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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3377 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 14, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm about halfway through Churchill's Savrola. It's basically a political conflict between authoritarian President Molara and democratic agitator Savrola, with a woman in the middle. It's actually engaging, though the dialogue can be quite stilted. The focus is on the game of ambition and the necessary qualities to win in it, and the characters seem divided on either side between the people who matter and the people who need a firm hand. Probably it is more fascinating than it otherwise would be because of who wrote it, but I think I would like it anyways.

Was it worth it? The struggle, the labour, the constant rush of affairs, the sacrifice of so many things that make life easy, or pleasant—for what? A people’s good! That, he could not disguise from himself, was rather the direction than the cause of his efforts. Ambition was the motive force, and he was powerless to resist it. He could appreciate the delights of an artist, a life devoted to the search for beauty, or of sport, the keenest pleasure that leaves no sting behind. To live in dreamy quiet and philosophic calm in some beautiful garden, far from the noise of men and with every diversion that art and intellect could suggest, was, he felt, a more agreeable picture. And yet he knew that he could not endure it. "Vehement, high, and daring" was his cast of mind. The life he lived was the only one he could ever live; he must go on to the end. The end comes often early to such men, whose spirits are so wrought that they know rest only in action, contentment in danger, and in confusion find their only peace.

About to finish Worth the Candle. It started off incredible, getting a bit lame by the end. Too much focus on narrative, and the relationships / characters are too cringey. It's a shame because it had a ton of potential but I'm still enjoying it.

Really? I kind of liked the cringe relationship drama. Er, that might be a little strong. I appreciated having it around. It avoids certain failure modes of self-published fantasy by flying really, really close to them.

I feel like the story would be weaker if it didn’t have Joon’s confused psychosexual problems. But then, I rather liked Evangelion.

Same here. Unfortunately, the latter part seems to be his intended focus. He could be a decent "straight" fantasy writer, but wants it to be a philosophical work that subverts expectstions, but he lacks the nuance for. I finished the book, but mentally checked out at the rape-icorn.

Yeah I stayed checked in a little longer, but not too much. You make a good diagnosis of his problems as an author I think.

I swear I answered this yesterday, but it appears my post never made it. Anyway, it's The Minority Council: Matthew Swift Book 4 by Kate Griffin. For those interested, I greatly enjoyed Cured and would recommend it to any fan.

Finished Ghost Story, the N-th Dresden Files book. I thought it was pretty fun. Harry fights monsters, solves crimes, does his usual stubborn white-knight shtick, all in a good way.

I read the first half of the series as a teenager, then the next few as used books, and got this from the library. It feels like the appropriate way to go for the rest; while I have little desire to own them, I can't say I'm not a little invested. From the outside, it's easier to grumble about the author's quirks, but while you're immersed, the predominant theme is "hell yeah, of course magic should work like that." Like, you want to be part of this setting, even though it objectively sucks. Fantasy in the pure sense.

Next up I guess I'm reading Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie. I've written about why the first book in that series was so good. Then I enjoyed the second without finding it particularly special. I'm hoping for a return to form.

Oh, and I guess I've got Battle Cry of Freedom too. It's getting into the early stages of the war now. Still horrifying/incredible. Still increasing my respect for Abe Lincoln.

Ghost Story is, thus far, my favorite Dresden Files novel. Together with Changes, they're a hell of a one-two punch!

Not to pooh-pooh, but I found the series took a dive around/shortly after Ghost Story, or it's possible I just aged out of the books. They're romantasy for lonely dudes (but still way better than the romantasy for women, as far as I can tell secondhand)

I did like the most recent one. It actually had a time frame longer than the weekend. There was a lot of narrative admin work that needed to be done, and I felt like it did it well.

Yeah same feel like it was a reasonable return to form and it'll be nice if he can keep to an annual cadence from here.

The Siege of Krishnapur. I couldn’t get through Blood Meridian because it used retarded, over the top violence in lieu of plot or developed characters, albeit the prose was sheer artistry on display to almost make it readable.

I've been reading the Hierarchy series by James Islington. The first book, The Will of the Many was great: full of flaws, but the things it does right it does so well that the problems basically fade away. The sequel, The Strength of the Few fumbles the ball hard, unfortunately, so much that I'm not sure how much interest I have in the rest of the series (next book scheduled to come out in 2027).

Did you read his Licanius series, and if so, what did you think? I bought the first one on a whim but haven't read it yet.

Nope. I've seen a lot of people say it's not as good as his Hierarchy series.

Not OP obviously.

It can be a bit rough and uneven, and it's going to look like the following won't happen at times: it absolutely nails the ending, and does some INCREDIBLE things with really intricate plotting.

It has some story elements that are really hard to handle in a smart and elegant way and it does not fail.

Some of the other bits are more mixed.

Starting Blood Meridian. Surprisingly readable given what I've heard, but comically over the top violence and McCarthy's disregard for useful grammar objects, especially quotation marks, grinds my gears just as much as it did when I read The Road for a class in undergrad. Otherwise listening to HP 3 in Italian and reading a light Spanish book about a love triangle between three roommates.

It might grow on you. The style does provide this sort of relentless momentum to some of the action set pieces. By the end I found the general misery and despair more of an impediment than the prose.

My own experience with McCarthy was brief and memorable, though not in a good way.
I made a point of finishing the first chapter of Blood Meridian, but I was nearly immediately overwhelmed with the urge to grab the pen, typewriter, keyboard or whatever it was he produced this with and whack him over the head with it.
Simply atrocious.

I have to keep reading unfortunately because it's for book club. Other people seem to be enjoying it, so will have to see what they say.

