|
Post by mln59 on Jan 28, 2020 16:01:40 GMT -5
really enjoying the anthologist so far. good stuff will finish this book today. fun read. i recommend it for those who might be interested in poetry finished this book during the morning commute. ending was quite satisfying.
not sure what i'll dive into next. i think i need to finish an issue of the atlantic that i started during my trip to DC
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Jan 28, 2020 17:39:58 GMT -5
The first Kindle came out in 2007. I bought one in Dec 2019. I guess I must be one of them "early adopters" I hear about!
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Jan 29, 2020 11:09:15 GMT -5
edit: fun note - bought this book at blackwell in oxford
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Jan 30, 2020 11:59:14 GMT -5
edit: fun note - bought this book at blackwell in oxford
started reading the intros for some background stuff. already enjoying it
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Jan 30, 2020 20:00:00 GMT -5
After a few false starts, I have now successfully checked out some library ebooks via my Kindle.
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Jan 30, 2020 20:21:07 GMT -5
After a few false starts, I have now successfully checked out some library ebooks via my Kindle. what did you get?
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Jan 31, 2020 3:15:12 GMT -5
After a few false starts, I have now successfully checked out some library ebooks via my Kindle. what did you get? Just a couple of Seanan McGuire novels I have already read. Reminding myself of the old stuff before the latest one comes out. I have that one on hold for when it arrives at the library.
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Jan 31, 2020 9:12:03 GMT -5
Just a couple of Seanan McGuire novels I have already read. Reminding myself of the old stuff before the latest one comes out. I have that one on hold for when it arrives at the library. not familiar with this particular author. i will investigate
i appreciate you using your local library
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Jan 31, 2020 14:20:15 GMT -5
not familiar with this particular author. i will investigate I just finished reading a book in which the main character is working at "Lowryland" in Florida under an assumed name while she's on the run from a secret society of monster hunters. She's human, but her roommates are a gorgon (snakes for hair, can paralyze with a glance) and a sylph (who can change her density from almost lighter than air to heavier than solid metal). Both pass themselves off as human (the gorgon wears a wig). Annie's family split from the monster hunters four generations earlier because they decided it was better to study and protect secret non-humans than to exterminate them, so they are regarded as traitors to humanity. She has to hide from her own family for their protection (she can be traced by the monster hunters and she doesn't want to lead them to her family), but she's regularly visited by a ghost who has been their family babysitter since she died back in the 30s. It turns out there is a cabal of magic-users secretly running the PR department of Lowryland, and they are not nice people. Eventually this leads to a confrontation involving her roommates tied to the tracks of a rollercoaster while Annie and her boyfriend Sam (a trapeze artist from a traveling carnival who is a monkey-like species that can transform into a human appearance) have to rescue them. Tricks For Free by Seanan McGuire Part of a series: Discount Armageddon Midnight Blue-light Special Half-Off Ragnarok Pocket Apocalypse Chaos Choreography Magic For Nothing Tricks For Freeand there is a side-series about the ghosts: Sparrow Hill Road The Girl In The Green Silk Gown Felt like elaborating: Discount ArmageddonVerity Price is a ballroom dancer (named Valerie Pryor), a cocktail waitress in a strip club, and a cryptozoologist (someone who studies species not known to mainstream scientists). She's in New York to decide which of those professions she really wants to follow. She encounters Dominic de Luca, a member of the Covenant Of Saint George. The Covenant are sworn to purge the world of the species that Verity is trained to study and protect. Together they investigate why something in the sewers is abducting young virgin women (human and otherwise). Midnight Blue-light SpecialDominic has decided it's OK to share a planet with non-humans and a bed with Verity, but the Covenant sends a strike team to New York to conduct a purge. The only thing they would like to kill more than non-human monsters is a member of the Price family. Dominic has to decide which side he is on, and Verity has to stop the purge without letting the Covenant know that the Prices are still alive. Half-Off RagnarokAlex Price is doing a post-doc at a zoo in Ohio and trying to establish a secret captive breeding program for basilisks. However, something is turning animals and people into stone. And Alex might start dating a cute visiting Aussie zoologist. But petrification is a painful way to die. Pocket ApocalypseAlex visits Australia to meet his new girlfriend's family. And then gets bitten by a werewolf. Oops. Chaos ChoreographyValerie Pryor is invited back to an all-star version of the reality TV dancing program she almost won several seasons ago. But really she's Verity Price. Only this time, when the contestants are voted off the show, they are never making it out of the theater. (Also, her grandmother shows up, makes cookies, and brings the grenades.) Magic For NothingAfter Verity kind of blew their cover on live national TV, the Prices send their younger daughter Antimony over to England to infiltrate the Covenant. The Covenant then send her back to the US to infiltrate a traveling carnival. The shapechanging monkey-man who she befriends there is exactly the sort of monster the Covenant expects her to report so that they can kill him, but she'd rather kiss him on the Ferris wheel instead. Tricks For FreeNow on the run from the Covenant, Antimony takes a job doing retail at a Florida amusement park. She can't lead the Covenant back to her family. So when she runs into a cabal of magic users secretly controlling the park, she has only her roommates and her boyfriend from the carnival to help her out. And her dead Aunt Mary, of course. Sparrow Hill