Definitely a 4.5-5 stars from me. Reminds me a lot of John Dies at the End which is one of my all-time favorites. It's got a very similar sarcasm + meta mix. At the end though in the acknowledgements he comments on having been a writer for Stargate Universe and how he felt it was a good show and like DUDE. It was... fine. But a lot of what made the earlier stargates so good was the contrast between the dark sad moments and the utter hilarity of things like playing golf through the gate. SGU was just depressing through and through. Good book though, but again at least in part because there's enough levity to level out the dark shit.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24238466

Before amazon, there was a website that I went to that allowed downloading ebooks. Ibe bought off this website many times.

Books I have enjoyed:

• https://www.baen.com/1632.html
• https://www.baen.com/the-philosophical-strangler.html
• https://www.baen.com/oath-of-swords.html

Let me know if you have enjoyed any of these books in the past as well!

I did like the book but I also thought they solved huge problems in a single short chapter with minimal detail.

In one chapter it's mentioned that one of the characters is working on some open source social media. A few chapters later it becomes the dominant social media in the world... oh and also payment method... Oh and blockchain...

Being a big fan of Lemmy, I think the book is a bit optimistic.

It didn’t happen the way we expected: The book has not yet made the New York Times bestseller list, but the other list the industry tracks is USA Today’s “Booklist.” And there, it settled in at #20 in its first week out.

The amount of attention a book gets during its launch has much to do with where it lands in our cultural landscape, which is the best part about all the energy around it the past few weeks. My hope is that Refaat’s book will be taught and read for years to come and is treated like the political and literary masterpiece it truly is.

The goal of hitting the Times list is still achievable, meanwhile, for two reasons. The Times list is opaque, but a publishing industry source told me that my initial understanding – that the paper counts orders as sales even if the book is out of stock – is probably not correct, and it’s more likely they count orders when they ship.

The book sold more than 20,000 copies but only 7,500 had been printed. That means that when the new printing arrives in January, at least 12,500 will be shipped, and in a typical January week, that number of sales is more than enough to make the bestseller list. So if you haven’t ordered one yet but still want to, your order will still count toward that effort.

The title pretty much says it! I'd like to explore that idea a little and would love to hear y'all's recommendations. This thought was originally inspired by lord of the rings, but I'm also currently on a little nostalgia trip by reading The Sea of Trolls and the soft magic system in that is pretty fun

Where main love interest is a dragon that can transform into a girl?

“Skeletons of the Gods” is a dark fantasy/horror tale about the man, who always wanted to be someone better, than he was. I invite You to read: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/skeletons-of-the-gods-short-story/ or listen to: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nk5RprPrkiU And here is the fragment.

Thousands of years ago, in a certain kingdom in the far south, there lived a man who always wanted more than he had… wanted to be more than he was. His name has been erased from the records, but the wise people who know this story call this man “The Insatiable One.” He was born into a family of servants of a nobleman. His parents trained him from an early age to take their place one day. They always told him, “Look how lucky you are! You could have been a slave on some plantation, but you are a servant in a rich man’s house! Moreover, such a good man. He lets us eat the leftovers from his table and only beats us when he gets really angry. You will have a real paradise with him!” But this young man was not satisfied with the scraps from the master’s table. He wanted to have everything his master had… And more. But he had no idea how to get it. Years passed, the Insatiable One’s parents grew old, and he passed out of adolescence. He took his father’s place and became the most trusted servant in the house. This gave him access to every nook and cranny of the large household. One day, while cleaning his master’s bedroom, he came across a scroll hidden under his pillow. He immediately took it in his hands, unfolded it and began to look through it. He mastered the art of reading enough to understand the general meaning of the written words. And these were extremely significant words. The lord of the house conspired with another nobleman, an aristocrat from an ancient family, against the prince ruling the province! Insatiable One was shocked, but after a while the feeling turned into excitement. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for for so many years! He could finally rise above his miserable existence… Over the corpse of that wretched, fat pig he had to serve!

If anyone else needs a temporary distraction:)

Mostly I am just looking for a good harem series. The harem doesn't need to be the focus or develop quickly, but not as slow as it wheel of time either.

I really like kd robertson (mostly his mob sorcery and neural wraith series) for reference. Thanks.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/25392452

Isobel: I’ve been working on a lot of stories about tech elites, the technopoly and so on. And something I’ve come across again and again is a “bunker mentality.” This idea that the tech bros have that they want to create their own jurisdictions, their own walled-off communities that will protect them from government regulation — but maybe in the future will also protect them from apocalyptic climate chaos, or the ravages of societal breakdown. Can you explain this mentality?

Atossa: I think these tech leaders have convinced themselves that they’re victims, that everyone hates them and they need to protect themselves at all costs. It’s a classic persecution complex seen throughout history among monarchs and dictators. With power comes paranoia.

SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?

Thomas Dybdahl: The Brady rule, the legal requirement that in a criminal case prosecutors must disclose favorable evidence to the defense, was intended to make sure trials were fair. But in the decades since it was enacted in 1963, prosecutors have regularly failed to comply with the rule; sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently. And judges have been reluctant to enforce it.

As a result, prosecutorial misconduct — hiding favorable evidence — has become the single leading cause of wrongful convictions in this country. Of 2,400 documented exonerations between 1989 and 2019, Brady violations helped to convict 44%: 1,056 innocent people.

As a public defender in Washington, D.C., I saw prosecutors routinely break the rule, and judges routinely look the other way. I wrote this book to focus attention on the problem, and to show how we can fix it. It tells the winding history of the Brady rule through the cases that created and defined it. The book is anchored by the odyssey of the Catherine Fuller murder case, which shows just how easily Brady violations occur, how difficult they are to uncover, and the terrible human cost they exact.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20241111124310/https://coloradosun.com/2024/11/03/sunlit-thomas-dybdahl-when-innocence-is-not-enough/

any suggestions are more than welcome

I'm trying to find any redeemable qualities that make me feel better for the time I spent reading it. I could have put it down, but the raving reviews made me think that it would get better.

It didn't.

I loathed it. With passion.