Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,354
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
-
> @BarnerCobblewood said:. > ... > As for your point, I'm talking about the adoption of a scientific form as a novel, not the inclusion of science within a novel. The disguising of narrative as occurring in a science, which perhaps harms …
-
Not relevant to gaming, but to the horror aspect you raised... it baffles me that Stephen King would so warmly endorse it, except that Karen Russell specifically thanks him for his support, so part of me wonders cynically if she was a student on a w…
-
Good questions, but I don't have answers, and I suppose I don't feel that the story tried to promote or demote any of those positions.
-
As mentioned before, I'm not sure I go with the "bad dreams = undesirable" equation which the story seems to posit. But I appreciate that isn't really the question you are raising here.
-
Well, I've commented elsewhere about what I thought about the language. Florid, maybe... full of adjectives and riddled with similes certainly... but I found it dull rather than lyrical, I'm afraid. I don't know if there's a more suitable discus…
-
I could never quite work out if the basic idea was that people wanted "pure sleep" ie ideally in the book's world without any dreams at all, or else "sleep with only nice dreams not nightmares". In case (1) then any dreams at all…
-
"Donation" feels in this book very much like a politicised word, much like "education" or "rehabilitation" might be. As such, it can be used to slide at will between a voluntary gift to a cause, and a social duty that c…
-
(Quote) These are some really interesting points that I will have to think a bit more about. But my initial impression is that I couldn't be sure about some of them. For example, Melville in Moby Dick quite often introduces scientific (or at least q…
-
(Quote) Sure, one can pick earlier isolated instances - I could make a case for the Middle Kingdom Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe, and considerable amounts of academic ink has been spilled over to what extent this should be classed as pure invention, pure …
-
> @BarnerCobblewood said: > Priest is pretty confident in the reader's motivation. Why do we continue reading these books? And I wonder about calling this a novel. Novel seems to mean nothing more than a certain number of pages contianing a f…
-
> @Ray_Otus said: > XVIII: The Return Journey > ... > For me, Tolkien hits a bunch of awesome notes in these final chapters. I LIKE the long-drawn journey home and all the closures. I feel like more modern fantasy are in a sprint to w…
-
> @Ray_Otus said: > Yes, I recently saw an article that year old ravens test above dogs in intelligence or some such. Which explains why dogs are great and ravens are a pain in the ass. :) Sufficiently so that the UK relies on ravens to ke…
-
(Quote) Your comment made me realise that "impenetrable" may have sounded as though I wasn't enjoying it. In fact I am - I was meaning impenetrable in the sense that a maze or riddle is, and hence invitational rather than off-putting. What…
-
So far I have found the book fascinating but (perhaps) slightly impenetrable! (I won't try to make an argument that this is a kind of mimesis for the fascinating but impenetrable Archipelago, but on a better day I am sure that such an argument could…
-
For fun, here is the relevant part of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: (Quote) So he has "gem-studded". Other translators choose "golden", "costly" or similar so I suppose that the original word is suitably ambi…
-
Sounds interesting
-
I guess they're the equivalent of the half-elven, seeing as how orcs were made in imitation of elves. Maybe Aragorn's press releases for former followers of Saruman never included the tagline "he's just like an Uruk-hai... only better..."?
-
I have a feeling that I looked into something similar a while back, maybe even the same one, and it wasn't available in the UK. But maybe times have changed?
-
(Quote) No problem :)
-
(Quote) According to Wiki, "Greek and Roman accounts exist of smoking hemp seeds, and a Spanish poem c. 1276 mentions the energetic effects of lavender smoke, but tobacco was completely unfamiliar to Europeans before the discovery of the New Wo…
-
A strange story with tragic end. Maybe we should aim to include one of his stories in the collection this year?
-
First, let me say how much I'm enjoying these notes of yours :) Secondly, about song... (Quote) It's a good point. I'm sure that, from the late perspective of LotR, his goblins would have sung a probably slightly distorted version of the Elvish pa…
-
> @Apocryphal said: > David Day’s book Tolkien’s Heroes > covers the inspiration for various > people and races. If I remember, the > Rohirrim in particular are based on > the Anglo saxons. But Arthur was a > Briton, who …
-
@NeilNjae this sounds really interesting... I have often meant to read Neuromancer but have never done so. And these latest two sound well worth reading
-
> @Apocryphal said: > If you're in, please let me know - and also roll a D20 for initiative! We'll resolve the order from highest to lowest. Ties will be resolved in order of response. Here's a dice roller if you need one: "Alexa, rol…
-
I've been meaning to read some Terry Pratchett for ages so I'd be up for this
-
(Quote) Carrying on from my thoughts about @Apocryphal 's post, it's an interesting question whether Aragorn or Theoden is more like Arthur! In the early strands of the Arthurian material, Arthur left Britain in order to help the beleaguered Roman E…
-
(Quote) I read back through Christopher Tolkien's comments about the textual history of this poem and that (as with so many of his father's projects) it wasn't clear why it was abandoned given that it had had positive feedback from a couple of trust…
-
The Islanders bought on kindle... no going back now...
-
> @clash_bowley said: > Richard? Where is this 'mild' geekiness you spoke of? ;) To misquote, "we have not yet begun to geek"!