Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.
This novel, written by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, is one of the best I've ever read
It is barely over 200 pages so I had to limit myself on tearing through it just one day
My impressions still seem to be holding; it's pretty standard fantasy stuff, but the way it's told is fun, and on top of that the prose itself is amazing
Currently rereading the colour of magic, as well as being halfway through three different books that got packed away during my move and frustratingly I can't find which box they're in.
Yes Please is in there somewhere and I'm really enjoying it. Must move on to Tina Fey once I've finished that.
My impressions still seem to be holding; it's pretty standard fantasy stuff, but the way it's told is fun, and on top of that the prose itself is amazing
Pretty much this. If you actually just lay out the bones of the story they sound horrible but the journey is made very enjoyable by the scenery.
It sounds like an enormous backhanded compliment but I really think it takes a lot of skill to make it work.
Skimmed through the last thread and found a bunch of books that I'm interested in. Especially those footnote heavy books like S and Infinite Jest. Those are better read in a physical format I assume?
I also visited my local dollar store and found a book section. They have a small selection of best sellers? which is pretty cool. I picked up The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen. It's about time travel I think. Has anyone heard of or read this book?
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I would recommend reading IJ in physical format, but I'm a huge physical format snob anyways, so take that with a grain of salt
Endnotes can frequently work well digitally, and they allow you to flip to them quicker than they would in print, but there's a couple of them in IJ (as well as a few other pages) that are useful reference points, and you'll want to refer back to later
My kindle keyboard has had a frozen screen for the past couple months now. I think that's gonna be my first obstacle for reading a bunch of books. Ill try a sample of Infinite Jest digitally and see if I like reading it that way.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
people talk up the whole digital infinite jest thing but i don't think it works at all
infinite jest is just way too huge
you need like, the physical object in front of you to give you a sense of the kind of undertaking you've committed yourself too
anyway i've been reading some of foster wallace's other stuff, his short stories and journalism
it's better than infinite jest because you can skip over the boring parts
i have also found that the key to appreciating him is to ignore all that stuff about how he's the voice of a generation and has this trenchant insight into american culture and instead just accept that he's kind of a narcissistic pedant who is only really capable of talking about himself. once you allow yourself not to like him he becomes much more palatable
the way he gets all creepily voyeuristic about other people's health problems is still awful but in general i get more out of him when reading him as a character study rather than actual meaningful social commentary
And besides, how are you gonna show people how clever and serious a book person you are if you read a digital version? Where are you gonna display that? You'd have to go round to everyone telling them you read Infinite Jest, rather than letting the presence of the book wow them into knowing how great you are.
Infinite Jest was fine in the physical format. Put one bookmark in the back, one in the front, read the footnotes as they show up. They're all in sequence so there's no need to keep turning back and forth. Dictionary-wise I don't remember too much weird stuff.
and, uh, take your time. I don't know about the voice of a generation stuff, but it's a pretty great book if you're sensitive to what it's trying to do
I don't know if this is one of those communities that loves Brandon Sanderson, or one that hates him, but I just finished Words of Radiance last night, and it was pretty boss. But if people here aren't fans, I'm content to just love his work quietly.
I'm not sure where to go next. Everything left in my Book Heap is stuff that I feel obligated to read for Education and Cultural Enrichment, but that doesn't actually appeal to me for entertainment much. That, and a couple big Tad Williams bricks, that I don't want to jump to after finishing a similarly huge Sanderson brick, without something a little lighter in between as a palate cleanser.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
I don't know if this is one of those communities that loves Brandon Sanderson, or one that hates him, but I just finished Words of Radiance last night, and it was pretty boss. But if people here aren't fans, I'm content to just love his work quietly.
I'm not sure where to go next. Everything left in my Book Heap is stuff that I feel obligated to read for Education and Cultural Enrichment, but that doesn't actually appeal to me for entertainment much. That, and a couple big Tad Williams bricks, that I don't want to jump to after finishing a similarly huge Sanderson brick, without something a little lighter in between as a palate cleanser.
Sanderson fan here. If you want more of his stuff that's not such a brick, and happen to be a fan of superpowers, then check out his Reckoner series. It's currently on Book 2 out of 3.
sanderson's okay, but after reading a lot of his stuff it all kind of blends together at times.
also words of radiance spoilers
why the fuck is nightblood showing up, like of all things
i'm glad jasnah's not dead though
Stormlight and Mistborn and Warbreaker spoilers in here.
The Stormlight Archives are more heavily into Sanderson's Cosmere multiverse than the other books. Hoid himself has shown up in nearly all of his novels aside from the YA ones. Others make appearances in the interludes, such as the first book with the Purelake? One of them was from the Mistborn world. And the sword instructor in the second book, interestingly enough, is Vasher himself.
The Cosmere itself is kind of interesting. It's very subtle and a lot of it is from talking directly to the author for confirmation, but he leaves plenty of hints. The Shards are the gods of it, of which Odium is one of the worst. Sazed is a Shard too now as Harmony, as of the third Mistborn book, and he's a unique one in that he commands two Shards so he scares Odium.
I'm reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, and the guy keeps throwing existential crises my way by describing the sheer impossible size of space. A small interlude about interstellar travel just did a great job of putting the universe to scale and we are all so impossibly tiny and it's so-likely-as-to-be-certain that humanity will never live by another star,and that is so depressing to me.
