So I've become crap at reading over the years and I've decided to get good again. So. A book a week! At least!
So far I've finished off the Sprawl trilogy by Gibson and read The City and The City, which I thought was good but didn't enjoy the last part of as much as I hoped.
Currently reading the Spaceman of Bohemia. Anyone got any good sci-fi recommendations? My favourite sci-fi writers are Banks and Gibson so stuff like that maybe.
I liked the first half of Seveneves. End of the world, people coming together to secure the future, despite some setbacks really showing humanity at it's best as it faces destruction with honor.
Then space trump appeared and the entire book went to shit. A few pants-on-head stupid decisions from leadership later, and I just stopped reading.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Finished Noumenon last night. It's being sold as Arthur C Clarke Rama like which it is a bit. However the story really is more about the AI that accompanies the convey as it is the central thread that weaves through the whole book.
I read like 70% in one sitting on Wed so it got me pretty good although the last third isn't quite as good as the earlier parts.
I was thinking about it this morning and there are some parallels to Battle Star Galactica series to the plot in this book. The section in the book where it jumps to the Pit is similar to BSG Season 3 where they are stuck on the planet and the overall tone of the series/book isn't quite as good from that point on.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
This isn't a book, but it's written by a woman who wrote a book that I loved, so I'm going to post it here anyways
This is a pretty interesting story, one day you too could get a book onto the NYT best seller list without actually having evidence that any were ever bought!
So I'm in the need of something new to read. Should I start the Dark Tower series? I'm not a huge Steven King fan but I have read The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition a couple times back when I was a teen and liked it.
I need to reread The Wheel of Time series so I can finally finish it and the last 3 books I've not read yet but I'm having problems being motivated enough to attempt that currently.
Incindium on
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I edited that post, it was really poor phrasing on my part.
Near as I can tell she somehow got retailers to place huge bulk orders, which somehow counted in the sales data as it becoming a best seller, but the crazy part to me is how it just materialized out of nowhere and they had to convince the New York Times that it was basically a fake book and that it didn't belong on the list.
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
I edited that post, it was really poor phrasing on my part.
Near as I can tell she somehow got retailers to place huge bulk orders, which somehow counted in the sales data as it becoming a best seller, but the crazy part to me is how it just materialized out of nowhere and they had to convince the New York Times that it was basically a fake book and that it didn't belong on the list.
It isn't a fake book though. You can order the Kindle edition on Amazon. It does sound like a horribly shitty book though, and they clearly gamed the NYTimes system to artificially reach that #1 spot in a way worthy of retraction. It also looks like they were probably putting all sorts of phony reviews on sites like Amazon in addition to placing dubious bulk orders for books through stores that report for the NYTimes lists.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Ok that makes more sense. The bulk book scam is how the (political) conservative publishing industry regularly gets all its garbage propaganda onto the list.
Maybe NYT needs to reevaluate how they do the list if it's this easy to game.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I edited that post, it was really poor phrasing on my part.
Near as I can tell she somehow got retailers to place huge bulk orders, which somehow counted in the sales data as it becoming a best seller, but the crazy part to me is how it just materialized out of nowhere and they had to convince the New York Times that it was basically a fake book and that it didn't belong on the list.
It isn't a fake book though. You can order the Kindle edition on Amazon. It does sound like a horribly shitty book though, and they clearly gamed the NYTimes system to artificially reach that #1 spot in a way worthy of retraction. It also looks like they were probably putting all sorts of phony reviews on sites like Amazon in addition to placing dubious bulk orders for books through stores that report for the NYTimes lists.
Ehhhh, you can slap some real garbage up on Amazon and get it published as a Kindle book. I'm not trying to split hairs exactly but as a librarian my professional criteria for what's a real book are instinctively stricter than "well you can get it on Kindle!"
So I'm in the need of something new to read. Should I start the Dark Tower series? I'm not a huge Steven King fan but I have read The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition a couple times back when I was a teen and liked it.
I need to reread The Wheel of Time series so I can finally finish it and the last 3 books I've not read yet but I'm having problems being motivated enough to attempt that currently.
The Dark Tower is uneven but more good than not. Worth a read if you liked The Stand.
You can just read the Sanderson volumes right away. He straight up drops tons of the meaningless Aes Sedai and Aiel characters and really tightens the focus back to the core characters from Emmonds Field and the early books.
