aka @kingrat@sfba.social
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Success! Phil in SF has read 27 of 26 books.
Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether …
On a generation ship bound for a distant star, one engineer-in-training must discover the secrets …
Ravinder "Ravi" Mcleod is training to be an officer on a generation ship going from Earth to Tau Ceti. While not strictly speaking a heredity based society, officers tend to be children of officers & crew tend to be children of crew. The ship (one of three in a fleet) is coming up on Braking Day, the point in the trip where the ship flips around, then fires its engines to begin decelerating. A.k.a., Braking Day from the title.
There's lots of plain drama just from keeping a ship in good shape and heading toward its destination. There's lots of drama because of the hierarchical society that dominates the ship. And there's lot of drama because Ravi starts seeing visions of a girl whose only words Ravi can understand are "help us".
This is a very young adult themed book, though I don't know if it was officially marketed as …
Ravinder "Ravi" Mcleod is training to be an officer on a generation ship going from Earth to Tau Ceti. While not strictly speaking a heredity based society, officers tend to be children of officers & crew tend to be children of crew. The ship (one of three in a fleet) is coming up on Braking Day, the point in the trip where the ship flips around, then fires its engines to begin decelerating. A.k.a., Braking Day from the title.
There's lots of plain drama just from keeping a ship in good shape and heading toward its destination. There's lots of drama because of the hierarchical society that dominates the ship. And there's lot of drama because Ravi starts seeing visions of a girl whose only words Ravi can understand are "help us".
This is a very young adult themed book, though I don't know if it was officially marketed as such. All the spotlight characters are coming of age. Pretty much anything an adult does is either off screen, or an authority figure in opposition to Ravi and his friends. As such, don't expect much in the way of adult motivations.
On a generation ship bound for a distant star, one engineer-in-training must discover the secrets at the heart of the …
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow …
If I close my eyes, I can smell those glorious days. Oakum and tar and fresh wood shavings from the dry docks where the shipwrights wielded their drawknives and mallets.
— Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy, #1) (7%)
new vocabulary: oakum
loose fiber obtained by untwisting old rope, used especially in caulking wooden ships
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow …
I helped them as far as the door of a small chandlery, Molly sniffing apologies every step of the way.
— Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy, #1) (6%)
new vocabulary: chandler
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow …
This year, I've vowed to read some of the books that I've had on my shelves for a while. This one has been on my shelf since 2009 at least.
The Interdependency—humanity’s interstellar empire—is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel …
On paper, I should really enjoy Scalzi novels. In practice, not so much. Every character feels like an extension of Scalzi's social media presence. Fir the first book of this series, I could put up with it because the premise and plot were interesting.
There's nothing interesting in this second installment. it's just court intrigue with a bunch of wise cracking nobles. Scalzi can't seem to write a normal conversation, or plot intrigue that isn't over the top mustache-twirling.
Unfortunately for me, i want to know the end of the saga now. i will read the third book. then please, talk me out of reading any other of his books.
(He seems like a decent guy, but his fiction is just oil to my water.)
The Interdependency—humanity’s interstellar empire—is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible is …
The Interdependency—humanity’s interstellar empire—is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel …
Ugh. The first book was ok. This is a drag, but now I'm invested in knowing what happens. And there's one more book in the series.
The Interdependency—humanity’s interstellar empire—is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible is …
Memory is far more than a record of the past. In this groundbreaking tour of …
As I've gotten older, I have found it increasingly harder to remember nouns, particularly names. Names of companies in my industry. names of software packages and services I use frequently. My sibling's names. My girlfriend's names.
I didn't read this book with the idea that i would learn how to cure my memory difficulties. Rather, I wanted to understand in a basic way how memory works and if research backs up any method for slowing my decline.
The book solidly walked me through things. It includes descriptions of two kinds of memory: episodic and semantic. Things I experienced and might recall vs. facts I've committed to my store of knowledge. Although my memory of things I've experienced is not great, for some reason that's never bothered me. But losing common facts really makes me anxious.
Although a bit florid, i recommend the book for a mostly understandable explanation of about …
As I've gotten older, I have found it increasingly harder to remember nouns, particularly names. Names of companies in my industry. names of software packages and services I use frequently. My sibling's names. My girlfriend's names.
I didn't read this book with the idea that i would learn how to cure my memory difficulties. Rather, I wanted to understand in a basic way how memory works and if research backs up any method for slowing my decline.
The book solidly walked me through things. It includes descriptions of two kinds of memory: episodic and semantic. Things I experienced and might recall vs. facts I've committed to my store of knowledge. Although my memory of things I've experienced is not great, for some reason that's never bothered me. But losing common facts really makes me anxious.
Although a bit florid, i recommend the book for a mostly understandable explanation of about 300 factors that influence memory.
Memory is far more than a record of the past. In this groundbreaking tour of the mind and brain, one …
Memory is far more than a record of the past. In this groundbreaking tour of …
The selective nature of collective memory is not random- our memories become especially skewed towards those of the last voices in the room. In the lab, the recollections of groups disproportionately reflect the information recalled by those who dominate the conversation.
— Why We Remember by Charan Ranganath (35%)
Memory is far more than a record of the past. In this groundbreaking tour of …
As expected from what we knew of previous research in rats and monkeys, responses in the reward-learning circuit did not necessarily shoot up in response to the reward feedback, but rather in response to the extent to which the reward deviated from what was expected.
— Why We Remember by Charan Ranganath (Page 270 - 271)
Everything starts somewhere. For elite military cop Jack Reacher, that somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, …
A prequel set just before book 1, The Affair tells how Reacher gets pushed out of the Army. The Army sends him to Carter Crossing Mississippi, where a young woman has been murdered and the town thinks the perpetrator must've been a soldier from the nearby Kelham Army Base.
This episode takes us back to early Reacher novels, where he can't put a foot wrong at all.
Including the sex scenes. Reacher can't do wrong, but Lee Child certainly does. These should have been whittled down a lot.
