Friday at the Confusion Factory
Friday, August 30th, 2013 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniThe on-signing check for the Audible edition of The Tomorrow Log arrived in the mail, and, between agency fees and taxes, we get to keep (just barely) more than half of it! Go, us!
"The Wolf's Bride" currently stands at 6,239 words. Possibly, I can bring it in under 10,000 words -- a novelette rather than a novella. It's possible that I may finish it today. I would really like to finish it today, especially considering that it's an extra, a favor to the character, and can't be turned loose to be read anywhere until after Carousel Seas is published (nope, no pub date yet; watch the skies).
It was cool enough this morning that Mozart sought out his floofiest blanket, under my desk, and is presently snoring like a German Shepard. Fall could start now, for all of me, but I see that we're in for a couple days of warmish weather in the near future. *sighs*
I've ordered in paper books -- a collection of some of Bat Masterson's columns about local colorful folk, all of them gunfighters; a biography of Doc Holliday, and another, of Billy the Kid.
I'm also looking to download some fiction to my tablet, since Steve and I will be on the road for a few days. So! Who's read a good book lately?
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recently read
Date: 2013-08-30 03:46 pm (UTC)FEED is fantastic! She definitely did her virology/epidemiology homework. Great characters! Guvmint conspiracies! Adventure and politics! It's a scary new world in the Newsflesh books (followed by Deadline and Blackout), but one that I was more than willing to spend the better part of week inhabiting.
Re: recently read
Date: 2013-08-30 04:05 pm (UTC)Re: recently read
Date: 2013-08-30 04:40 pm (UTC)Another book
Date: 2013-08-30 04:01 pm (UTC)This is what I think you call steam punk (Victorian England with lots of steam technology.) It was cute and led me to another series of hers called "The parasol protectorate". Nothing deep but fun to read.
Re: Another book
Date: 2013-08-30 04:04 pm (UTC)And....
Date: 2013-08-30 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 05:05 pm (UTC)Good new read
Date: 2013-08-30 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 04:13 pm (UTC)-The Sleeping God by Violette Malan. S&S, done exquisitely. Swords! Magic! Travel to far off lands! Discovery of hidden heritage! Women, with Agency! (this was a 4am book, with a non-negotiable 6:30 alarm. I didn't care.)
-Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara. Kaylin is a cop in a High Fantasy city, with multiple races and endless chances for misunderstanding. She has a past - it tends to give her an unorthodox perspective. (I like how exposition is handled. Kaylin is infamously bad at academics, so her companions keep exasperatedly filling her in on what she should already know.)
Liz Bourke over at Tor.com has been increasing my TBR pile with every post. It's doing horrible things for my productivity. Those are both from her.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 04:44 pm (UTC)I've been rereading Martha Wells's Books of the Raksura series (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths). I own paper copies, but the release of an omnibus e-book tipped me over into buying that too. Fascinating worldbuilding, and I love the characters.
I really enjoyed Susan Palwick's Mending the Moon, but it's hard to describe except in general terms. It's a mainstream novel, not SF, although part of the connection between some characters is in fandom of a comic called Comrade Cosmos (who encourages people to change the world, while his opponent, the Emperor of Entropy, counsels fatalism). It's about people (fully individual, fleshed-out characters) trying to make sense of the world after a senseless murder, which sounds like it ought to be either deeply depressing or teeth-jarringly saccharine and is neither. It's about going on, because, really, what else are you going to do?
no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 05:07 pm (UTC)If you haven't got the gift e-mail anymore, I could check if I find my copy of it ^^
She didn't win the Aurealis Award this time either, but they did nominate her in both the categories Young Adult and Science Fiction novel.
Lowell
Date: 2013-09-01 01:57 am (UTC)Read a good book lately?
Date: 2013-08-30 05:41 pm (UTC)I like Nathan Lowell's Solar Clipper series beginning with Quarter Share. Chronicles a young man's journey becoming a ship hand. He has a wonderful attitude and is always looking to help people be better themselves.
These are definitely feel-good books and I guarantee you will be smiling when you finish the story.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 11:13 pm (UTC)The trials of the last registered English wizard and his snarky young policeman-apprentice are VERY int'resting ....
no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 10:06 pm (UTC)Also I'd like somebody else's opinion on "Sea Change" by S. M. Wheeler.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-31 02:15 pm (UTC)New books
Date: 2013-08-31 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-31 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-31 01:09 pm (UTC)My biggest complaint is that, while the tab is Android-based, Samsung has loaded the poor thing with a proprietary platform called KIES, which is a mild pain in the neck to deal with. Had I known, I would have waited another couple months and gotten a Nexus, the Google tablet, which, lacking the proprietary "manager", is significantly less of a pain in the neck to deal with.
The biggest problem I have with the tablet (and with the phone, for that matter) is that I think that files have to be physically "on" the machine (or the card), so there was a lot of grief on the front-end learning how to move files physically to the machine (see "manager," pain in the neck). My excuse is that I don't live anywhere near, much less in a "cloud" and I want to know I have access to my stuff, even if I'm sitting out in the middle of Baxter Park.
Hope that helps.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-31 01:47 pm (UTC)For e-reading I use the Nook app, occasionally the Kindle app, and two epub readers. I use two epub readers because I like the one I started using first, and then I discovered that to check out e-books from my library I had to have a different one. The epub readers are handy not only for books downloaded from Baen, but for fanfic from Archive of Our Own.
I'm using the music player that came built into it. I use it mainly for songs that I download from my chorus website to practice with, so am not sure how it would work with commercial music.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-31 02:18 pm (UTC)Right. I have the Nook and Kindle apps and Aldiko -- which pretty much covers everything I read.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-31 03:01 pm (UTC)Deception Cove: Krentz
August/September
Date: 2013-09-01 07:22 am (UTC)I've been chugging through the work of Kim Stanley Robinson who, because he writes about Mars, I thought was some kind of Edgar Rice etc. modern knock off and have been pleasantly surprised.
Why don't you come out here and visit Tombstone for yourselves.
Those Aaronovich novels sound great: last registered Wizard and his snarky policeman apprentice. Reminds me of Tony Hillerman except that the policeman and his apprentice are Navajos on the Navajo Reservation ...or the Rez...as we call it out here. . Anyone who hasn't read Hillerman, who unfortunately is now deceased, is in for an incredible treat imo.
technical difficulties
Date: 2013-09-01 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-03 02:29 am (UTC)The Dark Lord of Derkholm
Year of the Griffin
Deep Secret
The Merlin Conspiracy