The Jim Butcher Files: Dresden . Codex Alera . Cinder Spires & More

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

...Nothing is holding my attention at the moment, so I am obsessively organizing all of my ebooks via Calibre.

I want [read: need] a good, sink your teeth in, standalone novel. I really like Speculative Fiction. Fantasy is my favorite genre. Scifi is a distant second. I haven't been a big fan of horror since highschool, but I'm willing to give it another go.

Or maybe I just need to get away from my comfort zone altogether, and try something completely new/different. *shrug*

Originally Posted by alansplace

Either any book in The Dark Tower series, or Joyland, or Rose Madder, or Duma Key, or Hearts in Atlantis, or Needful Things by Stephen King.

Originally Posted by Nyssa

I remember loving Needful Things some 20+ years ago.

I'm staying away from series right now, but, Dark Tower has been on my "one of these days" list for a while. I've not read any of the others.

Originally Posted by alansplace

Which is why I said any book, it need not be read as a series.

Originally Posted by BuyMore

^ Lol.

But you'll never know what you may like. Some romantic suspense is pretty much straight up suspense/thriller, and some paranormal romance can totally be considered as UF.

Originally Posted by red_phoenix

Maybe a good mystery? Or try picking a book on your TBR list at random?

Read any of Robert A. Heinlein's pre-1970's books including the Schribners Juveniles.

Tunnel in the Sky and The Door Into Summer (not a Juvenile) are favorites of mine as is his fantasy epic!!! Glory Road!

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Read any of Robert A. Heinlein's pre-1970's books including the Schribners Juveniles.

Tunnel in the Sky and The Door Into Summer (not a Juvenile) are favorites of mine as is his fantasy epic!!! Glory Road!

My husband said he liked the early Heinlein stuff as well. He also said that Heinlein started to get strange/weird a little later on, but he did not elaborate as to how or why.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

My husband said he liked the early Heinlein stuff as well. He also said that Heinlein started to get strange/weird a little later on, but he did not elaborate as to how or why.

His personal point of view seemed to to have changed. You need to have read some before and some after to have a sense of the change. Try the below article for one person's viewpoint of it all.

The Joke Is on Us: The Two Careers of Robert A. Heinlein

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by alansplace

His personal point of view seemed to to have changed. You need to have read some before and some after to have a sense of the change. Try the below article for one person's viewpoint of it all.

The Joke Is on Us: The Two Careers of Robert A. Heinlein

Thank you.

[bizzybody]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Changing subjects.....

I want [read: need] a good, sink your teeth in, standalone novel.

How about "The Warslayer", "Old Nathan" or "The Forlorn"? You can grab those free at http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx and several other free books. There are also some short story and non-fiction collections. The current year's collections are continually added to throughout the year so check each month for more additions.

There's a lot more at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ but you have to download full CD images or ZIP files of the contents due to Baen's deal with Amazon since they started selling ebooks there as well as on the Baen site.

The Cryoburn CD with most of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series was there but she requested it be removed. All the books and short stories Baen has for free are at the request of the authors or authors' estates.

The Scepter'd Isle CD is chock full of fantasy books. Rosemary Edghill with or without Mercedes Lackey (who also co-wrote some with Anne McCaffrey) has a rather different take on elves.

Baen giving away some e-books and having no DRM and providing their books in many different formats and placing no restrictions on the e-books other than not re-selling them has been a huge boon for the company. Instead of treating all their customers as potential thieves, Baen chose to treat them as book buyers and it has paid them very well.

[bizzybody]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

My husband said he liked the early Heinlein stuff as well. He also said that Heinlein started to get strange/weird a little later on, but he did not elaborate as to how or why.

RAH is a rare author, the first book he ever wrote was the last book of his to be published. "For Us, The Living" was written in 1938 but not published until 2003. Reasons why it wasn't published in 1938? Lots of nakedidity and a rather large hunk that's both infodump and Author Tract. (Look that up on TV Tropes) Frankly, it's not that good of a book.

He was very left leaning in his early writing but changed over the years towards libertarian, especially after he and his wife took a vacation to the USSR. Read the posthumous published "Grumbles From the Grave" for a lot of insight into the life, career and character of Heinlein.

Some humorous bits are about how an editor was always "finding" sexual innuendos in the juvenile SF books he wrote annually for several years yet completely missing the blindingly obvious ones he put into his adult oriented novels.

P.S. In the 1940 short story "Let there be light" he wrote about solid state panels that were equally good at emitting light and converting light into electricity. Predating both light emitting diodes and solar panels by many years. In the past 3 or 4 years some scientists have made small samples of such combination devices, though they're still not too good as LEDs or PVs, but that will change, given time and development and money.

[bizzybody]

Originally Posted by alansplace

...er...what's UF (to me it's either microfarad or University of Florida).

