HP Lovecraft Road to Madness anthology

Quote from: LiferGamer;1140170I'll give you that some of the main characters don't learn and in fact backslide.

This might just have convinced me to give up now. There seem to be 3 focal characters. I'm kind of neutral towards one, but am actively rooting against both of the other 2. If they don't get their shit together, at least a little . . . ew.

For our school faculty bookclub, the Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu

For personal reading, With Blood Upon the Sands, by Bradley P. Beaulieu.

For creature comfort "oh my god these idiots are going to get us all killed" reading, rereading the Belgariad, by David Eddings (currently still on Pawn of Prophecy).

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1140384This might just have convinced me to give up now. There seem to be 3 focal characters. I'm kind of neutral towards one, but am actively rooting against both of the other 2. If they don't get their shit together, at least a little . . . ew.

I'm trying to recall the original 'three', as the cast grows a bit, and its been a couple of years, but the barbarian chieftain dude you start with pretty much ends up exactly where he started, only with fewer friends... and honestly after reading his point of view in mid berzerker rage he's not actually any sort of berzerker at all, but a serial killer with a split personality. The urban fop gambler/duellist is the most frustrating, though he does advance in social standing, every time he seems to progress as a person, Abercrombie pulls the rug out from under him and he actually ends up a weaker, more pathetic character than he started. Also, I can't help but take away from his final scene in the trilogy that Joe Abercrombie is Pro-Bullying, from the point of view that weak willed victims of bullying deserve it.

The third was iirc Sand dan Glokta, also not your standard Hollywood hero material.
What I liked about the later series was that some of the bit-part players got a whole novel written around them. Or a short story in the case of 'Sharp Ends'.
But the First Law book 2 is basically a Ring Quest with a party of NE and CN characters, and a shitty DM. And Bayaz.

The Half-a-* series is the YA-novel version of this, for a certain kind of YA.

Okay, all books bought in the last three weeks. Spent about $70 at a couple of Half Price Books in Indianapolis, then ran around garage sales last weekend looking for ancient RPGs and finding many good book deals. Spent $10 there and received well over $100 in books...

First Up, Magician: Master by Raymond E. Fiest. This is getting a re-read after forty years, mostly for the Tekumel lore, bit still a great fantasy story! Next up, Linux Device Drivers. Improving my knowledge of Linux means looking at all different kinds of books. I like to tweak on video drivers, and printer drivers and wanted to learn more about how linux handles hardware interrupts and the order of Operating System processes. Linux Device Drivers is an older book, but still useful. H Beam Pipers Empire, a sci-fi novel I have not actually read before, and an old favorite by John Varley, also Sci-Fi, Demon which is about sentient alien world named Gaea and Cirocco Jones an explorer, another classic getting a re-read after forty or more years.

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The next set...
Electronics in Action. One of them 1960's texbooks covering basic electronics. Very useful as it contains all the basic AC and DC circuit calculation formulas which seem conspicuously absent from modern electronics textbooks in any legible and well-organized format. Useful since I'm getting back to custom circuit board design. Another non-fiction College textbook, Elementary Statistics. the introductory college Statistics 101 book which goes over probability theory and monte carlo simulations. Useful to me for new application and device design, as well as determining long term performance analysis for inventions, and in the financial markets, especially with hedge funds and the kind of collateral swapping for profit that wall street brokers are doing now to improve their profit-taking while electronically trading. I'm using statistical analysis to make price and futures predictions concerning the stock market.

An old Michael Crichton title, State of Fear. No idea what it is about, looking forward to reading it though, may follow up here with a writeup when i'm done.  Next is John D. McDonald's Darker than Amber, one of the few Travis McGee novels that I haven't read. I'm a real fan, because I lived in a hotel for three years just a couple blocks from the Marina where John D. McDonald actually kept his houseboat while writing the fictional tails of Travis McGee who coincidentally kept his houseboat at the very same Marina. Always a pleasure to read, Murder mysteries set in Florida, before it was considered cool to live in Florida.

Finally... When Worlds Collide, by Phillip Wyle and Edward Balmer. I'll just leave you with the Intro on this 1932 Sci-Fi classic to whet your appetites.

"All who are to leave earth forever, board the Space Ship!"

Two outlaw planets were hurtling through outer space on a direct collision course toward Earth. In secret, a few great scientists began to build rocket ships to evacuate a chosen few-- the most brilliant and biologically useful --to a distant planet where the human race could start anew. But the secret leaked and it touched off a savage struggle among the world's most powerful men for the million-to-one chance of survival... When Worlds Collide!

