So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[bdub76]

Currently alternating between three books:

* Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2)
* Skeleton Crew
* Jeeves Stories (a compilation of Jeeves short stories from StandardEBooks)

Keeping the reading mostly upbeat. Planning to read The Memory Police once I finish the Murderbot Diaries book. Future Boy is now on my radar too. Once I finish the Jeeves short stories, I'll read the Jeeves novels that are in public domain. Once I finish Skeleton Crew, I'll return to Sherlock Holmes.

I had a business trip, so I fell behind on my reading again this month.

 

[JD]

I finished up STTOS: All of Me last night, it took me a while to try to decide what I wanted to read next but I finally settled on The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian, the first collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. I've seen the Momoa movie and the first Schwarzenegger movie, but that's my only experience with Conan, so I'm very curious to check these stories out.

 

[Greg Cox]

E Pluribus Unicorn by Theodore Sturgeon

 

[bdub76]

I finished up STTOS: All of Me last night, it took me a while to try to decide what I wanted to read next but I finally settled on The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian, the first collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. I've seen the Momoa movie and the first Schwarzenegger movie, but that's my only experience with Conan, so I'm very curious to check these stories out.

I have this collection for later this year. Might read a couple.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/conan-33?sId=b4284f86-5e23-4d10-866a-c8e1f384dcae&ssId=xwR2-QYnwA-doaTMrLaYS&cPos=3

It's a good price. Looks like they're mostly novelettes or novellas.

You can find the public domain ones here:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-e-howard/conan-stories

 

[JD]

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bYQeX5a-PVoC
I don't really trust free public domain books, I like to get stuff from professional publishers so I know that I can trust what I'm getting, and that it will be full, professionally edited text.

 

[bdub76]

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bYQeX5a-PVoC
I don't really trust free public domain books, I like to get stuff from professional publishers so I know that I can trust what I'm getting, and that it will be full, professionally edited text.

I haven't had any issues with public domain books other than less than great TOC. However, with Project Gutenberg, I'll submit an errata about it, and they'll usually fix it within a week or two. StandardEBooks generally does a pretty good job. I'm reading through the Jeeves stories now, and it looks great.

They're already professionally edited. The same professionally edited book is now out of copyright. If you're going to pay for a public domain book, then at least purchase it from a good publisher, especially if it's a much older book. I've had good luck with Penguin, but I've only purchased older books with newer translations.

Another source for public domain that is well done:

MobileRead Forums - E-Book Uploads

MobileRead - the resource for mobile geeks seeking information and advice for keeping their gadgets happy.

www.mobileread.com

 

[JD]

Yeah, I usually try to go for one of the big publishers like Random House or Penguin, and I've gotten a few Barnes & Nobel Classics when I had my Nook. The one thing that's nice about those, is they will often extra introductions and stuff that can sometimes help provide some context for stuff that modern readers might not always understand.
And they're usually pretty cheap too, unless it's some kind of big special edition.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I bought small-press print editions of both the "Lensman" and "non-Lensman" versions of Doc Smith's Triplanetary. As I recall, one had great typography, and a ToC, but was full of typos, while the other was in painfully fine print, with no ToC. And I couldn't tell you which one is the "Lensman" version and which is the "non-Lensman" version. Of course, both were filled with absurdities, like radium as a currency metal (that would spontaneously transmute into other elements, and give everybody radiation poisoning), and iron (the most stable nucleus on the whole Periodic Table, with both fission and fusion reactions producing a net energy deficit) as a source of energy, and everybody and his dog smoking. I pretty much lost all interest in Doc Smith, although I can certainly see his influence on others.

 

[Christopher]

and iron (the most stable nucleus on the whole Periodic Table, with both fission and fusion reactions producing a net energy deficit) as a source of energy

Reminds me of the episode of the Canadian Starhunter TV series involving a rare allotrope of carbon that turned out to be an immensely powerful fuel source for nuclear fission. Oy...