62 Comments on “Today’s Books and ARCs, 2/4/14”

1. PRATCHETT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. The Shining Girls because Lauren Beukes.

   King David and the Spiders from Mars because interesting title.

3. That causes the picture not to show on your rss feed. Depending on how much you care about the rss feed being full featured, that may or may not matter.

4. Annihilation is brilliant.

5. The Shining Girls was a terrific read. Looking forward to Annihilation!

6. My mailbag last week was pretty solid, with new books by Elizabeth Moon, among others. I’d already received The Martian and V-S Day, and I’m told I have Raising Steam on the way. Also very excited for Annihilation.

7. What Sarah said, with some extra !!!!

8. You must have an impressive collection of Subterranean Press books.

   Do they send you limited signed editions as well?

9. What Sarah and David said with even more extra!!!!
   Off to check out the others…

10. New Allen Steele? Oh, dear, where am I going to fit that in my reading plan? Because I must have it!

11. The Barker and Beukes books based on the authors, and Eyes like Sky and Coal and Moonlight and King David and the Spiders from Mars just based on the titles.

12. *grabs Pratchett and runs* :)

13. NOTE TO WRITERS: Set your story on Enceladus and I will buy it on sight. Period. Enceladus is awesome.

14. I was able to read ‘The Martian’ as an ARC and I’ve got to say, it reminded me of Scalzi quite a bit in terms of tone. I actually wrote a review (which I don’t usually do) that started: “If you like snark and problem-solving, this book is for you.”

15. Ooh, Barker and Lansdale make a wicked double feature!

16. Picked up “Annihilation” at my local independant bookstore today, but don’t know if I will get to it right away or wait for the rest of the trilogy.

17. John, If I used Twitter I would not need to look at your blog. So post the info here if you want us to see it!

18. +1 to what Dave Orr said. Embedded tweets don’t show up right in your rss feed.

19. I went to Jeff VanderMeer’s reading here in Seattle last night and picked up my copy of Annihilation. I’m already a fan of his work but am looking forward even more to reading this one.

20. Gotta go with Sarah!
    Pratchett with TRAINS !!!! (I might be plotting to introduce my soon to be 3 year old to this one. He loved Where’s My Cow, and knows more about trains than I could have imagined before he became so enthused.)

21. I am in need of a British edition of Raising Steam.

22. What do you do with all these books? Read them all? Let them collect dust? I’d love to get my hands on the Barker and Lansdale books.

23. In addition to the aforementioned RSS problem, it also doesn’t show up in a browser if you don’t allow Twitter to run third-party Javascript on sites. (I block Javascript from all the social sites for increased security, privacy, and speed.)

24. The Martian is a brilliant book. In fact, seeing it in your photo reminded me that I’ve been meaning to load it back onto my reader to read again!

25. Curious about Grasshopper Jungle

26. Yep, I also had to come to the website to see the photo. I don’t use twitter, but do use RSS feed.
    It’s not that I want to avoid the website, but when I’m at work it’s so much easier to catch up via RSS.

27. I’ll also add my recommendation for _The Martian_. I’m glad I found it as a completed work – as a serialization, the suspense would have killed me :)

28. Would rather not have to click through to see the photo, but you’d have to balance that against how much hassle it would be for you to double post it…

29. I’m halfway through “Raising Steam” right now. Though I’ll love TP books until I die, he’s really backed off making things hard for his lead characters in recent times.

30. V-S Day is good. I want to read The Martian.

31. Terry Pratchett FTW.

    Andy Weir based on Herewiss13’s review

32. Please tell me that’s a PICTURE of a bug on the spine of “The Shining Girls”; please…

33. ‘The Martian’ is oh so very good. Frackin’ brilliant in fact.

34. I’ve heard good things about The Martian, and of course Pratchett. Om nom nom.

35. Instead of linking to some shortlink to the twitter pic, can you just set up an image with the src be the twitpic url, or does twitter not allow it? Not that I expect you to be sending me off to some NFSW or trojan, I’m not a big fan for shortlinks when there’s no real need for it.

36. The Ape-Man’s Brother, by Joe R. Lansdale. I’ll read ANYTHING by Lansdale.

37. I got the Pratchett book from my local library, and… well, it’s the first time since 1987 – my first was Equal Rites, as my mum-can-I-buy-a book-at-the-airport book – that I haven’t finished something by him. I can’t say I wasn’t expecting this to happen after Snuff, but then I was also expecting it to never happen. I do hope it’s just me, and most other people still get much pleasure out of it, but nothing gold can stay, I suppose.

