John's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 81-100 of 186).

I heard an interview with Stross, and he said that the essential conception of the book was "what if Heinlein wrote today?" Hearing him talk about the book, it looked interesting, and your review seems to confirm that it would be a good read.

I received mine Monday--thank you!

Thanks for another great review.

I liked her work a lot when I was a kid, but I tried to re-read the first book in the series a few months ago and didn't care for it at all.

One possibility for finding audio books is to look to your nearest metropolitan area's libraries. From what I can tell, more and more of them are allowing you to download audio books that they have onto your computer, so even if you don't live that close to the big library, you can check out a broader selection of audio books. The one I'm most familiar with, depending on the book, allows you to listen to the book on your computer for 2 weeks and to download it to your mp3 player (sadly, *not* your iPod--I got my wife another brand of mp3 player just so we could listen to audio books), and many books allow you to burn them to CD (yes, it's a lot of CDs to burn, but they're much cheaper than actually buying the audio book). Even now that I've moved away from Providence, RI, I still frequently use its library for books. Pittsburgh, an hour from where I live, also has something like this, though I haven't used it yet.

I re-read Gardens of the Moon, which was an interesting experience since it was my first re-reading, and I would like to re-read the whole series, but I think what I'll do at this point is go the wikipedia route, read Toll the Hounds, do the same with the next book, and then when the final volume comes out I'll re-read the whole series.

I'm looking forward to reading this--it's on my shelf, but I'm having trouble finding the time to invest.

Kernos, seeing how clearly you "get" Erikson's work, you've piqued my curiosity about Ysabel. And you should take a look at Scott Bakker's work--the writing at the beginning can be a bit difficult to get into, but it gets better and better, and it sounds like it would be right up your alley.

As an aside, I haven't gotten bored with Martin's series so much as I've lost momentum with it... he's taking so long to get the next book out that it's harder to get excited about it, especially knowing that the next book (whenever it finally comes out) isn't the last one, and who knows how long it will take for him to finish the series, or if he even will! I don't have the same worries with Erikson--he's been putting them out at a steady pace and I've found the quality to be pretty consistently high (I have the latest but haven't had time to read it yet, so I'm not including that in my judgment).

On the one hand, I am myself in the category of prospective homesteader. I guess it's the reader and teacher of Thoreau in me that wants to out-Thoreau Thoreau, to make a rather longer and more thorough experiment of a way of living that combines simplicity and self-sufficiency (and yes, I know how much Thoreau relied on outside inputs). More than that, though, I see homesteading as a reaction to the various problems facing us as a nation and a world (though I suspect it would take more time than I have here this morning to explain why).

This author in particular came to my attention because of a blog that he and some other folks involved in organic farming and cooking run, http://organictobe.org/. I was struck by Logsdon's intelligence and experience (and, on a minor but important note, the fact that he did his homesteading rather close to my childhood home). So, I picked up his The Contrary Farmer, enjoyed it, and wanted to get deeper into the specifics of certain types of small-scale agriculture.

I second the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, as well as Martin's Song of Ice and Fire (though I have a lot more hope of the former ever getting finished than the latter). If you like dense, complex, dark, and gritty, you should pick up R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series, which starts with The Darkness That Comes Before.

I liked both the first and the second Amber series... but then, I probably read them both before I could drive, so my tastes may have changed since then.

Since I've been an adult, I've not only read but taught Lord of Light to high school students a few times. It's quite good.

Since Peggy mentions short stories, I'll add that the short story that's stayed with me longest was "A Rose for Ecclesiastes."

I started playing D&D a few years ago--for me, it really takes the right DM and the right group. I want it to be a role playing game more than a roll playing game, if you see what I mean.

I love board games. We played a lot of them when I was growing up, but in the past few years I've really gotten into the euro-style games: things like Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Carcasonne, and the like. The less the game depends on luck and the more it has interesting gameplay, the better I like it.

I like computer games too, but on the whole I'd rather play board games. I never got into RTS games. My favorites have been games like the Civilization series--games where I can think and plan before acting.

