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The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CP8YXH3/ Someone mentioned this a few days ago. Worth picking up? Shaman's Crossing (Soldier Son #1) by Robin Hobb - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKCWO/ Hollywood Dead (Sandman Slim #10) by Richard Kadrey - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074SJ3MN9/ The Magician's Guild (Black Magician #1) by Trudi Canavan - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000MAH7B8/
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Dec 21, 2021 18:16
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I only recently finished Piranesi and since it's came up in the thread I have to ask, did everyone who enjoyed it just ignore the contradiction between the way Piranesi was essentially re-written as a person by the House and the rest of the story? I think I would have enjoyed it if the entire basis for the story wasn't essentially retconned as the book progressed. Every reveal of the book became another example of how the effect of the House was less than it needed to be to justify the behavior, feelings and thoughts of Piranesi before the reveal. Maybe it was just the expectation of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book instead of a more direct murder mystery book probably ruined it for me.
nessin fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 21, 2021 18:39
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Although it's a used bookstore chain regional to Tennessee and North Carolina (that also sells and buys music, electronics, games of all types, musical instruments, etc) , McKay's is really drat impressive. The McKay's along i-40 are all in custombuilt warehouse buildings the size of Costco warehouses. Tennessee is full of cool tourist trap things like the obvious Nashville Tennessee & Graceland, but also has Dollywood, tours of the Jack Daniels whiskey distillery, and if you're a scifi fan of any caliber, you really must visit the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge Tennessee. The exhibits are trippy as hell in there, and date from the 1950's to the latest round of SuperFund enviromental remediation diorama's for the Y-12 site also located in Oak Ridge. e: and yes, Tennessee did bribe me to post that for free Dollywood, Graceland, and Grand Old Opry tickets. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 21, 2021 20:07
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pradmer posted:The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton - $2.99 I also want to know if it's worth a read, as well as why she gets an extra half a death in the US.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:55
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I'm only halfway through it but still enjoying it. Of course, it is a mystery, so the ending is pretty critical to reviewing it properly
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Dec 21, 2021 20:58
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The Sweet Hereafter posted:I also want to know if it's worth a read, as well as why she gets an extra half a death in the US. I am not a "proper" mystery reader because I don't try and solve things myself, I just wait for the book to tell me the answer, but I recall I thought the ending was a bit of a stretch. It was a pretty fun read till then, though.
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Dec 21, 2021 21:05
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The Sweet Hereafter posted:I also want to know if it's worth a read, as well as why she gets an extra half a death in the US. You got to convert from the metric system to US measurements
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Dec 21, 2021 22:00
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Title [edit] According to Turton, the novel's title was changed in America since it was similar to the previously published The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.[6]
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Dec 21, 2021 22:42
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nessin posted:I only recently finished Piranesi and since it's came up in the thread I have to ask, did everyone who enjoyed it just ignore the contradiction between the way Piranesi was essentially re-written as a person by the House and the rest of the story? I think I would have enjoyed it if the entire basis for the story wasn't essentially retconned as the book progressed. Every reveal of the book became another example of how the effect of the House was less than it needed to be to justify the behavior, feelings and thoughts of Piranesi before the reveal. Maybe it was just the expectation of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book instead of a more direct murder mystery book probably ruined it for me. I don't really agree with that, I mean magic is demonstrably factually real and can be learned plus from my understanding he was literally living in abandoned and forgotten beauty This is the kind of stuff that would break down a person on its own, so to speak.
