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Best thing you've read in 2015

Author
Annemariela Antonela
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2015-12-30 02:55:17 UTC
Tell me your favorite thing you've read in the past year. Audiobooks count!

I think mine would have to be Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. Fairly hard SF space opera stuff, for which I am a big sucker.

It's a shame the trilogy never gets better than this first book-- the second is alright, but the third is just awful.

For non-fiction, I enjoyed The Mystery of Consciousness by John Searle. It is a collection of essays, or rather, rebuttals to other works, comprising several disparate but fascinating views on neuroscience, consciousness, and AI. It is like taking a short survey class on the topic.

“Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.”

― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

Khergit Deserters
Crom's Angels
#2 - 2016-01-02 04:31:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Khergit Deserters
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant Strange and beautiful, the way only a mad hatter Brit could do it. Still think about it once in a while.
-England in the mud time of Romanized Britons vs. Saxons
-Muddy Arthur
-Muddy energies manipulator druid shaman Merlin
-Heroics
-Racial hatreds
-Depressing English weather
-Dampness and cold
-Mr. Death in various guises
-Geriatric marriage romance
-You figure it out ending
-omg

So good, but I can't be responsible for recommending it. to anyone. Still, so good, read if you feel like it.
Edward Deegan
#3 - 2016-01-02 14:26:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Edward Deegan
There is always time for philosophers.

Epictetus: ENCHIRIDION

Non-fiction.

Universal Principles of Design
Turns out there are 125 principles. Those authors.

Fiction

Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
Found it in a Thrift store for a buck & a half.


Support your local public library. Use it.

EVE is easy.

Buzz Orti
State War Academy
Caldari State
#4 - 2016-01-03 00:48:09 UTC
I didn't read anything new because I still work on my past readings.
I plan to get more books related in the source, recommended readings sections to further complete my work.

Other than that I got about 3 or 4 orders to write books, most financial.

I also plan to update a list of EVE online posts, and save them, since I never know what will happen to them.
I learned from experience not to trust others in matters of IP.
Best way to get backstabbed for multiple multipliers.

Builds ship in empty Quafe bottle.

Maziacs
Doomheim
#5 - 2016-01-03 00:56:45 UTC
Get Chasm City, also by Reynolds. Best one of the bunch.
Buzz Orti
State War Academy
Caldari State
#6 - 2016-01-03 01:04:40 UTC
I mostly read news, job offers, union systems, tech news, and parts of books...

Builds ship in empty Quafe bottle.

Annemariela Antonela
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2016-01-03 01:19:24 UTC
Maziacs wrote:
Get Chasm City, also by Reynolds. Best one of the bunch.


Chasm City was fun. It's the only standalone I've read of his in that universe.

I have to say, I was so turned off by Absolution Gap, it's going to be hard to pick up another book of his.

“Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.”

― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

Maziacs
Doomheim
#8 - 2016-01-03 12:18:24 UTC
Another good standalone is The Prefect.

Pushing Ice is great (not in Revelation Space Universe)
Azda Ja
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2016-01-03 18:20:22 UTC
I find Alistair Reynolds is better with short stories, though to be fair the only full novel of his I read was Pushing Ice. I enjoyed it, but some of the character interactions grew tiresome after a while. I really love his collection of shorts "Galactic North" however.

Grrr.

Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#10 - 2016-01-03 19:02:37 UTC
Guns,Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies

or

Catch 22 (technically i re-read this but never not Joseph Heller)
Khergit Deserters
Crom's Angels
#11 - 2016-01-05 22:20:01 UTC
Ralph King-Griffin wrote:
Guns,Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies

or

Catch 22 (technically i re-read this but never not Joseph Heller)

Ralph, I was just thinking of mentioning Guns, Germs and Steel. A good one. Also Jerusalem: The Biography.

For some SF wicked dry humor fun, The Skinner. Not a new book, but I read it in 2015.
Robert Sawyer
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#12 - 2016-01-06 00:14:03 UTC
George Orwell, 1984.
I'll cover my impressions in a different post.

"And when, at last, the moment is yours, that agony will become your greatest triumph."

Annemariela Antonela
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#13 - 2016-01-06 00:16:25 UTC
Robert Sawyer wrote:
George Orwell, 1984.
I'll cover my impressions in a different post.


Ooh, ouch, I got the Folio edition of 1984 for Christmas-- 2014.

I have no excuses not to read it again.

“Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.”

― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

Buzz Orti
State War Academy
Caldari State
#14 - 2016-01-06 01:22:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Buzz Orti
I got a new Tom Clancy book called :

Tom Clancy under fire / 37131151368677

(C) 2015



http://www.amazon.com/Under-Fire-Jack-Ryan-Novel/dp/039917575X

Builds ship in empty Quafe bottle.

Vortexo VonBrenner
Doomheim
#15 - 2016-01-06 07:21:29 UTC
The Black Death by Philip Ziegler. Out of publication, but a 2015 read for me. It's a really well-researched and brilliantly written history of the Bubonic Plague in Europe. Not dry at all. Not all that long, but very rich and "meaty". Might be one of the best books I've ever read, actually. I probably shouldn't have been reading it while waiting at the doctor's office, though. Oops...



Jacques d'Orleans
#16 - 2016-01-08 13:36:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Jacques d'Orleans
I did read Clear the Bridge!: The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang written by Richard O'Kane (MoH) former CO of USS Tang in WW2.

It's the thrilling story of USS Tang a Balao claas Fleet Type submarine from the US Navy and her war patrols against the Imperial Japanese Navy and merchant navy. Until being sunk by the IJN USS Tang was the second most sucessfull USN Sub in the PTO totalling almost 100.000 tons sunken enemy ship tonnage.

Everybody knows battles like Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa but the men of the USN's silent service are not well known or almost forgotten today.
Today names like USS Tang, USS Wahoo or USS Barb and Eugene Fluckey and so on are only known to Naval history interested people, if you read that book, this might be change.
Khergit Deserters
Crom's Angels
#17 - 2016-01-09 16:15:18 UTC
Jacques d'Orleans wrote:
I did read Clear the Bridge!: The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang written by Richard O'Kane (MoH) former CO of USS Tang in WW2.

It's the thrilling story of USS Tang a Balao claas Fleet Type submarine from the US Navy and her war patrols against the Imperial Japanese Navy and merchant navy. Until being sunk by the IJN USS Tang was the second most sucessfull USN Sub in the PTO totalling almost 100.000 tons sunken enemy ship tonnage.

Everybody knows battles like Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa but the men of the USN's silent service are not well known or almost forgotten today.
Today names like USS Tang, USS Wahoo or USS Barb and Eugene Fluckey and so on are only known to Naval history interested people, if you read that book, this might be change.

That's an excellent one! I never knew WWII submarine warfare was so brainy. It's amazing what they managed, with little intel and just mechanical targeting tech.

In 2015 I reread the entire Lancer/Ace editions of the Robert E. Howard Conan stories. How did some guy in a little dustbowl town in Texas in the early 1930s dream up that stuff? All amazing stuff, but Book 5, Conan the Adventurer was especially good. Crom!
Vortexo VonBrenner
Doomheim
#18 - 2016-01-09 19:29:30 UTC
Wahoo? That's a great name for eve ship! :)