hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1506.txt

Episode: 1506
Title: HPR1506: HPR AudioBookClub 6 Shaman Tales Book 1 South Coast
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1506/hpr1506.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:26:06

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. Today is the Hacker Public
Radio Audio Book Club. I'm Pokey, and with me today is Colin. Hello, Colin.
Hi, Cookie, how are you?
Very well, thank you. Run a little late, as usual, and as my name would imply, but other
than that, things are pretty good.
Excellent. Good to hear you.
All right. And so today, it's just the two of us. Probably my fault. I didn't put out enough
emails and stuff, reminding people that the show was coming up. I'll try to be better
about that for the next book club. And again, let's see, we'll try to do it on like patch
Tuesday around 7 p.m. Eastern time in May for our next show. So I'll see that right up
at the front. So if you want to listen to our next book, and we'll say that at the end
of this show, and please join us, you know, Hacker Public Radio community members are
welcome to join. Colin and I have just met. This is first time on a podcast, right?
Absolutely. This is my Hacker Public Radio debut.
Excellent. Excellent. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. Ken's going to be thrilled.
It's good to be here. I've been listening to Hacker Public Radio for just over a year
now and been looking to drum up the courage to take parts. Hopefully this will work out
relatively well. Yeah, I think it's going to be fine. I think you're going to realize
just how welcoming our community is and friendly and helpful everybody is. All right. So
we are going to review the audio book. Okay, he retitled it. I believe it's, I have to read
this whole thing because he changed the name. Shaman Tales 1 South Coast by Nathan Lowell.
This is the second time I've listened to it the first time it was just called South Coast,
but he went and renamed all of his books. And the fact that I've listened to it twice should
tell you a little bit about it. That it is a good book. I do like the book very much. So the
way that we do this review for anybody who's new is we're going to not do any spoilers at first.
We'll just talk about the book and how, whether we liked it or not, what we thought of it.
When we run out of things to say without spoiling it, we'll have a brief intermission where we
each review a beverage of our choice. And then after that, we're going to spoil the heck out of it.
So if you haven't listened to it and you plan to, you can listen right up until the beverage review
without any spoilers. Okay. So I for one liked this book. I thought it was good. I didn't think
it was very good because I've heard a bunch of Nathan Law's other books and I like all of them
better. This is my least favorite of his books. I like all of the rest of them better than this one.
The mysticism, I think, just gets a little beyond me in this one.
Well, that's interesting because this is the first Nathan Law book that I heard.
I thought it was pretty good. There were a few aspects where I thought perhaps you could go
into a bit more depth and bring in some more story, but then on reflection I was thinking
that actually that might make the story a bit more complicated. But I folly a point
Pokey about the mysticism aspect there. On the one hand, you had that aspect and then on the
other hand, you had some quite detailed modeling and it was sometimes a bit difficult to marry
the two together. Yeah, and all of his books are very character driven. The plots of the books
are typically like this one where it's people who you'd like to know doing ordinary things. They
just happen to be way in the future. These folks just happen to be on another planet, but this could
happen today and here, except for a couple of the futuristic things. And they're just
dealing with problems that one might expect to deal with. And it's not, there's nothing terribly
dramatic or I don't know, I can't think of the word, there's conflict. The conflict is very
believable, very realistic and nothing's going to end the universe. There's no heroes really.
Is that, am I saying that right? Yeah, I think so. I completely agree. I thought that was one of the
really great parts of the book. And as you say, the character development and the way that he
managed to really bring two key elements of the story together was, it was a really good listen.
And I found it to be one of those books that you can listen to and it'd be quite relaxing and
not necessarily have to be one of those books where you have to really pay attention and then
I can easily consume myself listening to this again in the future.
That's very true. I was in the middle of another audio book when this one came up and it was time
to listen to it. And the other one, though it's very, very good and I like it a lot, when I listen
to it, I have to be listening to it. I can't really do much else. It's not an easy book to listen to,
I guess, even though it's re-enjoyable. And when I switched over to this one, it was a lot
easier to listen to. Nathan Lowell's storytelling and his voice are just so easy to listen to.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I listen to this book in a whole different range of places.
