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Jedit posted:That's a steal, but it is the first book in a duology and the second one isn't out until next year and it ends on a cliffhanger. Ok I'm gonna bank into the TBR pile. I don't enjoy picking up a sequel and not remembering the previous one very well. Thanks
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Aug 11, 2023 15:31
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mewse posted:Tolstoy wrote about this with war and peace - glad Asimov was breaking new ground Yeah I'll get right on reading War and Peace in elementary school.
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Aug 11, 2023 15:32
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mewse posted:Tolstoy wrote about this with war and peace - glad Asimov was breaking new ground War and peace doesn’t have robots and, at less than 1200 pages total, is barely novel length. Fly away, troll
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Aug 11, 2023 15:33
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Ravenfood posted:Yeah I'll get right on reading War and Peace in elementary school. You're still in elementary school?
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Aug 11, 2023 15:38
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war and peace was good, actually 
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Aug 11, 2023 16:00
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Awkward Davies posted:war and peace was good, actually 
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Aug 11, 2023 16:01
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Jedit posted:Then you'll be glad to hear that there's an entire album of Tolkien reciting and singing his own work. I probably still have it somewhere. Cool, it certainly seems to be a youtube rabbit hole. It’s fun to hear him clearly get so revved up at the charge of the Rohirrim at Minas Tirith.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:03
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Ravenfood posted:Yeah I'll get right on reading War and Peace in elementary school.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:46
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At least it's easy to know what it's about because Tolstoy keeps turning to the camera and saying "The great man theory is bollocks"
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Aug 11, 2023 17:27
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Qwertycoatl posted:At least it's easy to know what it's about because Tolstoy keeps turning to the camera and saying "The great man theory is bollocks" The book has an entire epilogue on the specific topic! War and Peace rules, and is set far enough back and far enough away from US/UK history to seem like a fantasy novel. It's one of my very favorite books ever.
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Aug 11, 2023 17:56
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habeasdorkus posted:The book has an entire epilogue on the specific topic!  not to mention it features Pierre, one of the gooniest main characters in fiction
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Aug 11, 2023 17:59
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ClydeFrog posted:Very excited about this. I was going to wait but then remembered the talk about how important pre-orders can be. Oh drat I forgot that this was being written. I've been too busy to read/check-in on this thread, but happy that I came in just now to mention a Murderbot short story just showed up in my email-amazon-following-Martha Wells feature which is the first time that feature has been useful too me. Thanks for mentioning this.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:52
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but it is a few books a week) and would like to send money to some fellow forum posters. Would it be possible to add Goon Author Books to the OP at all as they come up?
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I am aware of the fact that Russian kids are forced to read many thick classics in their schooling.
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Aug 12, 2023 01:34
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when your country has a massive inferiority complex and also drops like 3 of the best 5 novels ever written you make everyone read them as soon as possible
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Aug 12, 2023 02:36
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buffalo all day posted:when your country has a massive inferiority complex and also drops like 3 of the best 5 novels ever written you make everyone read them as soon as possible What are the three? W&P, Crime and Punishment, and Anna Karenina? Brothers Karamazov?
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Aug 12, 2023 03:29
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MockingQuantum posted:What are the three? W&P, Crime and Punishment, and Anna Karenina? Brothers Karamazov? my secret plan to turn this thread into the Russian lit mega thread is based on sparking this debate  …for me personally it’s w&p, crime and punishment and Anna karenina but I could have just said 4 of 5 and included a day in the life of Ivan denisovitch too. don’t even get me started on the short stories, the pevear and volokhonsky Chekhov collection is so good to make it sf&f adjacent, George Saunders (author of “Lincoln in the bardo”) has a book collecting Russian short stories with essays discussing each one called “a swim in the pond in the rain” that’s mind blowingly good especially for the writers itt
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Aug 12, 2023 03:42
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I read Oblomov in high school because I wanted to impress my English teacher and it ended up being one of my favorite books
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Aug 12, 2023 04:22
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Solzhenitsyn's politics suck, but he's a hell of a novelist. Except for 1914. I blame the translation, because a novel set on the Eastern Front in 1914 from the Russian POV is extremely my jam, but I can only get pages into that drat book.
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Aug 12, 2023 05:07
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buffalo all day posted:when your country has a massive inferiority complex and also drops like 3 of the best 5 novels ever written you make everyone read them as soon as possible Also when cultural genocide is one of the main tools of nation building.
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Aug 12, 2023 05:19
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buffalo all day posted:my secret plan to turn this thread into the Russian lit mega thread is based on sparking this debate Day in the life of Ivan D has the bonus of being short. I read a lot of Russia lit in high school, I should go back to it.
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Aug 12, 2023 05:42
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How soon people forget Eugene Onegin
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Aug 12, 2023 06:02
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fez_machine posted:How soon people forget Eugene Onegin Who?
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Aug 12, 2023 08:19
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Xtanstic posted:a Murderbot short story just showed up in my email-amazon-following-Martha Wells feature a new one? i thought the only upcoming murderbot release was in november?
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Aug 12, 2023 09:18
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buffalo all day posted:my secret plan to turn this thread into the Russian lit mega thread is based on sparking this debate I still remember Diary of a Madman and The Nose vividly, I was in a Russian Sci Fi and Fantasy class in college and there's some wildly awesome stuff.
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Aug 12, 2023 11:42
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Just finished Origin Complex, sequel to Steel Frame. Not mech-centred like the first one but still really good. I ended up getting it from somewhere called scarlet ferret. It seems like a legit site, small range but hopefully it’s giving more of a cut to the authors than Amazon.
