Comment by branon

Comment by branon 5 days ago

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The Gulag Archipelago is on my shelf, when I rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it.

Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though!

Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though)

Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land" (pretty good)

Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love" (PHENOMENAL, highly recommended)

Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (pretty good, required to understand "Time Enough for Love")

Richard K. Morgan, "Altered Carbon" (very good)

Robert A. Heinlein, "The Rolling Stones" (young adult, but good all the same)

Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (very good)

Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)

Lincoln Child, "Full Wolf Moon" (okay, not great)

Lincoln Child, "The Forgotten Room" (pretty good)

Lincoln Child, "The Third Gate" (very good)

Lincoln Child, "Terminal Freeze" (okay, not great)

William Gibson, "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" (good, but outdated, look up what he's said about it more recently)

Lincoln Child, "Deep Storm" (very good)

James Patterson, "Along Came a Spider" (not my usual genre, okay though)

Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days" (from childhood, revisited)

chickensong 5 days ago

> William Gibson, "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" (good, but outdated, look up what he's said about it more recently)

That's Neal Stephenson, not William Gibson.

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reidrac 5 days ago

I couldn't get past the awful sex scenes of "Altered Carbon". OK, after having watched the TV series I should have known, but reading it is completely different. Also, the main character is so dislikeable.

It has been a while since my last Heinlein, you reminded me I should read more.

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anotherevan 2 days ago

If you're on a Heinlein kick, try and catch Farmer In The Sky. It's about the only one of his I re-read every few years or so. Don't know why.

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ffuxlpff 4 days ago

Dostoevsky's Memoirs from the House of Dead is a good companion to Gulag Archipelago to show how things got worse into the full medieval sadism in less than a hundred years.

Besides the gulag is a blueprint to basically all the forms of how totalitarian societies treat their subjects, especially if you can see the pattern working in less cruel and plausible forms.

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pavel_lishin 4 days ago

> Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)

I read the whole series as a teenager, and loved it - especially the way he was able to wrap up the entire series at the end.

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madhadron 5 days ago

"Time Enough for Love" is the only Heinlein I've felt any inclination to reread in the past few decades that held up at all (and it's still a good read).

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wojciii 4 days ago

> Richard K. Morgan

This is one of my favorite books. The series actually. I really like the backstory to the main character which gets revealed in the later books.

Did you see the tv series made from the series? I was, to put it mildly, disappointed.

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