The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee
Tl;Dr all the artist and patrons of the Renaissance were pretty much deviants in every conceivable manner.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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I'm listening to Alex Verus 4 right now, and loving it. I like any series with an interesting magic system, and I really like the idea of adepts versus mages (single powerful spells versus versatility within one type of magic).
I read that a couple of weeks ago and just now finished the fifth, damn these two books were good! If the rest of the series keeps it up I think it'll be my new favourite.
Currently listening to [Psychokinetic] Eyeball Pulling by FreeID, narrated by Amanda Dolan through Audible.
Up next Tenacity by Dakota Krout, narrated by Luke Daniels through BookFunnel.
Ah, litRPG. How are you liking them? My experience with them has pretty much all been in web novels, with one exception of Cradle novels, or is that a different genre?
Honestly, it's a pretty broad category. Overall enjoyable, but after so many I start looking for the unique aspects between them. Psychokinetic is fairly average so far, but I'm quite fond of Dakota Krout and the puns and terrible jokes.
Technically, Cradle and the preceding series to Dakota Krout’s Completionist Chronicles, Divine Dungeon, are in the cultivation genre rather than LitRPG. That said, the two are so closely related that they can often be interchangeable. The biggest differences would be that cultivation uses energy/essence to gain power while litRPGs use experience points to gain levels. I think cultivation books tend to have looser rules(principles maybe?) binding them whereas litRPGs have more rigid video game constraints/rulesets (although the best litRPGs lay out rules early on that allow for a great flexibility in how a player can operate within them).
Speaking on both, I think the a lot of people gravitate towards the power fantasy of the genres which has led to them being oversaturated with a lot of sub-par series. There’s some good gems in there. Cradle is pretty good, I didn’t get super far in the series but I respect it. I do think Dakota Krout writes the best series in Divine Dungeon and Completionist Chronicles, although you do have to accept the puns, and that all of the main protagonists have very transactional personalities. The Life Reset series has an interesting premise and town management. If you want straight video gaming, I think Ascend Online is pretty good at capturing the best parts of the MMORPG grind, or there’s Awaken Online if you need to embrace your inner edge-lord.
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Reading Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. I love the humor in his writing style, but it does make the non action parts a bit slower reading. I'm also listening through Nona the Ninth, the third book in the Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir. Moira Quirk's narration makes this such a delight. Only drawback is waiting for my book club to catch up so I can read more.
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My partner and I are about a third of the way through Frank Herbert’s ‘God Emperor or Dune’. It’s getting really good!
I haven’t started it quiiite yet per se but I’ve picked up Osamu Tezuka’s ‘One Hundred Stories’, a period samurai manga retelling of Faust.
Reading through all Dune books?
One Hundred Stories sounds interesting, will look it up.
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I'm reading Alex Verus 5 tonight & tomorrow, and I intend to pick up the pace on Dead Beat because I should finally be getting Mercy Thompson 4 later this week. I moved recently and found a small local bookshop that specialises in fantasy, and immediately upon walking in I saw several series I've never been able to find in years. Bonus - they have a loyalty program, I'm going to be there a lot.
Edit: The extended Lightning Tree by Pat Rothfuss comes out tomorrow too iirc (I can't remember what it's called), that's definitely on the list.
The narrow road between desires, eager to read that as well!
Oooh, that's a dream. Wish I can find a nice local bookshop like that.
Mercy Thompson looks interesting. I already have few urban fantasy lined up after Dresden, can add this to the list too.
Is this the side-story of a character from his Wise Man's Fear? I think I saw something about it, but I am ignoring Rothfuss' work, until we can get something complete. 😀
Yeah, it's a character from the framing story of the two main books, Wise Man's Fear is the second. I think they're still worth reading even if we'll probably never see the series completed, it's some really beautiful writing.
Side note, The Lies of Locke Lamora is my favourite book, and that's another series that'll probably never be finished. On the bright side I hated A Song of Ice and Fire 🤷♀️ I'm 400 pages into The Way of Kings which is my first Sanderson book, so at least I've got approximately 150 years of reading lined up while I wait.
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Reading: The Hobbit
Listening to: I Robot
Next up (listen): Zoe is too drunk for this dystopia
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I'm reading Walkable City by Jeff Speck, it's about urban planning. I started reading it when my school gave us a speech to present and I chose Future of Transportation, and I wanted to show how much we could improve mobility while being feasible and ecologically friendly. The future of transportation could be so much more than self-driving electric cars...
Other than that, I'm also reading Chimpanzee Politics by the primatologist Frans de Waal, after reading his other book "Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?".
City of mirrors. Best one of the three, I think.
And the only one I don't have... Was hoping the get the final book before starting the series.
I'm slow-reading a book about meditation ("Seeing That Frees" by Rob Burbea) -- it's not really one to just "get through". And reading Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstatder, but it's not exactly light reading so that's taking a while too. This weekend I was at a bookshop and was compelled to get a quickie just so I could feel some reading-dopamine, and so far it's been great.. In fact I'm already almost done with:
Ubik, by Philip K Dick
reading-dopamine are nice, but slow-read book that are helpful to you are also important. So take your time and enjoy.
I'm reading the transcripts of The Magnus Archives podcast, and Time To Orbit: Unknown by Derin Adala.
