A Green Mushroom

Non-Fiction and Documentaries In this episode: Non fiction! Beej watches a lot of documentaries and has lots of recommendations He follows up with memoir, biography, and other non-fiction book recommendations Both of us read non-fiction articles of various sorts. Weekly Geekery Beej on TV! Void has played a ton more Persona 5! Be sure to subscribe to the Geek to Geek Podcast your favorite podcast app,   drop a review   so we know how we’re doing, and feel free contact us via email at   geektogeekcast@gmail.com   or   @geektogeekcast   on Twitter with any comments, questions, or suggestions for the show. Thanks for listening, and we can’t wait to hear from you! Geek Offer of the Week: audibletrial.com/geektogeekcast Subscribe: iTunes Overcast Pocket Casts Google Play Music RSS Feed Geek to Geek Podcast Network: Geek to Geek Geek Fitness Health Hacks The Comic Box Geektitude Music by   CarboHydroM

I liked the Cosmere Collection a lot, but it's not going to be for most people.  The Cosmere is the greater interconnected universe that Brandon Sanderson has slowly been building in the background of a lot of his novels and novellas.  He's mentioned that they're all connected and only recently have some of the connections been mentioned in the text of his work. This is a short story collection all about that.  It's a series of short stories and novellas from his various worlds in the Cosmere. Some of them are brand new for this collection and some of them I've read before as stand-alones.  But, they're all good. If you've read the majority of Sanderson's work then you owe it to yourself to pick up this Cosmere Collection.  If you haven't read any of his work or only a few books then definitely skip this one for the moment and keep it in mind for later. But for the Sanderson fans out there, this one is great!

In this episode: We love to read, but the big question we get asked his what we read. And how. Do we prefer ebooks to paper books, or audiobooks to ebooks? So we talk about how our collections have moved mostly digital for a number of reasons, not the least of which is simply the clutter that buying tons of hardcovers and paperbacks accumulate over the years. We discuss the benefits of smartphone ebook apps, and how between them and audiobooks, we can get through so many more books than we would otherwise. Speaking of audiobooks, we love them! We listen to tons of different audiobooks. Void tends to use Whispersync on Kindle to keep his place between the same book, but Beej listens to a completely different kind of book on audio than he reads. It’s like the formats work differently for each geek! Void doesn’t like books set in the real-world, but Beej is okay with them if they have good characters. We talk a lot about comics in another podcast, so we gloss over them here. We...

The latest Star Wars novel, Ahsoka, came out in mid-October and I finished it in two days.  I always love picking up the newest Star Wars book and it's been really fun keeping up with all of the new canon since Disney pushed the giant reset button on the universe. Ahsoka was an ok book.  It didn't blow me away with awesomeness but it wasn't bad either.  It will definitely be for some people and not for others. To me, it felt like a long story arc from one of the TV shows, Clone Wars or Rebels, that has been moved over into novel format.  It bridges the gap between those two shows and reveals what happens to Ahsoka during that time period.  For that, I love it, just because I always want to expand my Star Wars lore. But, I feel like it would have been better in show format.  I could easier see this as a bonus story arc in either of the shows.  It's probably a consequence of the main character being a unique character to Clone Wars and Reb...

I recently picked up Storm King's Thunder and read through the adventure.  Although I've checked out a few D&D adventures before and found them interesting I haven't wanted to really run any of the those.  This is the first one that has a premise I think is super cool. Basically, without giving real spoilers, giants are running amok and the players get sucked into what's happening.  They have to figure it out and I love the twists and turns that happen along the way.  I already know how I would modify and streamline it if I were to be the DM to run it... but the core of the adventure is very interesting. I especially love that there are a few key paths you can take the story down that are fully fleshed out. Overall, if I ever do pull the trigger on getting a D&D group together and I don't feel up to trying out a homebrew campaign I would definitely want to run Storm King's Thunder.

It kinda released under the radar but three new Harry Potter novella came out digitally about a month ago.  I read them all and enjoyed them a lot. They weren't full fledged stories but instead little vignettes about various events and people in the world of Harry Potter.  It helped flesh out a bunch of the characters that are key to the series.  I especially liked the sections about different subjects of magic and how they work in the world.  Things like getting all the details about what it takes to become and Animagus or finding out more about potion making were really cool. I've read some of the other short tie-in books before but these were much better.  I can easily recommend them to any fan of the series.

After failing to get into the Drizzt series I decided to pick up an old series I hadn't read in awhile.  Since I had recently re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone I thought I would just dig back into the series. Between reading in my kindle app and listening via audible I've already flown through Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban.  Neither is quite as good as I remember from when I read them as a kid, but both hold up pretty well. If memory serves, then the series really picks up with Goblet of Fire and stays interesting all the way through the end.  I'll soon find out since the next book I have queued up is that one! It's been really interesting revisiting Harry Potter as an adult.  I first read these books as a teenager and enjoyed them a lot.  As an adult I can find more plot holes in them and pick them apart more critically but I'm still able to have fun with them and enjoy them for what they are.

