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I'm reading An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, and the first chapter is about dogs and their smelling. It's an interesting reading experience because I already have a rather weak sense of smell - so it's totally out of my experience when people describe smelling the body odor of people standing near them, or even flowers and perfumes. So they are to me what dogs are to everyone.
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Nov 9, 2023 11:38
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I’ve had the same kindle since 2012, no issues with it but I think I’m going to make the leap over to kobo this holiday season. Looked at a few reviews and haven’t heard anything negative, just wanted to see if there were any dissenting opinions here. Only downside I can think of is I’d have to jump a few small hoops if I wanted to port any of my kindle library over.
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Nov 12, 2023 14:20
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Has anybody else read Gateway by Frederick Pohl? I started it last night and am not sure I want to continue as it's more a character study/psychology of an rear end in a top hat that happens to have sci-fi trappings and I'm not sure I want to read about this character's miserableness. It also does that ping ponging between events in the story: every other chapter is the MC getting mad and pissy at his psychologist in the present, while the mission he went on is told in flashback in the other chapters. It's not handled well and doesn't build up the mystery of what happened to him as it's supposed to. I briefly looked at some light spoilery reviews and hate that I already pinned down the root of the main character's psychological upset. He refuses to talk to his psychologist about a woman so I figured she died on the mission or dumped him and lo and behold reviews imply she left him. Maybe I'm expecting too much from award winning 70s science fiction. Fries and a coke please.
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Nov 13, 2023 17:23
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It's really overrated. Wouldn't bother finishing.
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Nov 13, 2023 17:51
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anilEhilated posted:It's really overrated. Wouldn't bother finishing. Glad to know it isn't just me. I've also just realized it's the same theme as Annie Hall; a neurotic can't deal with life. And I know too many people irl with issues, I don't need to read about fictional ones that refuse to deal with it. And yes, I am one of the haters of Annie Hall as well, if that wasn't apparent. What the hell was it about the late 70s that caused these types of stories? The energy crisis? Some other event I've forgotten about?
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Nov 13, 2023 17:59
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I had copy of one of the Gateway sequels in my house as a kid, back in the day when a new book meant convincing someone to take you somewhere physically to get it so a book in the house already was one I'd read five or ten times just because it was there. I remember thinking "this is kinda awful but there's enough here to make me wonder what the first book must have been like."
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Nov 13, 2023 18:02
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I'd mail you mine Hieronymous if you're still curious, but it's kinda musty and has a slight cigarette smell when I fanned through it. Also browned as hell pages but that's par for the course with old cheap paperbacks. Edit: Maybe I'll just bin it in recycling; no one wants books that grody. Turbinosamente fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 18:43
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Does anyone have any advice on reading the Gene Wolfe New Sun books? I tried and failed a year and a half ago and I'm thinking of getting back on the horse.
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Nov 13, 2023 19:24
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Don't worry about the poo poo you aren't getting. A lot of the mysteries in the first half are semi explained later on. And don't spend all your energy trying to "solve" the novel on your first reading, it's not designed for that. Don't immediately start hitting up pods or writing on the novels before you finish Urth. It'll end up sneaking strange ideas into your head that'll be hard to shake.
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Nov 13, 2023 19:35
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Yeah, just go with the flow. It rewards attentive reading but it's best to form your own theories.
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Nov 13, 2023 20:27
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I went with the flow and for me the flow was "You were bored for most of the previous book, do you wanna read the next one? Yeah, thought so. Alright, dork, let's read something dumb instead."
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Nov 13, 2023 20:57
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Yeah I read BotNS last year/earlier this year and once I sort of accepted that some of it wasn't going to make complete sense and just let the vibes wash over me, I enjoyed it a lot more. Then I saw a (maybe) spoiler about an aspect I definitely did not get at all on a first read because someone had to just blab it out in a twitter reply for some reason. It didn't make sense to me when I read it but I suspect it'll be hard to not think about it when I re-read BotNS, which I was planning to do sometime soon.
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Nov 13, 2023 21:09
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You just need to remember that the standard outfit is, black leather boots, black leather pants, black leather floor length cloak, black leather hood, no shirt and giant sword. Everything else follows from there.
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Nov 13, 2023 22:24
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I hate mysteries and going with the flow, perhaps it's not the series for me.
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Nov 14, 2023 01:52
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It is not
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Nov 14, 2023 01:58
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I'll go back to reading Hammer's Slammers by David Drake
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Nov 14, 2023 03:55
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Does anyone have any advice on reading the Gene Wolfe New Sun books? I tried and failed a year and a half ago and I'm thinking of getting back on the horse.
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Nov 14, 2023 04:44
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Gertrude Perkins posted:How was it for you? Did you need a cigarette? It was a weird book but I was really impressed at how good of a book it actually was, bestiality notwithstanding.
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Nov 14, 2023 05:00
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mellonbread posted:The nice thing about New Sun is it doesn't require you to solve all the mysteries to have fun. It's not like Fifth Head where you have to figure out the puzzle in order to enjoy it. It can just be a dark fantasy adventure story about a hosed up guy in a hosed up future. I don't really have any clue about the deeper things going on in Fifth Head and I enjoyed it.
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Nov 14, 2023 05:15
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Does anyone have any advice on reading the Gene Wolfe New Sun books? I tried and failed a year and a half ago and I'm thinking of getting back on the horse. I'm late to the party with this response, but in addition to seconding the sentiment of "just let it flow over you and absorb however much of it you want, it has more layers than you'll get to in any one reading anyway and all of them are optional," I can recommend the audiobooks as a tool for doing that. Audiobooks are inherently better for ~ * ~ vibes ~ * ~ books because they tend to be harder to absorb fine details on, and The Book of the New Sun is already so dreamlike and strange that the audiobook works well for letting you drift through it on a tide of gorgeous prose and bizarre, beautiful imagery.