Occasionally, I listen to it late in the evening, but I actually found myself having to
relisten to the episodes because I'd fall asleep halfway through. But I've listened to it on the
train work, although not last time, having to concentrate heavily at work. But it really is
that kind of book that you can just listen to and because of his voice as well, particularly,
I think you're quite happy if you don't feel that you've listened to an episode properly to just
pick it up and listen to it again. Yeah, definitely. He could have called in on our
or Senate, Senate segment in for our April Fool's show, just listening to him read the phone book
would have been completely satisfying. Yeah, absolutely.
The, sorry, switching through tabs here, Ken Fallon also listened to it. No, he can't join us.
He did write me an email and he's got some different things to say about some different
different segments of our show. And he said, in general, he really enjoyed this book,
and it was delightful to listen to it again. Okay, so he's listened to it once before as well.
His style of storytelling is both relaxing and exciting at the same time, very addictive listening.
And it's about what we just said. Yeah, pretty much. I think it's a rounded out quite concisely.
Yeah, and another thing I like about Nathan Law, his books are not short, but they're not long either.
They're you can get through them in a weekend, you know, one if you want to, or you quicker if
you really are into it, but he's fairly concise as well. I like that. Yeah, yeah. And I think
that perhaps comes back to maybe what I was implying earlier about. He could have gone into more
detail in some sections of the book, but I feel that that may have distracted him from what he was
trying to do. Yeah, and he did get into some detail, but most of his detail was, you know,
the mundane things like, you know, how fishing nets were put together and how reels worked,
and that kind of thing I thought that was neat too. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I mean,
when I'm talking about some of the other aspects, I mean, he touched on some pressure from
external sources. I don't think I'm going to be getting into too many spoilers to say it was
employer in particular. And he could have gone into that a bit more, but again, having thought
about it, I think he would have actually distracted from the point of the book and of the
characterisation. And I think you're right, Pokey, when he does go into more detail, it's always
benefiting the people within the book, and you kind of feel that you're actually listening to
the characters rather than listening to the book to a degree. Yeah, yeah, very much so. And
another thing about this book that might be unique, I don't notice it a lot with it, but I found
myself rewinding this one an awful lot because I would just maybe get too relaxed while listening
to it. And then I'd miss something and say, oh, and I probably would have just let it slide,
but I didn't want to miss anything for the club like, oh, I might have missed something great
to talk about. There's some detail, but there was no real specific detail that I could
think of to, you know, throw many comments about. No, and I agree with you there. I think there
are two characters in particular that it was quite easy to confuse. Do you which two was that?
I found myself having to rewind a lot to see whether I was listening to Richard or Otto.
That's not the two I was thinking of. Which two two two reckon? That's funny because if I
confused two characters, it was always Jimmy and was a Tony. Yeah, yeah, no, I can see that
particularly when they were actually out and about doing some fishing. Yeah, I mean, it might
have just been because their names, you know, both end with an E sound, so maybe that was it, but
occasionally I would find I would have to rewind it and listen to which name was speaking again,
because they had very similar voices too, I think. Yeah, I think that was the same for me with Otto
Richard and the fact that they particularly towards the end of the book, they started to relate
to each other quite well. Oh, yeah, towards the end. Yes, I can see that.
Well, I'm having trouble thinking of anything else to say without spoilers.
Yeah, the same here. That's exactly what I was just thinking.
I guess it's time for a beverage then. What did you bring?
Well, I bought with me one of my favourite aisles from the southwest of the UK, because I'm
based in the UK. It's called Golden Glory, and it's by the Badger Breweries. It's actually
described as being a kind of, I'm going to minute, I pulled up a description here, which will be
quite helpful. Yeah, it's actually described as an American blonde ale style beer, if that helps
you out at all, poohy. I have quite a sweet too, so I've gone for quite a sweet fruity flavour
ale. I find it quite refreshing, and it's one of those aisles that you can happily drink on its own,
or with something fairly light as well as something a bit more heavy like your state possibly.
