ToolHead on 6/3/2017 at 19:57
Recently finished The Circle. Clever, well-written and hitting a sweet spot between satire and foreboding in the depiction of our bright dystopia of tomorrow. Eggers is a bit heavy-handed in the delivery of his major punchline, but apart from that, a great read.
dj_ivocha on 13/3/2017 at 19:19
I just finished (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero) Tau Zero by Poul Anderson (for the second time, I'd just forgotten to include it in my previous post) and I'd like to read something in the same vein (effects of time dilation on passengers and observers). In the novel, Poul Anderson
concentrates on the ship so we never know what's going on with the rest of humanity. In A World Out of Time Larry Niven
does explore both viewpoints quite well, so maybe something in a similar vein? Does anyone have any suggestion for such a book?
Kolya on 13/3/2017 at 19:24
Me and the wife tried to get into The Lies of Locke Lamora but found it had too much of a Oliver modern Twist. We enjoy Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea a lot though. Thanks to the person who pointed this out. :)
Starker on 13/3/2017 at 21:51
Quote Posted by Kolya
Me and the wife tried to get into The Lies of Locke Lamora but found it had too much of a Oliver modern Twist. We enjoy Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea a lot though. Thanks to the person who pointed this out. :)
Um... this will change drastically once Locke is sold away. Also, if you liked Wizard of Earthsea, chances are good you might like The Left Hand of Darkness as well.
demagogue on 14/3/2017 at 01:25
@DJ, Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. Everytime the main character goes on leave back to earth or wherever several centuries have passed, human culture and even the language is much different, and his bank account has compounded millions or billions in interest.
Harvester on 18/3/2017 at 14:55
I've read Ender's Game. I liked it, it was good, but I don't know if it's completely worthy of the timeless classic status it has. But it must be said that I already watched the movie before reading the book, so the main twist was spoiled for me. I've heard the later books are of lesser quality, so I don't know if I'm going to read them. This was an enjoyable read, at least, but I've read science fiction books that aren't nearly as well-known, that I've liked more than Ender's Game.
Also read John Dies At The End by Cracked.com writer David Wong, which I was a little disappointed by, after all the praise it got. It's not that the book completely sucks, but the characters are paper-thin with too little attention to character development. Instead, the focus is on low-brow humor, a lot of blood&gore and detailed descriptions of grotesque monsters, which I often like in movies but doesn't do much for me in written form. I like to read horror books, but I prefer them to be less about the monsters etc. themselves, and more about what being confronted with monsters etc. does to a person, which is something I think Stephen King does well. What can be said in favor of the book is that it's effective in communicating the feeling of losing your mind and going insane, due to being confronted with horrors beyond your comprehension. There's a lot of random weird stuff going on that isn't always explained, and the characters don't understand it either, hence the feeling of losing it.
Now I'm reading a book called An Asperger Marriage. A husband with Asperger's syndrome and a wife without autism talk in turns about their relationship, the things that are going well and the things they have trouble with. Being an aspie and married myself, I'm interested to see how much I'll recognize in the aspie husband, and what the non-autistic wife's perspective on the relationship is, in order to get a better view on what my wife has to deal with.
Malf on 21/3/2017 at 13:57
This Book is Full of Spiders is probably better than John Dies, but then I liked both, so you may not get as much mileage out of the second as I did.
However, his newer book "Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits" is a damn good read too, and probably a more mature, accomplished one.
If you like that kind of stuff, I can recommend some other similar stuff:
Charles Stross and his "Laundry" series. Urban supernatural fiction with a James Bond meets C'thulhu thing going on. His exploration of vampirism in particular is rather horrifying and hilarious at the same time.
Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim books, a pulpy take on similar themes featuring compelling characters. However, every book is pretty much "Sandman Slim saves the world AGAIN."
Mur Lafferty's "Shambling Guides", stories about someone writing Rough Guides to cities for the supernatural element. Again, can get a little too carried away with saving the world, but is written with enough verve to keep me interested.
If you want similar themes in an alternate history scenario, I can highly recommend Ian Tregillis' Milkweed Triptych consisting of the books Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War and Necessary Evil.
Also by Tregillis and very good is his recently finished Alchemy Wars trilogy, another alternate history series, but in a steampunk world dominated by the Netherlands.
I don't read a book a day, nowhere near, but I do read a lot.
I'm currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons, a series I'd never heard of before until Google recommended it. And holy shit, is this a good book. Sol Weintraub's tale in particular really hit me hard. I'm near the end and have the follow-up, "The Fall of Hyperion", already lined up.
Before that, I read "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow", Yuval Noah Harari's follow up to "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", both of which are incredibly thought provoking, if a little strident in reinforcing the author's own vegan agenda. They're not explicitly about veganism, but his lifestyle definitely influences his writing.
There's a few sci fi novels I've read recently which have been absolutely stellar, with a particular favourite being Anne Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy, Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy. While the last ends somewhat abruptly, the series as a whole is still an incredible achievement. The first book in particular will have you confused for a while as you try and work out what's going on, but once you do, it challenges preconceived notions you may hold.
But even that's not my favourite series of recent years.
That honour lies with a trilogy written by a British sci fi author called Chris Beckett, an ex-social worker.
The trilogy consists of the books Dark Eden, Mother of Eden and Daughter of of Eden. The set-up for the trilogy is a short story he includes in his anthology "The Turing Test". And it's less about the science (although that itself is intriguing), and more about him exploring in depth a theoretical social experiment "what if...?"
To give you some idea, it's about a human society on an alien planet wholly derived from two people who ended up stranded there. He extrapolates incredibly, taking into account the genetic defects that would come to the fore in such a limited gene pool, the evolution of language based on a limited lexicon and lack of literacy, as well as the mythology that would build up around "Earth".
The first book, Dark Eden, deservedly won the Arthur C. Clarke award, but the second and third books are an even greater achievement as far as I'm concerned.
These days I very, very rarely read hard copies. I pretty much exclusively use an E-Ink device, with my current one being a Kobo Aura H2O, which I manage with Calibre.
Starker on 22/3/2017 at 04:37
Yeah, I have a Kobo Aura H2O too, great for reading in bath. At first I hated the way it handled PDFs, but luckily it let me install a better reader on it (KOReader is a must addition, as is KSM). I also have lists of Chinese words I'm learning set up as a randomized power off screen message, so it doubles as a sort of a flashcard device when it's turned off.
Malf on 22/3/2017 at 12:51
Yeah, I've been using e-Ink devices pretty much constantly and exclusively since the release of the Sony PRS-505. Treated myself to it after passing a course at work some 9 years ago now.
I've been through all the big name e-Ink providers and settled on Kobo as being the best for openness of their devices.
The most annoying thing is just how delicate the damn things are, but the convenience outweighs that for me.
I've since read so many books I wouldn't have considered reading before because of sheer physical size.
And while I like having books on shelves, there's only so much space I have available. A digital library has no such concerns. Cloud-based and accessible from anywhere too :)
Starker on 23/3/2017 at 03:06
Yup, I love my dead tree edition books, but I'm also starting to run out of space for them and they are a real hassle when I move into a new place. Not to mention that digital books are so much cheaper. Also, one thing I didn't really know I always wanted is a built-in dictionary. So much more convenient to just tap a word and look it up in an instant.
I resisted e-readers a long time, but the long battery life (as opposed to tablets) and especially the new E-ink Carta was enough to win me over. I read a lot, so it's kind of important for the books to look as good as possible. It also helps that I can install my own fonts with Kobo. Especially for languages like Japanese and Chinese, it can be a real lifesaver.
