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huhu posted:Is there a good website that will tell you simple information, such as is there a sequel, about the book without spoiling anything? I tried to use Amazon when looking up the second book in a series, misclicked the third book, and found out a decent bit of what happens in the second book by accident. Hoping not to repeat this again. isfdb.org if you're after genre fiction. It's a great resource because it lists editions of books, book series, collections, omnibuses, and is also good for finding out where a particular short story has been published.
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May 5, 2012 07:23
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Quad posted:What are the best ways to find "what's new"each month? Goodreads' lists are almost entirely self published fantasy porn, going into a Barnes & Noble is just tables full of severly bland looking lit. Is there a good blog for this, sorta like how Pitchfork used to be with music, or RT with film? I can give you a million blogs if you're after SF/F in particular. I follow review blogs, indie bookstore blogs, and others (eg: io9.com/books) that all list upcoming titles, as well as blogs run by various big-name publishers such as Tor US, Tor UK, and Orbit. Regular fiction, no idea.
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Jul 8, 2012 08:11
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Kobo truly is a poo poo ereader, however the app on iPad is not bad. I've used it for one book that was only available on their store for some reason, not on Amazon or iBooks.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:02
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Ape Gone Insane posted:It's not really been released yet as a single volume/book. I think it comes out in October. For now, if you desperately want paperback, they split the book into two paperbacks, 'Dreams and Dust' and 'After the feast'. http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Dance-With-Dragons-George-Martin/9780006486114
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Feb 19, 2013 02:27
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Oh god, I've gotten to the point where my book collection is so big that I've accidentally bought a book I already have (The Last Colony by John Scalzi). I've bought multiple copies of books deliberately before (usually to get a nicer edition when all I've had was a crappy MM paperback), but this was the exact same edition as one I now remember buying about 6 months ago. Oh well, at least it was about AUD$6.
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Mar 21, 2013 07:39
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Michael Cobley, Seeds of Earth, WILL NOT STOP INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS GODDAMN. There's like a dozen humans and half dozen aliens at this point and I am having such a hard time keeping track It really needs a wiki, or a list of major players or something, kind of like you need when reading A Game of Thrones. However the sequels each have "appendices" (in some editions it's before the main text, other editions it's after) which list characters, species, "previously on...", and so on which is very useful.
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Mar 22, 2013 02:58
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Would you mind explaining how 'hyperspace' works in this series? By that I mean the levels, etc. that are referenced by the warpgate. Or does it become clearer as the series progresses? (If it does, don't explain please heh) Sorry I'm only partway through the second book :B Seems like it's just infinite? alternate dimensions full of species that are way more hipster & awesome than us in our pathetic little universe. edit: From Michael Cobley himself: "I also wanted to do something different with the notion of hyperspace by turning it into sub-levels of reality made up of old universes, their decayed remnants stacking down into the foundations of reality, like sedimentary layers of continua." Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 03:56
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Beardless Riker posted:I'm having a problem getting through ASOIAF, hoping someone can ease my mind with an answer keeping in mind that I'm only part way though the fourth book A Feast For Crows. As a small bit of backstory I burned through the first three books at an incredible rate early last year and particularly loved every bit of the third book. However...I can't retain my interest in book four. I've been stuck in the second quarter of the book since last summer, never having any interest in picking it back up again until recently when the third season of the TV series started up. It's gotten so boring. I can find myself interested in the chapters which still follow named characters but whenever I hit a chapter that doesn't follow someone of the main group it makes me want to shut the book then and there. Of my two friends who have read the entire series so far, one says that it gets a fair bit cooler and the fifth book is nice to get through. The other one has told me to not even bother. I was thinking of making a compromise and just skipping the chapters that put me off after a page or two, hoping that I won't miss anything crucial or that small details could be picked up in later developments. Can anyone who's read through all five so far give me an idea of whether or not that'd be a sensible approach to continue slogging through the series? Reading is supposed to be fun and I want this series to be exciting to me again http://towerofthehand.com/books/104/ - Detailed chapter-by-chapter synopsises (synopses?) so you can skip what you don't want to read. The fourth book is a bit of a struggle, that's true. But I loved the fifth, I think it was second best after A Storm of Swords. So much cool stuff happens in book five. You might be pissed off by the dozen or so cliffhangers that won't get resolved until book six comes out in 5? 10? years though.
