@austern@sfba.social
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austern

@[email protected]

Computer programmer, ex-physicist, husband and father, reader. I'm originally from Pittsburgh but I've now lived in the Bay Area for more than half my life. I live in Palo Alto and work at Google, where my focus is large scale data processing.

I'm interested in various things, including food and wine, math and science, politics, hiking, history, science fiction, philosophy, opera, and cute cat videos.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

austern, to bookstodon
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My November reading:
• 11/1 Charlie Stross, Dead Lies Dreaming
• 11/6 Charlie Stross, Quantum of Nightmares
• 11/11 Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back (tr. A. W. Wheen)
• 11/15 Charlie Stross, Season of Skulls
• 11/19 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
• 11/24 Harini Nagendra, The Bangalore Detectives Club
• 11/26 Martha Wells, All Systems Red
• 11/27 Martha Wells, Artificial Condition

@bookstodon

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My October reading list:
• 10/1 Tadashi Agi (story) and Shu Okimoto (art), The Drops of God: Volume 28
• 10/1 Marjorie Liu (writer) and Sana Takeda (artist), Monstress volume seven: Devourer
• 10/8 Tadashi Agi (story) and Shu Okimoto (art), The Drops of God: Volume 29
• 10/11 Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games
• 10/14 Tadashi Agi (story) and Shu Okimoto (art), The Drops of God: Volume 30
• 10/17 Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
• 10/18 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters on Ethics (tr. Margaret Graver and A. A. Long)
• 10/23 Jessie Singer, There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits and Who Pays the Price
• 10/27 Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Memory

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austern, to bookstodon
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My reading list for September (at least the books; I was also reading all of the Hugo finalists in the short fiction categories):
• 9/4 Catherynne M. Valente, Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods
• 9/6 Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material
• 9/10 Agatha Christie, Hallowe'en Party
• 9/11 Charlie Jane Anders, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak
• 9/11 Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, Krzysztof Ostrowski, Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams
• 9/18 Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas
• 9/18 Kieron Gillen (writer) and Dan Mora (artist), Once & Future Vol 4: Monarchies in the UK
• 9/27 Tom King (writer), Bilquis Evely (artist), and Matheus Lopes (colorist), Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

https://lafstern.org/matt/2023books.html

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rabbit_fighter, to bookstodon
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@bookstodon I'm looking for book recommendations for an 11yo who reads at a much more advanced level. He likes sci-fi. He has read the Hitchhiker's Guide series and loved them. I think he would enjoy some more 'hard' sci-fi as well. He needs something challenging but without subject matter that is too mature. Thanks for any help!

austern,
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@mazz @LawProf @rabbit_fighter @bookstodon Another problem is that I don't think Leiber is what the original poster was asking for. "Hard SF" is a notoriously slippery concept, but I don't think anyone would apply that label to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Conjure Wife, or Our Lady of Darkness, or the Change War.

austern,
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@aprilfollies @rabbit_fighter @bookstodon Yeah, I was going to recommend some of Clarke's short stories too, such as "The Star", "The Sentinel", and "The Songs of Distant Earth". They're dated, but Clarke was trying to base them on the known science of his time. If you're considering other old books then you might want to try some of Heinlein's juveniles; my favorite is Citizen of the Galaxy.

I'll post more recent suggestions separately.

austern,
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@rabbit_fighter @bookstodon General advice: focus on the 21st century, rather than the mid 20th century that old folks like me read when we were young. Times change. Reading more recent books will avoid you and your son wondering things like why the author thought Venus was habitable, or why there aren't any women in the future.

Another piece of general advice: look at books that are specifically published as YA. A lot of them are very good. You could do worse than look at the winners and finalists of the Lodestar Award. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestar_Award_for_Best_Young_Adult_Book)

A few specific suggestions, mostly things that just happened to come to mind:
• Marissa Meyer, the Lunar Chronicles series.
• Scott Westerfeld, the tetrology beginning with Uglies. They read it at my kid's middle school, and I liked it too.
• Martha Wells, the Murderbot series, starting with All Systems Read. Not marketed as YA, but people of all ages, including my kid, seem to like it.
• Xiran Jay Zhou, Iron Widow.

austern, to bookstodon
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Once again, my August reading list was mostly finalists. (Including the
not-a-Hugo award for best YA book.)
• 8/2 Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes
• 8/2 Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ogres
• 8/3 Becky Chambers, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
• 8/8 Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
• 8/9 T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone
• 8/14 Tracy Deonn, Legendborn
• 8/20 Tracy Deonn, Bloodmarked
• 8/20 Tadashi Agi (story) and Shu Okimoto (art), The Drops of God: Volume 27
• 8/23 T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead
• 8/24 C. L. Polk, Even Though I Knew the End
• 8/27 Seanan McGuire, Where the Drowned Girls Go
• 8/27 Alix E. Harrow, A Mirror Mended
• 8/30 Nghi Vo, Into the Riverlands

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austern,
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@owlislost @Enema_Cowboy @bookstodon I'd start with Dubliners or Portrait. Neither is hard, and both are very good.

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austern,
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@cydonian @bookstodon thanks!

austern,
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@annaraven @bookstodon Makes me want to rewatch The Thin Man! And it already inspired me to have a Brainstorm, which I'd never heard of before, for last night's cocktail.

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