At least Wil, and/or his audio director, knew not to pronounce sysop (system operator) as "SY-sop" or ASCII (ASS-key) as "A-S-C-two." Apart from that, I find both audio editions very well done.

Bob from the Bobiverse and Grace from PHM are indeed very similar characters. It's not just Porter.

RC Bray did an audio version of "The Martian" some years back. It had to be re-recorded for rights reasons, and the voice actor that time was Wil Wheaton. I've listened to both, and it really didn't change my view of Mark Watney much.

My position on this sort of technology implant has always been: you first.

Don't worry, that will reverse itself pretty quickly when the North Atlantic Current shuts down.

I have a journalism degree, although I haven't worked in the field for many years. You?

Reporters call that "legwork" and it is absolutely someone's job to do so.

He can't help it, he's a Mormon.

You'd get a shorter response list by asking "what series that starts with a great book doesn't go steadily downhill the longer the series gets?"

Edited to add: I'm a fan of the 50-odd volume "In Death" mystery series by JD Robb/Nora Roberts. In my opinion, that one holds steady throughout. Started as a good absorbing comfort read, still is. Never Great but still good.

But mysteries benefit from their structure in that way. Each book naturally has its own internal complete story: crime committed, crime investigated, crime solved. But there's also room for the established characters, normally the investigators and their social circle to grow and develop. The In Death books are police procedurals, which also helps. You don't risk the "How many people near Jessica Fletcher get murdered every year? Is she doing it herself?" problem.

You have a lot of fun reading ahead of you. Most of his best stuff is his short story collections.

True enough. You can't understand English-language literature, going back at least as far as Chaucer, without understanding Christianity as they practiced it at the time. I expect the same is true for any other Western literature. And that goes double for Western history. You don't have to believe a word of it, but you do have to grasp what they believed.

For my personal tastes, laundry with current equipment is a breeze compared to dirty dishes and, worst of all, cleaning bathrooms. Humans, frankly, are kinda gross.

Everyone stop for a minute and go read "The Door Into Summer" by Robert A Heinlein, published 1957. Skim over the vaguely squicky but not abusive romantic part. Take the time travel as a necessary plot device.

The sections about inventing "Drafting Dan" are essentially an obsolete (even then) trained engineer trying to describe computer-aided drafting without ever having seen it. Or the transistors then microchips then less-than-room-sized computers then graphic user interfaces that turned out to be necessary for CAD in the real world. In, I repeat, 1957.

Dan's second invention, the "Hired Girl" housecleaning robot, basically describes this press release in the same can't-quite-see-the-future terms. Heinlein also has some remarkably shrewd suspicions about the programming problems of dealing with, say, putting away any set of dishes in any kitchen with a generalized set of instructions.

Is it just me, or are any other fans of old SF noticing this aspect too?

There have been years and years of incremental improvements in solar cells, batteries, etc. which have gotten very little press.

I keep track of books I've finished reading, but I don't set goals in advance. I do go by page count, since I read both long books and short books. At different times I will read for education, for entertainment, or for comfort. I can't predict how much of each I'll need/want at the beginning of the year.

She's highly respected among science fiction readers.

Asking for a report turns the gift into a homework assignment. Don't

Good points. There's a lot of nonfiction out there that tells stories. I've been addicted to the history of the Tudor dynasty in England since my teens. As a general rule, when people fictionalize those parts of history they become less interesting. Truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.

I'm also a big fan of Simon Winchester, whose nonfiction books take a set of historical events (the volcanic explosion of Krakatoa in the 1800s, for example) and always put them in an interesting and thought provoking context.

ITYM, "by a strange coincidence, there is also a zombie book with the same title."

I've read the Godfather, and I agree. Haven't read Jaws.

Sometimes, rarely, you find movies that are better than the book they're based on. I can think of "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Hunt for Red October" and then I run out.

I came here to say this. 6 hours to do full justice to a fairly short novel.

Shakespeare needs to be watched, not read. and the language has changed enough that it's best to be primed with some advance knowledge. From someone able to embrace the cheap and/or dirty jokes.

I love using long audio books on long car trips. I feel more alert. This may be an after effect of my childhood ADHD, but if I don't have something keeping my brain busy enough I'm liable to get lost in thought. And when driving, in some cases actually lost.

Processing in a second language is not at all the same as listening to your first language. I'm a massive book addict, both text and audio. But when I try to read text in my second language (Spanish) it's really hard work. I can't keep it up for long at a stretch.

I haven't even attempted an audio book in Spanish. I love them in English, but 125% is the very most I can speed things up and enjoy them. I'd say, give yourself a break on this one. Accept that for now, English is work for your brain and don't expect 100% fluency instantly.

Definitely read it. It's quite readable. And yes, the movie is definitely twisted into "look at these evil Nazi people" when in fact the author (Annapolis grad, medical discharge with tuberculosis) spent World War II trying to pull every string to get back in uniform and on active duty.

The two points I consider most important at the moment:

-- having gotten past the travesty of the script adaptation, the movie viewer in me now rolls eyes the most at the "FTL probes fired by bug farts" and the appalling lack of powered armor. I don't think Heinlein invented it -- Doc Smith certainly had some in the Lensmen books -- but he perfected it. A "Starship Troopers" movie without powered armor is almost equivalent to a "Run Silent, Run Deep" remake without submarines. Heck, those guys didn't even have sleeves on their uniforms to protect their arms from light scratches.

Heinlein famously said that readers who wanted to understand his thinking should read "Starship Troopers," "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," and "Stranger in a Strange Land" side by side. Also, to think of all three books as posing philosophical questions rather than imposing answers.