[Tiste Simeon]

I did suspect that might be the case! I'm looking forward to it anyway.

[Macros]

I full6 expect you to receive a bizarre list of requests from broken bindings that compells you to go to there and update some of the signatures.
Its what Jorg would have wanted

[Mark Lawrence]

Macros, on 12 March 2025 - 03:02 PM, said:

I full6 expect you to receive a bizarre list of requests from broken bindings that compells you to go to there and update some of the signatures.
Its what Jorg would have wanted

I mean - if you really want a signed and dedicated copy sent to you today (UK edition) or in the near future (US edition) then you just need to jump on my patreon at level 4+ for a month. Just sayin'.

[Abyss]

champ, on 06 March 2025 - 06:10 PM, said:

...Broken Binding really do throw out some beautiful books, I have The Broken Empire series in special editions from there. Just resisted buying into the Hyperion series that looked awesome.

i was very close to going for Hyperion. Fiscal responsibility and future Malazan books prevailed. If a full set of Mark's Library shows up after the series is completed i'll have to weigh priorities again.

[Mark Lawrence]

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 01:55 PM, said:

champ, on 06 March 2025 - 06:10 PM, said:

...Broken Binding really do throw out some beautiful books, I have The Broken Empire series in special editions from there. Just resisted buying into the Hyperion series that looked awesome.

i was very close to going for Hyperion. Fiscal responsibility and future Malazan books prevailed. If a full set of Mark's Library shows up after the series is completed i'll have to weigh priorities again.

Fancy editions seem to be a big money spinner these days.

If I ever get the chance to self-publish, I'll be diving straight into a kickstarter fancy edition push.

[champ]

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 01:55 PM, said:

champ, on 06 March 2025 - 06:10 PM, said:

...Broken Binding really do throw out some beautiful books, I have The Broken Empire series in special editions from there. Just resisted buying into the Hyperion series that looked awesome.

i was very close to going for Hyperion. Fiscal responsibility and future Malazan books prevailed. If a full set of Mark's Library shows up after the series is completed i'll have to weigh priorities again.

Aye, similar thinking too with regards to Hyperion. I am constantly checking for Malazan books 4-6 news. Did you see the Andy Weir set on Broken Binding? I was gutted to miss out on that, didn't even realise it was up for sale, they looked stunning.

Mark Lawrence, on 13 March 2025 - 05:31 PM, said:

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 01:55 PM, said:

champ, on 06 March 2025 - 06:10 PM, said:

...Broken Binding really do throw out some beautiful books, I have The Broken Empire series in special editions from there. Just resisted buying into the Hyperion series that looked awesome.

i was very close to going for Hyperion. Fiscal responsibility and future Malazan books prevailed. If a full set of Mark's Library shows up after the series is completed i'll have to weigh priorities again.

Fancy editions seem to be a big money spinner these days.

If I ever get the chance to self-publish, I'll be diving straight into a kickstarter fancy edition push.

Doesn't matter what it is... sign me up! It was Grim Oak Press Red Queen's War edition that got me into looking out for fancy books. If Broken Binding do Red Queen's War I'm not sure I'll be able to hold out.

This post has been edited by champ: 13 March 2025 - 07:03 PM

[Abyss]

Mark Lawrence, on 13 March 2025 - 05:31 PM, said:

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 01:55 PM, said:

champ, on 06 March 2025 - 06:10 PM, said:

...Broken Binding really do throw out some beautiful books, I have The Broken Empire series in special editions from there. Just resisted buying into the Hyperion series that looked awesome.

i was very close to going for Hyperion. Fiscal responsibility and future Malazan books prevailed. If a full set of Mark's Library shows up after the series is completed i'll have to weigh priorities again.

Fancy editions seem to be a big money spinner these days.

If I ever get the chance to self-publish, I'll be diving straight into a kickstarter fancy edition push.

And money and life permitting i'd be there for it. Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

[Abyss]

champ, on 13 March 2025 - 07:01 PM, said:

... If Broken Binding do Red Queen's War I'm not sure I'll be able to hold out.

Same same, easy.

[champ]

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

This post has been edited by champ: 13 March 2025 - 10:23 PM

[Mark Lawrence]

 champ, on 13 March 2025 - 09:24 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

I like the audiobook money, but as a format it has never worked for me. If I read a great line or there's an very emotional or impactful section, I like to change pace or go back, or take a moment, and the audio just rolls on. Plus, my mind wanders and I find I've not registered anything for 5 minutes while the narrator chugged along.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Mark Lawrence, on 14 March 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

champ, on 13 March 2025 - 09:24 PM, said:

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

I like the audiobook money, but as a format it has never worked for me. If I read a great line or there's an very emotional or impactful section, I like to change pace or go back, or take a moment, and the audio just rolls on. Plus, my mind wanders and I find I've not registered anything for 5 minutes while the narrator chugged along.

