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The Pandemic really slowed my reading (less communting + no gym = less audiobooks).
But the five months Before Coronavirus, I re-listened to Pierce Brown's Red Rising / Golden Son / Morning Star trilogy followed by the series continuation Iron Gold...all so I could be refreshed to listen to the 2019 new release in the series Dark Age.
If you like "space opera" -- crazy, over-the-top, worlds-building, space-soldiers and spaceships fighting (very violent and vulgar) fiction -- the original trilogy is one of the most additively listen-able audiobooks I've ever enjoyed. I've gotten several friends to try it, and they also got deeply hooked (one complaining that he asked me for books to help go to sleep at night and Red Rising keeps him up!).
This "scifi" is totally derivative and shamelessly steals the best ideas from genre fiction from the past decades. Brave New World? Check. Harry Potter? Sure. Ender's Game? Of course. No doubt there's more that I forget or missed. But...it's not a pastiche. It's standing on the shoulders of giants. It's all mixed together to create a new story, with its own themes and ideas. And it works!
Additionally, the narrator. Tim Gerard Reynolds, is a phenomenal reader for the series. The primary characters are identifiable by his voicing choices for them.
The fourth and fifth books in the series, I tentatively recommend: The original trilogy is a complete and satisfying story. The fourth book, which is longer than the prior three, takes the first half to re-establish the state of the worlds, to position the characters around the story, before it really gets going. It's a very slow start. Moreso compared to the rocket car pace of the trilogy conclusion. And the fourth book starts breaking things, as it were, relative to the triology's themes. Overall, the fourth book feels like Pierce Brown was torn on what story and theme he wanted to pursue, and hadn't resolved it through editing the book. Almost through the book, I thought he was going in a wildly new direction, and then he veered back to the core themes of his trilogy. A friend who is reading at my recommendation quit early in the fourth book. It's harder to get into. And yet, re-listening, after the first half tedium, it grabbed hold and took off with all the vigor and space-operatic thrill of the first three books.
Book five, was marvelous! Similarly, the first third is needed for the roller coaster to ratchet up that big hill...and then ZOOM! it doesn't stop until the end. I loved it and am anxious for the sixth book to be released in the next couple years (hopefully).
An additional knock against the new audiobooks: the narrators get changed up. The first three are read by a single narrator. With book four, presumably because this has been a highly successful series, they move to an ensemble of narrators. There are, I think four narrators. Tim Gerard Reynolds continues to voice his key characters. But other characters are given new voices. This is a mixed result. Two of new narrators I loved, especially voicing characters new characters without previous voice work by Reynolds. The fourth reader I was not overly impressed with..except he did a acceptable job for another new character. And then in the fifth book, they changed the readers again. The new female reader in book four was replaced with, much to the detriment, I felt. And a male reader was replaced by someone with better understanding of pace and cadence...but an important youthful character read by a youthful voice in book 4 was changed to a youthful character read by an older, raspier voice, and it was for a difficult and not wholly successful change in narration for some characters. Fortunately, two of my favorite reads, Tim Gerard Reynolds and Louis L'Amour (new to book four) continued through book five. I only wish they'd keep Aedin Moloney from Iron Gold in Dark Ages.
John Scalzi's Old Man's War got me back into reading science-fiction around 2010. Pierce Brown's Red Rising saga is the most fun I've had reading since then!
Why-haven't-you-read-this-already?!?!? Recommended!
Red Rising on Audible.com
But the five months Before Coronavirus, I re-listened to Pierce Brown's Red Rising / Golden Son / Morning Star trilogy followed by the series continuation Iron Gold...all so I could be refreshed to listen to the 2019 new release in the series Dark Age.
If you like "space opera" -- crazy, over-the-top, worlds-building, space-soldiers and spaceships fighting (very violent and vulgar) fiction -- the original trilogy is one of the most additively listen-able audiobooks I've ever enjoyed. I've gotten several friends to try it, and they also got deeply hooked (one complaining that he asked me for books to help go to sleep at night and Red Rising keeps him up!).
This "scifi" is totally derivative and shamelessly steals the best ideas from genre fiction from the past decades. Brave New World? Check. Harry Potter? Sure. Ender's Game? Of course. No doubt there's more that I forget or missed. But...it's not a pastiche. It's standing on the shoulders of giants. It's all mixed together to create a new story, with its own themes and ideas. And it works!
