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The Hunger Games. I'm about two thirds of the way through it. Liking it so far.

This post has been edited by Cefca on 14th December 2019 22:06

Quote (Elena99 @ 11th December 2019 16:25)

Has anyone read The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern? I finished it recently and it's really good!

I took a break from Discworld because my hold on the ebook finally came good, and I spent the last week cruising through it and finished it last night. Having read Night Circus when it first released and not again since, my first impression of Starless Sea was that it was trying a bit hard to feel relevant, with too much hipster influence in the characters, relative to the more fairy-tale feel of Night Circus. Once the setting shifted more thoroughly, though, it got far better and actually ended up being a better fairy tale, in my opinion. The intertwining stories and how they all factored in to the denouement made it a much more impressive book than I originally expected, even though it still at times felt like she was playing a game of how much metaphor she could stuff into a single book.

A while back, I requested that my library get a copy of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You and, when we happened to be talking about it in Discord again the other day, I took a look and realized that they'd gotten it. So I just checked that out to my (kid's) Kindle and will start it up soon.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

One of my goals this year is to read more. See, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a novelist. That dream has never really left me, but to be a writer, you have to be a reader. And for years I just wasn't reading books. Oh, I still felt like I was getting my necessary intake of story, but it was all coming from video games, not books.

I am pleased to say that so far I've read two books this year!

The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan is a historical romance set in England. The heroine is quite purposely ridiculous, and I absolutely loved her. The hero is interesting in that he's got flaws that he must overcome. There's also a brilliant set of side characters, including a second romance storyline. I quite liked this book more than The Duchess War which is the first book in the series. And the Duchess War wasn't bad at all (I mean, it couldn't have been bad if I picked up the second book, right?) It just lost me once or twice because it felt like the characters knew more than the reader did at times. I've already checked out the third book in the series and will be reading that next.

The second book I read was Lucy Parker's Act Like It, a contemporary romance set in London's West End featuring stage actors. The premise is that the hero has been getting quite bad publicity; to soften his image, his publicist and the play's director insists he pretends to date the heroine, who has an "England's swetheart" vibe. Problem: they rather detest each other. The subtitle of this series is "A Slow Burn Romance", and it's fun to watch them slowly fall for one another. There's also a delightful subversion of a common trope at the climax of the book. I'm looking forward to reading the rest in this series!

I'vs also been working through Code This Game! by Meg Ray with art by Keith Zoo. It's a Python book for kids (hey, I wanted to learn Python but this is all the library had!) It does a fantastic job of introducing programming concepts using fun analogies. Like, to introduce nested loops they used an example of a person making three pizzas with the same toppings that had to be cut into eight pieces each. This is my first intro to Python, and there's some things I don't like about the language (I prefer to have "end" at the end of programming blocks) but that's not the book's fault. I'm amazed at just how fast I was able to get a working game. I've only been working on it for a week, and already I have moving sprites that respond to clicks on the screen.

(Rangers, feel free to edit this to add AmaCoN links if you'd like!)

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays: Kingdom Hearts
Fridays: Final Fantasy XI
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Side Quests & Shenanigans

I finished reading The Hunger Games books and have moved onto the Moontide Quartet series. I've not got very far into it yet but I'll keep you updated!

Quote (Rangers51 @ 2nd February 2020 14:47)

Having read Night Circus when it first released and not again since, my first impression of Starless Sea was that it was trying a bit hard to feel relevant, with too much hipster influence in the characters, relative to the more fairy-tale feel of Night Circus. Once the setting shifted more thoroughly, though, it got far better and actually ended up being a better fairy tale, in my opinion. The intertwining stories and how they all factored in to the denouement made it a much more impressive book than I originally expected, even though it still at times felt like she was playing a game of how much metaphor she could stuff into a single book.

A while back, I requested that my library get a copy of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You and, when we happened to be talking about it in Discord again the other day, I took a look and realized that they'd gotten it. So I just checked that out to my (kid's) Kindle and will start it up soon.

