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Post by Sarfrin on May 18, 2022 18:58:01 GMT
The complete Witcher series is 99p on the Amazon Kindle daily deal today. Been curious to try them for a while. No reason not to at that price. Thanks!
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Post by Bill in the rain on May 19, 2022 1:44:10 GMT
I found them to be rather hard going. I'm not entirely sure if the translation is wonderful, but I thought the stories were a bit awkward, too. They had their moments and they weren't terrible, but they weren't great either. Some people really love them, but I kinda agree with this. They're a bit like the games in that there are lots of things that seem a bit janky, but there's also just something about them that makes them appealing. Every time they were a bit hard going, something would happen to make me warm to them again. The first 1 or 2 are short story compilations, so they're pretty accessible if you want to just give it a try.
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Post by Bill in the rain on May 22, 2022 6:42:08 GMT
Not reading, but I'd been trying to remember the name of a kids book about a gang of street kids for years, which was annoying the hell out of me, and a random short story I read a few days ago referenced it! Thank fuck as it was driving me crazy.
The Borribles! London street kids go on a mission to assassinate The Wombles.... I'm not sure how I could have forgotten!
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Post by grandpaulrira on May 22, 2022 8:38:03 GMT
I've quite enjoyed the Witcher books, although I've not read them all. I started with the short stories collected in The Last Wish book, and maybe that helped as it kept my interest high enough while the characters grew on me.
They're like fairy tales with a harsh edge. It isn't high art, but entertaining if you want a page turner.
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Post by deekyfun on May 23, 2022 18:46:09 GMT
Not sure if this is the space for it, but I recently discovered they were re-recording all the Discworld audiobooks. Each series has a main narrator, and the key recurring characters are voiced by the same person throughout. Bill Nighy is doing the footnotes.
They released all the Witches books in April, and I've been having a lovely time listening to those over the past few weeks. A complete set done like this will be awesome. The only annoyance is having to wait until April next year for the Guards series.
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Post by Chopper on Jun 4, 2022 9:16:03 GMT
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
This is serious sci fi, I guess! It deals with a generation ship which is sent to colonise one of two potential planets in the Tau Ceti system. The trip takes 175 years at a tenth the speed of light, so the crew spans five generations. As they near their destination, they become aware of certain patterns - the children being born are less intelligent than their parents, the ship is suffering from problems inherent to closed ecosystems like remote islands, where the bacteria and viruses evolve much quicker than the human inhabitants, and imperfect planning means that they are running out of base materials (mostly periodic table elements) that they can't retrieve 100% through recycling of waste. To say nothing of what awaits them when they reach Tau Ceti....
It's serious stuff - the generation ship, closed ecosystem, people dividing along partisan lines etc., presents the ability to draw lots of parallels with society, and this is very thoughtful and sharp. It's a bit dull to start off - I started it a few times - but well worth the time investment. Not sure if serious sci fi will lure me away from space opera, but this is really good. Recommended.
Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst
It's set in Salonika in northern Greece in 1940/41, and follows local cop Costa Zannis. Costa runs the department that handles all the cases too politically hot for the other detectives. Savvy as he is, he has a small network of like-minded cops throughout the Balkans, and is gradually drawn into a scheme to smuggle Jewish refugees out of Berlin. All set against the background of the Axis powers encroaching on Greece.
This is a curious one, in that it falls between several stools. Sure, there are spies, but they are adjacent to the action rather than central to it. Similarly, politics looms large, but is not the central focus (though it definitely drives the narrative timeline forward). It's not a thriller. Really, it's a pretty low key novel about normal people doing quietly extraordinary things in a WW2 setting. Really good! Recommended
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nazo
Junior Member
Posts: 1,120
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Post by nazo on Jun 25, 2022 20:29:19 GMT
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Really touching story of a mentally retarded adult who undergoes an experimental procedure to make him more intelligent. Told entirely in the first person through diary entries we follow him as he surpasses those around him but he soon realizes being smart brings its own problems. Then a mouse that underwent the same procedure starts to show erratic behaviour and the race is on to discover why and if it will happen to him.
5/5
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nazo
Junior Member
Posts: 1,120
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Post by nazo on Jun 30, 2022 7:02:22 GMT
The Last Wish - Andrzej Sapkowski
Ahh, it was ok. A collection of short stories, some better than others, the good ones mostly covered by The Witcher TV show. The back and forth between time periods makes a bit more sense in print but the characters don't come off too well.