After finishing the first two books in the first Drizzt trilogy I thought I could power through and finish the third.  I knew I wasn't going to stick with the series long term but I figured I could at least get through the initial trilogy. It turns out I could not. I gave Sojourn a try and made it maybe a fourth of the way through.  But, unfortunately, Drizzt is the only interesting character in the book.  And the book keeps cutting away to a bunch of other POVs and characters instead of sticking with him.  Even if it did stick with him he's still not very complex as a character at this point in the series. I had to set the book down and move on to something else.  I started avoiding reading which it how I knew it was time. I'm still not opposed to a good D&D novel.  I would love to find one that clicks with me.  It just looks like the Drizzt series isn't going to be it.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a decent story, but it's not great. I'm wondering how much of my feelings toward this are because it's a play and only the script was released to the public.  I'm curious about how I would feel walking out of the play instead of finishing up reading the script. But, the script is the only thing available to me at the moment so that's how I took this story in.  For me, it relies too heavily on the "cool things" from all the past Harry Potter books and not enough on it's own original creations.  They have a whole magical world to explore and instead they revert to the things we already know. It's like being constantly nudged and winked at while saying "Remember this thing?  Hey! How about this thing?  Remember how much you liked this?" I'm hoping the writer just needed to get this out of their system to tie the original generation together with this new generation of characters.  Maybe th...

Mecha Ace is the latest interactive fiction that I finished reading.  I haven't read one in awhile, but these are the interactive novels put out by Choice of Games LLC and I've found a bunch over the past few years that I like. Mecha Ace is all about being a Mech pilot fighting for the rebellion against an evil empire.  Sounds like a fairly standard setup but the actual missions and choices in the novel are fantastic.  I loved this author's work and I need to find out if he's written any other interactive fiction that's been put out through Choice of Games. I really like finding good ones put out under the Choice of Games label, but honestly the hardest part is finding a good author and then finding their other content.  It gets buried under the general catch all label too often. Anyway, Mecha Ace is really good, so if you're into interactive fiction or have ever enjoyed a choose your own adventure game you should give it a shot.  You can read/play it...

After reading the Player's Handbook, which I talked about yesterday, I immediately jumped over to the Monster Manual to see what the world of NPCs had to offer.  I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike the Player's Handbook, this isn't a book you can sit down and read cover to cover.  It's a detailed reference for all the major monsters, creatures, beasts, and beings in the game.  It's basically a combination of a world building tool and an encounter building tool for a DM. I scanned through the whole book, stopping to read about the monsters that most interested me.  It was fun!  And now I can definitely see how much of a tool this book could be for campaign building. One of the things I found most interesting was that every monster is given a challenge rating.  That rating is basically a "normal" difficulty rating for a party of four characters at that level.  So, for example, if a monster has a challenge rating of five then a group of four leve...

I wouldn't really call this a book review, but it kind of is?  I finally got around to reading the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook! I've only played three sessions of D&D in my life but I watch some YouTube series and listen to some podcast series that are basically ongoing D&D campaigns.  I've been doing this for years now.  I thought it was finally time to actually pick up a copy of the D&D books for myself and sit down to read them. I actually loved reading the Player's Handbook and I basically read it cover to cover.  I didn't read every single stat of every single spell, but that was the only exception.  I found some clarifications to the rules that helped me understand the game better than what I've picked up over the years.  But, best of all, I got to read all about the races and classes in the world of D&D. The world building contained in the race and class descriptions along was just amazing.  I especially love...

East of West is the last item on my Comics to Check Out list.  It came highly recommended from multiple people. I honestly can see why.  It has a fascinating story with and interesting and deep mythos behind it.  There are secrets to uncover but it explains enough to keep drawing the reader along. And it didn't click with me. This is one of those situations where I can objectively see the good in this but I personally don't really like it. I think it mostly comes down to the setting.  The setting is a cross of multiple genres, but most of them I don't like, especially Westerns.  And it seems like Western is the main genre for the whole series despite the fact that it's mixed with Sci-Fi, Kung-Fu, Civil War, and modern day. So... yeah.  You should probably check this one out if anything I've said has peaked your interest, but I'll be stepping away from it after only reading the first volume.

