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oddtail:
My wife and I have a tradition of sorts that I read her books out loud in bed, before we go to sleep. We haven't done that in a few years, but I decided to resurrect this little ritual, and started with "The Wizard of Earthsea". Partly because I'm coming back to Ursula LeGuin (I've read embarrassingly few books by her and I want to remedy that), partly because I've never read the book in the original English, and partly because my wife never read the book at all (which is a BOOK CRIME).

The book is as delightful as I remember it, and much more interesting on the language layer than the Polish translation (even though it was done by a brilliant translator). My wife seems to like the book, too. When we finished reading for the evening after the first chapter, she was all "noooooooo keep reading, I'm invested now and want to know what happens next". It's not typically her reaction to books I read, even ones she enjoys listening to.

So yeah. Definitely a good pick for us.

TheEvilDog:
Work has been so quiet the last couple of weeks that I've taken to listening to audiobooks. Just finished listening to Sepulturum by Nick Kyme.

And I'm glad its done.

Its a horror novella in the 40k universe and is about the opening stages of a Plague of Unbelief (zombie outbreak). And it was just soooooooo boring. None of the characters were likeable or engaging and for so short a story jumped between nearly a dozen characters, had the barest amount of characterisation. It also has my biggest peeve about zombie fiction - (click to show/hide)killing off nearly every character in the last couple of chapters. Just because.
Its hard to get annoyed when it was a free audiobook, but in case anyone was thinking of getting it, avoid.

LeeC:
I just finished another Robert E Howard Conan story: Shadows in the Moonlight

It was pretty good and had some mystery elements to it. Not in my top 5 Conan stories, but it was interesting to say the least. Conan, escaping to a remote island with a girl (Olivia) he unintentionally rescued, encounters pirates, strange iron statues, and something is stalking them in the trees. I liked that Olivia actually did something and had a bit of an arc compared to some of his previous traveling companions (male and female).

The next one on my list I have been lead to believe is one of, if not the, most popular stories along with a favorite character among fans and artists. "Queen of the Black Coast"

Theta9:
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.

LeeC:
Finally finished Robert E Howard Conan story Queen of the Black Coast.

I have the collection as an audiobook so I had to listen to it in installments over the course of a week or so since I drive less now. Honestly I think it was to the stories detriment that I broke it up. I thought it was great but I think I would have received it well if I read it instead of listened to it. It also had a few things going against it.

1) The narrator gave Bêlit a soft pleading sounding voice which seemed counter to her dialogue and personality. It should have been more of a commanding fierce voice, but when it comes to feminine voices his (the narrator's) range isn't all that diverse. It probably would have been better if I read it instead of audiobook this story.

2) There is a lot of hand waving in the beginning of the story to get Conan aboard the Bêlit's ship and as part of her crew. Before and after that moment the story was pretty good.

Barring those issues, it was pretty good. I can see why its generally in the top 5 original Conan stories for some. (I think when I get through all these, I'll rate them all myself). Certain parts of the story is definitely dated, and if I was to bring this to a visual medium, I would probably give the Tigress crew a bit more "screen time" (see spoilers)* but other than that, it would translate pretty well as an episode on Netflix or some other streaming service. Maybe an hour long episode like Star Trek tends to do, but I am not sure it would work as a movie, unless you expand or pad it a bit more.

I also noticed that Valeria from the Arnold movie draws a lot of inspiration from the character Bêlit. Some of Valeria's lines/actions are ported or paraphrased straight from Bêlit's in this story. Compared to some of the other Conan stories, this one was pretty grim, but its a nice change of pace instead of the freeze-frame endings of the last few stories.


*
(click to show/hide)It sucked that all the black guys were basically red shirts and did little except die or go mad. Even the named crew members, N'Yaga and N'Gora could have had something to do instead of being "ensign ricky"

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