Hyperion Cantos Series

I finished Dan Simmon's Hyperion over the week-end. It's the first book in the Hyperion Cantos Series. I really like the stories within a story. I got sucked in early even though the pace indicated that all this book was doing was setting the stage for the others in the series.

Amazon Kindle Book Deals

Highly recommend...



Recommend - especially if want to see or saw the movie...



Tempted...

Morning Star: Book III of The Red Rising Trilogy

I'm killing two birds with one stone with this post.

First, you know I get rich (rich I tell you!) off the millions of dollars you spend using my Amazon links. Amazon announced a new feature where they provide an embed link for Kindle books, so I wanted to try it out. We'll see what it looks like below.

Secondly, I finished Morning Star: Book III of The Red Rising Trilogy. I'd give it four out of five stars. It was mostly satisfying as a conclusion to the series. I really, really enjoyed the first book - it was a (virtual) page turner. I think I may have gotten it for $0.99 at the time. (The first hit is free!) My hang-up is more of a general nature than specifically anything about this last book. I think I enjoy the stories where there are high stakes, but the scope is on a more personal level - not giant space battles or planets being destroyed. If you read the series, you'll know my favorite parts are while Darrow is at the Institute.

Harry Potter: The Complete Collection

Well, I missed it... a Kindle version "boxed" set of all the Harry Potter books was on sale for $15.

It's back to $56 now. I'm posting it anyway, since the internet and this blog are substitutes for actually remembering anything.

Via Kinja Deals

Morning Star

I really enjoyed the first two books in the Red Rising series. I'll be downloading the last book in the series tomorrow: Morning Star: Book III of The Red Rising Trilogy.

Red Rising: Book I of The Red Rising Trilogy: Amazon 4.5 / Goodreads 4.22 Stars

Golden Son: Book II of The Red Rising Trilogy: Amazon 4.7 Stars / Goodreads 4/49 Stars

The Winds of Winter

George R. R. Martin posts an update on the next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter:

"THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished. 

Believe me, it gave me no pleasure to type those words. You're disappointed, and you're not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed... but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me. For months now I have wanted nothing so much as to be able to say, "I have completed and delivered THE WINDS OF WINTER" on or before the last day of 2015. 

But the book's not done."

I'm not surprised that it's not finished. I will be surprised when it is. This next statement did surprise me.

"Look, I never thought the series could possibly catch up with the books, but it has."

Have you seen a calendar? Can you do basic math?


Video via Winter is Coming

Kindle Book Cyber Monday Sale

I'm going to pick up a couple of cheap Kindle books from the Cyber Monday sale at Amazon.

I've never read any of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series by Fritz Leiber, so I'm going to get the first one: Swords and Deviltry. I'm also gonna try Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix Plus. Both are just $1.99.

Cheap Kindle Books

I've not read of the "50 Shades" books, so I can't comment, but I liked Ready Player One, The Martian, A Game of Thrones (duh), The Kite Runner, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl. My wife loves the Outlander books.

$2 Kindle Books

Outlander Books

The wildly popular Outlander series has a sweet Kindle deal right now... a bundle of the first seven books for only $2.

Seveneves

Neal Stephenson has a new book: Seveneves: A Novel. I obviously like his stuff as he made the cut when I purged books a while back. I've only started reading the sample of this one, but I came across this in the first little bit:

"Rufus, a die-hard ham radio enthusiast who still communicated in Morse code with a dwindling circle of old friends all over the world, had pointed out that radio transmission between the ground and Izzy was actually rather easy, given that it was line-of-sight (at least when Izzy happened to be passing overhead) and that the distance was nothing by ham radio standards. Since Dinah lived and worked in a robot workshop, surrounded by soldering gear and electronics workbenches, it had been a simple matter for her to assemble a small transceiver following specifications provided by her dad."

Izzy = The International Space Station. Guess I'll be forking over the money for the full book soon.

The Martian: Movie

So they are making The Martian into a movie.

The Martian

All my "for fun" reading has been set in space recently... I finished The Martian by Andy Weir not too long ago.

Apparently some people need to read the book to understand how difficult it would be to live on Mars.

Game of Thrones - All 5 Books for $10 (Paperback)

So I thought $24 was a good deal for all five books in the Game of Thrones series... well, Wal-Mart has all five paperbacks for $10. (And that matches the best deal I've seen for the Kindle version.)

Via Kinja

Game of Thrones - All 5 Books for $24 (Paperback)

Just ahead of the season six start...

Once upon a time, you could get all five Game of Thrones (Kindle) books for $10. (Currently, $20 for the Kindle versions.)

If you prefer the dead tree version, you can get the paperbacks for about $24.

Yesterday - Slashdot

These stories gave me deja vu all over again.

V'Ger Source Code Released

Scientists Discover Meaning of Life Through Massive Computing Project

If You Thought Studying History Was Bad, This Math Professor Is Making It Harder

If you don't know the references, turn in your geek card then check out V'Ger, 42, and Foundation.

Clancy to Lead Secret Service

Clancy to lead Secret Service. Sounds like a good fit. He and Jack Ryan always seem to get the bad guy.

Books - Archive Mode On!

I mentioned the books I was purging, but I want to reiterate that I liked most of those authors. Some of them were fun reads, some had a little more substance, etc.

The books by the following authors I will keep - at least until I decide I should get rid of them all! Then it will be library books or e-books here on out!

Actually, some of these probably won't ever go away as they have my notes from high school or college in the margins. I've re-read some of them and it's interesting to see what I thought was important 20+ years ago. For some of the "fun" books,  I remember, during my youth, I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning to read just a few more pages.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
J.R.R. Tolkien
Robert Asprin
R.A. Salvatore
William Gibson
Neal Stephenson
Gene Wolfe
Tom Robbins
Issac Asimov
William Faulkner
Richard Wright
Orson Scott Card
Robert Jordan
Terry Goodkind
Huston Smith
William James
Richard Matheson
Ernest Hemingway
J.D. Salinger
C.S. Lewis
Robert Heinlein
William Golding
Eugene O'Neill

Red Rising

And speaking of books, I just finished Red Rising. It was a $2 Kindle book, so no worries on the taking up space front. I really enjoyed it... put Harry Tris Ender Katniss Stark on Mars and that's a good starting point. I'm being glib, but it did have elements from each. And good news for me, the second book, Golden Son, comes out in three days.

Books - Purge Mode On!

If it's not nailed down, it's at risk for getting tossed, sold, recycled, etc.

Books from these authors didn't make the cut:

David Baldacci
Gene Kranz
Ken Follett
Larry Correia
Matthew Pearl
Nelson DeMille
Stephen Hunter
Tom Clancy
Tom Wolfe
W.E.B. Griffin

I'm not saying I don't like the books, but I'm still keeping a ton and I don't see me re-reading these anytime soon. For a lot of these, I've got stacks by each author.

I'll do another list of the authors I did keep.

Asimov's Foundation Series coming to HBO?

It's been years since I've read the books, but I'd like to see what HBO could do with Asimov's Foundation series.