Just a Lifetime

Are you sure about that first part? The second part sounds very much in line with the cover blurb for Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie (@LordGrimdark), which Ammanas mentioned. It's another one that I own but haven't yet read, unfortunately. I'll put that cover blurb a spoiler block just so it doesn't dominate the post: I wish I could tell you more about Who Fears Death. I am fully confident that its (metaphorical) sunshine is in very short supply. I did a quick Google search for Onyesonwu villain to see if I could glean any not-too-spoilery information... and ended up spoiling myself. La vie. But it looks like the main character (Onyesonwu) most definitely ends up an anti-hero at the very least (so the impression I shared earlier seems to be wrong). The less-spoilery stuff in the block below may interest you: PS. It might be worth mentioning that Best Served Cold is set in the same world as Abercrombie's earlier First Law trilogy. Although it seems to be accessible on its own, some reviews I checked suggest that this might make it harder to get a handle on the worldbuilding.

I remember feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the ending of Otherland, but despite that I have fond memories of the quartet as a whole (I do like me some worldbuilding), even after more than 17 years.

Hi mr.bug. What brings you here?

Nope! I've only ever had two layovers in the Honolulu airport. I was just wondering whether the topic title was Significant. I had to look up what Wattpad is. Are you a storyteller? If so (or maybe even if not) the Creator's Corner, Writing Excuses and Reading Excuses sub-forums might be worth checking out if you haven't done so already. They should also have a lower (though probably still non-zero) number of spoilers. (Upon reflection, the Writing Excuses podcast itself is probably more interesting than the sub-forum.)

There are occasionally folks who are eager to increase their post count, and may be tempted to split up a single post into a series of smaller posts in order to do so. Taken too far, this sort of superfluous posting can become a form of spamming. Rather than rely on subjective feelings about how far is too far, it's best just to discourage double-posting in general. You can read more here. Anyway, this is just an FYI for you, and shouldn't distract us from welcoming you to the Shard! Have an upvote and a question: Are you in/from Hawaii, or do you just enjoy using the language?

This fellow suggested Guards! Guards! as a good starting point for folks new to Pratchett, though when I took that advice it didn't really work for me.

Another option that isn't a perfect match but might be worth considering is Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. I own it but haven't yet read it, so there's not too much I can say other than that the things I heard about it interested me. I'm told it's quite dark, though I don't have the impression the (female) protagonist is a villain or anti-hero. The setting is a post-apocalyptic Africa, apparently with some technology lingering but not understood, so not exactly 'Middle Ages-esque'.

Fun fact: In UK English both the -ize and -ise forms (of these and many other words) are in common use and "neither is 'more right' than the other". I'm quoting from this OED blog post, which sets out a couple of reasons why the OED prefers the -ize form: It historically predates the -ise form and it reflects the (Greek) etymology of these words. Wikipedia quotes a third reason that I no longer see on the OED site, namely that -ize better reflects the pronunciation of these words in most dialects. On StackExchange I've seen claims that the push for -ise forms in the UK picked up post-WWII, perhaps to promote a sense a national identity distinct from the US. (This seems quite speculative, but if true would form an ironic counterpoint to one of the motivations for the post-revolution US spelling reforms pushed by Webster et al.) Overall the -ize forms tend to be used more in formal and technical writing in the UK, while the -ise forms tend to be used more in tabloid and other pop writing.

I'm looking forward to two new albums coming out on Friday, from rather different bands. 1) Emily Davis and the Murder Police. That's not my favorite name for a band (it's apparently inspired by a stand-up comic's routine), but their first album Same Old World might be my favorite of 2018. I got an advance digital copy as thanks for contributing to the Kickstarter fundraiser the band ran in order to produce the album, and I've been playing it a lot. To be honest I wasn't expecting all that much from a kickstarted album (I just contributed to support the creator of the fun punk song acoustic covers I sometimes listen to), so I'm very pleasantly surprised. They describe themselves as "alternative rock splashed with folk & punk", which is better than any other description I've been able to think of. A video for the first track came out a few days ago. 2) Ska-P (pronounced, I believe, kinda like 'escapade' without the 'd'). My favorite Spanish ska punk band seems to be establishing a pattern of a new album every five years or so (2002, 2008, 2013, 2018), with an indefinite hiatus every ten (2005, 2014). I'm especially excited because their 2013 album 99% passed me by. (For some reason only a couple of tracks from that album are on Spotify, and I only see the physical CD on Amazon. I'm sure it's on The Pirate Bay or even just Youtube, but those aren't places I go to keep an eye out for new releases.) While I don't yet have a copy of the new album Game Over, I've been listening to the lead single, Jaque al Rey (which I would translate as "put the king in check"). Even though the video at the end of that link is more polished than I'm used to for Ska-P, and the gang is noticeably grayer than back in '02, the song itself still carries a fun kick. I'm hoping the rest of the album will measure up.

