The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

I finished Col. Chris Hadfield's "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", and it was pretty solid. Wholesome, fascinating and rife with dad-humor, it was a pretty inspiring read. He does Canada proud. It was done in 2013, so some of his hot takes on the space programs are out of date, but still very much worth the read.

I re-read "Dune" ahead of the movie coming out, and if any of y'all know of sci-fi novels on par with that, let me know. Epic in so many ways, a letdown in none. Hell, it made me want to watch "Lawrence of Arabia" again.

I also finished "Flourish" by Martin Seligman. The whole "positive psychology" movement speaks volumes to me, because it's a more practical target for my own depression than the illusion of "you should be happy all the time, and that's the solution to depression". The book itself was a bit self-congratulatory, but worth getting through. Some of the more salient points for me came from the benefits of optimism and positive thinking, and how it can be learned. I'm moving on to some of the other books by Seligman, but I can say with no small amount of sincerity that Seligman's work has done a great deal to help. It's done more in 2 months than 18 months of therapy in terms of sticking in my head.

For shiggles, I'm reading "The Wild Storm" by Warren Ellis, a masterful re-take of the 90's era "WildCATs" comic. The original was the textbook example of bad 90's comics, and it made it's way into toys and a kid's tv show. Ellis' version is just much better storytelling and he weaves a cooler narrative with these whacky ass elements. It's kind of like taking the characters from "Saved by the Bell" and making "Freaks and Geeks".

 

Dune is brilliant. But be warned that the series drops off dramatically after that. The next two books, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are okay but don’t approach Dune. After that they become damn near unreadable.

 

Dune is a great, great book, a true masterpiece of science fiction, but are you asking if I've read scifi I consider even better? Yeah, absolutely.

While nothing I've ever read beats Dune in terms of world-building, I would consider these books even greater;

1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein
2. Glory Road by Heinlein
3. The Status Civilization by Sheckley
4. The Robot Who Looked Like Me by Sheckley (short story collection, but superlative in every way...)
5. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Dick
6. The Postman by Brin
7. Hiero's Journey by Lanier

I debated on whether to include my second favorite author of all-time, Haruki Murakami's books as science fiction, which would be several more entries, but ultimately settled on no. I would also say that To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld #1) by Farmer is probably equal to Dune in quality, being a tremendous masterpiece in its own right.

 

I tried reading it last summer and didn’t like it at all. The characters use of late 60s and early 70s slang and expressions took me right out of the world he was trying to create. The whole tone of the book was so 70s that anyone over the age of 50, given a page from the book independent of context, could tell you when it was written.

If anyone wants the complete Chronicles of Amber that I bought off Amazon last year I’ll be happy to ship it to you. It’s barely used.

 

I think I got roughly a hundred pages in. I follow what you’re saying, but when the princes and princesses talked that way even with each other in alternate realities it irritated me. I read some other Zelazny years ago, just never cared for him. You say potato. . . .

 

I ordered "The World of Jeeves" on this suggestion. I'm about 200 pages in and it's great. It's a compilation of the Jeeves short stories and the best way to describe it is it's like a brilliantly written English sitcom.

 

Me also. Definitely entertaining.

 

I've been reading Michael J Sullivan's Legends of the First Empire series. (Age of Myth, Age of Swords, Age of War, Age of Legend, Age of Death, Age of Empyre.) Holy shit. I'm through the first three books and they're phenomenal. It's a fantasy series (Wizard types, magic, and shit) but I'm devouring the books. Highly recommend.

 

I still have to get to Age of Death and Age of Empyre, but 100% agreed. I think his other series, Riyria Revelations/Chronicles is even better (Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, Heir of Novron, The Crown Tower, The Rose and the Thorn, The Death of Dulgath, The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter). They take place in the same world, but several centuries later, so it's really interesting how the footprint of the events in Legends of the First Empire echo through those books that take place way later.

 

@walt any news on the sequel?

 

I've just finished Age of Death, so only one more to go. I was glad to see that there will be 3 more books released in the next year (Although in another series.) I definitely plan to read his other books. The guy is a phenomenal writer.

 

Has anyone listened to any particularly good audiobooks recently? I’ve been tearing through them since I spend so much time feeding this baby, but I’m too tired to actually look at words on a page.

 

I haven’t listened to audiobooks in a very long time, but one that has stayed with me was In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (I don’t remember who narrated it). I think I listened to it in the early 90s, on cassette no less, and I still think about it occasionally.

 

All of Ruth Ware's books are terrific. I listen free on Libby. Not everything is available there, and sometimes on the more popular ones, there is a wait for availability, since it's a library. One reason I like them so much is because Imogen Church is the narrator, and she is absolutely fantastic. I started with The Woman In Cabin 10, and have listened to all of them (Turn of the Key, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, and listening to One By One now), except her first one In a Dark, Dark Wood.

I've read and listened to a few of David Baldacci's books, in different series. They were pretty good, but the Atlee Pine series (starts with Long Road to Mercy) is really good. Again, excellent narrators in them.

I seem to enjoy female narrators better, especially when they're willing to "do" the voices, rather than just read. So, I thought Cassandra Campbell was excellent doing Where The Crawdads Sing.

I usually put in my search terms for mystery or thriller, because I enjoy those the most as audio books. So, my search came up with 2nd Grave On The Left, and I had no idea what it was. I ended up listening to the whole Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones - there are 13 of them. They are not high literature: it's sex and silly and supernatural powers, with a little mystery thrown in. But, Lorelei King is so good as the narrator, I enjoyed all of them.

 

News from Taylor Anderson, author of the Destroyermen series, about an upcoming work.

Artillerymen
Artillerymen is a new series, that Anderson began writing in 2021, telling the story of a group of unassigned American replacement soldiers who were on a transport ship in 1847 bound for Veracruz to reinforce U.S. General Winfield Scott's army in his march inland to capture Mexico City during the Mexican-American War when their ship was mysteriously transported to the same alternate Earth as the Destroyermen, but a century before the Destroyermen's arrival. These people became the founders of the New United States (NUS) mentioned in the Destroyermen series.