Re: What are you reading?

https://i.imgur.com/wpU5DKV.jpg

An account of the 1910-1913 English expedition of the Terra Nova to the South Pole by one of its youngest members, Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

I think it's best summed up by its very first sentence:

"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised."

The expedition, led by Robert Falcon Scott, is famous for being the first to reach the pole... I mean, second. A Norwegian expedition led by Amundsen preceded them by 34 days. It's also famous for its return trip, which utterly went south (pun intended). No member of the small party that reached the pole survived, including Scott himself.

It's a long and difficult read - the brief introduction by the author is almost 50 pages and a bit strange, as the author describes the whole expedition in a summarized way, only to expand on it in the rest of the book. He does, however, give a recap of the history of arctic and antarctic discoveries, starting with Cook. The writing style is that of the 1920s, which means complex sentence structures and uncommon vocabulary; all in all, a good exercise for a non english-born dude such as myself.

It is, however, absolutely fascinating. I've grown passionate about distant and hostile lands such as the Antarctic or the Kerguelen Islands, even nowadays places only populated with scientists who live dangerous and extraordinary adventures to go there, in the sole purpose of learning about stuff. The Terra Nova expedition happening in the beginning of the 20th century, takes place in an epoch where technology and scientific knowledge was infinitely more limited than now. The whole thing is told in a way that only emphasizes how passionate about discovery and scientific enlightening every member of the expedition was, never backing off from the many hardships they encountered.

A tale of heroism that is of the same nature as the one I've found in mountaineering pioneers; one that is described by french mountaineer Lionel Terray as conquistadors of the useless, one that lives outside the realms of competition between nations that motivates the very governments that commission them, but that could be summarized by the answer another french mountaineer, Gaston Rébuffat gives to the question "Why do we climb mountains?": "because they're there".

Last edited by Saniss (2019-09-13 14:54:57)

Sébastien Fraud
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227

Re: What are you reading?

Oof.

The difficult second album Regan

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Re: What are you reading?

Abbie wrote:

[orson-welles]

Somehow I missed this, and I love it.

Saniss wrote:

[worst-journey-in-the-world]

Oh man, this looks awesome. If you're looking for more in the same category (while, probably, also being a bit easier to read), a couple years ago I really enjoyed — well, you know: it's harrowing as fuck, but, that's what happens when you sail a pirate ship to Hoth in the 19th century — "Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship." It's a several-similar-histories-in-one-anthology book about various attempts to get across the top of the world; find the northwest passage; find the magnetic pole; find a bunch of previously-lost missions before survivors are dead, etc.. (Plus, just a week or two ago, we randomly unearthed one of the missing most-famous ships from this book. History is all around us. Etc..)

If you're looking for something else, farther afield, in that same category — namely: "god humans will just not take a hint about their impossible old-timey conquests against nature; and yet, eventually, it worked" — I'd suggest reading-and-then-deciding-to-skim-because-jesus-christ-david-get-an-editor "The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914." Spoiler alert: That particular task turns out to be about as difficult as climbing a mile of greased rope. ...and, also, really deadly, for many people involved, for various reasons inherent to the aforenamed category. We figured out how to do the thing, eventually, but... god damn.

You would probably also enjoy "The Measure of All Things," because that book contains all of these same qualities (except widespread death, I guess), and yet — unlike 'Panama' — in the end, this time, the French actually finish the damn thing! Zing-bang! Wocka-wocka-wocka! Stereotypical jokemaking! Anyway, 'Measure' is about the guys responsible for the metric system — so, not much ice-sailing, but — another arduous, old-timey, staggering task.

'Resolute' is a quick read; 'Measure' is a bit denser, f'ya ask me; 'Panama' is like an old man's version of Goblet of Fire, but with only about an Azkaban's-worth of good reading in there, in my opinion. (You'll 'feel it' when it drags, and realize when to move forward a bit. You'll be 15% more confused this way, but 40% happier. It's worth it.)

