Book Recommendations?

So I am just about done with Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson and it is... not great. Heavy on the science, light on... everything else. I didn't like the 2nd half especially, like, at all.

2nd half ruined the premise and i just didnt care for the world KSR built.

I didn’t say that we *should* go to 50 years of all-female protagonists; just that seeing them become more frequent should not be a cause for complaint, given our past.

I'd say the problem with having so many female protagonists isn't the subsequent lack of male protagonists, but the fact that there is not enough braid tugging. If there was more braid tugging, no one would complain.

bekkilyn wrote:

I'd say the problem with having so many female protagonists isn't the subsequent lack of male protagonists, but the fact that there is not enough braid tugging. If there was more braid tugging, no one would complain.

Have you tried my Khal Drogo fan fiction? Plenty of braid tugging there.

Yonder wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

I'd say the problem with having so many female protagonists isn't the subsequent lack of male protagonists, but the fact that there is not enough braid tugging. If there was more braid tugging, no one would complain.

Have you tried my Khal Drogo fan fiction? Plenty of braid tugging there.

I kept trying to figure out if all the references to Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothies were because of paid product placement or you just really love the Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothies.

I just got The Fifth Season in the mail. Bought it after reading the blurb about the series on Ars Technica. Anyone into that series? Bad? Good?

Gotta wait to read it until I finish the 3rd book in the Farseer Assassin Trilogy which I am having fun with. I'm about halfway through it.

I was thoroughly impressed. See upthread, probably one page back.

Malor wrote:

I was thoroughly impressed. See upthread, probably one page back.

Great! I'm really looking forward to it after seeing the overview.

I just started it this week on Audible. Maybe five hours in of 15 I think. It's very good so far. Hard to say much without spoiling it but it's very well told, tightly paced, and engrossing. I forgot to stop and get gas twice today while listening on the way to and from work.

tuffalo, just be aware that it's really different than most SF (for one thing, it looks rather like fantasy, but it's soft SF, about the same as anything else in the genre nowadays), and a bit of a challenging read; the first book in particular is architected in a pretty unusual way, and it took me a good while to get settled in, as it were.

If you go in expecting 'the best book ever', there's no way it will live up to that, because you'll imagine something better than anything humans could possibly write. Read it for what it actually is, though, and I think you'll like it a great deal.

As bighoppa points out, it's a really hard book to be specific about. The world is revealed so carefully and elegantly that it feels like a real disservice to say very much about it, beyond "it's worth a read." She's so much better at it than I am that I don't want to metaphorically step on her toes.

That sounds great. I'm all about games, movies, and books doing things different these days. If it has a few fun, innovative ideas that I haven't seen used, especially in terms of structure, I'll probably dig it.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

That sounds great. I'm all about games, movies, and books doing things different these days. If it has a few fun, innovative ideas that I haven't seen used, especially in terms of structure, I'll probably dig it.

I can give you a wholehearted promise that the Fifth Season series will deliver on that.

Just finished the new October Daye book, The Brightest Fell. If you like the series, you'll probably enjoy it. It's sort of a placeholder book, in a sense. It's shortish, or at least reads pretty fast, and seems to be mostly setting up for a bigger story, one that could probably run two books, maybe even three. It's a little darker than many of these books have been, but it still felt mostly like a visit with some friends I hadn't seen in awhile. Not really important, mostly filler, but pleasant nonetheless. The actual important bits are about three chapters' worth, IMO, maybe four.

It's pretty expensive filler. I'd definitely wait for the softcover/cheap digital edition. Not a book you need to read right away. If you like the series, you'll want to read it, but probably not $13 worth.

Katy wrote:

Here's my working list, with Goodreads links:

I extended the list a bit... but we ended up with A Night in The Lonesome October. Thanks, Tanglebones!

Yay! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it when you're done.

Katy mentioned The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, one of his I hadn't heard of, so I blew through it in a couple of hours. (It's not very long, and reads VERY quickly.) It's another variant on his semi-mythic style, YA-flavored in this instance. Dunno if it's actually classed as a YA book, but it should be. (as opposed to, say, the Queen's Thief series, which is classed YA, but doesn't feel like that at all.)

It's a cotton candy story; tastes good, but leaves almost nothing behind.... an entertaining, mindless read. Boy Comes of Age in Graveyard, basically. Cute, but empty.

