Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
Tom Robbins
4/5
The Invention of Morel
by
Adolfo Bioy Casares
4/5
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As of 31 Jan 2024, finished 5 novels, ~20 short stories, and DNF 2 novels.
2023: 49 novels + dozens of short stories.
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Hold the phone. Is this a contest??
Free to Learn by Peter Gray
Makes the case that schools are detrimental to learning and creativity because they stifle intrinsic need for play. Since schools force children to learn and involve hierarchial structures as well as explicit incentive/punishment structures they limit creativity and acquisition of meaningful knowledge. Uses contemporary findings in psychology and case studies from Sudbury Valley school.
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If I could write a book that was just the titles of books I hadnāt written that would be great. 
Donāt get up. Itās raining everywhere.
Writes itself.
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Exahalation by Ted Chiang
Halfway through, but would definitely recommend 5/5. It wasnāt as strong as Stories of Your Life and Others (for me) but man, this guy can write real good sci-fi.
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This looks like a very good read:
Interview with the author:
Part 1
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/20/war_is_boyish_and_fought_by_boys_1006227.html
Part 2
I think itās about time I got an e-reader.
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Infinitely easier for getting books in Taiwan.
Can you recommend one? Just one; donāt need a side by side by side by side comparison. I will get it. But I think it needs to be hooked up to Amazon, yeah?
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Whereās that?
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I think Iām on my second Kindle now? Maybe my third, going back around fifteen years. Iām using a Kindle Paperwhite. Theyāre fine. Itās an odd piece of tech in that they havenāt improved all that much, but one of main āfeaturesā is the lack of features or distractions. Way better for losing yourself in a book than reading on an iPad, for example, where switching windows to Reddit or forumosa is just too easy.
Theyāre not good for reading things with illustrations or charts or graphs.
The Kindleās closely linked to Amazon, perhaps too closely depending on attitudes towards DRM and using non-Kindle e-books on it. I got in that ecosystem because it was the easiest.
When you buy a Kindle book from Amazon, you can then read that book all over the place: on a Kindle app on your computer, on your phone, on a tablet, and on a Kindle e-reader (with the e-ink screen). I had the impression you couldnāt (conveniently) read an Amazon-Kindle book on other e-ink-readers like the Kobo, but based on what @tango42 has written above about the Meebook, I may have that wrong.
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Can read Kindle books on Kindle app on any place you have a Kindle app and everything syncs up like bookmarks and highlights and reading status.
Anything iOS or Android with Kindle app.
Kobo, no can do.
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Same question I asked i the other thread. Will it read TO you as you read along, as in I can up the playback speed and read through faster?
The House of Doors
By
Tan Twan Eng
3.5/5
Picked this up recently in Manila. 60 pages in and after the haze of limited exposition and newspeak has burned off, I find it is an excellent read.
Post apocalyptic underground ant condos where millions live to build bits of robots that do, well, something or nothing when assembled somewhere else. A 1984 truth ministry of sorts that feeds news into mimicking synthetic talking heads that gets broadcast worldwide.
And a conspiracy against a guy who builds above ground condos for those who escape the anthills for, get this, the government who wants to keep this all hush hush. 
Good stuff.
2 Likes