(PS: On the previous point: It occurs to me that my attitude probably borders on heresy for certain other readers in the world. Welp: Hi, I'm Teague. I read a lot of books. I have just as much authority as any other reader — and with that authority, I give anybody on Earth permission, for the rest of their lives, to just drop (or skip-ahead in) whatever book they're reading, whenever it becomes a slog. Your overall reading habit is much more important than your finishing this book; never make yourself hate the time you spend reading, due to some misplaced sense of completionism. Unless you are studying for something — or you're Abbie, and this is your job, somehow, impossibly — just... always read stuff you enjoy. There will always be something else to go and immediately enjoy reading. You're allowed to stop hanging-out with a book in the same way (and for many of the same reasons) you might stop hanging-out with a person; and anyway, you can give the relationship another try, later, if you wanna re-test old waters. Life is too short to turn 'reading experiences' into 'obligations-to-self' — at least, in my book.)

(Puns. End on puns. Nobody likes it when you do that, which makes it good for them. Puns build character, right?)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What are you reading?

I've been fascinated by the disastrous Scott expedition story since I first learned of it in jr. high school, and more recently even more fascinated by the Franklin expedition. (If anyone doesn't already know this, season one of AMC's The Terror, based on Dan Simmons' novel, takes what little we do know about the Franklin disaster and fills in the blanks with indigenous snow demons and other weirdness.)

So next on my list of Incredible Polar Hubris books is this one. I have not yet read it yet, so I can't exactly recommend it. But come on, look at this damn thing...

http://www.pinkfive.com/images/iceballoon.jpg

It's about some lunatics who tried to get to the Pole in 1897 in a hydrogen balloon.   Thirty-three years later their journals and photos were discovered because of course they all died, and so we know a lot about what happened.  Short version, apparently a day or so of ballooning followed by months of the usual freezing misery and then death.  I can't wait to read this thing.

Re: What are you reading?

Trey wrote:

It's about some lunatics who tried to get to the Pole in 1897 in a hydrogen balloon.

I am immediately on board a thousand percent.

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231

Re: What are you reading?

I know, right?

Re: What are you reading?

Yarp. I'll have what she's having.

*poychase*

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What are you reading?

Trey wrote:

...and more recently even more fascinated by the Franklin expedition.

Yes. Absolutely. Cherry-Garrard gives a brief account of it in his introduction, and it took me a while to make the connection: the ships that got lost during the Franklin expeditions are the ones that were used by Ross' expedition to the South Pole in 1839, namely HMS Terror and HMS Erebus.

BigDamnArtist wrote:

I am immediately on board a thousand percent.

I wouldn't. They died.

Sébastien Fraud
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Re: What are you reading?

They actually found HMS Terror a few years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ … ge-attempt

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235

Re: What are you reading?

Already posted the cover twice on the previous page like a ninny so I won't do it again, but Gideon the Ninth released last week. Debut SFF book, hit number 12 on the IndieBound hardcover fiction bestsellers. I love it more than the first time reading it if possible, and my store - which doesn't do SFF in any big numbers - sold 13 copies in the first week during a dead time of year.

I love this book and am so happy that it's seeing success.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: What are you reading?

Saniss wrote:
BigDamnArtist wrote:

I am immediately on board a thousand percent.

I wouldn't. They died.

It's like you don't even know me.

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Re: What are you reading?

Faldor wrote:

They actually found HMS Terror a few years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ … ge-attempt

The internet can be a little spooky sometimes... this was just sitting in my recommended videos on youtube apropos of nothing:

ZangrethorDigital.ca

238

Re: What are you reading?

Re-reading Ubik for the first time in a good few years. Nobody writes late capitalism like PKD.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERQcCSSWkAEZIkg?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERQdJQIX0AAUmVk?format=jpg&name=large

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Re: What are you reading?

Really loved that second passage.

Here's the musical accompaniment, in my head.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What are you reading?

I've just read Gideon The Ninth on Boter's recommendation. I enjoyed it but did feel it went on a bit long. I'm not sure I'll be rushing to read the sequel but I didn't hate. I really enjoyed the snarky narrative style which at times reminded me of Terry Pratchett. I certainly didn't pick it up and say "Oh no, not another space lesbian necromancer novel, I am so tired of these."

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241

Re: What are you reading?