Just started The Ends of the World, a nonfiction title about the history of climate on Earth, and the five mass extinctions we've had. Five times in deep history, complex life was nearly wiped clean from the planet, and it seems like all of them are related to the carbon cycle. This book is, in a very entertaining way, going through what we know about them... which is surprisingly detailed, given how long ago they happened.

I've been reading The Ends of the World, too. I'm impressed by his use of plentiful adjectives to spice up the prose. It feels like he went back over the manuscript after writing and examined every sentence to see if he could add something adjectival. But he does a good job of jigsawing the science pieces together as you work through the chapters.

I like particularly that he pays attention to ocean acidification, which is kind of the unsexy but really scary part of global warming. Hopefully it'll get peoples attention.

Malor wrote:

Katy mentioned The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, one of his I hadn't heard of, so I blew through it in a couple of hours. (It's not very long, and reads VERY quickly.) It's another variant on his semi-mythic style, YA-flavored in this instance. Dunno if it's actually classed as a YA book, but it should be.

Disagree. Just because the protagonist is young doesn't make it a YA story.

I dunno, ranalin, I didn't see anything remotely challenging or even particularly mature about the story. It's pure fluff, about a boy coming of age. That's sort of dead-center YA material from my perspective.

It is a YA book.

It's the Jungle Book, you guys. Hence the title.

Onto Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

Already fun

Blitzed is great. Puts new perspective on several myths surrounding the military of the Third Reich.

Finished The Fifth Season. Dark, DARK book. f*ck. Good, but just...no. I need to go back to Malazan for a bit to cheer up.

Spoiler:

Uche and Coru both. Coru, mainly. Personal reasons.

Robear wrote:

Blitzed is great. Puts new perspective on several myths surrounding the military of the Third Reich.

Chapter 1: Have you heard of meth because its dope

oilypenguin wrote:

It is a YA book.

It's the Jungle Book, you guys. Hence the title.

I read the graphic novel adaptation and I totally knew that.
So easy! I saw the similarities at once.

After you, you know, made your post.

Natus wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

It is a YA book.

It's the Jungle Book, you guys. Hence the title.

I read the graphic novel adaptation and I totally knew that.
So easy! I saw the similarities at once.

After you, you know, made your post.

I was halfway through when a lightning bolt of "duh" hit me about the title.

Still beavering away at The Ends of the World. It's a pretty slow read, but quite entertaining as nonfiction goes. I do wish he wouldn't jump around from thought to thought to thought quite so much, I'd prefer if he were a little more coherent and focused in his presentation, but it's definitely worth the time.

I'm just getting to the Permian extinction, which was genuinely apocalyptic, coming very, very close to wiping out all complex life on Earth. As my own observation, having to start evolution over from single-cell creatures... well, there might not have been time to do it again before the Sun expanded and ate the Earth.

bighoppa wrote:

Finished The Fifth Season. Dark, DARK book. f*ck. Good, but just...no. I need to go back to Malazan for a bit to cheer up.

Spoiler:

Uche and Coru both. Coru, mainly. Personal reasons.

Just finished this too. I agree it's dark, but what a dark world!

Finished Artemis by Weir over the weekend. It was fun to read. I'd call it a light sci-fi heist. There is a ton of Weir's inner thought type humor in it so if you enjoyed that you will enjoy it more. Great book for a day on the beach.

I also finished The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro which I started based on some recommendations from friends. It is a sort of Arthurian Britain tale that touches on the politics of white washing genocide and is told mostly as the tale of an elderly couple's love for each other as they struggle to recall memories of their relationship...and consider if they even want to. His writing style has been described as, "level banality," and I agree. I'm glad I read it, but I am not sure who would enjoy reading this. I think the closest I can get is Canticle for Leibowitz, the main differences being Canticle is Sci-Fi, more emotionally powerful, and overall written by a more skilled author.

I'm currently reading Cork Dork and it's really good so far. A tech journalist (thing I follow closely) describing in intense detail the wine culture (thing I love) in NYC (place I love) while also getting personal with sommeliers. So far sommeliers seem mostly insane, but in the way that people who are laser focused on their passion seem insane. So, lovably insane.

Bosker was interviewed on the Gastropod podcast earlier this year. It was a pretty good show: https://gastropod.com/cork-dork-insi...

I'm gearing up for Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, about the Vietnam War. His The Coldest Winter on the Korean War was really good, so I'm looking forward to this one.

Just finished Norman Stone's World War One: A Short History. It was merely OK- a little too short to do much more than point out names & places without really getting into why this year or that battle was different from the ones that came before.