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I think I broke my phone's predictive text engine; it just autocorrected 'helter skelter' to 'Belter smelter'
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Apr 16, 2024 03:14
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Kesper North posted:I think I broke my phone's predictive text engine; it just autocorrected 'helter skelter' to 'Belter smelter' Well, if anyone's gonna lose the race war,
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Apr 16, 2024 03:45
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Admiralty Flag posted:Quite a haul of stuff today. Don't think I've ever seen such a long list. Some special promotion going on? Just daily sales mixed with the Monday weekly sales as far as I can tell. silvergoose posted:https://www.amazon.com/Obsidian-Tower-Rooks-Ruin-Book-ebook/dp/B07YSNDSSS Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso is also on sale for 2.99; I liked her first series but haven't actually tried this one at all This actually goes on sale quite often but no one has ever mentioned it in thread so it never made the list.
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Apr 16, 2024 04:31
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Fair nuf!
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Apr 16, 2024 04:49
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I read them. They were entertaining, nothing mind blowing. Basically your average "plucky crew of misfits" series that's so popular right now.
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Apr 16, 2024 14:28
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Finished The Gone World and it was great all the way through. Thanks for the recommendation, thread. I hadn't seen this particular take on time travel before, and it was pretty interesting. For those not familiar: you can't travel to the past, but you can travel to the future and then back to your starting point. But it's only a possible future; if you go to the future again, everything might've developed differently. The story is centered on an investigator in a secret branch of the US military who's looking into the killing of a woman and her children; the main suspect, the woman's husband, was on a time travel mission years earlier and supposedly never returned. Beyond this, the agency the investigator is working for has a long-term problem: some years earlier time travelers to the far future started to see a apocalyptic future with all of humanity dead every time they went more than six hundred years forward. And since then the apocalypse has moved closer, so that it is now only two hundred years away. It's a good book, you should read it. I think I'll start Dead Country next, I rather liked the Craft sequence.
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Apr 16, 2024 19:57
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god I love The Gone World so much
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Apr 16, 2024 20:02
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Tau Wedel posted:Finished The Gone World and it was great all the way through... Fake edit: oh that was the first novel from la Carre's son. loving England.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:56
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The Gone World is one of the best airport books ever written. That sounds like a slam, but I assure you I would never say anything bad about a book that, once I start reading it, gives me the ability to bypass the conscious experience of being stuck in an airplane for hours at a time.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:53
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Jurassic Park by Michael Chrichton - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007UH4D3G/ Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R Delany - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HE2JK4O/
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Apr 16, 2024 23:21
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I wanted the magician-cook to be "Nobody knows that if you smoke basil and mix it with cherries, then form the right mudra, you have an invisibility spell that lasts thirty seconds!" Aw man, that's what I was hoping for also, that the accent was on the cooking magic instead of it just being magic ingredients mostly. It definitely would have been a pet peeve of mine as well if I'd read it so you're not alone there! Thanks for the info. 
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Apr 17, 2024 00:40
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There are so many good books on sale right now for Kindle. Thank goodness I got one because it's saving me money even if I'm spending money. Now to debate if I spend all of 2025 reading WoT.
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Apr 17, 2024 10:19
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Go for it, we've even got a new readers thread!
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Apr 17, 2024 11:22
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Remulak posted:Thanks for the summary, it led me to realize that I had it confused with The Gone-Away World by Harkaway. Still not sure how I feel about that book, it seems like a more erudite version of something I'd find and like (but not love) on KU. it was OK but I don't know why it got the release and accolades it did. Have you read Gnomon? That’s a real work out for the brain but completely worth it. I’m about to audible it this time round as I really like the narrator from other books he’s done (and since I have already read it once I’ll stand a chance of following it.) To be clear this is a me problem with some Audible. I get distracted and realise I’ve not listened for a few “pages” and if it at all requires focused attention that gets tricky.
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Apr 17, 2024 13:42
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I am looking to take a break from Warhammer 40k for a book or two and can't make up my mind between The Fall of Hyperion and Children of Time. What is your recommendation? I will be listening via audible.
