[Ukjent]

Damn, that's a lucky find.

[polishgenius]

It's not quite books I've bought yet, but I figured this complaint fits best here:

Why is this August so fucking chocka with must-by releases? Just when I'm particularly low on money for various tedious reasons? Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes just came out, and in the coming month we're going to see, off the top of my head, Assail by ICE, The Widow's House by Daniel Abraham, The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman and Fool's Assassin by Hobb, all of which would ordinarily be day one purchases for me, as well as a few other books I'm interested in and would normally read quite quickly, but this time probably won't be able to.


So I guess this is The Books I Didn't Buy Today post.




Just venting.

[McLovin]

Picked up A SWORD FROM RED ICE and WATCHER OF THE DEAD, to complete the set.

Also found a surprisingly pristine copy of APPLIED LINEAR STATISTICAL MODELS, which is a classic statistics text from the 70s, for 6 bucks. Not any new information stats-wise, but cool to have on the office shelf.

[QuickTidal]

Picked up FOOL'S ASSASSIN by Robin Hobb, as one store near me had it a few weeks early. Note to Hobb fans awaiting the volume. It's a BRICK. It's huge. At least the length/size of Sanderson's WoK.

I also grabbed Marvel's prose novel GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: ROCKET RACOON & GROOT STEAL THE GALAXY (hardcover) because of how much I enjoy those characters, but mostly because it's written by Dan Abnett, and I'll pretty much read whatever that man writes!

[Baco Xtath]

Audible credits in; got the Girl with All the Gifts, Ex-Purgatory, and then bought Blindsight (for a re-read/listen) and returned my pre-order of Magician's Land seeing as how my library has it and pre-ordered the Widow's House instead. I'm good for a while.

[MTS]

Been reading a lot of historical novels lately. Today I bought 1434: How a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed Into Italy and Sparked The Renaissance by Gavin Menzies. It's...interesting so far. A lot of technical navigational jargon, but I'm liking it. I'm thinking I may have to do some extra reading to discover how credible this stuff is though...

[Serenity]

Some recent Kindle cheapies I picked up:

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Cruel as the Grave (The Queen's Man 2) by Sharon Penman
Dragon's Lair (The Queen's Man 3) by Sharon Penman
The Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader
Brainrush by Richard Bard

[QuickTidal]

I've never read a Penman book, but I always see her books in the store and ponder them. Let me know if they are worth it.

[Serenity]

QuickTidal, on 06 August 2014 - 01:52 PM, said:

I've never read a Penman book, but I always see her books in the store and ponder them. Let me know if they are worth it.

If you're interested in the Wars of the Roses then I can highly recommend The Sunne in Splendour, it's very good indeed

[Morgoth]

MTS, on 06 August 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

Been reading a lot of historical novels lately. Today I bought 1434: How a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed Into Italy and Sparked The Renaissance by Gavin Menzies. It's...interesting so far. A lot of technical navigational jargon, but I'm liking it. I'm thinking I may have to do some extra reading to discover how credible this stuff is though...

I noticed that book too, and have considered buying it. However, being somewhat well read on the renaissance in Italy I'd be very surprised if his claims are anything but another nonsensical conspiracy theory.

Edit: I went to Amazon and Wikipedia to have a closer look at what the book is actually about. Yeah, it's all nonsense I'm afraid.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 07 August 2014 - 06:41 AM

[Chance]

Picked up Assail and The Magician's Land both with pretty high expectations on them.

Assail will have to wait a while but might motivate me to read the last few of esslemonts.

[polishgenius]

Morgoth, on 07 August 2014 - 06:36 AM, said:

MTS, on 06 August 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

Been reading a lot of historical novels lately. Today I bought 1434: How a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed Into Italy and Sparked The Renaissance by Gavin Menzies. It's...interesting so far. A lot of technical navigational jargon, but I'm liking it. I'm thinking I may have to do some extra reading to discover how credible this stuff is though...

I noticed that book too, and have considered buying it. However, being somewhat well read on the renaissance in Italy I'd be very surprised if his claims are anything but another nonsensical conspiracy theory.

Edit: I went to Amazon and Wikipedia to have a closer look at what the book is actually about. Yeah, it's all nonsense I'm afraid.

Isn't Menzies pretty much known as a complete charlatan? He's the chap who wrote that 'The Year China Discovered the World' book which I tried reading but even as a complete historical amateur found his propensity for just manufacturing hypotheses on the basis of no evidence too annoying within just a few pages.

[Morgoth]

polishgenius, on 07 August 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 07 August 2014 - 06:36 AM, said:

MTS, on 06 August 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

Been reading a lot of historical novels lately. Today I bought 1434: How a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed Into Italy and Sparked The Renaissance by Gavin Menzies. It's...interesting so far. A lot of technical navigational jargon, but I'm liking it. I'm thinking I may have to do some extra reading to discover how credible this stuff is though...

I noticed that book too, and have considered buying it. However, being somewhat well read on the renaissance in Italy I'd be very surprised if his claims are anything but another nonsensical conspiracy theory.

Edit: I went to Amazon and Wikipedia to have a closer look at what the book is actually about. Yeah, it's all nonsense I'm afraid.