Additionally, the narrator. Tim Gerard Reynolds, is a phenomenal reader for the series. The primary characters are identifiable by his voicing choices for them.
The fourth and fifth books in the series, I tentatively recommend: The original trilogy is a complete and satisfying story. The fourth book, which is longer than the prior three, takes the first half to re-establish the state of the worlds, to position the characters around the story, before it really gets going. It's a very slow start. Moreso compared to the rocket car pace of the trilogy conclusion. And the fourth book starts breaking things, as it were, relative to the triology's themes. Overall, the fourth book feels like Pierce Brown was torn on what story and theme he wanted to pursue, and hadn't resolved it through editing the book. Almost through the book, I thought he was going in a wildly new direction, and then he veered back to the core themes of his trilogy. A friend who is reading at my recommendation quit early in the fourth book. It's harder to get into. And yet, re-listening, after the first half tedium, it grabbed hold and took off with all the vigor and space-operatic thrill of the first three books.
Book five, was marvelous! Similarly, the first third is needed for the roller coaster to ratchet up that big hill...and then ZOOM! it doesn't stop until the end. I loved it and am anxious for the sixth book to be released in the next couple years (hopefully).
An additional knock against the new audiobooks: the narrators get changed up. The first three are read by a single narrator. With book four, presumably because this has been a highly successful series, they move to an ensemble of narrators. There are, I think four narrators. Tim Gerard Reynolds continues to voice his key characters. But other characters are given new voices. This is a mixed result. Two of new narrators I loved, especially voicing characters new characters without previous voice work by Reynolds. The fourth reader I was not overly impressed with..except he did a acceptable job for another new character. And then in the fifth book, they changed the readers again. The new female reader in book four was replaced with, much to the detriment, I felt. And a male reader was replaced by someone with better understanding of pace and cadence...but an important youthful character read by a youthful voice in book 4 was changed to a youthful character read by an older, raspier voice, and it was for a difficult and not wholly successful change in narration for some characters. Fortunately, two of my favorite reads, Tim Gerard Reynolds and Louis L'Amour (new to book four) continued through book five. I only wish they'd keep Aedin Moloney from Iron Gold in Dark Ages.
John Scalzi's Old Man's War got me back into reading science-fiction around 2010. Pierce Brown's Red Rising saga is the most fun I've had reading since then!
Why-haven't-you-read-this-already?!?!? Recommended!
Red Rising on Audible.com
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Carlo_M
Senior HTF Member
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- Oct 31, 1997
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Because...yeah (technically this is a re-read, probably my 4th or 5th time over the course of 25 years)
Angelo Colombus
Senior HTF Member
Halfway thru The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics by Sydney Ladensohn. Great book on the brothers and the classic films they were involved with.
bmasters9
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2008
- Messages
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- Real Name
- Ben Masters
One really good one I've read-- This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, by former Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter and semi-retired CBS newsman (albeit he still makes contributions for CBS from time to time) Bob Schieffer.
I'm slowly finishing up my reading of Astro City. I've been reading, erratically, this comic series for about 25 years. I had a 10+ year hiatus from when they went on hiatus, and then I forgot about it, and only a few years ago discovered they had resumed publication and I had the combination of time and money and interest in revisiting and then catching up. My collection is haphazard: some book are out of print, so I have a mixture of new and used paperback and hardback trade compilations. I wish for a uniform collection of new, paperbacks. But I want to read them more than "collect" them.
Rather than try to explain Astro City, I'll extract from this interview with Kurt Busiek, writer and creator (and possibly familiar name if you're a comics enthusiast), to express some of the wonderfulness of Astro City.
io9.gizmodo.com
Rather than try to explain Astro City, I'll extract from this interview with Kurt Busiek, writer and creator (and possibly familiar name if you're a comics enthusiast), to express some of the wonderfulness of Astro City.
