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

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

We should take all future discussion of this to the thread to leave this one clear for additional quick burns.

Thanks

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

FWIW Scalzi says it's now official on his blog: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/06/0...

But he may be going based on the note on the GFMe page as well.

They might. I know I had hoopla at one point, but I never really used it. Not sure if they still have it.

I think it had the limit of 10 and I might have used it once for a movie.

Thanks for the suggestion. If/when I'm looking to read some new comics I can see if I still have access.

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

Personal: 24/50 (48% complete)
Sword: 8/15 (53% complete, 12% ahead of schedule)
Laser: 8/10 (80% complete, 38% ahead of schedule)
Comics: 5/5 (100% complete)

This month I've added 2 Sword, 0 Laser, 1 Graphic novels.

The only thing I read with my eyes in May apart from the news was the latest volume of Attack on Titan, which finished off my Comics challenge for the year.

I'm ending my subscription to Crunchyroll, so I'm not sure how/when I'll finish that series now. I had expected it to be long overy now, but it's been sort of dragging out that last year or so (in my opinion).

And with the libraries all still closed that cuts off the other main source I have for comics. So I'm likely to end up with 5 for the year anyways. Unless I finally get back to finishing the The Boys, which I own from a Humble Bundle.

I also finished the really long (and really good) Super Powered series in audio. Book 4 was 61 hours. I hadn't expected to finish it during May, but I was finding reasons to just sit and listen to it.

With me back to work at least part time, that should mean an increase in audio time and my backlog of new releases are all much shorter so hopefully I'll get through more than 1.5 books.

I'm also attempting to read the ebook version of this months S&L pick. Hopefully that goes well since I have it from the library, so I have a limited amount of time to finish.

So I expect I should add at least 3 more audio books (1 SF and 2 Fantasy) in June, and 1 ebook. That would have me completing my Sci-Fi challenge 6 months early, and about halfway done with my fantasy challenge.

We'll see how that goes. I purposely reduced my challenges this year BEFORE the plague happend and reduced my reading/audio by even more than I had anticipated.

I don't plan to increase my goals even though I'm likely going to complete all 3 challenges early despite everything going on.

May Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 281 (+9)
Total Read: 2,049 (+499)
Average Books Read: 7 (+1)
Total Committed: 4,917 (+177)
Average Books pledged: 17 (0)


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 280 (+7)
Total Read: 1,716 (+379)
Average Books Read: 6 (+1)
Total Committed: 4,432 (+83)
Average Books pledged: 16 (0)

The month has begun. Go forth and make discussion threads!

I own both series already. But I'm happy to see other people discovering and enjoying it.

Yeah, it was very cool. Too bad they camera cut off the stage 1 landing, although I've seen it from previous unmanned Falcon's before.

Looking forward to watching the docking tomorrow.

Next virtual meetup will be Saturday June 27th: https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...

Welcome Anna

I haven't tried Schitt's Creek, but I've really been enjoying Kim's Convenience. I'm almost caught up so I was planning to try Schitt's Creek next.

Locus has it nominated under their Horror category.

I haven't read it myself, so I can't speak to why it's being ignored by others, of if Locus would be better listing it under fantasy than horror.

Welcome Michael.

Please use the Author Promo section for this kind of thing in the future. I moved this thread there for you.

I added this one to my TBR during March Madness, so I'm excited about the pick.

I haven't been reading much though, so I need to decide if I want to try to get the ebook or audio. I have so many recent audio book releases to listen to, so I'm leaning ebook.

I just worry I won't finish it quickly if I go that route.

Anyone already do this in audio?

Our June pick will be A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

Let us know what you think about the pick before the group read begins. Please no spoilers.

I've enjoyed the season, but I haven't watched this week's finale yet. I was bummed to read that news yesterday.

And from what I read the only cross-over planned for next year was Batwoman and the new Lois & Clark show they greenlit. So that makes that a bit trickier depending on how they work a new actress into the story.

I already have a possible way they could retcon in a new actress but it spoils parts of season 1

(view spoiler)[Alice is always making new faces, in particular for Mouse. I can see a plot where they use archive footage of Ruby Rose where Alice kidnaps her and changes her face to that of the new actress for some reason.

Although given where this season left of last week, not sure how that would exactly fit into the plot, but I'm sure the writers can come up with something. (hide spoiler)]

Not exactly SFF, but one of the best books I've read is on sale: The Shadow of the Wind for $3

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B000OVLINI

So the S&L discord server has a text chat room for the UK meetups, but there are only 2 shared voice channels.

If you simply join the S&L discord server you should see which channel everyone is in during the meetups. And worse case you can ask in the UK text channel at the time of the meetup.

S&L Discord: https://discord.gg/e2YUWzz

FWIW Scalzi's new book wasn't available for pre-order, or if it was it wasn't very far in advance and it still came out on time.

I'd be shocked if this doesn't push some back. Technology is such that narrators can record out of their house, but that doesn't mean they have the required equipment or skill set to do it.