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Author Topic: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013  (Read 58094 times)

Realmfighter

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #660 on: September 10, 2013, 03:01:27 am »
Spoiler: 29/52 completed (click to show/hide)
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Neonivek

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #661 on: September 10, 2013, 03:11:34 am »
I am wondering...

How many people here tend to only read in HUGE stretches? Like for no less then 4 hours.
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Sappho

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #662 on: September 10, 2013, 08:41:18 am »
Spoiler: 1 through 34 (click to show/hide)

Book 35: Coraline - Neil Gaiman

I read this book by accident. I intended to just skim the first few pages and see if it was an appropriate level for a non-native-English-speaking friend of mine trying to improve her English. A few hours later I had finished reading it. It's supposed to be a children's book, but I should have known better. It's a Neil Gaiman book.

Total Pages Read: 11321
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i2amroy

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #663 on: September 10, 2013, 10:54:08 am »
Quote from: Neonivek on September 10, 2013, 03:11:34 am
I am wondering...

How many people here tend to only read in HUGE stretches? Like for no less then 4 hours.
I tend to read in long blocks, yes. I really have problems with the "just one more chapter and then I'm done" bug, to the point where I never read near the time I should go to sleep because I won't be able to stop.
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jhxmt

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #664 on: September 10, 2013, 06:16:00 pm »
Finished The Rapture of the Nerds yesterday.  A fun book - I like the pairing of Doctorow and Stross, they should write together again!  :)

Spoiler: 4/52 (click to show/hide)

Started book 5 last night: The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith.
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Dutchling

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #665 on: September 12, 2013, 02:14:18 pm »
Spoiler: 22/52 (click to show/hide)
Finished book #22, Prince of Thornes, by Mark Lawrence.
It was a nice book. At the beginning the setting was a little strange. It (what I thought it was) went from "generic fantasy" to "lazy fantasy" to "alternative collapse of the Roman Empire without Charlemagne" to "post apocalyptic world where technology is gone and people have all gone medieval again".

Still, a good book. 4/5. Definitely going to buy the sequel.
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Flying Dice

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #666 on: September 12, 2013, 02:45:07 pm »
Quote from: i2amroy on September 10, 2013, 10:54:08 am
Quote from: Neonivek on September 10, 2013, 03:11:34 am
I am wondering...

How many people here tend to only read in HUGE stretches? Like for no less then 4 hours.
I tend to read in long blocks, yes. I really have problems with the "just one more chapter and then I'm done" bug, to the point where I never read near the time I should go to sleep because I won't be able to stop.
I do that a lot with fanfiction because it's easy to lose track of time. Less so with genre fiction and "real" literature, for some reason. Probably relating to time constraints and my unwillingness to stop at anything short of a chapter/section break. I used to do that, though, tearing through novels in an afternoon. I still do it on occasion, but I rarely have the time.

Made a bit more progress on Paradise Lost since my last post (only a bit because I'm spending a lot of time rereading and going over the foot- and post-notes to fully grasp all of the meanings), and knocked out a bunch of fanfics. Some might even be worth listing here, though I've lost track of my finishing dates.
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i2amroy

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #667 on: September 12, 2013, 10:14:14 pm »
After many hours of reading and over 12,000 pages (that's some 28% bigger then the Lord of the Rings), I've finally finished it; books 11 - 14 for the Wheel of Time series are finished, bringing the masterpiece to a close. An incredible ending to a great series (though you might want to avoid it if you don't like bureaucratic-type series, the amount of characters/politics that happen over the course of the series is incredibly huge).

