RanaldClouston

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to bookstodon

I read and enjoyed #ChrisFlynn 's novel Mammoth, which is narrated by a wisecracking Mastodon skeleton. This short story collection is more of the same, with each story having animal or object narrators. Given that most of them also adopt the same quip-heavy voice, the effect is quite repetitive. The only story I liked was Shot Down in Flames, which mixes up the narration much more. The final story is also a bit different, but I found it unreadable. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #FinishedReading

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to scifi

#FinishedReading my favourite #AnnLeckie yet! Just so beautifully handled in its themes, its characters, and its wild and weird alien biology and culture, and with a streak of dark humour and even (sort of) romance to go with it. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #SciFi

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to random

Now that Threads are starting to federate, are there any interesting logicians / type theorists / category theorists / PL theorists etc there I should be following?

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to Canberra

Helen Clark is visiting #ANU #Canberra https://www.anu.edu.au/events/in-conversation-with-rt-hon-helen-clark

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to scifi

#FinishedReading this slim volume of early 50s #SciFi by #AEVanVogt . The goofy title and stories of visiting inhabitable Mars and Venus makes this look like super old fashioned stuff, but that, like much else in this book, is an illusion. This is pure Cold War paranoia, with disorienting temporal and character shifts, mind control drugs, sinister conspiracies etc, and in general this feels like a bridge to the high points of Philip K Dick. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to bookstodon

#FinishedReading This book was pretty much the funniest thing ever when I first read it as an adolescent, and it's been fun to see my 11 year old son discover it. Re-reading it now is a rather different experience as the surprise of the jokes has mostly gone, but even that is testament to how effective #DouglasAdams was at inserting his gags into my long term memory. A comfort read for sure #Bookstodon @bookstodon

kenthompson, 1 month ago to books

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
Quite improbably, you are rescued from Earth minutes before its destruction, only to find the galaxy poorly mismanaged and under the influence of intradimensional rodents, and everyone looking for meaning where there is none, which rather gets in the way of having a good time.
4 of 5 library cats 🐁 🐁 🐁 🐁.

#bookstodon @bookstodon #books #reading #humor #mice #SciFi #humor #towels #life #dontpanic #encyclopedias

RanaldClouston, 1 month ago to bookstodon

#FinishedReading #MichaelKing 's biography of Te Puea Herangi, indefatigable organiser of the Māori King movement in the first half of the 20th century. Her forceful charisma, flaws and all, pops off the page in the hands of NZ's most iconic historian. The scale of change in her lifetime for Waikato Māori and NZ is fascinating, as are the insights into other prominent figures like Apirana Ngata and Gordon Coates. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #NZHistory

Title page of Te Puea, signed by the author to my grandparents in 1977

RanaldClouston, 2 months ago to scifi

#FinishedReading this collection of stories 1998 - 2009 by Australian #SciFi author @gregeganSF . Along with Crystal Nights, which I've read before in a different anthology, my favourite stories were three set in his vast utopian Amalgam universe. Egan combines an extremely high level of interest and knowledge of mathematics and physics with an ability to find beauty, drama, and emotion in worlds that have moved beyond war, scarcity, and aging. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, 2 months ago to bookstodon

#FinishedReading my first foray into 18th century literature, although I doubt much of the rest of it reads like this, with its twisted structure, absurd digressions, and typographical jokes. Some of it is incredibly quotable, fresh, and fun; other parts border on incomprehensible as the centuries render the jokes obscure. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #TristramShandy #LaurenceSterne

A page from Tristram Shandy, in which the author describes the progress of the story in various chapters diagrammatically, with meandering looping lines

RanaldClouston, 2 months ago to bookstodon

Tfw when you find parts 2, 3, and 4 of a 4-part series at a second hand book sale, but not part 1 (and then buy them anyway) #LifelineBookfair #KatherineKerr #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, 3 months ago to scifi