Deanna, my wife probably started Kushiel's Dart about the same time you did, which was on our honeymoon. Incidentally, I'll recommend to any of you contemplating a honeymoon: DON'T DO IT! YOU'LL NEVER GET CAUGHT UP ON E-MAIL AND OTHER WEBSITES!

Just kidding, except that I probably WON'T ever get caught up.

I only got a little reading done on my honeymoon, reading The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks and The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. I'm also reading A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine.

Pleasure reading is just about over, since I'm a teacher and school will be starting soon.

I'd be curious to hear more about this rating... are you focusing on the poetry itself or the edition? The two things I like about this edition are the way that her idiosyncrasies have been restored (many were smoothed out by editors after her death) and the broad perspective on her work that this anthology gives, since it includes such a wide variety (including, to be fair, some rather mediocre poems).

It seems to me that what you're pointing out, M.d., puts Doctorow's novel closer to cyberpunk than to hard sf, that's all. They're both under the big tent of sci fi.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say it's a "prop" as opposed to an integral part of the story. Isn't the elimination of scarcity through this mysterious "free energy" an important factor in the social changes we see? Isn't virtual immortality through backups and cloning central to the way society is in the novel?

Incidentally, these things aren't, of course, anywhere close to real science: both are probably impossible. Part of their interest, though, as I see it, is the way they extrapolate trends in modern society. Though it may not quite feel like it with fuel and food prices soaring, we have been and still are living in the most plentiful time in history--scarcity hasn't been eliminated, but it's sure been beaten back from the door a bit. We don't live forever, but our lifespans have sure been expanded remarkably. For that matter, we don't deal in whuffie yet, but the regard of those around us has always been important and here in the 21st century, the hunt is on for the proverbial 5 minutes of fame, however we can get it. Entertainers of all sorts--actors, musicians, athletes--already depend heavily on popularity, however it's measured, to make their living, whether it's through the next record deal or film role, or through product endorsements.

Tadpole, it seemed to work exactly that way! I can't remember the exact passage, but I seem to remember him talking about squandering all the Whuffie he'd gotten from one of his symphonies by hogging the library terminal and general jerkery.

It's never really explained, but it seemed almost like an automatic function of the interaction between brain, machine, and network, like it could read your regard for others and translate that into whuffie.

I can think of three good trilogies you might check out, by Robin Hobb. She writes good stories and she wraps up each story arc in three books. The first begins with Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy), the second begins with Ship of Magic (The Liveship Traders trilogy, which is set in the same world but with almost completely different characters), and the third which begins with Fool's Errand (The Tawny Man trilogy, which returns to the main character from the first series).

In the way of ongoing series, longer than three books, I don't feel like Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series (which begins with The Gardens of the Moon has played itself out yet (the 8th book comes out in the States this September).

I'm finally reading again now that things have settled into a semblance of normalcy after the wedding / move / dog surgery.

I re-read portions of Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series in preparation for reading the newest volume, Jhegaala, which just arrived today. I'm also reading Treason by Orson Scott Card because I needed something to read yesterday, before what I *really* wanted to read arrived from Amazon.

In the same shipment to read soon are A Mind of Its Own by Cordelia Fine, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and King's Shield by Sherwood Smith. That last, I may hold off on until the fourth (and final) volume of the series is finished, so I can go back and re-read the first two and then read the two new ones.

I definitely find that I listen to different things on audiobook than what I read, though I can't categorize precisely. I suppose books that I really *care* about reading, I want to read, while stuff that I just want to have read, I'm fine with listening to.

Mostly I only listen on long trips, but last year with my iPod I started listening on my walk to and from work each day. It was only 10 or 15 minutes each trip, which made the whole task of holding it all together a bit difficult.

Which is why I ended up listening to fewer audiobooks and more podcasts.

Congratulations Sandi! I've been MIA pretty much all month because I was getting married the same day as your daughter. Ours also went well--having a great caterer sure helps! We're putting off our honeymoon until August, for which we're both grateful. Between moving, getting married, and our dog suddenly needing surgery, reading and internet time have each ground to a halt, though I'm slowly getting back to both. Just need to get unpacked....