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Ben Nevis posted:
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Oct 7, 2021 15:41
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Larry Parrish posted:the coolest part is there's all this depth and history just out of sight, and absolutely none of it matters. it gets brought up by people when its important, but even then they frequently just refer to it and everyone nods in understanding. i normally hate this kind of anti-exposition but done like this it's amazing and I wonder how I read anything else This conversation has made me way more interested in the Commonweal books, that sort of "I'm going to drop you into an alien culture and you get to figure it out yourself, I don't have to exposit poo poo" writing is very much my jam. a friendly penguin posted:That's not how Cloud Library works... Or it isn't how it has to be. They have apps for Apple, Android and Kindle Fire. So unless you're using an e-ink kindle, really shouldn't be a serious issue. But agreed, Cloud Library is one of the worst options and not just for the readers. It sucks for the libraries too. I have a Kobo, which is an e-ink device. It's very hackable, but as far as I know no-one has written an unofficial CloudLibrary client for it and god knows there's no official one; the instructions for "e-ink devices" involve doing something to connect Adobe software to your e-reader, and then downloading a thing on your windows computer that in turn lets you download the real book via Adobe and then sideload it over USB. Reading books on a phone or a tablet is for emergencies only.
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Oct 7, 2021 15:48
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Are there any e-ink readers that are small? I have a kindle paperwhite that I never read because it's too big, so I just do the app on my phone but I would prefer an ereader.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:14
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Sibling of TB posted:Are there any e-ink readers that are small? I have a kindle paperwhite that I never read because it's too big, so I just do the app on my phone but I would prefer an ereader. We have an e-reader megathread over in IYG that might be more help That said, how small is small? The smallest Kobos (the Nia and Clara) are both around 110x160mm, which makes them about the same width and a bit shorter than a mass market paperback. If you want something even smaller -- say, cellphone sized -- I'm not sure it exists; it's definitely not something offered by the big brands (kobo/kindle/nook/etc).
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Oct 7, 2021 16:45
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ToxicFrog posted:This conversation has made me way more interested in the Commonweal books, that sort of "I'm going to drop you into an alien culture and you get to figure it out yourself, I don't have to exposit poo poo" writing is very much my jam. Yeah the first book so far strikes me as if you took a KJ Parker book and mashed it together with a China Mieville series.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:46
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well Graydon, your alt accounts have paid off again. time to figure out how to send this poo poo to my kindle
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Oct 7, 2021 16:49
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Aardvark! posted:well Graydon, your alt accounts have paid off again. time to figure out how to send this poo poo to my kindle Calibre makes it pretty easy to convert to .mobi and sideload onto a kindle
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Oct 7, 2021 16:57
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navyjack posted:Same here. I got the free preview, read it, immediately bought the full book, read it, and am now on the 2nd. The standard is, as far as I can tell, an incredibly powerful sorcerous artifact that allows a military unit to become something of a gestalt hive-mind and do instant comms, cooperative magical workings, BIND THE DEAD OF THE FALLEN TO SERVICE IF THEY WANT, and stuff like that. It also seems to be an actual dimensional space where the Line-Captain keeps their poo poo. What follows isn't exactly a spoiler but I've read the series like four times now and poked around the Google group so be warned some details that are in later books may be involved: The Standard is a magical force multiplier plus an artifact that contains the patterns for many spells that would be difficult for Independents to perform outside their specialty. Just prior to the founding of the Commonweal the wizard Laurel discovered that you could get more power out of a consensus group working than the sum of its parts. In the bad old days, subjugating weaker or less experienced sorcerers was a typical way to enhance your power as a sorcerer. Still happens outside the Commonweal. The total ends up being less than the sum of its parts, in that case. Most Independents aren't as strong as a full Standard, and a battalion could hope to take on the strongest, although they might not survive it. This next part is a small spoiler regarding one function of the Standard. The binding of the dead to the Standard is consensual. It's mostly a way of making sure the job gets done, because the dead can still contribute their talent to the full push. Once deployment is over, all but the most dutiful dead are released to their rest. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 17:25
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But is it still also a flag that someone has to hold? Or it's just a concept in the ether somewhere?
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Oct 7, 2021 17:52
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Ccs posted:But is it still also a flag that someone has to hold? Or it's just a concept in the ether somewhere? It’s also still a physical object. (One of the later books suggests it could be mistaken for a javelin if one was in a hurry so I get the impression it’s just a big stick without any flag, in terms of its existence as a physical object.)
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Oct 7, 2021 18:16
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Ccs posted:But is it still also a flag that someone has to hold? Or it's just a concept in the ether somewhere? Yeah like the poster above suggests, it's like a big staff or pike, usually with a battle flag I think. Larger formations also have artifacts called pennants, which i think are like standards for an officer or reconnaissance corps.
