Started What If? by Randall Munroe.
It’s by the guy who runs / draws xkcd.com web comics, and gives serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. For example: Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?
Questions are weird like that, but the science is real, so an interesting read. Specially if you are a fan of xkcd.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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Titanium Noir. Scifi noir detective story. There is a drug that reverts your age back to about 20 and heals most health conditions.
It causes you to speed run puberty so each time you take it you get bigger. Only the ultra rich can afford it.
It’s pretty good so far and an easy read.
That would be an interesting drug, but most probably even if it’s real, only the ultra rich will be able to afford it, which will be even sadder than it being not real at all 😀
I’m reading Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp. It was released about a month ago but the premise is interesting. I learned about it from that Guardian article a couple months ago.
I hope you’re enjoying What If?. Randall Munroe is a blast.
What If? is going pretty good.
Goliath’s Curse sounds interesting.
Just finished Never the Wind by Francesco Dimitri
1996 - Luca Saracino is thirteen and has been completely blind for eight months when his parents move to a Southern Italian farmhouse they dream of turning into a hotel. With his brother dropping out of university and the family reeling from Luca’s diagnosis, they are chasing dreams of rebirth and reinvention. As Luca tells his story without sight - experiencing the world solely through hearing, smell, taste and touch - he meets the dauntless Ada Guadalupi, who takes him out to explore the rocky fields and empty beaches. But Luca and Ada find they can’t escape the grudges that have lasted between their families for generations, or the gossiping of the town. And Luca is preyed upon by the feral Wanderer, who walks the vineyards of his home. As Luca’s family starts to crack at the seams, Luca and Ada have to navigate new lands and old rivalries to uncover the truths spoken as whispers on the wind.
Very much enjoyed this story. Luca has real depth and emotional intelligence. The setting is unique. The magical realism could have been a little better fleshed out.
Currently reading How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barret. It’s interesting stuff like about how we interpret internal signals (e.g. rapid heartbeat) as emotions, rather than those signals being the result of emotions. Or how we think we can read other people’s emotions via well-known facial cues, but those cues are inaccurate and culturally dependant. But the book could use more editing to cut down some of the repetition and unnecessary length.
I am on book 5 of Cradle series by Will Wight. They’ve been super fun and fast paced, like little popcorn books.
The writing is serviceable, the characters are not super deep, but the world and exploration and discovery have been great. I didn’t think I would like the series but I’ve been pleasantly surprised and I think it’s definitely a good read between more difficult books because it’s a breeze getting through them.
I read a few book of it when I had Kindle Unlimited for couple of months for some reason. They were fun books, but nothing that made me subscribe to Unlimited for more months or outright buying them.
The Muderbot Diaries series. They’re very short books I have a feeling I’ll be done with them all in a week. Enjoying them so far. Though they are almost entirely from inside the mind of the main character.
The Murderbot Diaries are often recommended here. Glad to see you enjoying them.
Still working my way through Adrian Thatcher’s Vile Bodies.
Finished "crossing power"by Scott Moon. It’s scifi pulp as I mentioned last week. There’s also quite a few errors (spelling) in the book, which gets on your nerves eventually. Decided I had enough of that, so finished “The shattering peace” by John Scalzi. It’s a great installment in the “old mans war” series, and it has some great humor with a character of the “Obin” race. Not so fun fact; Scott Moon’s books get higher ratings on goodreads than John Scalzi’s, there’s definitely something fishy going on.
Currently reading “service model” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. From what I gather this isn’t a typical Tchaikovsky book, but I like this one a lot (I think I have two of his books in the unfinished pile because I couldn’t get the hang of it).
Could be number of people reading Scott Moon vs John Scalzi, also it’s possible that Scalzi is more popular so many people read it just because of popularity and end up not liking it, while only the people who like Moon’s book read them.
Just guessing randomly…
I think Scott Moon’s books are free on Kindle unlimited a lot, so the price/quality ratio might be a factor?
