Comments | ase: A Plague of Dreams: August Reading

ase

A Plague of Dreams: August Reading

Sep 08, 2003 21:49

See? Not as late as July! Go me!

Cutting for major spoilers and some space. May come back and cut for space more once I post this and see how much space it hogs.

(Nine books. Nine. Shoot. Granted, some of them were short, but others were five hundred pages. Probably won't read this many novels again until I get another insane commute like August ( Read more... )

a: king laurie, ed: datlow ellen, 2003 reading, a: weber david, a: leiber fritz, ed: windling terry, a: butler octavia, a: robinson kim stanley, a: le guin ursula k, a: walton jo

Comments 9

herewiss13 September 8 2003, 21:00:38 UTC

Ase decides that Ringo’s covert ops people work off a radically different set of assumptions than she does, and she's rather glad they're a few fictional universes away from her.

::cackles::

It's not just Ringo's Covert Ops people. He likes _all_ his protagonists to be pragmatic, ruthless and grimly amused. It's likely to keep them alive longer in combat zones (which is where Ringo tends to drop them).

OTOH, I'd imagine all covert ops people have radically different assumptions than yours...otherwise the CIA would be trying to recruit you too. It's not a job for just anyone you know. ;-)
______________
Re: Sino-Islamic Total War

I hold that a proportional percentage of the economy probably was pumped straight into the war effort - total war, remember?- and so would have drained it as fast or nearly so.It's a matter of industrial base. Both the factories and resources of the two combatants were _far_ behind the front lines and not subject to bombing until the very end. Also, the Country-size to Trench-length ratio is much ( ... )

ase September 10 2003, 19:03:16 UTC

OTOH, I'd imagine all covert ops people have radically different assumptions than yours...otherwise the CIA would be trying to recruit you too. It's not a job for just anyone you know. ;-)

No kidding.

China and Dar al Islam are both _tremendously_ bigger than England and Germany, and equally larger in relation to the Front (if I'm conveying this right).

I see what you're saying. However, wasn't Dar al Islam presented as only loosely unified when the war started? A federalist (?) government, or even more like allied states, rather than a centralized government with associated centralized powers? It's an inefficient way to run a war, and they could have eventually engaged more central planning, but if China started out with a more centralized economy it might have been able to beat out Dar al Islam before the Muslims could pull together.

::waves hands in magical economic handwaving::Keep that breeze coming. I don't care what the weather's like, hauling thirty pounds of chemistry book around campus would make me sweat during a ( ... )

What, me major? ashcomp September 9 2003, 06:31:34 UTC

Well, kiddo, I don't know what your ostensible major is, but it kind of looks to me like the work you might like best is book critic. Hope you've sent some of this material to Sam, he'll probably kiss your feet. Hmm, there's an image.

Thanks for bringing Service of the Sword to my attention; don't know how that slipped by me. (I do read a few other folks, but nobody blows 'em up like Mr. Weber).

Re: What, me major? ase September 10 2003, 18:27:39 UTC

At the moment, I'm in the chem department, so I sincerely hope I'm a chemistry major...

Book critic? Me? This is off-the-cuff whinging about the bad stuff and ecstatic one-liners about the good stories. Book critics grow up and turn into tedious Post Book Week employees. (They're currently on the List of Authority Wannabes. Any major magazine that manages to read "Anathema Device" as "Anastasia Device" in their Good Omens review deserves my mockery and non-respect.)

I also suspect book critics are *shudder* english majors.

Thanks for bringing Service of the Sword to my attention; don't know how that slipped by me. (I do read a few other folks, but nobody blows 'em up like Mr. Weber).

No problem. Like I said, it's a mix of strong and middling stories. Worth checking out of the library or buying used, or possibly buying in paperback, depending on your entertainment budget.

Re: What, me major? (Note 2) ase September 10 2003, 19:07:05 UTC

Hope you've sent some of this material to Sam, he'll probably kiss your feet.

Thanks for reminding me - I'll have to do a once-over for formatting and obnoxious netspeak, but that should leave me plenty of time to get to to Sam before October.

serendipoz September 14 2003, 10:03:42 UTC

I think Kings Name and Kings Peace are both remaindered at the moment. Try half.com?

ase September 15 2003, 16:47:24 UTC

I'm terribly fond of bookfinder, which searches a bunch of different sites. Once I've bought the final textbook ($50 english book I've been borrowing from a helpful classmate) and found a part time job for the semester, I'm going to go on a minor used book spree, I suspect.

serendipoz September 17 2003, 19:20:25 UTC

addall is a pretty good site as well.

(I missed you at Torcon - is DC really up for a Worldcon bid?)

later, ...

kaylarudbek September 17 2003, 22:08:54 UTC

Hi, ase. I remember you from lurking on the lois-bujold mailing list.
Yes, Paths was very good. I love being able to put books on hold as soon as the library buys them...