Finished Flashman at the Charge and Flashman and the Tiger. The latter being a collection of three different stories. Enjoyed Charge a lot, and as for Tiger... the first story, the longest of the lot (really a novel on its own), was interesting enough, mainly for Willem, the son of the Starnberg in Royal Flash. But it got tiring near the end--hell, even Flashy himself got bored of having too much sex.
The last story was interesting stuff, with one of his dastardly deeds coming back to haunt him when he's in his seventies.
Onwards to Flashman and the Redskins--after which I'll take a break from this magnificent poltroon.
Just started reading this. About 100 pages in. Not used to reading a modern settings book after all the fantasy books I have been reading for the past year.
Did you reach the nipple part yet?
I was fine-ish for the rest of the book but that scene actually made me put down the book so I could collect myself before reading on.
I used to do most of my reading on my commute, but I moved and now I take the crowded bus to work and it's always shoulder to shoulder - work has been so busy that my free time has been reduced to zilch.
I am re-reading my first ever book that doesn't start with harry potter in the title.
A game of thrones.
Every chapter reminds me of why this is my favorite series ever. Of all the times I have sung the praise of this book a little too enthusiastically to friends. Martin can make you despise a character in one chapter without it feeling cheap and give me goosebumps of excitement with the brilliant dialogue and foreshadows.
Probably making a Wise Man's Fear OT soon if no one else wants to. It isn't going to be fancy and full of pictures and what not, because I have better shit to do and don't work for Rothfuss.
i'm often curious about this, so i'll ask reader-gaf.. do people really read more with an e-reading device? if so, why? if you have an e-reader thingy..do you now read in places where you didn't before? if so, why?
For one I hate hardcovers. Inconvenient, can't take it anywhere really, heavy, etc. So I found myself out of the conversation with new books. I have no real affinity for a physical book and aside from one or two biographies I had stopped reading non-periodicals/jourbnals.
When I got the nook reading was just more comfortable and portable. The nook fit in my coat pocket so I could always have it with me and it was simple to buy a new book. I went from reading 2 books a year to reading literally dozens last year. Just something I really, really like about it. Reading in bed especially became a joy. Also reading in the car or in line was now easy.
Well I got an ipad in December for the hell of it and now never use my nook. The problem with reading on an ipad is that there is too much other shit to do. Get an email? Gotta check it. IM? Gotta respond. Some GAFfer finally made his Carc turn after 4 weeks, well I gotta go play mine now! Etc...
So for me, reading on a device is fantastic, as long as I can force myself to do it. Hell I was reading on old palm pilots on the toilet at work back in the 90's, so I've been waiting for e-ink for two decades!
We'll check back with you when Martin dies before the series is finished. Not if, but when. He won't leave a nice outline like Jordan did, either.
But in all seriousness, is Martin really even still interested in the world he's created? He's involved in a whole lot of other projects, and I can't help but think that he wouldn't be (as much, anyway) if this series was even a reasonable priority.
But in all seriousness, is Martin really even still interested in the world he's created? He's involved in a whole lot of other projects, and I can't help but think that he wouldn't be (as much, anyway) if this series was even a reasonable priority.
Bought a bunch of Dan Abnett's omnibuses(Gaunt's Ghosts, Inquisitor), Ciaphas Cain, the first of Horus Heresy.. Tons to wade through, I'm now at the last of the three omnibuses going through GG. Most entertaining sci-fi I've read in a while.
Bought a bunch of Dan Abnett's omnibuses(Gaunt's Ghosts, Inquisitor), Ciaphas Cain, the first of Horus Heresy.. Tons to wade through, I'm now at the last of the three omnibuses going through GG. Most entertaining sci-fi I've read in a while.
Anyone have recommendations for a post apocalyptic book? Playing through Fallout New Vegas and I'm just on that kind of a kick. Doesn't necessarily have to be similar in tone.
Anyone have recommendations for a post apocalyptic book? Playing through Fallout New Vegas and I'm just on that kind of a kick. Doesn't necessarily have to be similar in tone.
Anyone have recommendations for a post apocalyptic book? Playing through Fallout New Vegas and I'm just on that kind of a kick. Doesn't necessarily have to be similar in tone.
Hmm, Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge is post-something, but is hard sci-fi and deals in timescales of millions upon millions of years. Very very good though.
Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling is totally post-apocalyptic but isn't very good.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy obviously.
