It can stay here and we can continue to talk in the other thread!
I remember enjoying InterstellarNet: Origins a few years ago, a story collection where extraterrestrial contact is through AI brokers who are licensed to exchange information. Space is too vast to travel, but even newer sentient races have some kind of info or unique tech worth trading. Stories are set up like small puzzles almost in the Asimovian “robot” mold.
There are later books in the series but IIRC at some point (3rd book?) the author introduces superluminal flight which kinds of ruins the premise. Anyway the first set of stories stands alone.
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I think as is typical of having read stories in multiple translations, I have my own private version of Borges which does not exist in any volume. I’m sure I’ve tried to source an exact quote before only to realize those words were an amalgamation of various versions I’ve read. Much like my experience with the Bible, I guess.
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Sorry for multiple posts, just revisiting this thread for the first time in awhile…
The Vorkosigan Saga has become a series I’m patiently reading through, saving each book for a pick-me-up when I really need it. It hasn’t failed yet. Brilliant pacing in just about every novel once you get to Miles.
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Spoiler alert 
One of my great joys is loading a bunch of books on my kindle, forgetting which ones are romance, and discovering during the readthrough…
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Just finished (in the last week):
This was quite good. I’m not sure it is actually “#2” as it is a pair of short novels, each about one of two twins. I haven’t read the other yet.
This was very good and a bit sad.
This was…long. It was good but it was…long.
“Just kill Caesar already, forchrisake.”
Reading right now (still):
and
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The Forever War.
I’ve seen a few things saying it’s relevant again, but it’s got some really gross sexism that does not play well today. I just about stopped reading because of it.
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I’m about halfway though this
It needs updating, as Rojava wasn’t a libertarian socialist region in 2010. Carne Ross hasn’t mentioned the Kurds so far in the book so I don’t think that he thought anything would happen there (to be fair, I doubt that most of the Kurds thought that things would change so quickly).
The parts where he talks about his work as a British diplomat are interesting, as it explains how he started off believing that the state was a force for good, then as time went on he realised the harm he caused in Kosovo and Iraq. He compares the situation to the Milgram experiment.
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I haven’t read this in a while; I don’t recall the sexism, but that’s just my lack of memory. Overall, Joe Haldeman is one of my favorite writers. My favorites are Camouflage, The Accidental Time Machine, the Worlds Trilogy, and The Coming.
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I like Haldeman as well. The Accidental Time Machine was cool. He does strike me as vaguely sexist though, but not that sexist compared to everything else that’s out there.
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Just kind of part of the era, I think. But the bit about female soldiers having to be “receptive and promiscuous by custom and by law” really squicked me out.
Also as I read further, the attitude toward homosexuality is weird, in an outdated sort of way. And the book is super depressing, too (though I kind of expected that). I’ll have to find something lighthearted and fun afterward.
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The main female character in The Accidental Time Machine was a bit antifeminist, but she was definitely a product of her environment.
The zero-g ejaculation scene in that book was also kinda squicky, and the lead-up to it was squicky in a completely different way.
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You two are much more perceptive than I am. My main complaint with Haldeman is that so many of his novels have a deus ex machina ending – e.g., aliens appear out of nowhere to bring the novel to a conclusion.
He is an interesting guy, though. We saw him do a reading at an sf convention, of a work that I guess was based on experiences in Viet Nam (like so much of his writing - The Forever War among them). It seemed that he was almost in tears. I gather he has suffered a lot with PTSD.
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Fiction: I just finished reading Stories of Your Life and Others, the short story collection by Ted Chiang (the one the film Arrival is based on).
It was excellent. I liked how many of the stories explored linguistics, and the use of language in the writing itself was wonderful – warm but in keeping with the topic at hand.
Non-fiction: I just started The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. He’s the one the concept of Norman Doors is named after:
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I liked the division by 0 story as well as the one about the tower of babel.
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I recommend his War Year, which is directly about his experiences in Vietnam.
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I just finished Cotton Comes to Harlem after abandoning it once months ago when I had too many things going bookwise. It was a fun hardboiled detective/crime romp.
I am now at the recommendation of @KeisterButton about 1/3 the way in to Meddling Kids. All I will say is I am glad I didn’t read the dust jacket as it would have ruined ‘oh good this is where we are going’ I had at the end of the first chapter.
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Recently completed, via Kindle/library loan:
It was okay, but then, I wasn’t blown away by the first two books in the trilogy either. It’s more dry and literary than most of the vampire novels I read, and the pacing is fairly slow. But I saw my library had it available and I figured, why not finish the series?
This one was more fun:
An oddball, underachieving thirty-year-old author finds himself in the middle of a paranormal feud when he wakes up to find the devil in his living room, asking him for a favor. It’s not a deep read, just fluffy fun, but I enjoyed it. I did have a quibble with a particular left-turn-at-Albequerque twist midway through, as I don’t think it was really set up that well beforehand… yet overall the twists and turns add up to a solid plot, especially for an author’s first novel.
What’s up next? I picked up The Handmaid’s Tale on a $3 sale, but I’m not really sure I’m up to reading something that dark right now. My hold on Ready Player One just came up, so I’ll need to start that soon, I’ve only got it for three weeks.
(And I seriously wish the Detroit library system had more digital books available. I’ve got titles on my Recommended list for more than a year now… but maybe that means I just need to expand my horizons. And given how many free books I’ve accumulated on my Kindle-- several thousand-- I’ve got plenty to catch up on. 
But I’m a greedy reader, I always want more… 
)
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I’m reading the new Anne Leckie and Martin Weir’s new novel dropped on my kindle two hours ago.
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