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Kevin Klemme
March 09, 2020
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Kevin Klemme
January 27, 2020
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Kevin Klemme
August 12, 2019
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oliverkinne
December 19, 2023
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oliverkinne
December 14, 2023
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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oliverkinne
December 12, 2023
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oliverkinne
December 07, 2023
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River Wild Board Game Review

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oliverkinne
December 05, 2023
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oliverkinne
November 30, 2023
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Jackwraith
November 29, 2023
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oliverkinne
November 28, 2023
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Spitfireixa
October 24, 2023
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oliverkinne
October 17, 2023
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oliverkinne
October 10, 2023
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October 06, 2023
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Outback Crossing Review

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What BOOK(s) are you reading?

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01 Nov 2016 22:03 #237325 by Shellhead
The Mote in God's Eye is their best collaboration in my opinion. It's a great first contact story, and the plight of the Moties becomes more relevant as our own population doubled in the last 40 years, and may double again within our lifetime. Inferno just happens to be a personal favorite of mine due to my own viewpoint on religion.
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07 Jun 2017 23:30 #249599 by Cranberries
I read A Gentleman in Moscow a while ago and really liked it, even though it seemed like an NPR recommendation. It sounds tedious but I was really drawn into it.

From NYT:Beyond the door of the luxurious ­Hotel Metropol lies Theater Square and the rest of Moscow, and beyond its city limits the tumultuous landscape of 20th-century Russia. The year 1922 is a good starting point for a Russian epic, but for the purposes of his sly and winning second ­novel, Amor Towles forgoes descriptions of icy roads and wintry dachas and instead retreats into the warm hotel lobby. The Metropol, with its customs and routines, is a world unto itself.

For years, its florist adhered to the code of polite society and knew “which flower to send when one has been late; when one has spoken out of turn.” The barbershop remained a kind of Switzerland, “a land of optimism, precision and political neutrality.” As post-revolution scarcity set in, the chef of the upscale Boyarsky restaurant worked magic with cornmeal, cauliflower and cabbage, while the Shalyapin bar offered candlelight and dark corners so Bolshoi dancers could sneak a postperformance drink. In the lobby, politicians whispered and movie starlets swanned across the floor, dragging recalcitrant borzois on their leashes.

Towles’s novel spans a number of difficult decades, but no Bolshevik, Stalinist or bureaucrat can dampen the Metropol’s life; World War II only briefly forces a pause. A great hotel is eternal, and the ­tidal movement of individuals and ideas into its lounges and ballrooms is a necessity for one longtime resident. He’s not difficult to spot: a man who enacts a set of rituals and routines, grooming and dining, conversing and brandy-drinking, before ascending each night to his room on the sixth floor, which has barely enough space for his Louis XVI desk and ebony elephant lamps.
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07 Jun 2017 23:46 #249601 by dysjunct
I love NPR recommendations. They make me feel smart. I don't actually read them, because I'm working through my backlog of RPG PDFs. But knowing what way more literate people are reading is a type social capital that I value.

Also I listen to NPR. Not because I really like their spin on things, but because they're the only news announcers that don't feel like they're yelling the news at me.
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08 Jun 2017 06:39 #249606 by Sagrilarus
I just started Sean Chick's book on Petersburg and damn, there is some density. Every sentence has information. I'll be reading this one slowly.

S.

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08 Jun 2017 11:20 #249613 by OldHippy
I just finished Martin Daly's 'Killing the Competition' which was a dense social sciences book about violence and why men kill each other so often. It's filled with stats and charts and all kinds of stuff that seems really dark because it's all these murder statistics presented so coldly. I'm actually happy to be done with it because it was a real bummer. Before that was Jon Ronson's 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed' which made me blow up my friends list on FB and shut down my Twitter. It was damned terrifying as far as learning how badly your life can get screwed over from a simple comment on line.

Much more exciting for me is that now I've started PKD's Vallis which I'd been meaning to read for some time. It's damned fascinating so far and probably some of his best writing.
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06 Jul 2017 10:04 #250922 by Cranberries
I just finished the fourth book in the Lisbeth Salander series, which was written by some random Swedish journalist because Stiegg Larsonn, the author of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," died of a heart attack before his books sold a bazillion copies. The book is basically 419 pages of fan fiction. It was ok.

