I read that, and somehow it failed to excite me. I like Necromancer and Snow Crash, but this one is rather plain. It doesn’t help that there are 2 interleaving stories that only meet at the end, which feels like padding to me.
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There are some great recommendations on this thread 
Snow Crash is sitting on my desk and waiting, Babel17 sounds very interesting as well.
The last books I binge-read were the secrets of the immortal Nicholas Flamel - actually a series for teenagers, but a nice story and high pace kept me reading and reading.
Another highlight surely was A mind for mischief by Philip Why. An unusual book, very fascinating. My thoughts were going back to the book again and again and again…
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Done. Those last chapters were creepy and a bit visceral.
I don’t know why it didn’t click with me… I’m keeping it in my shelf to try to take a go at it again later.
Anyway, next on the pile was : Lais of Marie de France (which I have in French 
). Old oral stories from Brittany (UK/Francee Brittany) transcribed in (then old-) French. Like any good old tales, there is a moral, the undeserving get their comeuppance, and good love prevails.
I’ve read three of them so far, and it’s giving me Anti-Romance Jam vibes 
I like it a lot. Kinda want to go back and read more Medieval stories again.
It is soooo good. Honeslty, you can’t go wrong with Delany. Some of his publications are a bit weirder than others, but it’s always such an interesting read!
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I had a new experience today. I stopped reading a book on page 380 of 498. Fourth Wing
There was suddenly a seven-page sex scene where my words fail to describe the effect on the whole. (Words clearly weren’t failing the author!) I was laughing, I sort of couldn’t believe it, I started skim-reading to see how long it went. On top of all else, it had the Moonlighting effect – with 300+ pages of sexual tension now gone, what was going to fill the rest of the book? I quickly turned to the end just to see who lived and died, etc, if anyone.
Are long sex scenes always and inevitably stupid-seeming? I felt like this might be worst ever; the protagonists have powers and their powers are causing the furniture to explode, too, and not in a humourous way. But of course it’s not the worst. I’ve read the exact same before, usually in a seven-page standalone fetish or fanfic. This was one of those, inserted at page 380 of a novel where nobody had previously even said the word clitoris, let alone spent seven pages in explicitly-described screwing. It just seemed bonkers and sank the ship.
Is it mostly people who come from fanfiction, like this author or the Fifty Shades author, who do this kind of thing? I mean I’ve read some YA (not a ton) but I have read the biggies, and haven’t encountered anything like this before in a context like this.
-Wade
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Well, 50SoG is erotic romance. The explicit sex scenes are kinda the point, and anything in that genre will have them regardless of whether the author has ever written fanfiction.
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Wikipedia says this about Erotic Romance:
The subgenre got its start in electronic publishing and small press. High volume sales showed New York publishers there was an untapped market for erotic romance and since 2005
so I guess I’ve conflated fanfiction and those two things, e-publishing and small press, though there is some overlap. I know 50 Shades started as Twilight fanfic before it got a big publish.
Of course if we don’t put erotic romance in caps, there are a lot more books involved and they go back.
-Wade
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Ray Monk: Wittgenstein; Duty of Genius.
A biography of the excentric philosopher/logician with heavy emphasis on his emotional depths and develoment, his deeply personal ethics and their close connection to his work in Logic.
I’ve just reached Part II: 1919-1928, right after the first World War and his finishing of the Tractatus. The man wrote one of the deepest works on Logic while at the Russian front!
There was not a lot of explanation about his actual developments in Logic in the period before WWI, more about his personal relation with Russel and Frege. His rejection of Russel’s Theory of Types is mentioned of course, as well as his own Picture Theory where the symbols and structure of logic propositions show themselves and the world, but cannot say/assert/claim anything. And then I was left with this vague impression of what he’s getting at, because the author does not elaborate. I hope that now the Tractatus is finished (the search for a publisher is now on), there will be more attention to the actual philosophical work together with Wittgenstein’s personal character development and social relationships.
Wittgenstein is a fascinating personality. His deep struggles with himself show the intimate relation between his work and his life. Ethics and Logic are two sides of the same coin to him, the obligation to stay true to oneself.
