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I am reading Ender's Game, for the first time. I'm about halfway through it and I'm really enjoying it. I got sort of bullied by a friend into buying it, and I'm not mad she was so insistent I read it. She said she didn't care much for the rest of the series, any opinions here? Before this I read the 5th of the Expanse books, Nemesis Games. I absolutely love these books but I'm taking em one at a time with breaks for other reads in between. Hell, I love the show too, even though it kills me that Bezos is funding it now. I'm a huge Neal Stephenson fanboy, so if anyone wants to chat about his work I'm down. Probably read Snowcrash 4-5 times, Diamond Age 3-4, SevenEves, Anathem, and ReamDe twice each. I thought Fall was pretty good, the whole "Remember Moab" and Ameristan thing was wild, and oddly believable? Dude still can't write an ending to save his life though. The next book I'm going to read is Supernova Era by Cixin Liu. He might be best known for the Three Body Problem trilogy, which is amazing, and I highly recommend it to anyone who in interested in sci fi. House of Leaves chat, I found the book interesting. A bit dry sometimes, a bit nonsensical at other times. Agreeing with beer pal that it takes itself alarmingly seriously at times.
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Apr 19, 2020 21:25
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:18 |
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Gross Dude posted:I just finished The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe I thought it was kind of boring, but enjoyed the final few chapters. Then I learned it won a ton of awards and it made me feel like I"m bad at books. Awards don't mean poo poo, Gross Dude. Read the books that speak to you!
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Apr 23, 2020 01:19
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Finger Prince posted:I think there's a new Murderbot Diaries book coming out. That's a great series if you haven't read it. It got me to check out all of Martha Wells' back catalog, and boy she can write some swashbuckling adventures! All the Ile Rien books are great fun, but the whole Fall of Ile Rien series is fantastic.  Isn't she writing a novel length Murderbot? This series is fantastic. My roommate has actually been ordering her back catalog and they've been showing up at the house over the last few weeks. Pretty excited to check em out.
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Apr 24, 2020 05:39
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ToxicFrog posted:My fellow orbs I've got a couple on deck before I can get to the new one but I'm excited for it. My roommate just got his copy.
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May 11, 2020 05:33
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A page late, but just throwing it out there that Left Hand of Darkness was a wild ride, and Le Guin is fantastic. I'm sad I didn't pick up any of her books before she was dead. I'm still not done with Ender's Game, but I was waiting for my car to get worked on last week and read about a third of the way through Tomorrow's Bones by Shanna Germain. It's set in the pen and paper RPG Numenera's world, so it's super weird but I'm rather enjoying it. I've read two other novels in the same world by Germain, she makes the weird setting pop and makes enjoyable characters.
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Jul 9, 2020 21:11
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I read Worlds of Exile earlier this year, LHoD was way more engaging.
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Jul 9, 2020 21:40
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Relax Or DIE posted:i just read The Elementals and it was real good, not sure if I'm gonna move on to House of Leaves or The Master and Margarita As someone who has read both House of Leaves and The Master and Margarita I'm here to tell you The Master and Margarita is the better book. Normally I wouldn't be so objective, and admittedly it's been almost 15 years since I read these books, but I loved the hell out of TMAM and House of Leaves just strikes me as a book I read because it was quirky and weird and begged reading for these reasons more than the characters or story line being compelling or interesting.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:23
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beer pal posted:i agree. i thought it was kind of funny having a dumbass rear end in a top hat dude pop in all the time talking about some stupid bullshit for no reason but it gets old pretty quickly What a great way to sum up the Johnny Truant part of the book. Pizzatime posted:Can anybody recommend the most generic fantasy book they ever read? Looking for heroes slaying dragons in dungeons. Which Dresden File did you read? I have read nearly that whole series, I think they change a lot throughout. As to most generic fantasy books, have you read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings yet? They were good stories, in spite of Tolkien's personal shortcomings. And hell, they pretty much set the bar for the genre?
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Aug 12, 2020 07:33
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Vei posted:In Writing to Learn, Stephen Jay Gould gets cited a few times, and so I bought one of his books and it's really good so far: Holy poo poo. Probably 9 years ago I helped a friend move. My memory is foggy, it wasn't her book but it was in a pile of things they were getting rid of, but I was looking at this book because it was only the front cover and first 270 pages. She didn't know what happened, where the back of the book went, and it came home with me and has been on my shelf since. I dusted this off, paged through this a bit, and now I'm remembering why I took it. I should read this. How bizarre a coincidence.
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Sep 12, 2020 20:44
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 the jokes in this thread are getting out of hand.Finally finished Ender's Game today, what a shite ending. At least I can say I'm done.