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Apr 24, 2013 04:28
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Narzack posted:It's the most epic story about rabbits you'll ever read. The next two official English translations come out in June and August this year. http://www.amazon.com/Time-Contempt-Andrzej-Sapkowski/dp/0575084952/ http://www.amazon.com/Baptism-Fire-Andrzej-Sapkowski/dp/0575090960/
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Apr 27, 2013 03:21
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Dr Scoofles posted:I had no idea he had a new book coming out until now. So, who here is going to read it so I don't have to? I'm guessing it's probably a bit like the plot of Seven, dudes being murdered in outlandish ways to match Dante's Inferno. Bets are on that Langdon is assigned some bizzaro role as Dante by the murderer who considers himself to be Virgil, guiding him through each stupid set piece. I read the Wikipedia synopsis (full plot synopsis with spoilers etc) and it's nothing like that. But it sure sounds dumb as gently caress. Especially the ending.
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May 22, 2013 11:41
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Sci-fi author Adam Roberts posted his review in the form of a poem:Adam Roberts posted::1: 
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May 22, 2013 15:16
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Matthew_O posted:I'm still a week into SA forums: is there a forum or a post for non-fiction? Or did I just have my eyes glaze over and not see it? There are some threads for broad topics, like the following. There used to be others but these seem to be the only active ones. For eg, there used to be a science book thread but it died  The History Book Thread! Essays, long form journalism, and writing about the real world Make a new thread if you have a broad topic to recommend/request - eg: threads for books about war, biology, film-making, etc etc, but really specific threads like "books about Ukranian folk dancing in the mid-to-late 17th century" would be useless. For those specific requests you could always try the recommendation thread which gets questions about everything. edit: if you do start a thread though, try to have some recommendations ready to go and put some effort into an OP. Don't just make a thread with one sentence like "Anyone know any books about x?" Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 06:38
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 There's an Amazon.com.au now, fellow Ausgoons!We'll get Kindle Daily Deals of our very own now. Tears of joy here, tears of joy.
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Nov 14, 2013 23:29
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bowmore posted:Can't wait for them to be literally copies of deals that are happening in the states and double the price. Still cheaper than Dymocks 
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Nov 15, 2013 03:09
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BrosephofArimathea posted:I look forward to saving $0.99 off some $23 Bryce Courtney piece of poo poo about how awesome the outback was in eighteen dickety four. The first Daily Deal was Man Booker prize winner Wolf Hall for $3 so you can go gently caress yourself.
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Nov 18, 2013 02:34
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http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/11/how-books-are-printed This is kind of a cool article about how modern hardcover books are printed. Lots of photos of each step. I just found it fascinating as a book lover!
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Dec 6, 2013 05:57
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bigstupidjellyfish posted:Over the Christmas holiday I went back and reread all the Vlad Taltos books for the first time since high school (and got caught up on the ones that came out since I'd last checked in) and I realized that they're pretty much perfectly calibrated for my maximum enjoyment. I was hoping someone could give me a recommendation for something similar? A friend recommended the Dresden Files but I've read those before and they're not my cup of tea at all. I promise you that the City Watch series of Discworld books will give you the same vibe. Start with Guards, Guards and move on through Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud and Snuff. Sam Vimes is a complex character who changes throughout the series just like Vlad. And they're incredibly funny.
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Jan 8, 2014 10:07
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Somebody is off their meds.
