Rob’s Comments (group member since Jul 06, 2012)

Rob’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

The gazebo thing in the audiobook bothered me too. lol.

I have plenty of vacation saved up, so that wouldn't be a big issue for me.

For me I'm not sure I'll be comfortable attending a large conference in 2021, even December. I was considering going to the con. All those people, and no real idea which have gotten vaccinated (or that we might have wear masks at the con).

Plus, while I can easily drive there, I'd probably want to get a hotel rather than fighting DC traffic every day and looking for somewhere to park.

But I haven't really scouted the location.

John (Taloni) wrote: "I noticed that the eighth book was to be released late 2020 but actually came out February 2021. At a guess the author is experiencing some burnout."

Maybe, but 2020 took its toll on all of us, so it could just be that.

Bloodline came out today! I've been struggling to read, but I managed about 80 pages today (which is a lot for me).

Welcome Matt. We'll happily fill up your backlog with lots of other books you might have missed in the last 10 years.

You could be right, but until I see them in the next movie I'm reserving judgement. It's something that might be easily explained at the start of a movie but those who watched the show have a deeper background.

Dara wrote: "I joined in 2012 from the Geek and Sundry show and now I am a ghost."

*wave* I hope you've been doing well!

Personally, I don't see why they need to rush anything. It depends on the story they wanted to tell. The pacing is slower than a movie, but the show is far longer than a movie too. They "only" have 3 episodes left, but that's a full movie's worth of storytime.

I think expectations for these MCU shows some fans have are unreasonably high, in part I'm sure due to the success of the movies.

There were some who didn't seem to enjoy Wandavision, it's slow burn or lack of big reveals. Personally I thought it was great. I'm enjoying this one a lot too.

I'm not expecting Marvel to do major plot development in their shows. Yet. There is some character development and some origin story stuff, but nothing critical as far as I can tell. Time will tell how important these shows become to the bigger story.

In the past when the MCU films and shows tied into each other it was very thin. All of those shows have basically been relegated to non-canon now I think.

Thus far Disney has mostly made it so you didn't need to watch the shows to be able to follow along with the movies, while rewarding the fans that did and the hardcore comic fans with various Easter eggs.

But apart from Avengers you could watch almost any random MCU movie (mostly in phases 1 & 2, although a few in 3 as well) and not really be lost if you hasn't watched all the previous films.

I don't seem them suddenly ramping that up where you MUST subscribe to Disney+ to follow along the movies. Again, yet.

I expect over time they will do more and more in the shows to keep people subscribed.

I think it's important to keep in mind a lot of these shows were planned out well before covid and probably just meant more as optional viewing as a way to build up a slow number of subscribers not MUST watch shows to keep their audience paying them each month.

Now that covid/2020 have escalated all their streaming plans, it wouldn't surprise me if the next wave of MCU shows become MUST watch.

Thanks!

Could you put your post in spoiler tags Ruth? Some people may not have seen the episode yet.

Trike wrote: "I always wonder why more Fantasy books are read over SF. Is it because they tend to be in series? Or that there is relatively little difference between books within the same subgenre, therefore making them easier to consume? Or something else more complex going on?"

For me personally I don't enjoy seem to reading Sci-Fi as much as fantasy. I prefer to watch it. Until recently I didn't think live action fantasy was very good. Lord of the Rings and then Game of Thrones finally changed my mind.

I'm also not really a hard-sci fan so most of the Sci-Fi I read/enjoy is tends to be space fantasy.

I also prefer space opera more than most other sub-genres because I prefer character driven stories.

Oddly in fantasy I love world building and detailed magic systems, but I don't get bored by that like I do with scientific explanations.

If an author wants to prove to me they know the principles of science involved in their book, I start to get bored really quickly.

I do like books that have seemingly realistic science but don't get bogged down in the details, like the Expanse. I have trouble finding more stuff like that though.

Of course as a Software Engineer I tend to get pulled out of stories where they ignore reality or go over the top. But I have enjoyed some over the top books and movies that deal with computers and writing code.

So all of that is just a long winded way of me saying "It's just what I prefer to read" I guess.

Sheila Jean wrote: " I probably won't read the rest of Shadow and Bone's series unless they go on a audio daily deal/$5 sale again at some point. It was fine, but I'm not as invested with the characters."

Yeah, if I didn't own them all already, I'm not sure how quickly I'd have continued (if at all).

I'm still looking forward to checking out the TV show though, especially since they added the main characters from Six of Crows in as well. Apparently they made up some backstory for what they are doing during the original trilogy since that series takes place 2 years later.

Sheila Jean wrote: "I go over every year, but I keep my goal at 60 books because I feel that's reasonable. If I didn't do audio while doing other things (driving, exercising, cooking) I'd have a much lower completion rate.."

Yeah. I did that with 75 books for years. Then last year I was like, I want to take it easy and did 50, then barely managed that thanks in part to covid anxiety leaving me unable/uninterested in reading very much.

So this year I did 25, which I should easily clear.

Audio is like 90% of my reading now, but I do far less of that too. I'm commuting less and listening to music more as well, so instead of roughly 1 audiobook/week it's closer to 1 every 2 weeks or so now.

For my own personal challenges, I'm finished with:

Personal: 6/25 (24% complete)
Sword: 3/5 (60% complete)
Laser: 2/5 (40% complete)


I finished reading 1 fantasy and 2 Mystery/Horror book in March.

I finally got back into Small Gods last week. I want to finish that this weekend before Bloodline comes out next week.

So for next month I'm expecting to finish my Sword challenge, and likely exceed it by a few. I could end up adding anywhere from 2-5 fantasy books. Let's see if that holds true.

March Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 107 (+7)
Total Read: 856 (+399)
Average Books Read: 8 (+3)
Total Committed: 3,310 (+150)
Average Books pledged: 31 (-1)


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 111 (+8)
Total Read: 721 (+300)
Average Books Read: 7 (+3)
Total Committed: 3,039 (+133)
Average Books pledged: 27 (-1)

I've been reading the Shadow and Bone books. I'm mostly done with Siege and Storm and will probably pause to read The House in the Cerulean Sea before jumping into Ruin and Rising.

The series is OK so far. I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as the follow-on series Six of Crows

New month, new thread. What other books are you enjoying this month?

The month has begun, go forth an discuss!

April meetup: https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...

Welcome Scott. As to book titles, there have been a few threads where people have asked that.

You can just make a thread in the What else are you reading section.