3/5
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Post by Bill in the rain on Jul 2, 2022 8:03:05 GMT
That's probably the best one, imho.
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nazo
Junior Member
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Post by nazo on Jul 2, 2022 8:06:12 GMT
In that case I probably won't bother with the rest of them. At least the collection only cost me a pound.
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Post by Samildanach on Jul 2, 2022 8:32:11 GMT
I would say it is worth reading the second compilation book (Sword of Destiny) as I personally found it a far better read than the first. After that you have the main series which still had many good bits, but didn't quite reach the highs of Sword of Destiny.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Jul 2, 2022 9:19:31 GMT
Ah, Sword of Destiny is the only one I haven't read, due to it coming out later.
I guess the non-short-story ones might be better if you just get along better with epics and short stories, but I found that they kinda ran out of momentum, whereas the short stories were mostly pacey and to the point.
The Last Wish started terribly, iirc, with Geralt seeming like a horribly generic hero... but I liked the various subversions of fairy tales.
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Post by Sarfrin on Jul 2, 2022 11:24:16 GMT
In that case I probably won't bother with the rest of them. At least the collection only cost me a pound. I'm reading it (the collection) at the moment and enjoying it. I'm not sure whether that's because of the writing itself or because I really enjoyed TW3. I'm in the middle of Time of Contempt at the moment.
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Post by Red_Bool on Jul 14, 2022 12:03:22 GMT
Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith 8/10
The third Tiffany Aching book and truly a joy to read.
I read through all my Discworld novels again over the past year and found out that I'm miss four books (Snuff, Raising Steam, The Shepherd's Crown and I shall wear midnight).
They should get delivered on Saturday, so now I'm looking forward to new Discworld books to read
Which also makes me kind of sad because there will be no more new books after that
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2022 13:30:28 GMT
Brandon Sanderson - the Rithmetist
Picked up for 99p in Amazon sale, saw it was from 2012 or something and he writes 5 books a year so assumed it was a one off.
Really enjoyed that, YA but a ripping yarn like a lot of his stuff. Fluff, but very enjoyable.
Then ends on a cliff hanger and has a part 2 coming despite being written 10 years ago...
2/10
Regret reading it and a bit shit to have dropped mid series. It is like the wheel of time or game of thrones knowing it will never be finished, but an added kick knowing the author could finish as he has written 25 books in the meantime.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jul 14, 2022 18:47:14 GMT
Perdido Street Station: New Crobuzon - China MievilleA long but entertaining sci-fi/steampunk romp. The plot meanders a bit but the characters are fun and the city and the world(s?) it's set in is brilliant. 8/10 Completely missed that. I think I finished it at some point last year or so.
Definitely good, but in the end I found it a bit too depressing. Still, the universe is quite interesting and it would be nice visiting other places, experiencing other perspectives.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Jul 14, 2022 19:11:50 GMT
It is like the wheel of time or game of thrones knowing it will never be finished, but an added kick knowing the author could finish as he has written 25 books in the meantime. Errr. Wheel of Time is finished... Ironically, by Sanderson.
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Rich
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Post by Rich on Jul 14, 2022 19:55:24 GMT
ToomuchFluffy Yes, the ending was a bit of an exercise in making sure no one was happy. I'll definitely read/listen to the other two books in the series at some point though.
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Post by nemesis on Jul 14, 2022 19:57:47 GMT
Shogun - James Clavell
I remember small glimpses of the tv show from back in the day and we have festivals for the real life person as he was a local. So it’s always been around in my mind as a thing to read, but a short story it is not.
I’d picked up the book in 1999 and could never get through it. I had some time to myself and was resolved to give it my full attention and, my word, it’s brilliant. You have to pay attention to the shifting political landscape. It tries to teach you basic Japanese phrases as it goes along so you’re in step with Blackthorne trying to make sense of it all. Which is a genius central part of the story.
