Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,263
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
-
I really enjoyed this week's read! Some thoughts: Early on in the 3rd dervish's tale we read "no praise for the reckless" which mirrors Isaiah's "no peace for the wicked" - but with an interestingly secular twist. It occurred to…
-
I also had to buy a real physical copy as it's not available in kindle :o
-
Hi all, plenty of time to chat more about The Wager, but also this is a quick reminder, should such be necessary, that November's read is Tripoint, by C. J. Cherryh, hosted by @clash_bowley who will, no doubt, be posting discussion starters at or ar…
-
(Quote) I found this an interesting idea to explore! You could probably argue that the biblical story of Job fits your "Arabic" pattern, once again pushing this storytelling motif back into the ancient world. And of course the European tra…
-
You're right, there are a lot of plot holes in these stories! Presumably Shahrazad or whoever simply reckoned that their listener would be carried along in the moment and not question it... The transformation into ape - there was a 19th century fas…
-
Slightly ahead of expectation, I have set up the categories for the monthly reads in December (Witch World, @Apocryphal ) and January (The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, @NeilNjae ). As usual I've started them off with the cover blurb and a snippet…
-
(Quote) Well, Witch World is complete in itself as a story, though it is true that it is continued in Web of in a way that ties up a number of loose ends. But it's perfectly fine to read just Witch World on its own
-
A recent read of mine was Julia (https://amzn.eu/d/97NsHvM) - a retelling of 1984 from the perspective of Julia, the woman who Winston from the original book has a fling with. The book is billed as a feminist retelling - I wasn't altogether sure abo…
-
> @RichardAbbott said: > I'll ask my bookseller friend in the village if he came across this last year and if so if he has any opinions about it I chatted with him yesterday and he had heard of it but not seen it so didn't have anything in…
-
Great! I'll set that up as well early in the week
-
I'll set up the discussion area for Witch World in the next day or so.
-
I also realised belatedly that David Brann is author of several other books, all of which seem to deal with the behaviours of people, usually explorers of one kind or another, in extremis. So for example The Lost City of Z, dealing with exploring th…
-
(Quote) How splendid!
-
(Quote) Yes, totally - British law as enacted in courts is almost entirely about precedent and analogy with previous cases, so I can easily imagine a court not wanting to set a precedent where they weren't sure about the rights and wrongs of the mat…
-
(Quote) As in "fleet of foot" etc
-
Yes there was a lot of additional material at the end of the kindle book, which I personally didn't find added much. Something I wondered was the choice of presentation of the material... I wondered if it would have been better presented in novel…
-
There were a lot of characters - necessarily so because of the historical events, but I don't think a novelist would have nearly so many important and/or viewpoint characters. It's all too easy to kind of forget who's who and what allegiance they ha…
-
@NeilNjae neatly sums up my own position on this.
-
Other things I have read suggest that whilst the regulations were explicit about mutiny, and extremely wide in their interpretation of what constituted mutiny, in practice they were not enforced via often, and there is a fascinating contrast between…
-
Like the others so far, I've read plenty of naval fiction set in the Age of Sail but almost all of that has been set later on, around the time of the Napoleonic Wars (eg Alexander Kent, CS Forester, Patrick O'Brian) and rather less survival stories.…
-
I'll ask my bookseller friend in the village if he came across this last year and if so if he has any opinions about it
-
(Quote) It certainly is available in kindle at least in the UK and probably elsewhere. I have regular Andre-Norton-reading-fests - she was so enormously prolific that I have still nowhere near exhausted her repertoire :) They hold a particular memo…
-
A few thoughts, mostly disconnected from your comments ( :) ) When the prince is told about the infidelity and fakes drinking wine "When my wife returned, the feast was served, we had a bite and went to bed. I only pretended to drink from the …
-
(Quote) hoho :#
-
(Quote) I like Witch World - it won't be new to me but I'm happy to reread it. It obviously gripped her imagination as she went on to write a total of 18 books in a loose series (https://www.fictiondb.com/series/witch-world-andre-norton~10743.htm) o…
-
I've read some Martha Wells but not that one. The Chakraborty one sounds fun - didn't she write City of Brass (which I've heard of but also never read)
-
(Quote) I must admit to sharing this view in large measure. The local-to-Grasmere book club that I'm part of routinely chooses prize-winning books for its titles - not usually Hugo or Nebula as SFF is low on their priority list, but Booker or whatev…
-
(Quote) I like this idea, which I take to mean that storytelling is intended to perform some kind of cohesive effect on society as a whole
-
> @Apocryphal said: > Perhaps all the breaks are just where the storyteller needed a sip of tea. Which means the shorter sections were the thirstier nights, for whatever reason. I could go with the cups of tea explanation 😁
-
(Quote) I don't have strong views on any of those, though I suppose if as a club we read The Windup Girl a while back that excludes it? (It was before my time, though I have read the book quite a few years ago now and don't remember it well)