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

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

I didn't like the second episode as much. I feel like it didn't do much to advance the plot at all.

Rick wrote: "Rob wrote: "Rick wrote: "Rob wrote: "I'm playing a lot of WoW Classic like it's 2004 all over again. We'll see how long it holds my interest, but I still play WoW Retail so probably for quite some ..."

I've been skipping spells since level 12. It hasn't been enough apparently.

I mained a rogue for most of the game, but I rolled a mage alt in vanilla and pvped with it. Mage is all about kiting and burst damage.

Of course this time I'm playing my mage with a healer this time so hard to say it's easy not to die. lol

Yeah, each year's cleanup has taken me a few hours to do, especially for the older threads. I did 2008-2011 over the course of a weekend iirc. And now I do a year's worth of books at the start of each year. So in early 2020 I'll consolidate down the 2014 threads.

I forget when we started the prefix thing over here. I want to say it was late 2014. And since I've been moderator (also late 2014 I think?) I've been making it a point update all the book threads as people have created them.

That will make archiving those threads go a bit faster. It's still slow to move all of them into a single group though.

I never tried the sorting thing. Good tip.

Doing that it looks like the Blindsight threads are on pages 3/4: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Rick wrote: "Rob wrote: "I'm playing a lot of WoW Classic like it's 2004 all over again. We'll see how long it holds my interest, but I still play WoW Retail so probably for quite some time yet. Especially sinc..."

Yeah, I've been duoing with a friend as shaman/hunter a few nights/hours each week.

However, last weekend weekend we met a tank/priest combo and we've been running dungeons with them a lot since trying to push to 90g for the mount. So it's been a bit more like no-lifing it than I had been since launch.

I think I'm just under 41. And I'm still like 7g short and that's without training any of my level 40 spells yet. Hoping I can finally get enough tonight before I leave town for a long weekend.

And I can't wait until I'm saving for the level 60 mount again. >.<

What class are you playing?

I did try to label each thread with a matching prefix and set the book as the topic.

That should help your searching at least.

Anyone else watch episode 1 yet? When I saw this active I assume it did, but maybe I just haven't been in here since October? I've been kind of falling behind on goodreads lately.

I thought episode 1 started kind of slow. And the early scenes felt low budget/fan film to me. Maybe that was more the style they are going for with "space western" but I don't know.

But later on things really picked up. Both plot-wise and special effects wise.

Also, I like that he never takes off his helmet.

I know very little about the Mandalorians. Just a bit from the 1 time I watched the prequels and mostly the stuff from Star Wars: Rebels

I also looked up the time period and apparently it's 5 years after episode 6 and 25 before episode 7. That seems to give a lot of wiggle room with plot/characters.

Minor spoiler (view spoiler)[apparently the bounty droid is voiced by Taika Waititi (hide spoiler)]

I'm really curious where things are going with (Major spoilers): (view spoiler)[ the (baby? I guess at 50 they are still babies?) yoda. I don't know what else to call it. I googled what race Yoda is and it apparently has never been named?

It seems like he's going to protect it from the remenants of the Empire? Maybe he'll work with the doctor? I recognize that actor from something so I assume he'll be on more than 1 episode.

Then again I recognized the speeder pilot in the opening sequence and he didn't make it very far into the show. (hide spoiler)]

Rob wrote: "For me I've read: 11 fantasy and 6 sci-fi books that meet the time period.

Two of those 11 are by an indie author (Will Wight) whose starting to get popular, but nowhere near the ..."

Probably a bad sign that I'm replying to myself, but after making that list I can see that I'm severely lacking on woman authors, and minorities in my fantasy reads this year. Something I've been trying to read more of. Not to fill any quota or anything, but because I want to try to read different types of fantasy stories.

12 of the nominees in round 2 are women and I've only read 3 of them before. So I should check out some of them.

For anyone whose read/enjoyed one of those 12 books, what would you recommend?

I already had The Dragon Republic on my TBR and I added Ninth House, The Starless Sea because I enjoyed past books by both of those authors.

For me I've read: 11 fantasy and 6 sci-fi books that meet the time period.

Two of those 11 are by an indie author (Will Wight) whose starting to get popular, but nowhere near the levels that it takes to get on the list.

Three others are by mid-level authors that probably also don't have the popularity needed but whose books I buy pretty much automatically (Django Wexler, Scott Meyer, Drew Hayes)

The remaining 6 are from some pretty popular authors on GR, at least in fantasy circles I'm in:

Joe Abercrombie
Mark Lawrence
Brian McClellan
Anthony Ryan
Michael J. Sullivan
Brent Weeks

Of those 11 fantasy books, 4 are in the current round of voting (0 were in the initial round). Of the 6 sci-fi books I think 3 were in the intial round and 4 are in current round.

I can't figure out if there is a way to see the results/list from the first round to double check my numbers though.

But that means 36% of my fantasy reads and 67% of my Sci-Fi reads are in the current round. A lot better than the 0% fantasy I had before.

Yeah, the Goodreads awards are stupid. So are pretty much every award in my opinion. It's still fun to take about my favorite books though. I wouldn't get too upset by it. At worse just don't participate/ignore this thread.

It's a bigger problem than just Goodread though. All the end of year/review stuff comes out far too early in the year. It basically punishes stuff released in the last 2 months or so.

How can I list my top 10 books for the year in early december when there are probably new books in December that I'll read and enjoy (as has been the case for the Expanse books in previous years)?

