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Outside of a dog, the [books] thread is man's best friend
Jedoc
In the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
In the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
But you're not inside a dog, you lucky old thing! You're out in a world filled with wonderful and terrible and perplexing books! Let's talk about them!
Best book I've read so far this year: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Imaginative, optimistic, and reliably fun sci-fi. Basically probably what the universe looks like from inside the head of Kaylee from Firefly.
Worst book I've read so far this year: The Last Ship by William Brinkley. Expertly combines the paranoic Cold War politics of the 20th century with the gender politics of the 19th century and the long-winded narration of the 18th century. Just drop the rest of the nukes and let me go home.
Book I'm most emotionally invested in someone else finishing: @Butler For Life #1 's epic read of Infinite Jest. You can do it, buddy! Just one more layer of recursion and you're almost out!
What are you reading?
But you're not inside a dog, you lucky old thing! You're out in a world filled with wonderful and terrible and perplexing books! Let's talk about them!
Best book I've read so far this year: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Imaginative, optimistic, and reliably fun sci-fi. Basically probably what the universe looks like from inside the head of Kaylee from Firefly.
Worst book I've read so far this year: The Last Ship by William Brinkley. Expertly combines the paranoic Cold War politics of the 20th century with the gender politics of the 19th century and the long-winded narration of the 18th century. Just drop the rest of the nukes and let me go home.
Book I'm most emotionally invested in someone else finishing: @Butler For Life #1 's epic read of Infinite Jest. You can do it, buddy! Just one more layer of recursion and you're almost out!
What are you reading?
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Posts
I am reading Six Wakes which is set in 2394 on a largely automated colony ship. Six clones wake up to find that their predecessor clones were murdered. It's good!
So I'm still toward the back end of Chasing the Sea, a journalist's travelogue through Uzbekistan - which I'm finding so fascinating that I keep texting people trivia about it - and Bring Up the Bodies, which is obviously fabulous.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Sorry Ishiguro.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
wait why would you leave out Zodiac
it's his best book
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey kicks off a series about a guy escaping back to the mortal world after spending a decade banished to Hell by his own friends. The first book especially is a lot more grimdark than the Dresden Files, and I find the main character's constant assholery grating sometimes, but the world that builds up over the series is fascinating.
If you're turned off by the main character as I nearly was, you might try Kadrey's The Everything Box instead. It's about a magic-immune thief who gets drafted into working for an SCP-style magic bureaucracy, and is very much played for goofs instead of badassitude.
Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid chronicles are very much written in the same template as the Dresden Files, only starring the world's last druid instead of Chicago's only practicing wizard for hire. He spends a lot of time pissing off and then trying not to get killed by various gods and monsters, and he's got a dog he can talk to. It's not as widely beloved as the Dresden Files, but I enjoy them.
Phone posting from work but umm Rivers of London series; Rook and its sequel; Simon Green's books; Kate Griffin?
I've never really heard anything about it, and given that it was (more or less) his debut, I assumed it was below his later standard. But if you think it's his best then maybe I'll check it out and hit that sweet 100% completion bonus.
Feels like I'm approaching the final stretch here
My energy is high, I'm gonna get through tbis
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross?
It's sort of fantasy. Think 007 + Cthulhu + Office Space.
They're a lot of fun.
Oh, right, I was reading about Hands of Glory to try to determine if it was possible that one be made out of an adipocere hand.
Wikipedia did not answer this question for me.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
soon, my work shall be complete
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Boy was that an abrupt ending
Very good book! I enjoyed it, although I'll confess that there was much of it that I felt went over my head
I missed literally all of that, even knowing I was supposed to go back and read the beginning again!
I feel stupid, but also like I could never have figured it out myself in a million years
That's why you have to read it several times!
I'm mostly kidding, but if you can muster up the energy in a few years IJ is a book that is about 2x as enjoyable and 200x as comprehensible on the second read.
I'm trying not to feel too bad about missing basically everything the first time through, it's an unusual feeling for me
I totally missed the thing about the mold making him emotionally numb and then his wraith dad reversing it with DMZ
One hell of a book
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
The Pale King
Finnegan's Wake
Infinite Jest, Again
Ulysses
War and Peace
The Cat in the Hat
Just Kidding, it's actually Infinite Jest Again
The Fine Print on the Migraine Medication Bottle
Don't you kinkshame me
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
But I made it a hundred pages into Infinite Jest and found absolutely nothing to like about it
Meanwhile, I'm reading The Wolf's Hour, by Robert R. McCammon.
It's about a werewolf who fights Nazis.
Aaaoooooooooo
Also, I'm going to take this opportunity to once again shit on Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan. This is a 300-page book where the titular cop doesn't even turn into a werewolf until page 200, and at that point the only person he messily devours is the evil woman who tricked him into having sex with her so she could blackmail him. During the rest of the book, he's not even a very exciting cop. More of a self-hating adulterer, sexist, and racist. Not-Werewolf Shitty Cop has a boss who is a woman with a hyphenated name, and the author is so sure that these two facts are repulsive enough to the reader that he treats her as one of the primary villains without bothering to give her any other negative traits. Also, Europe has been overrun by radical Islam. This book isn't set in the not-too-distant future, and this fact has no bearing on the plot at all, the author just wanted to remind you that he's an asshole.
Andrew Klavan, you horrible bastard, you have written a book called Werewolf Cop with practically no werewolf and possibly negative levels of cop. You could not have fucked up a sure thing more badly if you had started off your first date with an escort with "As you probably know, I spent all my money failing to cure my genital warts. Also, don't we all just really hate Muslims?"
Your werewolf book is bad and you should feel bad.
Shit writes itself! And there's nothing about radical Islam!
zuh?
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
If there is not a joke in there about hiding in the oval office, you know, in reference to Trump not getting a W "joke" about there being no corners to hide in, not a Monica joke,
this book fulfills most of my needs
1) is about someone going to school
2) not afraid to get fuckin' pedantic and pedagogical as all hell
still think locking nerds away in their own citadels is a great idea though.
Reamde was... well parts of it were more entertaining than others