Author: 5t4n5
The Citadel of Weeping Pearls — Aliette de Bodard
Very much in keeping with the rest of the Xuya books and i absolutely recommend reading them before diving into this deep space.
A lot longer than the previous short stories and novellas that we’ve so far been used to: as such, this one is available as a real book that you can buy over at Amazon.
For those reading my previous review on Pearl, you’ll now know how i feel about pricing and this is no different to that. At the time of writing this the brand new paperback is £7.75 while the Kindle version is £7.34. And Amazon will deliver the paperback for free if you buy something else from them for £2.25 to make the total £10.00.
However, i’m not going to get back into my rant on the pricing of a teeny tiny data file compared to a forest of processed trees and environmental damages of such, you can read all about that at Pearl. Like that, it’s up to you if you are willing to pay that or not, or you can simply get a copy elsewhere, like get your local library to buy the paperback and then a thousand people can read it for free. Or you can buy the paperback with free delivery and then sell it on ebay to make some money back, or share it with a few friends, or give it to a charity shop. At the end of the day, it’s up to you, but ebooks aren’t going to be priced fairly for what they are if people — you the reader — keep paying silly prices for them. It’s utterly ridiculous to be charging every Kindle user similar prices for a single use, data protected copy while the paperback can be bought once and shared and read by dozens of people for years and years.
So, onto the content: great story, this time we’re going into the deep spaces within the deep spaces. Yeah, deep spaces squared get seriously bizarre. Lots of court intrigue and military invasion matters and the normal everyday life things as well.
Once again, super great writing from Aliette that keeps your attention from beginning to end. Shame about the ebook pricing.
And now let’s go get Scattered Along the River of Heaven.
Aliette’s Page
#scifi #aliettedebodard
Walden — Henry David Thoreau
After reading Into the Wild, where this book gets a fair bit of mentioning, one just had to see what all the fuss was about.
It certainly starts off incredibly well with the first 25% of the book — being mostly one chapter titled, “Economy” — explaining the ins and outs of what leads Thoreau to Walden Pond and away from a normal life and the cost of doing so. And it is very clear in this first quarter that Thoreau is a very capable writer who can get straight to the heart of the matter and keep the reader’s attention.
But then we begin the second chapter, “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”, and thus the tedium begins: word after word of pointless, boring tedium. Was it so utterly dull for him sitting by the pond, day after day after day with no one to talk to, that he just sat and wrote words for hour upon hour and simply spewed them forth upon pages enough to make up a reasonable amount to call it a book in order to sell it so he didn’t have to get a real job?
I just found myself reading paragraph after paragraph with a totally numbed out mind, noticing only a few words of interest here and there but mostly it’s just babble: babble, babble, babble, babble, blah, blah, blah. I tried, i really did, but i just cannot see why people so rave about this book.
Maybe chapter 3 onwards is back to the standard of chapter 1, but i simply could not get through chapter 2.
So, inevitably, it got …
… Deleted.
Henry’s Page
#philosophy #henrydavidthoreau #whataloadofcrap
Better Call saul — Season 5
Season 5 certainly didn’t feel anything like as good as previous seasons, like everything became rather stale and a lot of what happens just seems pointless and stocking filling. It’s all quite reminiscent of Breaking Bad’s two penultimate seasons, which also seemed quite superfluous to the overall story line.
Apparently, season 6 will be the last and one can’t help but think that season 5 has been completely used to set everyone and their story lines up for their finale. At least, that’s what i’m hoping, because i’d hate to think that season 6 is going to be more like this.
Ho hum, we shall have to keep our collective fingers crossed and wait and see next year.
#5t4n5 #tvandfilm #bettercallsaul
Worlds of Exile and Illusion — Ursula K. Le Guin
City Of Illusions — Ursula K. Le Guin
Also available in Planet of Exile — Ursula K. Le Guin
Also available in Rocannon’s World — Ursula K. Le Guin
Also available in Fool’s Quest — Robin Hobb
Revolution — William Manners
As a lifelong cyclist who has never owned a car i was so looking forward to reading this and i wasn’t disappointed.
Overall, simply an excellently researched book on the birth of cycling in the UK, especially focusing on the boom years of the 1890’s.
And as much as this should be in every cyclist’s book collection, it should also be in every feminist’s book collection. The history of the bicycle would not be complete without it being placed, centre stage, in those early years of women’s freedom and suffrage.
All hail the humble bicycle: a true vehicle of freedom and the most efficient form of transport ever invented. Nothing will propel you for so little watts per mile as a well manufactured and maintained bicycle can. It has well and truly stood the test of time.
As H.G. Wells once remarked: Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.
Long live the bicycle.