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I forgot to look for this thread until now, but I'm planning on reading 52 books again this year, of which at least 24 must be by women and 12 must be non-fiction, and no more than five books by a single author can be counted. So far I've only read Chestnuts: A True Story about Being Bullied by Gilbert Ohanian, which is absolute garbage. I'll post a review of it here at the end of the month, but I've already posted one on my Goodreads.
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# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 12:54 |
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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:26 |
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Lemon posted:I'll probably ask for suggestions on the other topics as I come around to them but for the moment, does anyone want to give me a wildcard? One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau.
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# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 15:29 |
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Damo posted:2. The Gunlinger - Stephen King - To be honest I probably could have skipped the first book because it isn't exactly the best DT book. It so is.
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# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 17:10 |
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anilEhilated posted:Nope, that's Wizard and Glass. Thing stopped three of my attempts to reread it; I don't care what the final payoff is, it's not worth wading through this amount of horrible teenage romance. Absolutely agreed. From what I recall, you can skip that one and miss practically nothing though.
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# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 04:37 |
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Dienes posted:Anyone have a play recommendation that is NOT Shakespeare? The Importance of Being Earnest is hilarious.
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# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 07:05 |
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January
Female authors: 2/24 Non-fiction: 1/12 Goodreads. I finished off the Fey series this month (aside from the prequel, which I'm still planning to read) and I enjoyed it. The last two books feel sort of like they're fixing the ending of the fifth one, where the primary antagonist is defeated a little too easily, and they feel more like one book split in half than two separate stories, but they're not bad. The criticism I do have of them though is that Rusch seems to have grown too attached to her characters. One thing I really loved about the early books in the series is how no one was safe; Any character could die at any time, and often they'd be built up, we'd get to know them, they'd make plans and then suddenly die having achieved nothing. Or they might survive for ages, you'd get to like them, and then they'd die. It made it really unpredictable and made it feel like there were real stakes. Around book four it starts going downhill, with the protagonists starting to pull off unlikely escapes and even minor characters being in less danger. It's also where there started to be fewer characters I cared about one way or the other, so even if they had died it wouldn't have had as much impact. I also thought there was a bit of inconsistency in how some of the characters were written in these last two books as compared with how they came across earlier, but it's set fifteen years after the fifth one so some of it can be written off as people changing over time. The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals has an intriguing premise, but it completely fails to live up to it. The authors banter feels forced and overly cutesy, which is not helped by the stupid gimmick of one of them pretending to be an evil monkey and given that there are some fairly basic and broad rules as to what animals are kosher, most of the conclusions are obvious and uninteresting. The section at the end where a chef is consulted about how to cook several of the mythical animals shows one direction this book could have taken to be a bit more interesting. More detail on fewer creatures, sticking to the ones that seem like they'd actually be edible, a discussion of what dietary restrictions might apply, and some discussion of what the creature would taste like and why, and how best to prepare it, could make for a much better book than this. Basically, this book just seems like a really lazy take on an idea with potential. But the real stand-out this month was Chestnuts - not because it's good, it isn't. But the fact that it's a terrible book isn't what made it stand out; What really grabbed me about this one is that the author is a total nutcase. After I posted my review on Goodreads Ohanian looked me up on Facebook and Google Plus and started harassing me with a bunch of sock-puppet accounts. And really I should be thanking him, because it was way more entertaining than his book. Tiggum fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Feb 1, 2015 |
# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 18:02 |