I also read Night Circus. I thought it was really good, but the plot didn't make a lot of sense to me in the end.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is on my to-read list! I hope you like it, it sounds interesting.

I'm currently reading a really long book called A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I'm only a third of the way in, but I'm enjoying it. I only have 7 more days until the loan expires, so I need to hurry.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

If manga/graphic novels count, I just learned Snowpiercer is a French comic. It's actually pretty cool.

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"So, are you a fan of the Fett?"

"Nah, I'm more of a Star Wars guy."

Quote (AltheaValara @ 2nd February 2020 17:18)

I'vs also been working through Code This Game! by Meg Ray with art by Keith Zoo. It's a Python book for kids (hey, I wanted to learn Python but this is all the library had!)

I've finished Code This Game! it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. The first part of the book has you build a simple tower defense game; at the end of that section, you have a working game, but it's trivial to win it. The second section encourages you to hack your game to balance it, and add levels of difficulty. Finally, the book suggests three other games you can now build on your own. I am probably going to take one of their suggestions and build a Space Invaders clone.

Yesterday I read through another Python book, also from the kid's section of the library: Coding Projects in Python, DK Publishing (various authors). This is another zero-to-code book that assumes you have no experience, so was rather below my level. It's got lots of fun projects in it, but.. Well, I can't get too excited about Turtle graphics (which s lot of the programs used) as they are dead simple. I did learn how dictionaries work in Python, and how to display a dialog box. While it would be a good intro for the beginning programmer, I felt Code This Game! was more suited to my needs.

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays: Kingdom Hearts
Fridays: Final Fantasy XI
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Side Quests & Shenanigans

Currently reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. Seems like it's the first cyber-punk book or something. I decided to read it before playing Cyberpunk 2077

Quote (Elena99 @ 3rd February 2020 15:25)

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is on my to-read list! I hope you like it, it sounds interesting.

I don't know how much of it you couldn't get by reading her blog, to be honest, but the book was well-organized and well-presented for a layman's introduction into machine learning. It doesn't dive too much into the nuts and bolts, which, as someone who has recently both watched a local presentation and started a class on machine learning, I'm glad that it didn't go any deeper than it did. It also made me laugh out loud a number of times, which says to me that she included a lot that she hadn't blogged about in the past or I'd just forgotten - either way was good enough for me.

I've shifted back into Discworld right now, and I'd say I'm probably approaching the halfway point of the entire series.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 19th February 2020 14:31

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
It's quaint, a little dated in parts but still very enjoyable

I'm continuing my way through Courtney Milan's bibliography. I recently finished The Countess Conspiracy. Folks, if you like romance novels, I highly recommend this one. It is utterly brilliant, and perfect, and all kinds of wonderful.

I've been reading romances since I was a teenager. Back then they were highly predictable: heroine and hero meet and fall in lust with each other, but dance around each other with lots of witty dialogue before finally coming together. But they deny their feelings for each other, until the damsel gets in distress and shoot, the hero realizes he does love her after all, so he rescues her and they live happily ever after, the end.

Yawn.

The problem with these old romances is that there was nothing to convince the reader that the couple was in love, other than the author saying so. And then you have The Countess Conspiracy, which is entirely about love. Halfway through the book, I was convinced they loved each other given how they acted towards one another. It's wonderful.

Couple that with a heroine who has complete agency - rare for a historical romance - and you have a fantastic book.

About that "historical romance" bit - it actually teeters on being an alternative history. The book opens with a bombshell of a revelation, which I won't spoil. All I can say is that the characters showed up in the previous two books (The Duchess War and The Heiress Effect) and I did not see this plot twist coming. My jaw literally dropped as I read it.

Five stars, A+++, would definitely read again

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays: Kingdom Hearts
Fridays: Final Fantasy XI
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Side Quests & Shenanigans

I read sporadic passages in Don Quixote. It's listed as one of the greatest stories of all time. I agree with my cousin it's not that good imo.