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Feb 26, 2014 08:07
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Let's sum up our 2014 reading! # Books read: 24 (normally I get through 45-50, so a disappointing year) # Books bought: Somewhere in the range of 50-60 Best ones: - Hyperion by Dan Simmons - A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge - The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman - Night Watch by Terry Pratchett Worst/least good ones: - Beginning Operations by James White (sexist and dated) - Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (a kinda stupid blog turned into a book, it's as pointless as it sounds) - The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher (good premise rendered laughable by a terrible ending) Longest book read: - Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton (1144 pages) Regrets: - Not reading more Iain M Banks - Not reading more female authors - Not reading more nonfiction - Being too distracted by other things (comics, video games) to read more
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Dec 31, 2014 09:25
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Today I am reading 5-star reviews of Mein Kampf on Goodreads  quote:Reading this book gave me an in-depth look into Hitler's early years and the events which led up to his forming the Nazi party. There were reasons why Germany followed this man and other than his views on race, I found myself agreeing with much of what he wrote. Even though I don't agree with his racial premises, I can fully understand how he and others developed these views. Our World History classes in high school and college fail miserably to paint an accurate picture of events and the mindset in Europe leading up to World War 1 and years following. Very little is taught on the onslaught of Marxism, the Progressive Movement, Socialism and the Jewish monopoly of International Finance and Trade Unions and the role these groups played in shaping historical events. quote:After I learned about Adolf Hitler and finally got past the lies told about the man I started to realize that his intentions and motives were not to take over the world. He was trying to protect White Christian Germany from being destroyed by the internal jewish parasite eating away at Germany’s well being. I discovered his book “Mein Kampf” and decides to put my time into reading it. After I managed to find Mein Kampf in a public library I was instantly drawn into this beautifully composed ideology of Eugenic nationalism. Experiencing Mein Kampf has changed me from being conservative Robert Brandt into Third Position Robert Brandt. Reading Mein Kampf was like finding a part of me, hidden and suppressed because of what the public school system taught me as a child. I could not put this book down. I kept it in my bag wherever I went and was fascinated by it’s pure genius and lyrical beauty. How could the world not only ignore Mein Kampf but also curse it and outcast such a masterpiece and pretend it was a plan to conquer the world. When it was the obvious and rational plan to save the world. Had no one read it I wondered? Just saying it was the work of an evil man. How could sensible people just attack this book without even knowing anything about it! I could see why the Jews would hate and curse it, but why my own people? quote:I completely agree with his non pacifist ideas, as we know nothing in world has achieved with pacifist non violence or so called AHIMSA. If you have a right to fight, you should with nail and teeth. This principle is worth considering present scenario of India, where politicians and bureaucrats prostitutes Mother India, to increase their bank balance. I would say nothing can be done with Satyagraha or non violence strikes, a generation needs to be awaken to fight with patriotic spirit for their Mother. If I had a ability to curse, I would have cursed Gandhi for filling young Indians mind with stupid non violence theories!!. quote:I love NSDAP, no matter other said.
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Jan 7, 2015 02:24
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Colleen McCullough is a very well-loved Australian author. She's probably best known to goons as the author of the First Man In Rome series of historical novels. Anyway, she died this week. Here's how a Murdoch newspaper here chose to obiturise (obiturate?) her: 
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Jan 30, 2015 04:14
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Wodehouse fans might find this hilarious  quote:Allen Hunter, a [PG Wodehouse Society] member in Queensland, who tried to buy a car numberplate for a vintage Bentley that spelt out the Wodehousean phrase “WHAT HO”. Bureaucracy refused his request and slapped him with a $100 fine for “attempting to obtain an offensive plate”. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4403695.ece
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Apr 9, 2015 08:13
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SquadronROE posted:Is there a thread where I can read more about the entire Sad Puppies drama? Grrmge GRRM GRRM Grrmtin's livejournal has quite a lot about it: http://grrm.livejournal.com/tag/hugo%20awards
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Apr 26, 2015 07:16
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What the gently caress is going on
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May 13, 2015 01:51
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Yeah, also it's bad
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May 13, 2015 12:33
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 This is the money-grubbingest thing I've ever seen from a publisher. Each of these three paperbacks is about 200 pages. Did it really need to be split into three parts? Jesus christ 
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May 23, 2015 02:04
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Cicero posted:I want some kind of book tool where I can put in particular series/authors and then see a calendar of upcoming releases and get email notifications. Does such a thing exist? I think goodreads has a function where it will email you upcoming releases by authors you've added to your shelves. But as far as a one-stop visual tool to get that kind of info, no idea. Do what I do and search Amazon for your favourite authors every few months, sort results by release date, then keep a text file of all the upcoming books to look forward to (in the same file I also have movie, album and game release dates and other stuff, it helps with budgeting in advance to buy that kind of thing) Often books will get listed on Amazon 6-12 months before release, even when there's no info. Publishers schedule future books well in advance and generally stick to release dates. For example I know I can look forward to Untitled Alastair Reynolds Novel in June 2016! 
