Hey, everyone! My name is Matt Dinniman. I am the author of the book series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and this is my first, official AMA for r/Fantasy.
I am posting this now, but I won’t be able to start answering questions for about 30-40 minutes or so.
If you’re not familiar with the series, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a litrpg that follows Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut as they are forced to compete on an alien game show.
My first book came out in 2003, but the first book in the DCC series was self-published in late 2020 after starting out on the web serial site Royal Road. There are currently six books out with book seven, This Inevitable Ruin, coming later this year. Recently, Ace Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, purchased the physical book rights to the first three books. Last week, the hardcover of book one in the series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, was released into the wild and is now available in bookstores, Walmarts, …
What? I keep reading comments like “I skipped Sansa’s chapters” or “I always skip the Tom Bombadil part” or “I skip all the scenes with Denna.”
I try to keep an open mind, but what the hell guys? I mean do you sit down to watch a movie and then just scan ahead and skip all the talking bits too? Don’t you have any faith that the author is going somewhere with this? I 100% do not get this. Can one of you people, if you are people, explain it to me?
If everything goes to plan we will get the following books in 2025:
What did I miss? What are you looking forward to? What am i too optimistic on?
Okay, this book was the first one that I gave a good grade to at first, and then when I started thinking that I liked it in the book, I realized that I found more cons in this book than pros.
There were all sorts of magical creatures in the world of the book, but then a cruel king came and killed most of them, while the rest managed to hide.
This is what we learn from the first book (also that magic is forbidden) and the world of this book seems boring and ordinary at the moment. But it is worth admitting that the author has revealed some details of the world well for the first part of the cycle.
The story tells about the heroine (the most dangerous assassin), imprisoned in a dungeon, which is chosen by Prince Dorian for a tournament in which 16 criminals compete to the death to become the bodyguard of the cruel king and thereby be released from prison. And now the heroine must pass the tests.
In short, if this brief description suggests that something interesting is waiting for …
I recently read a classic book only because a friend challenged me, saying I won’t have the patience and discipline to do it. It was Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. I had no interest in the book and found it depressing and tedious, but was able to finish it.
When I was discussing the book with someone online, he said being challenged to read a book is the wrong reason to read it. Just as it would be wrong to read a classic so you can call yourself well-read. That you need to be interested in the subject or have liked author’s previous work.
I almost felt like the person who goes to a fancy restaurant and uses the wrong fork and gulps down what I should have savored.
What are your thoughts on reasons for reading a book. Do you think other well read people or the author of the book would be offended if you read it for the wrong reason?
I intend to post images of the writing spots of my favourite SF authors. First up is Kim Stanley Robinson, who since 2007 has written outside on this glass table…
He uses plastic tarps above his chair to keep the rains off, and an electric fan to keep cool when it’s hot. In the winter, he wears lots of jumpers, jackets, boots and coats. When it’s icy, he uses an electric blanket. He’s in the chair for 6 to 10 hours every day (“A writing day is an outdoor day!”), and claims that even the birds are so used to him they don’t fly away any more.
IMO you notice a slight tonal shift as he begins to write outdoors. There’s a playfulness from 2007 on, and a lightness of touch, despite his heavy subject matter. Compare the two novels written on either side of this table, for example, the “The Years of Rice and Salt” and “Galileo’s Dream”, one a solemn thing written indoors, the other about a funny …
Link to the article (New Yorker): Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art - “To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.”
Not strictly directly related to the usual topics covered by this subreddit, but it’s come up here enough in comments that I feel like this article probably belongs here for discussion’s sake.
I’m looking for a book that embodies pure hopelessness and melancholy right from the start, something along the lines of “We Who Are About To… “by Joanna Russ.
I want a story where you can feel the inevitability of despair from the first page, with no redemption in sight. It should be a narrative that doesn’t shy away from bleakness or the reality of inevitable doom—no happy endings or uplifting moments, just a raw, unflinching portrayal of human experience.
