The Sword and Laser discussion

And the winner of the 2020 S&L March Madness tournament is: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Click here for March Madness stats

Looking forward to finally reading this. I love Amal’s poetry, very evocative and beautiful. I expect it’s going to be similar.

Wohoo! I read this last month so I could vote on the booktube SFF awards so I’m all set! Haha I really liked this book A LOT. I find myself thinking about it randomly.

Wow amazing! The book I nominated (well, seconded, someone else beat me to it) wins March madness! I loved this book and I hope everyone else will... have interesting things to say about it, even if they don’t love it.

And this was one of the ones I had negative interest in and hoped would lose. I said way back that I figured one of the two I really didn’t want would win. I’m glad S&L is meeting expectations.

Well considering I was just deemed non essential for the next 30 days, and can't really do much work from home. I was thinking I might actually read along this month. But at $8 for 200 I may wait a bit. I have plenty of other things to read for a while.

Dang. I wanted to read both books in the final round, but I was really hoping City of Brass was going to win...for purely selfish reasons, haha! I'd put both books on hold on Libby just to be safe, and I'm next on the list for Brass, but 8th on the list for Time. /cries in impatience

excited about this I don't do alot of flowery poetic prose style reads hoping the famialar topics of time and war ground that unique style in sci-fi. my main reason for voting for TiHYLtTW was to see how poetic prose works in a relatively straight forward genre.

My Libby hold for the audiobook says 4 weeks. Hopefully I’ll get it sooner. Lots to read while I await. I’ve been working from home & spending a lot of free time playing XBox, so reading (especially comics) is slowing down.

terpkristin wrote: "And this was one of the ones I had negative interest in and hoped would lose. I said way back that I figured one of the two I really didn’t want would win. I’m glad S&L is meeting expectations."

terpkristin wrote: "And this was one of the ones I had negative interest in and hoped would lose. I said way back that I figured one of the two I really didn’t want would win. I’m glad S&L is meeting expectations."

Are you okay? I’m asking sincerely. Your posts over the past few months have indicated that something is very wrong.

Anyone up for an alt-pick this month? I was really hoping for some group-read inertia to read either The City of Brass, which has sat unread on my shelf for a few years now, or The Ten Thousand Doors of January?

I've got City of Brass and would be fine reading it. I've read Time War, so I don't need to re-read it to participate this month. 10K Doors would be interesting too I suppose.

I just noticed the shortner for this months pick. I know the title is a mouthful to begin with, but that looks more unmemorable then most months.

I really do appreciate what Rob has done with keeping us organized within the cluster that is Goodreeds file structure. But maybe the rest of us can help him out on this one, possibly with suggestions of something a bit less convoluted. I'll admit I don't have any great ideas off the top of my head, but I'm sure someone around here does.

That shortener is a non-starter. I'd do something like Timewar or TW.

Drop the littles? THYLTW, aka “thy lit-dub” as a mnemonic.

It is a bit long. TW is a good compromise.

But that's up to Rob ;-)

While I like Thy Lit-dub, I probably wouldn’t be able to remember that either. Timewar seems best to me.

TW is fine by me. Not sure if we've had others with that abbreviation, but it mostly only matters that the 12 books we read in a year have a different prefix.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Anyone up for an alt-pick this month? I was really hoping for some group-read inertia to read either The City of Brass, which has sat unread on my shelf for a few years now, or [boo..."

I was already planning to read (listen to) both of those this month if possible before it's my turn to borrow TW.

The description for TW reminded my of [book:The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August|35066358] which I listened to after it was in March Madness last year. I loved it!

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Anyone up for an alt-pick this month? I was really hoping for some group-read inertia to read either The City of Brass, which has sat unread on my shelf for a few years now, or [boo..."

I’ve already read City of Brass, and I’ve just bought The Ten Thousand Doors of January, so I’d be happy to join an alternate read for either one of those

This one has been on my Goodreads shelf since it came out apparently, and I had it on hold via Libby before the March Madness brackets were announced. This is a good excuse to read it. Looks like I am 2 weeks out on the ebook but 8 weeks on the audiobook; I guess I will be doing the voices myself for this one.

I wonder how long we can keep up the time travel streak? Maybe a throwback to a classic in May (I assume May is a Sword month) with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?

May and June are both Sword picks. To make up for the 3 to 1 Laser dominance so far in 2020

Aaron wrote: "I wonder how long we can keep up the time travel streak? Maybe a throwback to a classic in May (I assume May is a Sword month) with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?"

I’m down for that. I’ve seen the movie but not read it.

Lots of Fantasy time travel books, too. We’ve already read Dragonflight, but there’s also Kindred, A Christmas Carol, and The Anubis Gates. I really liked The Chronoliths, too.

Ian wrote: "The description for TW reminded my of First Fifteen Lives of Harry August which I listened to after it was in March Madness last year. I loved it!..."

I read Harry August after MM2019 too. I loved it and was cheering on TW this year hoping it would be more of the same.

I'm about a third of the way into TW and I can report that it is definitely its own thing plot-wise. What it shares with Harry August is a very beautiful writing style with a sense of humour peeking through the cracks, and a way of making you seriously think about some very fundamental ideas.

I'm really glad I'm reading this book, and thanks to all who nominated and voted for it!

I read TW when it first came out, and did not enjoy it much, I'm hoping that a reread and discussion might help....

I just finished it. I know I'm early and I didn't expect to finish it so soon, but I just didn't want to put it down.

Wow!

So many different precisely crafted moments of excellence.

It was like a literary fireworks show, moments of wonder, humour, horror, beauty.

So much in so few pages.

I finished it yesterday. At 209 pages it was still too long. This would be a great short or novella, but as a novel the first half was mostly filler.

So I have a request. Can people expand on what they like or don't like?

One of the reasons I kind of skim past these threads a lot of times is that people say, more or less "I liked it" or "I didn't like" it which is fine... but a) not a springboard for discussion and b) does anyone here really care if another person liked or didn't like a book? I know I don't because some people will like a given book, others will dislike it, some will be in the middle. I'm far more interested in WHY... because that can lead to considering things I've missed.

Rick wrote: "So I have a request. Can people expand on what they like or don't like?"

Hard to do that without spoilers so I will refrain from that at this point in time (most people probably haven't even started the book yet.) Give it a couple of weeks :)

Use spoiler tags?

BTW, this wasn't really directed at you or anyone specific. It's a thought that I've been having about threads recently both here and in another group. Lot of "I liked/didnt like $BOOK" which make me think in reply "So? Tell us more!" and this thread was on top f the unread pile, so...

This thread is not for discussing the contents of the book. It's for discussing the announcement of the pick. I'll be locking it tomorrow anyways.

Please create a new thread to discuss your thoughts on the book.