10/10 for me.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jul 15, 2022 3:39:20 GMT
Errr. Wheel of Time is finished... Ironically, by Sanderson. I'm not sure anymore if that really was a good idea, but a lot of people seem to have liked A Memory of Light. Weirdly enough I actually really enjoyed The Gathering Storm, and while I didn't mind Towers of Midnight as it was exactly the kind of somewhat mediocre "bridging" novel I had expected, A Memory of Light somehow lost me and I never continued reading beyond 150 or so. Somehow the characters didn't seem like Jordan's characters anymore. Maybe it just took a while to sink in. I looked at the rest of it and there are frankly way too many armies and battles and "bossfights" as that I felt much interest to read the rest of it. Too much stuff happening in too short a timeframe. Though partially it is also Jordan's fault as the expectation was always that the good guys would win and everything would turn out well. The Shadow and its representatives had been handed its ass to themselves a few too many times to still be able to take them all that seriously.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Jul 15, 2022 5:55:09 GMT
I liked the way Sanderson finished the books, at least partly because they'd gotten sooooooo fucking torturously slow before he took over. I wanted it to be done, and he did it.
I remember there being distinctly less braid-tugging too, which was nice.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Jul 15, 2022 5:57:13 GMT
Anyway, speaking of torture, for some reason I've decided to read The Tommyknockers again. I don't remember much about it, but I remember it being pretty wild, and bad in an entertaining way.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Jul 15, 2022 6:24:01 GMT
Aaaaaand the main character is talking about her period already. This is going to be fun.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Jul 15, 2022 7:30:58 GMT
I sort of agree with both of you, MolarAm🔵 ToomuchFluffy. The characters (particularly Mat) are a little different and it's jarring in a few places. But I'm very glad that it got finished. I first read the Eye of the World when it came out in 1990 (instead of revising for my exams) so the series had been with me a long time and I needed the conclusion!
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Jul 15, 2022 7:35:41 GMT
Tbh on a recent re-read of Wheel of Time, I didn't particularly care for the characters, at least at the start. Basically all the men are broody, impulsive idiots, and all the women are scheming, manipulative nags.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Jul 15, 2022 7:54:27 GMT
Tbh on a recent re-read of Wheel of Time, I didn't particularly care for the characters, at least at the start. Basically all the men are broody, impulsive idiots, and all the women are scheming, manipulative nags. Tbh, I always mostly felt the same about the guys. Mat and Perrin grew on me but I never really liked Rand. And Jordan (in keeping with many, many male authors) couldn't write a believable female character to save his life. There's an odd mixture of puritanical tutting and bosomy panting about them (in his writing) that makes me wonder if his wife had as much input as he always suggested.
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zagibu
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Post by zagibu on Jul 15, 2022 8:35:00 GMT
After having read all of Erikson's Malazan books (or maybe there are more, but I've read the first 10 up to The Crippled God), I've now started with Esslemont's part, and the first book (Night of Knives) was great, I've read it much easier and faster than Erikson's stuff.
I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison, though, because it was much more limited in scope, basically dealing only with the events of a single location during 1-2 days.
I now wonder if his next books are all like that, basically highlighting smaller patches of the immense tapestry that Erikson has woven with his massive opus.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Jul 15, 2022 8:52:48 GMT
After having read all of Erikson's Malazan books (or maybe there are more, but I've read the first 10 up to The Crippled God), I've now started with Esslemont's part, and the first book (Night of Knives) was great, I've read it much easier and faster than Erikson's stuff. I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison, though, because it was much more limited in scope, basically dealing only with the events of a single location during 1-2 days. I now wonder if his next books are all like that, basically highlighting smaller patches of the immense tapestry that Erikson has woven with his massive opus. Yes, basically. The timescales are not always so short, but the scope of the stories is less epic than the main books and there's often lots of little bits of background info that, whilst not necessary for the 10, provides some enlightenment, too.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jul 16, 2022 18:18:01 GMT
I sort of agree with both of you, MolarAm🔵 ToomuchFluffy . The characters (particularly Mat) are a little different and it's jarring in a few places. But I'm very glad that it got finished. I first read the Eye of the World when it came out in 1990 (instead of revising for my exams) so the series had been with me a long time and I needed the conclusion! It's a good thing that the series got its ending, but oddly I didn't care too much that I didn't get there. Even if Jordan had been there to finish it, I'm not convinced that he really could have delivered on the expectations. But the greater consistency might have helped.
Mat and Perrin grew on me but I never really liked Rand.
I'm more partial to Rand myself and Mat was certainly an enjoyable character to read about most of the time. With Perrin it seemed more dependant on the storylines he was involved in. His return to the Two Rivers is one of my favourite parts of the series, but the extremely stretched Ghealdan storyline is one of the worst.
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EMarkM
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Post by EMarkM on Jul 16, 2022 18:24:17 GMT
nemesis Shogun certainly defined “me” for a good period of my teens. I should find time to read it again.
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