📢 Calling all tech enthusiasts and Linux aficionados! 📚
Excited to introduce our latest release, "Linux Kernel Programming." We're seeking passionate readers to review the book and share their insights on Amazon.
THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO Jasper Fforde’s enigmatic 2011 novel Shades of Grey is a fascinating, mysterious science fiction picaresque where decoding the secrets behind the worldbuilding is part of the fun. B PLUS
Another #bookreview - Unfortunately, this is my first negative review of the year.
Book: The Sage, The Swordsman and the Scholars
Rating: 3 / 10
The book is historical fiction focusing on the Ming Dynasty in China. A shady foreign power enters the scene brokering a dangerous level of influence in the local governments. A secret society protective of the empire begins to intervene - discovering this interlopers as evil sorcerers using drugs and magic in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor.
Book Review: Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa A time traveller named Orville attempts to save earth from an invasion. #bookreview@bookstodon@sciencefiction
My #bookreview is brief/won't spoil, to spread good, great, & spectacular #horror#books far & wide.
💙📚 THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH by Paul Michael Anderson is a compelling collection w familiar tropes that go to dark & unexpected places. Full of cosmic horror goodness, with dashes of folk & creature horror for extra flavor, this novella & 4 short stories will keep you entertained & satiated. (Cemetery Gates)
A well balanced combination of extremely good characters, a very solid and intriguing plot, great atmosphere and some well placed social commentary into the bargain, THE QUARRY tackles quite a bit and achieves all of it with considerable flair.
Reservoir builders in South Wales used an astonishing array of railways, gauges and engines!
This is a book for the devotee of industrial locos and the systems which they worked
It includes huge variety of machines - in an industry beset with problems!
See our latest review online (text/audio): ‘Reservoir Builders of South Wales’ by Harold D. Bowtell & Geoffrey Hill from The Industrial Locomotive Society
“MEKONG DELTA BLUESMAN” Son Vo tells the story of his life both offstage and on. From an early childhood in Saigon to a hardscrabble life in Maine to discovering his gift for music, Vo relates some wild adventures in a voice full of warmth and hope. B PLUS
Here's my review of the Free Comic Book Day 2024 issue of Conan the Barbarian. The digital edition is free on Kindle and direct from Titan Comics if you want to check it out yourself!
Borrowed The Lost Cause, written by @pluralistic (from the library), and was an enjoyable sci-fi novel, although perhaps too close for comfort to the present, and most certainly more optimistic than some of us here would be about the future; but, well recommended nonetheless. The hero of the book most certainly would be a denizen of this slice of the Fediverse. #bookreview#books#bookstodon
🆕 blog! “Book Review: Red Side Story - Jasper Fforde”
★★★★⯪
Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since. The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent […]
Book cover - a red land with a spoon in the foreground.Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since.
The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent job of exposition - but this isn't the sort of book you can pick up without having recently read the original. I got a dozen pages into Red Side Story before I realised that I remembered nothing about the original. So I went back to read Shades of Grey. I'm delighted to say it was just as good as I remember - a delirious ride through a messed up world.
The second book is… more of the same. It slowly reveals more of the backstory and its grim origins. It builds to a rather satisfying conclusion. Along the way it gets a little tied-up in its own rules, and makes some weird pop-culture references. But never fails to be brilliantly perplexing in its structured surrealness.
In one my smarter moments I likened our era to someone arriving late to a concert, just as the final chords were hanging in the air.
If you like Fforde's inventive and bizarre worlds, you'll like this. But, I warn you, it really needs you to have read Shades of Grey first.
I’ve just finished The Next Big Thing by Anita Brookner which was a great and sometimes difficult read. It’s about Julius who’s in his 70s and is now retired. His parents and brother have died and his wife has left him. He’s living alone in central London, his adopted city after his family fled from Nazi Germany. He’s looking for the next big thing in his life, pondering his past and feeling concern for his failing health. Sounds gloomy, right?! Well, the insightful writing just carries you along and pulls you in before you know it and you’re hooked on this story of loneliness and regret in later life. I found myself, like I often do with Anita Brookner, rereading sections due to the beautiful prose. Here’s an example to give you a flavour:
“He raised his eyes to a rooffline bristling with television aerials , lowered them again to windows still blank before the evening lights were lit. The sky was already darkening; signs of spring were absent, and yet the chilly damp held a promise of greenness, of new life only just in abeyance. it was even possible to appreciate that sky; its opaque blue reminded him of certain pictures, though no picture could compete with this strange sense of immanence. With the crust of the earth ready to break into life, the roots expanding to disclose flowers, the trees graciously putting forth leaves. The impassivity of nature never ceased to amaze him. This awakening process was surely superior to anything captured on canvas, yet art made all phenomena its province.in its unceasing war with the effort of capturing moments of time art won this unequal contest, but only just. The majestic indifference of nature was there to remind one of ones place, and no doubt to serve as a corrective to the artist’s ambition. When the canvas was finished it was already a relic, outside change. And surely change was primordial; all must obey it. To ignore the process was to ignore the evidence of one’s own evolutionary cycle.’
Haunting, introspective and with a hint of dark comedy this was so good, just maybe one to approach with caution if yu’re about to retire! This novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002. #bookstodon#AmReading#Braille#BookReview#nature@bookstodon
A TALE OF LOVE AND MONSTERS is a heart-stopping, action-packed fantasy adventure, a unique romance, and a deep, wise parable about self-sacrifice and family stories. Beautifully crafted kaleidoscope of distinctively new and classic legends. A MINUS