Random’s Comments (group member since Apr 30, 2009)

Random’s comments from the Beyond Reality group.

A few months late, but just finished today.

I really enjoyed this book. It was fun, I could like the characters and the magic system was really well thought out. I also loved the mysteries and revelations.

Started Ink Blood Sister Scribe. Only about 4 months late for the group read. :)

I'm about 40% through and have managed to enjoy at least one big AHA! moment.

So a title jump jumped out at me and demanded I pay attention to it.
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Cozy mysteries can be fun. While it wasn't really my thing, it was enjoyable.

It depends on the type of story, but I do tend to enjoy ambiguous endings. There's just something about them that I find so intriguing.

I think its more than just the ending though. A story with a good ambiguous ending takes work to setup so that it works well. Like in The Cabin at the End of the World. By the time we get to the end, we can see two paths that are both equally possible, at least in our eyes. What will they find? What do they wish to find?

Started and finished Light Chaser
It was ok. An interesting idea but I feel some of the more interesting parts were too glossed over. It makes it difficult for me to buy in on the premise.

Children of Memory
Part 11, Chapter 2.
I sobbed. In fact I am tearing up just thinking about it.

So after Sunday's question of the week, I got a desire to reread Fortress on the Sun. It was a quick and fun read and I finished it in one sitting.

I certainly have some beloved books to recommend. Only I've recommended the same books so many times over the years, I feel I should mix things up a bit.

So books I really enjoyed that never quite made it to the "OMG I've got to get other people to read this book right now" list.

Fortress on the Sun by Paul Cook. Ran across this at a local used book store many years ago. Prison camp literally on a fortress in the sun. They're all there because they've done very bad things, their memories have been taken from them (sometimes so badly that their personalities have reverted to that of children), and something strange has started happening.

Its a fast read. Both my husband and I really enjoyed it.

The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams
Well known for his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and Otherland series. This one hasn't seem to have gotten as much attention but I really enjoyed it.

Nothing Human by Nancy Kress
Multi generational. I can't think of a way to describe it without giving too much away.

And a Bonus: My husband is making me include Broken Time by Emily Davenport - he's been trying to get me to read this for ages and I keep not getting around to it. I think its his attempt to put more pressure on me to do so. :)

And, on a plus side, all of these are stand alone books. :)

--edit--

ok, 1 series.
Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse by Him C Hines

Aliens have come to earth to invite humans to join a galactic society, only to find humanity has been devolved to near unstoppable animals from a mutated plague. So they tried to fix us.

I really enjoyed this series. Its a well balanced mix of humor along with some very serious subjects.

I'm not a big post-apocalyptic fan. Mostly, like Kathi, they just seem to bleak. However, as with everything in life, there are exceptions.

In my case its The Passage. There's something about how the first book starts that seemed almost emotionally subdued. Something about that I think made it easier to get drawn into the events of what was happening without being a bit overwhelmed by the emotions of those events.

I've been meaning to try Mission to Zyxx for a while but haven't gotten to it yet.

I've been a lover of radio shows since what feels like forever and to my joy I found that a lot of that has transitioned into podcasts.

A few of my favorites which have since ended but are still available out there.

The Magnus Archives - starts out a lovely creepy horror, but the last few seasons feels more a fantasy/horror mix. Really done very well.

Wolf 359 - SF. Starts out seemingly a bit silly but gets really good as it progresses. My first podcast that got me completely hooked.

Unseen - Fantasy, only lasted about 15 episodes but I wished it had lasted longer. Magic is real in the world, but invisible to most. Urban Fantasy

We Fix Space Junk - Another I wish that had lasted longer.


Not audio fiction, but I really enjoy Imaginary Worlds. Its a podcast about SF/F and has covered a wide range of topics from Discworld, Wizard of Oz, Dune, Star Trek, and so so much more.

