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Ravenfood posted:I'm on book 19 
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Sep 2, 2023 20:32
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quote not edit, off to touch peaches (not a euphemism)
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Sep 2, 2023 21:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The trick is just accepting that there will be parts you don't understand and letting it just wash over you like a wave and then you keep going. Anything important will be explained to the doctor.
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Sep 2, 2023 21:39
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I've re-read the whole series seven or eight times now It genuinely gets better each time I cycle through, mostly because I understand more of the nautical jargon with each pass.
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Sep 2, 2023 21:40
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The thing is I don't think I've seen any series be 19 books deep and maintain quality the entire time, much less improve. I'm almost 40, I guess it's time to get really into boats as my schtick.
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Sep 2, 2023 23:14
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Ravus Ursus posted:The thing is I don't think I've seen any series be 19 books deep and maintain quality the entire time, much less improve. Jack Reacher is good through 19-20 books imo, though much like Aubrey-Maturin there’s a distinct 12-or-so book peak (without fail --> never go back). Scratches a different itch but also incredibly good.
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Sep 2, 2023 23:17
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HopperUK posted:Do I recall Steven Brust turning out to be an rear end in a top hat of some kind? Annoying. Yes, he is a sex pest who was banned from the 4th Street writers group for stalking a friend of mine.
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Sep 2, 2023 23:27
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Kesper North posted:Yes, he is a sex pest who was banned from the 4th Street writers group for stalking a friend of mine. I thought it was something like that yeah. What a dipshit. Thanks to the thread for rekindling my love for Jerome K Jerome.
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Sep 3, 2023 00:29
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Ravus Ursus posted:The thing is I don't think I've seen any series be 19 books deep and maintain quality the entire time, much less improve. There's basically two tricks that make the series work. The first is that the series has an extremely solid repeating pattern that is so strong you don't mind it repeating. The loop starts with Jack and Stephen ashore, and being ashore means Problems -- women problems, money problems, political problems, etc. Theres only one way to resolve these problems, and that's run away to sea on a boat. BOATS This trades all their many problems for one simple set of Boat Problems. And Jack is Good at Boat Problems. They then go back to shore and solve their various Land Problems with their new money. ... . . . Until they're on shore for too long and get new, more complex Land Problems. How do you solve those new more complicated problems? There's only one way! To a Boat! And the cycle repeats The second trick is immense levels of historical research. Most of the ship battles and set pieces he's lifting more or less whole from various period accounts and reports and biographies. It seems real because hes basically writing nonfiction with his main characters slotted in. So he's mining an immense wealth of material that most people aren't scholars enough to have ever bothered reading. He's still a great character writer and a great prose stylist but his secret weapon is scholarship. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 00:37
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Ravus Ursus posted:The thing is I don't think I've seen any series be 19 books deep and maintain quality the entire time, much less improve.
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Sep 3, 2023 00:38
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HopperUK posted:Thanks to the thread for rekindling my love for Jerome K Jerome. Have you read Connie Willis's excellent time travel comedy To Say Nothing Of The Dog? A must-read for fans of Jerome K. Jerome and SFF.
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Sep 3, 2023 00:46
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It is the worm Ouroboros, that eateth its own tail.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:his secret weapon is scholarship New thread title?