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Oct 7, 2021 18:26
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a friendly penguin posted:Nope, changeable by each individual reader at each individual checkout: https://help.libbyapp.com/en-us/6008.htm Thanks, I never noticed that setting but similar to what others said, the default for me is also the max (14 days). Which is generally fine: if I don’t read something in 14 days, I’m not going to read it in 21.
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Oct 7, 2021 18:34
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eke out posted:if you survived the jump from Black Company to Anarcho-Syndicalist Wizard School between books 1 and 2, you're definitely over the biggest hump in terms of difficulty learning what the gently caress is going on in the world, everything becomes gradually more clear at that point Too bad book two and three are loving boring and tedious. It is a rare day when I give up on a book, but book three hit that sweet spot. Oh, and book one is not worse than any other generic fantasy in terms of not explaining everything. I mean, GeneWolfe says hi. I did actually enjoy the first book, except the end which was just weird. Oh, and mission accomplished, I guess 
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Oct 7, 2021 20:05
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eke out posted:if you survived the jump from Black Company to Anarcho-Syndicalist Wizard School between books 1 and 2, you're definitely over the biggest hump in terms of difficulty learning what the gently caress is going on in the world, everything becomes gradually more clear at that point i faltered on that step and bailed loved the first one but the second was like entering a fugue state or a deep fog bounced pretty hard and didn't look back
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Oct 7, 2021 21:14
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cj cherryh is also good at the "lol no explanations you'll have to figure it out yourself" kind of story
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Oct 7, 2021 21:16
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Doctor Jeep posted:cj cherryh is also good at the "lol no explanations you'll have to figure it out yourself" kind of story When I first got into her works I always had to brace myself through the first hundred pages, and then the immersion therapy was over and they were fast, fascinating reads.
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Oct 7, 2021 21:21
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Ccs posted:Yeah the first book so far strikes me as if you took a KJ Parker book and mashed it together with a China Mieville series. I hate both those authors though 
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Oct 7, 2021 21:27
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Doctor Jeep posted:cj cherryh is also good at the "lol no explanations you'll have to figure it out yourself" kind of story That's one of the things I like about her writing and I do feel like the Foreigner series is more expositional than her earlier work, to its detriment But yeah when people were talking up that aspect of the Commonweal books my first thought was "oh, like Cherryh?"
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Oct 7, 2021 21:29
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Doctor Jeep posted:i faltered on that step and bailed love that series but can't blame anyone for being turned off by it, there's a lot of civil engineering lol
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Oct 7, 2021 21:31
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Doctor Jeep posted:i faltered on that step and bailed Four and five move back towards something significantly closer to the first book, fwiw.
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Oct 7, 2021 21:54
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Drakyn posted:Oh hey was this you too? Around age 8-10 I was trying to read Laurence Yep's Dragon of the Lost Sea series and was similarly bamboozled by this dragon-but-no-dragons titling. Oh my god, yes! It was Dragon's Gate! I've never been able to remember the title off hand, but that's definitely it!
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Oct 7, 2021 21:55
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Larry Parrish posted:dilapidated rural California. Now to be fair they might have actually acquired real ebook tech in the last 5 years that isn't weird, proprietary, or literally just a license to give people file copies (but not over the internet), but I haven't heard of it. the computers in the main library haven't changed since I was old enough to use them, anyway. they still have 1024x768 LCD panels from 2000 lol. If you live in California you have access to a shitload of library’s digital cards. Many libraries offer cards to any California resident, not just residents of their town. Especially with COVID there are tons of places where you don’t even need to go in person, like the ones listed below. Berkeley: https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/library/your-card San Jose: https://www.sjpl.org/membership Oakland: https://oaklandlibrary.org/online-services Santa Cruz: https://www.santacruzpl.org/services/detail/32/ Santa Ana: http://www.santa-ana.org/library/get-library-card Whittier: https://www.whittierlibrary.org/elibrary/temporary-digital-library-card Alameda County (by mail): https://aclibrary.org/faq/library-accounts/#faq_415680 One of the libraries on these lists surely allows cards to all residents, so just check a few and you can get cards for the Northern and Southern California digital libraries: https://ncdl.overdrive.com/support/card https://scdl.overdrive.com/support/card So basically if you live in California you should be able to have like ~7 library cards linked to your Libby account no matter where you live and be able to borrow a ton of stuff easily. You can get a chrome extension which syncs with Libby and can check if any libraries have a book if you go to it’s Amazon page, or just search on the app. Would highly recommend taking like half an hour to set it up! (Also, the same is true of a lot of other states to varying degrees.)