Reflecting on 100 Issues of Astro City With Writer Kurt Busiek
This week, one of the most important superhero stories in comics reached a major milestone: Although it might say issue 41 on the cover, this week’s Astro City marks the 100th issue of Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross’ groundbreaking series. To celebrate we sat down with Busiek to talk...
io9.gizmodo.com
Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
Books I've read this year but didn't previously comment on:
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. This is a prequel the Hunger Games trilogy, set 64 years before the first book, covering the origin story of the nefarious President Snow. It was mostly excellent, deepening the world and making a character who had been more or less a mustache-twirling villain into someone more complex and three-dimensional. It's an unnerving book in two key ways: in the years since the first three books were published, the real world has crept a little closer to the world of the Hunger Games; and because this is set so much earlier, Panem has crept a little closer to our world. Having a little less distance between the current COVID-19 dystopia and the fictional Hunger Games dystopia gave the book a resonance that the earlier books, which began as a vicious satires of our reality TV obsessed world before evolving into a grim meditation on the costs and consequences of war, didn't have. The 10th Annual Hunger Games begins the transformation of the grisly affair from one of blunt retribution to punish vanquished foes to a mass media spectacle. One thing that the book does brilliantly is plant the seeds for Snow's eventual downfall, even as it portrays the series of impossible choices that put Snow on the path to becoming a tyrant. While there was only one other character from the first three books in this one besides Snow himself, there are certain specific things that would go on to make Katniss Everdeen a uniquely potent adversary for Snow. In that way, it deepened the experience of the earlier three stories by providing context.
- The Night Country by Melissa Albert. It held my attention the entire way through, and it had some interesting dark fantasy concepts that it played with. But it didn't put me under its spell like the previous book, The Hazel Wood, did.
- The Last Emperox by John Scalzi. A satisfying read with characters you either like or like to hate. My main criticism of the book is that Scalzi spends more than 90 percent of the book setting up dominoes, so that the plotlines we've been following for three books resolve very quickly and abruptly at the very end of the book.
- Everyday Angel by Victoria Schwab. This is a compilation of three short middle reader books that Schwab had written under contract early in her career, which together complete the character arc of the angelic protagonist. You can definitely tell that the books are targeted to girls in late elementary school or early middle school, but Schwab's gifts a writer and a storyteller still shine through. The titular angel, while in the guise of a preteen girl, reminded me a lot of Clarence Odbody from It's a Wonderful Life, with a similar mix of innocence and wisdom, and a similarly patient kindness.
- Vicious and Vengeful by V.E. Schwab. If Everyday Angel is the lightest, most kid-friendly of Schwab's works than these two books about serial killers with superpowers is her at her darkest and least kid-friendly. Again, though, her gifts as a writer and a storyteller still shine through. There is a protagonist and an antagonist, and neither of them are good people. But their fates are intertwined with some good people, and that provides a hook that kept me invested. It's an interesting world she's created, which takes some comic book tropes and twists them and distorts them in some disturbing ways.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. This is a prequel the Hunger Games trilogy, set 64 years before the first book, covering the origin story of the nefarious President Snow. It was mostly excellent, deepening the world and making a character who had been more or less a mustache-twirling villain into someone more complex and three-dimensional. It's an unnerving book in two key ways: in the years since the first three books were published, the real world has crept a little closer to the world of the Hunger Games; and because this is set so much earlier, Panem has crept a little closer to our world. Having a little less distance between the current COVID-19 dystopia and the fictional Hunger Games dystopia gave the book a resonance that the earlier books, which began as a vicious satires of our reality TV obsessed world before evolving into a grim meditation on the costs and consequences of war, didn't have. The 10th Annual Hunger Games begins the transformation of the grisly affair from one of blunt retribution to punish vanquished foes to a mass media spectacle. One thing that the book does brilliantly is plant the seeds for Snow's eventual downfall, even as it portrays the series of impossible choices that put Snow on the path to becoming a tyrant. While there was only one other character from the first three books in this one besides Snow himself, there are certain specific things that would go on to make Katniss Everdeen a uniquely potent adversary for Snow. In that way, it deepened the experience of the earlier three stories by providing context.
The Last Emperor is downloaded and waiting to be listened. But pandemic is wreaking havor on my book listening.
bmasters9
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2008
- Messages
- 6,513
- Real Name
- Ben Masters
The China Syndrome (novelization by Burton Wohl of that 1979 Columbia Pictures film of the same name; U.K./Ireland edition by Corgi; back cover has a small piece missing where I removed the sticker that came on it)
Shorts:
Caffeine, Michael Pollan (an Audible Original): A short essay on Pollan's exploration into the history of caffeine and his personal experience with it. If you're an Audible subscriber and enjoy coffee -- or specifically don't drink caffeinated beverages -- this is a great listen. It spurred me to quit coffee for two weeks to understand if I really needed it, what its effects on me were, and whether I wanted to continue drinking or not. A great listen and an enlightening personal experiment.
The Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen: A series of anecdotes or essays highlighting the experience of "Millennials". While I am interested and sympathetic to the generational experiences of the so-called Millennials, I couldn't finish this short book. Too tedious and a blinkered in its consideration of the topic.
The Half-Life of Marie Curie, Lauren Gunderson: A short (80 min) audio drama biopic of Marie Curie and her lesser known best friend Hertha Ayrton. I confess to listening on the flight home from Los Angeles, and half dozing through it. Nonetheless, this is a cool listen, and revealed details about M.C. I'd never heard about.
Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie: A modern, audio-play, reinterpretation of the classic Peter Pan. At least I think it's a re-imagining. I mostly known Peter Pan from the classic Disney movie and the more recent Finding Neverland. If you're into Peter Pan, or into stories about the Fae, this is worth checking out.
Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman: I think every GenX'er had the classical greek mythology book for some english class. This is like that, except for Norse. And written and performed by Neil Gaiman. I like Gaiman. And having read The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne, I was interested in learning a bit more about Norse mythology.
The Minuteman, Greg Donahue (an Audible Original): A brief history of Jewish mobsters in NYC fighting against American Nazis on the brink of WWII. Fasincating.
Caffeine, Michael Pollan (an Audible Original): A short essay on Pollan's exploration into the history of caffeine and his personal experience with it. If you're an Audible subscriber and enjoy coffee -- or specifically don't drink caffeinated beverages -- this is a great listen. It spurred me to quit coffee for two weeks to understand if I really needed it, what its effects on me were, and whether I wanted to continue drinking or not. A great listen and an enlightening personal experiment.
The Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen: A series of anecdotes or essays highlighting the experience of "Millennials". While I am interested and sympathetic to the generational experiences of the so-called Millennials, I couldn't finish this short book. Too tedious and a blinkered in its consideration of the topic.
The Half-Life of Marie Curie, Lauren Gunderson: A short (80 min) audio drama biopic of Marie Curie and her lesser known best friend Hertha Ayrton. I confess to listening on the flight home from Los Angeles, and half dozing through it. Nonetheless, this is a cool listen, and revealed details about M.C. I'd never heard about.
Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie: A modern, audio-play, reinterpretation of the classic Peter Pan. At least I think it's a re-imagining. I mostly known Peter Pan from the classic Disney movie and the more recent Finding Neverland. If you're into Peter Pan, or into stories about the Fae, this is worth checking out.
Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman: I think every GenX'er had the classical greek mythology book for some english class. This is like that, except for Norse. And written and performed by Neil Gaiman. I like Gaiman. And having read The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne, I was interested in learning a bit more about Norse mythology.
The Minuteman, Greg Donahue (an Audible Original): A brief history of Jewish mobsters in NYC fighting against American Nazis on the brink of WWII. Fasincating.
Novels:
Provenance, Ann Leckie: A side story in the Ancillary Justice universe. If you enjoyed that series, this is worth a read. If you haven't read the Ancillary series, you should. Ann Leckie is becoming a "must read" author for me.
Dark Age, Pierce Brown: The Red Rising trilogy is highly recommended if you're fan of sci-fi space opera. The series continues with Iron Gold and Dark Age. Iron Gold takes half the very long book to get going. At the end, it felt like the author was fighting himself unable to decide the core character theme to pursue. And into the second book, it feels like he chose the lesser option. But Dark Age starts stronger, and a third into the book takes off and never stops, and does what the original trilogy does best: tell crazy space opera with bold, engaging, characters with conflicted motives. I'm waiting for the conclusion of this second series (trilogy?) to know if it's recommended or not.
Cibola Burn, James S. A. Corey: Book 4 of The Expanse. I'm reading after watching the Amazon Prime series. This is the most constrained and narrowly-focused of the series so far (both book and show). Still, I enjoyed it. Overall, the TV show is better than the book series. Given time for one, watch the series on Prime. If you like the show, and have time, the books give greater context and detail on what's captured on screen.
