Brandy Jensen over at The Defector has written a delightful piece about reading the Jack Reacher books throughout the last year. Do check it out, it's a short read, but compelling.
Do the Reacher books connect to one another at all or can you pick any one of them and be ok? The essay makes me think that whichever one will do me fine, but I figured I should ask.
Brandy Jensen over at The Defector has written a delightful piece about reading the Jack Reacher books throughout the last year. Do check it out, it's a short read, but compelling.
Do the Reacher books connect to one another at all or can you pick any one of them and be ok? The essay makes me think that whichever one will do me fine, but I figured I should ask.
I'd tentatively say Killing Floor first then... ehhh they connect with some characters showing up or references. But it's not an overarching series, you'd be fine picking up whatever.
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I finished A Desolation Called Peace
I really liked it! Probably about as much as A Memory Called Empire.
I know some people didn’t like it as much but between the precocious child spying on everyone and all the first contact stuff it hit a lot of my buttons.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
yeah, so i finally picked this up and i really liked it
it starts out kinda conventional, but i really think it goes some interesting places with all its anti-colonial throughlines and how the characters live and act in this world
it's revolution and rebellion in a fantasy french colony
BhowSunny day, sweeping the clouds away.On my way to where the air is sweet.Registered Userregular
I just read This is your Brain on Music, by musician/neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. It had interesting bits, but I skimmed large sections looking for those bits. It's probably an easier read for someone more familiar with or interested in neuro-anatomy. It also doesn't have many answers, but I can't fault it for that because the science doesn't have many firm answers yet, so a lot of it is "this is what some studies have indicated we might know in future," which I get is how science works but it doesn't necessarily make compelling reading for me.
Moving forward, I've got a hankering for some prehistory! Any fiction recommendations for books set before recorded time? Searching Amazon and GoodReads, it seems there was a small glut of the genre in the '80s, but not much since. I'd prefer something with solid grounding in contemporary scholarship of the era(s) and a measure of cultural awareness. I've read some of the Gear books decades ago, but I'm not optimistic that they've held up well. I also tend to steer away from YA lit, but a good book is a good book. What say ye, book thread?
Jean M. Auel's series that starts with Clan of the Cave Bear is the only thing I'm at all familiar with in that genre. It started in the 80s but it just wrapped recently and it's pretty well regarded, as far as I can tell.
The Last Stargazers is pretty fun for a pop sci book. Half of it is amusing stories of people getting dunked on, cannot observe due to the eruption of Mt. St. Helen and such
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Jack Reacher the character is a hulking golem of violence that can only fuck and kill no woman can withstand the intense erotic energy that ripples off his crazy body and not unrelatedly he never washes his clothes when they get too dirty he buys the cheapest possible clothing available and throws the old stuff in the trash
I really like the Jack Reacher books, but the closest thing he's ever got to character development was the time he owned a house for a while. A few books later, it had been sold in-between books because he's a rolling stone who don't need no house tying him down.
And he got a passport, for ID.
But book 1 Jack Reacher is identical to book 30 Jack Reacher.
The author is also near to running into the Punisher problem, when you realise the main character must be about 60, given when he served in the military, but has just stopped aging.
so a couple of years ago i ordered a copy of the king in yellow collecting the shorts by Robert Chambers
and the copy I got was this clearly self-printed as cheaply as possible by some company that no longer exists. the layout was typeset only in the vaguest sense that there were in fact words on the pages, with like zero margins or consideration to spacing/paragraphs/readability. and the cover art was just a stolen image that is hyper pixelated from being stretched to the size of the print pages. somehow the text on the cover was equally stretched and pixelated which is just impressive tbh.
At the time I was just annoyed and got refunded but was told i could keep the copy.
And in retrospect, based on my cultural knowledge of the stories and now that i started reading it last night, this might be the most accurate to the king in yellow in-universe experience that I could have possibly expected.
also, man... the first story starts by laying out a 1895 imagining of future 1920 new york that is somehow both ultrasocialist progressive and ultranationalist racist. it's been quite a while since i read anything looking at past versions of "the future." he's uh... he's trying.
I just read This is your Brain on Music, by musician/neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. It had interesting bits, but I skimmed large sections looking for those bits. It's probably an easier read for someone more familiar with or interested in neuro-anatomy. It also doesn't have many answers, but I can't fault it for that because the science doesn't have many firm answers yet, so a lot of it is "this is what some studies have indicated we might know in future," which I get is how science works but it doesn't necessarily make compelling reading for me.