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Oct 7, 2021 22:17
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Aardvark! posted:well Graydon, your alt accounts have paid off again. time to figure out how to send this poo poo to my kobo (it's also calibre)
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Oct 7, 2021 22:29
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DurianGray posted:Oh my god, yes! It was Dragon's Gate! I've never been able to remember the title off hand, but that's definitely it! *No illustrations, probably not much over or under a hundred pages, some ?siblings? on holiday at a ?cottage? ?on an island? with their ?aunt and uncle? and they find weird scavenger-hunt clues left around the island by the older relatives' ?brother? who was some sort of weird hermit back in the day. I think one clue partway through was in a hollowed-out tree in the middle of the woods and the one thing I know for SURE is that the entire chain of hints ends up leading them to the recluse's secret room hidden in the house itself. it is neither science fiction nor fantasy Drakyn fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 01:14
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Sounds like maybe a boxcar kids novel.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:16
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I read some of those years later and didn't make any connection, but it very well could be - that's the problem with the damned thing; it was so early on that I have very, very limited memories of reading it and the ones I DO have are garbled due to being a psychopathic little alien gremlin at the time.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:20
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I'm 90% sure on the boxcar kids thing. It's sort of hard to tell cuz if I remember right most of them had a structure like that. Come to think of it every kids book I read that was a sort-of-mystery feels pretty interchangable in retrospect. Then again maybe I just can't remember what I read 20 years ago very well.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:31
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The siblings with the aunt and uncle is what makes me think boxcar kids. There are definitely many structural similarities but the siblings plus aunt and uncle was the unusual part. Edit: is it The Lighthouse Mystery? Danhenge fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 01:50
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tildes posted:If you live in California you have access to a shitload of library’s digital cards. Many libraries offer cards to any California resident, not just residents of their town. Especially with COVID there are tons of places where you don’t even need to go in person, like the ones listed below. Awesome, thanks for this! 
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Oct 8, 2021 03:49
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Danhenge posted:The siblings with the aunt and uncle is what makes me think boxcar kids. There are definitely many structural similarities but the siblings plus aunt and uncle was the unusual part. Also in looking this stuff up I rediscovered that the boxcar children's grandfather was like 40x more obscenely rich than I recalled him being so the series is technically fantasy after book 1, it's just the fantasy of 'oh what a lovely house grandfather' 'haha yes, shall i buy it for us?' 'please!' 'very well, onto the pile with it!'
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Oct 8, 2021 04:14
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There's a dedicated book identifying thread (all genres) if you want to get more eyes on it.
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Oct 8, 2021 05:21
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Drakyn posted:*No illustrations, probably not much over or under a hundred pages, some ?siblings? on holiday at a ?cottage? ?on an island? with their ?aunt and uncle? and they find weird scavenger-hunt clues left around the island by the older relatives' ?brother? who was some sort of weird hermit back in the day. I think one clue partway through was in a hollowed-out tree in the middle of the woods and the one thing I know for SURE is that the entire chain of hints ends up leading them to the recluse's secret room hidden in the house itself. Not Elizabeth Enright's Spiderweb for Two, is it?
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Oct 8, 2021 11:02
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Drakyn posted:No problem, and I'm now hoping the karmic feedback from this lets me finally rediscover the name of a children's book* I read when I was 4-6ish. Reminds me of 'gone away lake' but the secret spot is a whole town in a bog, not a secret room ##edit also Elizabeth Enright## branedotorg fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 13:03
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Hobnob posted:There's a dedicated book identifying thread (all genres) if you want to get more eyes on it. Gone-away-Lake I read some years later when my brain was fully operational. I don't THINK it's 'Spiderweb for Two' either, based on what I've read. Apologies for the offtopicking.
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Oct 8, 2021 13:54
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it's not like we were talking about something more important
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Oct 9, 2021 01:48
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 Yea, this basically.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:42
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So I love science fiction and fantasy but don’t have a ton of free time anymore and fell off reading hard about ten years ago. I have been tiptoeing back in and read and fell in love with the writing style of The Name of the Wind even though I have some issues with the story and Kvothe. The prose and flow of the book absolutely recaptured that middle school reading zone I haven’t had in 25 years. I read the first book in about a day, it just flew by. Can’t say I enjoyed the second quite as much but the writing style was still phenomenal. Are there any recommendations for I guess it’d be easy to read and flowing books in the genres? Some of my past faves have been, Rendezvous with Rama, The Martian, Hitchhiker Guide, Enders Game. I haven’t read a ton of recent stuff besides Ready Player One which was fine. Sanderson was recommend to me once but his library seemed slightly daunting.
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Oct 9, 2021 04:29
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Susanna Clarke. If you need a short book, Piranesi. If you’re okay with a door stopper, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
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Oct 9, 2021 04:55
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Thinking about Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson again. I believe that it would have been less contrived if the colonization attempt had been made unviable by the extremely unsuitable day/night cycle rather than a deadly disease.
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Oct 9, 2021 05:01
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Ccs posted:Susanna Clarke. If you need a short book, Piranesi. If you’re okay with a door stopper, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Alternate approach: read both, they are good.
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Oct 9, 2021 05:32
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