06-03-2011, 12:02 AM | #9601 | |
ZCD BombShel
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I enjoy snickering at the Renaissance Faire series, but at this point, I'm having even MORE fun snickering at your above post! |
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06-03-2011, 01:31 AM | #9602 |
professional daydreamer
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@Fbone if you ever get a chance to listen to Phil read "Agatha H," *take it.* Not only does he look exactly like he draws (even from the back!), he *sounds* exactly like he draws. Kinda scary.
I am stuck in ebook limbo. I'm picking at yet another in the 1632 series--mired in it, really--and am too broke to buy anything. I think I'll begin picking at "Cranford," by Mrs Gaskill. At least it'll be more my time period than 17th century Germany by way of West Virginia... |
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06-03-2011, 02:20 AM | #9603 | ||
Wizzard
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Speaking of which, I was very pleased to see that sf/fantasy re-publisher Phoenix Pick had as their free e-book of the month selection for June Charles Sheffield's Georgia on My Mind, his Nebula and Hugo dual-award-winning novelette. I've been meaning to try Sheffield for some time, since he's got a good reputation and was married to Nancy Kress, one of my favourite writers. But he's been dead awhile and his books seem to have been mostly paperback, so the libraries have mostly kind of turfed their copies since then. Anyway this was a slow-starting but gradually very interesting story about trying to track down what really happened to an anomalous Babbage-ish Analytical Machine, which has lots of nifty bits about early computers and early computer programming (with punchcards and cogwheels). The resolution is a rather open-ended and I'd kind of liked to have found out what happened next, but in the end I rather enjoyed it, even if some of the technobabble went over my head. Recommended if you like early computer science stuff and figuring the mysterious whereabouts of disappeared Babbage Engines. The only thing better than getting this novelette for free would have been getting the entire story collection for free, but the next best thing is to get it for 50% off with coupon, which you can via the download page for the freebie novelette and which I myself will be picking up once I've paid off this month's CC bills. Also, remember about a month or so ago when I recommended Stephen Leigh's Le Guin-ish Dark Water's Embrace and The Speaking Stone? It turns out all three of Leigh's Phoenix Pick backlist are on special sale, bundled up for just $7.64 (works out to $2.57 each) and they're sold DRM-free worldwide if you want them. Details are in their email newsletter. Last edited by ATDrake; 06-03-2011 at 02:23 AM. Reason: Fixed redundant linkage. |
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06-03-2011, 05:20 AM | #9604 | |
Enthusiast
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IP :-)
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Hope i will get the chance to visit iceland before it loses it's uniqueness completely and becomes totaly ordinary. |
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06-03-2011, 06:03 AM | #9605 |
It's Dr. Penguin now!
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I just finished (what I thought was) a really cool novella. The author took the poem "Jabberwocky" and made it into a relatively short fantasy story. I never paid any attention to that poem before, but I think what he did with it was really cool! My review here.
(It's "Jabberwocky" by Daniel Coleman) |
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06-03-2011, 06:09 AM | #9606 |
whimsical
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I'm reading C. S. Lewis' Prince Caspian and for the first time I think they did it better with the movie!
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06-03-2011, 06:22 AM | #9607 | |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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06-03-2011, 06:44 AM | #9608 |
Grand Sorcerer
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I'm taking a break from reading Birdman (#1 Jack Caffery) by Mo Hayder to read Island People by William Meikle. I do like Birdman but I was more in the mood for a horror and my new Kindle makes is way to easy to download a sample and buy a book.
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06-03-2011, 06:59 AM | #9609 |
David
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Starting on A Game Of Thrones.
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06-03-2011, 10:07 AM | #9610 |
Wizard
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I got an audiobook on CD from Goodwill and listened to it over the weekend. It was Saxons, Vikings, and Celts by Bryan Sykes. I recognized him from Before the Dawn, which he didn't write but was mentioned/interviewed in/a source for. I love genetics. It might be fun but expensive to have my MDNA analyzed. I do know it is Irish but I wonder which of the seven or eight "daughters of Eve" it falls into. Not bad for $1.99, though basically just a bit of expansion on his chapter in Before the Dawn.