Currently reading All That We See Or Seem by Ken Liu. I’m a pretty big fan of his, I’ve read a lot of his short stories, but this is the first novel I’ve read. The pacing is great and I feel it’s pretty relevant to things going on in current times. I’m about halfway through and probably going to finish it over the weekend.
I finished Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik and I loved it. I’ll definitely be reading the next 2 in the trilogy.
Reading The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, which I’ve been looking forward to. So far, so good.
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Read Harrow County, Volume 1: Countless Haints by Cullen Bunn (writing) & Tyler Crook (art) (southern gothic folk horror comic, issues 1-4) | bingo: short HM, steppin’ up HM
A teenager becomes tangled up in her community’s witch-murdering past.
Picked this out for spooky season, since my current read isn’t horror. This volume tells a complete story arc, so while I’ll probably read more of it at some point, I’m satisfied for right now. It’s fun, though, and the art is gorgeous.
Oh I have What If! One of the last hardbacks I purchased.
It’s really fascinating. I followed xkcd pretty religiously for about a decade before I stopped regularly checking it.
I’m still reading The Shadow Rising. It’s slow going at the moment, but still a solid entry so far.
I am just subscribed to xkcd’s RSS feed, so doesn’t take any effort to stay up to date.
How are you liking Wheel of Time so far?
I should really mess around with RSS. It seems like a nice tool from what people describe.
I like it a lot. I’m a little worried I’ll drop it during the slog before Sanderson picks it up for the ending.
So far I’m really invested into everyone’s journey. Maybe it’s the way Jordan writes the Aes Sedai, but I find myself annoyed with Nynaeve at the moment.
I’ve had issues with spoiler tags on here, but I’m going to try them again.
Tap for spoiler
Nynaeve seems to be trying to stay mad so she can channel at any moment - and while understandable it’s really frustrating when she lashes out at EVERYONE.
Nynaeve does feel annoying for some time. Also, I am never able to pronounce her name properly.
RSS is pretty nice. It is not as widespread as it used to, but pretty much all blogs still provide it, and there are sites that can generate for many sites that don’t provide one. Even YouTube has RSS for every channel (though it’s very hidden). I am subscribed to many channels, so as soon as new video is released by those channels, I get it directly in my feed reader.
There is one huge issue with RSS though. It’s so convenient, once you get used to it any site that doesn’t provide one feels too annoying 😀
I have now started my journey of curating an RSS feed. Any suggestions? I have a few basic ones like XKCD, picture of the day, a photo throwback from my reader (feeeed) and a bunch of YouTube channels and a few subreddits that I never really stopped visiting.
Depends on what you want. I have a few authors like Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie etc. Some comics like XKCD, Sword Comics etc. Some work / programming related ones, news / blogs of lots of applications / software I use, some other hobbies related ones like gaming etc.
I’ll recommend starting from a few and then slowly growing it. I used to have tons of feeds, and would have 100+ new items every day, some time even more than 2 or 300, which became unmanageable, so have removed lots of stuff I didn’t care about too much. You can of course just add everything you want, and then slowly remove stuff that you think isn’t too important.
Been reading white fragility by Robin DiAngelo, it’s been a decent read so far and re-opened my eyes to things I saw but now have more to work with
I am re-reading the Expanse series - currently on Nemesis Games.
Love these books - I want to rewatch the show now. I have all the actors / actresses in my head as I read :)
The Expanse is the one series I wish I could read again for the first time. It’s so good!
I went to see the touring show of “Stereophonic” last weekend, and they were selling copies of the script in the lobby so I grabbed one.
The touring production is just under 3 hours while the broadway original is 3 hours, 10 minutes, I’m interested in seeing what was cut.
https://www.booksonbroad.com/book/9781636702162
The script is interesting in how they convey the stage direction.