The Last Emperox, John Scalzi: I'm a fan of Scalzi, and have read most of his stories, long and short. Overall, the Interdependency triology is good modern scifi. I very much liked the approach of doing a "climate change" theme in far-future space story. But, I found the conclusion to the trilogy anticlimatic. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as strong as the beginning.
The Calculating Stars & The Fated Sky, Mary Robinette Kowal: The first two books in The Lady Astronaut series. What do I think of this series? The third released today. I bought it and it's downloading now. Comet hits Earth, causes global catastrophe and is leading to climate change that will make the world uninhabitable in a couple hundred years. Thus a race against time begins to colonize other planets. Also, it's early 1960s, WWII is recently concluded, there's no NASA, the lead character is a young, jewish, woman pilot from the WASPs. It's a gentle series, but it deals with the sexism and racism of that era directly. So far, recommended.
The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie: The first in a new series. This is world-building fantasy. It took me the first chapter to understand what was going on. That's intentional. But once it revealed who the narrator was, I was hooked. The first book ends with no resolution, and I'm anxiously waiting for the second in the series.
Hyperion, Dan SImmons: A friend recommended this as his all-time favorite book. A great work of science ficiton with depth and mind-expanding concepts -- he talks about it the way others talk about Dune. I'm 36% done (7 of 20 hours listened) and I'm bored. So many words, so little story. It's not bad writing. And the audio production is good. But I am not into this right now. Set it aside to start listening to something else.
Provenance, Ann Leckie: A side story in the Ancillary Justice universe. If you enjoyed that series, this is worth a read. If you haven't read the Ancillary series, you should. Ann Leckie is becoming a "must read" author for me.
Dark Age, Pierce Brown: The Red Rising trilogy is highly recommended if you're fan of sci-fi space opera. The series continues with Iron Gold and Dark Age. Iron Gold takes half the very long book to get going. At the end, it felt like the author was fighting himself unable to decide the core character theme to pursue. And into the second book, it feels like he chose the lesser option. But Dark Age starts stronger, and a third into the book takes off and never stops, and does what the original trilogy does best: tell crazy space opera with bold, engaging, characters with conflicted motives. I'm waiting for the conclusion of this second series (trilogy?) to know if it's recommended or not.
Cibola Burn, James S. A. Corey: Book 4 of The Expanse. I'm reading after watching the Amazon Prime series. This is the most constrained and narrowly-focused of the series so far (both book and show). Still, I enjoyed it. Overall, the TV show is better than the book series. Given time for one, watch the series on Prime. If you like the show, and have time, the books give greater context and detail on what's captured on screen.
The Last Emperox, John Scalzi: I'm a fan of Scalzi, and have read most of his stories, long and short. Overall, the Interdependency triology is good modern scifi. I very much liked the approach of doing a "climate change" theme in far-future space story. But, I found the conclusion to the trilogy anticlimatic. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as strong as the beginning.
The Calculating Stars & The Fated Sky, Mary Robinette Kowal: The first two books in The Lady Astronaut series. What do I think of this series? The third released today. I bought it and it's downloading now. Comet hits Earth, causes global catastrophe and is leading to climate change that will make the world uninhabitable in a couple hundred years. Thus a race against time begins to colonize other planets. Also, it's early 1960s, WWII is recently concluded, there's no NASA, the lead character is a young, jewish, woman pilot from the WASPs. It's a gentle series, but it deals with the sexism and racism of that era directly. So far, recommended.
The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie: The first in a new series. This is world-building fantasy. It took me the first chapter to understand what was going on. That's intentional. But once it revealed who the narrator was, I was hooked. The first book ends with no resolution, and I'm anxiously waiting for the second in the series.
Hyperion, Dan SImmons: A friend recommended this as his all-time favorite book. A great work of science ficiton with depth and mind-expanding concepts -- he talks about it the way others talk about Dune. I'm 36% done (7 of 20 hours listened) and I'm bored. So many words, so little story. It's not bad writing. And the audio production is good. But I am not into this right now. Set it aside to start listening to something else.
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I’m nearly finished listening to a really good time travel story by Ken Grimwood called Replay.
A43 year old man dies suddenly but immediately wakes back up
but now he has gone back 25 years to his 18 year old self while retaining all memories he had from before he died.
I haven’t started it yet because it isn’t out yet but
Ready Player Two is to be released this week so I’m looking forward to that.