Audible has a "go back 30 seconds" button that I use frequently, particularly to write down quotes (sometimes I write down dozens---of course it's helpful when the audiobook comes with an ebook, especially if you want to get the intended spellings and punctuations right) or if my mind has wandered without sufficient conscious attention to the words. (It can be like a form of mindfulness meditation, noticing your mind has wandered so distractingly that you've lost track of the narrative, and bringing it back into focus. Though many audiobook performers perform so slowly that I can almost let my mind wander (consciously substantially) between words... certainly between meaningful chunks of phrases.)

[Abyss]

Mark Lawrence, on 14 March 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

champ, on 13 March 2025 - 09:24 PM, said:

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

I like the audiobook money, but as a format it has never worked for me. If I read a great line or there's an very emotional or impactful section, I like to change pace or go back, or take a moment, and the audio just rolls on. Plus, my mind wanders and I find I've not registered anything for 5 minutes while the narrator chugged along.

Irony, your earbook narrators have been top notch

I was in a space where the only time i had for reading was earbook while doing other things, then it became a preferred medium. That said i do relisten to chapters fairly often, and if i am truly loving a complex book i'll double up on ebook + earbook, that's typical for Malazan, your Red Queen's War trilo, a few others.

[QuickTidal]

Mark Lawrence, on 14 March 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

champ, on 13 March 2025 - 09:24 PM, said:

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

I like the audiobook money, but as a format it has never worked for me. If I read a great line or there's an very emotional or impactful section, I like to change pace or go back, or take a moment, and the audio just rolls on. Plus, my mind wanders and I find I've not registered anything for 5 minutes while the narrator chugged along.

I'm the same, and I've tried SO many audiobooks, different narrators, different types of books, ect. and the main through line is that I drift off as I listen and then I'm lost and have to back up....backing up to re-read things is SO much easier than trying to rewind audio to the place I missed the thing....I want so much to like Audiobooks....but I can't no matter how many times I've tried.

--------

Personal sidebar:


It's also annoying when one accent given to a character is off and that can irritate.

For example, in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin series Stephen Maturin is Irish, but by way of a youth in Catalonia Spain and young a adulthood amongst the English...which WOULD have affected his accent, so I expect he'd sound something like a genteel English accent with turns of phrase popping out with Irish lilts....but Patrick Tull (who is the most well-known narrator of the audiobooks of the series) makes him distinctly Irish as if he'd lived in southern Ireland all his life which just sounds so off to me...while others like Simon Vance and Rice Jerrom kind of try to make him more like what his upbringing would actually produce.

And I feel like O'Brian actually would agree with me as his text leans that way.

In THE NUTMEG OF CONSELATION a character named Sowerby bashes Ireland, Irish people, and -- perhaps worst of all (for Stephen anyways) -- Irish flora and fauna before learning Stephen is Irish: "Mr Sowerby had only to say that he meant no national reflexion, was unaware that the gentleman came from Ireland,"....which would not be the case if Stephen had a discernible Irish accent...


But yeah, stuff like that REALLY grinds at me when I try to listen to even books I love (The O'Brian books are the closest I've come to being able to enjoy audiobooks, but that accent drives me mental and Tull's audios are the most prolific ones out there)

[champ]

 QuickTidal, on 14 March 2025 - 03:43 PM, said:

 Mark Lawrence, on 14 March 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

 champ, on 13 March 2025 - 09:24 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

I like the audiobook money, but as a format it has never worked for me. If I read a great line or there's an very emotional or impactful section, I like to change pace or go back, or take a moment, and the audio just rolls on. Plus, my mind wanders and I find I've not registered anything for 5 minutes while the narrator chugged along.

I'm the same, and I've tried SO many audiobooks, different narrators, different types of books, ect. and the main through line is that I drift off as I listen and then I'm lost and have to back up....backing up to re-read things is SO much easier than trying to rewind audio to the place I missed the thing....I want so much to like Audiobooks....but I can't no matter how many times I've tried.

It's the reason I will only do earbook if I have read the book previously. I get distracted then wonder what on earth has happened in the book for the last however long.

Plus complex stories and especially stories with familiar sounding names become hard to keep track of.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Abyss, on 14 March 2025 - 03:25 PM, said:

Mark Lawrence, on 14 March 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

champ, on 13 March 2025 - 09:24 PM, said:

Abyss, on 13 March 2025 - 07:39 PM, said:

Just my $0.02, but the majority of books i buy now are earbook or ebook, i reserve 'dead tree' for the very special/limited/personal/personalized and I'm willing to spend a bit where i can.

