The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

It's a bit of a switch if you read it back to back with First Law. I think the characters were so good in First Law that if you go right to Best Served Cold you end up wishing they were back in that book. But I wouldn't say it's weaker, just different. It is standalone, so you won't technically miss anything major by skipping, but if you stick with Abercrombie's stuff there are some more minor characters that pop back up in major ways in other books.

 

I've been pushing Erikson and the Malazan series for ages in here haha, he's just released a new book based on Karsa Orlong called The God is Not Willing. For those that have read the Malazan series I highly recommend the Stories of the Malazan Empire series by Ian C. Esslemont, they're fantastic as well and fit in with Erikson amazingly.

They're old ones now but the Dune series by Frank Herbert is a great read as well.

 

Just finished "Five Nights At Memorial" by Sheri Fink, detailing the events at Memorial Hospital in NOLA, during Hurricane Katrina.

Holy fucking fuck.

Well worth the read. It was on the FEMA administrator's "reading list", and it has a lot of relevance as an emergency/disaster case study in fucking up. It also details the legal battle that ensued after a doctor allegedly euthanized patients "too sick to evacuate", a big fucking no-no. It was updated in 2015 to reflect recent changes in policy, medicine, and studies done on the incidents.

For my money, a big issue was the communications. People in the hospital from essentially Saturday to Thursday had a hell of a time figuring out what was going on outside. The radio station they were tuned into kept falsely saying "martial law" had been declared, and sensationalizing looting, acts of violence and talked about bands of marauders, making hospital staff scared shitless and ensuring they turned away people. They didn't have a plan, nor any practice with their plans, so they had no idea what to do or how to do it. They worried about ridiculous shit, like the pharmacy being looted, instead of planning for evacuation and conserving precious resources. Also, they had no clear span of control, so you had people giving and taking orders without clear authority or reason to do so. Lastly, they were without power for maybe 3 days...that's all it took. 3 days for them to turn into "Lord of the Flies." They kept using the toilets, even though water wasn't working, instead of instituting some latrine policies. They had cars with air conditioners and limited electrical capabilities that sat unused, hell they even had a cancer center that still had power, that some of the executives used and simply never thought to mention to folks needing care. The centralized, standardized Incident command structure (ICS) was heavily modified after this to make sure this shit didn't ever repeat.

Some stuff, like the radio spouting horseshit still hasn't been resolved. The book ended with a case study on a pandemic plan on how to share ventilators and triage care that I'd be real curious about now.

The cascade of fuck that was Katrina was before my time, but we had just as many confounding situations with Maria, Harvey, Florence, Laura, and the pandemic. It's a wild read, worth it if for no other reason than to inspire thought as to how we prepare for shit to go off the rails.

 

I need help here. I read for a half hour to my 5 year old son every night. We are currently reading Matilda. We have read every other Dahl novel now and need to move on to something else. The problem being I didn’t like reading when I was little so I don’t know where to go. Anyone have suggestions? Is he too young for the first Harry Potter book?

 

I think Harry Potter will play better starting around 7 or 8. Iirc the books got more mature from one to the next, so while you might get away with reading the first one, as the characters get older it might be a bit much for a kid that young.

My nieces have recently enjoyed the Detective Gordon books, but I’ve only read snippets. My sister loved the Junie B Jones books as a kid and I didn’t hate reading them to her when I was 10 or 11 and she was 5 or 6. I loved the Ramona Quimby books when I was around that age, and I also have a distinct memory of my aunt reading me a book called The Mixed Up Files if Mrs Basil E Frankwiler (or something like that) and being a big fan of that as well.

If I were you, I might do a little searching on GoodReads because I bet some people have made well curated lists.

 

Try Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Popular with that age group and entertaining.

 

Thank you. I like this and there are corresponding movies. So he will be excited to see the book come to life.

 

Just finished Steven Erikson's new Malazan book, The God is Not Willing: The First Tale of Witness. For those of you who have read his work, it's another outstanding read from him and the Malazan Marines are getting more outlandish as the Empire gets older. Well worth a read.

 

It's sitting on the "read next" pile! So excite!

 

The first handful of Lemony Snicket books aren't bad.

 

Depends entirely on the kid. I was reading Crichton by age 9, whereas I graduated High School with kids who still couldn't read more than a stop sign. If your kid enjoys Dahl, then I'd try the following, in rough order, until you hit something too advanced for him:

• Mr Popper's Penguins
• My Friend the Vampire
• My Father's Dragon
• Hank the Cowdog
• Sideways Stories from Wayside School
• The Chronicles of Prydain
• Mr. Tucket
• Where the Red Fern Grows
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Enchanted Forest Chronicles
• Interstellar Pig/Singularity/The Beasties
• A Wrinkle In Time
• Harry Potter
• Redwall
• The Hobbit
• Ender's Game
• His Dark Materials

 

There is an Australian author called Paul Jennings who wrote some good children's books called Around the Twist.

 

Never mind all that - when is your buddy coming out with his next book. The first one was great.

 

Has anybody read The Exchange yet? John Grisham's sequel to The Firm.