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ScienceSeagull posted:What are some books like Einstein's Dreams or Invisible Cities? Short stories exploring weird alternate worlds or thought experiments. Le Guin’s shorts?
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Jun 15, 2023 01:53
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| # ? May 18, 2024 02:44 |
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ScienceSeagull posted:What are some books like Einstein's Dreams or Invisible Cities? Short stories exploring weird alternate worlds or thought experiments. Borges
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Jun 15, 2023 04:02
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ScienceSeagull posted:What are some books like Einstein's Dreams or Invisible Cities? Short stories exploring weird alternate worlds or thought experiments. Cosmicomics
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Jun 15, 2023 04:07
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ScienceSeagull posted:What are some books like Einstein's Dreams or Invisible Cities? Short stories exploring weird alternate worlds or thought experiments. Greg Egan's work
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Jun 16, 2023 03:10
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I've found an enjoyable genre niche in reading about large corporations collapsing, the more hubris the better. I've read Bad Blood, The Smartest Guys In The Room and Billion Dollar Loser (Theranos, Enron and WeWork respectively). Does anyone have any reccomendations along those lines?
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Jun 17, 2023 12:56
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Cicadalek posted:I've found an enjoyable genre niche in reading about large corporations collapsing, the more hubris the better. I've read Bad Blood, The Smartest Guys In The Room and Billion Dollar Loser (Theranos, Enron and WeWork respectively). Does anyone have any reccomendations along those lines? The news?  But no I'm also into this and would love reccs.
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Jun 17, 2023 13:13
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Cicadalek posted:I've found an enjoyable genre niche in reading about large corporations collapsing, the more hubris the better. I've read Bad Blood, The Smartest Guys In The Room and Billion Dollar Loser (Theranos, Enron and WeWork respectively). Does anyone have any reccomendations along those lines? Boomerang is a bit more geo-political but it is about the 2007 financial collapse. I think that's the one with the quote: "Lets say I have a dog, you have a cat. I sell you my dog for $10 million, you sell me your cat for $10 million. We are no longer pet owners, we are now Icelandic banks"
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Jun 17, 2023 13:27
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I tried looking for a book about Halliburton but it turns out they're still around.
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Jun 17, 2023 13:27
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Captain Monkey posted:The news? Nthing this. I am currently reading Bad Blood and it's been pretty intense. (Don't tell me how it ends, hopefully this plucky Elizabeth character can turn it around  ) I also really liked The Big Short, which I read after seeing the film which is excellent.I have written down many book titles with the intention of reading them one of these decades, and some might be relevant to these interests. I only saved titles and not descriptions, but I tried to find the ones that might be relevant. I have not read any of these, so they might suck or be written by bad people, but I got suggested them at some point. There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for the Digital Future This one is from 04 so it might be positively quaint by now. Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry which was recently made into a film.
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Jun 17, 2023 14:08
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James B. Stewart's Den of Thieves and Michael Lewis's Liars' Poker (both from the late-80s Wall Street craze) are pretty good reads.
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Jun 17, 2023 16:18
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I've go Liar's Poker on the shelf (and it's great) next to Empire of Pain - all about the Sackler empire and America's addiction to oxy. I've not read it yet, but it comes with some good reviews.
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Jun 17, 2023 16:28
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Selachian posted:For spy stuff, I like Alan Furst, whose specialty is espionage in pre-World War II Europe. Like Le Carre, he's more cerebral than action-oriented. If you pick a bad one, it's going to be really bad.
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Jun 17, 2023 17:45
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Cicadalek posted:I've found an enjoyable genre niche in reading about large corporations collapsing, the more hubris the better. … Does anyone have any reccomendations along those lines? Not necessarily collapsing, but in that vein I’d put these - Kochland by Christopher Leonard Business Adventures by John Brooks
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Jun 18, 2023 13:40
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Thanks for the suggestions! I'll be sure to check these out. I actually watched the Blackberry movie recently and found it pretty entertaining.
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Jun 18, 2023 14:31
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Magnetic North posted:Nthing this. I am currently reading Bad Blood and it's been pretty intense. (Don't tell me how it ends, hopefully this plucky Elizabeth character can turn it around Just finished it. Spoiler: they didn't revolutionize the world. Allow me to complain for a bit. I found out that you can get e-books from libraries, and I thought "Awesome; it's the loving future! I'm gonna enrich myself so hard!" I have a like 90 books in a big list I've written down as I hear people mention them, sometimes on SA, sometimes elsewhere. However, it's not quite that easy. I have searched for about 20 of them so far. The vast majority have no copies at all. That sucks, but it happens. Some books have long waits because they only have so many copies. That doesn't seem like a terribly necessary way to organize infinitely reproducible digital resources, but I understand it's operating under capitalism so whatever. I finally found one that I could download, but oopsie: I can't read it in the Kindle app. It has some cockamamie DRM that I need to view within the library app, which runs like complete poo poo on my Kindle. Bad Blood is the only readable book I've found so far. You can search by "available on Kindle" but searching through the Nonfiction section is loving depressing. I get stuff from the usual right wing grifters right there with both august intellectuals and also intellectuals who probably mean well but are actually full of poo poo. I don't want to get my information algorithmically in case I end up finding someone who sucks and I don't know it. So here's my question: How do you all find books to read? I have been adding books to my list for years in the hopes of getting around to them, but finally getting my library card has not unlocked as much as I was hoping for.