Wow! I was not expecting anybody to recognize that knot. And I can take a break from flogging Ben Aaronovitch. Well, you win the internet for the day. Da iawn ti! Have fun with Warbreaker. It must be interesting to read having already seen where some of its characters are heading.

Groovy. I was not anticipating the G-word in relation to Detroit, and I won't insist on a debate about it in this thread. The Black Prism is now on my Kindle. By coincidence I'm between books at the moment and may start reading it during some long train rides over the next couple of weeks (though I should probably spend those writing rather than reading).

Welcome to the Shard, and thanks for the interesting information. I'm actually surprised there are not yet any academic studies of fan quizzes, since such quizzes have been around for a while. I remember encountering them when I was an undergrad, more than 15 years ago. (I'm another academic, although in a STEM field; I always recommend The Professor Is In to current and future PhD students, especially those in the social sciences and humanities.) It's also nice to see someone from the 313. People tell me that things have been improving in Detroit since I left the area in '02. Would you agree? Or, if you might prefer a more light-hearted question: I have not yet read anything by Brent Weeks. Do you have any recommendations for a good place to start?

Welcome to the Shard! We're glad to have you. I'm curious: What sort of post-production are you involved in?

Croeso! I hope you enjoy yourself here. Which Brandon Sanderson book do you plan to read next?

I don't think I've encountered a book of that sort, but this is not really my genre. By coincidence, however, I'm currently reading How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use. It's not bad, though there doesn't seem to be all that much to it. I heard about it through this Youtube video.

Welcome to the shard! I always recommend Warbreaker before Stormlight Archive (or at least before Words of Radiance) due to certain crossover characters. How are you liking Wax & Wayne compared to the original Mistborn cast and setting?

Mmm, Silmarillion. What's your favorite chapter in The Silmarillion?

Hello and welcome! Have an upvote and some links to threads dedicated to book recommendations and related discussions: What Are You Reading, Part 2 Supernatural Books? Having Fantasy withdrawal symptoms The best author Please recommend me fantasy novels with Female protagonist as main character

Adjectives that come to mind include simple, stable and straightforward. That's pretty much what I'm looking for these days when I don't have the time or inclination (or spare laptop) to experiment, fiddle around, break things, fix them, and so on. That said, so long as you're comfortable on the command line, the simplicity also provides a lot of flexibility for experimentation. So, for example, maybe twelve years ago I had some fun building custom kernels rather than just using the defaults, and keeping up with the development ('-current') version. (I'm back to the stable release and all its defaults now.) Debian may surpass Slackware and Ubuntu in terms of software freedom, though I see that all three are not endorsed by the FSF. I had a friend who advocated gNewSense for a fully free distro. Some things that might be useful if you want to try out Slackware are AlienBOB's multilib setup, Slackbuilds.org, and the slackware-security mailing list. slackpkg is a useful little utility in the default installation, which (in addition to applying security updates in a matter of seconds) can be used for a full system upgrade in four commands. I hear that it works similarly to Debian's apt-get. This looks like a promising Live Edition (also by AlienBOB) if you want to try things out without a full install.

But I suspect the name just grew out of Kvothe's... undisguised dislike of poetry. So... questions... um... Read any good books lately?

Dark Run by Mike Brooks ("that scifi author with the mohawk") was just the sort of change of pace I was looking for after a lot of N. K. Jemisin. There was a definite Firefly vibe, though not as much as I was expecting based on this review that brought it to my attention. I have a long flight over the weekend, for which I'll move on to the next book in this series (Dark Sky). Even though I was able to turn off my internal line editor for most of Brooks's first book, I'm interested to see if his prose gets any tighter in the second.

I took a few days off while I was back in the US this week, during which I confirmed that New Model Army remains my favorite band. In particular, I finally had a chance to read along with the lyrics for their latest (2016) album, Winter. NMA's lyrics are one of my favorite aspects of their work, and now I'm resisting the urge to quote an excessive amount of them in an excessive number of places. PS. My current profile pic is the celtic knot featured on the cover of NMA's 1989 album Thunder and Consolation.

Are you a poet-killer, Caesura?