VNVObit wrote:Currently working my way through the first book of the Witchers trilogy
Trilogy?
There are at least five, and two books of related short stories.
You can't get them all here yet, but the Polish versions are long in the tooth. I suspect the delay is some sort of marketing scheme, release one per game. If that's the plan, it stands a very real risk of going all the way down the pan when one of the games turns out to be naf.
must have misread a guide
only three of the saga books translated into english so far
Actually it was the trailer for number 3 that got me interested then found a book in a charity shop
"England is funny, but sometimes she scares me"
Tony Wakeford
VNVObit wrote:Currently working my way through the first book of the Witchers trilogy
Trilogy?
There are at least five, and two books of related short stories.
You can't get them all here yet, but the Polish versions are long in the tooth. I suspect the delay is some sort of marketing scheme, release one per game. If that's the plan, it stands a very real risk of going all the way down the pan when one of the games turns out to be naf.
must have misread a guide
only three of the saga books translated into english so far
Actually it was the trailer for number 3 that got me interested then found a book in a charity shop
Miecz Przeznaczenia (The Sword of Destiny) (1992 English edition: 2015)
Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) (1993, English edition: 2008). Note that, while The Last Wish was published after The Sword of Destiny, the stories contained in The Last Wish take place first chronologically, and many of the individual stories were published before The Sword of Destiny.
The Saga
The Saga focuses on the story of Geralt of Rivia and Ciri, ... (who) becomes a Witcher-in-training. Geralt is pulled into a whirlwind of events in his attempts to protect her.
Krew elfów (Blood of Elves) (1994, English edition: 2008)
Czas pogardy (Time of Contempt) (1995, English edition: 2013)
Chrzest ognia (Baptism of Fire) (1996, English edition: 2014)
Wieża Jaskółki (The Swallow's Tower) (1997)
Pani Jeziora (Lady of the Lake) (1999)
Sezon burz (Season of Storms) (2013) – prequel to Krew elfów.
Yeah, it's not simple to know which book is which.
I don't know whether the english publisher is just incompetent.
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
F-ZeroOne wrote:Finished "Ready, Player One!" the other day. I enjoyed it, but I can't help but feel that whilst its nice to read such an obviously shameless tribute to 80s pop and gaming culture, setting so much of it in certain very famous movies of that era did feel a touch... hey, make your own stuff up now and again?
This!
I actually loved it and found it to be a complete page-turner, but I did think it was bordering on plagiarism at times.
Still, I'm glad I read it!
(Didn't realise until just now, but the author is also the writer of the film Fanboys from a few years back.)
This more!
Just finished it - devoured it in three days' bus/tube commutes and a '50 pages to go it's almost 1am but no way am I leaving this unfinished tonight' session.
What a screaming blast from start to finish. I hear Spielberg has picked-up Directors' rights on this, and I'm expecting a call for the part of Halliday any moment now. If you're here, you're the target audience.
I'm currently reading "Mother of Eden" Chris Beckett's follow up to "Dark Eden".
Dark Eden was an incredible book, and Mother of Eden is shaping up to be just as good, if not better.
The premise is that a man and a woman got stranded on a rogue planet (one outside of a solar system) after a freak intergalactic travel accident. Dark Eden picks up some lifetimes after the accident, and the children of the couple have bred and interbred to create a new civilization. It's a very keen social observation, with the closest analogue being something like Lord of the Flies.
Mother of Eden picks up a few lifetimes after the events of Dark Eden, and explores how society might evolve in the absence of any contact with Earth.
Chris Beckett used to be a social worker, and that really shines through in his writing. I'll be honest here, both my Dad and step-Mum were social workers too, so the ideas and commentary feel very familiar to me, and I find myself nodding along agreeably.
The first of five books set in the Known Space universe, about the Puppeteers - this one is set 200 years prior to Ringworld.
I've actually read the first four before, and then got the fifth and final book in the series for my birthday last month so re-reading them again to be fresh going into #5.
If you like Known Space, this'll blow your mind. 'Puppeteer' doesn't even come close. Oh, and everything you think you know about them, the Ringworld, Starseed Lures, the Core Explosion, Pak, etc? Ha. You have no idea.
Unfortunately, it's not suitable. The introduction, more than half of which you can see in Amazon's "Look inside" is fine, even excellent as far as it goes, and it does refer to the material in the remainder of the book. However the bulk of the book is text for students to attempt to make precis from, with (in this edition at least) no teaching material, nor worked examples. There is one worked example in the introduction, but that's all you get.
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
I thought I'd have a pop at the Canterbury Tales on my Kindle. I'm just past the introduction of all the characters, and I've enjoyed it so far - possibly more from the challenge of parsing the language, than the meaning of it. I think I was getting about 75% of the gist of it generally, but occasionally it seems like Chaucer's had an episode, and there will be two or three lines that look like a cat has wandered across the keyboard.
I read a couple more of the Jack Reacher novels this summer.
Hollywood must be deaf, dumb and blind - Lee Child writes the most film friendly stuff I can imagine. How they ended up with that dwarf Tom Cruise for the single film is still a mystery.
NorthWay wrote:I read a couple more of the Jack Reacher novels this summer.
Hollywood must be deaf, dumb and blind - Lee Child writes the most film friendly stuff I can imagine. How they ended up with that dwarf Tom Cruise for the single film is still a mystery.
Have you ever read James Bond? That was intentionally filmic, but they moved The Man with the Golden Gun from the caribean to somewhere off china, and made a young-middle-aged villain Christopher Lee.
zip accident wrote:
Have you ever read James Bond? That was intentionally filmic
A good number of them. Never struck me as written for film though. I still think the first Bond film is a bit different in character to the later films - more cloak and dagger than fisticuffs.
Giving the Patrick O'Brian "Master and Commander" books a blast on the Kindle. Lot of naval terminology and jargon till you get rolling, but stangely compelling.
Mark wrote:Just finished Ella Minnow Pea* by Mark Dunn, which was a really fun read. It's about an island where the guy who claimed to have come up with the line "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" lived. The island revere him and have a sign with it written on displayed in the town. One day one of the letters falls off and the council decree that this means that letter shouldn't be used any more. Then more letters start to fall...
The book is written as a series of correspondences between various people, so as more letters get banned they start having to rename things, and make do with the letters they have left.
*L, M, N, O, P
I bought this on your recommendation and have just finished it (barely 5 minutes ago) and may I say thanks for that; it's a well written, enjoyable and interesting read.
must have misread a guide