Right on. That sounds pretty good. I like blonde aisles every now and again. A lot of times,
I tend to stick with the darker beers. I like a creamier flavour sometimes, you know,
tending towards a coffee flavour or vanilla port or a stout or something is good to, or just like a
heavy ale, like a double or something, but a blonde ale every now and again is quite refreshing,
especially like if you're drinking like a half a waist and you need to cut that yeast or the
wheat, yeah, the wheaty yeasty flavour little something, those blonde aisles can do the trick sometimes.
Yeah, absolutely. I find them cut easier to drink. I mean, I like the heavier aisles,
I'm not really so much of a stout man. The good ones definitely, but I have to be in the right
mood for that. Yeah, you do, and stouts, I usually don't drink like a ton of them consecutively.
Like one or two is good and then I can switch over to an ale or a log or something.
Cool. How is that one for hoppiness? It's hoppy, but the general kind of zesty peachy type flavour
is probably slightly stronger than the hoppy. Oh, right on, yeah.
Yeah, I always have to ask over here because we got so many micro brews now in the past,
done five or ten years, all these craft beers are showing up and it seems like every one of them
makes seven IPAs. I'm not that big a fan of hops, you know. Yeah, now I know what you mean,
I think it's great that the micro brews are coming up. I don't know quite what it's like over
in America, but over in the UK, it's very easy to walk into a brewery owned pub because pretty
much most of them are brewery linked around these days and you just have some very bland general
purpose aisles, whereas the micro brews can quite often, if they're working well, come up with something
a bit unique. Yeah, and that's the weird thing too is a lot of them have those unique beers and
flavored beers and I'm not always, you know, I'm not thrilled if somebody tries to hand me a blueberry
beer, you know. You're not into that kind of flavour. I remember trying a rather nice raspberry one
once. Yeah, well, that's it. I could try one once. I don't, you know, like orange beers,
some people have these orange flavored beers or lime in a beer. I'm just not into that, but
give me something dark and smoky and I'm happy. Yeah, what I want to know these days is how many of
these micro brews are using their raspberry pies to help them sort out the brain process.
They should every one of them be doing that. There's, at the Northwest Linux or Linux Fest
Northwest, there's a group of guys who do exactly that and they make an open source beer and they use,
or do we know as a raspberry pies and stuff. David Whitman's talked about it a couple of times when
he's been up to Linux Fest Northwest and it's really exciting and it sounds like it's worth the
trip. Yeah, it does definitely does. I mean, the nearest I've got to it so far was reading the,
I think it's the last issue of Linux Voice has got a brew pie tutorial type description
thing in it, which was an interesting read. Oh, it's fantastic. All right, so my beer
for the past year or so, I've been trying to get back into camping and hiking and hunting and
woodsy type stuff and I've been working on camp stoves, you know, little hiking backpackable
stoves to take with me and and it seems to me like a wood stove is great and alcohol stove is great,
so I'm trying to make different combinations of them and a lot of them and a lot of the ultra light
hikers do a lot with the fosters beer cans because they're so huge. So tonight I grabbed a fosters
logger and I've never had one before. I've never had a fosters before, but I bought it just for
the can. I know Peter 64 is certainly rolling around it and no, but if it's bad Peter 64, you can
be happy because I deserve it for for trying it, but I just need the can to make a stove.
I think I'll be interested to see what you think when you try it, Pokey. Yeah, I think I'm
happy we've paid to 64 on this one. All right, well here it goes. What do you think?
I had some just barely beer in a can. It's kind of like a, of course, Miller Budweiser type of beer.
It's kind of thin in flavor other than that kind of stale giant brew beer flavor,
kind of watery on the back end and the aftertaste is kind of stale. And yeah, pretty sudsy.
