Older Sci-Fi was like that as well, it’s just that we only remember the good stuff.
I remember having this dicussion with my elderly Opera-loving neighbour. She and I were discussing the classics, Aida, Carmen, etc. Then I mentioned to her I have hardly ever seen an opera I didnt like at our local opera house.
She simply said “of course not! They wouldn’t seel tickets for the bad ones, people hardly remember those.”
I’m pretty sure that applies to most things. 
You do raise a good point. I’ve read lots of lame stories in my preferred genres, forgettable as you said, but I remember the good ones - just not the names of the books they were in grrr!
For instance, there’s a short story in a collection, where there was a tree outside this guy’s window, tapping on the pane constantly, so eventually he went outside and chopped off the limb. The next morning … tap tap tap … He wondered how that could be. When he went out to look, the limb was still cut off, but the limb on the other side was now tapping on the window. The tree had turned itself around to continue its “torment”.
I would have moved out. Can’t remember if he did, lol. Wish I could remember what book that was in… T_T
As allergic as I am to joining clubs and cliques, I don’t want this one to die.
So I’m here to share my latest baddest reading decision: re-reading the A Song of Ice and Fire books. To those who know me a bit outside these forums, it’s a known fact I’m busy AF, and I’m pretty sure that reading 5 700-pages+ long tomes isn’t going to help my cause.
Still, I discovered the sub r/asoiafreread and couldn’t resist the temptation to jump once more into Georgie’s world and his characters.
I’m very blunt when sharing my opinion about his ASOIAF prose: I dislike it. I’m much fonder of his writing style in shorter, very much weirder, stories such as Sandkings.
Still, his characters are golden and much more interesting than anything HBO could ever pull off.
I miss a good Greyjoy plotline, I miss Stannis, I miss the epic sand snakes, I miss the Tullys, I miss my baby Sansa Stark, I miss Brianne’s quest for “a maid of three-and-ten”. Gods I miss liking Daenerys.
So I’m inviting you all to join us if anyone has both the time and the lack of sense required to jump in. The fourth re-read cycle starts TODAY, with Will freezing his balls off and looking into a cold pair of blue eyes…
The pace is slow (1 chapter per every 3 days) and it’ll take us until March 2022 to finish… gods help us.
I bought the sequel to the Rook (which I have talked about before), The Stiletto. it came in the mail yesterday at around 11 am, and I finished it at 11 pm (but I had stuff to do between).
Loved it. I strongly recommend the series, and I think it is getting much more nuanced and interesting as more books are added.
Hmmm. This is the thread I was looking for the other day. I guess I wasn’t using the correct search words…
Anyways…Calibre and Calibre Portable has an update…
Ooh… if that handles Epub it’s perfect to keep around.
Adding to the list…
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-websites-with-lots-of-completely-free-ebooks-that-dont-suck-nb/
And they list more in the comments also…
(I know this is a year old, but I just had to comment)
The books’ covers are so amazing! Will check out these books.
I just started reading Philip K. Dick’s short stories, and I am really enjoying them, quite a breadth of ‘generes’ mixed into science fiction (dystopia, horror, a bit of dark comedy, action, a few moments clearly inspired by Lovecraft). I am really looking forward to reading the rest of it. Look in a library and see if you can find a copy of some of his work!
It says “teenage” but I think most readers should have read most of these. Not free but really worth a gander… Even if you go to the public library
Herm, watched The Stand and Watchmen - never read either.
A lot of the other authors I know, but never read. Like you said: public library, lol. My jam was always vampire stories and Hardy Boys. Sci-fi and Stephen King too, but more of the others.
On that thought, I actually prefer to Dean Koontz to Stephen King in a lot of ways.
Much love for Vonnegut and Adams though, excellent books by and large on the list.
I prefer to read the local parish’s Sunday pamphlets about the congregation of kids seeking to improve the quality of the neighborhood by picking up sticky chocolate wraps off of the street than read Stephen King.
Dude, thumbs up for that. I avoid news in general - don’t see the bad stuff, but don’t see the good stuff either.
Guys and gals, a close friend just made me aware of this:
Standard Ebooks is a volunteer driven, not-for-profit project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, and free.
Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
Standard Ebooks aren’t just a beautiful addition to your digital library—they’re a high quality standard to build your own ebooks on.
I’m not crying, you are.
Why not start with one of my personal favorite classics to give it a shot? In .epub, .azw3, .kepup and .epub3!
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
Humans explained in one succinct sentence. O_o
So… I didn’t see the announcement anywhere else, but Humblebooksbundle is selling RPG books again! YAY
This time around it is the Warhammer 40k 1st line of RPG’s through Fantasy Flight Games (a company I am very, very close to in terms of product lines), Dark Heresy.
The only reason I bring this up is that if you ever wanted to play a Warhammer 40k game that wasn’t hideously expensive (the miniature games) or terrible (arguably everything that ever came out not title Dawn of War: somenumberorwordthatisn’t5 or had the subtitle space marine). $18 is not a bad price. And the best part is that it also gives you access to the 2nd ed of Dark Heresy content (which I have always struggled to find nowadays)… Lots of folks really dind’t like 2nd ed cause it was very different from 1st edition and had a lot more in common with 5th ed D&D, but I liked it (even though I really didn’t like 5th ed D&D, cause 3.5 for LIFE).
Just a short announcement.
Also, has anyone else ever read or heard of The Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy? I read it on a plane following my vacation, and I don’t know what I feel about it.
Cool, but it’s not a series I’m familiar with… hope it gains some interest though. Humble does have a variety of different offerings.
Is this a pun?
Maaaaybe, or maybe IT’S DEAD!
Nah, I was being serious, it was a very strange book about multiverse theory with a lot of mindscrewy philosophy just kinda thrown together.