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Apocryphal
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So, for now I don't think we have a book lined up for October. Should we return to our normal schedule rotation, or everyone nominate some titles and vote on them? We could nominate 3 each, maybe, and pick the top 3 for Oct, Nov, Dec. Please opine …
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For most of the book I felt like it was a collection of linked short stories in a shared world. But I found myself coming around to the idea of it being an episodic novel by the end. Things certainly get tied up in a bow. But almost every chapter is…
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Oh, and about the death of the emperor, I actually had the impression that the Archivist, (what was his name? Emparad, something like that?) was actually the Emperor, just now hiding in a different role. This wasn't explicit or confirmed in the text…
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Yes, starting small is a great way to integrate characters into a setting. Or having them be 'outsiders'. That way, nobody needs to learn the setting up front - it can be revealed to the players by widening their horizon one session at a time. This…
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I've seen it written that this books is about the futility of work. Not, I suppose, empirically speaking, but the futility of many modern jobs. This is something I can somewhat relate to. I don't know how often I spent hours trying to solve this par…
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I found the scaling quite interesting because it reminded me of how RPG campaigns in new setting are often run, something that was alluded to elsewhere by one or two of you. I'll speak more to this in the other thread. But from a literary perspecti…
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I curious what would have been a tell for those of you who said it didn't seem translated. I've read many translated books and generally speaking I can't really tell them apart from native English books. But I don find that Russian books have a diff…
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I also really enjoyed the book. Most of the comments I had seen about it before reading it focussed on the carpet weavers and mentioned the domesticity of the book, so I was expecting it to be more like Ryman's Air, with a focus on a small community…
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You'll probably blow through it, if your usual rate holds. The language is clear and direct.
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I’ll post up on Sunday
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I think with the voting method mentioned above we'd still get a variety of books, but it would take out the outliers, I suppose... the weird stuff. But we could also try to sell our picks to each other. We could try it for a short period and see how…
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How are people doing with this book? Done? Close to Done? Gave up? Thanks
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@NeilNjae and @BarnerCobblewood Did you have any thoughts on this matter?
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I did associate the advent of Air with the singularity. This idea was at the end rather cemented by the idea that the baby would fully participate in it, despite being effectively stillborn. This is rather like the digitization of all people to be r…
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I’m open to it if people think it will help increase their participation.
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I would argue that there's a very slim band of time, and even then only a few places, where magical thinking wasn't the norm in the world. I think the world did mostly alright with magical thinking. I'm not sure the nuclear age was objectively bette…
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How would the weighting work? FYI for the newer members, we've tried several different methods of picking books over the years. We started with straight up one-member-picks just like we do now. Then we went to one member nominates three and those t…
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@NeilNjae That's too bad. It sounds like all the talk of local life got in the way of your ability to appreciate how tech can impact local life? Did I read that correctly? I'm not sure you can have the latter without the former. @clash_bowley What …
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Not this far western 😂
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I meant to say, this book reminded me of The Circle by Dave Eggers crossed by Tolkien’s Leaf By Niggle.
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Setting-wise it does provide a ready-made village setting one could just lift and plop into an appropriate campaign, complete with village map, factions, and personalities, of one wanted to. From a theme perspective, I could see myself (or to be ho…
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I think it was a feature of the novel, to a degree, but not fully. The only real luddite in the village was teacher Shen, and he didn't come off well. So it was more about how to adapt to new culture while still staying who the villagers were, than …
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I don't see why the book couldn't have worked in, say, a native community in the Americas or in eastern Europe. Or even a Mennonite community. Except that had the author chose those, he would have had to be a lot more careful about understanding the…
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I think in may ways is was remarkably prescient. I did think it did a good (if narrow!) job at examining the impacts of changing tech in general and applying this examination to what felt like real people far from the centres of change. It did not a…
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I also wasn't sold on the pregnancy. Nor on the (magical seeming to me) way they all got insurance and things all worked out. Where was the 2-year fight to get insurance money? The book had a rather fairy-tale quality to it, especially when one sta…
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I though the book's main spirit was to tell a community story (the kind of story @BarnerCobblewood keeps mentioning he's looking for, and what I expect our next book, The Carpet Makers, will also be) against the backdrop of technological change. The…
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I think we have to conclude the author's take is optimistic, though cautious, about technology. Or at least it was when he wrote the book. Things probably looked less scary and more promising back then. In our current global situation, I'm much less…
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All caught up, now. I did enjoy the book - it was my first Ryman. The only other one on my radar is The Child Garden. I'm not quite sure what the author was setting out to do with the book, so I can't say whether that was accomplished or not. On th…
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Looks like I can get from the library - they have 1 copy but no holds. It's not on audible.ca, oddly.
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I'm leaning toward this book for September: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carpet_Makers I've heard many good things, and since it has a current Penguin release I think it should be generally available. And, I think from a subject matter standpoi…