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Apr 17, 2024 16:05
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notaspy posted:I am looking to take a break from Warhammer 40k for a book or two and can't make up my mind between The Fall of Hyperion and Children of Time. What is your recommendation?
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Apr 17, 2024 16:13
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anilEhilated posted:Children of Time, definitely. Hyperion sequels somehow manage to make the original worse in retrospect. Also, don't give Simmons money. Is he a chud?
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Apr 17, 2024 16:16
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notaspy posted:Is he a chud? Yes. He's one of those guys who went full Islamaphobe after 9/11.
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Apr 17, 2024 16:25
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Selachian posted:Yes. He's one of those guys who went full Islamaphobe after 9/11. Ty for letting me know. I got children of time.
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Apr 17, 2024 16:36
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I finished Declare by Tim Powers - thank you to the thread for mentioning it is similar to a John Le Carre novel, one of my fav authors. As I started the book I was fascinated by the concept of a supernatural Le Carre book - by the end I was whelmed. Was surprised to discover in the afterword that many of the details about Kim Philby's life were real.
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Apr 17, 2024 16:44
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grassy gnoll posted:The Gone World is one of the best airport books ever written. That sounds like a slam, but I assure you I would never say anything bad about a book that, once I start reading it, gives me the ability to bypass the conscious experience of being stuck in an airplane for hours at a time. So much shocking imagery, it's a very vivid book.
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Apr 17, 2024 17:06
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My Zones of Thought reviews: Fire Upon The Deep: Incredible, loved it, might be up there as one of my favorite sci fi novels A Deepness in the Sky: Incredible, loved it, might be up there as one of my favorite sci fi novels The Children of the Sky: This one I just cannot get into at all, and I think if I'm being honest with myself might DNF. I don't quite get why, since it is sort of just 1/2 of the setting of a previous book, but now 100% of the time, but it just is not clicking for me.
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Apr 17, 2024 20:53
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mewse posted:I finished Declare by Tim Powers - thank you to the thread for mentioning it is similar to a John Le Carre novel, one of my fav authors. As I started the book I was fascinated by the concept of a supernatural Le Carre book - by the end I was whelmed. Was surprised to discover in the afterword that many of the details about Kim Philby's life were real. Powers absolutely does this. The Stress of Her Regard is all about the summer the Romantic poets plus Mary Shelley spent in Italy. The plot works in with every single known date. I didn't like it because I am meh about all the Romantics except Byron. I should probably try a reread.
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Apr 17, 2024 21:43
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mewse posted:I finished Declare by Tim Powers - thank you to the thread for mentioning it is similar to a John Le Carre novel, one of my fav authors. As I started the book I was fascinated by the concept of a supernatural Le Carre book - by the end I was whelmed. Was surprised to discover in the afterword that many of the details about Kim Philby's life were real. I liked the book, but I think the reveal of what's on top of mount ararat could have been grander. The book spends so much time foreshadowing that some crazy poo poo is up there, and then its just another djinn. Maybe one of the more powerful ones, but not very unique. In the big picture, its way more important that the protagonist shot Philby with the magic bullet, the fate of that particular djinn colony is almost irrelevant in comparison. But maybe that's the point?
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Apr 17, 2024 21:48
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:I liked the book, but I think the reveal of what's on top of mount ararat could have been grander. The book spends so much time foreshadowing that some crazy poo poo is up there, and then its just another djinn. Maybe one of the more powerful ones, but not very unique. In the big picture, its way more important that the protagonist shot Philby with the magic bullet, the fate of that particular djinn colony is almost irrelevant in comparison. But maybe that's the point? I agree, and I found the motives for going there/killing the djinn in the first place to be unclear.
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Apr 17, 2024 22:09
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Sphere by Michael Crichton - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007UH4G9C/ Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5WPD2NQ/ Edited by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. No idea how much they messed with it.
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Apr 17, 2024 22:29
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Finished Lock In by Scalzi for a book club. Pretty good. Not the most elegantly delivered police procedural, but pretty good. The scifi gimmick (people get stuck in their bodies and drive robots or specially trained body-renters) makes for a neat mystery slightly undermined by how its solution is just sort've shouted at the reader by an IT guy.