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Female authors: 5/24 Non-fiction: 3/12 Goodreads. I didn't bother posting in February because I only read two books, so here's a big catch-up post. The Labours of Hercules is a short story collection, and it's mediocre by the standards of the series. It was enjoyable but nothing special. Uglies is pretty good for YA. The story and characters are decent and I am interested enough to read the rest of the series at some point. I feel like there are some real inconsistencies with the technology and world though, like hoverboards seem totally implausible. And the big secret conspiracy seems totally unnecessary, but those are minor issues, otherwise I enjoyed it. The Harry Potter and the Natural 20 series is a surprisingly good Harry Potter parody in which a group of Death Eaters accidentally summon a D&D wizard. The author sticks pretty well to the original plot, and where he diverges he adds bits that are consistent with the Harry Potter universe and make sense in the story. I'd probably be getting a bit sick of the premise after the second one if not for the side plot he's added of a muggle police officer finding out about wizards and setting up various systems to keep that knowledge through repeated memory erasures, which may actually turn out to be the best part of the story. Women in Love feels really long. It's very wordy and seems to avoid ever getting to the point. That said, it's not boring or tedious, it just feels long. I liked the scenes of Ursula and Gudrun together, they were probably the most entertaining part of the book, but I didn't feel like they were particularly essential to it. On the other hand the scenes of Gerald and Birkin together were almost as entertaining, but felt more important, and I often thought as I was reading it that it would have been better as two separate stories, one about the Brangwens and the other about Birkin and Gerald, and not had them interact at all. I also would have liked more about Hermione and Winifred as I found them far more interesting than any of the four protagonists, and both of them just sort of disappear out of the story. A Mind Forever Voyaging was poo poo. There's plenty to talk about with regard to how storytelling in games differs from other media and how it's developed, but rather than any of that he basically just reviews some games he really likes. And not just that, but his research is really bad - several times where he says a particular game was the first to do some thing or other, I could think of an example off the top of my head of a game that did it earlier. The main problem with it though is just how desperate he is to convince you that "video games are art" and justify his playing of them. Due Justice was the worst by far though. The protagonist (Willa) is incredibly obnoxious, and her inability to put two and two together combined with her apparent inability to do the reasonable or sensible thing at any time serve only to pad the story out by making everything take longer than it should. It's stupid, lazy, rich arseholes wasting everyone's time. Everything about Willa is irritating. She seems to believe she's just a low-paid public servant, but she's clearly incredibly wealthy. She apparently has a job from which she basically can't be fired (American federal judges are appointed for life?), so she does a massively half-arsed job of it and barely even bothers showing up, then acts like her boss (or not her boss? I couldn't even tell) is the arsehole because, as far as I can tell, he'd like her to actually do her job. She daydreams through trials, she behaves incredibly unprofessionally, and seems to spend more time playing golf than working. And she's incredibly dumb. Generally in a mystery the protagonist is supposed to figure things out, but Willa needs everything spelled out for her. For example, we learn that character A is being blackmailed. We learn that character A is making payments to character B. But Willa somehow fails to connect those two facts until character A flat out states that character B is the blackmailer. Then there's the actual plot. It just goes around and around in circles, introducing a whole lot of irrelevant characters and trying to convince us that Willa is making progress when she clearly isn't. The obvious solutions are ignored until right near the end when it turns out that the big conspiracy angle Willa's been pursuing this whole time was bullshit and it was actually the more straightforward answer that any normal person would have been investigating right from the beginning. Even the series numbering is stupid. This is book one, but apparently there are two earlier books about the same character, they just don't have "justice" in the title. But Due Justice isn't even the original title for this book. It makes no sense to me. Finally there was Yes Please. It was OK. I have no particular feelings one way or the other about this book.
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 19:05 |
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thehomemaster posted:Goddamn, I don't see how anyone could not enjoy Catch-22. What exactly didn't you enjoy? I didn't like it either. It reminded me of something by George Orwell, but giving the impression that it's supposed to be funny somehow? I don't understand what's even supposed to be enjoyable about it.