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06 Jul 2017 14:35 #250937 by RobertB
I just finished Thinking, Fast and Slow. It turns out that we're not nearly as logical as we believe we are. This is not exactly news, but this is a good overview of how we really think, and what we need to look out for.

I am now reading Autumn of the Black Snake, which is about the events and choices that led to the creation of a standing U.S. Army, and the U.S. victory in the fighting over the Northwest Territory.
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16 Jul 2017 13:56 #251227 by Gary Sax
Just finished Return of a King, a history of Britain's mid 1800s wars in Afghanistan. Fantastic, the writing is great and super engaging. Also really well sourced on both sides. If you're a history type, definitely read it. Starting Dalrymple's other book on the Sepoy rebelliion now.

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16 Jul 2017 15:20 #251230 by Black Barney
The charge of Rohan is my favourite part of that book
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17 Jul 2017 23:21 #251295 by Not Sure
Return of a King has been on my "to read" list for like a year, and I just can't get to it.

I recently read NK Jemisen's The Obelisk Gate, which is book two in a so far spectacular series.

Read some other forgettable bullshit, and I'm taking the new Neal Stephenson (plus co-writer this time) lunchbox-sized book on a plane tomorrow.
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18 Jul 2017 05:08 #251304 by Matt Thrower
Years ago Call of Cthulhu inspired me to pick up the then OOP collecting of Ramsey Campbell's mythos short stories Cold Print.

I picked it off the shelf recently on a whim for a re-read. It's fascinating in the way it charts his development as a writer. The first couple of tales are clumsy Lovecraft pastiches written as a young teen. He then goes through a long phase of material that's clearly in his own style but is nevertheless very clearly part of the pulp horror genre. The last few stories in the book are very distinct and among the best mythos fiction I've read. They're oblique, amorphous things where the horror is always just out of reach, a shadow flickering at the edge of the eye or the mind.

Given that many of the tales were written when he was very young - late teens and early twenties - they're really very accomplished and imaginative. It's a shame he's not better known as an author. But then, I don't know what his longer work is like.
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18 Jul 2017 19:52 #251354 by trif
Replied by trif on topic What BOOK(s) are you reading?
I'm a big Ramsey Campbell fan, though I've fallen behind with his most recent books.

The novels I would recommend are:

The Nameless (also a good film. The film has a different ending to the book and Campbell has said he prefers the film ending.)
Obsession
The Influence

the next ones are his most overtly Lovecraftian:

Midnight Sun
The Hungry Moon
Ancient Images

He also wrote some non-supernatural novels which I don't think are as good, except for The One Safe Place which is masterful and The Count of Eleven which is him at his most playful.

Yes, he should be much better known - but his works are harder to translate to film than Stephen King's.
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18 Jul 2017 20:06 #251357 by Gary Sax

Not Sure wrote: Return of a King has been on my "to read" list for like a year, and I just can't get to it.


Definitely try to get to it, it is SO readable for history.
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25 Jul 2017 22:57 #251656 by Not Sure
Okay, so I finished The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O, the previously-mentioned lunchbox-sized book from Neal Stephenson and Nicole Gallard. Jeb, did you read this thing yet?

I won't be spoiling anything beyond the first page to say it's a great hefty whack of time-travel. That usually bugs me, but I was willing to give it a try. I was initially dubious about co-authors, but I think it worked well here. There's some Stephenson wonkery, particularly about swords and such, but i think the addition of a female co-author improved the characterization and sharpened the humor.

I skipped the Mongoliad trilogy since I thought the multi-author thing would be a nightmare, but the biggest takeaway I got from this is to go look at Nicole Galland's other work.

If you didn't like Stephenson before, this isn't going to change your mind. I liked Seveneves a lot, but was very unsatisfied with REAMDE. I found this one to be roughly on par with Seveneves, and much tighter in storyline.
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26 Jul 2017 00:04 #251657 by Gary Sax
I finished the 4th Expanse book finally and it was pretty weak. Noticeably weaker than the previous 3. I'm still reading the series out of inertia, because I want to know what the metaplot is, and it's an easy read. I'm not engaged with the characters, that's for sure.

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