Apologies for those following my #bookstodon offerings, I corrupted this and forgot to reupload it. A Hardness of Minds: First Contact on Europa by Eric Kay. seanrandall.me/recommends/B09W…
Can someone recommend a fantasy or sci-fi series that I can get into? I don’t always read those genres (I have a condition where I can’t visualize images) but recently I liked The Expanse, various Sanderson books, Shadow and Bone etc. I prefer well built worlds with good writing
It's Friday and you need something new to read this weekend! Here is a list of books about time travel that appeal to a wide audience, not just science fiction fans:
A post by @JamesBazan reminded me of one of my absolute favorite and the most profound quotations from a book. In fact, this book has many others. I'll let you discover others on your own. Here are a few.
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. … Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”
Tell me about your favorite "found family" #scifi stories! Queer or queerish is a plus and while I don't mind "spicy" it's not a requirement either. #bookstodon #scifibooks
There was an interesting discussion in the SFWA discord and a tangential topic was men and reading.
So I’m curious. Men, of any age. Are you a reader? I broke it down into Avid - More than 20 books a year Sometimes - Less than 20 a year Don’t read - Self explanatory I hope.
Please share far and wide. 100% not scientific and feel free to reply with genres and any other color commentary you like in the replies.
For any #FirstContact fans, #PeterCawdron has put his next book up for preorder toward the end of October.
I'm going through a difficult patch and not reading much at the moment, but we're looking at nearly 6 weeks away. Hopefully things will have improved by then. My daughter's due to be on a school trip, my Son is due to be a few weeks old, and my job is due to be paused. SO I might get there around about the right time. #Bookstodon
Alternatively, for a similarly low price, you can get the series that got me into Dave's writing in the first place. The "world of the Goddess" as they call it in the book, or the seventh sword series, as it's known, is a typical portal fantasy (although I didn't really know the term when it was written).
the protagonist, Wallie Smith, a man from our world, finds his consciousness transferred into the body of a barbarian swordsman in a completely different world. In the classic "fish out of water" narrative, he must navigate the rules, customs, and dangers of the new world. Wallie Smith's journey epitomizes this, as the mild-mannered earthling is suddenly thrust into a society governed by a goddess and a rigid code of swordsmanship.
The twist is great, too. It's one of those utterly fantastic revelations that you had all the material to work out for yourself, so perhaps you will.
The 4th book was written years after the first 3 and is as much an homage to the fans as another story, so if you're going in fresh, enjoy the trilogy as a unit first.
My omnibus copy omited the preface when I bought it, so be wary of that. I did report it to the publisher, so hopefully they fixed it.
For only £2.39 on Kindle at the moment in the UK, you can get all 4 of the Man of His Word fantasy books. Nearly 1,800 pages of escapism which enthralled me greatly the first time I read it. I've been back a handful of times, too.
It's light (but moving), entertaining YA fantasy. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and there's not a lot of grey area. It is a bit heavy on the traditional gender roles, Inos is a princess but she's not helplessly waiting to be rescued, and while Rap is the strong commoner, he's not always right, or always doing the rescuing. They're genuine (if young and not overly complex) people. It's clever, diversionary fantasy with a rich magic system. The sequel is just as good too, which is rare.
My book Drystone – A Life Rebuilt is out in just three weeks.
I really believe in this book. It’s honest about important things, quietly subversive, funny, easy to read, and I’ve poured everything into writing it and getting it into the world as far as I can.
If you can, I’d love your help. A share, a preorder, a message to someone who might love it, it all makes a difference.
I'm dying over this reddit comment. Not saying that it is wrong but the framing of books as "old timey entertainment" is funny to me. Like my grandpa talking about farming using mules.
Some really great books this week. Someplace Else by D. R. Brown feels like an interconnected set of novellas, following AI as Humanity evolves to the stars. If Wishes Were Retail by Auston Habershaw is a cosy story about a genie granting wishes in modern society (Alex's dad on the roof was sidesplittingly funny), and Line Magic by Kris Faatz was just such a wholesome, fill-you-up-with-goodness sort of a read. I also revisited an old sci-fi favourite from the 1960's.
I'm not overly happy with the way the audio turned out on this one, but I did read the book last week and enjoyed it. If you're looking for something without a happy ending, you might enjoy ... #bookstodon
Gosh. I was off work for a day last week with a new Peter Cawdron. This week I get yet another day off and there's a new Scalzi! I haven't had a day off this quarter, then 2 books come along at once. #Bookstodon
Another cracking book, thanks @FreakyFwoof for both the find of the book, the recommendation of the book, and of course as usual the music bed to go beneath the description of the book.
It's the wonderful in any lifetime by Marc Guggenheim. #Bookstodon
Buy Shroud: A gripping first contact story from Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Adrian Tchaikovsky Main Market by Tchaikovsky, Adrian (ISBN: 9781035013791) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.
