Just finished book 10 from my WoT re-read.

Time for 11.

Finished the steam punk anthology and it was exactly the mixed bag I thought it would be, some good, some bad.

Now that I've got the unemployment thing dealt with, I've gotten my reading time back.

Started the "Septimus Heap" books by Angie Sage. So far, so good.

Almost done with this one and looking forward to the rest.

Listened to:




And started:


The Mercy Thompson series just keeps getting better.

CM, this is how I get through so many books. Reading during the commute and listening at work with playback set to 1.7:1. This was actually a fairly slow week. I left probably 10 or 12 hours at work that I could have used listening unused.

I recently got the latest two Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I really need to get back to that series before I lose all the threads and have to start over.

I have discovered a new author, Edward T. Yeats, III, who writes a lot of sci-fi and some adult oriented fiction.  So far all of his works are online.

The book that first caught my attention was "Lords of Kobol, Book One: Apotheosis"  A five-book series, it answers the question in the Battlestar Galactica universe of "What happened on Kobol that brought about the migration of mankind to the Twelve Colonies?"  So far I have read books one and two, will be reading book three soon.  Check it out, especially if you are a revised Battlestar Galactica fan.

You can download his Lords of Kobol books here: http://www.ety3.com/8652.html

Here is his blog: http://ety3rd.blogspot.com/

Currently reading Candide by Voltaire as recommended by Pyrrho and Rhythm. Great story so far and thoroughly enjoying it (about a third in).

Also reading "Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity" by Thomas Metzinger but that's going to take a lot longer to read, probably months even at a fair rate as it's so long. But so far it's incredible, being perfectly willing to tackle the 'hard' questions of consciousness and in a really thorough way. It can get a bit technical but the author is great at explaining difficult concepts with thorough examples. From what I've read though, I think this is the most solid theory of mind/consciousness I've come across and it is a joy to read so well chuffed.

Dipping into "God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions" by John W. Loftus and Randal Rauser. But I don't really need that any more since joining this site. Still, it makes good toilet reading

Recently finished "The Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis. Fascinating portrayal of heaven and hell - very imaginative. Just as interesting as Dante's Inferno from that perspective.

Finished a really good book yesterday and now I'm exceedingly pissed off.

The book: "Low Town" (aka "The Straight Razor Cure") by Daniel Polansky. One of the best (easily top 25) fantasy novels I've read in the last decade.

The reason I'm Pissed:
"Low Town" is the first part of a (so far) four part series. It also works well as a stand alone work. Nine different libraries and an assortment of online book sellers can only provide two of the four books in electronic format even though they are recent publications 2010-2014. You can get every bit of tripe that Stephanie Meyers has spewed upon a page but truly good writing... Nope. I can understand not being able to get older books by less well-known authors, but anything in print after about 2000 should also be in ebook format.

At least his new series is 100% available electronically. All one of them (book two is due out next year).

---

Secular Elf, I'm gonna give those Kobol books a go. I'm not usually one for fanfic, but these sound like that are a bit outside the usual fanfic fare.

So, I finally found the Polansky e-books, at Amazon, for Kindle. I don't own a Kindle nor will I pony up that much cash for an e-reader just for two books.

Fuck proprietary, bullshit DRM. I understand the desire to protect intellectual property, I really do. But content providers are cutting their own throats by doing this. Most people who have already made $100+ purchases are not going to be willing to make another just to access a small percentage of the market. Most will either forgo the books, purchase the content and strip the DRM or pirate a copy. The only way the provider gets a sale is if the customer chooses the most difficult path, stripping the DRM. Human nature and the path of least resistance means forgoing or pirating. If you want to remain strictly within the letter of the law, it means forgoing since DRM removal is a violation of the DMCA.

DRM doesn't even make surface sense. It's a huge inconvenience to the paying customer but less than a minor nuisance to the pirate community. As was pointed out when Sony crashed so many PCs with their poorly implemented DRM for music CDs back in the late 90s/early 00s, it only takes one upload for anyone who wants it illegally to get it illegally. All forms of DRM have proven absolutely worthless at actually protecting the rights of copyright holders but they have been effective at coercing consumers.

So, it looks like I'm going to have to do something I've not done in almost two years. I'm going to have to buy an archaic print media that hasn't been signed by the author. Ugh. I guess I'd best check e-bay. Of course, the joke's still on Amazon. They still aren't getting my business for these books.

Bad Science / Ben Goldacre
The Human Stain / Philip Roth
The Mind Of God / Paul Davies
Helen Of Troy / Bettany Hughes
The Selfish Gene / Richard Dawkins
Nineteen Eighty Four / George Orwell
The Rage Against God / Peter Hitchens
What Is Your Dangerous Idea / Various
You Cannot Read This Book / Nick Cohen
Our Mathematical Universe / Max Tegmark
Blue Remembered Earth / Alastair Reynolds
Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest / Stieg Larsson
Mandela The Authorised Biography / Anthony Sampson
About Time / Einsteins Unfinished Revolution / Paul Davies
Thirteen Things That Do Not Make Sense / Michael  Brooks
Why Does E Equal M C Squared  / Brian Cox And Jeff Forshaw
Women Of The Revolution / Forty Years Of Feminism / Various
M I 6 Life And Death In The British Secret Service / Gordon Corera

A MIND IS LIKE A PARACHUTE : IT DOES NOT WORK UNLESS IT IS OPEN

(May 22, 2015 at 10:16 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: CM, this is how I get through so many books. Reading during the commute and listening at work with playback set to 1.7:1. This was actually a fairly slow week. I left probably 10 or 12 hours at work that I could have used listening unused.

I just found out Dan Wells just released a new book (The DevilsOnly Friend) that I want to get on audiobook. I have the rest of the series on audio and have been considering restarting my audible account.

I also read the first three or four books of the Earths Children series on audiobook, which started okay and quickly became 100% shit.

'what if?  Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions'  by Randall Munroe.

If you're at all familiar with the xkcd online comic, you've got a glimpse of Munroe's delightful sense of humour, and this book is no different.

Ever wonder what would happen of you tried to collect ALL the elements of the periodic table in a display case?  Spoiler alert:  it would be really, really bad.  Have you ever computed the odds of dialing a phone number at random and saying,'God bless you' to a person who just sneezed?  No need, Munroe's done all the heavy lifting for you.

This is a really funny book.  Although Munroe trained as a physicist and worked as a roboticist for NASA (cool points for that), the book touches  on meterology, archery, genetics, printing out Wikipedia (don't try, you can't afford it), statistics and a helluva lot more.

Highly recommend it.

Boru

(July 4, 2015 at 11:47 am)Clueless Morgan Wrote: I just found out Dan Wells just released a new book (The DevilsOnly Friend) that I want to get on audiobook.  I have the rest of the series on audio and have been considering restarting my audible account.

Oh, yes. I've been waiting for that one, though I suppose I should get around to "Next of Kin" (short set between books 3 and 4) first. The John Cleaver books have all been quite good so far.

Have you read his "Partials" books?

(July 4, 2015 at 11:47 am)Clueless Morgan Wrote: I also read the first three or four books of the Earths Children series on audiobook, which started okay and quickly became 100% shit.

I couldn't get past the two main protagonists discovering, or being directly involved with the discovery of almost every every ancient world discovery after fire. The disbelief became unsupportable.