RoadThe story of Rose Marshall -- the phantom hitchhiker who was murdered on the way to her prom. But her killer didn't manage to feed her soul to his demon car, so he's still after her. (This book is a fixup: a collection of short stories rewritten as a single novel.) The Girl In The Green Silk GownRose Marshall is brought back to life, and she's not happy about it. She had gotten used to being a ghost. But returning to her ghostly afterlife is not as easy as just dying again. Just read the latest book: That Ain't WitchcraftAnnie and her friends end up in a spooky small town in Maine (cue lots of Steven King jokes). She meets a guy there who is trying to kill the evil "crossroads". Annie owes the crossroads a favor. Guess what the crossroads wants her to do? This is complicated by the fact that since she's no longer surrounded by all the people at Lowryland, the Covenant can track her down. And they do. I am reading a book by Seanan McGuire called Middlegame. A story about Roger and Dodger, two artificially created siblings who are part of a plan by some alchemists to "embody the doctrine" and essentially gain control of the world. Anyway, it's pretty good. Dodger embodies math, and she can reset the timeline but only if commanded by Roger, who embodies language. The story is very nonlinear, and it took me a surprisingly long amount of time to realize that it is just like a video game. Roger and Dodger keep reaching bad endings but then resetting back to earlier checkpoints and trying again, until they work out how to get the ending they want. (I'm about 2/3 through the book, so I don't know if that's what is going to happen for sure.) As "math", Dodger is inherently extremely skilled in chess, which is likely where the name of the book comes from. www.npr.org/2019/05/16/723709536/middlegame-makes-mathematical-magicNow that Antimony's story was told (in three books), the next book is going to be told by/about cousin Sarah. Sarah was an important side character in the first two Verity stories, so I decided to re-read those stories to get myself refreshed on Sarah. Sarah is a member of a telepathic race of human-looking insects from another dimension. Outside of the books themselves, the author has explained that in this other dimension the members of this species were having trouble with some sociopaths (mental disorders among telepaths are contagious). So they exiled them to another dimension, and that happened to be ours. These so-called "cuckoos" can make anybody instantly think they are their best friends. They are life-parasites -- they take anything they want and people are happy to give it to them. Money, food, housing ... anything. Then they walk away and nobody remembers them, but the damage they do is permanent. Normally they inherit their sociopathic attitudes by absorbing them in the womb (telepaths, remember?). Sarah, though, has been raised to be socialized to live with others. She still basically has the instincts of a parasite, but she mostly targets corporations and such, rather than individuals. For instance, she'll walk into a Starbucks and the staff will happily give her anything she wants without charging, but she puts some money in the tip jar. She tries to live by a "telepathic code of ethics" that she mainly borrowed from watching episodes of Babylon 5. The cuckoos would basically run the world if they wanted to, but that would be work. They don't like work. They don't like people. They don't like other cuckoos. They barely tolerate each other long enough to mate. It's very ironic that the Prices have knowingly and willingly adopted a cuckoo into their family, because the typical experience is that the cuckoo simply makes people *think* they are "family" while they really just take anything they want. In the second Verity novel she severely overextends her ability and injures herself. In later novels she is being cared for because she is confused, injured, and somewhat child-like. However, there are signs that she is slowly healing.
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Feb 8, 2020 9:26:53 GMT -5
finished the tea obreht book, inland, a few minutes ago. great book..i may have shed a tear or two. haven't picked the book for the february book club yet. due to the UT library being on intersession hours, i won't be able to pick it up until next week.
gonna read some back issues of the atlantic
picked up the anthologist today. the book club meets february 8th. book is 243 pages only so i can rock that out have the book club this morning. excited to discuss the book and see the objects selected by the museum staff
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Feb 8, 2020 12:24:54 GMT -5
picked up the anthologist today. the book club meets february 8th. book is 243 pages only so i can rock that out have the book club this morning. excited to discuss the book and see the objects selected by the museum staff someone was brave enough to say they disliked the book. the chill in the room was apparent
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Feb 8, 2020 15:13:06 GMT -5
edit: fun note - bought this book at blackwell in oxford
finished the martin luther book. plan is to read a collection of sci fi stories by chinese authors..."invisible planets". includes stories by cixin liu, the author of the three body trilogy
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Feb 8, 2020 23:05:49 GMT -5
edit: fun note - bought this book at blackwell in oxford
finished the martin luther book. plan is to read a collection of sci fi stories by chinese authors..."invisible planets". includes stories by cixin liu, the author of the three body trilogy Science fiction is a very political genre, but that's not always recognized. Reading stories from other countries often makes this much more visible.
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Feb 16, 2020 15:51:41 GMT -5
picked up 'the case of the spellbound child' by mercedes lackey. part of her elemental masters series. i enjoy her stuff
|
|
|
Post by mln59 on Feb 18, 2020 15:36:06 GMT -5
edit: fun note - bought this book at blackwell in oxford
finished the martin luther book. plan is to read a collection of sci fi stories by chinese authors..."invisible planets". includes stories by cixin liu, the author of the three body trilogy i'll finish this collection today and start on the mercedes lackey book
|
|