giriinthejungle

Also -1 here. I was convinced throughout my studies that my university was being super cheap on the projectors, getting always some shitty, soft ones. Ranted about it the whole time. Wish it was the beamers.

I think my hand-wash-only, pure-wool sweater believes by now that the bottom of the wash bin is where it belongs.

This is beautifully said. There had been moments in my life when I'd be so very happy that I would indeed close my eyes, take a deep breath and appreciate the moment. When there is nothing to bug you in the back of your mind to ruin the setting, such moments are beautiful and I agree, could be described as pure joy.

This is excellent!

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.

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.

Hey I just finished the Replay and came to thank you again for mentioning it. Such an amazing book, absolutely one of my best reads so far. Cannot believe it is not more popular. Not only the plot got me, but also the way it was written, so... Human and intelligent. Also there is often quite some interesting info and emotional maturity in the dialogs, and yet they never felt forced, as those well-thought-through-exchanges sometimes tend to be. Just excellent. But gotta say: for once, for freaking once, the main character of time travel invests in stocks. I mean, come on, finally!

Anyways, you literally nailed it with recommending me this one. Will also look up now the other two from the list. Thanks again!

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. :)