I've had my Marvel Unlimited subscription for awhile since I got a really good deal on a year long sub, but I haven't checked in and browsed much until lately.  Here's a quick sampling of what I've been checking out: Civil War Civil War was very comic booky... and not in a good way.  I didn't enjoy it since it was so over the top and it couldn't go more than 2 pages without trying to reveal a new hero in the fight or have someone switch sides.  I know it was a big thing at the time, and now I'm glad I know the source material for the upcoming movie, but I don't think this storyline holds up. Old Man Logan I didn't realize what Secret Wars was until like half way through this series.  But it's a short 6 comic run.  Secret Wars is basically a bunch of alternate universe earths that have all been jammed together into one planet somehow via the power of Doom.  It sounds dumb, but it lets the writers do mini storylines in any universe setti...

This is not my normal kind of book.  It's about Japanese ghosts and how they fit into Japanese culture.  I don't typically stray from fiction when it comes to reading for fun, but this one was cool! I found it because it's by the author that does Japanese cultural essays in Wayward, which is my favorite part about that comic.  It's actually the main reason that I still pick it up whenever a new issue releases. Yurei: The Japanese Ghost is all about Japanese ghosts and their evolution over the years.  It's a fascinating read and gave me a lot of cultural insight that I knew nothing about. Overall it's an interesting read, although it had some culture touch points that were hard for me to grasp as a Westerner.  But I got a lot of good information out of this book.  I would say if you're interested in either Japanese culture or ghosts in general you'll find something worthwhile in reading this.

One of the recommendations I got from a few people after the comic podcast was to check out the first two runs of The Ultimates comics. It turns out these are fantastic. The Ultimates is definitely a huge source of inspiration for the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of The Avengers.  The Ultimates is the start of it's own separate universe from the main Marvel comics so they're not burdened with all the history of all the characters.  It gets to assemble it's own Avengers for the very first time and it does a great job. The pacing of the story is fast and I love that about it.  Every issue moves multiple storylines forward which is something very few comics can say. I don't really want to spoil anything about the plot because it's so good. My main takeaway is that this is going to go into my back pocket as a recommendation for people who ask me what comics they should check out.  I think most people will like The Ultimates and The Ultimates 2.

The Three Body Problem is a book I heard rave reviews for.  What I found was not what I was expecting. The novel is about first contact with aliens, but it takes forever  to get to the point.  Instead you spend the first quarter of the book reading about the cultural revolution in China then you spend almost the entire rest of the book following characters who are trying to put together clues to a mystery (alien first contact... it's obvious the entire time) while never actually being interesting. No one ever puts the pieces together or accomplishes anything.  Instead they need it spelled out for them by the person who made first contact. There's no drama, no good story arc, never a character you can relate to.  And to top it all off there are huge sections of the book that are written as dry as possible. What I expected was a groundbreaking Sci-Fi novel since that's what it was sold to me as.  What I found was the longest preamble to a premise ...

Bands of Mourning is the third book in the second set of the Mistborn series.  It follows Waxilliam six months after the events of Shadows of Self .  It directly deals with the fallout from that book and it picks up really quickly. I think Bands of Mourning was the best paced and most consistently interesting in this set of Mistborn books.  I'm sure that part of that is because it ties into the previous book so well and builds on it.  I didn't feel that way nearly as much between the first and second book. Bands of Mourning finds the main characters needing to leave the central city where they've spent the last book and go investigate what's happening in the wider world.  They're looking for a legendary item, the Bands of Mourning, because it could have a power that would change the world. While I still don't love this alternate history early 1900s type of setting at this point I really like the main characters and I want to know what happens to them. ...

Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors these days and I just found out that he released this novella Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell a while ago and I somehow missed it. I remedied that situation. My favorite thing about novella length fiction is being able to sit down and read the entire thing in one session.  This one was no exception.  I read through the novella in one night and really liked it. Sanderson creates a new world with a new system of magic and superstition, as he usually does.  It's always interesting to see which direction he takes it.  In this world it seems to be built up around puritanical belief systems.  I'm not a person that likes too much religion in my fiction, but  Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell does a great job of using it as source material but not lingering on it. The story follows Silence, a character who owns a waystop along a dangerous road through the forests and the White Fox, a b...

I was surprised to see that Blade Runner was actually a novel  from the 60s.  I've tried to watch the movie a bunch of times and it never grabbed my attention but I'd never given the novel a shot. Once I started reading it I very quickly ran into that 60s Sci-Fi feel.  I didn't know if I had enough drive to read a book like that at the moment so I got the Audible version instead. It's actually a pretty interesting book.  It's all about a bounty hunter in search of renegade androids on the loose in his territory.  It's post apocalyptic and the world is a radioactive wasteland where most life is dead.  There's an entire religion built up around the remaining living animals and it also influences how people feel about the artificial life of androids. It's not a book I would necessarily recommend to anyone, but I am glad that I've read it.  I know it's either based off of or another name for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which i...