Spoiler: Books Finished 56/75 (click to show/hide)
Total Pages: 26,375
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It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

jhxmt

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #668 on: September 18, 2013, 04:18:34 pm »
Finished The Rediscovery of Man in the small hours of this morning.  Excellent sci-fi with a surprisingly epic-in-scope feel to it - it's a series of short stories all set in the same universe, with large chunks of time basically missing and only hinted at (a lot of the author's notes and even full stories were actually lost, so it genuinely feels like an archaeological expedition at times...it's a bit like reading through DF Legends Mode without a viewer!)  ;D

Spoiler: 5/52 (click to show/hide)

Starting book 6 tonight: The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M Banks (RIP :().
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Sappho

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #669 on: September 22, 2013, 11:23:48 am »
Spoiler: 1 through 35 (click to show/hide)

Books 36 and 37: Foundation, and Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov

I read these books many years ago. I remembered loving them, but I didn't remember much about the plot. I got my hands on a paperback copy of Foundation and devoured it in two days, forsaking all other responsibilities and hobbies in the meantime (I don't get much spare time lately). I couldn't figure out an easy way to get the rest of the series fast enough, living as I do in a non-English-speaking country, so I found digital copies instead and tore through the second book just as quickly, even though I had to read it on the computer. I neglected planning my lessons for the coming week so I could finish it today.

What can be said? They are works of pure genius. I'm pausing before moving on to the third book, only long enough to write this. Now, if you'll excuse me...

Total pages read: 11858

EDIT: I interrupt my feast of Second Empire just to note that Asimov had some kind of crazy love affair with the word "sardonic." I've never seen it used so frequently.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2013, 11:57:26 am by Sappho »
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jhxmt

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #670 on: September 22, 2013, 04:20:26 pm »
Quote from: Sappho on September 22, 2013, 11:23:48 am
Books 36 and 37: Foundation, and Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov

...

What can be said? They are works of pure genius. I'm pausing before moving on to the third book, only long enough to write this. Now, if you'll excuse me...

...

EDIT: I interrupt my feast of Second Empire just to note that Asimov had some kind of crazy love affair with the word "sardonic." I've never seen it used so frequently.

I re-read the Robot series, the Empire series and the Foundation series not too long ago - in 'sequence', as far as such a thing can be done (in theory they're all part of the same universe and timeline, but in practice many of them were written before this was decided, so there's a little bit of crowbarring to get some of them to fit).  It's amazing - shows a sweep of time from what is effectively near-future (and this is 1950s near-future, remember) to the far, far distant reaches of mankind's time in the galaxy.  I know that Foundation (and sequels) was inspired by The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire, but I hadn't appreciated how epic in scope the whole set was until I put them all together.  And I use the word 'epic' justifiably in this instance, I hope.  Not sardonically.  :P
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Sappho

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #671 on: September 23, 2013, 02:17:01 pm »
And now I can add #38: Second Foundation.

Not quite as good as the first two, but that may be because the first time I read it was more recent, and I remembered some of the surprises. Also, this one deals with just a few individuals, not so much with grand sweeps of the forces of history. I think I like the logic of psychohistory as it flows in the earlier books more than the close looks at people's relationships and personalities. Anyway, on to book 4....
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Lectorog

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #672 on: September 23, 2013, 02:26:55 pm »
There was a book sale today, $1 per book. I picked up all the Asimov I could find: Foundation, 2nd Foundation: Galactic Empire, The Naked Sun, The Martian Way, View from a Height, and The Rest of the Robots. I don't even know what they are past the first two, and on the 2nd I don't know what the Galactic Empire part means. I figure they're all probably worth reading though.
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Sappho

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #673 on: September 23, 2013, 03:14:10 pm »
Everything written by Asimov is worth reading. And the man did write about nearly everything there is. I borrowed a few of his non-fiction books from a physics teacher back in high school and even they were so interesting I couldn't put them down.
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jhxmt

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Re: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013
« Reply #674 on: September 25, 2013, 03:48:27 pm »
Quote from: Lectorog on September 23, 2013, 02:26:55 pm
I don't even know what they are past the first two, and on the 2nd I don't know what the Galactic Empire part means. I figure they're all probably worth reading though.

I read them in the order Asimov suggests in Prelude to Foundation, and I highly recommend it if possible - I'd read them before, out of that order, and they flow much better this way:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series#List_of_books_within_the_Foundation_Universe
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