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 12:51 |
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Female authors: 5/24 Non-fiction: 3/12 Goodreads. The main part of The Changelings is basically a series of set-piece action sequences, each of which is relatively fine, and there's a sort of mystery established at the beginning to kind of link everything, but it doesn't really go anywhere. Then the book suddenly and anticlimactically ends with an exposition dump setting up the sequel. It wasn't the worst thing I've read, or even the worst thing I've read recently, but it was really generic and without any particular value or merit. If you're looking for a bog-standard YA fantasy adventure, this is one. Killer Cupcakes is hilariously bad. I couldn't stop laughing the whole way through. I can't believe a grown adult wrote this. The whole thing comes across as a story invented by a little girl playing with dolls at her grandmother's house. The protagonist is living a Barbie-doll life - she does adult things, but in the way a child might understand them. Even the way she dresses (jeans, a pink t-shirt and pink platform stilettos) and what she eats is childish; throughout the book she's always eating cakes and biscuits and pastries and the one exception is when she goes out for burgers - and gets sauce all over her face. On top of that, the writing is incredibly unsophisticated - everything is explained, characters say what they're feeling, nothing is just implied or demonstrated through dialogue and action, and this extends even to the actual mystery. The author doesn't seem to trust her audience to be able to figure out or understand anything not directly spelled out for them. It's like the book was written for its own characters, because they actually are that dim - not to mention one-dimensional and, again, childish. It's also free on Amazon if you want to see how bad it is. The Long Goodbye is a bit longer and slower than the previous books, I think, and less funny. If I were recommending a Raymond Chandler book I'd pick Farewell, My Lovely, but they're all good.
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 16:50 |
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Female authors: 8/24 Non-fiction: 4/12 Goodreads. If you've enjoyed any of David Thorne's other stuff, you should read Look Evelyn. It calls itself a collection of essays but I'd say it's more like a novel, if a slightly unconventional one. Reminded me a lot of Mil Millington, but funnier. If you've never heard of Thorne, read Missing Missy. If you like that, you'll probably like this too. Spider-Man and the X-Men was a pretty fun book, despite the villains mostly being crap. Spidey is a fun character and his students all work well. I have no idea what's going on in the surrounding Marvel universe, but whatever it is it apparently turned the surviving X-Men into dicks though, so I didn't much care for them in this story, but fortunately they're not in it that much. The villains are my main complaint, because Sauron, Stegron and Mojo are all really dumb and I didn't much like this version of Mr Sinister either. Those aren't major complaints though, because Spider-Man really carries the whole thing on his own. Also published as Ignorance is Blitz, Non Campus Mentis is just one of the absolute funniest things I've read. I had to stop many times because I was laughing too hard to continue reading. I first read Guards! Guards! around 15 years ago, and I've read it many times since then, but not in a while now. I read it this time for a book club, and it was OK. I don't know how much of that is down to me being too familiar with it, or whether I just wouldn't like it as much if I read it for the first time now as I did when I actually first read it. It feels rather like the story got away from Pratchett as he was writing it. He starts out with this premise of the classic fantasy adventure, dragon threatens city, but instead of a hero coming to kill it the story focuses on the guards, the little guys who would normally be ineffective allies or minor villains. But then it seems like he accidentally wrote a much better book, but never quite purged that original premise from it, so it ends up a bit tonally inconsistent, and the plot doesn't really work properly. In the end the problem is basically solved without any of the characters actually doing anything, and it just kind of ends. It's still pretty funny though, and Vimes and Vetinari are great characters. I read The Three Musketeers some time ago and really enjoyed it, but only just got around to reading the sequel now, and unfortunately I found it fairly disappointing. Twenty Years After just feels incredibly slow. Nothing much seems to happen for the first half of the book, and even then it's a slow start. The last quarter of the book is pretty good, but not good enough to make up for the rest. I had planned to read the entire series, but at this point I'm not sure I will. I cetainly won't be starting the next one any time soon.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 18:46 |
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Roydrowsy posted:56. Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe: A little bland at times, but I really, really liked this book. Everybody knows that this book is about a guy who gets stuck on an island, but there is considerably more to it. That being said, everybody loves a good person stuck on an island story. You left out the best thing about this book - the original title: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.