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Sep 17, 2020 18:39
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I finished Tomorrow's Bones. Shanna Germain is the author, and it is set in the world of Numenera, though you don't have to be familiar with the setting to enjoy the novel. I don't know if I have ever finished a book so fast in my life. I read it in 3-4 sittings. Just blocks of time that passed quickly as the pages turned. It is a seafaring adventure story, with a lot of fantastic creatures and vibrant characters. I thought the story was good and I found the ending satisfying. Great book, would recommend. |
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Oct 12, 2020 20:51
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Just finishedThe Deep by Rivers Solomon, but credited also are Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes of clipping. and James Stinson/Gerald Donald from Drexciya. It's a wild story about the power of memory and trauma and is related to slavery. It is a very powerful novella and I'd recommend it to anyone. The afterword explains how clipping. made a few songs based on Drexciya's body of music, the book is really another telling of the same sort of story. |
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Dec 5, 2020 07:16
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Finally started reading my next book, Peace Talks by Jim Butcher. It is the latest in the Dresden Files series and I haven't read any of the other books since probably when I caught up two or three years ago, so every time he references a character or event I go "oooooohhhh" like a idiot.
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Dec 16, 2020 07:22
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I'm certainly not going to read it but can we all laugh about Ernest Cline's Ready Player Two?
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Dec 20, 2020 22:06
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xcheopis posted:I never read the first one! I thought it was worth a read but have since been informed I have no taste. Anyway, it's very heavy with 80s references and a barely likeable main character. You're not missing much.
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Dec 22, 2020 07:24
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I'm still only about halfway through the sixth Expanse book, I haven't been able to get much reading in at work where I've been keeping it. Also, got about three or four chapters of Cixin Liu's Supernova Era in while waiting for my car to get worked on last week, looking forward to finishing this book. Everything I've read by him has been great and I'm really liking how this one starts.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:41
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Finger Prince posted:It's a full novel, but The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland was a really good unconventional time travel story. There may be a cat in it though, I don't remember. Seconding D.O.D.O. as a good time travel story. There's a sequel too, but I haven't read it. And if memory serves, unlike novels Stephenson writes by himself, the ending wasn't incredibly dissatisfying.
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Jul 3, 2021 19:39
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Hi book thread! Been a long time!beer pal posted:before that i read death's end by cixin liu and it was fine. sometimes felt like he just had a bunch of cool sci fi ideas and needed to come up with a story to link em all together Dang, you know it's been a minute since I read the Three Body trilogy but that's kind of making sense to me. That series turns so fast it could give you whiplash. I wonder if the ideas could be separated into individual stories and still make sense. Have you read Cixin's other books? I just finished The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper. This novella is short, fast paced cosmic horror kind of on the vein of how Lovecraft wrote, except Piper is actually capable of describing things occasionally. I don't know a lot of the authors y'all talk about, which makes me feel like I don't really know books, which is funny because I know so many non-readers who are just astounded I'm a dude who likes to read fiction when I'm on break at work, or occasionally on sleepy weekend mornings.
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Jan 28, 2022 21:17
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I also finished that Expanse book, Supernova Era, the Murderbot novel and the novella after that, since I posted ITT, dang, friggin shameful. I still have two Expanse books but I don't own copies of them yet so I'm not really sure what I'm reading next. I should figure that out.
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Jan 28, 2022 21:20
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HUSKY DILF posted:started the discworld series, up to wyrd sisters which is send up of multiple shakespeare plays mind candy but a lot of fun this is a funny coincidence. a mate of mine recently came back to town and immediately mentioned Terry Pratchett to me, and lent me Small Gods. I'm a little over halfway through and enjoying it, he's already talking about how he's trying to decide what order to loan them to me, but realistically I'm not going to read them back to back.
