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

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

Our February pick will be: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

What do you guys think about the pick? As usual I'll close this thread about a week into February.

For anyone else struggling to find it, I think it's here: https://youtu.be/ZLW2jkd6E7g?t=24

I had to pause it. He's standing around the back left-side of a command table as a hologram.

Phillip wrote: "It also looked like young Padawan Kanan was in the trailer with his master. That would be a fun cameo, especially if he got some lines."

Missed that. I have to go rewatch now!

Hmm. Now I'm trying to remember what they said about Order 66 in Rebels, if anything.

So far I'm finding the episode list to be pretty good. There is definitely stuff I forgot about. I haven't found any of the selected episodes boring.

Of course I'm mostly watching it while I'm doing mindless stuff in World of Warcraft..

31 down, 35 to go on my abridged rewatch.

Thanks for the quick announcement! I'm getting ready for the next newsletter and I was afraid I wouldn't have the next meetup for you guys.

I must admit I kind of zoned out a bit during all the plans for the how we might read all the hugo nominees, but I did hear something about "skipping March Madness" which would make me very sad if that happened.

Also thanks for the shout out about the S&L Worldbuilders group. And thanks again to everyone who donated!

Tassie Dave wrote: "The reason I know how old my oldest books are is because I used to write the date I bought a book on the inside cover.

No computers and definitely no internet in those days (mid-70s)"

Actually, that reminds me. I do add the purchase info to goodreads when I do a review too.

It looks like that is a field in the data export too. Hmm. Now I may have to add that as a feature to my application when I have some time.

It would be easy to get the duration between the purchase date and read date if both are set.

I wish I had a good way to use my goodreads data to determine how long it's been on my owned an unread shelf.

The best I could do is compare the read date to the shelf date, but a lot of these books get shelved before I buy them. Also a bunch of my books I owned before joining goodreads in 2012 so that would also throw off the calculations.

It'd be interesting to see which of the books from my backlog I read each year had been sitting on that shelf the longest.

Goodreads should totally hire me part time to add a bunch of features like this to the site.

Welcome Amanda.

Fresno Bob wrote: "Rob wrote: "but the best comic I've read recently is Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker about adults returning to the "real" RPG world they entered as children, very dark with interesting art..."

That does sound interesting. However it seems to have a lot of detractors on goodreads. Most of the top shown reviews are 2 stars it seems. Looks like my library has it though so worth a shot.

Can't be any worse than Critical Failures

I've been slacking off on my reviews for the last 2 months and had 19 to do (albeit that nearly half of those were volumes 1-8 of The Boys), but as I was doing my review of 2019, I figured it was time for me to catch up them before I could no longer remember what I thought about them.

Rather than inundating you with a huge list and a bunch of links, I figured I'd highlight some of the best reads out of the bunch. If people really want to read all my reviews that's easy enough to do.

The top read had to be The Burning White. After an up and down series, I feel like Mr. Weeks really stuck the landing with this book. Unlike my opinion on his Night Angel series. - ★★★★★ - (My Review)

I also really enjoyed Starsight, but not quite as much as Skyward. After how much I didn't enjoy the Reckoners I've been pleasantly surprised to see I can still enjoy some of Brandon Sanderson's non-cosmere stuff. It continues to be a fun series and I'm looking forward to the next book. - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

And more recently and my first book of 2020, I read The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies. I've been trying to read more non-fiction and I love the history of computers and related subjects like this (cryptography). This is one of those books that proves the life can be more unbelievable than fiction. - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

There were others than I enjoyed but after writing 19 reviews today, I'm kind of tired of writing about books.

We could try it, but most stuff doesn't go beyond a few posts and I don't bother saying much.

I figure if people really want to keep talking it's easy enough to make it's own thread.

If you guys want to discuss this top further, please create a new thread.

They are books I've owned for more than a few weeks and haven't read.

Despite my good progress last year I have over 165 books on my "owned and unread" shelf. And I'm pretty sure that there are a bunch I haven't shelved as such too.

I try not to add too many new books to it each year, but I'm not sure that's been working out too well. I have a book buying problem..

So I finally got around to running my books through my GoodReads Parser Application and here's the quick summary:

Total Books: 75
Total Backlog Books: 32 (42.67%)
Rereads: 4 (5.33%)

********************
* Format Breakdown *
********************
Total AUDIO_BOOK Count: 46 (61.33%)
Total BOOK Count: 4 (5.33%)
Total EBOOK Count: 9 (12.00%)
Total GRAPHIC_NOVEL Count: 16 (21.33%)

*******************
* Genre Breakdown *
*******************
Total FANTASY Count: 51 (68.00%)
Total MYSTERY Count: 4 (5.33%)
Total NONFICTION Count: 4 (5.33%)
Total SCIFI Count: 16 (21.33%)

***********
* Ratings *
***********
Average Rating: 3.8
Total 2 Count: 3 (4.00%)
Total 3 Count: 14 (18.67%)
Total 4 Count: 53 (70.67%)
Total 5 Count: 5 (6.67%)


If anyone is interested in more of my stats and a thoughts on my reading from 2019, I finished my 2019 on Goodreads Review

Stephen wrote: "I gave up on the Boys Graphic Novel series. I too like the Amazon series, but the Graphic Novels are unrelenting. Seriously, everything is taken to 11. But 2 volumes in and I had enough."

It's been a lot. I actually ended up taking a break, but I'll hopefully get back to it soon. I just have some stuff from the library to read first.

Sorry for the delay. Hellfire is being reigned upon them. Carry on..

Yeah, I don't know that I plan to do anything with either the Short Story or Graphic Novel challenges this year. I was already running out of steam by the end of last year just collecting/reporting the numbers each month.

I honestly considered just dropping the Short Story challenge since there didn't seem to be a ton of effort, but it wasn't like it took me very long to create the thing so I figured people who wanted to could still participate.