I just finished listening to Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner as an eAudio loan from the public library. I am normally not into contemporary literary fiction but I really enjoyed this tale of 2 Russian immigrant childhood sweethearts and the girl's search for the truth about her family. I still need to finish Deathless by Cathrynne Valente. I am really on a Russian kick, apparently. It is excellent but I have been kind of busy, stressed, and distracted so it has been hard to sit down and read. Also, it is a pBook from the library and I forgot to bring it with me but I did bring my eReader which has Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night on it. I read about 18 pages of that yesterday and it seems like I will really enjoy and such a deal at 99 cents. I loved her Benjamin January books (she really did her NOLA research on those). |
06-03-2011, 02:30 PM | #9611 | |
Wizzard
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I hope good sales at the discount price encourage the publisher to try lowering the price on more titles (or Amazon to just randomly pricedrop them, which also works for me). Fun fact: Hambly used to be married to native New Orleans writer George Alec Effinger and lived there part-time for a number of years before they split up. If you ever wonder what their relationship would be kind of like if they'd met during 1920s Hollywood while trying to keep a Manchu demon from killing again, then you should pick up Hambly's marvelously entertaining retro-historical paranormal thriller Bride of the Rat God, especially if you like old silent films and wonder about the industry behind them. I just finished my own re-read of my brand-new legal digital copy of Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night (1989 Locus Best Horror Novel, only 99 cents at Amazon's summer sale, good until June 15th). It was as brilliant and clever and thus, excellent and awesome, as I remembered it, and for the main part Open Road Media have done a pretty good job with the e-book. Nice formatting with faux-small caps opening the first line of each chapter, no-indent on first paragraph of a scene, proper flickable chapter marks, etc. The only problem was a semi-regular squishing together of two words or a word and punctuation, probably due to an overzealous line-break-removal script, which shows up every few page turns. But that's a fairly minor issue which otherwise does not interfere with the meaning or readability of the text that I'll be contacting Amazon about with my highlighted clippings w/locations so that it can be fixed. Aside from that, the book appears to be typo free and comes with a nifty bonus of Hambly's personal pictures following her biography in the back. ORM's blurbs say that this and all the other Hambly re-pubs contain an exclusive photogallery and I'm wondering if it's the same one for all, or they vary the pictures in some of them. Highest possible recommend as one of the best-of-breed-if-you're-wanting-to-try-this-genre novels you should pick up if you have any interest whatsoever in gaslight paranormal investigations of vampire murders. And even if you're not, you still can't go wrong for only 99 cents as long as you've some vague interest in Edwardian-era British mystery/suspense Great Game/detective thrillers because it's a very good one of those, too. Last edited by ATDrake; 06-03-2011 at 02:49 PM. Reason: Add fun fact. And more book-peddling. |
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06-03-2011, 05:22 PM | #9612 |
i'm getting there.
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The Last Child by John Hart so far so good but for for a really good read (ive only read it 600 times i swear) is A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown.
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06-03-2011, 10:31 PM | #9613 |
Bah, humbug!
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I just finished The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Icon by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The scholarship was sound and I learned a few new things about the first century missionary and self-proclaimed apostle. I wasn't as embracing of some of the major thrusts of what the authors claimed as Paul's theology, but that's okay. If nothing else, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan always make you think.
They begin their book by writing of how the seven letters which are nearly universally accepted among scholars as genuinely Pauline reveal a man who was extremely revolutionary and egalitarian in his thinking. They call him The Radical Paul. Then they contrasted those letters with the disputed letters, written, in their opinion, by other people in the name of Paul. The "Paul" of these letters they refer to as The Conservative Paul; a Paul who was toned down to make him more appealing to the official powers. The last letters to be considered are the Pastorals (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus), which they say were written in Paul's name long after he was dead. These, they claim, reveal a very different "Paul" who they refer to as The Reactionary Paul; a man so different in his thinking and his message that he could even be thought of as The Anti-Paul. From there, they go on to challenge the way the genuine (Radical) Paul and his message have been understood for the last 1,000 years and beyond. The book was well-written and well-paced, but I felt that some of the fresh slants they apply to theological terms and phrases used by Paul were a bit nebulous. Then again, perhaps the fault is mine and a re-reading would clarify in my mind what they mean by those terms. |
06-03-2011, 10:36 PM | #9614 |
whimsical
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I'm reading C. S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. At first I tried reading it in time order but it was disturbing so I thought I should read Narnia Chronicles like how the author wrote it.
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06-04-2011, 09:00 AM | #9615 | |
use the force
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everytime i look here i see you post another !! i'm 66% through mockingjay overall the series as a whole is pretty good but the first book is top notch |
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