Struggling a bit with The Magnus Archives tbh. It's a supernatural horror story with a really interesting premise but there's a lot of really disgusting stuff that keeps happening that kinda messed with my head a bit. The rot, and meat, and infestations of it all are quite intense.
I'm halfway through now, and while I'm down to a few chapters a day now for the sake of my mental health (the gross stuff is gross trust me), I'm curious to know where everything ends up and how it all works/will work.
Time To Orbit: Unknown is really fucking good. It's a scifi mystery set on a colony ship full of future humans and very well done, I can't say more without spoiling it and it's not even finished yet either (new chapters are realeased every Sunday and Wednesday). I caught up last week and the anticipation I'm feeling waiting for new chapters is surprisingly fun.
Weren't you listening to them before? Why did you switch to the transcripts?
Time to Orbit: Unknown sound interesting, going to look it up.
I was only just introduced to the Magnus Archives last month!
I'm reading the transcripts because I struggle with audio processing and sensitivity (basically words stop sounding like words if a noise hurts, and lately everything hurts).
The ""unofficial"" TMA transcripts on github are really good though!
Time To Orbit is fantastic, there's no way you won't enjoy it. It's moreish the way it unfolds.
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The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
I finished Look to Windward by Iain Banks, I enjoyed it and it's ending particularly. Also read Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being A Witch, which I also enjoyed. Very interested if Rhianna wants to make a go of more new stuff for Discworld.
Really looking forward to starting The End and the Death: Volume II by Abnet. I cannot believe I have been reading HH for this long and it is finally finishing, if you ignore the inevitable books that will still get shoehorned in later, like I will.
That's good to hear about the Look to Windward. Your last post made it sound very bleak. I think your posts have convinced me to give The Culture another try.
Wow, didn't know anyone was continuing Discworld, should check it out.
Well remembered! Yeah it gets a lot less bleak as Banks focuses more on other characters as the book progresses who do not have such a tragic back story. Player of Games is still my favorite of the series so far, I just love it when people go super saiyan after being pushed too far. If they could translate the game properly into something that would work on film it would make an amazing film.
just finished the Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher.
very much enjoying the world building
Omg you just made my day! I read the Aeronaut's Windlass not knowing that he'd taken a long hiatus, and was bummed at the thought that I might have to wait a few years or more for the next one (looking at you, Rothfuss and Martin). Gonna check now to see if my library has this one in stock.
released a novella in between the two of them as well which is definitely worth checking out and very relevant to the main plot
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Bad Blood about Theranos. This book is good, shows very detailed on how everything went down but sometimes way to detailed about medical things that it takes me so long to actually finish it.
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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. About ~110 pages in, it’s good so far! Can’t say much about it yet but it has bit of funny moments but also very sad moments in it. I like it and curious where it’ll take me.
Since I don’t know how to spoiler tag on Lemmy, I will leave a part out.
I also want read “Before the coffee gets cold: Tales from the cafe” - the sequel to the first one.
I've been listening through my Alastair Reynolds audiobook collection since early October. Started with the Revelation Space trilogy and the other books in that universe, then Pushing Ice, Terminal World, and Century Rain. Forgot I had Glactic North on audio, so I'm halfway through that. Next up is a personal favorite: House of Suns.
All of them are read by the same narrator, so my internal monologue is now largely in the voice of John Lee.
Probably reading through the Revenger series next (they weren't on-sale when I bought the first collection on Audible).
That sounds interesting, listening the books of an author by one narrator.
So, how do you like Alastair Reynolds work?
I am a big fan of hard sci-fi, and he does an excellent job of it without letting it cramp the story or limit the scope of human space colonization (those limits help make the story rather than constrain it). Plus, he has a whole series that's basically space pirates (Revenger) so hard to go wrong with that haha.
Most of the stories are set 100 to 300 years after Star Trek takes place, but FTL travel is non-existent here. Things like inertial dampeners that are basically handwave plot devices in Trek are a huge deal in his stories (i.e. very experimental, of alien origin, and absolutely horrifying when they malfunction or are pushed beyond their "safe" limits).
Reynolds used to work for the European Space Agency, and he absolutely brings that to his stories and shows his work. One of the big (pun intended) areas he excels at is keeping the scale correct when parts of the story take place in-transit between various star systems.
Some critics complain he doesn't end his stories very well, but I've only had issues with a couple (mostly because it seems like they were set up for a sequel that never came about).
Interesting. Thanks for the detailed response.
He is already on my wishlist, but this makes me even more interested in reading his work.
Started on the Master And Margarita by Bulgakov and listening to Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams.
A relaxing books week! 😀
Absolutely. Both the books are highly entertaining and enjoyable 😘
Finished Absalom, Absalom!, read If on a winter's night a traveler, started The Crying of Lot 49.
For much of the time I was reading Absalom, Absalom!, it used exhausting language to describe events it mostly failed to make me interested in. That got better once a critical mass of unexpected turns accumulated; my final impression is pretty good.
Demian Veen (from Ada, or Ardor) might even largely be a reference to Thomas Sutpen. In fact, there could be dozens of Faulkner references in Ada I'd entirely missed due to ignorance of Faulkner at the time. I guess I'll reread it later.
Crossings by Ben Goldfarb. Nonfiction about the effects of roads on wildlife migration and what people can do to reduce that impact.
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