Isn't Menzies pretty much known as a complete charlatan? He's the chap who wrote that 'The Year China Discovered the World' book which I tried reading but even as a complete historical amateur found his propensity for just manufacturing hypotheses on the basis of no evidence too annoying within just a few pages.

Yeah. I thought the argument was that Chinese influence was what triggered the Renaissance, which is an interesting if not entirely credible argument. I could read a book about that. However, Menzies genuinely argues that the Chinese treasure fleet visited several of history's most obsessive record keepers without a single record of this miraculous event having been found.

He's also written a book which claims to prove that the Menoan civilization of Crete (or Atlantis, as he seemingly calls them) actively traded with North America.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 08 August 2014 - 09:24 AM

[Gabriele]

Morgoth, on 08 August 2014 - 09:23 AM, said:

He's also written a book which claims to prove that the Menoan civilization of Crete (or Atlantis, as he seemingly calls them) actively traded with North America.

OK, next step is to get the Aliens in, Danicken-style.

[MTS]

Morgoth, on 08 August 2014 - 09:23 AM, said:

polishgenius, on 07 August 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 07 August 2014 - 06:36 AM, said:

MTS, on 06 August 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

Been reading a lot of historical novels lately. Today I bought 1434: How a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed Into Italy and Sparked The Renaissance by Gavin Menzies. It's...interesting so far. A lot of technical navigational jargon, but I'm liking it. I'm thinking I may have to do some extra reading to discover how credible this stuff is though...

I noticed that book too, and have considered buying it. However, being somewhat well read on the renaissance in Italy I'd be very surprised if his claims are anything but another nonsensical conspiracy theory.

Edit: I went to Amazon and Wikipedia to have a closer look at what the book is actually about. Yeah, it's all nonsense I'm afraid.

Isn't Menzies pretty much known as a complete charlatan? He's the chap who wrote that 'The Year China Discovered the World' book which I tried reading but even as a complete historical amateur found his propensity for just manufacturing hypotheses on the basis of no evidence too annoying within just a few pages.

Yeah. I thought the argument was that Chinese influence was what triggered the Renaissance, which is an interesting if not entirely credible argument. I could read a book about that. However, Menzies genuinely argues that the Chinese treasure fleet visited several of history's most obsessive record keepers without a single record of this miraculous event having been found.

He's also written a book which claims to prove that the Menoan civilization of Crete (or Atlantis, as he seemingly calls them) actively traded with North America.

Yeah, I thought the sections on what is actually well documented were fairly decent (i.e. Zheng He's forays into the Indian Ocean), and that's what sucked me in when I read parts of it briefly in the store.

When he gets to where conventional history loses Zheng He it kinda goes off the rails though. As soon as I read the parts where he casually states that Zheng He died in North Carolina (with no explanation of how [or why] he got there) and Central(not East) Asian genetic markers in the Balkans were evidence that female slaves from the Chinese treasure fleet intermingled with the population as it sailed up the Adriatic (as opposed to Central Asian horde migrations that had been happening since the 6th century), it completely lost me. Now I'm just reading it for the crazy factor, like his propensity to attribute every single intellectual achievement to previous Chinese thought (Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus and Galileo, to name a few, are just copycats apparently).

[QuickTidal]

Full disclosure. The trailer for ASSASSINS CREED: UNITY (Which is Just. So. Badass.) dropped and being how I love stories that take place during the French Revolution, I got a little bit google-happy wondering if there were any fantasy or Alt-history books that take place in an around the French Revolution (there are really not that many surprisingly)...and stumbled upon a book from 1993 called ILLUSION by Paula Volsky, which is essentially an alt-fantasy version of said events. So I grabbed it for like $5 off Amazon. Looking forward to reading it.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 11 August 2014 - 01:18 PM

[Abyss]

Despite my best efforts (or something) to keep the DTTRPFH from growing, i spotted books 10-12 of THIEVES' WORLD at a 2HS and couldn't resist completing the set.





...which stands proudly next to and under the 200 or so other books ahead of it for when i bother reading something that isn't an ebook.



Fuck.

[McLovin]

Oh i was recently on the lookout for THIEVES WORLD too! Another hole in my fantasy reading I need to address.

[Gabriele]

Abyss, on 11 August 2014 - 02:06 PM, said:

Something like that tried to break into my flat the other day and left some droppings behind. They got immediately absorbed by the Gothic pillars that are my TBR piles.

The droppings? oh Assail, The Widow's House, The Portrait of a Lady, a non-fiction book about the battle of Nechtansmere (aka Dunnichen), and one about the Bavarians (the 'dark age' tribe, not the beer drinking lederhosn variant of today, though beer was already known to their heroic - and often rather belligerent - ancestors ).

[Mentalist]

So it was pay day, and I had to take a bus from Square One, so naturally, I wandered over to a Chapters....

Third World War must truly be upon us, since Chapters moved their Canadian release date for Malaz books forward . Last I checked, Assail was due to street on Aug 25th. Which is why I was going to order it through Book Depository.

Imagine my surprise, when it was there, staring at me from the shelf.

promptly grabbed, along with Vol 2 of The Mongoliad , and also "The Thousand Names" by Jango Wexler. I recall someone (Slow Ben?) raving over this, and I needed another purchase to inch over $50 and get a $10.00 gift card,