Book Recommendations?

Robear wrote:

Here ya go, Charlemagne. The last paragraph ties up the threads neatly.

Ah ok. That makes sense but also doesn't make sense.

Hence the discussion that arose.

You are not wrong!

Calculating the Stars is free to download via Tor. I know some folks here recommended this book.

Just re-read Neuromancer. I remember posting about it here a couple years ago, but I still really enjoyed it. The first time around, I remember being surprised at the style of prose, and had difficulty following along. This time, I made sure to pay closer attention and was able to pretty much grok what was going on, and things were mostly clear by the end. I feel like I could read it a third time and still pick up new things, though. There's a surprising amount of variety in settings for a relatively short book, yet the grimy neon mood manages to stay consistent.

The followup, Count Zero, is waiting on my self to read. I'm going to take a break from the grit and start The City of Brass next, though.

I loved City of Brass!

Just finished Shadow Divers about finding an unknown U boat off the coast of NJ. Couldn’t put it down.

City of Brass is my next one too. I'll be interested in your take, bean.

firesloth wrote:

Calculating the Stars is free to download via Tor. I know some folks here recommended this book.

That's a great book, but keep in mind that it's only half the story. What was originally intended as a single large volume was split into two, because it got unwieldy.

If you want to finish that story, you'll have to buy the second book.... which is a lot cheaper than buying both, but it's not free.

Totally worth it, btw, just don't go in expecting zero total cost.

beanman101283 wrote:

I'm going to take a break from the grit and start The City of Brass next, though.

It's so good! (I just finished the third, Empire of Gold). Not sure you're getting away from the grit, though, the series has plenty of that.

Just finished Gordon Corrigan's The Second World War: A Military History . Not bad, and covered some lesser-known areas (like Burma) more than I was used to, probably because it's very British-centered.

Corrigan is very opinionated to the point of snark, and for a Brit he really has knives out for both Churchill (amateur meddler in military affairs) and Montgomery (middling commander but raging self-promoter). He loves the Gurkhas and apparently served with them as an army officer himself. But in general he's very much in the 'Wehrmacht was the best soldiers' camp which I understand is passing out of style.

At one point he asserts that General Henri Giraud was 'even more arrogant than De Gaulle' and I was forced to wonder 'does that dial actually go to 11?'.

He also throws a couple of bombs in the conclusion, wondering aloud if maybe Patton was right that the Allies should have re-armed the Wehrmacht and headed for Moscow (while admitting it was inconceivable), or if MacArthur should have been allowed to nuke China in 1951. Like I said, in general he doesn't spare the snark but some of that sounds like "just saying, wink wink nudge nudge".

I think as a general military history I'd recommend Max Hastings Inferno / All Hell Let Loose over this, but it was enjoyable.

What about Keegan's "The Second World War"? That's my favorite.

I liked Keegan's as well though it's been a few years. I remember it concentrating on a few specific battles or campaigns as exemplars which is an interesting way of going about it. I've always liked Keegan, though I found A History of Warfare painfully dry.

It's just, he doesn't go crazy at the end with far-Right revenge fantasies lol.

For any fans of the Kate Daniels series, they are posting a follow up named Ryder on their blog that tells the tale of Julie's venture back into Atlanta ~eight years after the conclusion of Magic Triumphs. If you are, or were, a fan of the series, it's a fun read so far. Not sure about this, but I'll assume it will be something like the innkeeper series they do. Free chapters approximately weekly, after it's finished they release a novella and remove the free stuff.

Oh nice!

Our local library has time limited visits at the moment, which meant I ended up grabbing a bunch of books based mostly on their covers. Of those, the best was House of Names by Colm Toibin. It's a reimagining of the Agamemnon and Clytemnestra story. I wondered how a short tragedy would work as a 300 page novel, but it turned out to be surprisingly gripping tale! It's told from several perspectives and manages to make each character believable but also recognisably not of our time.

I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers yesterday, and I loved it. Thank you to all who recommended it! From what I've seen on Amazon, it seems like the sequels star different characters. Is this right?

Also, I don't think I mentioned I finished Joe Hill's short-story collection Full Throttle right before starting The Long Way..., and I also found it very enjoyable. I tend to like his short stories better than his novels, something many people say of his dad.

Finally, I started Blake Crouch's Recursion last night. I'm only 10% in, but I am intrigued so far. My wife loved it, and I know several people here enjoyed it as well, so I am very curious to see what happens next and what the story is actually about, because I honestly know nothing about the book!