If that went long, then I recommend Finna by Nino Cipri, coming out this Tuesday (but Tor is kinda lackadaisical with release dates and we've had it on our shelves for a week).

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563304090l/44081573._SY475_.jpg

130 very fast pages. As per my staff review I submitted today:

Ava just had a messy break-up with her ex, Jules, who is unfortunately also her coworker. She tries to avoid them, but that's hard to do when the manager at this knockoff IKEA sends the two of them to find a customer. Who is lost. In another dimension.

On the slim side for a novella, Finna nevertheless delights with its adventure and raw emotion. It tells just what it needs to, and excites me for the prospect for what will happen after the last word graces the page.

Also continues Tor just leaning hard into queer authors and characters; Jules in nonbinary, and the story uses it thematically a lot (as opposed to Gideon, which is still queer as fuck but doesn't use it to drive the story - it just is, which is its own merit).

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

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Re: What are you reading?

Highlighted Finna as well as two others at an event we had at work - semi-informal discussion with customers, I and two others each with a few minutes to present a few books.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

243

Re: What are you reading?

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TJ9ZaJFV4aU/XI_mKINyPQI/AAAAAAAAAl0/OZn29QRB7oQaGDWR7YKE5unY1Dl0N1qSgCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Long%2BDescent%2B2ndEdition%2BCover.jpg

I've recommended a few of Greer's books on here before—Decline and Fall, Dark Age America, and The Retro Future. They're all basically updated/more in-depth versions of a lot of this book's material, though, so if you're gonna pick one volume by him, this is the one to go with.

Greer's basic thesis is that, while we've been focused on the absolutely catastrophic damage that's going to be wreaked on our future by climate change, we've been distracted from an equally large problem—we've already passed peak oil and are currently mining the dregs of what fossil fuels we have to support a completely unsustainable energy model. When that collapses, so too will our infrastructure, our economy, and countries as we know them—especially the United States. We're not facing an apocalypse—what we're facing instead is a long period of regression, of the kind that's come about after every major empire has collapsed since time immemorial. That doesn't mean, however, that it's something that won't show its effects until we're dead and our children are ruling things—within our lifetimes, we're going to see automobile transportation dwindle away, the internet as we currently conceive of it vanish, and economies return increasingly to local, barter-based systems as technologies we couldn't conceive of living without crumble around us.

Depressing? Yep, especially in light of the recent plague. But also reassuring—let us assume we are fucked, but not in the apocalyptic sense. Our world, a world, will end, but humanity will keep going. It's up to us to choose how we go about our descent, and we would be wise to start preparations now—doing our best to preserve art, learn useful trades and skills, set up local networks that we'll very much need later on, etc.

(P.S. Once you spot the typo on the cover you'll never unsee it. Mmmph)

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Re: What are you reading?

Star Trek: Picard The Last Best Hope – Una McCormack
what can I say? I am a sucker for tie-in novels. Opinions seem divided on the latest Star Trek series there were things I really liked about it and others I was less keen on. This book may be the best thing about it, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. It expands the back story glimpsed in the show between the ending of the next-generation movies and the start of the pilot. Following Picard as he led the mission to evacuate the Romulan Empire. The amount of space politics leaves it feeling more like “Babylon 5” than traditional Star Trek even borrowing the other series moniker for the title. This is no bad thing and it really expands both the Star Trek universe and the new Picard series both in the way a good tie-in novel should but also perhaps some think we should have seen in the episodes proper.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
This is one of those books that gets mentioned a lot recently and I was put off picking it up by the comparisons to firefly. I love firefly, but every third advert on my Facebook timeline is an e-book comparing itself to firefly and I don’t want any more second-rate knockoffs. I enjoyed the characters and world here although the book is rather episodic and never really feels like it’s telling a larger story, it was nice to read a more uplifting positive sci-fi tale without everything being horrifically “twee”.