Geek Steep - Tea and geek culture


And there are a few actual play podcasts I am currently following

The Adventure Zone - Three brothers and their dad play D&D. I really wasn't interested in actual play, but a coworker got me to give this a try. Their first campaign, Balance, started out a bit silly as they were all learning, but ended so amazingly good.
"And this is how four guys played D&D so hard they made themselves cry". I was literally driving south bound through downtown Seattle in rush hour traffic with tears pouring down my face, snot dripping from my nose, etc. They've done more campaigns since, but I will forever love Balance. The campaign is broken up into arcs and The Lost Century is so good. I actually can't even remember them rolling dice for it.


Critical Role - which completely destroyed my book reading last year as I was working my way through the obscene number of hours for Vox Machina campaign.
I just started The Mighty Nein (the second campaign) this weekend so there goes any chance I'll get reading done for a long time. :)

For those not aware, Critical Role is a bunch a nerdy voice actors who play D&D. Its fun as a gamer as I'll be randomly playing along on a game and all of a sudden recognize one of their voices.

I'm looking forward to seeing what else others might be listening to that I can add to my list.

Memory was the first Vorkosigan book I ever read and my favorite of the series.

Finally finished The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
There were some really enjoyable stories in there.

My initial reaction was "I don't buy multiple copies of books" and that smug idea lasted about 10 seconds until the rest of my brain woke up and yelled "LIAR!".

The most common would be situations where I have multiple formats. In this case its usually audio and something in text (physical, ebook, etc). Sometimes I get something in text and decide I really want to listen to it instead, or the audio is done by a beloved narrator, etc.

Like Kathi mentioned above, get the first book or two in ebook individually and then an omnibus edition comes out at a cheaper price than purchasing the rest of the series. Or I buy the single editions as they come out. But when the last book comes out, its only as part of an omnibus. I almost always prefer single editions over omnibus editions, but this still happens now and then. I have multiple copies of all the Expanse short stories, except the last one, for this very reason. The last was only released as part of the short story omnibus.

Or my husband bought them cause he likes having both, which tends to really annoy me. :)

I have purchased ebook editions of print editions I already own. Though usually the plan is to declutter the print editions by donating them.

I've also purchased multiple copies of some print books. This is almost always because they were lost or damaged. I think I bought 3 copies of A Bad Spell in Yurt as I read that so often it kept falling apart on me. Didn't help one of my cats hacked a hairball up on the cover one day. And now I have a strong desire to reread that book again. :)

Well The Witcher games immediately come to mind. Rreally excellent RPG series though the first game's interface was a little clunky.

Strolling down memory lane

Discworld adventure games from the 90s. A whole lot of insane fun. Really loved them.

Nifty bit of trivia. I played the first two Discworld games before I ever read any of the books. :)

Oh and there was a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game from Infocom back in the 80s. Took me years to solve but I adored the Infocom text adventure games. Still do technically. :)

On the not so good side

I remember trying to play a game based on the Pern series on the C64 when I was a kid. Didn't have any of the docs and you REALLY needed docs in games at the time. But I adored Pern, so I kept trying and trying and trying. Never got very far.

I do this often enough I thought I should just do a running thread.

Humble Bundle is doing a big Cory Doctorow bundle.
18 books (mixture of novels and short stories) for $18

The selected charity if the EFF or Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is a non profit organization which fights for digital privacy, free speech, and similar.

Since this is TOR books, its a direct download and the books have no DRM.

Oh, that's both easy and difficult to answer.

Easy because I've made effort to keep my ebooks organized and grouped. Current count is 1945.
Please note that includes both Omnibus editions as well as individual short stories.

Its the other formats that cause difficultly.

Print, we've gotten rid of a number of our print books over the years as they've been replaced by ebooks with the print editions being donated The majority that we still own are packed in boxes in the garage. We do still have one bookcase for print books, but that's for books like science and math books (mathematical equations just don't do well in ebook) as well as art books, special editions, as well as comic trades (entire Sandman trade run, or the entire Calvin and Hobbes collection).

