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YC’s Summer Reading

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11–20 of 188 posts

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#11
post #7

Nice, 2 out of 20 authors are women. Nothing like a balanced reading experience.

I feel like your comment would be more useful if you were to raise your concern (which you did) and suggest some books written by women you think warrant inclusion on the list. Otherwise you're just complaining.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#12
Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#13
post #12

Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

I think it depends. I take months to finish a book casually, but when a true page-turned like "Ready Player One" pops up, I blazed through it in days. I think there's a need for active reader engagement, where there is incentive ("It's going to be a movie directed by Steven Spielberg and music composed by John Williams!") to enjoy the fruits of being cool before it becomes cool.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#14
I'm consistently surprised to hear people saying positive things about "Ready Player One" - to me it was one of the most hackneyed and silly books I've read in a long time. My review at the time of reading (originally for private consumption only):

Terrible modern sci-fi about easter egg MMO quest for game creator’s fortune. Childish plot/dialog, cliches everywhere (e.g. ‘L337 Hax0r Warezhouse’), absolutely atrocious, really simple puzzles. The only positive thing I can say about it is that I didn’t give up on it immediately - although I was tempted, the main plot line was at least interesting enough that I wanted to hear the end. Unfortunately the ending itself was disappointing - the final puzzle was just a rehash of the first two. My main takeaways were: I hope the ‘MMO-scifi’ subgenre is finally dead, I should wait at least 10 years for more recent sci-fi to go through quality assurance, and that it seems like based on this, anyone with a half-baked idea and enough pop-culture-nerd knowledge to sprinkle throughout 300 or so pages should be able to write a best-seller. Meanwhile, the politics/worldview it espouses is basically boingboing distilled - big corporation bad, internet is free, knowledge is free, american culture and society is dead, cyber-elite should run world, pop-media is simultaneously in control of world and source of inspiration and true creativity.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#16
post #12

Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

Audiobooks are also a good way to blast through content at the expense of a retention cost.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#17
post #11
post #7

Nice, 2 out of 20 authors are women. Nothing like a balanced reading experience.

I feel like your comment would be more useful if you were to raise your concern (which you did) and suggest some books written by women you think warrant inclusion on the list. Otherwise you're just complaining.

Here's a recommendation for some female authored sci-fi at least:

The "Newsflesh Trilogy" by Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire). I'm not usually into zombie fiction, but this was a great series. Not your typical zombie fare... more like a political / conspiracy thriller where zombies are just part of the trappings of the story, not the focus of the story. Hard to explain, but worth reading.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#18
post #12

Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

Less than a day for Ready Player One ;( Not focus for me as much as how much fun I'm having

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#19
post #14

I'm consistently surprised to hear people saying positive things about "Ready Player One" - to me it was one of the most hackneyed and silly books I've read in a long time. My review at the time of reading (originally for private consumption only): Terrible modern sci-fi about easter egg MMO quest for game creator’s fortune. Childish plot/dialog, cliches everywhere (e.g. ‘L337 Hax0r Warezhouse’), absolutely atrocious…

I agree - I really wanted to like Ready Player One but the writing was just so difficult to enjoy. In the same way I remember thinking "wow this is really well written" when reading George R R Martin, I spent most of RP1 thinking, "I will get through this for the concept but this is not a good book."

Instead of Ready Player One, I recommend the Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam. The action is a little overdone, but it's so much better than Ready Player One and it does a really good job of exploring very interesting technology questions!

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