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https://www.youtube.com/user/Greatermaxim

Terra - LV 99 - HP 9999 - MP 999

Equipment - - - Abilities

Illumina - - - - - Fight
Genji Shield - - Morph
Oath Veil - - - - Magic
Minerva - - - - - Item
Ribbon
Economizer

Before my city--and the library--went into lockdown mode, I'd been devouring The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. I'm halfway through and am even more desperate than normal for physical distancing to end so that I can get to the last two books.

(I should probably just buy them all at this point, but I'm quite poor these days.)

The books are slow character-driven affairs, set in a world where certain people--poets--can bind abstract ideas into physical form to control them. They're quite compelling, so I highly recommend them if you're interested in fantasy.

After waiting for an interlibrary loan - and of course, for both libraries to be open long enough for the loan to take place - I finally got The Last Hero, an illustrated Discworld novella from late in the series' run. Having completed it, I now have finished the entire main Discworld series.

I also read Good Omens while I was waiting for the loan to go through.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

Your libraries are open during this time of COVID-19? Ours are still closed.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I recently finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I'm hoping to read the second book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, soon. Although I'm not currently reading it, I also highly suggest the His Dark Materials to anybody who hasn't read it. It's amazing.

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“Sorry for hitting you in the face with a palm tree that time.” - Belkar Bitterleaf

I bought a wooden whistle. But it wooden whistle. So I bought a steel whistle. But it steel wooden whistle. So I bought a lead whistle. But it steel wooden lead me whistle.

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th June 2020 21:00)

Your libraries are open during this time of COVID-19? Ours are still closed.

Ours were closed for a month or so, then open for curbside for a few weeks, and now fully open in my parish with limited capacity and no-contact checkouts.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st July 2020 07:45)

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th June 2020 21:00)

Your libraries are open during this time of COVID-19?  Ours are still closed.

Ours were closed for a month or so, then open for curbside for a few weeks, and now fully open in my parish with limited capacity and no-contact checkouts.

Around here, our libraries were closed to the public (as in, only the staff was there, still answering questions and the like), but they've started to reopen with limited runs. So, you can call ahead to put a hold on the books you want, and they'll bring it out to you curbside.

It's not as good as being able to wander through the stacks, but it's still great. I've been waiting months to read the next book in The Long Price Quartet, but I finally got book 3: An Autumn War.

I'm reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January by by Alix E. Harrow. I like it so far, it's similar in some ways to The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

Quote (Kane @ 1st July 2020 14:04)

Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st July 2020 07:45)

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th June 2020 21:00)

Your libraries are open during this time of COVID-19?  Ours are still closed.

Ours were closed for a month or so, then open for curbside for a few weeks, and now fully open in my parish with limited capacity and no-contact checkouts.

Around here, our libraries were closed to the public (as in, only the staff was there, still answering questions and the like), but they've started to reopen with limited runs. So, you can call ahead to put a hold on the books you want, and they'll bring it out to you curbside.

It's not as good as being able to wander through the stacks, but it's still great. I've been waiting months to read the next book in The Long Price Quartet, but I finally got book 3: An Autumn War.

Thanks for prompting me to check; apparently library staff here do now offer a walk-up/drive-up service where library staff will hand items over on a table or through a car window, and items can be returned through book drops.

I dunno when they started, but it's better than just being closed.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I borrowed Final Fantasy VII Remake from our library last week, and while there I also picked up a book to read. I finished the book yesterday, which pleases me because I bounced off the two previous books I had tried reading when I was halfway through with them. But I'm not surprised I finished this latest book as it's from an author I have a good track record with.

That book: Head On by John Scalzi, which he describes as being a stand-alone novel in the Lock In universe, but it sure felt like a direct sequel to me.