It's beer, but just barely. That sounds like the fosters I know and avoid.
Yeah, I've moved into Ayles and I've never looked back. I try and go as independent as I can and
yeah, fosters. I think you rounded out pretty well with your your cause and your Budweiser.
I'd say that almost as a slight injustice to Budweiser. Oh no, Budweiser really can't stand.
I can't take that. You know, I used to know someone, you'll have to see for more. I used to know
someone who used to keep his Budweiser bottle in his pockets warm up for a drink and I never understood
why he was drinking Budweiser to start with but to drink it warm. I mean, really. Oh my gosh,
that's crazy. Oh, this beer is going to make me burp an awful lot. I'll try to remember to do that
off mic. Okay. Yeah, so that's fosters. If you need a camping stove or an ultra light aluminum pot
and you're a DIY or go for it, but maybe try to get a friend to drink it.
Why is move? And Ken wrote in and said that he was drinking a Rui-Bos-T-R-O-O-I-B-O-S.
I'm not a T-drinker. Is that one that I should know if I were a T-drinker?
Yes, I think so. I do have to say I drink a lot of tea mainly because I don't like the taste of
coffee, but Rui-Bos is one of the naturally caffeine-free teas. It's got an interesting,
I think it's slightly lemony taste to it, but it's not something I particularly enjoy myself.
Okay, Rui-Bos. All right. Yeah, if I drink tea, it's usually allong tea. It's the only one I
really will go out of my way for. Yeah, I like Rui-Bos and I like green teas and you have to have
some good old English breakfast teas. I've tried it. I've never, I don't know, maybe I wasn't
doing it right. Who knows? We don't really get tea over here. We get the shake out of the machines
when they're done making your tea and they put it in paper bags and that's what we get.
Okay, remind me to bring some tea bags with me if I have rained up in your part of the world.
Yeah, somebody and I cannot remember his name because it's not an English-ized name and I lost
the email. I can't find it, but somebody on IRC and he was in one of the Nordic countries sent me
a motherboard that he was all done with and I'm pretty sure it's the one I'm using now actually.
And he sent me a bag of tea with it in a package of ramen noodles, which I thought was terribly
clever because the ramen noodles will tell you whether or not the motherboard's been mistreated
and shipping and the tea was looked like something fancy and I just I didn't know what to do with
that. I had to look up how to brew tea. It was good, but I didn't know how I had no idea what to do
with it. I definitely liked the idea of the noodles as a way of checking to see whether the package
has been handled correctly or not. That's very clever. Yeah, and I don't know if he did that on
purpose or if he was just being a little cheeky throwing tea and ramen noodles own a balloon. He
shipped a balloon as well and it was funny as hell because on the shipping label, I don't know
he must have had to declare what was in the box. So it said motherboard, tea, noodles, and balloon.
I just thought that was hilarious. I still laugh about it. Can you imagine the guy at custom's
face reading that list? Yeah, I know. Maybe the tea and the ramen noodles, whatever,
but the balloon, he must have really just scratched his head about that.
Yeah, that was going to be one of those packages where he went home and told his family about it
and this weird guy sending these components off to someone. I mean, what they're going to need
all of those things for. Yeah, and now that I think about it, the guy who sent it to me, I'm sure
he must have got a good laugh about throwing that eclectic list of things in the same box.
And I bet when he told his family, they just looked at him funny too.
Yeah, when you opened it, Poke, did you have a look on your face as if to say, why did he send this?
No, I was completely thrilled. Are you kidding me? Even the balloon was fun.
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm surprised. Complete surprise. I hope you made the most of it.
Yeah, you bet I did. I don't remember if I just, I probably gave the balloon to one of the kids,
but I drank the tea and I ate the noodles for sure. And then like I said, I'm pretty sure this is
the mother board I'm using now. In that case, it must have been treated well. Yeah, the noodles
were pretty much intact. All right, so we can get into spoilers now. Yeah, I thought it was,
I thought it was an interesting book. I thought the, you know, the dilemma, they're
living on this fishing planet and all of a sudden, then they're running close to their quotas anyway.
