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Speaking of King,

I was really disappointed with how the Dark Tower series was wrapped up, especially the last book. It just felt like King phoned it in, just to get it over with. Mordred the spider boy seemed so... pointless, and then the way Flagg was offed, so completely random and in such an insignificant way... Ugh.

 

 

Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

 

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I read some book called...A Far Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier? "Multicultural" Literature class. Dreadfully boring, particularly the first half. Bleck. Would recommend only if you hated yourself...or if I hated you, maybe.

 

House on Mango Street - same class. Not as bad, but still kind of bad.

 

I should read a book I'm actually interested in one of these days...I don't read as much as I used to.

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How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything - spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying'. I tried with all my heart.

In my dreams, I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.

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Plodding through the Witcher series some more, two books officially translated and one of the short stories collection unofficially so.

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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  • 3 weeks later...

the Maztica books really got me interested in the Aztecs

The area between the balls and the butt is a hotbed of terrorist activity.

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Now reading The Bird Box by Josh Malerman. It's ok, a little creepy but also a little hard to buy into. I can only suspend disbelief so far.

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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* Some military history about the battle for the Hurtgen Forest 1944-45. Given it was the 'Murican's costliest battle of WW2 it's kind of relegated due to the legend of the neighbouring Ardennes offensive (occurring slap-bang in the middle of the period). The author served as an infantry replacement in 1944 and clearly enjoys ripping all the generals a new one, juxtaposing their self-regarding memoirs with bloody reality.

 

* Some end-of-the-world schlock I can't even remember the title of. I read a lot. A damn lot. Books eventually mush into each other.

 

* More Lovecraft. I feel like I need some sort of literary Purple Heart for slogging through baroque prose and endless lists of Arctic expedition prerequisites.

sonsofgygax.JPG

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Please Don't Tell My Parent's I'm a Supervillain

 

An entertaining YA read, about the young daughter of a pair of retired heroes, who stumbles into her own Mad Scientist powers and along with her two friends end up being mistaken for breakthrough Supervillains. Every time they try to correct that view, things go slightly askew and they get seen as even better Supervillains.

 

Some interesting world building and characters, and a setup where the heroes and villains have a nice set up of "rules and conduct of behaviour". Those who break it, (especially by making it personal) tend to end up facing a couple of the villains or heroes who ensure there's an "accidental" death when they next get into a fight...

"Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum."

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The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, an American Legend. by Tom Calvin & Bob Drury. I just started it last night but I'm hooked.

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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Finished Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds), it was ok. Looking forward to Chasm City(book 2), because that is the book that was recomended to me.

Edited by Sarex

"because they filled mommy with enough mythic power to become a demi-god" - KP

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An odd request, but a friend is looking for some good Russian audiobooks - mystery, suspense, fantasy are her targeted genres. Any ideas ? :p

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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An odd request, but a friend is looking for some good Russian audiobooks - mystery, suspense, fantasy are her targeted genres. Any ideas ? :p

 

Boris Akunin is the the only stuff I'm familiar with and the Erast Fandorin series in particular

 

http://www.kniga.ru/audiobooks

 

I can ask around for more stuff

 

EDIT- Forgot to mention the World of Watches series though I admit I only saw the movies (Night Watch and Day Watch)

Edited by ShadySands
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Free games updated 3/4/21

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CompTIA A+ Certification. Should have went for this years ago when the book was half the size.

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War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength

Baldur's Gate modding
TeamBG
Baldur's Gate modder/community leader
Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition beta tester
Baldur's Gate 2 - Enhanced Edition beta tester

Icewind Dale - Enhanced Edition beta tester

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An odd request, but a friend is looking for some good Russian audiobooks - mystery, suspense, fantasy are her targeted genres. Any ideas ? :p

 

The Strugatsky brothers' "Roadside Picnic" and Vladimir Sorokin's "Ice Trilogy" ticks off at least two of those checkboxes; I'm unaware if they come in audiobook form.

 

If she wants to broaden her search to other Eastern European countries she can't go wrong with Stanislaw Lem's work. Pirx the Pilot, The Cyberiad, and The Star Diaries being all time favourites of mine.

Edited by Agiel
Quote
“Political philosophers have often pointed out that in wartime, the citizen, the male citizen at least, loses one of his most basic rights, his right to life; and this has been true ever since the French Revolution and the invention of conscription, now an almost universally accepted principle. But these same philosophers have rarely noted that the citizen in question simultaneously loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not to kill.”
 
-Jonathan Littell <<Les Bienveillantes>>
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"The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete."

-Rod Serling

 

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An odd request, but a friend is looking for some good Russian audiobooks - mystery, suspense, fantasy are her targeted genres. Any ideas ? :p

 

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, it has mystery, suspense and fantasy in it.

"because they filled mommy with enough mythic power to become a demi-god" - KP

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Finished Neverwhere, more than halfway through Good Omens. Anathema Device is the best name ever conceived. The AC organizing an Inquisition against witchcraft is gripping stuff.

 

Neverwhere needs to be remade as a TV series with the BBC Radio cast.

With additional seasons/series as the novel ending is blatantly a declaration of sequel-itis

 

 

Although it should be patently obvious what the ending of Neverwhere is given the nature of humanity. It's obvious from the start how it's going to end, but that's not a flaw on Gaiman's part. One of those "it's not the destination, it's how you get there" sort of things. It really feels like a setup for a broader media franchise, at least from the perspective of someone who couldn't possibly have seen the original TV series back in the '90s. And whom is tainted by the talents of today who performed the radio-play.

 

 

Not that I want Benedict Cumberbatch and Anthony Head to get sucked into what may or may not be a black hole, but I do want Natalie Dormer to be the one who makes fools of them through that means.

 

Edited by AGX-17
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