This is where I am at too... once over I remember thinking that I'll never convert to earbook or ebook but convenience / house space required took over. I more do earbook for books that I have read before though.

I'd rather pay for a special edition book of my favourite authors than get a standard paperback/hardback nowadays so sometimes that means waiting for the right edition and having it for looks rather than reading.

I like the audiobook money, but as a format it has never worked for me. If I read a great line or there's an very emotional or impactful section, I like to change pace or go back, or take a moment, and the audio just rolls on. Plus, my mind wanders and I find I've not registered anything for 5 minutes while the narrator chugged along.

Irony, your earbook narrators have been top notch

I was in a space where the only time i had for reading was earbook while doing other things, then it became a preferred medium. That said i do relisten to chapters fairly often, and if i am truly loving a complex book i'll double up on ebook + earbook, that's typical for Malazan, your Red Queen's War trilo, a few others.

The performer for The Red Queen's War did a particularly good job---especially at playing the characters of the first-person narrator and Snorri while also bringing out the book's humorous treatment of them (without going too far into pure parody)---and the rest iirc were good too.

Though I'd imagine many authors, perhaps including ML, might have mixed feelings about any particular actor's renditions, particularly the voices and deliveries... perhaps before too long the other ML (machine learning) will advance to the point where authors can quickly navigate through an n-dimensional space of possible voices and deliveries, and machine learning can learn from their past preferences to accelerate the process for their review.

[worry]

I likewise struggle with audiobooks for fiction, but I've found them a pretty great way to do non-fiction. When it comes to like memoirs or essay collections, it's often the author doing the audiobook too. It's not particularly different than listening to a podcast.

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 14 March 2025 - 03:57 PM, said:

I likewise struggle with audiobooks for fiction, but I've found them a pretty great way to do non-fiction. When it comes to like memoirs or essay collections, it's often the author doing the audiobook too. It's not particularly different than listening to a podcast.

This is a good point. I did get through one entire audiobook with little to no struggle and it was the History Of Magic book narrated by Natalie Dormer. I found it was a lot easier to consume since it's non-fiction and parcelled out in sections with clear topics and agendas.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 14 March 2025 - 03:43 PM, said:

...
It's also annoying when one accent given to a character is off and that can irritate.
...

You're not wrong.. i was struggling w the narration of Hearn's IRON DRUID series to begin with, and their 'dog accent' was awful, but then they systematically did a series of the absolute worse stereotypical borderline offensive accents one after the other and i DNF'd hard.

champ, on 14 March 2025 - 03:46 PM, said:

...
Plus complex stories and especially stories with familiar sounding names become hard to keep track of.

Generally i'm good, but am also not hesitant to listen to a chapter more than once.

[champ]

 Abyss, on 14 March 2025 - 05:52 PM, said:

 QuickTidal, on 14 March 2025 - 03:43 PM, said:

...
It's also annoying when one accent given to a character is off and that can irritate.
...

You're not wrong.. i was struggling w the narration of Hearn's IRON DRUID series to begin with, and their 'dog accent' was awful, but then they systematically did a series of the absolute worse stereotypical borderline offensive accents one after the other and i DNF'd hard.

I've not come across a narrator yet that has caused me to DNF but I can remember thinking the early Malazan series narrator was a bit off but that was probably because I love the series so much so a harsh critic.

If you haven't already, you need to treat yourself to LotR by Andy Serkis, best narration I have come across...

He kinda matches up the different characters voices to their LotR film counterparts and he does it so well... and then obviously he is Gollum so that is amazing. When Gollum first talks I was like oh bloody hell aye - this is going to be epic... and it was!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

For those who have trouble with drifting off during audiobooks... I found that listening at the highest speed I can make out words at forced me to focus enough that my mind almost never wandered (and on those rare occasions it did, I noticed pretty quickly). Might be best to be sure you can also use voice commands to quickly pause and go back.

(Wish they'd add a voice command to transcribe the last sentence or paragraph, bookmark the position in the audio, and add it to your collection of quotes from the book---though this could probably be set up without too much difficulty with readily available ML tools. (Machine learning, that is... not the ML this thread has been drifting off from a bit.))

But I wouldn't prefer to listen at extremely high speed for books that are more thought-(or-complex-or-ambiguous-imaginary-sensation-)provoking, so I generally wouldn't recommend it for ML's books (though there are probably sections for which it might even enhance the experience).

(Perhaps in the near future it will be possible for noninvasive quasi-continual brainscans (or implants) to tell exactly when you drifted off so that with a simple voice command you can return from the drifting labyrinths to the thread of the narrative. And maybe send authors and publishers feedback on your brain's authentic spontaneous reactions across time... and to optimize various aspects of the audio and the text for each individual's current preferences or preferred transformational goals.)