I've read Neuromancer several times, but for whatever reason never got around to the rest of the Sprawl trilogy
Correcting that now, I've started in on Count Zero.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited August 2017
I forgot to bring my kindle on holiday with me because I'm a dumb idiot, so today I bought an actual paper book for the first time in ages, to take advantage of actually having some time to read. It's called 1356 by Bernard Cornwell (who I have been calling Bernard Cromwell all this time) and is apparently about English people murdering French people in the Hundred Years War. I anticipate lots of gruesomely detailed battle scenes and people being dicks to each other. Nice light holiday entertainment.
I forgot to bring my kindle on holiday with me because I'm a dumb idiot, so today I bought an actual paper book for the first time in ages, to take advantage of actually having some time to read. It's called 1356 by Bernard Cornwell (who I have been calling Bernard Cromwell all this time) and is apparently about English people murdering French people in the Hundred Years War. I anticipate lots of gruesomely detailed battle scenes and people being dicks to each other. Nice light holiday entertainment.
Hey! I literally just started reading The Winter King, Cornwell's King Arthur novel
I forgot to bring my kindle on holiday with me because I'm a dumb idiot, so today I bought an actual paper book for the first time in ages, to take advantage of actually having some time to read. It's called 1356 by Bernard Cornwell (who I have been calling Bernard Cromwell all this time) and is apparently about English people murdering French people in the Hundred Years War. I anticipate lots of gruesomely detailed battle scenes and people being dicks to each other. Nice light holiday entertainment.
Hey! I literally just started reading The Winter King, Cornwell's King Arthur novel
I have been working my way through the Last Kingdom series by him and really enjoying it, but that's on my kindle. This was the only book of his outside of that series which the book store had, so I'm keen to see if it's as good. A King Arthur one sounds cool too, so let me know how you find that one!
I really need to get around to the Sharpe novels some time. So many books to read, so little time for reading.
I don't know if this is the right place, but what are good "liberal" history books? I'm not sure if liberal is the right term, but I'm looking for things that don't have a ton of WASP fuck yeah America bias
I read and enjoyed James Loewen's Lies Across America and Lies My Teacher Told Me
1492 and 1493 were very good
Is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States good? I know it is very divisive.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
What are you looking for in terms of history? Like, general knowledge stuff, or specific topics?
For some reason it took me like 5 tries to get past the opening bits of Count Zero but once you do the rest of it is a good ride
I'm all the way on board already. I'm a sucker for rotating perspectives/protagonists, and I'm already digging the seeds planted for the plot proper.
I love Neuromancer, don't get me wrong, but Case is a kinda... stock protagonist. He mainly exists to get beat up a lot, and watch Molly/Dixie Flatline/Maelcum/that fancy Icebreaker do all the actual work. It's a more "pure" noir novel, in that sense, but I don't have a whole lot of love for leads like that.
That's interesting because I thought Turner was a very stock sci-fi macho ex military hard dude whereas Case was a burnt out fucked up kid being manipulated and I felt more for him, and engaged more with his sense of desperation.
He does do the Sense/Net run too, so I feel like he's involved, but I don't like the rotating protagonist of Zero as much as the tight narrative of Neuro so I appreciate that's more the feeling you get than anything else.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I don't know if this is the right place, but what are good "liberal" history books? I'm not sure if liberal is the right term, but I'm looking for things that don't have a ton of WASP fuck yeah America bias
I read and enjoyed James Loewen's Lies Across America and Lies My Teacher Told Me
1492 and 1493 were very good
Is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States good? I know it is very divisive.
That's interesting because I thought Turner was a very stock sci-fi macho ex military hard dude whereas Case was a burnt out fucked up kid being manipulated and I felt more for him, and engaged more with his sense of desperation.
He does do the Sense/Net run too, so I feel like he's involved, but I don't like the rotating protagonist of Zero as much as the tight narrative of Neuro so I appreciate that's more the feeling you get than anything else.
It's very possible that my preference comes down to having read a lot of noir vs. not having read much military fiction
Like, Turner isn't blowing my hair back so far, but I don't find him as... rote as Case.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
case isn't very exciting but I definitely prefer him to the hypercompetent, cocky protagonist types you typically see as main characters in other cyberpunk
which I think is one of the reasons I liked Snow Crash as much as I did, since Hiro is making fun of those
I forgot to bring my kindle on holiday with me because I'm a dumb idiot, so today I bought an actual paper book for the first time in ages, to take advantage of actually having some time to read. It's called 1356 by Bernard Cornwell (who I have been calling Bernard Cromwell all this time) and is apparently about English people murdering French people in the Hundred Years War. I anticipate lots of gruesomely detailed battle scenes and people being dicks to each other. Nice light holiday entertainment.