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Apr 18, 2024 00:26
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pradmer posted:Sphere by Michael Crichton - $2.99 I got a soft spot for Sphere. I went a little nuts for Crichton after I read JP when I was 13, I really liked Congo too lol
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Apr 18, 2024 01:43
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zoux posted:I got a soft spot for Sphere. I went a little nuts for Crichton after I read JP when I was 13, I really liked Congo too lol Big same. Sphere, JP, Lost World, Andromeda Strain, Congo, I tapered off around Prey which came out as I was wrapping up high school and had broadened my horizons quite a bit.
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Apr 18, 2024 01:50
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Lost World was probably the first book I can remember that disappointed me. I remember thinking "this feels like he rushed it out so they could make a Jurassic Park sequel", like many of the scenes seemed tailor-made for movie adaptation. Prey I didn't like very much, and obviously nothing need be said about State of Fear. Who would yall say is the heir to (good) Crichton? Where maybe the science isn't right but it feels authentic and drives the plot, ala chaos theory/genetic engineering in JP?
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Apr 18, 2024 15:50
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zoux posted:Lost World was probably the first book I can remember that disappointed me. I remember thinking "this feels like he rushed it out so they could make a Jurassic Park sequel", like many of the scenes seemed tailor-made for movie adaptation. Prey I didn't like very much, and obviously nothing need be said about State of Fear. Andy Weir?
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Apr 18, 2024 17:12
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:I liked the book, but I think the reveal of what's on top of mount ararat could have been grander. The book spends so much time foreshadowing that some crazy poo poo is up there, and then its just another djinn. Maybe one of the more powerful ones, but not very unique. In the big picture, its way more important that the protagonist shot Philby with the magic bullet, the fate of that particular djinn colony is almost irrelevant in comparison. But maybe that's the point? This was my main problem with the novel. Ultimately the events all seem kind of unimpactful, with the intro section being more interesting to me than the Cold War maneuvering. The novel could have done more with the theme of waning influence in a modernizing world and that would’ve kept me more engaged.
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Apr 18, 2024 17:25
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Selachian posted:Andy Weir? No, Crichton's books are basically humorless. I guess I'm trying to describe a vibe and not doing a very good job of it. Maybe because I'm trying to articulate a feeling from when I was 13.
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Apr 18, 2024 17:27
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Weir is more competence porn generally, Chrichton was a lot more about the potential horrors/thriller type stuff. There's definitely overlaps, but that doesn't quite fit for me.
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Apr 18, 2024 17:28
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is crichton the guy who inserted a critic he disliked into one of his books as a baby raping pedophile with a micropenis?
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Apr 18, 2024 17:31
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yes.
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Apr 18, 2024 17:32
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Doktor Avalanche posted:is crichton the guy who inserted a critic he disliked into one of his books as a baby raping pedophile with a micropenis? Yeah, in his book about how global warming was fake.
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Apr 18, 2024 17:38
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There's a common point between Crichton and Declare that makes it unsatisfying to me. They both take place in essentially the real world, so despite having big stuff happen, it all unravels by the end and essentially nothing changes. It ends up feeling like the message is "Here's some interesting stuff, it will have no impact."
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Apr 18, 2024 17:39
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StumblyWumbly posted:There's a common point between Crichton and Declare that makes it unsatisfying to me. They both take place in essentially the real world, so despite having big stuff happen, it all unravels by the end and essentially nothing changes. It ends up feeling like the message is "Here's some interesting stuff, it will have no impact." That's historical fiction though. At the most dramatic, historical fiction can still only bring us to today. Anything else puts you over in Alt History with the Gettysburg Gatlings. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 18, 2024 |
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Apr 18, 2024 17:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's historical fiction though. At the most dramatic, historical fiction can still only bring us to today. Anything else puts you over in Alt History with the Gettysburg Gatlings. I enjoy when historical fiction swerves into alt history at the last possible moment and you suddenly realize you've been had
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Apr 18, 2024 18:04
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