They're running a pretty lean organization. All of a sudden, their quotas go up by 20%
or everyone's going to lose their job. And that pretty much was the driving force behind the whole book.
Yeah, absolutely. It really provided that outside influence that basically the whole
community that was involved within the book and the area itself really had to struggle against
a new follow, Jimmy who's kind of having to take responsibility for it. Now, I have to admit,
he does a really good job of actually making sure he takes that responsibility seriously,
but takes quite a long time for him to move out of the kind of thought box that he's kind
of stuck himself in that kind of tradition in terms of what they've been doing for so long.
Yeah, and that now that you mentioned it is a fairly common theme in Nathan Law's books,
the thinking outside the box theme. And, you know, all of his, you know, quote-unquote heroes are
the people who think outside the box now that you mentioned it. Okay, yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, I mean, the way I thought about the book is that there seems to be several phases to it,
although having said that they kind of merged together so you couldn't distinctly say one appeared
after the other, but you had the kind of Jimmy Tony and Casey relationship and then you had Richard
Otto and Rachel, I think it was, at the other end, and then you had some further interactions
in between which were always quite interesting and all very well coordinated. You really got
the sense that there was this community and that the characters were would interact with each
hour in the way that Nathan was describing. Yeah, and one thing about the relationships there,
as I kept waiting for, like, a love story there between, like, and I thought it was going to be
Jimmy and what was it in Casey? Is that what it was? Yeah, yeah, there was definitely something
looking like it might have been on the cards there. Otto and I think Susan, who was an incidental
character at one point as well. Yeah, and that was exactly that was just incident. That was just to say,
hey, he's reaching that age, but the Casey and Jimmy thing, I kept expecting it to happen and it never
did and as close as it ever got was when Jimmy suggested to Tony that Tony might be missing Casey
for love interest reasons and I thought that was kind of how to left field.
Yeah, I guess. I mean, Casey is one of those interesting characters in the book,
though, isn't she? Because for a short while she seems to play a really major role,
particularly when it comes to going out and being on the boat and teaching the guys how to
fish again, so to speak, or in Tony's case, to fish to begin with. But she kind of falls away
later in the book and as you say, that kind of left field remark, I don't know whether that was
just a case of looking to bring her back into the book and remind people that she was there,
or whether Nathan is looking to perhaps avoid getting down that road and opening up a relationship,
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, she was mentioned once or twice in like the brainstorming segments,
where they were trying to find fisheries and stuff, but you're right, she did kind of fade away,
I hadn't even thought of it that way. Well, I was, when I was listening to it, and I mean,
I listened to the last episode this evening, actually, and she seems to get replaced by Rachel as
the story goes through. Oh, yeah, you know, you're right about that. Rachel was the woman who ran
the bar. Well, I'd better check, but if I remember rightly, it wasn't Rachel, I'm thinking about Richard's
wife. Okay, yeah, okay, no, I was thinking that she was replaced by the woman who runs the bar
and was, and was teaching them how to do crabs. Yeah, I think we're actually might be talking about
a similar person. Yeah, because Richard's wife went and did the actual crabbing her an auto went
out and set the traps and learn how to do crabbing, but there was the woman who ran the pub who
wasn't interested in doing crabbing, but she seemed to know everything about it, which that kind of
took me for a small ride also. That part took me out of the story a little bit.
Jimmy, throughout the story. I think that was Mary. Mary? Okay, thank you. Yeah, throughout the story,
Jimmy would figure out what he wanted and then just go get it. He seemed to have unlimited funds
to get what he needed. And the fact that when this woman said, I'm not interested, but you should
see so-and-so who's never done it before, but I talked to her son and he was like, oh, great idea.