Moving forward, I've got a hankering for some prehistory! Any fiction recommendations for books set before recorded time? Searching Amazon and GoodReads, it seems there was a small glut of the genre in the '80s, but not much since. I'd prefer something with solid grounding in contemporary scholarship of the era(s) and a measure of cultural awareness. I've read some of the Gear books decades ago, but I'm not optimistic that they've held up well. I also tend to steer away from YA lit, but a good book is a good book. What say ye, book thread?
*Mythago Wood* by Robert Holdstock kinda sorta hits some of those. You should certainly get a super strong pre-history vibe from it although it is framed as starting in a post-WW2 setting.
so a couple of years ago i ordered a copy of the king in yellow collecting the shorts by Robert Chambers
and the copy I got was this clearly self-printed as cheaply as possible by some company that no longer exists. the layout was typeset only in the vaguest sense that there were in fact words on the pages, with like zero margins or consideration to spacing/paragraphs/readability. and the cover art was just a stolen image that is hyper pixelated from being stretched to the size of the print pages. somehow the text on the cover was equally stretched and pixelated which is just impressive tbh.
At the time I was just annoyed and got refunded but was told i could keep the copy.
And in retrospect, based on my cultural knowledge of the stories and now that i started reading it last night, this might be the most accurate to the king in yellow in-universe experience that I could have possibly expected.
also, man... the first story starts by laying out a 1895 imagining of future 1920 new york that is somehow both ultrasocialist progressive and ultranationalist racist. it's been quite a while since i read anything looking at past versions of "the future." he's uh... he's trying.
Ultraracism was super progressive in the early 20th century.
H G Wells was a committed lifelong socialist, and also advocated via his fiction the complete eradication of non-white humanity, for example.
I've started reading The Unspoken Name, by A.K. Larkwood, a fantasy novel that's picking up some steam (helped along, no doubt, by an endorsement from Tamsyn Muir), about a young orc girl rescued from the mystery cult she was a priestess of and tossed into a life of adventure
So far it's quite fun and breezy, and above all does something I've recently come to value in fantasy: it just tosses you into stuff happening and fills in mercifully brief lore dumps in between, and in a way that makes sense for the POV character to learn gradually, rather than a huge wall of fictional history. Early on it's revealed that this setting is built on the bones of multiple interdimensional imperial powers connected by an actively used portal network - including mass transit! - and it's done so casually and with a minimum of fantasy technobabble that I had to back up and read it again to be sure
Also I feel like it's relatively rare to have a story from the POV of the most maligned and poorly used of the stock fantasy races, so it gets points for that alone
Finally finished Song of Achilles and I am an emotional wreck. So, to get over it I wanted something mindless and pulpy.
I saw that Naomi Novik, who I've liked just about everything of, has a little fantasy series about a magical school called Scholomance (which I think is an old WoW instance, right?)
I'm two chapters in and I don't think I've seen a magic system like this before, which is very interesting, and the casual brutality is a nice hook.
Finally finished Song of Achilles and I am an emotional wreck. So, to get over it I wanted something mindless and pulpy.
I saw that Naomi Novik, who I've liked just about everything of, has a little fantasy series about a magical school called Scholomance (which I think is an old WoW instance, right?)
I'm two chapters in and I don't think I've seen a magic system like this before, which is very interesting, and the casual brutality is a nice hook.
Finally finished Song of Achilles and I am an emotional wreck. So, to get over it I wanted something mindless and pulpy.
I saw that Naomi Novik, who I've liked just about everything of, has a little fantasy series about a magical school called Scholomance (which I think is an old WoW instance, right?)
I'm two chapters in and I don't think I've seen a magic system like this before, which is very interesting, and the casual brutality is a nice hook.
emotional. wreck.
"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
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
god dammit how dare that book be so good.
"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
Finally finished Song of Achilles and I am an emotional wreck. So, to get over it I wanted something mindless and pulpy.
I saw that Naomi Novik, who I've liked just about everything of, has a little fantasy series about a magical school called Scholomance (which I think is an old WoW instance, right?)
I'm two chapters in and I don't think I've seen a magic system like this before, which is very interesting, and the casual brutality is a nice hook.
It's good! I'm not quite sure i'd call it light and pulpy myself, it deals with some preddy serious stuff. But it's goood!
Posts
Do the Reacher books connect to one another at all or can you pick any one of them and be ok? The essay makes me think that whichever one will do me fine, but I figured I should ask.
