Sisimka's comments (member since Mar 29, 2009)

Sisimka's comments from the Beyond Reality group.

I haven't had a problem with message delivery, but sometimes an ISP will block an address that sends too much email as potential spam.

My email set up is for new posts, but I don't get another email from the same thread until I've checked in with it.

I finished Ethan of Athos last night. I was actually surprised when I turned the page and found out it was the end - although the story arc has resolved. It felt a bit more like a novella than a novel.

I joined the story a lot, even though it didn't have Miles in it. I quite liked Ethan as a character and wouldn't at all mind checking back in on him in say ten years, to see how his sons are working out!

Baen's ebooks are very, very cheap, they have webscription deals where you get a month's worth of reading for one low price too! Although I'd frequented their free library, I didn't start using their site in earnest until I got my Kindle, now I 'shop' there at least twice a month.

Hi Bill,

I just recently read the Time Machine, after having loved the movie for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, what a great book!

Welcome to Beyond Reality.

Polls are up! Please take a moment to register your vote for our February Fantasy and Science Fiction selections. We will hold run off polls in five days.

As per some discussion, we've made these polls not anonymous, so you can see how you and the rest of the gorup voted. If you have a problem with this, please contact Stefan or myself. Thanks!

Welcome Simon, we look forward to seeing you participate in our discussions. You've arrived just in time to vote in our polls for February's Books of the Month!

McDevitt's Time Travelers Never Die and Sanderson's Gathering Storm finally arrived yesterday. I guess SFBC had more orders than they could fill by the release date on those! Anyway, husband has already laid claim to TGS - I'm still on book 7 or something of the WOT series. I've got my eye on the McDevitt anyway.

Laurel, that is such a sweet offer! Thank you very much.

Barb wrote: "Some of the reviews I read before reading this book complained that none of the characters were like-able enough... I don't know, I guess they weren't like-able in a way that you would want to meet them in person and be buddies, but they were definitely interesting enough that I wanted to continue reading to see what happened to them."

I agree Barb. Although we didn't get the warm fuzzies for this bunch, I still cared about their fate and enjoyed their unique personalities.

We could vote on it! Hehe.

Althought it's been a disaster for my TBR shelf and wish-list, I think the GR format is so much more suited to our type of group. We've had much more member participation and livlier discussions since we moved across.

Actually, if we didn't check the anonymous voting box here on Goodreads, we'd see a list to the right of each poll showing how each member voted. If members don't mind not being anonymous when registering their vote, we can change to that method in future (right Stefan? :).

But I agree that being able to vote for more than one choice, particularly before the run off polls was a nice way to narrow the selection.

I'd like to nominate Rollback by Robert Sawyer for Sci Fi and I'd like to renominate Way of the Shadows by Brent Weeks for Fantasy

Thanks for the link. Scalzi makes a lot of good points - none of which I personally think excuse the use of a 'donate' button on a blog (here I think simply changing the text to support, etc, is a great idea).

My sister and I are both freelance writers of the journalistic sort. We've both been on staff on occasion, but tend to fall back on freelancing for the freedom (this is just a whole other debate). I'm lucky I have a husband who supports me and my writing can remain a 'hobby'.

One of the problems I see facing writers in particular (and it certainly applies across the board in this 'recession') is the fact that so many newspapers and magazines are folding or going online. There is a real difference in the standard of content between online publication and offline publication. Accordingly the pay can be a lot less... :(

A magazine my sister and I both used to work for was having financial woes and did not pay it's writers for 18 months (why did we still write for it you ask?) until we mounted a class action suit and finally settled for 50 cents out of every dollar we were owed. Unbelievably, this magazine is still in business (it's an airline magazine, they gotta have some rag to stuff in seat pockets) and the standard of writing is just awful - they are paying only a third of what what we were getting to their newer writers and accounts payable folks are editing.

*shakes head* so sad...

Disabilities, abilities, which ever way you put it - I think we mostly agree they were chosen specifically because of what they could do, rather than what we percieve they could not do.

I didn't get the feeling that the crew was expendable, although they did have 'backups' which was interesting. I think they were chosen for their disabilities. Interesting representation of the human race to send into space.

I think the aliens are actually scarier than the crew.

I enjoyed Cetaganda too, Miles is an irresistable character.

I occasionally follow his blog, he talks about food quite a bit! But I missed all this, thanks for the post.

I agree also, Kathi, but wondered if anyone would weigh in on the other side of the debate. Quite a number of comments on the Miss Manners post seemed to indicate that this was an acceptable part of blogging, asking for donations to keep the site running.

Here's a link to a link to a link I found very amusing! Neil Gaiman's blog is generally very entertaining and one of the few I read. Here is a link to a post: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/fo...
That contains a link to a post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
That has our author of the month, Steven Brust asking Miss Manners for advice!

I thought it would make an interesting debate!

I inherited Pink Floyd from my dad, and the annoying habit of packing sentimental crap into boxes that then get stacked into every available 'storage' area - a habit I've been trying to break over the last ten years with limited success.

From my mother I inherited the cooking bug. She was an awesome and adventurous cook, and though I wasn't allowed into the kitchen, I guess I absorbed it through her food.

They were both big readers...