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dr_mitch
About
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- dr_mitch
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Comments
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I'm in. Sorry for my long absence - I was struggling to read much, but I think I have my mojo back.
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46 - 49. Memories of Ice, House of Chains, Midnight Tides, The Bonehunters (Steven Erikson). More of the Malazan books. Still absorbing, still at the start of each heavy-going, still moments of magnificence and depth which makes them worthwhile. *…
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Talking Asimov, Pebble in the Sky was absolutely about racism. Though done via analogy (not skin colour but prejudice towards people from Earth). I think that racism via analogy take is a classic SF thing. So I’m Star Trek, there seems to be no prej…
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Has this book achieved the impossible, and been one that we all actually liked? That’s an outstanding achievement for the author, possibly unparalleled.
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The questions are finally there!
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Next weekend a good time to drop the questions?
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We'll do Piranesi then. I'd love to discuss it. Announcement incoming...
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Good to see you around @Ray_Otus !
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@RichardAbbott well put. The quest for the transcendent. That's important to me, as well as being a religious/philosophical core.
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@NeilNjae I really liked Oort, and the contrast to Decibel, but he felt like a secondary character. More from his point of view would have been good. He was exaggeratedly deliberately "normal" but really so was Arthur Dent (the Hitchhiker'…
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In terms of language and effect on mental states, I've just read the (non-fiction) book Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher. Very highly recommended. And I shall now be a smug know it all when this sort of thing comes up in book discussions.
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This was the one thing that lifted the book up for me. I didn't like the writing or the humour, but I did appreciate some of the ideas. The search for meaning, the importance of art and expression, and the meaning of sentience are all big themes, an…
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There were two problems for with the humour. One was the Hitchhiker's Guide Turned Up to 11 writing - it worked when Douglas Adams did it, partially because it came in bursts rather than being like it all the time. But even these bursts weren't as o…
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(Quote) I'd have preferred it to be nailed down. at least to a decade too. Hey, an alternate near future where some 1970s and 1990s styles had returned would have been good for a page or two of humour near the start (though the humour mainly failed,…
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* Comedy For me, comedy in RPGs is either emergent, based on serious situations, or characters reacting to absurd situations that are serious to them. Any RPG session I run has an element of comedy, even if serious over all. The players bring that. …
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I didn't really see it particularly, though there are parts that are applicable. The comments on multi-cultural backgrounds and being British for example. One thing that struck me is that it's set some years in the future rather than the day after t…
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There were some good aliens- the sapient disease was great, as was the first species to fail the music contest. I'm tempted by a sapient disease featuring somehow in something. The universe as a whole didn't do anything for me.
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The alternating structure was fine. The "eliminate a competitor" business dragged - there were a couple of good situations, but most weren't there. I've issues with the book, but the absence of plot wasn't one of them.
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I didn't find it was funny. The writing style was trying too hard to be funny, and the trying to be funny interfered with my enjoyment. It felt like taking Douglas Adams but missing the point. Some of the puns I appreciated. I nearly laughed at two…
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I'm ready this time!
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* Dune (Frank Herbert). A reread, and I'd forgotten most of it, including the ending. By the end I really didn't like Paul Atreides, and it's clear I wasn't meant to. I'm impressed with the world building and slow revelation - in places it's magnifi…
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I think pace means I get different things out of a book, and some books (for me) need a certain pace, For example, something pulpy I need to consume rapidly, As for what the trilogy says about racism, it felt like a cry of fury. It wasn’t at any st…
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Flipping autocorrect.
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I like the way the book questions if the world is even worth saving. The way things are painted in the trilogy, the answer is not a definite “yes”. That’s pretty remarkable. I don’t know if 2020 me can cope with that sort of bleakness...
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Hello there old chap!
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The Girl with all the Gifts was another book/movie combo we've done.
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* Revolutions (Mike Duncan). A podcast, but it must amount to more than a hundred hours of listening, so I'm going to say it counts. Goes through the history of ten revolutions, in some detail, and bringing connections to the surface. It starts with…
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I'm happy with either. Since that's not a helpful response I'll vote for the comedy; we've had a few months in a row now of relatively heavy books.
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The Flashman books I've read have been great. And another case of reusing a character from fiction and plenty of historical characters.
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The Bronze God of Rhodes was immense fun. I've already mentioned Anno Dracula and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for reusing fictional characters. Recently I read The Stress of Her Regard (Tim Powers) featuring Byron and Shelley as major characte…