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Nov 16, 2023 10:44
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Does anyone have any advice on reading the Gene Wolfe New Sun books? I tried and failed a year and a half ago and I'm thinking of getting back on the horse.
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Nov 16, 2023 12:11
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Alhazred posted:Skip the play. The play is the only way to understand the ending without Urth. It's also fun. Anyways what's the worst back of the book quotes you have ever seen on a novel. Got my copy of Notes on Cinematography by Robert Bresson today and found this gem on the back. John Semley, The A.V. Club posted:Half philosophy, half poetry, Notes on Cinematography reads in places like The Art of War for filmmakers.
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Nov 16, 2023 21:39
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I just had something pretty weird happen. I ordered a few books from Amazon.co.uk (because one book I wanted wasn't out yet in mainland Europe, and then why not get a few more), and one of them I could tell the moment I opened the envelop that it was POD and not traditionally printed. There's just something about the surface and colors of the cover with the Amazon POD printing that makes it obvious. And there's a 'Printed in Great Britain by Amazon' thing on the last page, with a bar code, so that confirmed it. The text in the book is way too close to the inner margin, and the spine too tough to crack it open enough to read. Maybe this book just has too many pages to use that particular POD method but they did it anyway. I went to start a return and Amazon is refusing to refund to my card and would only offer a 'returnless refund' to store credit. I accepted it because I'm not going to waste my time fighting Amazon and having to return this thing. Maybe this is due to the me being in the Netherlands and ordering from the UK. I'm also getting GBP 1.63 more back than I spent for some reason. The thing is, this is a book from a Harper Collins imprint, not some lovely CreateSpace title. I didn't know this was even a thing that Amazon offered to real publishers Is there a way to tell from a product page that this is going to happen? With quality issues like this, I'd rather avoid Amazon POD books forever
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Nov 17, 2023 20:30
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EricBauman posted:The thing is, this is a book from a Harper Collins imprint, not some lovely CreateSpace title. The readability of the interior text is often a low priority for them.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:03
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Finishing up battle cry of freedom and god there was so much diplomatic/spy stuff going that I never knew about in the civil war. Highly recommend
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Nov 18, 2023 22:15
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The Island of Doctor Moreau is reminding me more of Heart of Darkness than I was expecting.
FPyat fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Nov 19, 2023 |
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Nov 19, 2023 02:06
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It does have that same energy, a man desperately not wanting to be there and experiencing these horrors.
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Nov 19, 2023 02:09
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There's a week left to sign up for Secret Santa and get cool books for Christmas. Don't be a stranger!
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Nov 19, 2023 19:53
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Llamadeus posted:I think what you're describing is going to be the new normal for many titles. The drawbacks and benefits of POD are the same for the big publishers as for self-publishers: the unit costs are much higher but they don't have to pay to store thousands of copies in warehouses, they don't print in the thousands to make it economical, and they don't have to eat the cost of the print run when they overprint. this is awful. I was just thinking about the niceness of a well-printed book. I really hope this doesn't catch on...
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Nov 20, 2023 02:29
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Thinking of picking up ringworld.
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Nov 22, 2023 00:26
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Lawman 0 posted:Thinking of picking up ringworld. Sounds heavy.
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Nov 22, 2023 00:57
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It’s maybe the Hugo winner that’s suffered most with reappraisal.
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Nov 22, 2023 01:40
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FPyat posted:It’s maybe the Hugo winner that’s suffered most with reappraisal. I'm mentally preparing myself for the extreme hornieness.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:27
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It’s a great example of a certain type of sci-fi where a whole book is written to explore a cool, physical, sci-fi thing, and then later some plot and characters are added. I do remember one character very well, because she was bred for luck, which is so stupid I love it.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:55
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Not sure if right thread, but my iOS comic book app died at some point. Anyone know of a good CBR reader that still works on iOS 17? I used ComicZeal and then that stopped working, switched to Chunky and it also died. So maybe it's me killing these apps edit: I'm wondering if the dev actually died, because their last update was on 2020 and it was pretty regular before that 
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Nov 22, 2023 07:08
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Comfy Fleece Sweater posted:Not sure if right thread, but my iOS comic book app died at some point. Anyone know of a good CBR reader that still works on iOS 17? Panels is great and actively developed/maintained. I hope the ComicZeal dev/devs are alright. I used to love that app.
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Nov 22, 2023 11:19
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101 posted:Panels is great and actively developed/maintained. Panels looks neat, cheers fellow goon  To clarify, the Chunky app is the one that stopped updating in 2020, not sure when ComicZeal stopped working but it must've been earlier than that
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Nov 22, 2023 18:59
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lifg posted:It’s a great example of a certain type of sci-fi where a whole book is written to explore a cool, physical, sci-fi thing, and then later some plot and characters are added. Listen there is nothing more I love in sci fi than stupidly huge mysterious megastructures. It's like catnip to me.
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Nov 22, 2023 21:24
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Lawman 0 posted:Listen there is nothing more I love in sci fi than stupidly huge mysterious megastructures. It's like catnip to me. Have you read Charles Sheffield's Divergence? That was a pretty good one of those. Was to have been the first of a trilogy but he died before the third book so we shall never know the answer to the mystery!
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Nov 22, 2023 21:33
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Lawman 0 posted:Thinking of picking up ringworld. first one is a great BDO book with a plot stapled on to it but they get progressively worse. I'd read Ringworld Engineers too and then decide if you want to keep going (Warning Ghoul Sex). TBH the best ringworld novel is actually Terry Pratchett's Strata but it makes more sense if you've read the book it's actively parodying
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Nov 22, 2023 22:29
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