He doesn't write pretty prose; it's not bad at all, but it's not really enjoyable for its own sake, and contains virtually no memorable, quotable material. He doesn't write great characters; if I was making a list of my favorite SFF characters, I don't think that there are any Sanderson characters that I'd consider putting on it. His overall plots tend towards "there is a big evil guy, and we should probably do something about that"; he sometimes tries to include a little moral ambiguity, but it's typically brief and passing. While the overall trend in SFF writing is to write about dark and gritty things happening in somewhat realistically terrible places, Sanderson prefers to write about dark and gritty settings where good people are able to come out on top.
In some ways, Sanderson reminds me of Jim Butcher - neither is a particularly great author, neither really makes any pretense at it, both like having systems of magic that can be explored scientifically, and both write fun stories. That's what you pay for, that's what you get. Sanderson isn't trying to write the next Song of Ice and Fire; he's trying to write the literary equivalent of Star Wars, and that's perfectly OK.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I am a third of the way through Deadhouse Gates. Progress is very slow because I barely get any free time for reading. But really enjoying it. Jesus it's bleak though, and this is only book 2 of 10.
I am a third of the way through Deadhouse Gates. Progress is very slow because I barely get any free time for reading. But really enjoying it. Jesus it's bleak though, and this is only book 2 of 10.
Also I miss
Paran and Kruppe.
I hope they come back.
They do. And if you think it's bleak now, hoo boy.
Posts
Sounds like a good read on the plane to east.
Okay I'm buying this for my library.
Man I'm a librarian. I run a library. I got people under me that do my staple removing! :snap:
That won't help you when you're facing off alone against the battle-hardened Librarianator Peen on the arena floor
Bonehunters was pretty good
My impressions still seem to be holding; it's pretty standard fantasy stuff, but the way it's told is fun, and on top of that the prose itself is amazing
All of the stuff about Lether and the Edur took some time to hook me.
Yes Please is in there somewhere and I'm really enjoying it. Must move on to Tina Fey once I've finished that.
Me too, but when you have Tehol, Bugg, and Ublala Pung it was most entertaining.
Pretty much this. If you actually just lay out the bones of the story they sound horrible but the journey is made very enjoyable by the scenery.
It sounds like an enormous backhanded compliment but I really think it takes a lot of skill to make it work.
I also visited my local dollar store and found a book section. They have a small selection of best sellers? which is pretty cool. I picked up The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen. It's about time travel I think. Has anyone heard of or read this book?
Endnotes can frequently work well digitally, and they allow you to flip to them quicker than they would in print, but there's a couple of them in IJ (as well as a few other pages) that are useful reference points, and you'll want to refer back to later
Much like your posts.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
they were too heavy
infinite jest is just way too huge
you need like, the physical object in front of you to give you a sense of the kind of undertaking you've committed yourself too
anyway i've been reading some of foster wallace's other stuff, his short stories and journalism
it's better than infinite jest because you can skip over the boring parts
i have also found that the key to appreciating him is to ignore all that stuff about how he's the voice of a generation and has this trenchant insight into american culture and instead just accept that he's kind of a narcissistic pedant who is only really capable of talking about himself. once you allow yourself not to like him he becomes much more palatable
the way he gets all creepily voyeuristic about other people's health problems is still awful but in general i get more out of him when reading him as a character study rather than actual meaningful social commentary
and, uh, take your time. I don't know about the voice of a generation stuff, but it's a pretty great book if you're sensitive to what it's trying to do
I do enjoy the Malazan books. I'm about 60 % through reapers gale and it feels like things are finally happening.
Also someone was asking about Saga: you should drop whatever you are doing and read Saga right now.
I'm not sure where to go next. Everything left in my Book Heap is stuff that I feel obligated to read for Education and Cultural Enrichment, but that doesn't actually appeal to me for entertainment much. That, and a couple big Tad Williams bricks, that I don't want to jump to after finishing a similarly huge Sanderson brick, without something a little lighter in between as a palate cleanser.
Opinions here are mixed. I enjoyed those books.
also words of radiance spoilers
i'm glad jasnah's not dead though
Stormlight and Mistborn and Warbreaker spoilers in here.
The Cosmere itself is kind of interesting. It's very subtle and a lot of it is from talking directly to the author for confirmation, but he leaves plenty of hints. The Shards are the gods of it, of which Odium is one of the worst. Sazed is a Shard too now as Harmony, as of the third Mistborn book, and he's a unique one in that he commands two Shards so he scares Odium.
It feels really weird when some of that stuff is way up in front though
Sanderson has a niche pretty much to himself.
He doesn't write pretty prose; it's not bad at all, but it's not really enjoyable for its own sake, and contains virtually no memorable, quotable material. He doesn't write great characters; if I was making a list of my favorite SFF characters, I don't think that there are any Sanderson characters that I'd consider putting on it. His overall plots tend towards "there is a big evil guy, and we should probably do something about that"; he sometimes tries to include a little moral ambiguity, but it's typically brief and passing. While the overall trend in SFF writing is to write about dark and gritty things happening in somewhat realistically terrible places, Sanderson prefers to write about dark and gritty settings where good people are able to come out on top.
In some ways, Sanderson reminds me of Jim Butcher - neither is a particularly great author, neither really makes any pretense at it, both like having systems of magic that can be explored scientifically, and both write fun stories. That's what you pay for, that's what you get. Sanderson isn't trying to write the next Song of Ice and Fire; he's trying to write the literary equivalent of Star Wars, and that's perfectly OK.
Also I miss
They do. And if you think it's bleak now, hoo boy.
Why whatever do you mean?
Terry Pratchett Dead At 66