Hey! I literally just started reading The Winter King, Cornwell's King Arthur novel
I have been working my way through the Last Kingdom series by him and really enjoying it, but that's on my kindle. This was the only book of his outside of that series which the book store had, so I'm keen to see if it's as good. A King Arthur one sounds cool too, so let me know how you find that one!
I really need to get around to the Sharpe novels some time. So many books to read, so little time for reading.
The Arthur trilogy was pretty good from what I can remember when I read it about 15 years ago. I found it stronger than a lot of his other fare at the time, which was enjoyable light reading about battles and people being jerks to each other.
I don't know if this is the right place, but what are good "liberal" history books? I'm not sure if liberal is the right term, but I'm looking for things that don't have a ton of WASP fuck yeah America bias
I read and enjoyed James Loewen's Lies Across America and Lies My Teacher Told Me
1492 and 1493 were very good
Is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States good? I know it is very divisive.
What are you looking for in terms of history? Like, general knowledge stuff, or specific topics?
I guess US history, for starters
There's at least another book by Loewen that I need to buy, maybe two? I think he wrote a book about the neo-Confederates and another about sundown towns
I'm a fairly privileged WASP but I'm becoming more liberal or aware or something and I'm very interested in minority? perspectives on history
I have a few books on native issues from the native perspective on my wish list, but haven't bought them yet
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Alright, for US History:
Everything by Sarah Vowell. Assassination Vacation (discussing presidential assassins and the way that we remember them) is my favorite, but it's a very direct cross-section for me so that makes a lot of sense. I'd also recommend Unfamiliar Fishes (the history of Hawai'i) and The Wordy Shipmates (the Puritans in America) pretty highly.
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, by Stephen Puleo. First off, this is based off of a bonkers thing that happened that you may or may not have heard of. It's also something that happened because of corporations being terrible and exploitative, and has some good stuff about the anarchist movement in the United States during the early twentieth century, as anarchists were (incorrectly) blamed for the explosion.
Those are probably the best things I've read over the past few years. I tend to go for pretty niche stuff though (I once sat down and read every letter ever written by John Wilkes Booth for fun), so it's not always gonna be the best recommendations. I'd also recommend checking out our History Thread, as it occasionally has book recommendations.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist is a harrowing deep dive into slavery, and his main thesis is attacking the myth that slavery was unprofitable compared to free labor and was already doomed by the time the Civil War came around.
Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted by Ian Millhiser, is a very readable history of Supreme Court decisions that shows that our perception of the judiciary branch as a champion of minority rights is based entirely on a few highly influential but ultimately quite short periods in the court's history, and is depressing yet required reading for the future.
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz is a narrative history of what happened in the Americas between 1492 and the Mayflower's arrival in 1620. Spoiler: largely Spanish fuckery.
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne is the best book I've ever read about the late-stage Indian Wars of the 1800s. It's half a biography of Quanah Parker and half a history of the war between the Comanches and the United States.
If you want to venture outside the Americas and are interested in a more anthro/paleontology bent to your history, I'd recommend The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery. It's old, so fairly dated now (we have a bunch more data on migration movements and extinction events, etc, than were available at the time), but it's still a super fascinating exploration of the way humans have been reshaping and destroying the environment for basically as long as we've been social predators.
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I really enjoyed the beginning of that book. It cheats a bit in the set up but it correctly realizes that's not the story it wants to tell.
Although sloggy, unsatisfying beginnings have certainly never been his problem, I suppose.
So far I've finished off the Sprawl trilogy by Gibson and read The City and The City, which I thought was good but didn't enjoy the last part of as much as I hoped.
Currently reading the Spaceman of Bohemia. Anyone got any good sci-fi recommendations? My favourite sci-fi writers are Banks and Gibson so stuff like that maybe.
Then space trump appeared and the entire book went to shit. A few pants-on-head stupid decisions from leadership later, and I just stopped reading.
I read like 70% in one sitting on Wed so it got me pretty good although the last third isn't quite as good as the earlier parts.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
Sexual Codes of the Europeans, by Helen DeWitt
It's weird but I think very good?
Technically wouldn't this be any ghost-written book, since the ghost-writer is generally not the one credited.
edit: also, it's entirely likely that this woman DID write it, it's only the methods of getting it counted as a bestseller that are illegitimate
I know, but I was posting in response to the "you too could get a book onto the NYT best seller list without actually having created it" part.
The linked story is just strange.
I need to reread The Wheel of Time series so I can finally finish it and the last 3 books I've not read yet but I'm having problems being motivated enough to attempt that currently.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
After reading the article, I still don't understand how it got on a so-called bestseller list without selling any books.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Near as I can tell she somehow got retailers to place huge bulk orders, which somehow counted in the sales data as it becoming a best seller, but the crazy part to me is how it just materialized out of nowhere and they had to convince the New York Times that it was basically a fake book and that it didn't belong on the list.
