Eat any good books lately Worf?

[Rocketboy1313]

"All our Wrong Todays" joins an elite club today. It is only the second book on Audible I have ever refunded.
The first being "Ready Player One" (ironic title for the circumstance).
My reasoning being they were both complete shit.

[Fixer]

Ahh well, so much for my book suggestions

Edit: Agreed on Ready Player One though. Interested in hearing your opinions on why you didn't like All our wrong todays and see where tastes differ.

In actual book reading I picked up a new kindle in the sale and started reading Temeraire or his Majesty's dragon again. I picked up the series to read on my iPad before but got bored somewhere in Empire of Ivory plus the iPad's backlit screen started to strain my eyes. There's been another half dozen books released since then so it looks like I have to do a lot to catch up.

Alternate timeline Napoleonic war with an airforce of dragons. How can you go wrong?

[Rocketboy1313]

"Ready Player One" was a series of references without jokes.
People complain that "Family Guy" is just references, but it isn't, it takes the cultural jargon and makes a joke with it. It is a subversion to see IceMan's ice bridges go to a gay bar. But, all "Player One" does is list things. There are whole pages with just lists of movie titles, authors, games, and no commentary or insight.
It is kind of clever when he figures out where the first key is, but holy shit do I not care about him talking about how much time he spends reading all the pop culture flotsam the game creator grew up on.

It didn't help the Audio book reader was Wil Wheaton and hearing him play an obnoxious, girl inept, know it all dweeb IS JUST THE WRONG THING TO DO.

[Fixer]

Oh I'm agreed on Ready Player One already. The short taster I've seen of that is just references to stuff.

Essentially the book version of South Park's member berries.
'member Pac-Man?

Was wondering what you didn't like about All our Wrong Todays.

[Rocketboy1313]

With "Wrong Todays" another god damn book about a guy who has no idea where he is going with his life and he is sad that his dad doesn't love him. I would feel for him BUT HE LIVES IN A JETSON'S STYLE UTOPIA.

It is first world problems taken to the millionth power. The first two hours is him talking about how he had pity sex with a string of exs and his friend because he was sad his mom died. FUCK YOU. This book was advertised as a comedy about our world being the nightmare dystopia created by accident, I was expecting it to be funny, two hours in and I am bored and actively dislike the protagonist.

Did not help that it is clearly a personal story by the author, I could tell because he decided to be the audio reader. In addition to OVERexpressing and sentimentalizing EVERY GODDAMN WORD, he has what I like to term "fat tongue". I am constantly aware of every movement his mouth is making. I just want to slap the mewling pretense out of his stupid face and hand the book to Luke Daniels or Dan Green so at the very least I am not annoyed to hear the book I can be free to roll my eyes every time he starts crying about his mother or wanting to fuck his coworker.

Just typing this is making me mad.

[Fixer]

Fair enough

I enjoyed the book for it's alternate universe post-scarcity world, interesting technology, time travel concepts and eventual character development.
The sadist inside me rather enjoyed the concept of a monumental screwup destroying utopia.

The book has actually been picked up to a movie adaptation so that might be a more tolerable than the audiobook.

Edit: To give some very spoilery thoughts.
The book really comes into its own when discussing the problems with time travel. Including the issue of the transporting someone not just to the time but the proper location when the world is spinning and travelling around the sun in a galaxy that's rotating in an expanding universe.

One of the interesting concepts used though is that of what he calls "temporal drag" in which the Universe tries to adjust to the alternate reality created by the changes in the past. It still needs Tom Barren or a version of him to exist, to go back into the past and be present to change history otherwise reality could not exist.

Tom who is already living with having committed the greatest crime in history essentially is destined to travel back in time somehow, and of course he succeeds because events conspire towards that. However this universe's more primitive version of time travel results in him having to experience the trip back in real time and all the existential horror that involves.

The big reveal is that the current world that Tom creates (ours) isn't the only alternate version of the world. The first one was a truly horrific post apocalyptic nightmare where the Tom that grew up did so as a ruthless, amoral soldier with the memories of time travel and the original utopian world. His action was to create our current version of the world but when Tom Travels back himself he ends up with a battle between his current self and the monster that now wants to return the world to the apocalypse so he can exist again.

In the end, Tom can't restore the original world because of this and has to settle for ours, but with lessons learned and helping to push the world back towards the lost utopia.


Can certainly understand dislike of the narrator. I think I mentioned the ear splitting chapter on my previous audio-book review. In general I may have been desensitised to such things thanks to a career of dealing with customers in IT and net security.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

"Ubik" reads like a book written by a paranoid schizophrenic addicted to amphetamines.
Makes sense, it is a Philip K Dick novel.

Ubik is my current pick as Philip K. Dick's best. It's not the craziest Dick novel by a long shot, but it captures a lot of his recurring themes while maintaining (relative) coherence and the entertaining and bizarre off-kilter feel that he did so well.

To me it also showcases why PKD is adapted so often and yet so hard to get right on film. Ubik has a lot of exciting and thematic elements, but its hard to see how its essence would be translated in an adaptation.

[Rocketboy1313]

Ubik is my current pick as Philip K. Dick's best. It's not the craziest Dick novel by a long shot, but it captures a lot of his recurring themes while maintaining (relative) coherence and the entertaining and bizarre off-kilter feel that he did so well.

To me it also showcases why PKD is adapted so often and yet so hard to get right on film. Ubik has a lot of exciting and thematic elements, but its hard to see how its essence would be translated in an adaptation.

What I kept comparing "Ubik" to as I was reading it was "Silent Hill". I don't know if I am totally off base with that comparison, but I got that vibe hard when reading it.

[Fixer]

Decided I couldn't wait for the Audible release and picked up the Kindle version of Expedition Force Book 4 - Black Ops and read that over the weekend. Not as good as the last two and the Kindle version had some serious spelling issues to fix, but still a fun read which left on another cliffhanger and I'm looking forward to the 5th being released on November.

Trust the Awesomeness.

Honestly, I though the series would make a great TV show. All the fun of modern day humans trying to save Earth in clever ways using advanced alien technology they can't understand. Sort of an SG1 vibe.

Temeraire - Empire of Ivory. I've been trying to slog through again. I had trouble finding my place where I had picked before because it feels like there's so much filler, or dire circumstances feel so boring for some reason. Maybe it'll get more interesting later. I had really enjoyed the previous books in the series.

[Rocketboy1313]

Did I already recommend the "Old Man's War" series by Scalzi? I just finished book 3 and each one has had a different enough emphasis that they do not get repetitive and paint a picture of a big and interesting universe.