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Aug 12, 2023 12:05
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Cold Iron (Masters & Mages #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079L5669Y/
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Aug 12, 2023 16:20
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Larry Parrish posted:I'm pretty sure you're supposed to think Quillifer is a stupid rear end in a top hat in the first book. Don't worry, the last half is really good, and the second and third book continue from that trend instead of being a bumbling drunk rear end in a top hat who's too clever for his own good. I’ve now completed all three and done basically nothing else. I’m not claiming they’re great literature, but goddamn they were what I needed and I could not put them down, it’s an odd mix of sub genres and unusually colorful writing, along with a some terrific narrative twists. I think my favorite part is that it’s never really clear what is true and what is exaggeration, or even lies, as it’s all from the mouth of the protagonist, who clearly has his own agenda.
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Aug 12, 2023 21:47
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lol literally thought Larry was back for a second
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Aug 12, 2023 21:48
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WarpDogs posted:lol literally thought Larry was back for a second Don’t scare me like that!
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Aug 12, 2023 22:03
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fez_machine posted:How soon people forget Eugene Onegin Nabokov didn't. The Opera version is also getting rebroadcast in theatre's on a pretty wide release as part of the Met Operas Summer Encore Series. Next Wednesday I believe. So get your tickets if your interested.
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Aug 12, 2023 22:09
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Doktor Avalanche posted:a new one? i thought the only upcoming murderbot release was in november? It looks like it's a more fleshed out short story that was recently published. It was only a buck and I love Murderbot so I just grabbed it. https://www.amazon.ca/Compulsory-Martha-Wells-ebook/dp/B0CD39L16K/
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Aug 13, 2023 07:11
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I found this from other threads. SA Authors All collated in one handy place
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Aug 13, 2023 08:39
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I'm giving up on A Memory Called Empire about 25% in. I find the plot superficially similar to The Goblin Emperor, in that it's (somewhat implausibly) whirlwind court intrigue drama with a main character thrust into a leading role they're not ready for, except in AMCE it makes even less sense because she was specifically trained to fulfill her role, albeit hurriedly. Besides that, I have the same problem that both of them are rather unimaginative settings that really had little reason to be SFF at all and could have just been historical fiction. Perhaps that's a little unfair with AMCE because the imago implant that contains the memories/psyche of a predecessor is somewhat central to the plot, but the main character's breaks almost immediately and thereafter does little besides generating her anxiety. More to the point, though, a lot of people seem to praise AMCE's worldbuilding, and I just... don't get it. I can understand people enjoying the murder mystery/court intrigue even if I didn't and won't, but nothing about the universe seems particularly compelling. The empire is vast and sprawling, spanning most of the galaxy, but most of it is only vaguely hinted at. Lsel Station has a population of 30,000 and has some outsized importance that isn't particularly well-explained, and a culture that's only sketched out in brief. They want to avoid being annexed by the empire but rely on a solitary ambassador who rarely informs them of anything he does. The new ambassador arrives - again alone - at the capital city and jewel of the empire, an ecumenopolis/planet-city later stated to have a population of a few hundred thousand. The gently caress!? How tiny is this planet? It's described as having some tall towers and a large subway/train network with buildings covering most of the surface. I can't say I enjoy long-winded and detailed descriptions of architecture but there's virtually nothing here to express alien-ness, grandiosity or a particular flavour of post-scarcity society. The Teixcalaan culture is apparently obsessed with poetry but it's vastly complicated and untranslatable, so... who cares? Like with architecture and planning, I don't need pages and pages of detailed descriptions, but something to give an impression or understanding. Iain Banks did a decent job sketching the titular games in Player of Games without attaching an appendix of rulesets (like the drat naming scheme in The Goblin Emperor). Teixcalaan comes with its own inane naming scheme of Number Noun which I suppose is a matter of taste. Other than that, the other sci-fi element is the The first breakfast they eat is a boiled paste that has been processed for 16 hours to remove the naturally-occurring cyanide in the tubers it's made out of. It's delicious. I rolled my eyes but was at least reminded of an amusing review of the second Ancillary book. Something mildly traumatic happens and someone makes a soothing tea, luxuriously using fresh leaves instead of the old batch that had been there for a week (but would normally have been used for another week, since the stuff is expensive as it's an obsession in that particular space empire). "That's not how tea works!! What the gently caress!", the reviewer sputtered. I feel you.
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Aug 13, 2023 08:41
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I thought it was a decently written book, but the anti-imperialist and lesbian angle does a lot more heavy lifting than in some other books with that particular combo I could name...
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Aug 13, 2023 09:59
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eXXon posted:The first breakfast they eat is a boiled paste that has been processed for 16 hours to remove the naturally-occurring cyanide in the tubers it's made out of. It's delicious. I rolled my eyes but was at least reminded of an amusing review of the second Ancillary book. Something mildly traumatic happens and someone makes a soothing tea, luxuriously using fresh leaves instead of the old batch that had been there for a week (but would normally have been used for another week, since the stuff is expensive as it's an obsession in that particular space empire). "That's not how tea works!! What the gently caress!", the reviewer sputtered. I feel you. Behold the deep science fiction lore of the Cassava tuber, which has to be soaked in water for 24+ hours.
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Aug 13, 2023 10:03
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also thats definitely a reasonable extrapolation of how some oolong teas could be handled if the expense were an issue
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Aug 13, 2023 10:05
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ClydeFrog posted:I found this from other threads. Heh, I did link it in here when I made it, but the more people seeing it the better!
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Aug 13, 2023 12:01
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WarpDogs posted:lol literally thought Larry was back for a second
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Aug 13, 2023 12:16
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We accidentally made coffee the other day without swapping the grounds. That does not work well at all.
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Aug 13, 2023 13:44
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buffalo all day posted:
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