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Apr 12, 2022 20:56
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hey long time no see book thread. I'm about halfway into A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, as well as just shy of halfway through Termination Shock, the newest Neal Stephenson. the latter I'm almost obligated to read, the former a friend recommended and lent to me. I'm liking both of them, tho it's probably been over a month since I picked up the Stephenson one. also I'm not sure if this is the place for it, in fact I'm almost certain this is not what this thread is for, but I'm going for it. most of my at home reading this summer has been either Spire: the City Must Fall or Heart: the City Beneath, both by Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor. a mate saw a review of Spire on a YouTube channel that usually reviews board games, and he thought it sounded interesting, so he ordered me a copy for my birthday. they are pen and paper RPGs, and the lore about the world is incredibly rich with interesting ideas and characters. It has been a while since a game lit up my imagination like this, and this is like, what the hobby is supposed to be about 
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Sep 28, 2022 08:27
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caspergers posted:read this book recently called the Fifth Wave. it's okay. it's about this dude who goes to the library and sees a friend sitting at a table reading, but he can't call out her name because it's a library, so he just starts waving at his friend. Throughout the first two chapters he gives four distinct waves, each time his friend not looking up from her book, but then the main protagonist stretches back his arm and frantically gives a final fifth wave, but he knocks over an old librarian and kills her. The rest of the book deals with the consequences of this event. Our character's main conflict is that his friend cannot give adequate testimony, as he did not see whether our man had waved four previous times. lmao that sounds kind of good
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Oct 29, 2022 08:04
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Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:John Dies At The End 4 : If This Book Exists, You're In The Wrong Universe. holy poo poo, that fuckin movie was based on a series of books?? |
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Oct 31, 2022 03:32
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All I remember about the movie is John died at the beginning and came back, and didn't actually die at the end, and I thought that was peculiar since that was the title of the film. |
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Oct 31, 2022 20:55
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I've got just under 100 pages left in Confederacy of Dunces, I just have to actually sit down and read.
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Dec 17, 2022 21:05
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I'm going to finish Confederacy of Dunces tonight. been distracted reading my Spire sourcebook, Strata.
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Jan 16, 2023 06:33
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also finally read a few new pages in Termination Shock since probably August and wow taking long breaks from reading mid way through a book is a questionable decision
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Jan 16, 2023 06:39
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it's never too late to read the book, friend! I'm still picking away at Termination Shock, probably reading more regularly at the new gig that the old one.
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Feb 21, 2023 03:58
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caspergers posted:I listened to the audiobook and recommend. The idiolect the narrator gives to Ignatius is so funny and perfect. Got any recs that are more like this book, in terms of humor? I don't think the author wrote anything else that has been published, if'n I remember the forward correctly. I think Neal Stephenson is funny sometimes but ymmv. read a book by a stand up comedian? I remember liking all three of Carlin's books.
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Feb 22, 2023 21:39
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nut posted:its sadder than that I do definitely remember TCOD was published post-humorously. I just wasn't sure if the mom had more of their writing around.
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Feb 23, 2023 00:35
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good to see you posting, nut.
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Feb 23, 2023 00:37
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le Guin was a goddamn national treasure. I'm sorry I never read anything of hers before she died. there was a quote from the Left Hand of Darkness that will always stick with me “How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing.” |
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Feb 27, 2023 00:45
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going to finish Termination Shock soon, getting to that part of a Stephenson book where the seemingly unconnected threads start to come together. probably reading some Terry Pratchett soon since a homie dropped a bunch of his books off at my place and Small Gods was good. |
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Apr 25, 2023 17:11
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I'm like halfway through Guards Guards already dang Pratchett books read pretty fast |
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May 25, 2023 14:41
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Quadramind posted:"This snowcrash thing - is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" unironically the best line in the book |
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Jun 14, 2023 23:03
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baka fwocka fwame posted:i finished a neuromancer rearead. pretty good book you know, it's fair to say one of my favorite college professors recommended this to me and I have never pursued it. I always hear good things tho. I'm like a quarter of the way into Mort, my third incursion into the Discworld. it is sick, which I just expect now from Pratchett lol
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Jul 7, 2023 23:04
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Snuff Melange posted:Slowly working through House of Leaves, and trying to cram some learning in my lunch breaks with "The Age of Extremes", a dry rear end history book. I want to either continue the Three Body series next, the 4th Expanse book, or jump into a new disturbing horror book. I liked Expanse and Three Body Problem. when will you have time for em though with two things already going? |
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Jul 8, 2023 03:43
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I finished Mort a bit ago and started rereading the Phantom Tollbooth because it has been a long time and I didn't know what else to read. when I finish this (probably this week) I'm going to start The Gateway Trip by Frederik Pohl. I haven't read any of this series but a mate was saying he wants to run and Eclipse Phase game loosely based on this series and maybe I'd GM the parts that are set in the "future" but I hadn't read any of it. not sure how that all is going to work lol. |
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Aug 22, 2023 23:49
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about halfway through The Gateway Trip by Frederik Pohl, it is ok. the into part of the book made it pretty clear Pohl has a big ol boner for humanity and our society, which is a point of contention for me, but it's chilled out some. pretty quick read too.Buttchocks posted:Book 4 of the Expanse series 
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Sep 12, 2023 00:11
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:18 |
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three of my favorite stand up comedians published books this month, really need to get my rear end to a bookstore. |
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Sep 21, 2023 22:59
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