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Dec 21, 2021 22:51
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Benagain posted:I don't really agree with that, I mean magic is demonstrably factually real and can be learned plus from my understanding he was literally living in abandoned and forgotten beauty This is the kind of stuff that would break down a person on its own, so to speak. Yeah this is where I’m at with it. The extent of the changes in the Mc after being trapped work perfectly well as far as I’m concerned. Where I struggled with plausibility is in the timeframe of those changes. Iirc he was in there for five years, a long time by any stretch, but he also understood on some level the kind of poo poo that was going down, so it’s hard for me to believe that he totally unraveled in that timespan. Hell, not exactly comparable but I’ve done two years in Covid isolation and while it’s impacted me significantly in ways large and small, I’m still me. You know? My other big beef with the plot rides the coattails of that issue. The MC really had no clue whatsoever that he was being played? That’s hard for me to square with who he was before being trapped: a canny investigator who’d nearly cracked the facts of the mysteries he was investigating. Maybe I’m misremembering a key part of the book, but even in the midst of reading it, I wanted to shake the protagonist regularly. As a literary technique—the author giving the reader more information than the protagonist—it worked great, but as a plot device I’m a little more sanguine about its effectiveness. But at the end of the day, I don’t really find these plot tangles very annoying. They weren’t the point of the book to me. The point, as I saw it, was to acknowledge, nurture, and be nurtured by an undisturbed beauty. On that score, the book is a slam dunk. e: Oh, and an eligy for humanity and its most destructive, exploitative tendencies, but I prefer to focus on the good bits. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 21, 2021 23:32
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Title [edit] Which is not at all SF, but I found pretty enjoyable anyways.
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Dec 21, 2021 23:45
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BurningBeard posted:Piranesi IIRC, the House has an amnesia effect on the people on it, hence why the Other can’t stick around. And scavenging algae for food while trapped alone in the statue universe is a little worse than Covid lockdown. But more than that I think the book is about going through capital T Trauma and how that can break anyone, even someone like Matthew, and how someone like that reintegrates who he was before and who he had to become to survive. Thats the horror and beauty of the House. That Piranesi and Matthew are completely different isn’t a mistake, it’s the point.
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Dec 22, 2021 01:05
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Tars Tarkas posted:You got to convert from the metric system to US measurements I genuinely did wonder for a second if it was something to do with that. Or maybe shoe sizes. I'm now trying to work out if I have heard of The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo before, and if so, whether I subconsciously conflated it with Evelyn Hardcastle.
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Dec 22, 2021 01:12
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pradmer posted:The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton - $2.99 I really enjoyed it. Closest thing to a book equivalent of the Zero Escape games that I’ve read, in terms of feel. theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 01:16
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mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:IIRC, the House has an amnesia effect on the people on it, hence why the Other can’t stick around. And scavenging algae for food while trapped alone in the statue universe is a little worse than Covid lockdown. But more than that I think the book is about going through capital T Trauma and how that can break anyone, even someone like Matthew, and how someone like that reintegrates who he was before and who he had to become to survive. Thats the horror and beauty of the House. That Piranesi and Matthew are completely different isn’t a mistake, it’s the point. We seem to have come to two very different conclusions about the point of the book. Heh. Though you’re right I’d forgotten about the house having the explicit ability to mindwipe people. Woops.
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Dec 22, 2021 01:16
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There’s a good article to be written comparing Piranesi and Murderbot as two visions of how it feels to be isolated from the people who love you as a result of trauma and how it feels to try to reintegrate.
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Dec 22, 2021 01:22
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The only thing that bothered me about Piranesi was that the person who comes looking for him and rescued him is a police detective who was assigned to his missing persons case. It just felt weird, like looking at the ending of somebody else's story, and would have felt more appropriate to me if it were a family member or lover who'd never given up on him.
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Dec 22, 2021 04:10
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I didn't have a ton of time to read this year but I made up for it in quality. I started with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and I'll definitely look for more KJ Parker. Project Hail Mary was decent. It felt like The Martian but more scifi. Between Two Fires was phenomenal. I loved the religious/fantasy/cosmic take on historical events. Piranesi was amazing. It made me take some time to reflect on what I read and that's what I want out of a book. It really hit home. I read a few other things but these were the most memorable. Between each book I've been working on Lord of the Rings. Overall it's good but it just won't end. We destroyed the ring 150 pages ago! Let's wrap it up people. Thanks to everyone here for the great reviews and recommendations!
