Picked up “The Traitor Baru Cormorant” because someone on here said it was good

Read a single sentence of utterly generic fantasy word garbage, something like “The Empire of Wizzle assaulted Theplacia” and put it down.

I’ve had quite enough fantasy stories that think characterless “fill in the blank” world building genericism for one lifetime thanks.

Yeah screw 3rd edition, 4th edition forever!

I felt they were awful, Jason Bourne starring geriatrics

I’m perfectly happy encountering new words and concepts and not understanding them. I don’t know what a “whale road” is. But maybe if I keep reading I’ll be able to get some idea of it from the text itself.

As for “nuances”. I’m going to go out on an unpopular with some people limb here and say that’s 99% self indulgent bullshit from people that like jabbering about it with each other. Like if that’s your hobby knock yourself out, but often you can sound pretentious as hell about it.

More character perspectives on ideas/worldbuilding. Blasted through The Slow Regard of Silent Things even though I happily didn’t read the sequel to The Name of the Wind, 10/10.

And less the opposite. Tried reading “The Magic of Recluce”, the MC’s personality is “I am bored and that’s an excuse to lore dump on your head.” And I’m sorry but “this island in LOTR knockoff land has an extreme but low key cultural tradition of everyone hyperfocusing on one single task in life in the belief that this will stave off conflict” is interesting, but not interesting enough sans any sort of character or plot or other idea whatsoever for me to continue.

I guess it should be up to the author, it’s their story and assumedly IP as well, but at this point I kinda want to Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring even after Martin dies just to see what the internet would make of them.

Went from liking the idea to bored real quick.

The “pandemic” character was a just an author self insert from 2020, with incredibly little effort beyond that. In fact Id’ve appreciated just going full Steven King and inserting herself into the narrative in 2020, rather than the quarter hearted attempt at making a “near future” setting by slapping a “hologram” label on a handful of things.

I suppose if you’re just into writing style and characters then the book is over so fast you might not notice that the characters are shallow, and might not care that the plot and ideas are empty.

Because the book has the father being a chaplain away for the civil war. It’s not a modernization at all, it’s from the actual book.

I’m looking at the real Alcott’s wikipedia entry, Amos Alcott btw Bronson is his middle name, and he certainly wasn’t a chaplain. He was instead a wealthy and minorly famous abolitionist that personally knew Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, he even met Lincoln once.

Also did you watch the 2017 movie or 2019 one?

Sometimes I have an exciting life, which took me a minute to realize but certainly I’d qualify at point, and I still read to go somewhere new and be entertained by others.

But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying others adventures. Sure maybe in a decade or two when VR becomes the matrix, or if the multiverse is real, I’ll get to go to Rivendell or colonial north america or something. But even if I did I’d still read.

I’m the opposite in a way, I love reading books way more than finishing them.

I’m going through The Vaster Wilds right now, and parts are really quite good but I hit a part where it’s starting to feel like it’s really repeating itself and I can see I still have a third of the book left, and my brain just goes “you can just go to a different book, you enjoyed most of this, you don’t need to finish”

Her followup, To Say Nothing of the Dog, is edited far better, it’s an incredibly tight book (almost too much considering how much is packed in there).

Then Blackout/All Clear gets even worse than Doomsday even though there’s good bits in there.

My mom enjoyed it and reads a lot. It’s just a very slow paced, slice of life as times kinda thing, not for me either (the faster paced the better I say) but I’m glad it’s for others, and I’d say it’s technically very well written.

Historical facts

Any historical fiction with just, a bunch of random historical bits in along the way is great. Certainly it can be too much at times, The Baroque Cycle feels like less a plot or characters and more a series of random historical facts Neal Stephenson found interesting jammed together with random historical fanfic.

But anything short of that is great. I’m not even into sailing but I enjoyed learning all about old sailing vessels in the Aubrey and Maturin series.