Reading Catching Fire In Your Pants now. Two chapters in and it keeps the intensity of the first book. Hopefully this continues throughout the series. Will read The Mockingjay In Your Pants after that. Then I got The Fault In Our Pants by John Green lined up after that.
Sorry to break it to you, but Mockingjay slows down a bit and is actually a bit dry at times. The weird thing is they are making that book into 2 movies.
Sorry to break it to you, but Mockingjay slows down a bit and is actually a bit dry at times. The weird thing is they are making that book into 2 movies.
Well, it's easy to see why they split it. It sort of has two phases.
Sorry to break it to you, but Mockingjay slows down a bit and is actually a bit dry at times. The weird thing is they are making that book into 2 movies.
Well, it's easy to see why they split it. It sort of has two phases.
I'd say they're not exactly shedding tears over having people buy two tickets each instead of one, either.
The Difference Engine was really, really good, but I feel like Gibson and Sterling kind of flubbed the ending by closing it out with all those little vignettes and then ending on a very down note.
The Difference Engine was really, really good, but I feel like Gibson and Sterling kind of flubbed the ending by closing it out with all those little vignettes and then ending on a very down note.
I still posit that the anti-climactic ending was entirely the point. ;^)
Quite likely. I can't imagine them fucking it up accidentally; Schismatrix and the Sprawl trilogy are so epochal and so good that I feel like Gibson or Sterling writing a bad ending would have to be entirely purposeful.
Then again, it makes sense for the book to wind down, fall into the little vignettes, and then hit one anticlimatic (and extremely dystopic) note when you consider the way the Eye is stated to leaf through data, people, places, and times as if they are meaningless and fleeting at the end of the novel.
I'm reading "Ready Player One" because every geek in the universe seems to think it's so great.
Haven't finished it yet, so I can't give any final judgement. I can say that so far it is very enjoyable, but not very good. It is mostly playing "the woo game." Also, it's very similar to Daemon, only crooked just so.
Ready Player One was entirely playing the woo game. The only non-terrible thing in that book was the indentured-servitude thing (trying not to spoiler it), and even that has been done better in other places.
This episode of the Incomparable Podcast pretty much sums up my views of this book.
You really found it that awful? I mean, yeah, it was defs playing The Woo Game. But I'd argue that any book you like (you know, that fanboy like-it-so-much-it-hurts like) plays the woo game with you on some level throughout its entirety.
Don't tell me no part of you Woo'd when Kellhus sang the third Word and created the Cant of Transposition.
It wasn't a phenomenal novel, but it was fun and I genuinely enjoyed it (and would read a sequel, if it came up). It also happened to crop up just around the time I was researching stuff for my pen and paper RPG where you play Gold Farmers in an MMORPG, so it fit right into my framework at the time.
I think my problem with RPO is that it was repetitive, blatant, and poorly timed. Imagine it's your birthday, and someone forgot your cake. You make a joke like "but you said there'd be cake," an off-hand reference to Portal. Then, two beats later, that guy blurts out "hurr hurr the cake is a lie, guys!" That's what RPO felt like.
Also, like the people in the podcast I linked noted, all of the "challenges" were either blatantly obvious or completely impossible.
There is a point where the main character BEATS PAC MAN ON HIS FIRST TRY, for chrissakes!
I feel like the book was more aimed at people who wanted to feel nerdy and play the woo game than anything else.
P.S. Hey guys, remember Ferris Bueller? Eh, eh? What about Joust? Remember that game? Can I get a "woo" up in here?
EDIT: Creamsteak, I would highly recommend Doctorow's novel For the Win. It's about gold farming, shadow economies, and labor rights.
If I took it remotely seriously I don't think I could have read past how the "Game World" worked. I have so many problems with that aspect of the book from a technical perspective and throw on top of that, "This game world wouldn't even be particularly fun." But then again second life exists. I just can't buy that second life + poorly implemented haphazard combat mechanics would get nearly the whole world to buy into a single game and architecture.
Finished "Ready Player One." My feelings are unchanged. It's a very enjoyable book for a geek like us to read. It's also not all that good. If I had the time, determination, etc. to actually write a book, which I don't, the writing quality would probably be only slightly below this.
Finished "Ready Player One." My feelings are unchanged. It's a very enjoyable book for a geek like us to read. It's also not all that good. If I had the time, determination, etc. to actually write a book, which I don't, the writing quality would probably be only slightly below this.
Same here. Enjoyable, but obviously a book full of descriptions of 80's nostalgia was never going to be a masterpiece. Well, perhaps it *could* have been, but this was SO ham fisted. But I read it and so did all my friends and everyone thought it was a good read.
About halfway through Catching Fire. Who the FUCK said this was even readable??? Its utter drivel. And yes, I liked Hunger Games. If she describes ONE MORE MEAL in pain staking detail I'm going to stab myself in the ear with a popsicle stick. Yes, I'm listening to the audiobook.
Finished reading the Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy, and debating what to read next. I kind of want to re-read Tad Williams' Otherland, but that's a significant time investment.
Also, I finally found a dead tree copy of End of Eternity for my girlfriend. Why is that book so hard to come by? It's like Asimov's forgotten masterpiece.