The Passage by Justin Cronin, may include vampires.
Bought a bunch of Dan Abnett's omnibuses(Gaunt's Ghosts, Inquisitor), Ciaphas Cain, the first of Horus Heresy.. Tons to wade through, I'm now at the last of the three omnibuses going through GG. Most entertaining sci-fi I've read in a while.
Anyone have recommendations for a post apocalyptic book? Playing through Fallout New Vegas and I'm just on that kind of a kick. Doesn't necessarily have to be similar in tone.
Anyone have recommendations for a post apocalyptic book? Playing through Fallout New Vegas and I'm just on that kind of a kick. Doesn't necessarily have to be similar in tone.
I also just bought this for $3 on kindle, but haven't gotten around to it yet:
They were asleep for 572 years...
Shard Mountain is an epic science-fiction fantasy novel set in a distant post-apocalypse future America.
Three young men involved in a highway accident are surprised to wake up not in a hospital, but in a dark underground tomb, five-hundred years in the future.
They emerge to discover a world completely unlike anything they knew, where bizarre mutations are common among people and wildlife, and scraps of futuristic technology are dug from the ground like ancient buried treasure.
They will have to learn to survive in this dangerous new world, and to unravel the mystery of what happened while they slept, to discover why they would be categorized as something other than human beings.
Right now I'm reading Debord's Society of the Spectacle and it's safe to say I'm in over my head. Perhaps I should brush up on my Marx and Hegel because I'm just not following with Debord is saying.
Life sucks because living is being replaced with representation (to cover up the degradation of capitalism).
<--- spoiler tagging philosophy what now people that spoiler tag classics don't come at the bull unless you're ready for the horns
N E WAYS maybe you should take a look at Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, which he wrote in like the late 80s? Much more straightforward than the original it's updating, in part because he's not constantly detourning Marx in it.
There's also a film version you can catch on UbuWeb but it's not really a straight adaptation of the essay so HEAD'S UP. (They also have a Situationist kung fu movie which is absolutely hilarious. Can Dialectics Break Bricks?)
Anyone have recommendations for a post apocalyptic book? Playing through Fallout New Vegas and I'm just on that kind of a kick. Doesn't necessarily have to be similar in tone.
About halfway through Flashman and the Mountain of Light. Shit's awesome as usual. Flashy has narrowly escaped being roasted alive and is now en route to betraying one hundred thousand men.
A boss at a previous job recommended this to me, and I'm absolutely loving it. It's Hemingway writing about his time in Paris, so you get these scenes with all these prominent Lost Generation figures like Stein and Fitzgerald. Great, great stuff.
I am reading a really interesting non-fiction of what happened to the whaleship Essex, a true story that inspired Moby Dick.
Essex was rammed twice by an angry & defensive sperm whale off the west coast of South America while the crew of Essex was going berserk on a pod of them - all accounts tell that this whale was huge, lighter in color, smart and was the pod's bull & overseer. It sank the Essex quickly, with the men escaping in dingys/tenders basically. I learned in the book that sperm whales were far far far more profitable to harvest for oil, compared to other large whales). Way better in yield and in quality by 10-15x. Yes, now it's a bad thing to hunt whales, but it was a very important part of the economy back then.
One of the survivors, Owen Chase, relayed the story to Melville years after it happened. Owen Chase was the First Mate of the Essex. When he was saved and recovered from his starvation and insanity - instead of staying home with his family (which had grown since he was away - he missed the birth of his daughter during the three year ordeal), he kept going back for years to those waters to hunt, but as a Captain and part owner of a really impressive ship by the standards of that era. 260 tons or something - very big for the time.
Many believe he kept going back because revenge overcame him. To try and find that whale and kill it was more important at the time than to be home with his family - by a long shot (also he was a super good mariner and made bank bringing thousands of barrels of oil back with every voyage - making him and his family very rich). But he was going insane - hording food, nightmares, etc. It's his madness and tendency toward revenge that got Melville interested (the two were at sea together for some time) and Ahab is loosely based on Owen Chase. Many people think Ahab is an analog to the Captain of the Essex. Nope. That guy went out one more time as a captain and destroyed a ship on a reef off Hawaii. He came back to Nantucket and lived out his years as a volunteer cop.
