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I finished Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen. The man has a real talent for writing astonishingly stupid redneck villains who meet creative self inflicted demises.

I'm slowly reading through the Infinity Lore book. It's pretty dry and the writing feels a little off, likely due to it being translated from Spanish. But need to research if I'm going to change my novel from my own Sci fi setting into the Infinity universe.

And, as all good things must, we at last come to the end of the 2000AD Ultimate Collection.

Volumes 199 and 200 in my grubby mitts.

The Order

Another one I hated in serial form in the Progs. But it reads much better as a single volume. Good if you like multiverse/time shenanigans and a slice of steam punk, without really being any of those things as such.

Rogue Trooper, Fr1day Vol 3

‘Member when they tried to reboot Rogue Trooper “for the 90’s” and it kinda choked, but then they found a way to fold it all together into something largely satisfying? This is the end of that.

This of course means for the first time since the Judge Dredd Megacollection began in January 2015? I’ll be without my monthly hardback collected volumes.

Upside is across the two collections I’ve now a pretty extensive 290 volumes for my amusement. Maybe I’ll go back and try to read the few I gave up on (CalHab and Dan Dare).

Oh, and I’ve an annual subscription to 2000AD and the Megazine, so it’s not as if I’ll be entirely bereft of Thrill Power. Yet it must be Splundig vur Thrugg to the Ultimate Collection.

In case of accident, I’ll need to think about who gets them in the future.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse.

The discussion on Hammett a few pages back convinced me to put the book on my list, and now that I’m reading it I am quite enjoying it. The prose is surprisingly modern for something written in 1928. It feels like it’s moving at a breakneck pace which makes me wonder how much crazier it’s going to get in the next 100 pages or so.

I've been working my way through my Collected Dashiell Hammet (It's like 9000 e-book pages!), and I remember this one. The hallucinogenic drug trip was truly unexpected in the middle of a hard-boiled detective story.

That took me by surprise, too. And the explanation was a fairly classic Scooby Doo cop out, in a good way.

For a book written almost 100 years ago, it felt like a modern “that escalated quickly” procedural. Diamonds, drugs, cults, adultery, murder, car crashes, an explosion. Jerry Bruckheimer could have co-written it.

Polished off The Hogfather last night.

Sadly, this a book tainted in my mind by the Sky adaptation for telly, which I only saw bits of, and wasn’t at impressed by Mr Teatime in that.

But it is a fun book, with a deep dive into the Discworld’s gods, and how they’re powered by belief, belief which overtime can fundamentally alter them. Old Gods Do New Jobs.

There’s also a significant amount of development given to Hex, the closest thing to a computer on the Disc.

Just reread A Game Of Thrones for the first time in a long long time.

Man, I sure do have new levels of hatred and despair that the show was truly nowhere on level with the book.

Even the start where the royal procession arrives at Winterfell and Cersei is supposed to have a double decker carriage with 40 horses drawing it.
Just the little things that make it so much better.

Jingo

Back to the Watch! You can tell this is a cracker, as I belted through half of it yesterday evening, and I expect to have it finished tonight.

The Watch are such a fantastic group of characters. For an ever expanding group, PTerry still managed to flesh out each and every one over the relevant stories. Not necessarily all equally, but it is there.

Even more impressive is that the likes of Fred and Nobby get character development, but never change. Which is part of their character.

By now, we’ve Humans, Zombies, Gnomes, Golems, Trolls, Dwarfs, a Werewolf and of course Nobby Nobbs, a truly multicultural police force.

Keep talking like that and I'm going to have to embark on another Discworld re-read, and I had other plans for this year!

Shut up and get re-reading you!

 Gert wrote:
Just reread A Game Of Thrones for the first time in a long long time.

Man, I sure do have new levels of hatred and despair that the show was truly nowhere on level with the book.

Even the start where the royal procession arrives at Winterfell and Cersei is supposed to have a double decker carriage with 40 horses drawing it.
Just the little things that make it so much better.

I'm waiting for it to be finished before starting it....so I'll probably never start it.