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Dec 22, 2021 04:14
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but the post-Ring poo poo is like, more important than 80% of the rest of the book/s!
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Dec 22, 2021 07:38
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Ended up reading around 12+ millions words alone finishing that SF-LOVERS readthrough project this year. Most of my high points and biggest low points in reading SF&F fiction in 2021 came from that project. Ending up hating Babylon 5 as much as I hate filksongs wasn't an expected outcome, but it is what it is. Reading habits chat from a page or two ago: I'm one of the oddballs that use ebook devices at their tiniest font size settings and wish Kindle/Kobos/Nooks had even tinier sized fonts.
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Dec 22, 2021 09:42
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I was disappointed in Piranesi that the amnesia effect of the House was never explained beyond "it's magic". I wanted there to be some kind of reason for it, or at least a thematic connection to the other aspects of the House. As it was, it felt like a cheap plot device shoved in to justify having an amnesia-based mystery. Still a wonderful book in many ways, but that aspect made it fall short of "classic" for me.
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Dec 22, 2021 12:12
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In the place of forgotten things, one become forgotten to oneself. His investigative skills keep him going in the house but he's got to apply all his energy just to survive
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Dec 22, 2021 15:16
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A Proper Uppercut posted:For me, Piranesi was really elevated by the audiobook. I'll never not recommend it to people. Just so good. Thanks for mentioning this, picked up the book and it is really good so far
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Dec 22, 2021 17:27
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I adored Piranesi, the images of the House it could conjure without taking hundreds of pages. Was actually a speculative fiction or adjancent book I just considered gifting to my pretty much detective novel reading mother for Christmas, now that Finnish translation is out. Previously did this with Mieville’s City & The City, Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, and Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs.
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Dec 22, 2021 17:43
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The Sweet Hereafter posted:I also want to know if it's worth a read, as well as why she gets an extra half a death in the US. Maybe they added a sex scene in there. La petite mort, after all. 
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Dec 22, 2021 18:39
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Aardvark! posted:I'm only halfway through it but still enjoying it. Of course, it is a mystery, so the ending is pretty critical to reviewing it properly I'm reading it myself. It's interesting mystery-wise, although I find the prose a bit clunky and overwritten. And while he does a decent job at the whole remote-English-estate-murder-mystery atmosphere, there are still some minor wrong details that niggle at me -- like, an aristocratic young lady of that era would have called her family's butler Collins, not Mr. Collins.
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Dec 22, 2021 19:30
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Sailor Viy posted:I was disappointed in Piranesi that the amnesia effect of the House was never explained beyond "it's magic". I wanted there to be some kind of reason for it, or at least a thematic connection to the other aspects of the House. As it was, it felt like a cheap plot device shoved in to justify having an amnesia-based mystery. Ah, the Mieville/Sanderson split.
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Dec 22, 2021 19:31
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Sailor Viy posted:I was disappointed in Piranesi that the amnesia effect of the House was never explained beyond "it's magic". I wanted there to be some kind of reason for it, or at least a thematic connection to the other aspects of the House. As it was, it felt like a cheap plot device shoved in to justify having an amnesia-based mystery. I think it's connected thematically. If you've ever spent a very long time absolutely alone, you really do get brain fog of an extreme kind after a while. So that connects up. The magic is reality but more.