For those who never read Lock In: it takes place in the near future, when a pandemic (yes, really) causes a considerable portion of the population to develop Lock In syndrome, where the mind is still active but the body can't move. The disease is named Haden's, after the first lady who was afflicted with it. Because the disease affected someone so well known, the government spent a lot of money on ways to manage the disease. Hadens get a neural net installed in their brains, which allow them to pilot robots (nicknamed threeps) and live pretty normal lives.

The two books follow the story of Chris Shane, the former poster child for Hadens, who now is working for the FBI. Both books are basically a science fiction mystery story, as Chris needs to solve cases. Head On opens with an unexplained death at a Hilketa league game, which is a sport played by Hadens in which the goal is to decapitate the opposing team's threep.

Both books are expertly written with plenty of...well, not exactly twists and turns, but new information coming to light page by page. There's touches of humor to keep the books fun, and as usual with Scalzi, plenty of ethical questions (I seem to recall this more in the first book, but it's been several years since I've read it). It was an engaging read that i really enjoyed, and I look forward to future books in this series.

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays: Kingdom Hearts
Fridays: Final Fantasy XI
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Side Quests & Shenanigans

I've been reading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy again having recently finished some PG Wodehouse. I do love a bit of classic comedy with a fun story.

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'Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers.'

I just finished reading the Welcome to Night Vale novel. I'd always liked the idea of the podcast and have enjoyed quite a few tweets from the guys behind it, but I never got around to actually experiencing it at all. I found that my library had the novel available through their reader app, almost at random, and decided to give it a shot. It was cute and cutely creepy and clever, as I think one would expect, but IMO it lost a little bit of its voice as it tried to keep the plot going and tie it up in the end. It's definitely made me want to give the podcast a proper try once I catch up on all the other ones for which I'm currently behind, though.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

I've read a ton of stuff since the last time I posted in this thread, but since it's not likely to get read all that very much I'll just mention a couple books I just finished: Prisoners of the Castle and Thistlefoot

The first is a nonfiction book detailing the history of a prisoners-of-war castle in Germany during World War II, meant mainly for "VIP" prisoners, and the set of wild characters imprisoned there. The relative good treatment they received left them with the time and energy to plot myriad escapes and those stories are really interesting because many of them seem like fiction.

The latter popped up on my library's app as a new release and it was noted as a modern fairytale "in the vein of American Gods" which I also just finished reading for the first time, so I gave it a shot. I didn't realize going in that it is essentially a retelling of the Baba Yaga myth, brought into the 20th and 21st centuries. While it might have been compared to Gaiman in the book jacket, I feel like it might have more in common with Erin Morgenstern, and was definitely as enjoyable as a fairy tale that is both sweet and very dark.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

I picked up The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. It looks huge but it's shorter than some of the StormLight Archive. They formatted it funny so it has all these extra pages that it really shouldn't have. Huge margins on each page. I'm enjoying it so far it's a fantasy about clashing religions around dragons and kingdoms each claiming to have the truth of it all. The world building is fantastic and it's using a lot of literary devices that I enjoy. I wouldn't say it's for everyone but it's not bad.

This post has been edited by St Khael on 29th September 2023 20:26

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I'm your Mama Terra, come hang out with me around the internet!

Retro gaming cosplayer with a focus on Terra Branford.

I can't really think of all the things I must have read since I last posted in this thread, but I did just finish a book that I assume some folks here have already read or might be interested in - the first book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I guess it had been around for a bit, but I hadn't heard of it until recently, and apparently it's popular enough that it took a few weeks to get to the top of the queue at my library.

It was a slow starter in my opinion, and for the first third I wasn't sure what I thought about it; after completing it, though, I think I realized that the main gripe I had was that it's pretty heavy into the overly quippy style of the Borderlands looter-shooters, which I got tired of about halfway through Borderlands 2. By the time I got through the book, though, I found a new appreciation for it in this context, as it's pretty vital to the way the worldbuilding works. In the end, it felt a little more like Ready Player One, but with more heart and not just an unending stream of references. I'm starting the second book tonight, for sure.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

I did StoryGraph's page-a-day January reading challenge, and am pleased to say I succeeded with it. This is pretty big news for me because I'm usually too busy playing MMOs to read, but that's something I want to change this year.