If you’ve read a book that made you feel the weight of hopelessness and captured a sense of existential dread throughout, I want to hear about it.
P.S i have already read “on the beach” , “i have no mouth”, “the road”, AND 1984 Basically all the recommendations that one finds in every comment on this sub
Edit: thanks for so many recommendations, i have a solid tbr now. But more recommendations are always welcome.
This might be an unpopular opinion since I can see how much this book is loved here on this sub, but I finished it last week and I wasn’t that impressed to be honest.
So I’ve been reading sci-fi for a little more than a year now, more or less the same time I started reading this sub, and I’m always on the look out for new recommendations and adding books to my impossibly large reading list, A fire upon the deep is a book that gets recommended a lot, not only here but pretty much everywhere else, every website, every list, every youtube video people will always mention it. So recently I decided to give it a go.
I’ve had very high expectations for this book, the only thing I knew about it was the concept of the zones of thoughts and how they worked, nothing else, and this is what I had in mind based on the recs: hard sci-fi space opera, big mind bending ideas, story with a galactic scope, lots of cool aliens and locations. And while all of this is true to a …
My first Stephenson book. I enjoyed it for the most part, but the ending felt a bit rushed and then it just suddenly… stopped.
What I enjoyed the most was the info dump at the middle of the book about Sumerian history/myth. I thought it was really neat. What other SF books out there tie in Sumerian lore into the story? I would love to read more of those.
Releasing tomorrow! I’ll have never been happier to wake up and go to work. It’s been a long 9 month wait. -_-
Edit: just to be clear, it’s the audiobook version only for about 4 months, then it should release in print.
Repost with proof
Before Venus and Serena were born, he had a successful cleaning company, concrete company, and a security guard company. He owned three houses. He had 810,000 in the bank just for their tennis. Adjusted for inflation, he was a multi-millionaire.
King Richard led me to believe he was a poor security guard barely making ends meet but through his own power and the girl’s unique talent, they caught the attention of sponsors that paid for the rest of their training. Fact was they lived in a house in Long Beach minutes away from the beach. He moved them to Compton because he had read about Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali coming from the ghetto so they would become battle-hardened and not feel pressure from their matches. For a father to willingly move his young family to the ghetto is already a fascinating story. But instead we got lies through omission.
How many families fell for this false narrative (that’s also been put forth …
UPDATE: Wow, this blew up overnight, far more than I ever could have imagined (I’m more of a lurker than a poster here in the Redditsphere). I’ve had a few people message me that I should edit/update this post since the Jerome Weiselberry channel has quickly grown past 16k subs and is now at 31K as I’m writing this. RIP my inbox, I finally had to give up trying to reply to everyone. I’d like to acknowledge everybody that thanked me for bringing her channel to light and I’m amazed and heartened at the power of Reddit and this community. I hope her channel brings a little joy to everyone’s life.
ORIGINAL POST:
I stumbled upon the Jerome Weiselberry channel back during lockdown and she never fails to surprise me with her insight and choice of films to review. One week she will post about an obscure creature feature or romance from the 1950’s and the next she’ll talk about something like Godzilla Minus One. She’s always honest, never …
I swear to god Soderberg laced this movie with crack. This might be the suavest movie ever made. Effortlessly stylish. Just movie stars being movie stars in a film that knows it’s featuring a shit ton of movie stars so the movie makes the most awesome decision of leaning into its movie star-ness. Everyone is cool. Everyone is a smooth-talking, smug, and intelligent bastard. Everyone is sexy. A movie so up its own ass that’s it’s actually endearing. Plotholes? Who gives a shit. Just enjoy Soderberg’s kinetic cinema unfold with snappy editing, great soundtrack, innovative camerawork, and witty dialogue. A turn your brain off movie that actually forces your brain to stay switched on due to the sheer amount of dopamine hits. Endlessly rewatchable and goes down super easy.
Lot of shit movies get defended because they’re “fun”. This movie is just straight up good BECAUSE it’s fun. Cinema with a capital “C”.