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Dec 22, 2021 19:39
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buffalo all day posted:There’s a good article to be written comparing Piranesi and Murderbot as two visions of how it feels to be isolated from the people who love you as a result of trauma and how it feels to try to reintegrate. So I’ve been thinking over the last day about Piranesi and this trauma interpretation, and why it doesn’t exactly sit right with me. Not picking on you specifically, cause I don’t think there’s such a thing as a wrong interpretation, and the trauma angle is as valid as any other. That said though, I don’t really remember the MC being particularly “traumatized” by the events of the book as such. If anything, he really wants to return, and wants to take the cop with him, even. And for as long as he was there, I think he developed a sort of symbiosis with the place. I get that you can say this is a traumatic event, it undoubtedly is for his family and the people that care about him. But he bonded to the place. I think to a reader with conventional beliefs about how things ought to be, it’s perfectly cool to say this is traumatic, but he was happy when he was there, despite the providence of his arrival. I kept thinking about the purpose of the place. It feels like a sort of metaphor for the natural world to me. The cultists and magicians and etc. are like exploitative humanity not caring about the value of the place in and of itself. They only want to exploit it. Where the MC found a way to exist within it, was provided for by it, learned to understand its rhythms and workings, showed great reverence to the dead, without really knowing who they were or where they came from. It makes me think of older, land-oriented spirituality and shamanism. Obviously the manner of his arrival was horrid, but what he got out of it was a kind of pure connection to his environment unmediated by the kinds of human concerns we so often prize. Like if the algae was actually repellent, I think the text would have made that explicit. Instead, we see it the way he sees it, as a sustaining thing. I could be misremembering some vital detail that flips my take on its head, of course. But either way, I like thinking about the book because of how compelling it is.
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Dec 22, 2021 19:52
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BurningBeard posted:So I’ve been thinking over the last day about Piranesi and this trauma interpretation, and why it doesn’t exactly sit right with me. Not picking on you specifically, cause I don’t think there’s such a thing as a wrong interpretation, and the trauma angle is as valid as any other. I think this is also a really interesting interpretation, and not necessarily counter to the trauma reading at least as I see it. The House is I think mostly horrifying in its indifference, like the natural world, and maybe it's our own baggage that makes being lost there seem horrifying at all. But it's hard not to imagine his state of mind in the House before he lost his memory, forced into pretty debased survival -- that I think is the trauma, and why I see his Piranesi self as a kind of reversion into childlike thinking and wonder to psychologically survive-- the horror is that he doesn't find what's happening to him horrible. There's a purity to him there, but it's tainted by what we know he's lost. Then again, for me the beauty of the ending is that he still loves the House, despite what happened to him there, so I don't know. I like your more optimistic read on it. Similar to Murderbot though less obviously, I think there's a reading of Piranesi that's about slavery and dehumanization but I haven't really thought that through enough.
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Dec 22, 2021 20:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think it's connected thematically. If you've ever spent a very long time absolutely alone, you really do get brain fog of an extreme kind after a while. So that connects up. The magic is reality but more. How do you get rid of it? Asking for a poster who has essentially been a hermit since Day 1 Covid
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Dec 23, 2021 02:33
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Kesper North posted:How do you get rid of it? What worked for me in the Before Time (by which I mean, like, TYOOL 2001-2005) was very consciously and deliberately going out to coffeeshops and bars and things and just talking to people and meeting people (ideally, without being creepy). I'm not even sure that would be possible today though even apart from covid. Everyone's glued to their phones. Back then all I had to do was sit somewhere and read a book with a neat cover and usually someone would ask me about it and if they didn't hey I'd read a new book.
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Dec 23, 2021 02:44
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Cardiac posted:Ah, the Mieville/Sanderson split. What's that?
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Dec 23, 2021 03:34
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Doobie Keebler posted:I didn't have a ton of time to read this year but I made up for it in quality. I started with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and I'll definitely look for more KJ Parker. Project Hail Mary was decent. It felt like The Martian but more scifi. Between Two Fires was phenomenal. I loved the religious/fantasy/cosmic take on historical events. Piranesi was amazing. It made me take some time to reflect on what I read and that's what I want out of a book. It really hit home. I read a few other things but these were the most memorable. Between each book I've been working on Lord of the Rings. Overall it's good but it just won't end. We destroyed the ring 150 pages ago! Let's wrap it up people. We had a similar reading experience this year. Best things I’ve read in 2020-2021 were KJ Parker books, Piranesi, and Between Two Fires. I also read a bunch of Buehlman’s other works as well as the latest book in Abercrombie’s trilogy. Other than that.... I dunno, I probably read some other stuff but it wasn’t that memorable. I’m still trying to struggle my way through The Absolute Book but it just does not grab me. Similar issue with The Grey House and The Exploits of Engelbrecht (although I think I did make it like 60% through this one but I was skimming a lot.)
