Did you ever read a book or two in a long series and they were enjoyable so you’re hooked into the storyline and care about the characters.
But then, the stories get really irritating - this strange need for authors to torture their main characters over and over again is very troubling.
So I finished this series as a spite read. Fortunately the books were short. Compared to a lot of the books I usually read.
No I’m not naming authors. @bookstodon#amreading
@DejahEntendu@CuriousMagpie@bookstodon You're more forgiving than I. If I loose interest after the 1st chapter, I don't go on. If I get 30 minutes into a movie and I'm bored or the plot or characters are rediculous (hello? ARGYLE?), I bale.
Watching at home has made me much more critical of what I watch. It has to be outstanding from reviews and the trailer to spend $20 to see a movie in the theater. MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE did not disappoint, except for that TERRIBLE Winston Churchill.
If an author abuses their characters or does unreasonable violence, I stop immediately and blacklist the author from my life. Vickie Schwabb is on that list.
Oh, sure, I'll stop a stand-alone or first book if the author gets into abuse and all now. I never made it past the intro to The Expanse due to that. But in a series, where I've already gotten a couple of books in? I'll give them more of a chance.
I wasn't always that critical about my reading, and there are scenes I just can't delete out of my brain, even 25 years later. I think it was GRRM and his mid characterization of Daenerys that convinced me.
@wendypalmer@bookstodon Best to ignore the outliers you don't like. Could be anything. Don't waste time guessing, just enjoy the 5 star rating as a person with better taste. That's what I do 😊
We're so close to liftoff...please help us reach our 500 subscriber target so we can launch the new "The Interocitor" sci-fi short story magazine. It's a completely free, all-volunteer effort...no gotchas. Read up, sign up, and strap in!! https://www.theinterocitor.org
@grero@bookstodon It is, Roger! Short stories by the classic sci-fi masters, reformatted for optimal screen reading. New stories by current authors in the classic style. I like to call The Interociter a “digital pulp.” 100% free to readers, a labor of love. An online magazine for all who love sci-fi short stories’ golden era.
I've hit a reading rut and haven't read anything good in months.
Any recommendations? I've read a lot of different things, and will read just about any genre. If I have to rank things, I'd say that for me characters > themes > prose > setting > plot.
You can check out my profile or #AdventOfBooks to see some of the works I've enjoyed
Most of my reading is SFF and I also care most about characters. A few suggestions:
The Hands of the Emperor, Victoria Goddard.
The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovich.
Tuyo series, Rachel Neumeier.
anything by Martha Wells. Her Murderbot series is well known but I also like the Raksura series beginning with The Cloud Roads or the standalone Wheel of the Infinite.
Astreiant series by Melissa Scott beginning with Point of Hopes
restarted a book i thought i maybe didn't like, but turns out i was just in an airport experiencing interminable delays when i tried before. @bookstodon
@bourgwick
I might try the same with Slaughterhouse Five someday. I was miserably hot in an apartment with no AC. Made that book particularly hard to enjoy. But I stand by my opinion of White Noise! @bookstodon
In parallel I do read A Tall History of Sugar [2019] by Curdella Forbes that takes place in rural #Jamaica and starts in the late 1950ies. Seems very promising, being already on page 47! #bookstodon@bookstodon
@bookstodon Very strange reading a book with two main characters that both are so heavily coded as #actuallyautistic, but I don't think this was done on purpose...
While I was working on compiling a PDF proof of some writing drafts this morning, I realized MS had "enhanced" office with AI. Without asking, without consent.
I was able to do the registry edit solution and now the AI.exe task does not appear to be loading when I go in to work on a draft.
I mostly use #Scrivener for my drafts but while the Compile function is very slick, it does lack a couple of key features that I required Word for. I'll have to look into LibreOffice as a backup word processor.
He llegit quasi totes les novel·les de #GarcíaMárquez i fa uns dies vaig començar aquest recull de contes. Només puc dir que és absolutament magnífic. Us el recomano molt molt! @bookstodon#bookstodon#llibres
@GelatDeTramussos@bookstodon gràcies pel consell.
En aquesta cas concret és un autor del qui no llegiré mai més ni tres paraules escrites, per motius no literaris 🤷♂️
I agree with Horowitz. Censoring books and literary characters to suit modern sensibilities is very like Winston Smith's job in 1984. It gives a false sense of history. We're free to read or not read them.
I swear I planned to only drop off books to the #LittleFreeLibrary, but I decided if I brought this one home with me, that would free up space for one more book to go into the library :) @bookstodon
@bookstodon HAHA!!! I'm in a training class today, and they recommended one of the books I'd just dropped off at the #LittleFreeLibrary. Now I remember why I had that book in the first place.. so I have to go back and get the book unless it's already gone.
A bit surprised but very much honored -- OK I'll admit it, totally stoked! -- to see an excerpt from my review @nybooks (alongside Laura Rival's @ TLS) as the back cover blurb for the 2023 paperback edition to Falling Sky by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert
Just finished Biology the Whole Story by Lindsay Turnbull https://www.amazon.com/Biology-The-Whole-Story/dp/1788451937/ref=sr_1_1 Wow - what a great read! This was the perfect biology refresher for someone who took biology ... thirty-ish years ago? Steps through all the major topics - DNA, evolution, energy systems, animals, plants, and so on. Was great to dig back into some concepts I hadn't thought about in a long time
@danielcornell@bookstodon I'm in the same boat, only it was 50 years ago. I recently listened to Paul Sen's EINSTEIN'S FRIDGE as a great brush up on Thermodynamics which I studied for my Chemistry degree. It was a great overview of how it became the science of heat transfer, who were the major players (I remembered a lot of the names), and it's implications in modern information theory (that was new).
A fellow social worker I knew from grad school shared this book on her Instagram story and recommended it. I was on a hold list for the ebook at my local library for weeks, but now, I have it. I’m also listening to the #audiobook read by the author.
Natasha Brown’s Assembly is quite the Novella. “I've watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days - when the them had been so clearly defined! It's evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two's irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They're nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach - won't even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just viscous, random chance. And then, compounding.” @bookstodon#bookstodonhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58600914
Gestern hab ich The Sudden Appearance of Hope [2016] von Claire North beendet [gut, aber nicht revolutionär], heute starte ich mit einem im voraus faszinierenden, hoffentlich nicht zu viel versprechenden Buch:
Mütter Europas - Die letzten 43000 Jahre [2022] von Karin Bojs
Eins kann ich, obwohl erst auf S. 20, schon sagen:
Leider gefällt mir die deutsche Übersetzung von Erik Gloßmann überhaupt nicht und die Ausgabe von C. H. Beck ist schlurig [oder gar nicht?] korrigiert/lektoriert. Wer kann, sollte das schwedische Original [oder eine andere Übersetzung] lesen.
I have a craving for vampire novels that don’t take themselves too seriously - any recommendations? Currently reading Odd Blood and enjoying it so far.
"But Munro is an entirely different case, and she may be a singular author in that category for me: the time spent not reading her is as essential to my understanding of her work as the time spent immersed in her words."
