Book Recommendations?

MannishBoy wrote:

Got on chat and they recredited the coupon, which I promptly spent in the sale. Annoying I had to spend the time twice to get credit for one of their previous sales, but I guess it worked out.

Nice work! These days I feel like company policies are geared towards mentally tiring you out of getting what you are owed.

EvilDead wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Got on chat and they recredited the coupon, which I promptly spent in the sale. Annoying I had to spend the time twice to get credit for one of their previous sales, but I guess it worked out.

Nice work! These days I feel like company policies are geared towards mentally tiring you out of getting what you are owed.

I try to be exceedingly nice while also stubbornly arguing facts. Doesn't always work, but more often than not it's effective.

karmajay wrote:

Same. Amazing the amount of quality reads you can get in the genre.

Any recommendations? I've enjoyed The Wandering Inn; The System Apocalypse; and Adventures on Brad

litRPG?

Wandering Inn is the best piece of literature to ever be written and I've only read all the ebooks so far!

I honestly like a majority of what I've read but some other series I've enjoyed are He Who Fights with Monsters, The Good Guys, The Bad Guys, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Mother of Learning and Defiance of the Fall (gets real crunchy in later books). All these have really good world building and characters. Not a all encompassing list just some off the top of my head.

The 1st He Who Fights with Monsters book gets a bit into the system in the 1st book but backs off it a little in other books.

@Robear LitRPG

Sometimes it can be background sometimes a bit more in your face but I have been really surprised with the quality of the majority of the litrpg style books I've read the last couple of years.

Thanks!

If you want something on the lighter side, I thought this was really fun:
Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel

I did enjoy that one.

Wow, didn't see this coming. The Kindle Scribe, available Nov 30. Read books, write notes in them, export notes, keep a journal, etc.

Looks like it's meant for students. But it's their first 10.5" unit in a while.

WHERE IS THE COLOR E-INK KINDLE?!

Edit - Unfortunately, all the writing videos on the page show the palm not touching the screen. Palm detection is important to prevent serious wrist and forearm issues. You have to be able to rest your hand near where you write. This may be a big issue for Amazon.

"You're writing it wrong"

Brandon Sanderson's "The Lost Metal" book came out today in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn series. Got it queued up from the library.

I just finished his Dawnshard audiobook novella, which I enjoyed.

MannishBoy wrote:

Brandon Sanderson's "The Lost Metal" book came out today in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn series. Got it queued up from the library.

I just finished his Dawnshard audiobook novella, which I enjoyed.

My hardcover copy is, presumably, on its way from Amazon!

Undercover by Tamsyn Muir (of Locked Tomb fame). In what seems to be an archetypal lawless Old West town (but is gradually revealed to be something very different), in a world where zombies and ghouls are an ongoing menace, a tough young woman hires on as bodyguard to the local gang leader. Turns out she's also expected to act as keeper for the saloon's prime attraction, an unusual zombie with enough brains to talk and dance - as long as she's kept supplied with (to put it delicately) the right sort of food. But all three characters have secrets within secrets, unfolding over the course of the story. Up to Muir's usual standards of cool world building with a touch of necromancy. Recommended.

Math wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Brandon Sanderson's "The Lost Metal" book came out today in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn series. Got it queued up from the library.

I just finished his Dawnshard audiobook novella, which I enjoyed.

My hardcover copy is, presumably, on its way from Amazon!

It's pretty Cosmere heavy. I don't know how more casual readers will react to such overt interconnections. I'm deep enough into it to know the references, but I worry it will infuriate others.

DudleySmith wrote:
Math wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Brandon Sanderson's "The Lost Metal" book came out today in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn series. Got it queued up from the library.

I just finished his Dawnshard audiobook novella, which I enjoyed.

My hardcover copy is, presumably, on its way from Amazon!

It's pretty Cosmere heavy. I don't know how more casual readers will react to such overt interconnections. I'm deep enough into it to know the references, but I worry it will infuriate others.

Why would others pick up the last book of a series to start reading?

I think he means Cosmere as in the overall setting that many of Sanderson’s works take place in. So, even if you’ve read all of the previous Mistborn books (6 plus a novella?), you may not pick up on references to other books in the Cosmere.

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Cosmere

Current series in the cosmere are the Elantris trilogy, Mistborn series, Warbreaker (and its eventual sequel), The Stormlight Archive, and White Sand. It does not include any books that reference Earth, as Earth is not in the cosmere.