Feed it into Claude and tell it to add punctuation for you.

Give in to the temptation. Rewrite the entire book with proper punctuation.

Funny, I don't remember noticing the lack of quotes in The Road. But when I heard Sally Rooney omits them that was all the reason I needed not to check her out.

No quotes: 🤯

No quotes, Irish woman: 😡

Lmao fair. Maybe if I re-read The Road today I'd find this stylistic device more annoying than I did on my first read. As I recall it's not a particularly dialogue-heavy book which might also make it more forgiveable.

About two-thirds of the way through Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.

Ooh, I've thought about checking that one out, but I keep telling myself to read at least the really interesting parts of my backlog first.

Have you read the first two?

Aww hell, I was mixed up, the book I was thinking about was Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving a Relationship With a Narcissist--sorry about that! I'm actually not familiar with the Neapolitan series.

This weekend I read Colossus, of which the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project was a remarkably faithful adaptation, and which is hopefully not prescient, as well as The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul on a lighter note, my first outing with Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective.

I remember watching that movie with my father when I was young. One of those sort of cult classics that always stuck in my mind when the binary was being read out horizontally on the digital visor in the command center, and it was processing data humans couldn’t understand.

Finished with The Decipherment of Linear B. Very interesting to see the brass tacks of how ancient scripts get deciphered in cases without bilingual texts or even knowing what language it is.

Now on The End of Eternity. First 2/3 were entertaining enough but nothing especially amazing. I think it might be picking up though. Asimov continues to write like an autist; fortunately, that means he can write autists well.

HE MET THE girl in a corridor one day and stood aside, eyes averted, to let her pass.

But she remained standing, looking at him, until he had to look up and meet her eyes. She was all color and life and Harlan was conscious of a faint perfume about her.

She said, “You’re Technician Harlan, aren’t you?”

His impulse was to snub her, to force his way past, but, after all, he told himself, all this wasn’t her fault. Besides, to move past her now would mean touching her.

So he nodded briefly. “Yes.”

“I’m told you’re quite an expert on our Time.”

“I have been in it.”

“I would love to talk to you about it someday.” “I am busy. I wouldn’t have time.”

“But Mr. Harlan, surely you could find time someday.”

She smiled at him.

Harlan said in a desperate whisper, “Will you pass, please? Or will you stand aside to let me pass? Please!”

She moved by with a slow swing of her hips that brought blood tingling to his embarrassed cheeks.

He was angry at her for embarrassing him, angry at himself for being embarrassed, and angry, most of all, for some obscure reason, at Finge.

I'm a big Asimov fan, but that was one of his weakest. Hopefully if you're there it's just because you ran through all of his good novels first?

I've read a couple but nothing systematically. Which would you recommend?

The original "Foundation" trilogy is the place I'd start, if you're okay with the old-sci-fi "Sense of Wonder, Big Ideas, What's Characterization?" style. For the first whole book the plot jumps from generation to generation fast enough that when he does give you a fascinating character you have to resign yourself to soon saying goodbye and at best hearing about that character again later as a historical figure.

"The Caves of Steel" (followed by "The Naked Sun", "The Robots of Dawn", and "Robots and Empire") would be option B. Sci-fi/mystery crossovers, maybe not as good overall but not nearly as weak on character development.

There's a two-book prequel series to the Foundation trilogy, which was my favorite of all the fiction he's written, but which I wouldn't recommend reading until after the above 7 books.

I think that covers all the strong recommendations for novels.

His collaborations with Robert Silverberg were good, but they were all just fleshing out earlier novellas, and honestly you could just read the novellas instead to get 90% of the quality in 30% of the time.

He got started with short stories, and some of his best stuff is in them, but any particular anthology is a mix of quality, except that his last couple ("Gold" and "Magic") I found disappointing.

His "Empire" novels ("The Currents of Space", "The Stars, Like Dust", and "Pebble in the Sky"), weren't best-of-the-century things like the Foundation trilogy was, but I did like them better than The End of Eternity.

He had a couple kids' book series. I remember loving "Lucky Starr" and being disappointed by "Norby", but I read "Lucky Starr" in elementary school and I wouldn't dare guess how it would hold up to an adult. Perhaps Norby was just as good but I found it in middle school or high school and had aged out of the intended audience.

Edit: I almost forgot to mention "The Gods Themselves" - I wouldn't even put it above the "strong recommendations" line myself, but in some ways it was one of the most unique and interesting books of his I've read, and I've known other people to say it was his best, and it's perhaps a safer recommendation (stand-alone work, not "you should read these other seven books first!") than my own favorite.

I was always one of those guys who loved his non-fiction much more than his Sci-Fi. Asimov always stayed true to the reputation people often pinned to him as “the greatest explainer of the age,” and he was truly remarkable when it came to that. When I read the Foundation trilogy though, it just kept coming through to me, over and over and over and over and over again just how sterile his writing seemed to feel; and it wasn’t at all to my liking.

IMHO the Foundation trilogy gets much more humanized halfway through, and even for the first half "sterile" is an overstatement, but you're at least directionally correct, I must admit.

I'd agree his non-fiction was better than his fiction, it's just harder to recommend because there's so much to choose from! Hundreds of books instead of dozens, in so many fields that it's hard to say that a fan of one subject would equally appreciate the others. "Asimov's Guide to the Bible" was perhaps the most in-depth example I can think of to recommend, but by far my favorites were (the anthologies of) his pop-science essays.

Thanks, I'll add some of these to the list.

I remember loving Lucky Starr and being disappointed by Norby

I vaguely recall enjoying the Norby books, though I remember almost nothing about them except the weird telepathy punctuation (was it italics with guillemets?).

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