Audio is another difficulty since we've been buying audiobooks since the early 90s. So from audio cassettes to CDs to various forms of digital media.

Audible claims we have 587 audio books in our library.
Downpour claims 208 - which also reminds me I have a bunch of credits waiting to be used.

Then there are more that were either manually digitized/copied from audio CDs and cassettes (most of the cassette copies have been replaced with newer). The Books in Motion CDs which were just CDs with the mp3 files on them.

My guess is that we're at 800-1000 audiobooks.

As I age, I find the idea of minimalism more and more appealing. I've gotten so tired of having to take care of things, so many things.
However, that will never apply to books. :)

Its funny. Going through all of this brought up a memory of me as a kid. My bedroom had 4 pieces of furniture in it. Bed, a small bedside table, a small chest of drawers, and a cheap white plastic modular book case that were in all the rage in the 80s. One of those shelves contained my little row of books, primarily Trixie Belden at the time, but soon grew with Earthsea, Pern, and Dragonlance. I was so proud of that little collection.

I haven't changed. I like to look at my books. Sometimes I just scroll through my ebooks and get that similar warm feeling. So many old friends. So many new friends promising new adventures.

I'm going to jump in with the Riftwar series, or at least a portion of it (the full thing is massive) by Raymond E. Feist.

First, the initial core books
The Riftwar Saga
This includes:
Magician: Apprentice
Magician: Master
Silverthorn
A Darkness At Sethanon
Note: this is alternatively considered a 3 book series with the first 2 books as one called "Magician". I've never been sure if these were later combined or if it was initially published as Magician and broken apart due to size for paper back editions.

Then over to a second sub series co-written with Janny Wurts
The Empire Trilogy, which takes place during the first group, but from the other side of the war.
This contains
Daughter of the Empire
Servant of the Empire
Mistress of the Empire

While the greater series does continue, these 6/7 books cover a complete story with a few hints about more to come.

They all also seem to be available in print, ebook, and audio formats.

Sorry, I keep editing my post.

I was either late grade school or early Jr High when I first started reading this series. It was a series my best friend at the time and I bonded over (along with Pern and Dragonlance) and it was a wonderful surprise some years later to find my new fiance (who tends to snub fantasy) also loved them. He's the one who introduced me to the Empire books, which I eagerly read and which are probably my favorites of all of them.

Its been a very long time and I have such warm and happy memories about these books. I'm also hoping it might kick start me into the rest of the series. I never got further than SerpentWar and there's so much more now. I own them all. I just need the motivation. :)

Its been a while since I read these books so its hard for me to remember exact details, but I felt like the ending was a bit too rushed. It actually almost feels like a different ending was planned and for some reason had to be changed at the last minute. It didn't feel like a natural progression of the story.

Still liked this book, still loved the series, but the ending just felt a bit off to me.

Okay, I am going to show a little bias here (or my reaction to existing bias). I absolutely despise the fact that nearly every couple and relationship in most fiction is only about its start. Like people's lives end once they enter a stable relationship and the ONLY conflict a couple can have is relationship related.

My husband and I will be celebrating our 30th anniversary this year. This subject REALLY annoys me.

So, some of my choices.

Miles and Ekaterin from the Vorkosigan series. I'd also have to add Cordelia and Aral. Simon and Lady Alys.

Heading over to Fantasy, Sam and Sybil from the Discworld series.
Magrat and Verence as well.

Not books, but Zoe and Wash from Firefly.

Thought I would toss out for any who might be interested.

Humble Bundle has a Discworld ebook bundle going for a little under 5 more days. $18 for 39 of the 41 books.

Missing The Last Hero (there is no ebook version of this book) and Raising Steam (might be missing due to being a different publisher).

ebooks are distributed trough Kobo.

Finished We Have Always Been Here and honestly I ended up really disappointed.

Not sure what's next.