morgenman

This is so cool!! I don't know what our prizes are, but now I need to find out!

Thanks I'll check it out!

100% with you on Red Queen. As soon as it was about armies and a revolutionary force and all that it just kinda faded in interest. I think honestly just too YA for me. All I remember is that the people have powers and there's a cool walled city or something?

I totally get North Woods, it was strange. The supernatural bits felt a little out of place at the end. Definitely a love letter to naturalism though.

What are some of your favorite books?

Yea I don't think ACoTaR is romance in that way, but if you're really willing to push your boundaries of predicability and comfort you might like the Bone Island series. Personally I hated how it made me feel, but it definitely made me feel something, especially the second book. My initial thought was jfc the author needs to seek therapy. Do you have any love/smut that you do like? I love love, but haven't enjoyed any romance books that come from the pastel covered romance section of the bookstore which is why most of my books lean fantasy romance.

[Edit] You might also like a study in drowning. The book has you questioning the reliability of the narrator in a fairly interesting way and I enjoyed the light romance.

Me too, being able to share something you love is such a rush. I gave a copy of Moonbound to one of my best friends and one to my wife and they both said it was one of their favorites. I rode that high for at least a month! Looking forward to checking out both Tanith Lee and Hailey Piper when I get a chance. Happy new year!

Omg we do have a bunch in common! Stealing this reading list for when I need a new book to read.

Will check out thanks for the recommendation! Sounds right up my alley

If you're ok with it being a little YA the Graceling series was great, especially Bitterblue and Sea Sparrow.

I liked the Cruel Prince, very Fae focused fantasy. If you're down for an Arabian nights vibe the Wrath and the Dawn was good.

The House of Salt and Sorrow and it's sequel both caught me off guard with twists that had me yelling at my ereader when I found out that book three hadn't been published yet.

I didn't read it this year, but A Court of Thorns and Roses series is really popular. I enjoyed it a lot but the first book imo is the worst so you need a bit of an investment. Firmly 'romantasy', if you jive with that.

What's some of your favorite sci-fi? I love the genre but have a bad track record with actually liking the writing style of a lot of sci-fi I find (obviously Moonbound was an exception).

I used storygraph but I'm not really sold on it. Going to look at some of the other alternatives in this thread!

I thought the Red Queen series was alright, but didn't end up finishing it. It really reminded me of the Hunger Games for some reason and I just wasn't feeling the vibes. North Woods was fascinating. I read it after seeing a screenshot of the beetle erotica bit. I'm definitely glad I did. It wasn't the character driven narrative I normally go for (unless you want to make the argument that the house was the main character which honestly is a pretty good argument), but I found it charming and mysterious. Not my favorite but fun.

My favorite is definitely Moonbound. 10/10, incredible sci-fi book that blurs the lines with fantasy without getting too Chronicles of Riddick if you know what I mean.

This is just wrong. I love foss and the effort put into gimp, but there are so many little ux things that it gets wrong.

The big one for me is non destructive resizing of pasted objects. Photoshop puts the little drag handles on them allowing for resizing, the top middle one allows you to rotate, holding the shift key locks proportions etc, all right away after pasting.

On gimp you can open a menu and specify the height and width, or you can click shift + s, which kind of works like Photoshops but is somehow clunkier & destructive when shrinking.

I also really miss smart objects and the universal tool options menu (not sure what it's called but it lives on the top of the canvas on PS and gives you all the relevant options for whatever tool you are using. I'm sure gimp has an equivalent but out of the box I find it much more correct and confusing.

Libertinus Serif is my current favorite. I generally like most garamond-likes for most books, but will dabble in a sans if the book is suitably scifi. Older favorites of mine are Adobe Caslon Pro and Adobe Devanagari. Baumschrift is a fantastic clean sans font but honestly it shines best on larger sizes for headers rather than prose. If we are doing monospace I love IBM Plex Mono in the light variety.