I had started off reading Carl Sagan's "Contact" which is a really good book (I've read it before) but it wasn't what I really wanted to read. So I bounced off of it after a few days of struggling to get my page in, and moved onto a "safe" author that I knew I would likely enjoy.

That author is Courtney Milan, who I've written about previously in this thread. I ended up buying her novella "The Pursuit Of..." off Amazon because it was really cheap. (sorry for not using AmaCoN! I tend to forget). Actually, I had wanted to get the ebook off Bookshop.org which is my go-to place for books these days, but I don't think they had the ebook, and if they did, it was not 99 cents like at Amazon.

BUT ANYWAY! The book was fun! Both heroes were very likeable, especially the British guy whose name is escaping me at the moment. I really enjoyed him. I also really enjoyed the cheese storyline. Courtney often does use a physical object in her stories, to great effect, and it was really good here.

Apparently this novella was part of a trio of books with two other authors, and I was intrigued enough by one of the characters mentioned that's in another book to perhaps seek that book out in the future.

After I finished that book, I went on to the book I had REALLY wanted to read, that being Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog". This book is a fun time-travel romp and very relaxing to read, which with the state of the world right now, I know I can certainly use. I've read Connie's entire Oxford Time Travel series and it's all brilliant, but the other books are rather... difficult... reading. Like, when I read "Doomsday Book", I was physically exhausted at the end because it was such a heavy story. Not so this book! It's silly and coincidental and captivating, and I just love it.

Funny story: I misplaced my physical copy, so "borrowed" the book via Libby, except when I tried to download it, it said I already had it. LOL! Apparently I had bought the ebook on sale in the past and forgot about it. Anyway, if folks are looking for a lighter sci-fi read, I recommend this book.

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays: Kingdom Hearts
Fridays: Final Fantasy XI
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Side Quests & Shenanigans

Quote (AltheaValara @ 2nd February 2026 19:15)

I had started off reading Carl Sagan's "Contact" which is a really good book (I've read it before) but it wasn't what I really wanted to read. So I bounced off of it after a few days of struggling to get my page in, and moved onto a "safe" author that I knew I would likely enjoy.

I love Contact, and really basically everything by Carl Sagan.

I just finished reading Middlemarch, which maybe I should have read during my undergrad in English. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Oh hey there's a books thread here.

I started trying to read more this past year.

It's been an odd mix of fantasy fiction and assorted nonfiction.

Last year I read a couple self-help books (lol @ the Kefka quote; they're books, not booklets!) and a book called "Living without Plastic" (which is just a ton of ideas for living without plastic, especially single-use plastic), but I also read a modern urban supernatural novel called Vampire Weekend (by Mike Chen) and poked my head into the novels from the Pathfinder role-playing game franchise.

This year so far I discovered a fantasy book series by Stephanie Burgis, having read through The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart (which I loved!) and wanting to go on to the second and third books in that series. I've also been reading a book about the many legends and apocryphal stories and other fun things from Florida history, and trying to make my way into Marjory Stoneman Douglas's famous book about the Everglades, River of Grass. This book is not an easy read -- I find I need to really take my time to sit down with it in order to appreciate the intensely vivid imagery it paints.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th February 2026 09:33)

Last year I read a couple self-help books (lol @ the Kefka quote; they're books, not booklets!) and a book called "Living without Plastic" (which is just a ton of ideas for living without plastic, especially single-use plastic), but I also read a modern urban supernatural novel called Vampire Weekend (by Mike Chen) and poked my head into the novels from the Pathfinder role-playing game franchise.

Now if we could only get those in power to care about how much plastic [and various other forever (and nigh-unto-forever) chemicals] we produce and consume.