Currently reading Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds. I'm flying to Rome this week so I need books for the flight, thinking I'll pick up the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett. Also thanks to tehstone for posting these while I was away!
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. I'm roughly halfway, and my guess is that the more interesting stuff is up next. While I like the subject, I feel like Bostrom is going into great detail on things that are so uncertain I doubt they'll ever go the way he describes them unfolding.
I was trying to read "Deathwalk" by Matt Braun. It's awful. I hate it. I stopped at Chapter 10 after a whole day of trying to read it and I don't want to go back. The author chose the most shitty way to write this book, where each chapter is an even but they're only loosely connected. 10 chapters in and I don't see any hint of a story arch, of a bigger picture. So I think I'm gonna say "screw it" at this point. Over the weekend, when we were out antiquing and book crawling, my wife picked up "The Martian" behind my back because I showed her the trailers to the movie. She said if I want to see the movie, I have to read the book first. I haven't read a single page yet, but I think I'll give it an honest shot. After all, she did the same thing to me with the John Carter series and I ended up liking the books more than the movie.
I can't imagine the movie will be the same experience as the book, at best it will be a different kind of fun. The book goes into a lot of fun with science lectures that I don't think will translate well. I really loved the book, I'd say it's worth a shot.
I've wondered the same thing. The first trailer has a bit of voiceover that's directly quoting the book which sort of makes sense given that he's writing everything in his journal/log. My guess is that it will alternate between him talking as a narrator and talking on-screen given the context of the event.
I'm six chapters in and I like it so far. The jump from Watney's journal to the characters at NASA was unexpected. I'm actually thinking about skipping those chapters altogether because I like how how isolated things feel from Watney's perspective. Though, I'm afraid I'll miss important points if I do.
There was a point in the book where I had just read a long section from the nasa perspective and found myself wishing it would just go back to Watney only like the first part of the book had been. A few pages later I got my wish for some time because his comms went down. I think a little less on the nasa parts would be fine but overall they're a necessary part of the narrative.
Transmetropolitan. This very minute. kleinbl00 have you ever gone through this? Warren Ellis and Dystopia and Gonzo journalism. Also, about 75% through The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin after a short hiatus due to being fucking exhausted from working non-stop and living in two weeks of non-stop 90 degree heat and humidity. It's really fantastic.
On book: Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome, sort of an interest set of essays of how genomics changed peoples views and interests before, during, and after the Human Genome Project. Fun fact: You can add "Post" to just about anything and sound smarter for it. I'm waiting for the day that Transgenomics becomes a thing though. On audiobook: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which has been sitting on my shelf for two years after I forgot to pass it on to a friend who moved away. It's... kinda boring... I appreciate narration's Irish dialogues, but as far as coming of age stories go, I liked Siddhartha much much more.
I'm currently reading The Martian (80% in) and I really like it. I love the attention to details.
Yeah. I'm eleven and a half chapters in and I'm really enjoying it. It's not high brow like I thought it would be, but it's enjoyable. For some reason, it kind of reminds me of World War Z. Probably because it's a) easy to read and b) the author fills you in on concepts as you go along.
1) A Random Walk Down Wall Street. My current audiobook. Dry as hell in spots, but pretty great most of the time. 2) Day-trading for Dummies. Turns out I didn't know what day-trading is. It's uber-mega-stupid. I'm pretty much reading this one because I figure it's worth knowing how the chartists think, if you can call it thinking. This book and the previous book are kind of like reading about the Atkins diet and raw foodism at the same time. I love that there's a wikipedia article that uses the word "foodism." 3) That twelve million dollar shark. Still loving it but as I decided to pull some money out of the annuities and put it in IRAs I'm being responsible. Let me know how Century hits you. I read Eye of the Needle last year and was absolutely entranced. The people who tell me how to write tell me to read Follett.
Yay random walk! Love that book, wish it was taught in schools. I'm so curious what the day traders book says - does it promise you wealth and riches? If you stay on a finance kick and haven't read them, some suggestions: The Investor's Manifesto - I really understood asset allocation so much better after reading this The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing - My finance bible The Millionaire Next Door - Interesting write up, especially the notes on parenting
As it turns out, "pattern day trading" is defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission as executing four or more trades of the same security in five days. "Day trading" is the practice of closing out all positions and returning to cash at the end of every trading day. "Swing trading" means holding shit for less than a week and yes, there's a "for dummies" book on that, too. Holding shit for more than a week? That's considered "investing." The day trading book doesn't promise wealth or riches at all - it makes the point that in any legitimate study of day trading, 80% of traders are wiped out within a year and those that aren't wiped out earn a median income of $3k per year from their trades. They then say "but it's legit because real estate agents do worse." It's kind of amazing - it goes out of its way to say "day trading isn't gambling" and then uses gambling metaphors for the rest of the book. I've saved your comment. I'll definitely check them out. I put my wife into a Yale unconventional last week and I'm doing a Bogle 3-fund for my meager portion. (and doing all sorts of options hijinks in Thinkorswim but that's fake money so who cares)
Gambling metaphors, and borrowing terminology from gambling, is really common among finance people in general though. I think it's really because probability theorists like to talk about everything in terms of gambling and the finance people worth listening to for the past few generations have been steeped in probability enough to have picked up the habit and spread it.