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I thought about this, too. Why is this book so popular? Because it runs down a checklist of every trope from YA, fantasy, and romance and blends them up in a blender. Hogwarts-like setup where you learn magic things because you are special? Got it. Passionate hate/fear to passionate love/sex? Got it. Uncomplicatedly evil scary end-of-the-world enemies that must be defeated by a group of kids and their badass dragons? Got it.
I think unsophisticated plots and unsophisticated sex sell precisely because they’re unsophisticated. I mean, if you look at a master writer like Edith Wharton writing a very sophisticated story of passionate connection like The Age of Innocence, which will blow your head off with its sexiness, yet nothing physical ever happens, that’s not what most people want in their lives. They want-- or think they want if they’re not very experienced-- their magic powers to burn the house down while being screwed into a puddle by someone they don’t really trust but who desires them desperately.
This is very geared to the young teen girl brain. It would have worked great on me at age 13.
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Finished it! Delicious prose and silly little romantic chivalrous premises. The last one in the book, Eliduc, was something… special
I’ve moved on to The Tombs of Atuan by Le Guin. I loved the first book of the Earthsea cycle. I can’t wait to see how this one goes. I GASPED at page 3.
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I think nothing matches the first book of this series. But anyway, every book of Le Guin is simply outstanding. One of the greatest fantasy authors imho.
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I’ve harped on at you about which of the lais is my favourite already (#11 Chevrefoil Nation etc etc) but the twists and turns in Eliduc really are something else. I was hoping the Arthuriana/medievalist trend in mainstream US cinema a few years ago would stretch on for some movie adaptations of the Lais or maybe even an Icelandic Saga, but no luck. It would have been really fun to see one of those come to the silver screen - best case scenario, it’s wonderfully worked and true to the source’s spirit. Worst case scenario, it gets mangled by the heat of Hollywood lights and ends up being excellent meme material after being microwaved.
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I was NOT PREPARED for that… Insane.
Imo the Lais are so little known, I don’t think any studio would have gone for it to adapt… Maybe Hallmark would have butchered it if the craze had gone a bit longer 
Or just be so darn duuuuuuulllllll
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I quote a review from The Guardian:
Fairy Tale also draws from the well that is The Wizard of Oz, as King so often does, and from The Neverending Story’s Fantasia. HP Lovecraft’s tentacles are also deeply entwined.
This sounds very interesting to me. I’ve put it on my library to-read list.
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At this point, a lot of authors come from fanfic. If you’re under 50 and you write a lot, you probably started writing on Livejournal or in the social-media boom that followed. Quite likely fanfic. This is an acknowledged factor in why women and minorities are so much more prominent in the SF/fantasy industry than they were twenty years ago.
Whether these authors kept the erotic stuff depends entirely on what subgenre they decided to go into. That’s probably related but not directly: writers write what sells. On the SF side, the publishing trend started with Anne Rice and maybe Laurel K. Hamilton – they were definitely not small press. It was called “paranormal romance” for a while. I think “romantasy” is the current label.
I don’t know about the genre-romance trends but I’m sure it moved in parallel. Only bigger, since romance has always sold better than SF.
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Right. I was also looking at Goodreads trying to get more perspectives. There are a ton of ranting reviews, both pro and anti, and a lot of Booktok crowd. There’s also no shortage of quotes like ‘This is the most formulaic book I have ever read,’ or ‘I’d like to know if I’m actually reading the same book as everyone else. This is the worst piece of literature I’ve read in a long while. I got to chapter 8. Couldn’t go any further.’
I’m free of it now.
-Wade
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A virtuoso of horror …
Agreed! 
Edit: I also love reading lights! It’s a new thing for me.
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Just finished Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who without a doubt is my author of the year. I’ve read nearly all of his books now. And this one is an outlier in his oeuvre, which is usually solidly fantasy/scifi worldbuilding.
This is different. It’s a stand-alone book, which is unusual for Tchaikovsky. The make-believe world is thinly sketched, an early modern world in which trains run and muskets are in use, but isn’t particularly different from our 18th century, although there is some magic thrown in. It’s Pride & Prejudice meets GI Jane meets the American Revolutionary war. I liked it and was surprised by its difference from his other work. Not one of my favorites, but worth reading.
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I know.
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