Think I have him hooked into fantasy!
What did they not say?
That there are FOOTNOTES WITH ADDITIONAL WRY SILLINESS! Damn I love a good footnote.
That your spouse will tell you they’re kicking you out of bed if you don’t stop laughing as you read! So grumpy.
I’m only on page 50ish and am really enjoying myself. Thank you to the so very many of you who’ve recommended Guards! Guards! over the years I’ve lurked and become more active on the sub, and my apologies for dismissing your rec so quickly for so long. I thought that a SFF novel/series known for hilarity would not be my cup of tea, but wanted another entry for Made You Laugh, so here I am: laughing and eating my words. So far, so good - I look forward to what comes in the heart of the book.
And for those who’ve lovingly recommended it, why do yo love it? After all, sometimes silliness falls flat, or doesn’t have enough of a plot or compelling enough characters to carry it. Any favorite lines, situations, pratfalls? At this …
Looking for good fantasy book recommendations where the women are treated well. For context, I just read the Clocktaur War duology by T. Kingfisher and loved it. The main character Slate had a flourishing career as a forger, rape was not a part of the plot, and the love interest was respectful and protective without being domineering. One of the side characters on their adventure is a scholar who comes from a community that is sexist, but his comments are played for laughs and treated as ridiculous by the other men, and his outlook is eventually changed by the end of the second book.
I’m already planning on picking up Swordheart and Paladin’s Grace by the same author, but I’d really love more recommendations in this same vein. I’m not picky about subgenres, though I do like a bit of romance.
It’s one of my biggest pet peeves. I love beautiful cover art on books and I hate to say I do judge a book by its cover. There’s this book I want its a Swedish horror novel and every single copy I can find the cover is a still from the movie adaption. I hate being this picky but when I know the original cover art for the book is nice I don’t want a film poster on it. I almost don’t even want to get the book. I’ve seen this trend happen with a lot books that turned into movies and frankly I don’t care that it’s a movie. I’m here for the book! I don’t want to see the movie cover I want to see the original book cover. I love how unique book cover art can be and I feel like slapping the movie poster on every new copy does the book a slight disservice. I know im sounding like a cover snob and I know there’s more to books than the book cover but I cant help but being annoyed when it’s all I can find for new copies.
Edit: on …
It happens to me all the time. I finish a book, enjoy it thoroughly, think I learned so much from it, but when I think back six months later, I realize I hardly remember anything from that book. Sometimes it feels like I didn’t really finish that book if I didn’t truly digest it but I also know that you are supposed to forget most of what you read because that’s how human brain works. How do you deal with that?
They also say the same about lectures though. They say that as soon as you walk away from a lecture, you already forgot 95% of the material covered in it.
Edit: Wow, I didn’t expect this many responses, not even close.
I know a lot of people who will only read non fiction, mainly books that will equate to a more “successful” life. When I ask them what their favorite fiction novel is a lot of people tell me they don’t read fiction because it’s a waste of time and they can use that time to learn more by reading more non fiction. Now to be clear if you if read only non fiction because fiction doesn’t entertain you then that’s fine. But if you are reading books for the sole purpose of bettering yourself then I feel these people are really missing a big opportunity by not reading fiction.
For me personally I get facts from non fiction books and fiction helps me improve my empathy and abstract thinking.
Would love to hear everyone’s take on this!
Edit: whoa I did not think this would get as much traction. I think my point is getting misconstrued. This isn’t a post judging people on what they read. I’m talking about the logic some people use for not reading fiction. That some people only read the …
I feel that Frankenstein and his monster are so ingrained in popular culture for over 100 years. Many movies have been made. So why is the book so very different from popular cultures interpretations of the book and its monster. Am I not understanding it? It seems the monster is not a monster at all. He feels and thinks.
Not to mention a load of extra story that I’ve never seen in the movie or media on the book.
So are the movies based on other things? Did they just change it all for some reason?
Sometimes I find aliens can seem a bit human for my liking. Examples of aliens I have loved:
The Gods Themselves - gaseous aliens that solidify as a triad
Revelation Space - planet aliens that mangle your mind
Solaris - Planet Ocean that just mimics
Blindsight - uncommunicatable starfish that move as our eyes vibrate?
Children of Time - intelligent spiders
What are your favourite truly alien aliens?
… and it takes painful efforts to generate one.
A synthetic \“showcase\” of the books I read in the recent years (v2)
There doesn’t seem to be a readily made tool for this task;
edit: adding a few more books; adding “new” labels and “Audible” labels …
Freshly published and finished in one cozy afternoon (as it should be) I just want to share my thoughts about this highly recommended fourth novel in the Wayfarer series by Becky chambers. No spoilers, I will be talking about the novel in the most general terms so that people unfamiliar with Becky Chambers novels can follow and for a novel like this I think it’s the best approach.
Here’s the blurb:
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When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.
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Let me get this out of the way first: Becky Chambers is not for everyone. Most Scifi uses certain trusty plot structures of other genres as a scaffold. You have your standard action plot, political thrillers, murder …
‘The Cold Equations’ is a famous short story which has a controversial place in SF history. A girl stows away on a spaceship and the pilot is reluctantly forced to throw her out of the airlock because otherwise the ship will crash and be unable to save a planet from a plague.
Many writers, for example Cory Doctorow , criticize it as an example of ‘stacking the deck’. In other words the author has engineered the story to force some outcome they want.
The parameters of ‘‘The Cold Equations’’ are not the inescapable laws of physics. Zoom out beyond the page’s edges and you’ll find the author’s hands carefully arranging the scenery so that the plague, the world, the fuel, the girl and the pilot are all poised to inevitably lead to her execution.
Obviously all authors control the story’s parameters and outcome, but sometimes it feels particularly unnatural, especially when it leads to some moral dilemma that a character is forced to solve to the …