What'd you think of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy? Dave and Joel hated it. I rather liked it; I understand why they hated it, but if you know anything about old-school pulp, the relentless sex and sociopathy of the main character could be considered a direct homage to any number of old pulp heroes.
Just finished the last book in the warrior cat series (Erin Hunter). Not a bad way to end the series. Good timing too because my daughter has just about outgrown the series.
Now I can get to reading book three in the Game if Thrones series. I snagged the four book ebook a few weeks ago. I also have the Hunger Games to read.
Finishing up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm kinda in the mood for a sci-fi novel if anyone has any good suggestions I'll check it out. I was considering Speaker for the Dead since I enjoyed Ender's Game and it might be interesting to go back to.
Oh wow. I just got a Kindle (found one in a pawn shop for super cheap last weekend), and it's pretty sweet. Currently reading With the Old Breed (one of the novels The Pacific was based on). Also, I can send Instapaper'd articles straight to my Kindle, as well as automatically get formatted RSS feeds. I'm going to investigate using it for manga and manga-sized comics tonight.
I'm currently reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and it's really good. It's about a girl with lung cancer falling in love with a leg-amputee and both of them trying to find out the real ending of her favorite book.
I've also resolved to read some of the books I was supposed to read when I was in high school and either didn't read or was too stupid to understand at the time or just plainly don't remember. Thus I plan to read Waiting for Godot, Dead Poets Society, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Youth Without God some time soon. While the last is german in its original version, it kind of annoys me that I only have german versions of the first three, but I'm too cheap to buy english copies.
Oh wow. I just got a Kindle (found one in a pawn shop for super cheap last weekend), and it's pretty sweet. Currently reading With the Old Breed (one of the novels The Pacific was based on). Also, I can send Instapaper'd articles straight to my Kindle, as well as automatically get formatted RSS feeds. I'm going to investigate using it for manga and manga-sized comics tonight.
I curious about the results of your manga experiment. I had tried a small program when I first got my kindle about a year and a half ago and it looked fine but the text in bubbles was hard to read a lot of the time.
So, yesterday I tried Mangle, Jomic (converts cbz to pdf), a script using ImageMagick and Ghostscript, and Calibre. Nothing really works that well. I can make the images kindle-ready, and put them in a PDF (and/or convert it to .mobi), but there's about a 0.75cm white space between the image and the edge of the screen that I can't get rid of.
I tried a bunch of different things, including messing with Calibre options, but no dice. Kindle really doesn't want to display full-screen images, and text in a manga-sized comic gets slightly too small to read when the images are shrunken.
So, I love the way Paulo Coelho writes. He reminds me of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and I just wanted to let you all know that eleven of his books are going for 0.99 cents in the amazon kindle store and the nook store. Sadly "The Alchemist" is not included. http://paulocoelhoblog.com
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Then again, it makes sense for the book to wind down, fall into the little vignettes, and then hit one anticlimatic (and extremely dystopic) note when you consider the way the Eye is stated to leaf through data, people, places, and times as if they are meaningless and fleeting at the end of the novel.
Onto the Bridge Trilogy now, I think.
Haven't finished it yet, so I can't give any final judgement. I can say that so far it is very enjoyable, but not very good. It is mostly playing "the woo game." Also, it's very similar to Daemon, only crooked just so.
This episode of the Incomparable Podcast pretty much sums up my views of this book.
Don't tell me no part of you Woo'd when Kellhus sang the third Word and created the Cant of Transposition.
Also, like the people in the podcast I linked noted, all of the "challenges" were either blatantly obvious or completely impossible.
P.S. Hey guys, remember Ferris Bueller? Eh, eh? What about Joust? Remember that game? Can I get a "woo" up in here?
EDIT: Creamsteak, I would highly recommend Doctorow's novel For the Win. It's about gold farming, shadow economies, and labor rights.
Sorry. WHAT YOU SEE.
About halfway through Catching Fire. Who the FUCK said this was even readable??? Its utter drivel. And yes, I liked Hunger Games. If she describes ONE MORE MEAL in pain staking detail I'm going to stab myself in the ear with a popsicle stick. Yes, I'm listening to the audiobook.
Also, I finally found a dead tree copy of End of Eternity for my girlfriend. Why is that book so hard to come by? It's like Asimov's forgotten masterpiece.
Now I can get to reading book three in the Game if Thrones series. I snagged the four book ebook a few weeks ago. I also have the Hunger Games to read.
I've also resolved to read some of the books I was supposed to read when I was in high school and either didn't read or was too stupid to understand at the time or just plainly don't remember. Thus I plan to read Waiting for Godot, Dead Poets Society, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Youth Without God some time soon. While the last is german in its original version, it kind of annoys me that I only have german versions of the first three, but I'm too cheap to buy english copies.
I tried a bunch of different things, including messing with Calibre options, but no dice. Kindle really doesn't want to display full-screen images, and text in a manga-sized comic gets slightly too small to read when the images are shrunken.
Anyone have ideas on how to fix this?
http://paulocoelhoblog.com
EDIT: Coelho promotes book piracy and file sharing. So, go to #bookz or your favorite Torrent side and Check It Out, ya dingus!