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# ¿ Jul 8, 2015 10:17 |
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Female authors: 10/24 Non-fiction: 7/12 Goodreads. College in a Nutskull is a sequel to Non Campus Mentis, but includes a wider range of subjects and is generally less funny. Still good, but the best material clearly went into the first one. What a Croc! is just selected front pages from The NT News (the paper that had the famous "Why I Stuck a Cracker Up My Clacker" headline). Some of them are somewhat amusing, but mostly not. I won this book in a contest on their Facebook page, so at least I didn't pay anything for it. Diary of a Young Girl is pretty much what you'd expect from the diary of a teenager shut up with her family for an extended period, ie. self-absorbed, overly emotional, tedious. Pen Pal was by far the best book I read in June, and I'd definitely recommend it. Reminded me a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird.
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# ¿ Jul 15, 2015 14:31 |
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Female authors: 13/24 Non-fiction: 9/12 Goodreads. Bleeding Violet seemed like it could have been a decent YA book, except for the fact that the protagonist just seems to have no interest in or curiosity about anything. Weird stuff is happening, and she doesn't so much take it in stride as just kind of ignore it. The main plot doesn't even get started until well into the second half of the book, and then it gets resolved by the protagonist suddenly developing super powers (because of her bipolar disorder interacting with the magic of the town). I'm familiar enough with the story of the holocaust that that part of Maus didn't really do a lot for me, but I did really like the character of Vladek as an old man, both the way he told the story of his life during World War II and the stuff about him in the "present day" sections. My biggest issue with It's a Bird is that I felt I didn't really have enough context to care about the protagonist, so he basically just came across as an arsehole most of the time. He had his reasons, obviously, but I wasn't invested in them so I was more against him than with him. And then the ending seems to skip straight to "and then everything was OK again" and now he likes Superman, I guess. It didn't really work for me. And it also didn't really seem to say anything much about Superman either. It Came from the North might be worth reading as an introduction to some interesting authors you probably haven't heard of before, but it's pretty inconsistent. I liked some of the stories, I disliked some, and most were just sort of OK. It did put me onto Datura though, which was better, but mostly because of its side characters rather than the central plot. I also tried reading another book by Krohn, Tainaron: Mail from Another City, and found it just completely dull and pointless.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 09:14 |
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Female authors: 14/24 Non-fiction: 11/12 Goodreads. The Happiest Refugee was interesting and entertaining. I'm not really a fan of Do's stand-up, so I probably never would have read it but for the fact that I was assigned two chapters of it for a class, and having read those I was invested enough to continue. The Little Princesses was a pretty entertaining book about some pretty interesting people. I don't have a lot to say about either one, but I enjoyed them. The Kewpie Killer, on the other hand, was incredibly dumb. Every plot point is telegraphed way ahead of time and the characters are really bad at picking up on the obvious. One example from early on: The killer leaves these plaster "kewpie" dolls by the victims, but everyone writes them off as being prizes from the carnival, even though it's specifically and repeatedly mentioned that they're not the same as the ones the carnival has, which are plastic. A bigger problem though is that the protagonist just doesn't seem to do anything. She just follows other characters around while they investigate. Occasionally whoever she's with will be struck by a sudden fit of stupidity so that she can make the obvious suggestion to get them back on track, but the book would probably be improved if she were written out. Also, by about two thirds of the way through it seems like the solution is obvious and the book should be just about over, but then the insane plot twists begin, each chapter introducing some new and implausible element. And I don't know if Jones felt they'd written themself into a corner or what, but the book has the most abrupt ending I can remember reading. The plot is suddenly and anti-climatically resolved, and where you'd expect a final chapter showing the characters' lives going back to normal instead you just get... nothing. And I refer to the author as "they" because "Falafel Jones" is obviously a pseudonym and they seem to have gone out of their way to make sure no one can find out anything about them, including their gender. The other book I read and hated this month was Neverwhere. And mostly it was down to the protagonist (although the plot was also pretty meandering and the twist predictable). But mostly I just hate Richard Mayhew. He is among the worst protagonists in anything I've read/played/watched. He exists only to be the dullest, stupidest, least relatable audience stand-in ever. Even on the few occasions where he does attempt to do something, he still does the dumbest poo poo. And then at the end, he finally gets to go home, but decides that his life is inevitably going to be boring so he returns to London Below, like as though that will somehow lead to him having a meaningful life. What's he going to do, track down Door again and follow her around like a lost puppy? I hate this guy.