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Jun 19, 2023 14:22
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Try talking to the library, they're usually pretty good and filling gaps. There's been a few times where I'll make a request and they track down a copy pretty quick. Beyond that I just check the sales page on kobo's website every once in a while, but at this point I have around 250 books in my reader so I try not to add more unless it's something really good
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Jun 19, 2023 15:20
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Yeah it sounds like maybe your library has a poo poo selection. Look into cards from other metro areas in your state or for libraries that offer out of state cards for a yearly fee (RIP the Brooklyn Public Library out of state card). With my library I almost never run into non-Kindle ebooks. I also never really read nonfiction so that could be part of it. Also removing the DRM from the Libby only ebooks is actually pretty easy, assuming you have a real computer that can run Calibre. I've done it to get those few books onto my Kindle when I needed to.
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Jun 19, 2023 17:13
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There's also always  but they tend to have formatting issues, I find I'd usually rather pay the $2 when they go on sale so I can have proper chapter breaks
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Jun 19, 2023 18:43
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Magnetic North posted:Just finished it. Spoiler: they didn't revolutionize the world. :files: and purchasing direct from the author or publisher if I can.
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Jun 19, 2023 23:32
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Humerus posted:Yeah it sounds like maybe your library has a poo poo selection. Look into cards from other metro areas in your state or for libraries that offer out of state cards for a yearly fee (RIP the Brooklyn Public Library out of state card). With my library I almost never run into non-Kindle ebooks. I also never really read nonfiction so that could be part of it. Thank you very much for the suggestion. Turns out the Boston Library will let you get an eCard for free if you live, work, etc in MA which I do (no doxx pls). It's a bit weird that I have to switch between library cards, but I guess that makes sense for the system. I can already see a difference because at least one book that didn't appear in my local system was present in the BPL system. Many would require a hold, which is more of what I expected for any book popular enough for me to have heard of. As for I know "piracy is praxis" but that just isn't me.
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Jun 19, 2023 23:41
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tuyop posted:purchasing direct from the author or publisher if I can. You'd be surprised how often this works too. I couldn't find a copy of Carrier Wave that wasn't locked to kindle, so I emailed the author to ask about buying it directly and he just gave me an epub
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Jun 20, 2023 00:12
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I recently read Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, and I'm looking for more spooky chemistry stories/anecdotes about research labs, not necessarily chemistry focused.
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Jun 20, 2023 21:13
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TheCog posted:I recently read Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, and I'm looking for more spooky chemistry stories/anecdotes about research labs, not necessarily chemistry focused. Command and Control is a very engrossing history of all the known times a nuclear bomb almost exploded on accident.
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Jun 21, 2023 00:02
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TheCog posted:I recently read Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, and I'm looking for more spooky chemistry stories/anecdotes about research labs, not necessarily chemistry focused. Derek Lowe's Things I Won't Work With is pretty legendary: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with
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Jun 21, 2023 04:02
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Is this a good spot for book recommendations? I've got a 2-week beach vacation coming up and I need some good stuff to read! I'm a big fan of historical non-fiction, Erik Larson being one of my favorites, so anything similar to that would work well. For fiction I'm a big 1920s golden age of murder mystery fan, but have gone through all the Poirot, Campion, and Lord Peter Whimsey novels. I'm not familiar with many modern mysteries, is anyone doing things really exciting in the space? I enjoyed the Thursday Murder Club but not going to dive right into the next one, for instance. Any tips are welcome so I don't just bring Moby Dick for the third year and fail to read it!
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Jun 22, 2023 17:28
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Tom Tucker posted:Is this a good spot for book recommendations? I've got a 2-week beach vacation coming up and I need some good stuff to read! Why not mash your two interests together and read Caleb Carr’s The Alienist? It might work. Bear in mind it is a lot more gruesome than the Poirot novels, though…
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Jun 22, 2023 17:46
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I will check it out!