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Sep 3, 2023 01:23
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buffalo all day posted:Jack Reacher is good through 19-20 books imo, though much like Aubrey-Maturin there’s a distinct 12-or-so book peak (without fail --> never go back). Scratches a different itch but also incredibly good. I don't know why,but I expected jack reacher to just be airport schlock but I guess I can add that to me TBR. Also, a 12 book peak is more than most authors can even put up. Hieronymous Alloy posted:There's basically two tricks that make the series work. This is just the odyssey with extra steps. Ravenfood posted:The improvement plateaus a bit. You can think of it more as a really good intro, a few books to really get into the stride, and then off to the loving races. But for almost 20 books. I don't know that I've got 20 books I can consider great, much like a dozen in a single series. Y'all are killing me. My TBR is only 273, I guess I should put it back over 300.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The trick is just accepting that there will be parts you don't understand and letting it just wash over you like a wave and then you keep going. Someone somewhere (probably in a thread here on SA) made the point that it's best to approach Aubrey-Maturin as a modern reader without a technical knowledge of sailing with a mindset sort of like you'd have reading ungrounded (I.e., not near-future quasi-realistic) sci-fi: there's a lot of technical terms and weird social mores around, they're not all explained and some barely resonate even with context, so do your best to see where you can slot in what a "carronade" or "loblolly boy" is from the story, trust the author that it'll get explained if it's crucial, and if it's not then just admire it as part of the worldbuilding. (The difference, of course, is that you can look this stuff up in a reference guide if you're really curious.) And as someone said, anything really important eventually gets explained to Maturin (or by Maturin to Aubrey if it's in his bailiwick, as happens on occasion). More A-M talk: I've never read a series where there are so many bangers in a row (Discworld is a gap in my catalog, one that I need to address sooner rather than later, and of a different tone, but as I understand it once Pratchett got going he was hard to stop); however, you can see the author's decline in the last couple of books -- especially the last -- and it's a bit melancholy to note. Not that I'm sorry I read them, and O'Brian is still ten times the writer I am on his worst day, but it's there if you read closely. Age comes for us all.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:28
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Ravus Ursus posted:I don't know why,but I expected jack reacher to just be airport schlock but I guess I can add that to me TBR. It is extremely good airport schlock.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:28
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withak posted:It is extremely good airport schlock. yep, they’re short, well-paced, tightly written thrillers with interesting characters and enjoyable set pieces. basically what airport novels are aspiring to be
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Sep 3, 2023 01:38
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withak posted:It is extremely good airport schlock. Seconding this. The Reacher books (particularly maybe like 4-15) are really good -- way better, and way better written -- than the airport/dad thriller trappings would suggest. Lee Child is a great writer, and when he's on his game those books hurtle along like freight trains. Lee Child writes the intro in the recent editions of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGrlee series and it's no accident - he feels like MacDonald's heir. Unfortunately Lee Child's brother Andrew doesn't seem to be quite the writer his brother is, so the newer jointly written novels might be the point at which to bail. Or maybe he'll get better -- hope springs eternal.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:40
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Figures someone named Admiralty Flag would like boat books
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Sep 3, 2023 01:47
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I think an overlooked bit about Aubrey Maturin is that they’re extremely funny. The last passage I read had the crew convinced that the French were feeding them bread full of holes so as to fill them up with air until they popped. Stands to reason.
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Sep 3, 2023 02:39
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McCoy Pauley posted:Seconding this. The Reacher books (particularly maybe like 4-15) are really good -- way better, and way better written -- than the airport/dad thriller trappings would suggest. Lee Child is a great writer, and when he's on his game those books hurtle along like freight trains. Lee Child writes the intro in the recent editions of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGrlee series and it's no accident - he feels like MacDonald's heir. Yeah, the jointly written ones are much worse than Lee's solo work.
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Sep 3, 2023 02:58
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Kesper North posted:Yes, he is a sex pest who was banned from the 4th Street writers group for stalking a friend of mine. I'll not be recommending him again.
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Sep 3, 2023 03:07
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I have to admit, until just now I was conflating the Jack Reacher books with whatever series that "Oh John [something], no!" meme came from. Too many thriller protagonists with J-names!
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Sep 3, 2023 04:30
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John Ringo is an author, possibly a villain, definitely not a protagonist.
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Sep 3, 2023 04:54
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General Battuta posted:I think an overlooked bit about Aubrey Maturin is that they’re extremely funny. The last passage I read had the crew convinced that the French were feeding them bread full of holes so as to fill them up with air until they popped. Stands to reason.