A43 year old man dies suddenly but immediately wakes back up
but now he has gone back 25 years to his 18 year old self while retaining all memories he had from before he died.
I haven’t started it yet because it isn’t out yet but
Ready Player Two is to be released this week so I’m looking forward to that.
bmasters9
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
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The Radium Girls (2017 book by British author Kate Moore about a group of women in a factory who dealt with radium and painted watch dials with it; this radium ate a lot of them alive, and crippled quite a few [the factory owners, however, downplayed the risks thereto, and insisted that the radium was safe, IIRC])
A film was released about that in 2018 (only recently premiering in selected theaters and online this year) called Radium Girls; it has Joey King and Abby Quinn as Bessie and Jo Cavallo, fictionalized versions of two of the workers.
Here's the official site, from which you can find out more (and possibly see the film for yourself):
radiumgirlsmovie.com
Also, here's a scene from that film, w/Joey King as Bessie:
A film was released about that in 2018 (only recently premiering in selected theaters and online this year) called Radium Girls; it has Joey King and Abby Quinn as Bessie and Jo Cavallo, fictionalized versions of two of the workers.
Here's the official site, from which you can find out more (and possibly see the film for yourself):
Radium Girls
Radium Girls follows the teen sisters who dream of Hollywood and Egyptian pyramids as they paint luminous watch dials at the American Radium factory in New Jersey.
Also, here's a scene from that film, w/Joey King as Bessie:
Added Replay audible wishlist.
So far in 2020, in no particular order:
www.audible.com
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The Sandman
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Please note: This content is not for kids. It is for mature audiences only. Just like the original graphic novels, this audio adaptation contains explicit language and graphic violence, as well as strong sexual content and themes. Discretion is...
www.audible.com
Recursion
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. New York Times best seller From the best-selling author of Dark Matter and the Wayward Pines trilogy comes a relentless thriller about time, identity, and memory - his most mind-boggling, irresistible work to date, and the inspiration for...
www.audible.com
Battle Ground
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Things are about to get serious for Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, in the next entry in the number-one New York Times best-selling Dresden Files. Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enem...
www.audible.com
Peace Talks
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Harry Dresden is back and ready for action, in the new entry in the number-one New York Times best-selling Dresden Files. When the supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago's only p...
www.audible.com
Brief Cases
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. An all-new Dresden Files story headlines this urban fantasy short story collection starring the Windy City's favorite wizard. The world of Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, is rife with intrigue - and creatures of all supernatural ...
www.audible.com
Dan Rather: Stories of a Lifetime
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Tales from the front lines of 60 years of television. Emmy Award winner and former CBS News anchor Dan Rather brings his unforgettable staged performance, Stories of a Lifetime, to the Minetta Lane Theatre, where it will be recorded live for ...
www.audible.com
The Relentless Moon
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Mary Robinette Kowal continues her Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Lady Astronaut series, following The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, with The Relentless Moon. The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the meteo...
www.audible.com
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. There's a reason We Are Legion (We Are Bob) was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The...
www.audible.com
The Last Emperox
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. The Last Emperox is the thrilling conclusion to the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today best-selling Interdependency series, an epic space opera adventure from Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi. The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar...
www.audible.com
Certain Woman of an Age
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Margaret Trudeau, former wife of Pierre Trudeau, 15th Prime Minister of Canada, mother of Justin Trudeau, Canada's current Prime Minister, and international mental health advocate, brought her intimate staged performance, Certain Woman of an Age, to...
www.audible.com
The Fated Sky
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Mary Robinette Kowal continues the grand sweep of alternate history begun in The Calculating Stars. The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually...
www.audible.com
Caffeine
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting...
www.audible.com
Hyperion
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time...
www.audible.com
The Raven Tower
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Shortlisted for the 2020 World Fantasy Award Gods meddle in the fates of men, men play with the fates of gods, and a pretender must be cast down from the throne in this breathtaking first fantasy novel from Ann Leckie, New York Times best-selling...
www.audible.com
Hyperion: So tedious and uninteresting. Complete slog to suffer through. Also, not a complete story. Ends in the middle of the story.
Recursion: Good sci-fi overall, but not as strong as Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter.
Harry Dresden: if you’re a fan, the last two books and short story compilation are must reads!
The Raven Tower: superb, can’t wait for the next book.