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Dec 23, 2021 03:36
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Sailor Viy posted:What's that? Magic-should-have-rules vs. don't-be-so-literal-minded, I guess. Though I would argue it's more of a continuum than a split.
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Dec 23, 2021 03:58
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Finished up The Girl With All the Gifts. The limited scope makes it feel more like a movie novelization than the other way around (fake edit: apparently this was written at the same time as the movie script, as they were both based on a short story called Iphigenia In Aulis;). It would have been nice to see what happened back at the “school”, or see some perspective from someone in the junker gang, or anyone else really - the characters felt a bit thinly sketched, and they were starting to wear on me by the end. Overall though, an interesting twist on the zombie-adjacent genre. Just borrowed the prequel book, we’ll see how that holds up. Back on the Pratchett train, finished Mort and got about halfway through Reaper Man. Both are fine, entertaining without being too heavy or demanding; good holiday reading. I think I’ll take a break from Discworld after this one, though - Pratchett has a very distinctive narrative style and all the books are starting to run together in my head.
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Dec 23, 2021 05:25
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I haven't stopped raving about between two fires to all my friends tbh. One of them will eventually read it if I pester enough...
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Dec 23, 2021 05:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What worked for me in the Before Time (by which I mean, like, TYOOL 2001-2005) was very consciously and deliberately going out to coffeeshops and bars and things and just talking to people and meeting people (ideally, without being creepy). I'm not even sure that would be possible today though even apart from covid. Everyone's glued to their phones. Back then all I had to do was sit somewhere and read a book with a neat cover and usually someone would ask me about it and if they didn't hey I'd read a new book. Heh, that's the same timeframe in which I made friends with a guy who was reading the same book as me at Denny's at midnight, except I was his gateway to a social life at the time! I've kind of been doing something a little similar by picking up new games and hobbies with big online communities and forcing myself to get on voice and talk to people. It's helped a little, and I've met some cool people with similar interests in the process! In the Grand Old Days of the Centauri Republic, we had whole fleets of parties...!
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Dec 23, 2021 05:43
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Another Dirty Dish posted:Finished up The Girl With All the Gifts. The limited scope makes it feel more like a movie novelization than the other way around (fake edit: apparently this was written at the same time as the movie script, as they were both based on a short story called Iphigenia In Aulis;). It would have been nice to see what happened back at the “school”, or see some perspective from someone in the junker gang, or anyone else really - the characters felt a bit thinly sketched, and they were starting to wear on me by the end. Overall though, an interesting twist on the zombie-adjacent genre. Just borrowed the prequel book, we’ll see how that holds up. One odd thing that occurred to me about The Girl With All the Gifts is that at a certain level of abstraction, it has basically the same plot as Ender's Game. The protagonist is a bright child at an unusual school who's treated rather cruelly by the adults around her, then ends up in the "real world" making high-stakes decisions, and in the end, with the best possible intentions, commits genocide. But somehow the implementation in The Girl With All the Gifts feels less...emotionally manipulative, I guess.
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Dec 23, 2021 05:48
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I just read the first chapter of the first Commonweal book...and it was like I was having a stroke. The words were English words and some of them had meaning, but none of them connected in any meaningful way. I've read and enjoyed A Clockwork Orange and Anathem, but this was like taking all the Asperger's in the world and mixing it with high fantasy Capital Names. Surely there was a better way to introduce the book (unless bafflement was the desired effect). It starts with unattributed dialog from a PoV that doesn't become semi-evident until the chapter is basically over. There's no setting, no description, no blocking, just exposition and colored commentary on the exposition. It reads like something I'd find in a undergrad creative writing course. Unless these choices are intentional? I wouldn't bother reading any more, but the premise in the thread sounded cool. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Dec 23, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2021 06:45
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