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Sep 3, 2023 05:11
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Zorak of Michigan posted:John Ringo is an author, possibly a villain, definitely not a protagonist. I saw him at a convention almost 20 years ago now and my main memory of him was being very jealous of the Star Wars EU authors who were there and how they pulled bigger crowds than he did. Also him being surprisingly careful not to curse because kids were in the audience.
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Sep 3, 2023 14:19
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Would that've been around the time he was pushing his trans humanist series where anyone could be race/species/alien they wanted to, as long their gender didn't change? And the villains tried to destroy society because they thought body fluidity was destroying the moral fabric of humanity?
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Sep 3, 2023 15:08
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Just Over the Horizon (Short Fiction #1) by Greg Bear - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0155UBSVE/
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Sep 3, 2023 15:11
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Arsenic Lupin posted:See also Maturin's response to being offered goat milk. Perhaps something of a slut: your amiable slut makes the best of cooks. in the A/M timeframe a slut could just mean a low ranking kitchen worker
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Sep 3, 2023 16:17
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Sloth But so much *joy* in these books
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Sep 3, 2023 16:41
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Would that've been around the time he was pushing his trans humanist series where anyone could be race/species/alien they wanted to, as long their gender didn't change? And the villains tried to destroy society because they thought body fluidity was destroying the moral fabric of humanity? Transhumanism without the trans humans.
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Sep 3, 2023 17:48
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Would that've been around the time he was pushing his trans humanist series where anyone could be race/species/alien they wanted to, as long their gender didn't change? And the villains tried to destroy society because they thought body fluidity was destroying the moral fabric of humanity?
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Sep 3, 2023 17:51
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Admiralty Flag posted:Someone somewhere (probably in a thread here on SA) made the point that it's best to approach Aubrey-Maturin as a modern reader without a technical knowledge of sailing with a mindset sort of like you'd have reading ungrounded (I.e., not near-future quasi-realistic) sci-fi: This point was already being made on rec.arts.sf.written in the 90s. Was someone on there who got me into the series.
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Sep 3, 2023 18:23
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I would have never thought to be interested in reading fiction based on early 19th century sailing, but here I am ordering Master and Commander based off the thread's recommendations. I *did* love the movie, so pretty excited about going through all the novels. This may also get me to finish Hydrogen Sonata in a decent amount of time so I can get to M&C....
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Sep 3, 2023 18:42
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BadOptics posted:I would have never thought to be interested in reading fiction based on early 19th century sailing, but here I am ordering Master and Commander based off the thread's recommendations. I *did* love the movie, so pretty excited about going through all the novels. This may also get me to finish Hydrogen Sonata in a decent amount of time so I can get to M&C.... It's so good buddy
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Sep 3, 2023 19:49
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Based on our recent conversation I have decided that the world needs a sci Fi novel set in a future solar system where all the plot details are based on the 30 years war and Germany is represented either by the belt or Jupiter's moons. Probably the latter now I think of it.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:58
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Be sure not to read Bio of a Space Tyrant first, or you'll be ruined for solar system allegories.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:05
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Benagain posted:Based on our recent conversation I have decided that the world needs a sci Fi novel set in a future solar system where all the plot details are based on the 30 years war and Germany is represented either by the belt or Jupiter's moons. Probably the latter now I think of it. An example of what you're talking about with plot is Kate Elliot's Unconquered Sun, which is sort of a retelling of Alexander the Great's life as a Peter Hamilton-style doorstop space opera. I haven't read the second one yet (might wait for the third since it's supposed to be a trilogy) but thought it worked well in the first book. We don't really know much about Alexander's life so most of the details are author-invented and therefore fresh and new, just sprinkled with little bits of "lol spot the reference" for the knowledgeable (e.g. Bucephalus is a spaceship instead of a horse).
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Sep 3, 2023 21:50
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Probably just read Legend of the Galactic Heroes at that point and have a better time.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:58
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With the usual Anthony prepubescent stuff, IIRC. His SF was so much better than the Xanth books, at least the first book in each separate series was. Such inventive worldbuilding.
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Sep 3, 2023 22:00
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