Second foundation – Isaac Asimov
I actually took an extra couple of days before starting this book whilst I looked for the third entry mistakenly assuming this had been the second. I really enjoyed the first book and everything it set up, so was really disappointed when none of it really seemed to be paid off. I can’t really fault Asimov for the concept he used that have become cliché in the many decades since but this didn’t particularly grab me. I would have liked to have seen the establishment of the second Empire that the books had been alluding to the whole time, perhaps this is something that happens in one of the many, many sequels he continued to write but I’m not sure I’ll stick around for them. That Nolan brother that does “Westworld” is apparently developing this for television, I’ve no idea how that will work but good luck to him!

The last Emperox – John Scalzi
I’ve been a fan of Scalzi ever since “old man’s War” and have read almost all his books, this interdependency series has been one of his strongest and I found it to be a very tight trilogy it is closer to “Game of thrones” in space then “the expanse” series although very much its own thing. It has overtones of “Dune” with its clashing noble families but without the tedious boredom. The sarcastic style and ample swearing really works for it. It is definitely one of those series that I would both love to see on film, yet no they would never get the tone quite right.

Last edited by Faldor (2020-05-03 08:55:55)

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245

Re: What are you reading?

Paul Giamatti recently recorded an excellent reading of Herman Melville's novella Bartleby the Scrivener. For those who'd prefer not to scale a paywall to access, my Google Drive is yours to scour.

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Re: What are you reading?

I would prefer not to.

;-)

As long as I'm here I should mention that I'm halfway through E. Jean Carrol's bio of Hunter S. Thompson. (Yes, that E. Jean Carrol...the magazine columnist who has accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s) Can't say I've been a fan of HST's work per se, but I have been fascinated by what others have seen in him.

Last edited by drewjmore (2020-12-11 16:41:56)

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Re: What are you reading?

Out of left field I ran into a recommendation of the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peak. It starts with Titus Groan (1946)

I've only just begun but it's weird as hell. It's like the Phantom Tollbooth meets a medieval Tim Burton. There is a plot, but really the point of it is just to read the descriptions of the characters and setting. It's incredibly precise in language to really get the vibe right.

The Castle Gormenghast's tower described:
“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.”

Witness me!

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Re: What are you reading?

I have only just learned of the existence of Gormenghast and cannot for the life of me decide if it sounds like something I want to read. I think I'll have to give it a shot just to satisfy my curiosity!

alicia ♆
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Re: What are you reading?

It's fascinating how it says things in just the oddest possible way but they still make sense.

Like early on there's a character who has an unexpected visitor for the first time in years, looks through the lock to see who it is and sees an eye that "he knew belonged to someone else because not only was it a different color from his own iron marble, but also (and more convincingly) it was on the other side of the door."

(Slight paraphrase, but what a ridiculous way to say that! I love it.)

Witness me!

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Re: What are you reading?

Bit of a weird one, so Context for those that don't already know: There's a subreddit called Humanity, Fuck Yeah!, where people post their own sci-fi writing generally centered around the idea that optimistic potential of human nature in out future, or around the idea of humans as uniquely gifted in some way that gives us an advantage over the rest of the galaxy because of our human-ness. One of the big tropes is the idea of Earth as a "Deathworld". Basically, in the galactic sense, a place where no one would ever dare go because you will die, and die hard, and probably Die Hard 2 With a Vengeance too;; basically the galactic equivalent of Australia; and since humans evolved here and we just think of it as home, we are these terrifying hardy af killing machines that can survive basically anything.

So all that to say: There's one series on-going right now (They usually update with a new chapter every cpl weeks or so, but they've had to slow down because they're in college rn) called "A Job For A Deathworlder" that I got hooked on. The basic pitch is it follows the first human scientist to serve aboard an alien vessel, and follows his journey through navigating the culture shock of living amongst aliens on a spaceship, and navigating the stigma that comes with being a deathworlder, and then things get Complicated™. It's jam packed with really interesting and well done world building, with a lot of really fun ideas, but always manages to center the character relationships and does them really well and doesn't minimize the fact that these are all aliens with completely different ways of thinking and worldviews into the Star Trek-y humans by another name thing but celebrates the weirdness (and the headache's, tension and confusion that brings), and is (so far) telling a really fun story that I can't wait to see more of.

They're on Chapter 16 right now, with a few bonus short stories, although I'm a few chapters behind atm.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hfy/wiki/serie … athworlder

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