Oh, wow - I just finished that audiobook as well! I was continually cursing the things that happened, and people’s choices. the “same place as before, 5000 years later” transition was a bit jarring.
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I agree that the stupid/shortsighted choices made were frustrating, but they seemed realistic, rather than grasping for ways to move the plot. IRL there would have probably been a lot more petty nonsense, so I think he did a decent job of showing that those factors would still exist, without them taking over the story.
Jumping 5000 years did not jar me so much, especially as it used a lot of intermediate history to give perspective to its contemporaneous events.
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No idea why, but I picked out Philip Roth’s Everyman from my TBR pile today. It’s been a while since I read fiction – OMG, I think it was The Quarry, which clearly scared me off contemporary fiction! – so I don’t know what lead me to this choice, but so far so good.
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I’m working through a book on communes in the counter culture (from the 60s or early 70s), which gives a history of communes in the US.
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Hi, everyone. This is to introduce myself here and share a book that I’m enjoying.
It’s Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard which includes details on why and how he wrote his books, on publishing and on genre fiction generally.
The articles collected there are short but interesting and funny esp. if you love Terry Pratchett’s writing or books about how books are written (which I do).
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Everything else I wanted to read at the library was out, so while I wait, I’m trying to fill an inexplicable hole in my reading by finally getting around to some Charlie Stross (other than The Rapture of the Nerds), starting with Wireless.
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Kindle unlimited was free for a month, and I decided to reread Ian Mc Donald’s King of Morning, Queen of Day. It’s been about 18 years since somebody decamped unexpectedly from Budapest with the copy I had loaned her.
Also reading Flaming Zeppelins by that Texan, and Expressive Processing: digital fictions, computer games, and software studies by Noah Waldrip-Fruin, and some fragments of Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, wishing I understood it better. Also audio book of Use of Weapons on the commute.
All these have been ongoing for at least a month.
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[quote=“OtherMichael, post:147, topic:57439”]
Expressive Processing: digital fictions, computer games, and software studies by Noah Waldrip-Fruin,
[/quote] sounds interesting. How would you describe it?
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Accessible? If you interested in popular, applied “artificial intelligence”, computational narratology, interactive fiction, or conversation trees in contemporary computer games.
P.S. “that Texan” being neither Kinky Friedman nor Howard Waldrop, but Joe R. Landsdale. Sorry for the confusion.
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Hmm … upon further reflection I should probably first find and finish an accessible introduction to computational narratology.
Well … and those other things.
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Just started A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, while I wait for the next darn Song of Ice and Fire book to come out. Not that I need to be reading fiction while I’m supposed to be studying for finals, but everybody needs a little break, right?
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“computation narratology” => “computers telling stories”
Expressive Processing isn’t terribly technical, so don’t let it put you off.
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After not reading much for a while, I have been binging, mostly on fantasy fiction.
I finally got the Kindle app installed on my phone over Thanksgiving and was able to start accessing my wife’s Kindle reading collection. So in the past couple weeks, I’ve read Naomi Novik’s Uprooted (excellent, will bear re-reading), then Scott Lynch’s fantasy crime caper “Gentleman Bastards” series beginning with The Lies of Locke Lamora followed by Red Skies, Red Seas and Republic of Thieves, a Lois Bujold novella Penric’s Demon, and a new novel by a friend’s wife, Seven for Sorrow (modern witch families in 1950s England, pretty good I thought.) Then last night I got out a William Tenn short story collection to show my son one of the stories, ‘Brooklyn Project’, and ended staying up after 11:00 reading when I’d meant to get to bed by 9:00.
Like I said, binging.
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Yay! I’m back in.
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Now it’s a book about Postnationalism and identity formation…
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Almost finished with Estelle Freedman, Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation. It’s amazing.
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Just finished The War of the Worlds.
A ripping yarn.
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I need to get back to reading my tome of Wells. I was in the middle of The Island of Dr. Moreau.
So many books in my stack of unread.
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Currently reading:
and
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I’ve got the audio versions of these all ready to distract me from too much airplane travel.
Actually the Saladin Ahmed is a re-listen, but it’s that good, and it will have to be enough until he releases another book. The Daniel Jose Older is new for me, but his other stuff is terrific.
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