Yes, GT Chris is right. Sanderson's got the impression that people don't hate there being more overt references, and characters from other bits of the Cosmere in the later books and has said "the gloves are off" compared to the subtle stuff in earlier books.

He's not building up to The Cosmere Avengers (the heroes from each sequence aren't going to turn up to fight the biggest bad or anything), but stuff from Mistborn, Elantris or Warbreaker can turn up in Stormlight for example. They aren't plot critical (so you'll still understand the book just fine) but you can tell certain things are references to other series.

The diagrams of which order to read the Cosmere in are becoming more complicated. I know when I look at 100 4 hour episodes of Critical Role, I just nope out, so it might just seem a bit daunting, even though the early series are very self-contained.

I consider this the 2nd part of the Mistborn series, but maybe i'm too early, but don't see anything that goes beyond that currently.

I've always seen the Cosmere stuff, up to this point, as deep-lore eastereggs that are disposable for a single series'/novel's plot. They are definitely on the cusp of becoming more important though, as certain details in The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) and Rhythm of War (Stormlight #4) indicate. Some of the short fiction is heavily, heavily into the Cosmere weeds though, Mistborn: Secret History for example.

DudleySmith wrote:
Math wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Brandon Sanderson's "The Lost Metal" book came out today in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn series. Got it queued up from the library.

I just finished his Dawnshard audiobook novella, which I enjoyed.

My hardcover copy is, presumably, on its way from Amazon!

It's pretty Cosmere heavy. I don't know how more casual readers will react to such overt interconnections. I'm deep enough into it to know the references, but I worry it will infuriate others.

Dawnshard also has some specific Cosmere call outs. Like the word "Cosmere", not casual references to other books.

I just finished The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I enjoyed the characterisation work and the feeling of a world moving into a modern age and that was despite it being a bit too grim dark for my tastes, the humour was just enough to leaven it. The book doesn’t come to any real conclusion so I will definitely be giving the second book a shot.

bbk1980 wrote:

I just finished The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I enjoyed the characterisation work and the feeling of a world moving into a modern age and that was despite it being a bit too grim dark for my tastes, the humour was just enough to leaven it. The book doesn’t come to any real conclusion so I will definitely be giving the second book a shot.

The series gets better as it goes along. The Blade Itself was his first novel, and it's pretty clunky in places.

Without giving too much away, there is a duel between two characters in the third novel, and that's the only time as an adult that I have stayed up late reading a book, because I absolutely needed to know who was going to win before I could go to sleep. It gets really compelling.

It certainly doesn't get any less grimdark as it goes on. I respect his books, but they aren't my cup of tea

I had always heard how grimdark Abercrombie's books were, so I was surprised that The Blade Itself and its followup weren't as dark as I expected. The third book, though, was one gut punch after another by the end.

Best Served Cold, the standalone followup to the first trilogy was excellent, but also incredibly grim.

Re-reading Cat's Cradle and this is your regular reminder to read Vonnegut. His writing is so light and informal and just downright fun, but he's grubbing around deep down in the depths of the human soul.

Reading/Listening to the Expanse makes me want to go into space. The fragile human body verses the ocean of stars.

Speaking of space, I finally read my first Iain M. Banks book (as opposed to my first Iain Banks) meaning it was s/f: The Algebraist. Overall, I just loved it, and it was a very easy read/listen. However, I have quite a few issues with his writing: his use or rather lack of use of female characters, his over-indulgence and over-writing, and what I call "chessboard mechanics." But even with all of that included, I highly recommend the book not just for the crazy breadth of imagination but for the writing itself, which is always a pleasure to read, though as the Emperor says in Amadeus, there are simply "too many notes."

May I recommend his Culture books? Particularly "The Player of Games", "Surface Detail" or"Consider Phlebas". He also wrote a large number of *excellent* regular fiction under the name Iain Banks. I recommend "The Crow Road" or "The Bridge".

"It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach." - The first two lines of "The Crow Road".

Banks was an absolute creative genius, and he positively spews out ideas in his writing. In that he's the modern Jack Vance, I feel. He creates worlds and characters that will challenge you and make you think about them long after you finish them, and periodic re-reads are just a joy of life.

Greg Bear has died. The author of "Blood Music", "Darwin's Radio", "Hull Zero Three" and many other fascinating SF books, he was both prolific and personable. A writer's writer.

RIP.

I enjoyed Greg Bear's Eon, ambivalent on Eternity, might read Legacy some day.

Darwin's Radio I enjoyed on the first read, found it rather long and dry on the second. Darwin's Children I did not particularly enjoy.