I typically try to wait until January to do my year in review, or very late in December when i'm fairly confident there isn't a book that's going to jump the list. And if it does, I'd probably just update.

Personally I like Thrawn: Treason far more than Thrawn: Alliances. But neither were as good as Thrawn

I'm playing a lot of WoW Classic like it's 2004 all over again. We'll see how long it holds my interest, but I still play WoW Retail so probably for quite some time yet. Especially since I'm not even max level yet.

I just started it the other day. It's OK, but not amazing. Honestly I went for audio book more out of covienence that being blown away by the sample.

I'm only an hour or so in and I guess I'm wasn't noticing the Scottish accents. But now that you say something it does ring a bell.

I wonder if it will bother me for the rest of the book now. If so, I know who to blame. :-D

Oh and personally I don't feel bad about voting when I haven't read all the choices. All these award lists wether they are carefully curated or a popularity content are just a means to discuss and share your favorites.

Or lament how your favorites go unrecongnized in favor of some other book (or as was the case the one year with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two) a play you think far less deserving wins.

I generally try not to get too upset that something I love loses to something I didn't, or something I haven't read yet. Life's too short. I enjoy seeing what other people in this group name as their favorite reads of the year far more than what goodreads as a whole votes for.

I'm not sure if I'm just not reading the new popular fantasy anymore or what, but I'd read ZERO of the fantasy books goodreads listed for the open round. And most of them aren't even on my (unrealistic) TBR pile.

I think that's the first time that's happened to me since I've joined Goodreads.

I tried to write in Underlord for round 1, but unsurprsingly it didn't make the cut. It's still my favorite fantasy book from this year though.

For round 2 at least, I do see several fantasy books that I read and enjoyed this last year got written in and made the cut. That includes The Burning White which I just finished and was probably my #2 fantasy book this year. But at the time of the opening round I hadn't finished it yet.

And there are a few others now from my top fantasy reads I'm hoping will make it the later rounds: Holy Sister, A Little Hatred in case Burning White falls short. It coming out so recently probably hurts its chances. Not to mention it's a huge damn book.

By contrast I'd read several of the sci-fi books, and I read far less sci-fi than fantasy. I guess the stuff I do read there is the most popular. I'm Tiamat's Wrath all the way, that's probably my top read from this year overall.

As we are now a few days into the month, I'm going to lock the kickoff thread. Feel free to make new threads to discuss the book. Please make sure to indicate if your thread contains spoilers.

apparently the first test says I'm 46% likely to be a replicant.

But the second test said I'm Human. So who really knows?

lol.

I have my parser app to let me track how many hours I listen to/pages I read, but I don't set my goals around it.

My reading is way down this year. I'm playing more video games, riding my bike a bit less (I was overdoing it), so both my quantity and volume is down.

But I'm OK with that. I think next year I will probably drop my goal from 75 to 60 or 65 for the first time since joining goodreads (I joined in July 2012 so I had a goal of 35 for half a year I think.

Goals are fun, and stretching yourself can be fun too, but I've done that for the last 6 years or so.

I do wish the Goodread challenges had more options to do things like length, but with the variety of formats and narration styles not all pages are created equal and not all hours of audio either.

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

Sword: 28/35 (77% complete, 3% behind)
Laser: 13/15 (87% complete, 3% ahead)
Comics: 8/10 (80% complete, on track)

This month I've added +1 Sword, 0 Laser, 0 Graphic novels. I also did 2 books that don't count towards either (1 mystery, 1 nonfiction).

So despite cutting my goals, I'm now behind on Sword again. It doesn't help that the October Monthly pick is really long and that I'm doing another long (39 hours) audiobook. I should finish with both of those early in November despite doing the bulk of them in October.

After I finally finish Seven Blades in Black, I'll probably crush my Comics challenge by doing all 12 volumes of The Boys.

That should also help me with my personal challenge of 75 things, which I'm also horribly behind on.

After that I may try to do a few shorter Fantasy works (likely something by Will Wight or Terry Pratchett) to try to catch up a bit.

I also have a road trip this month so that should give me a good chunk of audiobook time.

October Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 426 (+8)
Total Read: 5,900 (+700)
Average Books Read: 14 (+2)
Total Committed: 7,465 (+93)
Average Books pledged: 18 (0)
Total Challenges Completed : 9 (+2) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 420 (+5)
Total Read: 4,672 (+477)
Average Books Read: 11 (+1)
Total Committed: 6,646 (+55)
Average Books pledged: 16 (0)
Total Challenges Completed (Goodreads): 5 (+2) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Graphic Novel Challenge
Total Participants: 120 (+2)
Total Read: 1,415 (+209)
Average Books Read: 12 (+2)
Total Committed: 2,741 (+62)
Average Books pledged: 23 (0)
Total Challenges Completed : 4 (+1) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Short Story Challenge
Total Participants: 43 (+2)
Total Read: 348 (+47)
Average Books Read: 8 (+1)
Total Committed: 589 (+32)
Average Books pledged: 14 (0)
Total Challenges Completed : 2 (0) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.

The updated projections indicate we'll get about 7,000 fantasy books, short of both the pledged books of 7,465 and the goal of 10k books. Similarly we'll only get 5,600 sci-fi books short of the 6,646 pledged.

We're approaching the home stretch of 2019. What books are you trying to fit in before the end of the year?