It isn't a fake book though. You can order the Kindle edition on Amazon. It does sound like a horribly shitty book though, and they clearly gamed the NYTimes system to artificially reach that #1 spot in a way worthy of retraction. It also looks like they were probably putting all sorts of phony reviews on sites like Amazon in addition to placing dubious bulk orders for books through stores that report for the NYTimes lists.
Maybe NYT needs to reevaluate how they do the list if it's this easy to game.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Ehhhh, you can slap some real garbage up on Amazon and get it published as a Kindle book. I'm not trying to split hairs exactly but as a librarian my professional criteria for what's a real book are instinctively stricter than "well you can get it on Kindle!"
The Dark Tower is uneven but more good than not. Worth a read if you liked The Stand.
You can just read the Sanderson volumes right away. He straight up drops tons of the meaningless Aes Sedai and Aiel characters and really tightens the focus back to the core characters from Emmonds Field and the early books.
Correcting that now, I've started in on Count Zero.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
Fuckin' word, William Gibson.
Hey! I literally just started reading The Winter King, Cornwell's King Arthur novel
It is but I think Neuromancer is better
And I think that it's easier to get into because Case is an interesting if fucked up person but Turner is not so interesting, IMO.
I have been working my way through the Last Kingdom series by him and really enjoying it, but that's on my kindle. This was the only book of his outside of that series which the book store had, so I'm keen to see if it's as good. A King Arthur one sounds cool too, so let me know how you find that one!
I really need to get around to the Sharpe novels some time. So many books to read, so little time for reading.
I read and enjoyed James Loewen's Lies Across America and Lies My Teacher Told Me
1492 and 1493 were very good
Is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States good? I know it is very divisive.
I'm all the way on board already. I'm a sucker for rotating perspectives/protagonists, and I'm already digging the seeds planted for the plot proper.
I love Neuromancer, don't get me wrong, but Case is a kinda... stock protagonist. He mainly exists to get beat up a lot, and watch Molly/Dixie Flatline/Maelcum/that fancy Icebreaker do all the actual work. It's a more "pure" noir novel, in that sense, but I don't have a whole lot of love for leads like that.
yeah it's great
It's very possible that my preference comes down to having read a lot of noir vs. not having read much military fiction
Like, Turner isn't blowing my hair back so far, but I don't find him as... rote as Case.
which I think is one of the reasons I liked Snow Crash as much as I did, since Hiro is making fun of those
The Arthur trilogy was pretty good from what I can remember when I read it about 15 years ago. I found it stronger than a lot of his other fare at the time, which was enjoyable light reading about battles and people being jerks to each other.
I guess US history, for starters
There's at least another book by Loewen that I need to buy, maybe two? I think he wrote a book about the neo-Confederates and another about sundown towns
I'm a fairly privileged WASP but I'm becoming more liberal or aware or something and I'm very interested in minority? perspectives on history
I have a few books on native issues from the native perspective on my wish list, but haven't bought them yet
Everything by Sarah Vowell. Assassination Vacation (discussing presidential assassins and the way that we remember them) is my favorite, but it's a very direct cross-section for me so that makes a lot of sense. I'd also recommend Unfamiliar Fishes (the history of Hawai'i) and The Wordy Shipmates (the Puritans in America) pretty highly.
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, by Stephen Puleo. First off, this is based off of a bonkers thing that happened that you may or may not have heard of. It's also something that happened because of corporations being terrible and exploitative, and has some good stuff about the anarchist movement in the United States during the early twentieth century, as anarchists were (incorrectly) blamed for the explosion.
Those are probably the best things I've read over the past few years. I tend to go for pretty niche stuff though (I once sat down and read every letter ever written by John Wilkes Booth for fun), so it's not always gonna be the best recommendations. I'd also recommend checking out our History Thread, as it occasionally has book recommendations.
Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted by Ian Millhiser, is a very readable history of Supreme Court decisions that shows that our perception of the judiciary branch as a champion of minority rights is based entirely on a few highly influential but ultimately quite short periods in the court's history, and is depressing yet required reading for the future.
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz is a narrative history of what happened in the Americas between 1492 and the Mayflower's arrival in 1620. Spoiler: largely Spanish fuckery.
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne is the best book I've ever read about the late-stage Indian Wars of the 1800s. It's half a biography of Quanah Parker and half a history of the war between the Comanches and the United States.
I was sad about this until I actually read the article and saw that it was in his will
Good on that guy for making sure to get a say
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