User Profile

frogplate

frogplate@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 2 years, 1 month ago

Vegetarian, European, Stoic, Humanist, Developer, hard sci-fi fan, observer of frogs and stars, AFOL, patched back together and replumbed by the NHS...

Interests include astronomy, books, open source software development, LEGO, Linux, Nintendo, JRPGs, hard science-fiction, Stoicism, and anything technical and shiny.

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frogplate's books

To Read (View all 9)

Currently Reading (View all 6)

Brandon Sanderson: Skyward (2019, Orion Publishing Group, Limited) 5 stars

Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped …

A fun YA hard science fiction yarn

4 stars

I greatly enjoy Brandon Sanderson's fantasy novels. His world-building and magic systems always have an interesting logic - balancing a power's advantages against its limitations or disadvantages. I always feel that those rules would translate directly into a well-tuned RPG.

"Skyward" is the first Sanderson science fiction I've read, but it won't be the last. It's a hard sci-fi YA adventure with a teenage girl protagonist who makes mistakes and embarrasses herself but has you cheering her on every step of the way.

The technology and action scenes are convincing, and I enjoyed the way Sanderson went into some detail about how the spacecraft and their weapons worked.

Overall the plot was a little predictable but didn't detract from the fun of the story, and the final revelation was a good surprise and set-up for the sequel.

started reading The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett (Discworld, Book 27)

Terry Pratchett: The Last Hero (Paperback, 2007, Victor Gollancz Ltd) 4 stars

An illustrated storybook.

I'm currently re-reading the whole of the Discworld collection on Kindle. I used to have, that rare thing, a complete collection of Discworld titles on dead tree unscathed by a single Pratchett signature. But household space limits dictated a move to bits rather than books.

When I finished "Thief of Time", I found that the next tome was unavailable on Kindle as a real ebook. Instead, it was PDF which was inadequate on eInk and pretty hostile on a tablet.

So I've had to switch back to traditional media to fully appreciate Paul Kidby's artwork.

started reading Meditations by Marco Aurelio

Marco Aurelio, Gregory Hays: Meditations (Paperback, 2003, Random House Publishing Group; First American PB Edition) 4 stars

Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking …

Having read and enjoyed the Penguin Classic edition of "Meditations" recently, I am interested to see how much difference this new translation of Marcus Aurelius's jottings will make. Initial impressions are that the book is almost worth it for Gregory Hays' introduction alone.