The stage is set up with a raised recording booth behind glass, with a control room in front. You often have overlapping dialog between the booth and the control room.
So in the script, all the booth dialog is on one side of the page and the control room is on the other, with overlapping lines marked with “//”.
I’m on book 7 of the expanse. I’m finding this series to be a slog. I almost stopped at book 6, but everyone says the last three are really good and get into more protomolecule stuff. It does get into the protomolecule stuff more, but it’s still a bit of a drag.
I’ve never seen the tv show, but I’m starting to think this is one of the rare cases where the books are NOT better.
:/
I’ve discovered that sequels, by and large, don’t improve on the original. I got to book 2 of the expanse and was like “nah, I’m good”. So good on you for keeping with it for so long!
For my money, I prefer stuff like Discworld, where there’s just a lot of stories in a given universe. Less worldbuilding, more exploring.
It is a space opera. It’s meant to be drawn out, more political and world building than other stories.
Sounds like just not your thing, books AND show are both knockouts. Sucks what happened with the actor and it got cancelled.
It is a matter of personal preference obviously, but the world building doesn’t have to be too elaborate in a space opera. I liked this comment about earlier this week.
And if you don’t find the particular genre or concept appetizing any amount will be a slog.
As you said personal preference, but people love whining about stuff they just don’t enjoy, but continue to try.
I don’t enjoy Cyberpunk, so any stories, even short stories seem a slog. That doesn’t mean it’s bad writing, and that’s a terrible attitude to have. Ive enjoyed the anthology’s I’ve read though for their history and the writing style. I’m not gonna praise, nor bash the writing, since it’s not my style.
It’s akin to picking up a story with racing and complaining there is cars and races. Well… what else did you expect…?
A lot of people think Dune is too technical, well yeah, that’s the appeal, sorry you don’t like it, don’t whing about it.
Edit as for linked comment itself. The vast majority of readers aren’t going to get those hints, nor are wanting those in EVERY story, so those genres aren’t entirely meant for them, shit attitude like above. Elitist and gatekeeping as well. Not every piece of media is going to be relatable to everyone, yet people continue to think stories should be for THEM. Not what the writer wants.
The show definitely condenses/changes stuff (mostly in a good way), although weirdly I found the seasons with the Marco Inaros drama to be more grating than the book versions.
Have you liked any of plot lines so far, or has it been a slog all the way through?
I loved the first book - like ate it up. Then the books started doing this “let’s build things up forever, and then one two knockout punch the reader”
I get that approach, but it just draws them out for me. I find myself reading entire chapters a going “so what, get on with it”. I actually liked how book 4 ended. I also liked most of book 5, but I felt books 5&6 could have been one condensed book.
7 started off really good, but now I’m at the part where they are barred from their ship and living the underground thug life and it’s stating to drag for me again.
I DO kind of like all the books-it’s just the pacing isn’t right for me. Maybe they were just overhyped for me. So many people love love love the expanse. For me it’s just an ok amusing read.
Totally fair. It’s impressive you’ve kept reading so far into the series; I’ll grit my teeth through one book with pacing that doesn’t work for me (and complain the whole time), but not much beyond that.
Finished reading 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, because last month someone here reminded me about it and said it didn’t suck. He’s right. It’s not a best in breed of the alien invasion genre, and some of the YA themes weren’t intended to captivate guys who’d cross the street to avoid overhearing teenage girls gushing about dreamy teenage boys. But it’s good enough that I can donate it to a neglected little free library and not feel guilty about shortchanging whoever takes it. I think the reason I passed over it earlier was that I thought it was the 5th in the series, not the first.
Now I’m re-reading Bone Collector by Jeffrey Deaver. I’ve read some of his Lincoln Rhyme mysteries, but couldn’t remember which ones. I’m only about 50 pgs in, but it looks familiar. I expect it to end with some unrealistic coincidences, but can’t remember what, so I’ll continue.
Any recommendations for books in alien invasion genre?
