Reading Charlie and the Great glass elevator.
Not
Aged
Well
6 Likes
(With mod hat resting at a rakish angle)
Fair points all round, let’s drop it now.
7 Likes
RogerBW Roger, Roger. 
Enjoying Lovecraft’s novels. I’ve been rereading them for a while now, but I really enjoy reading his creepy (sometimes funny) stories, in which he creates the atmosphere of a man who’s in a jam 
7 Likes
Finished Amongst Our Weapons last Thursday. Took me less of a week, which given how little I am reading lately, it is quite remarkable. I can see @Marx point about stereotypes, and I think the book might bring those more up due to the police theme it has been immersed in.
Before this conversation started, I had noticed that in this book, each character first description includes a racial feature, which in my head it makes sense as it is something a police officer would do due to training and procedures. So if a person is white, he will describe it as white, which I welcomed. Hardly any books I read do that. But then again, hardly any books I have read are from people from my generation or younger, so I guess that is a factor.
Besides that, I did really enjoy the book a lot (hence why it took me so little to read it) and I will take that as a positive thing.
2 Likes
“Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise… Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency… Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope… Our four…no… Amongst our weapons… Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise… I’ll come in again.”
6 Likes
Oh really? My son has just started reading it
Currently rereading a load of Lindsay Davies Falco books. Always an enjoyable read.
1 Like
There’s a questionable chapter involving the Chinese Premier
1 Like
Started a book that I have been wanting to read for a while, Scar Tissue, from Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of Red Hot Chili Peppers. I have always heard really good things about it, and so far is not disappointing.
4 Likes
I finished Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, a book my wife gifted me. Probably because it won a Hugo award.
It is the first book of a series. It was fine. The world building has some nice aspects (being set in a Mesoamerican , but doesn’t really do anything ambitious with it. It just feels like standard fantasy world with some inclusive twist (a third gender xir / xe and homosexuality without anyone being surprised). but the ending was underwhelming (there wasn’t really a climax, it was just over, it was a whole setup book), one main character annoyed me a lot and didn’t feel very interesting (she felt like an adolescent but was over 30 years old, getting outmaneuvered by everybody while being the boss of them). Also the book was pretty predictable in some ways, a lot of telling instead of showing.
But also finished Matt Dinniman’s fifth Dungeon Crawler Carl book The Butcher’s Masquerade and that one was nerve wracking. Very tense and exciting. Great read! Looking forward to book 6 coming out on July 2nd!
Now onto my reread of Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson. I think I could read another Cradle novel on the side.
3 Likes
I thought Roanhorse’s “Trail of Lightning” was really good, have read reviews saying it’s probably her best one.
1 Like
Finished listening to Jade Legacy. The green bone saga is awesome, very fantasy meets the godfather. The characters are really great and it nicely pulls together all the different strands towards a satisfying ending.
1 Like
Just finished A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney.
Its a memoir about his son who is diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer at the age of 1 up until (and the effect of) he dies when he is two and a half. It has absolutely devasted me. Totally fucking floored.
- It is also beautiful and actually, in places, very funny.
4 Likes
A question… where do you guys buy books in the epub format in the US or UK? The German book stores are often bad with English books (meaning they don’t have them).
Amazon has all the books but I dislike getting mobi format and converting it. Also dislike supporting them when there should be good alternatives.
1 Like
Although Amazon is still The Devil, they are apparently dropping MOBI as a format.
Just an FYI.
1 Like
They have been using kfx internally for ages and I think at some point they introduced some support for epub. So mobi is now another dead format. Most of my zine subscriptions have been epub/pdf only for a while as well. So dropping mobi… ah well.
In any case my next eReader will not be a kindle.
@Boronian I buy ebooks at ebooks.com or at Thalia. They have a weird model where you have to install some download software but it works and gives you nice epubs to put in your calibre library. Also sometimes smashwords (very niche) or Barnes & Noble (rarely). Not buying at amazon often means stuff is more expensive but we all know how cheap prices at quasi-monopolists come to pass. (note most of my ebooks were still bought via amazon over the past many years, recently I have not been reading as much. I have converted my whole library into a calibre library so I am not bound to amazon anymore)
2 Likes
I’m reading (listening to Dominic West read it) the remains of the day. I’m really really delighted with it so far.
2 Likes
@Marx Oh I didn’t know that. Very interesting, that would remove one big thing for me.
@yashima Thanks for the suggestions, these are the ones I know and checked before but they don’t have the book I was looking for, it is only on Amazon.
But I was really surprised about the fact that I couldn’t find a real alternative to Amazon in the US because the market seems so big. I thought it is Barnes & Noble (their name is even known here in Germany, a bit at least) but their selection isn’t actually that good.
So I guess I continue using Amazon.
1 Like