I that kind of took me out of it. I think for me that was that was one of maybe two or three
like unbelievable situations. Yeah, I think you're right. There was a couple that came up,
couple of convenient elements to the plot, but I think if you were casually listening to it and
not necessarily playing close attention for the purposes of a review, you'd probably miss it in
the characterization possibly. I always thought that Jimmy had those kind of resources and that was
reasonable because he was effectively running the business and had to make quota and if he made
quota, it'd get the bonuses. But like you say, if for someone who's running that kind of business
and fraying that kind of resource, would he really have immediately trusted without any kind of
questioning whatsoever? Yeah, and right, he did, that's the one, oh shoot, I'm stuttering here.
Yes, he did have or seem to have unlimited financial resources and that was believable because
he was running a planet, a business that was effectively half a planet. So I could kind of believe
that at least he had the funds to do it and then all they were really trying to meet was the quota
and they stated that several times. They were just trying to meet the mass allotment or the
mass quota of fish. But you know, I kept finding it hard to believe that there's only these two
operations going on on the planet. There's fishing and there's raising sheep and cattle and there's
nothing else. As if this planet has no other resources that are of any value to anybody.
And I know they said mineral resources are slammed and blah blah blah. But still, I mean,
there didn't seem to be more than 20, 30,000 people on the whole planet. I mean that kept throwing
me off too. Like this whole place was a small community. And I think you just hit the nail on the
head, Pokey, because that's exactly how I started to think of it. I really lost the concept of it
being a planet altogether. It felt like a community that lived on a shoreline with an expensive
sea to fish. But you know, it felt more like a kind of county or partial state rather than a
rather than a planet. Yeah. And listening to Nathan Lowell's other books, which are set in
this same universe, there's lots and lots of planets. But this makes it seem like the planets themselves
are a virtually unlimited resource that you can spread your people that thin and then set up
interstellar travel to support the few people rather than just concentrating them. And you could
help from planet to planet and completely wear one out a lot easier and more financially effectively
than what they're doing here. That kind of was weird. Yeah, I mean, I don't have the background in
his other books, but I mean, from the iterations that were the strong element of the book, I mean,
I ended up just feeling that he was talking about a community that was on a planet that was
interacting with other areas of the planet, whereas in reality, if you've got a bit more in depth
stories than clearly, yeah, that starts to feel a bit strange when you've got. So effectively,
so little happening on a planet, I mean, perhaps I'm starting to get a bit too technical,
but you'd need a certain amount of mineral resource on the planet to be able to sustain the fish.
I'd have thought, but you know, maybe that's just going one step too far.
Yeah, and yeah, really, it's just, there's got to be more than fishing and farming on this whole
planet to, I mean, so many industries exist. You know, you can't, you can't just set up a place,
I don't think, anyway, and not have any of those other industry industries even exist that nobody's
entrepreneurial enough and creative enough that you know, they get interested in something.
It just, I don't know, it's just kind of weird. Every time I thought of that, it took me out of
the story, so I had to try and not think of that. It sounds like I almost had the benefit in not
having the background of the other books, because I found it a lot easier to transition the storyline
into that kind of small community where it made a lot more sense. Yeah, perhaps.
Yeah, that could be true. And the other thing that kind of threw me for a loop was the fact that
here's this entire fishing community planet, and they never thought to fish for anything else with
these detrollers, like, like we don't want to see growth. And they said they'd been there for
100 years. You want to see growth in your industry, you at least try one other kind of fish.
Yeah, I mean, coming back to what you were saying about those occasional bits of kind of
unbelievable plot. I mean, if they've been doing the same thing for a hundred years and they've
got all these other fish around, why is there all of a sudden this entrepreneurial explosion,
if you like, in terms of trying to meet this quota. Well, I understand that, you know,
it's by putting the quota up that they're challenging what they do. But yeah, it was a bit of a leap.
Yeah, and Ken says, his main criticism of the book, boy, this fosters, makes you slur a bunch.
I don't feel funny, but I'm slur in my speech. All right, the main criticism of the book
and his work in general is the faith and corporations to look after the needs of its employees.
