Finally got around to Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, which is sort of a social history of modern (2010ish) Moscow. It’s a little Jon Ronsonish, but it’s also horrifying. EST cults, rampant corruption, actual reality tv programs made by gangsters who won’t fake stunt work. Oh gods, the corruption.
In light of fake news and media manipulation, it makes so much sense.
Finished Un Lun Dun. It’s my favorite Mieville novel by far. I’m actually reminded of Kingdom of Loathing, and I mean that as a compliment. 
Not sure what I’m going to start on next…
“At Wit’s End” by Erma Bombeck. After that…maybe I’ll read some Studs Terkel.
I’m actually trying to write a novella-sort-of-thing myself, but I’m STUCK.
Have someone burst through the door with a gun!
Will being forced to finish the novella at gun point really give the best result?
Think of the ending
“Reader, I shot him”
Something about his writing style does not sync with me. I like his novels, but I’m never driven to finish them.
Maybe I’ll pick up Un Lun Dun and see if “2017 Me” might enjoy him more that “2013 and earlier Me.”
I couldn’t finish one of his novels, but the rest I got through, even if it required some eye-rolling. I actually enjoyed Un Lun Dun thoroughly though.
No, I just have to decide whether it’s a lady friend or her beau that introduces one of my characters to her avocation.
How much difference will it make?
I don’t mean that snarkily, I am wondering if you can’t just placeholder that section, keep going then come back when you decide. Or write it both ways and see which you like (a good writer’s exercise, regardless).
Another plot movement trick I find works: deprive a character of something. Even something small like the last danish to go with their coffee. Or just spill their coffee. Amazing how well a small thing like that can spur action without jumping out like Deus ex machina.
A lot. Trust me. It’s pivotal. It’s an elderly woman dictating her memoirs of her avocation to someone who answered an ad in a local paper; she wants a clean slate before she dies.
I seem to be getting book recommendations from year-old Adam Savage podcasts. (Why I’m doing this is a story for which the world is not yet prepared.) I finished Seveneves, which I enjoyed without having the same intense emotional reaction he and his buddies felt; now reading The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first in a trilogy. It’s a cracker, so far: starts out as a very weird, all-but mystical scientific problem, which is evidently going to change everything once the characters work out what’s actually going on.
I never really decided whether or not I liked The Three-Body Problem. It was definitely imaginative and different, though.
I found the dark forest took a little while to get going but when it did…
Anyone here read Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor? It’s a short story collection, all SF with a First Nations slant. After a rather long wait at the public library, I finally got a reading copy.
It’s fun – SF that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and focuses on the concept, not pretty writing. So far I’ve only read the foreword and the first story, but I think I’m going to enjoy the rest.
Well I just got a free sample off amazon so lets have a look.
Bugs discover physics through math and observation?
Wait until you read the the next three (two) books that are its sequels… The Apocalypse Madonna goes to shore.