Jingo finished. Absolute belter, showing The Watch, Willikins and Lord Vetenari at their best.

Next up is The Last Continent. Which I think is our last Rincewindcentric one?

And I’ve just found my copy (the fancy hardbacks) has no ribbon. So I’ll need to dig out a bookmark.

Reading: The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient.

While Stoicism isn't my primary philosophy in life, it's good to read the "guys who hate your school of thought," every so often.

While Seneca and Epictetus had some good ideas. They are honestly a lot easier to put into practice if you are not in close proximity to what causes you grief.

The mind as a refuge and fortress that no one can mess with, unless you allow them to is an interesting idea.

 Gert wrote:
Just reread A Game Of Thrones for the first time in a long long time.

Man, I sure do have new levels of hatred and despair that the show was truly nowhere on level with the book.

Even the start where the royal procession arrives at Winterfell and Cersei is supposed to have a double decker carriage with 40 horses drawing it.
Just the little things that make it so much better.

Haven’t read it since the last book came out. Lost interest in the show after a few seasons. I used to love this stuff and would post fan theories on grrm forums circa 2009. Good times.

My vague memories of it is that Martin clearly lost control of his story after book 3 and everything seemed to grind to a halt. He introduced the Viking family on rock island and the other lot in not-Spain further bloating a story that was already creaking at the seams.

More teash Light novels
but light reading before bed is great.

Metro 2033 is getting pretty good so far. I mean, it was already good, but a little rambley. Seeing Artyom finally get to Polis and do what he was tasked doing, as well as more action scenes such as fleeing from mutants take a looooong time to get to, but it's well worth it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Reading: The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient.

While Stoicism isn't my primary philosophy in life, it's good to read the "guys who hate your school of thought," every so often.

While Seneca and Epictetus had some good ideas. They are honestly a lot easier to put into practice if you are not in close proximity to what causes you grief.

The mind as a refuge and fortress that no one can mess with, unless you allow them to is an interesting idea.

So, what you're saying is...
'An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded'
right?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Reading: The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient.

While Stoicism isn't my primary philosophy in life, it's good to read the "guys who hate your school of thought," every so often.

While Seneca and Epictetus had some good ideas. They are honestly a lot easier to put into practice if you are not in close proximity to what causes you grief.

The mind as a refuge and fortress that no one can mess with, unless you allow them to is an interesting idea.

the problem with stoicism is it can often conflate "Im resilent" with ignoring a problem outright.
Im dealing with a horrible parent at my job, one that left me crying after work, Soticism would say i need to ignore it, when really i need to deal with the problem of a parent waiting outside and taking pictures of my car.

bullisariuscowl wrote:Metro 2033 is getting pretty good so far. I mean, it was already good, but a little rambley. Seeing Artyom finally get to Polis and do what he was tasked doing, as well as more action scenes such as fleeing from mutants take a looooong time to get to, but it's well worth it.

You are spot on. I read Metro 2033 right after reading Roadside Picnic, and remember being kind of frustrated by the slow, slow pace. Having finished it and knowing where the story was headed, I think it could stand up to a re-read. I seem to recall hearing something about a sequel, as well.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Reading: The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient.

While Stoicism isn't my primary philosophy in life, it's good to read the "guys who hate your school of thought," every so often.

While Seneca and Epictetus had some good ideas. They are honestly a lot easier to put into practice if you are not in close proximity to what causes you grief.

The mind as a refuge and fortress that no one can mess with, unless you allow them to is an interesting idea.

the problem with stoicism is it can often conflate "Im resilent" with ignoring a problem outright.
Im dealing with a horrible parent at my job, one that left me crying after work, Soticism would say i need to ignore it, when really i need to deal with the problem of a parent waiting outside and taking pictures of my car.

\

This.

I consider my approach to be stoic.

The loss of my parents sucked, and upset me greatly. But leaning toward stoicism, I recognised that grief is good, but life must still go on. And no amount of upset and crying was going to change facts.

