I started Confessions of a Crap Artist by Phillip K. Dick and am not yet sure how I feel about it. Also started Tai-Pan in the urge to keep Shōgun vibe in my life after literally devouring the book, but Tai-Pan didn’t feel the same. Is on hold for now till I forget Shōgun a bit.
I sometimes wish I could go back in time just to read some of the books for the first time again. Monte Cristo would be at the very top of that time-travel agenda. Enjoy the ride!
I missed this in the news, then saw link refers to Kronen Zeitung report which is not a great newspaper to cite so thought for sure it cannot be entirely true? But it is! And here another link from Die Presse (google translate works fine here) which tells us it was not a jerk dad who brought his kid to drill holes but an idiot mom.
I am 10% into Lonesome Dove. Many people swear by it and to me has East of Eden vibes. I find the story a little slow but then there were a couple of scenes (all of which involved pigs) that made me laugh out loud. So far - worth it.
I’ll suggest you what another user here on Lemmy suggested to me: Replay by Ken Grimwood. Topic is re-living life, there is a love story involved, relatively short and easily written but good - you won’t need much brain to keep track of what’s up but it is still a quality read.
Also, metals can easily accommodate varying number of electrons in the electron shells of their atoms and still be stable. That makes them very good to quickly store and release electrons which means they can help say transfer molecules around (iron for transport of gasses), scavenge free radicals (e.g. manganese) etc.
Not to mention academic/research text where authors are actually forced to pay to publish, only to have the articles end up behind a pay wall of given journal. If the authors want their papers freely available, they have to pay extra fees to the journal (we are talking thousands of dollars scale). Not a cent goes back to the authors or even research funding bodies. Long live Libgen!
Make trains cheaper goddammit
Yes, yes, you are totally correct - delivery can make all the difference.
But I have to add that my main problem is that I am a scientist and big part of my job is to read immense amount of literature and memorize/connect often obscure terms. So when I read for pleasure (I love my job, but still) what I tend to enjoy the most are character heavy, emotional books with beautiful prose, written by people with deep understanding of life. Quite opposite to the academic literature.
So you are right, yes, this slog issue is not restricted to SF (e.g. I don’t read epic fantasy either; GoT and LOTR books I skipped myself as well), but SF in particular is something I really want to dig deeper, as there the ideas challenge my brain and remain lingering far after I finish the piece.
But! - I prefer to do it without being forced into a memory challenge. Because if I start and within the first two pages there are 15 names and 3 planets and lots of traveling (i really damn hate descriptions of pure traveling, like please lets just skip that part) then I lose interest in the main idea and the ideas are what I am after.
So Tldr yes, you are absolutely right, it is also the prose and the delivery, but still no prose or delivery would keep me long motivated or make me deeply enjoy reading work which has too many names or weird, invented terms.
Do you use diluted or out-of-the-bottle vinegar and does the fruit taste weird afterwards? I need to temporarily become a bit of germophobe and this sounds like a good way to take care of fresh produce.
Never too late for good recommendations! I am happy such a good collection of suggestions was made, not just for me but for everyone. Thanks for contributing!
I think to really solve this we will need to wait for the kids from this generation to grow up, and those who “figure it out” teach others how to do it, through a (hopefully adapted) educational system or otherwise. Because, to be honest, we don’t really know what this is like. We think we do, but we don’t, not really.
Thanks, especially for summarizing other comments. Also, sorry for my 1000 years of solitude misspell… Marques didn’t dream as big as Asimov haha
She keeps popping up so I think I really have to check her out. :)
The Martian I am saving as one of those cannot go wrong books, in case i ever run into reading blockage. But Expanse i didn’t check out. Will do now. Thanks
I haven’t. I thought I wasn’t really into short stories… Till I discovered Ray Bradbury. Now I am very much into short stories. So will give Asimov a try for sure.
Just finished it a week ago. That prose… From another planet.
Exactly this. Thank you. :)
Omg this comment is so beautiful. Thank you so much! I think I am going to start with your first option, just got it on kindle (I am a total sucker for time/dimension travels, from 11/22/63 (one of my all time favorites) to Time Traveler’s wife to Blake Crouch).
There are good answers about differentiation from stem cells, process governed by the evolutionary determined genetic information stored within the cell itself. This genetic information was/is influenced by environment but that influence tends to be slow and subtle.
I have another answer to contribute. Metastatic cancer cells. These are cells which detach from primary tumors in any part of the body, then have to break into the lymph or blood and then they in a sense “decide” where they want to settle. We now know they’ll have preferences: some cancers will metastase to liver, some to lung, some to brain; but before they do so, these cells will literally circle around the body, searching for a “perfect spot”. Once they find it, they settle, often entirely changing their O.G. tumorous behaviour in the process which in return makes them super unpredictable and hard to kill. And all it takes is one wandering cell.