38. Pratchett!

39. I came hear to point out the RSS problem: much like I very rarely watch a YouTube video you post (because I only click through to the discussion if I’ve seen something worth opening) I can’t see a picture in a tweet.

    That aside, I think I’m going to be getting The Ape-Man’s Brother when I get paid.

40. Andy Weir wrote a novel? Sweet! Was wondering what he was up to since finishing Casey and Andy. (Which is a totally awesome webcomic BTW, and a true rarity, a completed one as well).

41. I’m old, I don’t tweet. /end whine

42. The Martian is my pick; one of those books that is impossible to put down.

43. I listened to the Audible version of The Martian, and it was fantastic. As soon as I finished, I started again. It will be something I come back to over and over. It was very funny and the the narrator did a great job. I also can’t wait for the audible version of Raising Steam to be available.

44. Raising Steam. Which isn’t great, but I found it got better as I read on. It did have a ‘happy ever after’ feel to it tho, like a last book :(.

45. Sooz, thanks for letting me know that Raising Steam gets better. I got part-way through and then… just stopped reading it. From boredom. And because that scene with Nobby and the kid was so not-funny. I’ll try again.

46. I went to my library’s webpage, looking for the Pratchett, only to find this: A Plan Wherein the Power of Steam is Fully Shewn, by a Now Constructed Machine, for Propelling Boats of Vessels, of Any Burthen, Against the Most Rapid Streams or Rivers, with Great Velocity: Also, a Machine, Constructed on Similar Philosophical Principles, by Which Water May Be Raised for Grist or Saw-mills, Watering Meadows, &C. &C

47. I loved The Daedalus Incident, so I am very much looking forward to The Enceladus Crisis.

48. *Raising Steam* – even if it’s not his best, because a day with a new Pratchett book is a better day than most.

49. C.S. Clark – I don’t know where you stopped but the first third of Pratchett’s latest (Raising Steam) is pretty rough, the middle third is decent and the last third is pretty good.

50. Like several others here, I don’t use Twitter … Whatever is about as close as I get to *any* social-media format, not counting boards devoted to specific fields like computer security.

51. @Damian Trasler:
    Is Rasing Steam better than Snuff? I generally really enjoy stuff by Terry Pratchett, but I was disappointed by that one. (Mostly because the marital strife jokes got old and repetitive, I’ll admit…) So, I’m really interested in a review.

52. Like Sarah said, PRATCHETT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

53. Is that Casey and Andy‘s Andy Weird? Cool, didn’t make the connection! I was already kind of looking forward to the book based on a review.

54. Recent Pratchetts have been a bit off, but the only one I really had to struggle to finish was Dodger. The dialogue was laboured where it should be sparkling. Raising Steam was fine, and seemed genuinely Pratchett-style, though by no means his best.

    (His best was, in my opinion, Nation, Night Watch, or A Hat Full of Sky. One of those. No idea which.)

    TRiG.

55. THE MARTIAN is friggin’ hot!

56. Richard H – I would say that the first third of Raising Steam wasn’t as good as Snuff, the middle third was about the same as Snuff and the last third was better than Snuff.

    YMMV of course.

57. @ghayenga – not hugely into it. Thanks for saying it got better, it makes me feel better about hanging up my fanboy hat, but I think that I’ll probably leave it – I don’t want to have to struggle through a book to get to the better parts, especially with someone I have so much regard for.

58. you guys know that Mr. Pratchett’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, yeah?
    so i wouldn’t be surprised if “Raising Steam” is set to be the last Discworld, because he genius and all-around-AWESOME specimen of humanity’s finest that he is, is, well,…

    it’s a scarey, scarey terrifying thought, Alzheimer’s…

59. Andy Weir is a friend of a friend, and I’m really looking forward to reading his book.

    Also, Raising Steam, for all of the enthusiastic reasons listed above.

60. ZOMFG. Sorry. Sorry. Just a moment of such profound and jaw dropping envy…

    The Shinning Girls is marvelous; Jeff Vandermeer is always impressively original – and then, of course, there’s the new DiscWorld novel. *drools* *is embarrassed* *runs away*

61. On my to-read list are The Martian, The Shining Girls, V-S Day, and Annihilation.

    But King David and the Spiders From Mars has… an intriguing title.

62. Terry Pratchett’s Alzheimer’s is the kind where you stop putting letters together into coherent words. like you can see the letters and with a great deal of effort you can put them together but the automatic recognition of a word that you do without thinking after you’ve learned how to read is gone. This still sucks but it’s not the kind of Alzheimer’s that makes him forget his long standing memories.

    BUt awesome for the new Pratchett book. And Vandermeer’s book is crazy and creepy and I totally love it.