Fated Sky: The Woman Astronaut series is worthwhile. A different take on alt-history sci-fi than I typically read. This third book is stronger than the second and shows the authors versatility in expanding her range of story types.
Recursion: Good sci-fi overall, but not as strong as Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter.
Harry Dresden: if you’re a fan, the last two books and short story compilation are must reads!
The Raven Tower: superb, can’t wait for the next book.
Fated Sky: The Woman Astronaut series is worthwhile. A different take on alt-history sci-fi than I typically read. This third book is stronger than the second and shows the authors versatility in expanding her range of story types.
jcroy
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Abrikosov, Gorkov, Dzyaloshinski
(extremely slow going)
(extremely slow going)
jcroy
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Over the past few several months:
Intro to Modern Solid State Physics - Yuri Galperin
(never published officially)
and
Solid State Theory - Harrison
Intro to Solid State Physics - Kittel
Elementary Statistical Physics - Kittel
Very slow and heavy going in reading and understanding.
Basically stuff I never learned in college, in understanding how electronic components actually function at a microscopic level. Stuff like transistors, diodes, etc ...
Intro to Modern Solid State Physics - Yuri Galperin
(never published officially)
and
Solid State Theory - Harrison
Intro to Solid State Physics - Kittel
Elementary Statistical Physics - Kittel
Very slow and heavy going in reading and understanding.
Basically stuff I never learned in college, in understanding how electronic components actually function at a microscopic level. Stuff like transistors, diodes, etc ...
Tommy R
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Not sure if I can remember every book I’ve read so far this year, but I can try to trace back in my head.
If I can cheat and go back to almost exactly a year ago, I started going though the Ian Fleming Bond novels beginning on Black Friday 2019. It was my third time going through them and I finished them up in March I think.
I DNF’d it, but I started Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy. I may still try getting back to it (I got to page 377 of 990). Just a boring mess of a book, but am still sort of curious where a couple threads were going. I have been going through the Ryan-verse (do people call it that?) over a few years now and I liked all of them to varying degrees up through Without Remorse. But Debt of Honor is god awful in my book.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. An absolutely BEAUTIFUL book. Just filled me with magic and wonder. I can see myself rereading this one in regular intervals. I’m also anxious to read her only other published book soon called The Starless Sea.
Deadly Games by Edward Topol and Frederick Neznansky. A Russian-written thriller published in English in the early 80’s, it’s a detective story that follows a case involving the KGB and Azerbaijani drug dealers. Pretty good stuff, but crazy fast paced and dense that I really had to get through it quickly as to keep everything straight in my head. They wrote another book called Red Square that I have on deck to read pretty soon.
The Hammer of Eden by Ken Follett. In anticipation of his new book (see below) I threw this in as it is one of the few Follett books I have yet to read (still have 4 more). Kind of disappointing. Probably my least favorite book in his whole bibliography.
By my favorite author, Craig Thomas (best known for Firefox, which Clint Eastwood made into a film in 1982), I have read this year All the Grey Cats, and The Last Raven. These are re-reads for me as I’ve already read all his published novels before. Ive been going through them all for a second time, albeit very slowly and over several years now. I have 4 more of his novels to re-read, but it may be a while before I re-read more as I’ve been adding quite a few new book to my TRL.
I re-read Susanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy in anticipation for her new prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which I also have read. Kind of a slog to get through, but I think it was interesting enough. Will probably make a better movie, as I think her writing style is actually a little on the iffy side. But there are some interesting ideas in there.
The Andromeda Evolution, I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember who the author was. Probably because they have Michael Crichton’s name in HUGE font on the cover, even though he didn’t write it. But it’s an interesting little sequel to his original The Andromeda Strain.
What I’m reading right now is Ken Follett’s new book The Evening and the Morning. It is a prequel to his previous book The Pillars of the Earth. I just got past page 500 since starting it two weeks ago, so only 400 to go (yeah, it’s long) and I absolutely love it! Better so far than the previous Pillars follow ups. If you like historical fiction set in the Middle Ages I’d recommend these novels of his!
Hopefully I can have time to finish another book by the new year, and I have Little Women picked out as my next one. My wife loves it and used to read the book repeatedly when she was young. I’m only familiar with the 1994 film adaptation, and only saw it once with my wife a few years ago, but I remember really liking it.