#FinishedReading the followup to #AnnLeckie 's Imperial Radch trilogy. Although it is set in a different milieu, very much recommended to read the Ancillary books first because the conclusion of that series is a plot point here. Leckie is one of the best in #SciFi for inventing alternative cultures and seeing how they can clash or cooperate; here the high concepts are wrapped in a fun and twisty, somewhat noirish, tale of murder and politics #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, 3 months ago to history

#FinishedReading this #HistoryOfScience on the non- Western contribution to science from 1450 on; stories range from brutal exploitation of indigenous biological knowledge to scientists like SN Bose who worked in more collaborative and acknowledged ways. Prose is a little pedestrian and academic but the material is really interesting. Not impressed with the erasure of Rutherford's New Zealand nationality though! #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Excerpt from book, describing Ernest Rutherford as British and using this as an example of a non-European scientist (in this case, Hantaro Nagaoka) not gettting proper credit for discoveries.

RanaldClouston, 3 months ago to Netflix

Just finished watching #Katla and I thought it was beautiful and incredible, and easily the best thing I've seen from #Netflix , even though I don't see many people talking about it (and don't recall much talk about it when it came out in 2021). And because it's a one-off limited series Netflix can't cancel it!

KitMuse, 3 months ago to sciencefiction

I need your help #bookstodon. One of the classes I'm taking at the graduate level this semester is Religion & Science Fiction. I read more fantasy, and would like to do my research paper on something that's not obvious (like ST/BS5/Matrix/etc.) & I'd love to use more modern sf rather than the golden age classics.

Anyone have any interesting ideas for my research paper on regarding the intersection of religion and science fiction?

@bookstodon #sciencefiction #scifi #ReligiousStudies #academia

RanaldClouston, 3 months ago to bookstodon

#FinishedReading a story of a Malaysian American woman returning to Penang with her parents and getting tangled up in the local ghosts, spirits, and gods. The dialogue is mostly Manglish (Malaysian English) whose distinctive syntax makes for quite a fun reading experience; I suspect #ZenCho has dialed it back a fair bit to keep it readable for non-Malaysian readers, mind. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, 3 months ago to comics

#FinishedReading (well, re-reading): I don't think these books are even close to as famous as Alan Moore's earlier more serious work like V and Watchmen, but I rate them just as highly; the sheer density of characters, interleaving subplots, and visual gags is incredible. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #comics #GeneHa #ZanderCannon

Superhero cops walk onto a bar filled with gods, one of whom (Baldur) lies dead on the floor. Policer officer Smax orders the crowd "Nobody move in a mysterious way..."

RanaldClouston, 4 months ago to bookstodon

By my count I finished 34 books this year, not counting ones read with my kids. These are 4 of my favourites, in no particular order: a biography of eccentric mathematician Paul Erdos; a self contained SFF epic about the future of religion; a fascinating look at bird intelligence; and a moving Australian sci fi story of virtual reality and the gap between those who embrace it and those who reject it #BooksOf2023 #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Snare, by Katharine Kerr
The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman
Every Version of You, by Grace Chan

RanaldClouston, 4 months ago to bookstodon

#FinishedReading This odd little #CarloRovelli book starts as a quite nice pop sci glance at time in 20th century physics, then shifts to speculations in philosophy of science. It comes with ecstatic blurbs from e.g. Phillip Pullman and Nick Hornby, who (like me) lack expertise to judge the meat of the book. Is it bullshit? Is it original? The whole package, including its sometimes strange language choices (who still uses 'Peking'?) left me intrigued but sceptical. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, 4 months ago to fantasy

#FinishedReading we picked this up because it was first in a series, but it turns out to be Book 9 of some giant metaseries! It seemed pretty accessible, and I loved the part of the book set in the 9th century, but I wonder if the 12th century part, which has more fantastical elements, might have been better with more context on the world. The book uses exclusively Celtic (mostly Welsh I think) language, culture, and folklore as its inspiration. #Fantasy #KatherineKerr #Bookstodon @bookstodon