But work wise? Not so much. Kinda. I’ve recently dealt with three or four deeply unpleasant consumers. If I stayed entirely stoic, and just “water off a duck’s back”, they wouldn’t have stopped, and things would continue escalating. So I sought out help from senior department members to put those issues to bed fully. Sure, stoicism helped me leave those issues At Work, and not dwell on them in my own time. But it’s still draining, even though I followed through in the most appropriate way.

Who knows, maybe being contacted by Police under the malicious communications act might shock one of them into being a better human bean?

I am probably biased because as someone watches horror movies of all types, I love The Game at Carousel. An entire story based in playing around the tropes and motifs of horror movies and mystery box fiction, that at least through the first three books manages to be solid enough for what I wanted it to be and I get to have fun guessing along with the main character as he tries to figure out the plot of whatever horror movie scenario he happens to be in.

I like these books. They're definitely not for everyone, probably not even the usual LitRPG sort of people given it's a bit of a weird set up, but it's just a book that's about perfect to entertain me.

Moved on from the Stoicism and moved on to the other major school that was disliked by the Roman Stoics: Epicureanism.

Want to know why the Romans called them hedonists?

Epicurus taught women philosophy.

"Oh no! The horror! You can't teach women philosophy," said the Romans, "The Epicureans must have them for orgies they have in their gardens."

Do you like to read? Do you like to use reason through problems? Do you like to hang out with your friends? Do you believe that if a tree branch falls on someone it's just gakky luck and not the divine will of the gods? You might be an Epicurean.

Right now I'm reading How to be an Epicurean by Catherine Wilson. An attempt to take this classic Greek idea and apply it to the modern world...

The Last Continent

The final Discworld novel to be centred on Rincewind. Better than I remembered, but not as good as The Watch and The Lancre Witches books.

The problem with Rincewind is his natural instinct to a problem is to run away. This kind of makes it tricky to make a story that focuses around him because any challenge that raises his natural insect is to avoid; evade and get away from it.

Most of the other characters will "engage" with things - Rincewind knows of many things and very much wants to get away from them, as quickly as possible.

I think its why he worked well in the very early books because his running-away kind of led you on a tour of the world; but in latter books he kind of gets a bit "stuck" cause we've explored so much through other means that we know that we don't have to run away to see other regions.



At least that's my recollection of him.

He’s also someone that just has Things Happen To Him. Rincewind himself never really has an agency.

But then, rather than poor writing, it’s what he is, and it does serve a purpose, especially for exploring the different lands and cultures of Discworld.

I would be much more interested in the book on Stoicism if it wasn't code for Right-wing Man-O-Sphere Bollocks now.

Edit: Reading about all those classic philosophies sounds really cool though!

Carpe Jugulum

Back to Lancre, Nanny, Granny and Agnes. With Vampires, and our first proper Igor.

Belter of book.

 Easy E wrote:
I would be much more interested in the book on Stoicism if it wasn't code for Right-wing Man-O-Sphere Bollocks now.

Edit: Reading about all those classic philosophies sounds really cool though!

Go read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gregory Hayes).

It's the best translation out there, and gives you the best intro to Stoicism I've seen (and good information on where to find d more).

I read my highlighted copy every day.

Just finished Carpe Jugulum.

Love it overall, but there’s a part where I’ve either just not remembered it as I fell asleep that night, or it feels like there’s a scene or two missing. Specifically between Agnes, Nanny and Magrat heading back to Lancre, and Granny turning up at the castle.

Anyways, minor quibble aside as we crash on to…

The Fifth Elephant

Now I actually re-read this one not terribly long ago, so I know I’m in for a treat. But that’s no reason to break the release order streak, is it?

Reading Stephen King’s Richard Bachman’s The Long Walk. So far so dystopian.


Also, Art Deco Los Angeles. The details of some buildings’ construction read like something out of a fantasy story. Sand from every county, water from every river…

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:



Also, Art Deco Los Angeles. The details of some buildings’ construction read like something out of a fantasy story. Sand from every county, water from every river…

Who’s the author for this one?