For 2021 I plan to start Brandon Sanderson, who I’ve been hearing is really good.
If I can cheat and go back to almost exactly a year ago, I started going though the Ian Fleming Bond novels beginning on Black Friday 2019. It was my third time going through them and I finished them up in March I think.
I DNF’d it, but I started Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy. I may still try getting back to it (I got to page 377 of 990). Just a boring mess of a book, but am still sort of curious where a couple threads were going. I have been going through the Ryan-verse (do people call it that?) over a few years now and I liked all of them to varying degrees up through Without Remorse. But Debt of Honor is god awful in my book.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. An absolutely BEAUTIFUL book. Just filled me with magic and wonder. I can see myself rereading this one in regular intervals. I’m also anxious to read her only other published book soon called The Starless Sea.
Deadly Games by Edward Topol and Frederick Neznansky. A Russian-written thriller published in English in the early 80’s, it’s a detective story that follows a case involving the KGB and Azerbaijani drug dealers. Pretty good stuff, but crazy fast paced and dense that I really had to get through it quickly as to keep everything straight in my head. They wrote another book called Red Square that I have on deck to read pretty soon.
The Hammer of Eden by Ken Follett. In anticipation of his new book (see below) I threw this in as it is one of the few Follett books I have yet to read (still have 4 more). Kind of disappointing. Probably my least favorite book in his whole bibliography.
By my favorite author, Craig Thomas (best known for Firefox, which Clint Eastwood made into a film in 1982), I have read this year All the Grey Cats, and The Last Raven. These are re-reads for me as I’ve already read all his published novels before. Ive been going through them all for a second time, albeit very slowly and over several years now. I have 4 more of his novels to re-read, but it may be a while before I re-read more as I’ve been adding quite a few new book to my TRL.
I re-read Susanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy in anticipation for her new prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which I also have read. Kind of a slog to get through, but I think it was interesting enough. Will probably make a better movie, as I think her writing style is actually a little on the iffy side. But there are some interesting ideas in there.
The Andromeda Evolution, I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember who the author was. Probably because they have Michael Crichton’s name in HUGE font on the cover, even though he didn’t write it. But it’s an interesting little sequel to his original The Andromeda Strain.
What I’m reading right now is Ken Follett’s new book The Evening and the Morning. It is a prequel to his previous book The Pillars of the Earth. I just got past page 500 since starting it two weeks ago, so only 400 to go (yeah, it’s long) and I absolutely love it! Better so far than the previous Pillars follow ups. If you like historical fiction set in the Middle Ages I’d recommend these novels of his!
Hopefully I can have time to finish another book by the new year, and I have Little Women picked out as my next one. My wife loves it and used to read the book repeatedly when she was young. I’m only familiar with the 1994 film adaptation, and only saw it once with my wife a few years ago, but I remember really liking it.
For 2021 I plan to start Brandon Sanderson, who I’ve been hearing is really good.
Last edited:
bmasters9
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Larson: El Hombre Con Mas Suerte Del Mundo (rough English translation: Larson: The Luckiest Man in the World), by Javi De Castro
This is a Spanish-language graphic novel about controversial Press Your Luck contestant Paul Michael Larson (Michael Larson, for short), who went on that CBS game show in '84 and took it for $110,237, much to the shock of everyone there (Peter Tomarken, the contestants, the production staff, everyone); this Wikipedia entry tells the whole story:
en.wikipedia.org
Back cover (rough English translation): "In 1984, Michael Larson, an ice cream truck driver from Ohio, caused quite the scare at CBS by winning more than $100,000 on a television game show called Press Your Luck.
After 40 consecutive spins, he broke all the statistics.
Is it possible to be that lucky?"
This is a Spanish-language graphic novel about controversial Press Your Luck contestant Paul Michael Larson (Michael Larson, for short), who went on that CBS game show in '84 and took it for $110,237, much to the shock of everyone there (Peter Tomarken, the contestants, the production staff, everyone); this Wikipedia entry tells the whole story:
Michael Larson - Wikipedia
Back cover (rough English translation): "In 1984, Michael Larson, an ice cream truck driver from Ohio, caused quite the scare at CBS by winning more than $100,000 on a television game show called Press Your Luck.
After 40 consecutive spins, he broke all the statistics.
Is it possible to be that lucky?"
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