OH! Urban Fantasy!!!

DUH!

Some of the SERRAted Edge and other in-universe books could classify as both urban fantasy and (at least light) romance.

SERRA = South-Eastern Road Racing Association. Elves driving race cars. ;-) They can handle that since the cars are mostly aluminum and plastics. When they have to handle iron and steel they wear silk gloves 'cause silk is the only thing that can shield the magical folk from the poison metals.

One book has one plot line about the elves building a fake factory for their magically produced lightweight racing engines. Aside from that sub plot there's really not a lot about auto racing in the series.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by bizzybody

The Cryoburn CD with most of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series was there but she requested it be removed. All the books and short stories Baen has for free are at the request of the authors or authors' estates.

You can find the torrent for downloading the Cryoburn CD here: https://baen.dominikbodi.de/

Disclaimer (because I just know someone is going to see this, somehow, someday, and go "torrent" == "illegal") -- yes, this is legal. All the Baen CDs listed there were released by Baen with permission to share freely, for free. Just like all the Baen CDs:

What’s the catch? This disk and its contents may be copied and shared, but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved. That’s it.

And Bujold didn't realize the impact of that it seems, and threw a tantrum (with accusations of pirating)... but there is still no legal ground for withdrawing the right to share and redistribute that CD.

Some people were nice and stopped hosting it anyway.
Some people decided to leave it up anyway, which is a right granted that cannot be retracted. Torrents make nice crowdsourced distribution methods.


Oh, and an amusing conversation about it, here on MR: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=188591

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Read any of Robert A. Heinlein's pre-1970's books including the Schribners Juveniles.

Tunnel in the Sky and The Door Into Summer (not a Juvenile) are favorites of mine as is his fantasy epic!!! Glory Road!

I love The Door Into Summer and Heinlein in general. Two other Heinlein favorites are Double Star and The Puppet Masters.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by BuyMore

Try romance then. There are many subgenres to choose from, too.

Originally Posted by alansplace

EEEwwww...yuk!

Isn't Dresden Files kind of romance too? The white court vampires, Harry getting it on with Susan, with the shadow of Lasciel, with Mab, and with Murphy. Some more in thought than real, but still.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You can find the torrent for downloading the Cryoburn CD here: https://baen.dominikbodi.de/

Disclaimer (because I just know someone is going to see this, somehow, someday, and go "torrent" == "illegal") -- yes, this is legal. All the Baen CDs listed there were released by Baen with permission to share freely, for free. Just like all the Baen CDs:



And Bujold didn't realize the impact of that it seems, and threw a tantrum (with accusations of pirating)... but there is still no legal ground for withdrawing the right to share and redistribute that CD.

Some people were nice and stopped hosting it anyway.
Some people decided to leave it up anyway, which is a right granted that cannot be retracted. Torrents make nice crowdsourced distribution methods.


Oh, and an amusing conversation about it, here on MR: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=188591

My husband has the original disc, but I'm not sure where it is at this point. I'm just happy we were able to get the series before FI all but shut down.

I recently visited the site not realizing that they had "closed up shop", and decided to DL everything I could before it was all gone for good.

I'm not sure how much is now "missing", but it seems to be at least 3 CDs worth of books. There is quite a bit of duplication between them, with the updated versions of some books being in the later (high numbered) CDs.

Edited to Add:

Originally Posted by bizzybody

How about "The Warslayer", "Old Nathan" or "The Forlorn"? You can grab those free at http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx and several other free books. There are also some short story and non-fiction collections. The current year's collections are continually added to throughout the year so check each month for more additions.

There's a lot more at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ but you have to download full CD images or ZIP files of the contents due to Baen's deal with Amazon since they started selling ebooks there as well as on the Baen site.

The Cryoburn CD with most of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series was there but she requested it be removed. All the books and short stories Baen has for free are at the request of the authors or authors' estates.

The Scepter'd Isle CD is chock full of fantasy books. Rosemary Edghill with or without Mercedes Lackey (who also co-wrote some with Anne McCaffrey) has a rather different take on elves.

Baen giving away some e-books and having no DRM and providing their books in many different formats and placing no restrictions on the e-books other than not re-selling them has been a huge boon for the company. Instead of treating all their customers as potential thieves, Baen chose to treat them as book buyers and it has paid them very well.

Heh.. I just saw your response after responding to eschwartz's about Bean & FI.

[alansplace]

Hrothbert of Bainbridge aka "Bob" The Skull

[FizzyWater]

Wonder why Hrothbert didn't just get shortened to "Bert"....

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Wonder why Hrothbert didn't just get shortened to "Bert"....

Hrothbert of Bainbridge

Besides that BoB is a palindrome.

[alansplace]

......................Cat Sith - Malk