Whatcha readin'?

After his recent passing, I decided to reread my collection of Sir Terry Prachett's books in order (depending on whether or not I can find the damned thing in my library). Some, I fear, do not stand the passage of time, while others are actually a lot better than I remembered.

I've gone through Colour of Magic, Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, and should have Sourcery done by the end of the week.

Sourcery is a lot better than I remembered and Mort is still outstanding.

The first two books are widely considered his weakest. I've started listening to Men At Arms on audiobook this week - I read the first 14 books as a teenager and I'm now picking up the series where I left off.

On the non-audio side, I'm reading Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem.

Just finished Paper Towns by John Green (good book for the youth genre), will start Kafka at the Shore by Haruki Murakami soon.

KysenMurrin wrote:The first two books are widely considered his weakest. I've started listening to Men At Arms on audiobook this week - I read the first 14 books as a teenager and I'm now picking up the series where I left off.

On the non-audio side, I'm reading Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem.

I know. I have his entire series. Been collecting them since the mid 80s after I saw some of his short fiction in a magazine (found after a recommendation by White Dwarf, back when they were not a house organ but a real live gaming magazine).

Re-reading A Feast For Crows before GoT Season 5 starts.

Financial Accounting for MBAs. Riveting stuff.

Passionario wrote:Financial Accounting for MBAs. Riveting stuff.

You poor, poor bastard...

Passionario wrote:Financial Accounting for MBAs. Riveting stuff.

I'm only at the third year of a business admin degree, but I feel your pain. Of all the topics, I found accounting to be the least interesting.

Wondering if anyone's experienced with using Audible. I finished my first book from the free trial, and I'm realising I could easily listen to two books a month. With the prices, though... I'm thinking the best option might actually be buying two separate annual accounts, for 24 credits a year. Anyone tried anything like this?

I want to just keep going with the Discworld audiobooks. Men at Arms was great.

Up to Soul Music. Mort was as good as I remembered. Sourcery was better than I thought (I upgraded it to okay). Equal Rites... still stank. That said, much of his early work is parodies of other popular writers of the time, espeically in the first two books. Kids these days have simply never read half the stuff he's taking the piss out of (and I haven't read it in years!).

Pyramids? You can't parody something that's already parodying the genre. Well you can, but it's hard to do and this didn't do it.

Anne Bishop stuff.

More, though, I'm writing stuff, and it's taking a lot of effort to
1) not go back and instantly edit, but just to live with the bad writing until I can edit
2) make one of my protagonists more relatable

My Dad asked me for reading recommendations. I loaned him a copy of the Eye of the World to see if he liked it. He later asked me if he could borrow it for a few days to 'finish the story.'

If only he knew.

KysenMurrin wrote:Wondering if anyone's experienced with using Audible. I finished my first book from the free trial, and I'm realising I could easily listen to two books a month. With the prices, though... I'm thinking the best option might actually be buying two separate annual accounts, for 24 credits a year. Anyone tried anything like this?

I want to just keep going with the Discworld audiobooks. Men at Arms was great.

I found that it was better value for a lot of books to just buy the kindle version, and then "upgrade" to audio. You'd often get the audiobooks for only a couple of bucks extra. This only works for books that have amazon's whispersync service though, which automatically syncs your position between your kindle ebooks and audiobooks.

I went ahead and bought the 12 credit account, which works out to about £5.80 per book. Then I found out they had a 24 credit option that they'd just decided to leave off the list of available deals until I'd already bought the one that's worse value. So, once I'm done with the next twelve books, I'll be getting that instead, for approx. £4.50 a book.

On that subject - I started listening to Soul Music today.

KysenMurrin wrote:I went ahead and bought the 12 credit account, which works out to about £5.80 per book. Then I found out they had a 24 credit option that they'd just decided to leave off the list of available deals until I'd already bought the one that's worse value. So, once I'm done with the next twelve books, I'll be getting that instead, for approx. £4.50 a book.

On that subject - I started listening to Soul Music today.

As long as it's a good voice reading it. I hate reading the flashman books because the character is just too odious but the audio books make up for it enormously with the voice actor.

That said, I need to use more audio books as I have an hour commute each way.

These two have been read by Nigel Planer, not sure how many of the total he's done. He's alright, not perfect. I thought there were spots where he seemed to get the intonation of a line wrong, and he sometimes doesn't leave enough of a space between scene breaks.

Soul Music seems to be a little quieter and lower quality than Men at Arms, unfortunately.

KysenMurrin wrote:These two have been read by Nigel Planer, not sure how many of the total he's done. He's alright, not perfect. I thought there were spots where he seemed to get the intonation of a line wrong, and he sometimes doesn't leave enough of a space between scene breaks.

Soul Music seems to be a little quieter and lower quality than Men at Arms, unfortunately.

Yes, that is my opinon as well. But after Men at Arms, Prachett really finds his stride and the remaining books are pretty solid. The worst I can say is that they are "merely" good.* The Industrial Revolution arc with Moist Van Lipwig was a good place to stop. Snuff and Raising Steam are among my favorites. That said, I don't have a copy of Maurice and his Eductated Rodents. Oops.

Yes, I read "Where's My Cow?" to the boys when they were wee lads. And made the noises, in accordance to the ritual.

*Aside from Monstrous Regiment, which seems to be a Sharpe spoof and I don't like the Sharpe books much. It sort of reminds me of readings of the War of the Tripple Alliance, at that. Its good but I just don't care for it.

Even better than audio books, is graphic audio. http://www.graphicaudio.net/

The wife and I listened to Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Great production and very entertaining to listen to.

Right now my wife has me listening to Outlander I got off Audible.

Nice. I'm taking a break and re-reading the very excellent "Helenic Traders" series by H.M. Turtletaub (Turtledove under a pen name). It's TRAVELLER NOT IN SPAAAAAAAAAACE!

Good stuff. Historically accurate. Two cousins run a fast merchant ship (atakos) in post-Alexandrian Greece. They travel out of Rhodes to various places and have adventures. Wackiness and trading ensue.

Just finished Confessions of a D-List Supervillain.

The writing style took a bit to get used to but by the end of the first book I was enjoying it quite a bit.

Euphoria wrote:Just finished Confessions of a D-List Supervillain.

The writing style took a bit to get used to but by the end of the first book I was enjoying it quite a bit.

I had heard that was good. Unfortunately, I'm reading "Live Free or Die" by John Ringo at the first and last recommendation of a friend. It's bad enough to be a traffic accident of a book.

I'll go read some Caiphas Cain after this to wash the taste of Ringo out of my mouth.

Just finished The Void Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton. I didn't think it was quite as good as some of his other series that I've read, but still pretty darn awesome Sci Fi.

Njall wrote:Unfortunately, I'm reading "Live Free or Die" by John Ringo at the first and last recommendation of a friend. It's bad enough to be a traffic accident of a book.

The only thing that ever comes to mind for me when people mention John Ringo is OH JOHN RINGO NO.


I'm almost done listening to Soul Music. The endless trail of song and band name puns are starting to get to me.

Oh, indeed. OH JOHN RINGO NO is very apt. But at least this one wasn't as bad as some of the others I'd been subjected to.

Good quote: He wants to write like Heinlein but ended up being like John Ringo.

Meh, Oh John Ringo No really only applies to the Mike Harmon books. His first series, starting with A Hymn Before Battle is decent popcorn milSF.

Currently reading Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. Fun take on milSF, in that an aristocratic, militaristic society tries to take on invaders to their system while foreign observers shake their head and wonder how stupid they can be - it's basically classic battleships in space vs nanoswarms with total matter and energy conversion. Also interesting take on super AIs and how they might act.