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[Tack]

Prefer subjective opinion to objective link.

[JoshuaFH]

Finished the Jungle, it's godawfully tragic and horrible, even more so as it's based on the real working conditions of the food packing industry, but it's fun to read with how it's a goddamn nonstop parade of tragedy and awfulness happening to the characters. It's almost too much to believe.

Spoiler: the worst death (click to show/hide)

The most awful death in the book probably had to be little Stanislovas', just 15-ish years old, accidentally passed out in his factory in a spot noone could see him, and got locked in, then at night he got cornered and eaten by rats. Just goddamn, he has something like four lines in the book and he's the most heart wrenching one for how little he deserved that.

[Flying Dice]

Prefer subjective opinion to objective link.

No. It is not space opera. It's one of Heinlein's best novels (also one of the ones that belongs to that timeline shared by a lot of his standalones), and sorta defies categorization. It easily carries a slot in my top fifteen novels. Definitely would recommend, particularly to people who like other works of the Golden Age greats (i.e. the ones who wrote novels and short stories that happened to be science fiction, as opposed to the pulp dross).

[kilakan]

Got given the first two books to a series by the author today at work.  They are about a samurai/spy/vampire in modern times.  I don't know what even to make of the books so far, his writing style is enjoyable but the entire concept is just so much what that I'm having to try and not have a biased bad opinion about where the story is going to go.

[JoshuaFH]

I'd been eating my way through a book called "You are now less dumb", which is about fallacies, why humans make them, and how they play into our daily lives and thought processes. The short answer: because we're barely evolved chimp people possessing brains that only have the power of a combined 85 cat brains.

While it's very cynical, it makes up for it by being, interesting, humorous, and never stagnating on one topic too long before switching to the next one.

[Arcvasti]

The short answer: because we're barely evolved chimp people possessing brains that only have the power of a combined 85 cat brains.

I am so going to use the hell out of that statistic.

[NJW2000]

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco.

[Yoink]

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco.

Gosh, I've been meaning to read that for a while.


...As for what I've been reading, well. I was reading Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle, about some Irish dude who comes to New York in the jazz age to escape his criminal past (and a whole bunch of Irish dudes who want to kill him). It seemed pretty good so far, although I wasn't a fan of the prose: it seems the author subscribes to the annoyingly-prevalent "let's use as little punctuation as possible so that people think our book is more fresh and innovative than it actually is" school of thought. Ugh. Still, it summons up a fascinating portrait of the times.

I also started reading The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. This is actually my first Dickens, and I'm pleased to say I can actually see why he's such a legendary author. A really enjoyable read, even if I'm not very far into it yet. Can't shake the feeling that I hazily remember watching an old movie based on it as a kid, in school...

Unfortunately, I seem to have left both those books at my mother's house, and for whatever reason none of my unread books here are grabbing my interest, so I've started re-reading 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Truly a great, strange, depressing and joyful novel all at once.

[Caz]

Conn Iggulden's Wars of the Roses series. Tbh I preferred the old Mongolian setting, medieval england is almost a cliché by now, but eh, the quality of his writing makes it worth reading.

[JoshuaFH]

Been reading Brave New World, venturing even deeper into the teen classics section of my local library. Have to say I'm really liking it, even if characters are caricatures both of ideology and of the time & culture they were written in.

[TheBiggerFish]

This.
Ignore title, get feels.

[Flying Dice]

Finally got my mitts on a copy of The Road to Hell. It continues to hold its title as the only series Weber didn't fuck up.

This.
Ignore title, get feels.

Aww, I was hoping you were prompted by an update.

[Levi]

If anybody is into comics and giant transforming robots, there is a pretty great humble bundle at the moment.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/transformers-revolution-comic-book-bundle

The IDW run of tranformer comics have been fantastic in my opinion (Especially the "More than meets the eye" ones).  The comics in the bundle are from various points in the timeline, but most of it is AFTER the war between the autobots and decepticons ended, and Starscream is the democratically elected leader of Cybertron.

Its also got some GI Joe stuff (and Street Fighter??) mixed in there.  The last 15$ or more tier gives a bunch of the "Revolution" series comics which seems to cross over a lot of the IDW comics and I'm not sure what its about yet, but the 8$ or more tier is all great. 

[TheBiggerFish]

Finally got my mitts on a copy of The Road to Hell. It continues to hold its title as the only series Weber didn't fuck up.

This.
Ignore title, get feels.

Aww, I was hoping you were prompted by an update.

Sorry ;-;

[milo christiansen]

Finally got my mitts on a copy of The Road to Hell. It continues to hold its title as the only series Weber didn't fuck up.

I hadn't realized there were more books in that series...I knew it wasn't complete, but I didn't know if it was abandoned or if there were some I was missing (and it wasn't important enough to me at the time to check). Some review comments lead me to believe there are more books beyond that yet (or that there should be anyway), I think I'll wait to see if more books materialize before I acquire them.

I generally like Weber's work, as long as it ends before he ruins it. The Honor Harrington series was pretty good... until it got stupid (after the peeps got their asses kicked). Safehold is still mostly OK. Most of his other stuff isn't really memorable enough for me to list (it, mostly, wasn't terrible, but it wasn't awesome either). Some of the standalone books were pretty good, but I mostly worry about series.


Lately I have been reading the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia. They aren't bad, but not the greatest I have ever read either. Too bad there are only three of them (plus short stories, but I hate short stories as a rule. The simply don't have enough length to develop a good tale).