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# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 07:10 |
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Talas posted:I need a wildcard, please! Amberville by Tim Davys.
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# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 04:37 |
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Female authors: 16/24 Non-fiction: 12/12 Goodreads. The Diamond Queen was entertaining and interesting, but obviously very pro-queen - as you'd probably expect. I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been researching the queen, but I enjoyed it enough to finish it after I'd got what I needed from it. Taken at the Flood is one of those Poirot books where the titular character shows up late and does very little, so I wasn't that into it, and the ending was bad. It seems like one character is thrown under the bus at the last minute for the sake of making sure the young woman ends up with the "right" man (who Poirot basically lets get away with murder, attempted murder and fraud). The solution does work, but it feels like it shouldn't, and Poirot himself comes across as disinterested. Unless you're determined to read every Poirot story, skip this one. The Phoenix Code is another one I'd say to skip unless you're particularly keen on the author. It's pretty generic, the twist can be seen coming a mile off, and it doesn't really seem to have much to say. It does get better as it goes along, but the start is really awkward and it takes a while before the main plot even starts, but mostly it's just that there are a million books like this out there, and many of them are better. The other book I read this month was one I was asked to read by the author (apparently because I gave a positive rating to John Dies at the End) and it was amazing. Just not in a good way. I've already posted some of the "best" quotes from The Savior Cometh to the PYF terrible book thread. There's a time traveller with a dick the length of his thigh, there's a presidential candidate taking orders from the archangel Gabriel, there's some kind of body-stealing sex-demon, there's dinosaurs... it's an incoherent mess and it's hilarious that someone not only wrote it but then asked strangers on the internet to give it honest reviews. If it were free, I'd recommend it for a laugh, but I can't suggest that anyone actually pay money for it, even if it is less than a dollar.
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2015 08:16 |
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Female authors: 17/24 Non-fiction: 12/12 Goodreads. I've mostly been wasting my time playing The Sims this month, so I haven't read much. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits was a bit of a disappointment, but still a fun read. It just didn't work as well as John Dies at the End and a lot of it doesn't really make sense if you think about it at all. It also felt like it should have been serialised, because it's kind of broken up into episodes, little self-contained bits of the story, before it reaches the final, unsatisfying conclusion. The Cipher was pretty good though. It wasn't as scary or creepy as it seemed like it wanted to be, but the characters are pretty great.
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2015 10:41 |
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ToxicFrog posted:I picked up Black Man along with Angels, and I've had Market Forces on my bookshelves for years -- maybe I'll get around to reading them before the end of the year. For now, though, I'm reading The New Space Opera, a short story collection. Black Man is OK, but not as good as the Kovacs books. Market Forces is really dumb though.
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 01:49 |
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screenwritersblues posted:So when's the new thread going up? Late December or early January, I would imagine.
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# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 07:17 |
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Female authors: 21/24 Non-fiction: 12/12 Goodreads. This month I read two good books, two bad books, and one that wasn't particularly good but was quite enjoyable. And I'm still behind on my target, so hopefully I'll read a lot more than usual next month. I read Emma because I heard it was funny. And it is funny, but in a way that sometimes swings around to irritating. I really liked Emma herself though, and I liked the way it was shown how different people had different interpretations of events and motives. I wasn't keen on the ending though, with Emma's meddling in Harriet's life essentially excused by everything coincidentally turning out fine. It feels like she got away with that one where she really shouldn't have. But overall it was very enjoyable. I'd put off reading Crossfire for ages, because I've got low expectations for sci-fi, but it turned out to be really good. Good characters, believable technology, engaging story that never feel forced or like anything is thrown in out of nowhere as a convenient way to keep the plot moving. Maids of Misfortune is a decent mystery with pretty good characters and a solution that makes sense and fits the facts. The only real problem is that it's a bit too easy to figure out, so the story starts to drag a bit towards the end when you're just waiting for the characters to catch on, and there's a sort of B plot about the protagonist's financial issues that really should have been cut, I think. But I mostly enjoyed it. To Be or Not To Be was OK, I guess, but North's writing gets pretty grating, and the book is not nearly as funny as it thinks it is. The real stand-out this month though was The Culling. For a start, it's just really carelessly written. It contradicts itself all over the place (like one chapter mentioning a wolf attack and then a later chapter mentioning that wolves are extinct) and the author seems to use a lot of words incorrectly. It tries to keep your attention by just not explaining things, so if you want to understand what's happening you have to keep reading. The protagonist doesn't really do anything to advance the story (and is actually a prisoner for most of it). But all that is nothing compared with the creepiness of the setting. Earth has been taken over by blue-skinned mind-controlling lizard aliens who keep humans as pets - and have sex with them. The protagonist is constantly menaced by the possibility of being raped (by humans and aliens alike) and much is made of her attractiveness (apparently to lizard aliens as much as humans). The aliens are also known to eat humans, and make humans fight to the death for their entertainment. The only thing separating this from weird self-published Kindle porn is that there's no actual sex in it, but I got the impression the author probably has a second version rectifying that.