I'd tentatively say Killing Floor first then... ehhh they connect with some characters showing up or references. But it's not an overarching series, you'd be fine picking up whatever.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
I really liked it! Probably about as much as A Memory Called Empire.
I know some people didn’t like it as much but between the precocious child spying on everyone and all the first contact stuff it hit a lot of my buttons.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
look at this fuckin nerd god bless
I initially read that as “nerd god, bless” as opposed to “nerd, god bless” and the sentence didn’t quite parse right. I got garden pathed.
i mean i read it as nerd goddess so you were closer i guess. but i also dont think im wrong lol.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
yeah, so i finally picked this up and i really liked it
it starts out kinda conventional, but i really think it goes some interesting places with all its anti-colonial throughlines and how the characters live and act in this world
it's revolution and rebellion in a fantasy french colony
it's also gay
Steam // Secret Satan
Moving forward, I've got a hankering for some prehistory! Any fiction recommendations for books set before recorded time? Searching Amazon and GoodReads, it seems there was a small glut of the genre in the '80s, but not much since. I'd prefer something with solid grounding in contemporary scholarship of the era(s) and a measure of cultural awareness. I've read some of the Gear books decades ago, but I'm not optimistic that they've held up well. I also tend to steer away from YA lit, but a good book is a good book. What say ye, book thread?
I mean look we don't know for sure that early man didn't spend a lot of time dramatically dickin down and frankly I like to think that they did.
Well, she got the Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon cross-breeding down correctly, which was suspected, but not confirmed until fairly recently, so...
I really like the Jack Reacher books, but the closest thing he's ever got to character development was the time he owned a house for a while. A few books later, it had been sold in-between books because he's a rolling stone who don't need no house tying him down.
And he got a passport, for ID.
But book 1 Jack Reacher is identical to book 30 Jack Reacher.
The author is also near to running into the Punisher problem, when you realise the main character must be about 60, given when he served in the military, but has just stopped aging.
and I need to charge my tablet to read it...
and the copy I got was this clearly self-printed as cheaply as possible by some company that no longer exists. the layout was typeset only in the vaguest sense that there were in fact words on the pages, with like zero margins or consideration to spacing/paragraphs/readability. and the cover art was just a stolen image that is hyper pixelated from being stretched to the size of the print pages. somehow the text on the cover was equally stretched and pixelated which is just impressive tbh.
At the time I was just annoyed and got refunded but was told i could keep the copy.
And in retrospect, based on my cultural knowledge of the stories and now that i started reading it last night, this might be the most accurate to the king in yellow in-universe experience that I could have possibly expected.
also, man... the first story starts by laying out a 1895 imagining of future 1920 new york that is somehow both ultrasocialist progressive and ultranationalist racist. it's been quite a while since i read anything looking at past versions of "the future." he's uh... he's trying.
I mean, it's horrific, but it's a fascinating weird snapshot of both Chambers and the times
*Mythago Wood* by Robert Holdstock kinda sorta hits some of those. You should certainly get a super strong pre-history vibe from it although it is framed as starting in a post-WW2 setting.
Ultraracism was super progressive in the early 20th century.
H G Wells was a committed lifelong socialist, and also advocated via his fiction the complete eradication of non-white humanity, for example.
So far it's quite fun and breezy, and above all does something I've recently come to value in fantasy: it just tosses you into stuff happening and fills in mercifully brief lore dumps in between, and in a way that makes sense for the POV character to learn gradually, rather than a huge wall of fictional history. Early on it's revealed that this setting is built on the bones of multiple interdimensional imperial powers connected by an actively used portal network - including mass transit! - and it's done so casually and with a minimum of fantasy technobabble that I had to back up and read it again to be sure
Also I feel like it's relatively rare to have a story from the POV of the most maligned and poorly used of the stock fantasy races, so it gets points for that alone
I saw that Naomi Novik, who I've liked just about everything of, has a little fantasy series about a magical school called Scholomance (which I think is an old WoW instance, right?)
I'm two chapters in and I don't think I've seen a magic system like this before, which is very interesting, and the casual brutality is a nice hook.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholomance
emotional. wreck.
"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
"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
It's good! I'm not quite sure i'd call it light and pulpy myself, it deals with some preddy serious stuff. But it's goood!
You haate the existing novels in the series?
Other than that, it's good! if a little sad that it's the last in the series. i wanted another slice of life with the Wayfairer crew
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