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bartist
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:21 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Carrie Vaughn is on my must read list now. Thanks, Syd.

Did anyone check out Century Rain? It has elements that I think film fans would really enjoy.

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bartist
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:23 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
(moved due to page break)


bartist wrote:
I think my sigboth has purchased through Abebooks. She is unlikely to sell any, unless forced to do so on pain of death, so just purchases so far. Recently she sent me an unusual page from their website that you all might enjoy....

https://www.abebooks.com/books/weird/?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-C190112-RNC-weirdbAWTRADE-_-b2img&abersp=1

Careful, this page is addictive.


On an earlier topic, Going Postal, I wondered if anyone else has noticed a strong resemblance between Mr. Pump and the acting AG, Matt Whitaker?



[/img]

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carrobin
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:36 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Fascinating (and hilarious). I've always wondered how to impress guests who use my bathroom--toilet paper origami would be perfect!

I clicked on that book of British seaweed because it has such a beautiful spine. And there were several of them, but the first two had no photo; the others were over $200. I wonder how well they're selling.

It makes me hopeful, though--there seem to be people out there who'll buy anything! (As joke gifts, if nothing else.)

P.S. I've put "Century Rain" on my list to look out for--maybe B&N will offer it on the discount Nook list, but not so far.
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bartist
Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 12:00 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
For some reason, I was intrigued by The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America.

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Syd
Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 11:21 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
is reading Linda Nagata's The Red: First Light and really enjoying it, and I've ordered the second and third. Nagata did a series of nanotech and biotech novels 15-20 years ago, many of which I liked. My favorites were the haunting "Memory" and the brilliant and difficult "Vast," but she seems to have disappeared for a few years because her novels weren't selling well. First Light is a wonderfully cynical military novel in which the International Defense Contractors are looking for wars to get involved in to keep their stock holders happy, and if they can't find one, they're not about instigating one. By the way, this is supposed to be science fiction.Smile Eventually we get into creating cyborg warriors, so this is sort of a blend of Catch-22, Platoon and The Six Million Dollar Man, written by one of my favorite writers in the business.

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bartist
Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:56 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Will look for Nagata. I've heard Alastair Reynolds rave about her, which had already piqued interest. Vast looks quite interesting, so might start there.

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knox
Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 9:05 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 1245 Location: St. Louis
Owen Egerton, "Everyone Says That at the End of the World," is some very funny apocalyptic sci-fi.

Definitely captures that Austin TX weirdness.
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Syd
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 10:45 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I'm reading N. K. Jemisin's collection "How Long 'Til Black Future Month," which suggests that it's a collection of stories about racism, which it isn't, and doesn't include the title essay, so I wish she'd entitled it something else. Still, an excellent collection, including three stories that were trial runs to the Dreamblood and Broken Earth series, and her forthcoming novel. The Dreamblood novella is better than either of the novels in that series, and is heartbreaking.

She has some failures (her Ursula K. Leguin pastiche), but she triumphs in the lesbian steampunk story, "The Effluent Engine," and has some amazingly romantic stories, such as "L'Alchemista" and "Cuisine de Memoires," which are beautifully written and about food, so she was apparently a starving artist.

I thought the best current writer in SF is Connie Willis, but she seems to be phasing out, so it's probably N. K. Jemisin.

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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament
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bartist
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2020 11:31 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Quote:
Always prolific, King seems to have tapped into a bottomless reservoir of narrative. “The Institute,” is the latest to emerge, and it is classic King, with an extra measure of urgency and anger. Beneath its extravagant plot and typically propulsive prose, the book is animated by a central concern that could not be more relevant: the inhumane treatment of children.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/stephen-kings-the-institute-turns-our-political-moment-into-gripping-horror/2019/09/09/fae7d094-cf52-11e9-87fa-8501a456c003_story.html

Not his most original plot (there are dozens of YA novels with this plot at your nearest branch library) but I found it "propulsive" indeed, and the characters well drawn.

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knox
Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:33 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 1245 Location: St. Louis
It's rare that I favor a book from an author late in their career (Nabakov offers exceptions), but have to say I liked The Institute about as well as any King novel I've read.


While we're on sci-fi and close relative genres, I was reading "Sandkings" by George RR Martin, and it struck me the number of similarities to the classic "Microcosmic God," by Theodore Sturgeon. Wonder if that earlier story was an influence on Martin - seems like it would almost have to be.
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bartist
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 8:08 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
The horror of having the public library closed has been sinking in.

Yes, one can look up a title online and then pick it up from a drive-thru window, but it really isn't the same as roaming the stacks, lingering in the magazine room, perusing the new books racks, listening to local musicians who give free performances in the meeting room upstairs, chatting with friends you run into, watching children play, watching birds in the little aviary our main branch hosts, knowing homeless people have a safe, warm place to be during the day/early evening, taking a free yoga class, hearing regional authors speak, and generally enjoying a community center that is not dominated by illiterate red hat wearers.

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carrobin
Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2020 4:31 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
That's very like the way I feel about bookstores--as Paul Krugman once commented, I go to the internet for books I want but I go to bookstores for books I don't know I want. And bookstores have some of the same amenities that your library does. I seldom visit a library but I do have a card and I'm always planning to--as with so many other attractions in Manhattan that are causing me regret for my procrastination.
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bartist
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 2:18 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Krugman covers it succinctly.

Meanwhile, an author of the bizarre and often horrific says he's sorry people now feel like they're trapped in one of his novels....

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/08/829298135/stephen-king-is-sorry-you-feel-like-youre-stuck-in-a-stephen-king-novel

...personally I don't think it's quite that bad yet. Things are way better than, for example, the predicament in King's "Cell. "

"Cell" follows a New England artist struggling to reunite with his young son after a mysterious signal broadcast over the global cell phone network turns the majority of his fellow humans into mindless vicious animals. (insert twitter joke here)

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carrobin
Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 3:52 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Stephen King was Stephen Colbert's guest last night. Turns out he's almost as big a fan of "Lord of the Rings" as Colbert is. Both said Sam is their favorite character.

A few days ago, this article about the books visible behind some of the people who broadcast from their homes was in the NY Times--it's intriguing, and the comments by readers are fun to read. King's name comes up a lot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/books/celebrity-bookshelves-tv-coronavirus.html
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Syd
Posted: Sun May 10, 2020 10:45 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Just finished N. K Jemisin's new novel,"The City We Became," and though I didn't like the story that created this universe, I love this book. (Staten Island may not agree with me.) Jemisin is the best sf writer in the world.

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