Mario_Alba wrote:

I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers yesterday, and I loved it. Thank you to all who recommended it! From what I've seen on Amazon, it seems like the sequels star different characters. Is this right?

Sort of. The second book primarily follows one of the characters from the first (the AI in a new body, but includes another of the ships’s crew). I didn’t like this one as much, though it’s still endearing. The third book, which I just finished and liked a lot better than the second, follows a family member of the captain, Ashby, and other characters on the same Exodan home ship. It’s an exploration of lives in the Exodan fleet, and I found it very well done. Like Long Way, the overarching plot is sort of secondary to the lives of the characters. It was touching in some of the same ways as the first book.

Outside of that series, I also really liked her To Be Taught, If Fortunate.

Finished Jo Walton's "Tooth and Claw", and it was great fun. A classic Victorian drama, with the usual tropes very well executed, impeccable writing and just generally able to yank me out of the world for a few hours.

Well, I should add that she describes it well as "A Victorian drama with dragons who eat each other". And she really commits to that conceit, building it into the base of the society in interesting ways. Very much worth reading if the premise at all interests you.

firesloth wrote:
Mario_Alba wrote:

I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers yesterday, and I loved it. Thank you to all who recommended it! From what I've seen on Amazon, it seems like the sequels star different characters. Is this right?

Sort of. The second book primarily follows one of the characters from the first (the AI in a new body, but includes another of the ships’s crew). I didn’t like this one as much, though it’s still endearing. The third book, which I just finished and liked a lot better than the second, follows a family member of the captain, Ashby, and other characters on the same Exodan home ship. It’s an exploration of lives in the Exodan fleet, and I found it very well done. Like Long Way, the overarching plot is sort of secondary to the lives of the characters. It was touching in some of the same ways as the first book.

Outside of that series, I also really liked her To Be Taught, If Fortunate.

Thanks, firesloth! That clarifies everything. I had seen several negative reviews of the third book, but it does sound interesting. And the second one as well!

As for To Be Taught, If Fortunate, I read it a few months ago and loved it. That's what really made me seek out The Long Way... and read it.

Robear wrote:

Finished Jo Walton's "Tooth and Claw", and it was great fun. A classic Victorian drama, with the usual tropes very well executed, impeccable writing and just generally able to yank me out of the world for a few hours.

Well, I should add that she describes it well as "A Victorian drama with dragons who eat each other". And she really commits to that conceit, building it into the base of the society in interesting ways. Very much worth reading if the premise at all interests you.

I haven't yet read this one (wasn't it free from TOR a while back?) but I love Jo Walton's writing!

Seven out of eight books in a series I want to read are available on Kindle... the first one is the one that isn't available?!?!?!?!?!

What series, Rykin?

That seems odd.

Happens at our library too. Often seems to be that people request books after they have read the first one on their own. It’s how I end up owning weird numbers within a series

The Overdrive app has a way to request books at one library I use. Doesn’t hurt to ask if they’ll buy it.

MathGoddess wrote:

Happens at our library too. Often seems to be that people request books after they have read the first one on their own. It’s how I end up owning weird numbers within a series

The Overdrive app has a way to request books at one library I use. Doesn’t hurt to ask if they’ll buy it.

I used to get a lot of response to that back when I was early in the game on Overdrive use. I'd say 80% of stuff I requested would get added to the catalog. Now my library only lets me submit one request every 14 days.

Robear wrote:

What series, Rykin?

The Blending series by Sharon Green. Odd thing is most of them are even Kindle Unlimited titles and it looks like the first book used to be available on Kindle based on reviews from years ago.

Huh. Same thing for me. Very strange.

Edit - When I googled it, the actual Kindle page came up with a price box that said "This title is not currently available for purchase". Which I think means the publisher is doing some work on it. Maybe it's being updated, or reformatted, or something like that.

Robear wrote:

Huh. Same thing for me. Very strange.

Edit - When I googled it, the actual Kindle page came up with a price box that said "This title is not currently available for purchase". Which I think means the publisher is doing some work on it. Maybe it's being updated, or reformatted, or something like that.

I've seen this several times on Audible, where stuff I've had in my wish list for a long time just goes off of Audible entirely. Probably due to some kind of legalities around the rights.

Frustrating, though.

Just finished John Barry’s The Great Influenza. I’ve read a lot of books on the 1918 pandemic. I think this one is my favorite (so far).