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The Unabridged Illustrated Encyclopedia of Gardening, Volumes I and II. by T.H. Everett, Assistant Director (Horticulture) and curator of education The New York Botanical Garden. 1967. Because I like to garden, and want to get better at gardening. Nothing like some vintage knowedge including plenty of illustrations. bocoup articles including ones like Apple: Popular Cool Climate Fruit. A complete guide to cultivation of this American Favorite, and much, much more! Also Tropical Blossoms of the Pacific by Dorothy and Bob Hargreaves, just so I know which flowering plants are edible or toxic if I'm ever shipwrecked, or crash land on a deserted Pacific Island. Dorsai, By Gordon Dickinson, one of them military sci-fi books from the late seventies and early eighties which is getting a re-read, and I'm happy to add it to my library. Ditto that for Larry Niven's Ringworld Engineers. Really trying to improve the quality of my Traveller games this year with a re-read of these.

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Two more engineering textbooks in my latest garage sale adventure. literally 50 cents a book... Technical Drawing by GIesecke, Mitchell , Spencer & Hill, a 5th edition textbook primarily about architectural drawing, and Engineering Drawing & Design by Jensen, which focuses on mechanical engineering illustrating including sub-assemblies and parts drawing. Finally to round out this batch of books another Michael Crichton book, Prey, about a bio-engineered nanoweapon unleashed on humanity. His background in science means his fiction stories include lots of well-researched hard science. I felt it a very appropriate addition to my library taking into consideration the current pandemic.

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Last set, from the last few weeks...

Stephen Coonts, Saucer. Just haven't read this one. From a master of horror comes a sci-fi tale about, of course, UFO's, ...should be interesting. Out on a Leash: Exploring the Nature of Reality and Love by Shirley Maclaine. Because I really need a book by a liberal who doesn't make me feel like a degenerate just for being an aged white heterosexual male, something the new left liberals can't seem to stop spending time doing. Finally figured out what to do with all of them, by the way.

Financial Management Theory and Practice 10th edition by Eugene F. Brigham and Michael C. Ehrhardt. Another textbook, mostly for my now college aged children, a good business 101 college textbook from 2001, will get a once-over by yours truly to ensure I'm not missing any of the basics.

A double book by Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Once again for my kids, but the first is getting a re-read after forty years to see if I can improve my ability to influence others, and the second I haven't read before, so is new for me.

Then a noir mystery, A Kiss before Dying from Ira Levin. Was kind of looking for Raymond Chandler novels at half-priced books when I came across this. A murder mystery. A ruthless college student resorts to murder in an attempt to marry an heiress. Three years after this book came out, the movie was made. Kind of wondering now if he found some inspiration with this book regarding Natalie Wood.

And finally pictured earlier but not mentioned before now, Isaac Isimov's Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction: Intergalactic Empires from . An anthology of short stories from 1983 I'm expecting to prove insightful for my Traveller RPG game. The image of the huge spacecraft carrier on the cover made this an instant buy for me.

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Quote from: Spike;1140447I'm trying to recall the original 'three', as the cast grows a bit, and its been a couple of years, but the barbarian chieftain dude you start with pretty much ends up exactly where he started, only with fewer friends... and honestly after reading his point of view in mid berzerker rage he's not actually any sort of berzerker at all, but a serial killer with a split personality.

He's the one I was neutral towards! Lemme guess. When he was fleeing after his hometown had been destroyed, at the beginning of the book, that's going to turn out to be his own handiwork? It wouldn't be the most ham-fisted use of split personality I've seen, but it'd be up there. It does seem like it'd come out of left field, too. When he was thinking of abandoning the mage's apprentice, it was all about practicalities and the sad realities of wilderness travel. Nothing malicious to even hint at a split personality, and that seems like a good place to have placed something. The other two - the fop and the torturer - I kind of just want done with. The magician dude introduced just a short ways in seems okay as long as you're polite. The only people he's shown up(not even hurt at this point) were being rude and making threats.

Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt, and Folklore and the Sea by Horace Beck, as inspiration for a nautical-based campaign I'm planning.

I´ve just finished rereading an C.A. Smith antology, and started van Vogts "The World of Null-A".

And now thanks to Tenbones overview, I'm diving into Fantasycraft 2nd edition and its Adventure Companion.  

Dig it.  (Going to get a side game going with a dwarf kingdom getting overrun by orcs to learn the system.)

Finished a GREAT biography via Audiobook: The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones by Thomas Asbridge

QuoteThe other two - the fop and the torturer - I kind of just want done with. The magician dude introduced just a short ways in seems okay as long as you're polite. The only people he's shown up(not even hurt at this point) were being rude and making threats.

@GeekEclectic - the torturer I found to be interesting; but I know how miserable a book can be if you don't like anyone in the darn thing! (Specific to his books, Heroes, but I slogged through it)  IIRC the wizard and Logen Ninefingers recur in later books (outside the trilogy), Best Served Cold is my favorite, and its pretty stand alone.  It may spoil some of the trilogy, if you want to try something else in that world.

Finished Skin Game, now on to Peace Talks.