If I lived with anyone, sure.
Anyone check out this new Humble Bundle of video game-comic book tie ins?
Not sure what to make of that. I’d be more interested if there were some Mass Effect comics in there though.
I would be extremely skeptical. Neither videogame tie in novels nor videogame tie in comics have a strong track record of quality and comics in particular have a lower average writing quality.
How about the Retro Wonder games bundle?
Curated by Simon Carless, who I’m familiar with from Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine.
The Untold story of Xbox sounds good. I always love hearing about Samus whatshisname and the work he did on the original Xbox.
For those of you who haven’t read Robert McCammon’s A Boy’s Life, Its available for $1.99 today.
I haven’t, is it good?
Its excellent. It set in the 60’s and is about a strange summer these kids have. Its kind of like Steven King’s The Body ( also known as Stand By Me ) in tone. Won several awards and is considered by many as McCammon’s best work.
OK, thanks. I’ll probably pick it up.
I bought a couple of McCammon’s books a few months ago, due to a recommendation here. The first one I read was Stinger, which didn’t really click with me - it struck me as a sort of Stephen King-alike. I then unenthusiastically started A Boys Life. The difference was night and day. It’s a dreamy look about growing up in a small town in… the 50s. It’s a wonderful, wistful book about those days in a kids life when he’s between childhood and puberty. Yeah, it’s won awards, and rightfully so. I love reading it, and hated seeing it end.
One of my favorite excerpts is when the main character is talking to his teacher about possibly entering a writing contest. He needs some encouragement:
But I’ll tell you a secret, Cory. Want to hear it?”
I nodded.
“No one,” Mrs. Neville whispered, “ever grows up.”
I frowned. What kind of secret was that? My dad and mom were grown up, weren’t they? So were Mr. Dollar, Chief Marchette, Dr. Parrish, Reverend Lovoy, the Lady, and everybody else over eighteen.
“They may look grown-up,” she continued, “but it’s a disguise. It’s just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won’t let them. They’d like to shake off every chain the world’s put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day. They’d like to feel free, and know that there’s a momma and daddy at home who’ll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can’t be hurt.”
Get this book, it’s great!
Whooops, wrong thread.
Wow, thanks for that enthusiastic recommendation.
I’d better go over there and get it before… oh man, too late, price is already around $9 now.
Wishlisted though!
I did pick it up and it is probably on deck after I finish my current book - Catcher in the Rye, which I never had read before.
Amazon has free ebook versions of 9 acclaimed books, in celebration of World Book Day.
8 fiction books and one memoir from a North Korean defector.
Not too shabby a deal from a big evil company.
Terms:
This free Kindle book giveaway starts at 9 p.m. (PDT) April 16, 2018 and ends at 11:59 p.m. (PDT) on April 24, 2018. Eligible US customers can download one or more of the nine featured Kindle books subject to the terms and conditions of Amazon Digital Services LLC. Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the offer at any time. Offer is non-transferable and may not be resold.
That one was pretty good. It’s an easy read and assuming the guy is telling the truth it provides an interesting picture into just how miserable living in North Korea is.
Hm, I ws charged for the books even though the page showed $0. Maybe a region thing, hopefully it can be sorted out.
I starting reading these. The bundle ends in a couple days, so I thought I’d share some impressions. So far, I’ve only read two of the works.
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A Small Charred Face is a fairly standard Japanese vampire / horror story. By which I mean, if you watched it as an anime, you’d probably say “yup, that’s anime”. It’s also, er, indifferently translated, meaning that it’s serviceable, but does the work no favors. There are several things that should have been translated idiomatically, but instead are translated literally, the cadence of dialog feels awkward, that sort of thing. Overall, it’s fine. I do give it credit for what appears to be a wholly original Vampire mythology (I haven’t found any pre-existing examples of it, although they may just be non-translated if they exist).
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Spirits Abroad is phenomenal, but I think it might be impenetrable if you don’t have at least a nominal background in Malay / Straits Chinese culture. The author is Malaysian Chinese, and she writes in her own context, for her own audience. I grew up in Singapore, so I get most of the cultural references, but there’s also pretty extensive use of pidgin Malay that requires context to decipher (or maybe google translate). This is however, in general, exactly what I wanted from this story bundle. Unapologetically non-anglo-centric storytelling. It probably helps that this was written in English, and doesn’t need to suffer through a translator.
I’ve also started reading The Secret History of Moscow, but I haven’t read enough of it to really have impressions yet. It appears to have been originally written in English, so it so far seems to avoid any translation issues.
Stanislaw Lem’s “Cyberiad” is on sale everywhere for $2 today. I read this in high school and was blown away by it. It’s a series of short stories featuring the inventors Trurl and Klapaucius. It begins “One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could create anything starting with n.”
Oh yes, great stuff. Highly recommended.
TOR is having a sale on their Nebula nominees: Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly, Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, and Weave a Circle Round by Kari Maaren. At all the places. I don’t know anything about any of these books.
Picked up Autonomous. “Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the Internet.” --Neal Stephenson is what sold me on it.