I'm back at school, so it's going to be mostly text books for the next little while. If I get the time, I'd like to start Oliver Twist.
I just started reading A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. Apparently the first half is goo,d but it slows to a crawl in the second half. If it does, I'll bail - I've got nothing to prove.
Last week I read Blackout by Sarah Hepola. It's a memoir about alcoholism. I read the first half while drinking a six pack or so and got through all the war stories. The second half is about recovery and it was a good read for the day I resolved to quit drinking. I bought A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again for some light reading that isn't stupid. I won't read all of it since I don't care about anyone's opinions on tennis but it'll keep me busy for a while.
Four days sober. I drank some last night and I have a headache. After fifteen years of doing it every day, five drinks instead of ten is not so bad. I'm not doing AA so I don't have to be shamed by picking up a new chip on Saturday. It's called harm reduction in my group instead of "we're very disappointed in you for not praying to God instead of drinking."
You're welcome rinx, wasn't sure if you were going to post it this week but then I forgot this morning anyway. Still reading 2312, it's become my read-before-bed book so the progress is slow. I don't dislike it, but it hasn't grabbed my attention enough to be worthy of more time. I finished The Explorer by James Smythe. It was ok, probably 2.5/5 stars. Calling it sci-fi is definitely a mis-categorization. On Friday I started The Gunslinger, part 1 of 7 of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I've never read any of King's books and most of them are not in genres I'm particularly fond of but I've heard nothing but good things about The Dark Tower so I'm giving it a go.
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning Have fun in Rome. If you've not been, you're in for a treat.
I currently have no desire to use my brain when I get home from work so I'm backlogging through "old" fantasy series to see if any are worth the time. When I get home I will start on the first volume of the Thomas Covenant set. On the weekend I read about politics.
Seek a second opinion. I hate almost all modern fantasy because it's derivative, or tries too hard not to be derivative, or the authors think that stringing together longish names and a few maps is all they need to be do to be Tolkien. I can count the fantasy series written after 1980 that I really enjoy on one hand, I think. After 2000, it drops to two: Pullman and this Kvothe business. EDIT: uh, the Convenant books, basically they sucked in every possible way. Most people just can't write antiheroes, I kinda wish they'd stop trying. EDIT 2: if you need something to read, fucking read Worm. It's 2 million words long. EDIT 3: I'm really pissed off because of baseball right now just ignore me.
I think fantasy has suffered a little too much for being genrefied. There wasn't Fantasy when Tolkien or Dunsany were doing it, and after Tolkien fantasy was doing what Tolkien did, maybe cribbing from the pulps or from people who cribbed from the pulps too. If you weren't writing a pastiche you weren't part of the genre.
What is fantasy if not a genre? I mean, I read number9dream the other day and it falls into a sort of vague postmodern magical realism category, but it shared all sorts of traits with modern fantasy: perversion of the Bildungsroman, extended dream sequences, sinister villains, more questions asked than answered... It could have gone on shelves as "urban fantasy" and no one would have batted an eye. If you aren't writing Tolkien-lite these days, your book won't get listed as fantasy. It's almost like there's no good fantasy left by definition. There are still plenty of stories being written that pique my imagination in the same way Lewis and Tolkien and Alexander did, you just have to look elsewhere. If I had my druthers, the genre would disappear for a few decades and give some people time to recharge their creative juices. Brandon Sanderson is an incredibly nice guy, and his books generally make for an enjoyable couple of hours, but it's no accident that he writes one every six months. He grew up reading the same genrefied stuff I did, you did, we all did, and it melted into the back of his brain for resynthesis on cue. He represents the pointlessly of the whole industry. Don't diehard fantasy fans ever get tired of reading the same stuff over and over again? I browse r/fantasy once a week or so; they don't.
Don't you have to be a romance novel with monsters to be urban fantasy? I love Sandman, the Invisibles and Hellblazer as much as the next guy of a certain age, but they all came before the scope of urban fantasy narrowed. I wonder if how any of them would fair if the genre has been established when they'd started. That was what I was getting at, which I think is what you're getting at withIt could have gone on shelves as "urban fantasy" and no one would have batted an eye.
It's almost like there's no good fantasy left by definition
Exactly. If I wanted to write a fantasy book, and make it about elves that didn't look like Jackson's Long Tan and handsome fantasies, or tried to make them more of the assholes they generally are, I would get lambasted for having shitty elves.I think fantasy has suffered a little too much for being genrefied.