Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

Apparently I picked up the Sapphire Reader achievement in September, and the Emerald and Diamond Reader achievements in October, although I have no idea what the requirements for those achievements were.

I never use the GR Bingo tracking - I do have a shelf for my Bingo each year, but I keep track on a spreadsheet on my laptop.

Happy New Year all - we're nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Only 40 years to go until we get the Thunderbirds 😁

That seems entirely reasonable, especially as you talked about doing that during the discussions leading up to the final Bingo selections 😊

Andrea wrote: "I've read that. I've not read part II because its nearly impossible to find!"

There are copies (of the paperback edition) on bookfinder.com for less than $40 (hardcover copies look to start at $100). And those prices are in Aussie dollars, so they would likely be cheaper for you, as the Canadian dollar is pretty strong against the Aussie dollar at the moment (every currency seems to be strong against the AUD at the moment), and postge is likely to be less.

I picked up my copies as they were released (so mid-80s for the early books) and they have been sitting on my shelves ever since 😝

Robin wrote: "This is also why, despite being in a few other groups, I always consider this one my primary or "real" group. :-)"

And we're happy to claim you as one of ours Robin - even allowing for the bad puns 😝

Biographies of people who are famously known for their work in SF/F TV and movies, such as William Shatner or Patrick Stewart or Sigourney Weaver. Also, episode guides on SF/F TV shows would count. I'm planning to read a history of the steampunk genre.

I have started reading The Book of Lost Tales, Part One. Possible, but unlikely that I will finish before the end of the year.

I have finally finished The Last Dark, which brings to end my reading of the entire Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I guess I'm glad I did it, and I'm certainly happy I have finished it, but I found the last couple of books really hard to read, mostly because I just didn't care what happened anymore.

Clearly, I finished The Last Dark - the final Thomas Covenant book - too early, as Jeremiah (the adopted son of Linden Avery), features heavily in that book, and would have been good for the Features a Son slot 😝

The notifications are completely broken. I have my notifications set to inform me of all new posts in this group, but it doesn't send me any notifications. I have to manually check.

I always access Goodreads on my laptop - I don't like using on my phone.

Georgann wrote: "I should look into getting a personal size one."

The ones readily available in Australia are individual sized, and usually come in packs of 4 or 6 (depending on which supermarket chain you buy from). It's not so much the minced fruit filling that is bad for diabetics - it's because the pastry is made with a lot of sugar, and then crystallised sugar is brushed over the finished pastry. Even in my pre-diabetic days, I found them too sweet to have more than one.

I have read 8 of them - The Caves of Steel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Great North Road, Bimbos of the Death Sun (one of my favourite books), Neuromancer, The Plutonium Blonde, and The Stainless Steel Rat.

I also have several in my TBR pile - Leviathan Wakes, When Gravity Fails, Mindstar Rising, The Stars My Destination, and The Water Knife (honourable mention)

Merry Christmas all 🎄🎉

Like you, Andrea, I rarely vote for the best books of the current year as I usually don't read more than one or two new releases each year.

Of the list of the top 144 books by GR readers, I have read three - Dune, Fahrenheit 451, and Frankenstein.

Mince pies are a staple down under as well although, as a diabetic, I tend to avoid them most of the time.

I'm still slogging through The Last Dark. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and I'm determined to complete it before the year finishes - which should be possible since the office closes for Christmas at the end of this week, so I will have more reading time.

I finished Pellucidar, which I didn't think was as good as the first novel in the series. Bit it's still ERB, so it's certainly not bad.

It seems odd that anyone would conflate steampunk with dieselpunk, although I can see mixing dieselpunk with atompunk - a lot of pulp SF from the 20s through the 50s could probably fit in one of those two categories.

As for dreampunk, I'm fine with that. There's a lot on that list that I haven't read, and I would think a fair number of Moorcock's books from the 60s and 70s could fit in that category.

Andrea wrote: "I didn't know it was a book! I'm always surprised to find certain movies are based on books like Shrek, Jumanji, Mary Poppins and of course loads of others. Though some may barely resemble the orig..."

I didn't know it was a book either until I found it in a box of books I had bought at auction - $9 for 10 boxes of ex-library books. Most of them I have no interest in, so I will give them to community book exchanges, or to a charity shop, but there were a few good ones in there.

Georgann wrote: "I know that the Cowboys and Aliens movie was not a box office hit, but I loved it!"

I thought it was a fun movie 😊