I can find no example in human history where this holds true, where workers didn't try and unite.
At best, places where workers retreated well, there was no resentment at lack of land rights or
self-determination. I find it unbelievable that a planet of several million people would not seek
some form of independence or rights for its citizens. This extends to the son of the shaman.
What if the shaman has ten sons? What about the daughters? Where is the right to self-determination?
Are all the planets inhabitants doomed to a life of toil on the sea purely to an accident of birth?
Why are the teenage children not going to second level education, let alone third?
All that aside, it's a good yarn and I look forward to more works from him.
Ken, good points, Ken. Yeah, it's interesting. I think they are good points, but I think that again,
I think that may have overcomplicated the story somewhat, and I think it benefits from the simplicity,
the story, simplicity almost reflects the community's simplicity to a degree.
Yes, the simplicity is in the plus column for this book. The fact that it helps it to be an easy
listening book for sure, but he's right about secondary education, and that thought did cross my
mind while I was listening to it, that it didn't seem like there was any school at all.
Really, you learned to fish and you went fishing, there wasn't really much for education.
Yes, it's never mentioned. I suppose whilst we were
rounding up the criticism, I did find the kind of the time segments that we used,
stances and things like that, I think. I found that quite confusing. I didn't quite see the need
for changing what would have effectively been the same unit of time, although
be it different, perhaps, in actual length on a different planet.
Yeah, he never goes into any explanation of that in this or in any of his books.
He talks about stands and ticks, which I just took to mean hours and minutes,
which threw me off for a long while too, because I would have thought a tick would be a second,
but he seems to use them as minutes and stands. He seems to use as standardized hours or standard
hours, I think. Yeah, I mean, I really had to pick that up as it went through the first couple of
times. It's like, okay, I think he means this, and then when the second, I mean, the ticks came
up after a while, and then you're like, okay, so what's the day, what's the hour, what's the minute?
Which threw me a bit, and that was probably the one time where I was listening to the story,
where I was actually feeling like I was having to think a bit more than perhaps I should have done.
Yeah, and the other, in his other books, he does this a lot of where he just talks about things,
and you're kind of expected to just pick up on it, and it's a reasonable expectation
for a person who's paying attention to the book. His other books, the Trader's Tales,
is a six book long series, and I think I was listening to it the third time
before I realized that when he talked about the sand, he was talking about a sanitation unit.
I knew it was a bathroom, I knew it was a shower, but I couldn't figure out what sand meant.
Yeah, I suppose that might answer the longevity of the series, and I think, although it feels
like we've been a bit critical for the last 10 minutes or so, Pokey, but I think the fact that
you've lighted on listening to it for the third time really shows that the books themselves
are pretty good, and there's a lot going for them. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It sounds
like, for me, it probably sounds like I'm nitpicking the book and being overly critical of it,
of a book that I really, really liked, which is weird. It's just that the things I liked about it,
were also subtle. The book is so subtle, and Nathan Lold has such a good job with subtlety
that it's hard to say, oh, I'd love to this part where that happened, or I'd love to that part
where that happened. It's all just very subtle. I just really enjoyed the thing as a whole.
It's hard to break down the good things because they're all one big good thing.
Yeah, absolutely, and to link the two together, I think my biggest criticism of the book is
actually that it's a bit short. I could have happily listened to that story go on for another
good few chapters and episodes. It was really, really good. Yeah, it was. And
geez, what else? Now, I feel like I need to say something positive. I run through my brain real
quick. My brain, which is swimming in this awful fosters. Yeah, you've disabled yourself a bit with
the fosters there. I'm just thinking that I mean, I don't know his background too much. Nathan's
background, that is. But he really seemed to marry up the different aspects of the book. There was
enough understanding of business. There was enough understanding of fishing, particularly, which
a lot of the book depended on. But when he started to get into modeling and I can't remember the
guy's name, the young kid. Frank. Yeah, that came in and he'd written the game based on this model.
