Seeing the official form title “Special Circumstances" on my NYS taxes and sniggering in #IainMBanks’ #TheCulture
(and for all its warts, ah if only we lived in that fully automated gay luxury space communism!! instead of manual labor cishet "luxury apartments" terrestrial hypercapitalism. I guess.)
I get greedy with Audiobooks. At first, it's just a book a week, then it's a book a day, then you're downloading the entire year of audiobooks to listen to.. <sigh> but they are good books. I've still got 16 hours left on my current book, and I saw this mentioned.. So, I got it too.
@Rasta he can seem a touch complex, but he's really worth sticking with. I'm very fond of the 'ships' series but it's a close second for the culture novels. Only my preference though.
@capnthommo If I can stick with it, will be good. I move around sampling everything, because I never really read before. Books I didn't read in school, I did last year, about this time, I started and finished about 100 books, more than any in my lifetime. Every subject, age group and interest. Some were dry and challenging but I got through them. I did a Sea Story or two last year myself
The Cruel Sea - Nicholas Monsarrat
Sea Change - Robert Goddard
Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy
The Culture Drawings book is full of pages like this - all these raw worldbuilding thoughts and sketches lovingly scanned in and restored! Whether there's much that can actually be deciphered coherently is another matter, but it's kinda fascinating to see :) #TheCulture#IainMBanks#SciFi
I'm telling you, he may drop in fancy sci-fi quotes but that doesn't mean he's actually read the texts or understood them.
He references Iain M Banks on his Space X drone ship but I bet his understanding of the Culture starts and ends with "lol, funny ship names, cool"
He is a fraud in every sense, no wonder Rishi Sunak adores him.
#FinishedReading the last book by #IainBanks , about a group of friends visiting a man dying of cancer, in his condemned house about to be swallowed by the next door quarry. Not quite as grim as it sounds, even though Banks's cancer diagnosis came while he was finishing the book; it argues for the value of meeting terrible things with dark humour and even rage. It feels a bit like a stage play with its restricted setting, small cast, and focus on dialogue and monologue. #Bookstodon@bookstodon