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Jun 22, 2023 19:06
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Tom Tucker posted:Is this a good spot for book recommendations? I've got a 2-week beach vacation coming up and I need some good stuff to read! What immediately springs to mind is Arturo Perez-Reverte's mystery novels -- The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel, both mysteries deeply informed by history. Anything by Umberto Eco probably fits also, especially of course the Name of the Rose, but as mentioned above _The Alienist_ might be more precisely on point for you. We have a mystery fiction thread here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3876922 And a history book thread here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3458502&userid=0&perpage=40&highlight=history&pagenumber=1 For a good beach read? Maybe Rascals in Paradise by James Michener. It's ten short biographical sketches of various historical figures of the South Pacific -- William Bligh, Edgar Leeteg (the father of black velvet painting), The Marquis de Rays, etc. Even better though might be David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag: the Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates. Cordingly combed back through historical records to put together a breakdown of what pirate legends are mythology and what was truth. It has a great deal of extremely detailed historical info in it and overall it's a great and interesting crime read. If you want more classic cozy mystery series type thing, my suggestion is that you get the entire collection of Nero Wolfe books, all forty or so of them, and read them in strict publication order. They're great little cozy mysteries and importantly each one is set in Manhattan in the year it was written, so reading all forty or so gives you this great historical window into the middle of the American century from the Depression through to the 1970's. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jun 23, 2023 |
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Jun 23, 2023 00:59
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Tom Tucker posted:Is this a good spot for book recommendations? I've got a 2-week beach vacation coming up and I need some good stuff to read! Have you read Nero Wolfe? Or anything by Ngaio Marsh? Both are great in different ways!
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Jun 23, 2023 01:06
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Devil in a blue dress?
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Jun 23, 2023 01:09
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Tom Tucker posted:Is this a good spot for book recommendations? I've got a 2-week beach vacation coming up and I need some good stuff to read! A lot of people here enjoyed Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell, a comedy-mystery involving British barristers travelling to Venice in the 80s, which just got reprinted (but don't buy the new audiobook; it's bad).
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Jun 23, 2023 01:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What immediately springs to mind is Arturo Perez-Reverte's mystery novels -- The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel, both mysteries deeply informed by history. I can second at least The Club Dumas, I really enjoyed it. Its movie adaptation, The Ninth Gate, is a bit more famous in the Anglosphere, but is really only about... 60/70%-ish of the original book plus a very different ending? As the name suggests, enhanced by knowing at least the Three Musketeers, but not mandatory to enjoyment. I can't speak to The Flanders Panel except generally liking Perez-Reverte's work, since I've also read most of his Captain Alatriste series (the Three Musketeers' depressed Spanish cousin).
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Jun 23, 2023 01:58
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As far as history goes, I really enjoyed Expedition to Disaster: The Athenian Mission to Sicily 415 BC by Philip Matyszak. It's a fun, easy to read accounting of a very interesting, very dumb war that you'd never hear about otherwise.
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Jun 23, 2023 02:37
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These all look like awesome recommendations, thanks everyone! For me I can say I found the Mary Russel novels by Laurie King to be pretty entertaining. She does Holmes justice in her storytelling but really the best parts of the novels are they are well-researched examinations of places in time, from intrigue in Jerusalem to Dartmoor to a manor house. They're much more thrillers or dramas than mysteries, though.
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Jun 23, 2023 02:47
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tuyop posted:I think pillars of the earth is pretty good for this, actually. This book was loving fantastic, btw, thanks for the recommendation.
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Jun 23, 2023 06:00
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The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War was dang fantastic. As well as the difficult training and combat, the book conveys a lovely sense of the romance of getting to sail off to France for the first and only time in your life, visiting Paris on furlough.
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Jun 23, 2023 06:50
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I was going to read some more nonfiction next but I think I need a change after Bad Blood because the next book I chose is tough to get through. I think I would like something entertaining. Since I am now doing the e-Library thing, Agatha Christie is now back on the table. Since she is not in public domain it would have been a little expensive to purchase. I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stuff a little while back, having not read them before, and greatly enjoyed it. The short stories were especially good for "before bed" reading since they were digestible in one sitting. That makes me think I'd enjoy the Hercule Poirot books. I have not read or seen any Poirot media except for one video game but I understand it's basically her take on those types of tales. My question is: are these books graphic in the form of descriptions of blood and gore? Since they're mysteries and sometimes about murders, I suspect they certainly could be. For the Sherlock books, typically there were few lurid descriptions of graphic violence. I was only unable to finish one story due to its description of a victim. Of course, she was writing at different times. I suspect that her standalone novels might be more horrific than the more lighter Poirot stuff, but I am basing that on nothing at all. If you have other suggestions based on what I've said, I'm open to that as well.
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Jun 24, 2023 00:36
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Almost none of the Agatha Christie books have significant amounts of blood or gore. I think Hercule Poirot's Christmas is the only exception.
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Jun 24, 2023 01:18
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Yeah, there's not a lot of description of gore in Christie beyond thumps on the head or stabbings. I'd maybe avoid The Body in the Library since it touches on a body in the aftermath of a car accident, but even then it's not in particularly descriptive terms. edit: also body in the library is a marple book and most of those aren't as good lol
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Jun 24, 2023 14:39
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Poirot is generally safe. You’ll get descriptions of bodies but nothing lurid or grotesque. It’s usually just someone poisoned or hit over the head as others have said and it’s much much more about the details of the mystery and the characters and suspects. I’d also recommend the Lord Peter Whimsey novels as another option, although I’d say as a whole Poirot is better. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is the first I believe and a classic. A lot of opinion differs about the two most well-known, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, I think both are OK. I really like Peril at End House, the ABC murders, and Five Little Pigs.
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Jun 24, 2023 20:06
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