| 31 Jan 2021 |
|  dratulgoel joined the room. | 11:13:47 |
|  @allsnop:matrix.org joined the room. | 18:43:03 |
| 1 Feb 2021 |
|  @visla:matrix.org joined the room. | 03:08:43 |
|  @CitizenZero:matrix.org joined the room. | 04:13:38 |
|  emberfiend joined the room. | 10:53:12 |
|  @yvad:matrix.org left the room. | 11:15:39 |
| emberfiend | In reply to @biblioscholar:biblioscholar.com
What’s everyone reading? Just started Wayfarers #1 (Becky Chambers) last night. Too soon to tell whether her writing suits me, but the setup sounds promising :) | 11:33:27 |
| emberfiend | Also, what are you reading? | 11:33:33 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | Just finished John Ford's The Dragon Waiting. Kind of unable to figure out how to follow that one up so I'm reading some non fiction right now instead. | 11:59:19 |
| emberfiend | How did you find it? What makes it difficult to follow up? | 12:05:11 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | This article put him on my radar: https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/john-ford-science-fiction-fantasy-books.html | 12:29:44 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | Hard to follow up because it's smart, erudite, silly, dense, and really fun. I want to just sit with it for a while more because it was such a special reading experience. | 12:31:13 |
| emberfiend | Phwoar, that's some mightily high praise! I'll be sure to check him out. | 13:16:13 |
| emberfiend | I have that problem in general with SFF not living up to Le Guin and Iain Banks, but I've learned to live with it | 13:16:52 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | Le Guin does it too for sure! But in a different way. This John Ford novel was excellent but nothing quite compares to Le Guin | 15:23:37 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | I've only read one Iain Banks--The Algebraist. I really struggled with it. | 15:24:35 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | Are the culture books good? | 15:24:52 |
| emberfiend | If you didn't like Algebraist I'm not sure you'll like the culture stuff, it's pretty representative of his style. He digs the density. But, frankly, apart from his guns and cruelty fetish, Banks produced in the culture novels the most vivid and coherent work of optimistic SF so far. Which really works for me :) | 15:43:08 |
| emberfiend | Yeah, she really gets the human experience, doesn't she? I still remember the room I was in when I read The Dispossessed, just because of how formative it was. | 15:44:01 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | Everything I see about the culture novels seems just my cup of tea, but yeah, I really bounced hard off his writing. I'll try again someday for sure I think, but I'll wait. | 15:48:29 |
| @allsnop:matrix.org | I had the same experience with Le Guin reading The Farthest Shore. I was riveted and my memory of that whole experience is so vivid. | 15:50:02 |
| emberfiend | Ah, that's wonderful to hear :) She is just unbelievably good. | 16:05:07 |
| emberfiend | Yeah, I hope you do try again at some point. It's probably less intimidating once you've read a couple because you know the general structure of tech and society, which helps because he really loves to omit context and do the hopping between three to six story threads all novel long thing. | 16:06:27 |
| emberfiend | Which kind of pays off if you really get into him, because I can re-read a novel for the 4th time and still spot links I missed :) | 16:06:59 |
 dgaletic | I wonder if I missed things in Player of Games on account of not having read anything else from The Culture | 16:53:40 |
| emberfiend | Yeah quite possibly, although as I recall that one was fairly straightforward (as Banks goes) | 19:31:24 |
| 3 Feb 2021 |
|  @undesisive:matrix.org joined the room. | 11:42:31 |
| @undesisive:matrix.org joined the room. | 12:24:43 |
| @undesisive:matrix.org left the room. | 12:24:53 |
|  @lamecarlate:tedomum.net joined the room. | 14:27:25 |