Amazon will remove the ability to download the ebooks for Kindle at the end of the month. So if you ever close your amazon account, you'll no longer be able to access the books you had bought.
Designed for downloading your Kindle eBooks in a more automated fashion than is typically permitted, this tool allows you to create backup copies of the books you've already purchased. - treetr...
This week's reading highlight was probably the second of the Brian Pinkerton novels: The Gemini Experiment follows attempts to transfer Human brains into cyborg bodies. Part of me thinks it's meant to be read entirely seriously, but then you get the whole Russian subplot and an utterly stupid action in chapter 15 which makes one think the author's partly playing it for laughs. Either way, a quick thriller which I enjoyed.
I'm giving up on the idea of running my reading updates on the web. So for now if you care to get regular updates on my reading, feel free to subscribe at buttondown.com/SeansShelf If it works for the majority, we'll keep it. if people want a different system, we'll talk about it. Updates come weekly on a Wednesday. #Bookstodon
More "enshittification". This time from Amazon. Amazon is pulling a Google, killing off popular services. Evidently, I have until 25th February to download my 708 books that I have purchased from them. After the 25th you can no longer download YOUR books for backup or transfer via USB
Good job I did this 2 years ago eh? Buy the books from elsewhere.
This is fine for those of us who don't buy from Amazon anymore, but if you have a standing library with them, make sure you get it all downloaded so you can break it. It's frustrating because you can't bulk download - I keep finding titles I own but missed grabbing somehow - but you have until Feb 26th to get them all.
Amazon is removing the ability to download purchased Kindle content, which is the only way to read it on my Kobo or elsewhere. What this means is I will no longer be purchasing (“a license to”–ick) any books by the mostly independent authors who exclusively publish there; just cancelled preorders.
6 books this week, although one was a very short fanfiction prequel and its successor, called Rise of the Wizards was rather venal.
Outstanding read this week has to go to Dan Frey's Dreambound, which I've already mentioned. I also reread the Heinlein classic Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, and an interesting twist on the murder mystery front with Memory Blank by John Stith.
Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations
"...court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models."
#bookstodon "what is magic if not a way to transform the world through the power of our thoughts? What are books if not spells? What are stories if not the most powerful and mysterious force known to man?" Not since King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald and Angelica by Arthur Phillips has a fantastic mystery had this sort of impact. I was very pleased to see that Dan's managed to do it again, in terms of writing a book without any actual narration, and I was even happier that the table of contents didn't give it away. Whoops? I've spoilered that for you now. I love this chalkboard-style of writing, the idea that this whole work is a huge tapestry of interconnectedness. I enjoyed every page, and I think the ending just clicks so well that, even if it's predictable, it's so hard not to cheer along and want things to fall out.
5/5: "what is magic if not a way to transform the world through the power of our thoughts? What are books if not spells? What are stories if not the most powerful and mysterious force known to man?" Not since King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDo…
only 3 books this week. The Rift was as good as I'd hoped, but I've already mentioned that here. This week's unexpected enjoyment was called Web of Secrets. it calls itself progressive fantasy, but it felt more like a young adult mage fantasy thing to me. Be interesting to see where the second book goes! #Bookstodon
22 hours of reading this week and another 5 books swalloed up.
3 Pretty humdrum fanfics, although the 4th was a nugget: the way the Triwizard Tournament is handled in "The Lie I've Lived"by JBern was pretty cool. Shame the sequel isn't finished, the idea was quite well handled.
I started what seems to be a bit of a Star Trek knockoff series, too, which was ... Different. #bookstodon
In the wake of SPD shutting down, I started doing roundups on Metafilter of #SmallPress books to support a less corporate reading ecosystem. Time to start posting those here too, dailyish! 💙📚 Or you can go to my Bookshop list (affiliate link): bookshop.org/lists/small-press… #bookstodon #books
I have lost momentum in this week of reading and only managed to swallow 3 books, 3,750 pages.
the shoutout this week has to go to *The Boys*, a compelling work of literary fiction that pulls a childhood insecurity, grief and trauma into the light in an interesting way. I read it in a single sitting and it hung around my head for days afterward. The other 2 were Harry Potter fanfiction, one of which was rather amateur and immature both, and the other of which seems to have sadly had its sequel abandoned. #bookstodon
My second week of the year in books was largely taken up with the I, Starship series. One of those Human mind put into a spaceship ideas. Been done before, but it was diverting enough. I also read the second of the Jo Callaghan detective novels this week and the newest of Peter Cawdron's First Contact novels.
5 Books down in the first week of the year. I actually spent more time reading than working this week, given I didn't go back for the first 2 days of the working week. If I had to pick a weekly winner, it'd be the cool techno-crime story "in the blink of an eye", which is a typical British police procedural but with an AI twist. seanrandall.me/recommends/B09Y… #Bookstodon
Author of sci-fi without the pew-pewSi (she/her) is a Canadian misanthrope who lives in London. She shares her home with her partner and an assortment of waifs and strays.