Owen Chase's account of the whale's ramming attack and what happened in the years following was combined with several other accounts including that of Thomas Nickerson, Essex's cabin boy and youngest person on board (a survivor), to make the book. Nickerson's account of what happened surfaced only 20 years ago, and added amazing detail about what happened. Nickerson was 14 at the time but wrote the account in his adult years and hid it.
Those men were at sea for 95 days in 2 open boats, no sail, nothing. At one point they found an island. They ransacked it of all food & fresh water in a matter of weeks. 3 men stayed there, choosing to risk being seen more easily (they were rescued, all three survived). With oars only, and barely any food or water, the 2 small boats went back out to try to find a shipping lane and be spotted using dead reckoning as navigation, but it was useless. After awhile they couldn't even stand let alone row a 25 ft boat. By the time they were found they were insane, starving, had been reduced to eating most of the deceased crew (gross, I know). After people stopped dying of natural causes, they figured out that eating only made them more hungry and angry, so they drew lots to pick who would be next to give up their lives to be food. It is an incredible story, sad but incredible. The ship that found them said they were all hallucinating - and had no idea that they were saved. They had tried to eat parts of the boat by that point (unsuccessfully), and did in fact eat all of the leather they had on board, including their shoes.
Oddly enough, this is not the only time I've heard of starving sailors or expedition teams eating clothing (most common one, clothes...), wood, wax, rubber compounds, paint, urine, bones, (whole bones, not just marrow) bugs, sled dogs, and sadly each other. Cannibalism was kind of common (mostly unspoken of, though) back then in desperate situations on multiple-year voyages when a mast snapped or something awful happened to the ship. It was actually an acceptable thing - however horrible it sounds - and it sounds horrible. I get it - its food, it's actual digestible calories. They hated themselves for it. But the idea that they would get so desperate that they would try and eat their boots that just blows me away almost as much. The desperation! This same thing happened on one of the first hardcore American North Pole expeditions, let by Adolphus Greely, in an attempt to break England's record and reach the magnetic north pole. When members of the Greely expedition were found, rescuers were horrified to find a group of men laying in a totally destroyed tent (one of them Greely) that had lost several hands and feet between them. They had tied spoons to their wrists where hands were lost, and they were actively cooking their shoes over a fire when the rescue team arrived (nearly 2 years late, by the way).
So I've been starting to do this thing where I alternate between a nonfiction book, some "literary" fiction, and a much lighter tome.
Right now I'm reading:
I'm enjoying it for the most part, even if the bias is pretty blatant and I do have a few problems with it. Goodwin is pretty good at telling the story in an engaging manner. Unfortunately I never studied American history beyond high school so I don't know if Goodwin is skimming over some pretty important things.
I guess that's the problem with nonfiction, which I have to admit I never actively sought until now. If anyone has any tips or recommendations for seeking out really good nonfiction, I'd love to hear them.
Can someone recommend me a good sci-fi book that centers on (and I hate this term) cyberpunk type atmospheres? I've been trying to find a good one that would be set in a somewhat believable near future world where the Internet or computers or something that we use now has gone to that next level and been integrated directly into humans..... but good.
A few years ago, I read a book called Technogenesis by a small time author Syne Mitchell. Sure, it was flawed and a bit cliched but the premise of a hive mind becoming self aware and feeding off people connected to the network was fascinating.
Can someone recommend me a good sci-fi book that centers on (and I hate this term) cyberpunk type atmospheres? I've been trying to find a good one that would be set in a somewhat believable near future world where the Internet or computers or something that we use now has gone to that next level and been integrated directly into humans..... but good.
A few years ago, I read a book called Technogenesis by a small time author Syne Mitchell. Sure, it was flawed and a bit cliched but the premise of a hive mind becoming self aware and feeding off people connected to the network was fascinating.
Can someone recommend me a good sci-fi book that centers on (and I hate this term) cyberpunk type atmospheres? I've been trying to find a good one that would be set in a somewhat believable near future world where the Internet or computers or something that we use now has gone to that next level and been integrated directly into humans..... but good.
A few years ago, I read a book called Technogenesis by a small time author Syne Mitchell. Sure, it was flawed and a bit cliched but the premise of a hive mind becoming self aware and feeding off people connected to the network was fascinating.
Diamond Age is more sociology fiction than cyberpunk. If you want techdecks and skullguns or w/e you're probably going to be bored a lot of the time you read it, but there is plenty of 80s era chinoiserie still.