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May 27, 2015 09:34
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Oh my god why haven't I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay yet?? Everything I hear about it makes it sound right up my alley. I've started it twice (last year and a few years ago), and both times I put it down in the first 40 pages or so, for no good reason. I was enjoying what I was reading! I need to devote time to this book. Someone slap some sense into me.
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Jul 24, 2015 14:10
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Enfys posted:Now I sort of want to order pizza in order to pose math riddles, like asking them to slice it into seven pieces using only 3 cuts. Professor Layton can't order food anywhere these days.
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Aug 22, 2015 05:11
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I usually can manage 3-5. Right now I'm concurrently reading a short story collection (of SF/F/Weird Western stories), a non-fiction book (Bill Bryson), two SF novels that are sufficiently different so I don't get plots/characters mixed up (Aurora by KSR vs. Brightness Reef by Brin) and a fantasy novel (Robin Hobb). It's easy to manage them all, because the plots and writing styles are very different. The only problem is get so engrossed in 1-2 of them that I only pick up the others every couple of weeks. So some books I get through in like 10 days, others in a few months. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Sep 8, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 03:06
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Oct 11, 2015 23:53
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What's the deeeeaaaal with adult colouring books?!
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Oct 27, 2015 08:53
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It's just insane how they've popped up all of a sudden. Did someone like Oprah spruik them? Now I walk into my local bookstore and there's a display at the front of the store of about 600 of the loving things, every publisher jumping on the bandwagon. For a while there were like 5 or 6 colouring books in the top 10 best-sellers in my country. What happened to that thing adults used to do with books, what was it, reading? I can't wait to see billions of these books mouldering in bargain bins for the next decade.
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Oct 28, 2015 22:31
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Ornamented Death posted:bookstores that focus on selling books and managed to weather the recession are doing well. Ha, that reminds me, I don't know what it was like in the US but right before Borders died here, they went all desperate and started trying to sell homewares and gift items and poo poo in stores too. They emptied out about the front 30% or so of the store, ditching dozens and dozens of shelves (display space for probably thousands of books) and instead put up tables with useless loving tchotchkes and photo frames and other poo poo like that. Borders' business model was hosed, anyway. Their response to the increase in online book shopping was to make hardcover new releases some kind of "premium" product. I distinctly remember a new Bill Bryson hardcover coming out and Borders pricing it at $60.
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Nov 1, 2015 07:15
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After sorting my bookshelves and finding at least 10-20 books I've bought in the last 5 years are starting to go spotty (gently caress living in a humid city), I'm just about ready to go 100% digital for all novels in the future.
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Nov 2, 2015 15:23
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A human heart posted:Do people actually buy ebooks? It's a fancy text file, that's not worth money. And a paperback book is that same fancy text file printed with about a dollar's worth of paper and ink. What exactly the gently caress is your point?
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Nov 4, 2015 04:49
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A human heart posted:One's a file and the other is a book. So a book's entire value is the physical object, and not, you know, the words the author put in it? According to you, all those words together in a formatted downloadable file aren't worth any money at all. But print it on paper and it magically becomes something of value.
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Nov 4, 2015 12:20
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How do you guys decide what books to cull when you need to? I have like 7-800 books now and it's getting loving ridiculous. Especially as I just moved in with my boyfriend who has at least half that himself. I can get rid of crappy paperback novels and get the kindle edition, but my hoarder instinct kicks in for anything I bought in hardcover or spent more than $10 on in the last few years.
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Nov 27, 2015 01:49
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Cool, that's quite a big reduction! My initial goal is to choose 50 to get rid of by February — that's when my city's next big charity book fair is. Then after that, I'm gonna see if I can keep culling.
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Nov 27, 2015 14:51
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Khizan posted:The vast majority of the books, however, went into the recycling dumpster that very day. After all, "I'll sell these books later or wait for the library to do a book sale and donate them, because books are precious and cannot be thrown out" bullshit was how I ended up with 500 loving books and zero storage space. I was with you with all the book-culling, but this bit hurt me. Books are precious, if not to you then to somebody, somewhere. Is having to wait for a sale before you donate the only option where you are? Here in Australia, nearly every city/town has a charity shop like Lifeline who take donations all year round. They sell anything they get in their stores, and consolidate stuff every few months for massive book fairs in capital cities. I dunno, I just think books should go anywhere else before the recycling bin, unless they really are damaged beyond usability.
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Nov 30, 2015 08:49
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