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# ¿ Nov 30, 2015 08:35 |
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:33. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
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# ¿ Nov 30, 2015 15:21 |
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Corrode posted:John Dies at the End I read on a couple of flights while I was away in Italy and Germany. It was good fun and had some cool ideas, but I feel like it could have done with being 100 pages shorter and the dialogue being thoroughly decheesed in some places. IIRC it started life as a web serial thing and you can definitely tell that. The twist at the end was pretty cool and done effectively, but yeah, see previous point - it seemed to go on past the point where Wong had a clear idea of how to end it and then fizzled out. I read his latest book recently (which I'm pretty sure was written from the beginning as a self-contained novel) and it also reads that way, so I think that's just how he writes.
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# ¿ Dec 28, 2015 02:09 |
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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:26 |
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Female authors: 24/24 Non-fiction: 12/12 Goodreads. I cheated a bit this month in reading two comics and a children's book, but I was way behind and didn't have much time left to catch up. Mrs. McGinty's Dead was decent but nothing special. Rinkitink in Oz reminded me a bit much of a folk tale (which is a genre I don't particularly enjoy) but was decent aside from that. There's probably not much worth saying about Harlan Ellison at this point, but if you like his writing then I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a perfectly fine collection of short stories. I don't though, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Velvet was an odd one. The whole thing feels like the recap section at the start of a TV show. I like the concept, but because nothing feels very immediate there's no real tension, and it seems a bit rushed as well. I think it would be a lot better if they slowed down and cut back on the action scenes, and made more of a thing about her age and lack of recent training or experience, make her have to be smarter rather than just winning every fight straight up. And by the end of the second book I felt like I was being strung along, like this story is never actually going to end, there'll just be an endless series of complications that mean she has to do one more thing before she can uncover the conspiracy or whatever. The Victorian San Francisco Stories are written in the same entertaining style and with the same attention to historical detail as Maids of Misfortune and are some quick, enjoyable reads, but probably not a great place to start reading. Go with the first book then this one. The Enthusiast was really great, but might lose something if you're not a fan of either newspaper soap-opera comics or The Comics Curmudgeon. It would still be really good, but there's definitely a lot there for people who are perhaps overly familiar with Apartment 3-G, Mary Worth, Judge Parker, etc. The absolute stand-out though was Near + Far. This is the best sort of sci-fi, where the fictional elements (aliens, new technologies, etc.) are integrated so well into the story that you don't need to be told what everything is, you understand perfectly from context, and it all serves the story rather than being mere set dressing. Just really well-written stories about relatable people in scenarios that allow us to understand something interesting about them. Finally, here's my top five books of the year: 5: The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe #7) by Raymond Chandler 4: Look Evelyn, Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them: A Collection Of New Essays by David Thorne 3: The Cipher by Kathe Koja 2: Pen Pal by Francesca Forrest 1: Near + Far by Cat Rambo
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# ¿ Dec 31, 2015 08:34 |