Books!

[BRIK]

Finally bought a subscription to Retro Gamer magazine. Does that count?
I was sick of paying $20 per issue from the local rip-off fishrag merchant.

[Pulsar_t]

[dsheinem]

I just read this book in three sittings in less than a day, so I guess I must have liked it.



It starts stronger than it finishes, but the pacing is ace.

[noiseredux]

I just read this book in three sittings in less than a day, so I guess I must have liked it.



It starts stronger than it finishes, but the pacing is ace.

ah shit, I had this marked as my 'beach read' for the year. Due to unseasonably cold Summer, I only read a few chapters. Left off right after the uh... Joust part when he meets the girl?

[Pulsar_t]

I put the audible on my tablet, then woke up a while later to the narrator name-dropping and geek references and it seemed just for the hell of it. Maybe I got dismayed by that out of context, but it seems to be trying to impress a certain narrow demographic.

[dsheinem]

I put the audible on my tablet, then woke up a while later to the narrator name-dropping and geek references and it seemed just for the hell of it. Maybe I got dismayed by that out of context, but it seems to be trying to impress a certain narrow demographic.

The characters are involved in a contest throughout the book where they have to know and thus discuss a lot of trivia about the late 70s-early 90s, so that's why it is there. I didn't think it seemed to be too much at all, given the reasonable rationale.

[samsonlonghair]

I read my lady a chapter from a book every night. It's bonding time. Earlier this year, we read Huckleberry Finn. Then we went on a Jules Vern Kick and read Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Now we're reading an old translation of Hunchback of Notre Dame. I get the feeling this one was translated for children, but that doesn't bother me much. It's just bed time reading after all.

My personal bookshelf is dominated by non-fiction books. I read lot's of topical books on interests like photography, cycling, dog training, fixing stuff, and plant identification. My pet peeve is when someone tells me that I don't read. I do read; I just don't read many novels.

I don't read many narratives these days, but I took some time earlier this year to read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I though that I knew what slavery was from history class, but I was wrong. Reading a first hand account from an escaped slave has taught me things I never knew. It wasn't just a matter of physical bondage; the masters deprived the slaves of any sense of self.

This next part gets a little depressing:

Fredrick's father was his master. His own father whipped him, forced him to work the fields, and valued him like livestock. Frederick speculates that most slaves in his won time (the 1830s) were not pure African, but partly descended from white masters.

Frederick was never allowed to know his own mother. This was an intentional tool of the institution of slavery to break any kind of generations or traditions. Frederick was instead raised by a woman he called his grandmother, though it's not clear if they have any biological relation or not. After grandmother was too old to be of any further use she was abandoned in the woods.

Frederick was not allowed to know his own birth date or age. He could speculate his age within a year or two, but never could know for certain. This is another tool to rob a slave of his sense of self.

If a slave expressed any unhappiness, he was whipped. He had to claim that he loved being a slave to avoid physical punishment.

Frederick was not allowed to learn to read or write, because it would make him an "unfit" slave. This was the turning point in his life when he decided he needed to learn to read. When he first read the word "abolition" in a Maryland newspaper, he assumed that it was a bad word based on context.

Speaking of Maryland, many northern states (by which I mean states that would later not secede into the confederacy) still allowed legal slavery in the 1830s. This includes Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. I had always assumed that these states had staunchly opposed slavery for many generations before the civil war; I was wrong.

Frederick never had a real last name. During his escape, he invented a number of fake last names, but always kept the first name "Frederick" because this was the only sense of self he had.

Frederick describes in great detail the physical torment and the pain of starvation, but the loss of identity was what most stuck with me after I finished the book.

[Pulsar_t]

I put the audible on my tablet, then woke up a while later to the narrator name-dropping and geek references and it seemed just for the hell of it. Maybe I got dismayed by that out of context, but it seems to be trying to impress a certain narrow demographic.

The characters are involved in a contest throughout the book where they have to know and thus discuss a lot of trivia about the late 70s-early 90s, so that's why it is there. I didn't think it seemed to be too much at all, given the reasonable rationale.

I see. Thanks for the clarification, whenever I opt for audible editions I tend to snooze sooner than reading the book proper

[Pulsar_t]

How can you judge a book unless you're deeply involved in a particular field? At any rate this looks like an interesting read. I always suspected some leader personalities have serious mental conditions that differentiate them from the rest of us.

[Pulsar_t]

A waste of time for a "hard scifi" fan like me. Felt like reading a Twilight in space, yech. The reviews didn't reflect this of course When a story that can be told in a novella form takes so much space, something silly is used as filler material.