They then used the game to help model the fishing and linking up the benefit. You can almost see
a technological background in the fact that he managed to connect gaming to real life and
actually demonstrate that gaming can be a positive influence in terms of understanding what's really
going on and those kind of things really pulling together. It was a bit awkward at times, but he
seemed to make it work. Okay, you just reminded me of something that I really, really liked about this
book. A specific thing is that the game model where he was, I think his name was Frank, the kid,
was trying to explain it to Jimmy and it said how he got a little shy. It said, oh, I never published
the game. Like, just kind of never said it. Never came right out and said it, but hinting towards the
fact that this kid infringed copyright and knew that he infringed copyright was a little afraid
of getting in trouble for it. And I just, I got that feeling from it. I could, I could see the kid
kind of respond in that way and, and you know, hunching his shoulders and hiding a little. I really
did like that. That's exactly how I write it and coming from a book that's obviously creative
commons. Yeah, I really hit home. Yes, exactly. His audience, I think every person in his audience
will, well, I shouldn't say that. I think a large portion of his audience probably took it that
way, whether or not he meant it that way, just because a large portion of people reading a creative
commons books are going to be aware of copyright issues. So, so yeah, I really enjoyed that,
that I got a good chuckle at it. Although thinking about Ken's point, where did he learn how to
write the game and manipulate the model? That's why you're doing a good job of channeling Ken there.
I also liked the the banter between Otto and his mother Rachel. I think we determined her name
as I did like that a lot that the way they, they, you know, joked back and forth. I do that a lot
with, with, you know, my mom and my wife and my daughter and the people I like.
Yeah, that really started coming through towards the end of the book to that relationship and
bond between the whole family just kind of grew much, much stronger. Amazing what a, a bit of family
turmoil will do for you and I don't know quite how much of a spoiler it will be to go into that,
but I think it's safe to say that the father goes through some pretty rough times there or after he
goes out fishing and gets caught up in a fairly serious incident. Well, we're in the spoiler
section so it's fair. You can, you can say, you know, you got bit by that boxfish and, you know,
came very close to death and there's, oh, sorry. No, that's okay. It's interesting because there's
so many good parts of this book and then occasionally you just pick up a criticism as you're thinking
about it, but the fact that the guy recovers almost completely untouched is perhaps another one
of those elements, but then, you know, I suppose it's kind of good that he dances and it's just kind of
lucky that's how it films, I guess. Well, that was one of the two, two I can think of major
events where the mysticism, you know, it seemed like you were supposed to believe that the mysticism,
the shamanism had a real world effect on the people. You're supposed to believe that the
polar bear, polar bear, welky gave him the strength that he needed. And the other part, of course,
was Richard holding the barge still. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Which is,
it kind of comes out of nowhere, though, because you kind of get the feeling through the most of the
book, the shamanism is really more of a kind of, you know, it's respected and recognized throughout
the planet, but it tends to sit in the background. And for those two elements, it's like really
plum central in view. And it's a bit of a surprise almost at those points. Yes, it's a little jar
and Richard standing there on the deck of the barge using the force to hold it still.
Where, to contrast, one place where I thought the shamanism was used really, really well, was
when Otto, well, I don't remember who, I think it was Otto who saw the birds fly in south to,
you know, they were seasonal birds and they would fly south to find their food in the winter.
And then he gave the bird, welky to Jimmy. Like, I thought that was great. That, to me,
was, you know, what that shamanism kind of could have meant, you know.
Yeah. And then Jimmy, not knowing what it was, but then going back to, to the ports and looking
at the boats and then being told by someone else who was working on the boats, I mean, that that
really worked really, really well and that kind of realization. Well, I thought that the link was
there because they said nothing was south but water and these birds fly south to fish. So I'm,
you know, the way I read that was that Jimmy found where these birds go during the winter
and where they go to catch their fish. Yeah, absolutely, although now you mentioned it,
if they've been there for a hundred years and it took them that long to figure that out. But,
yeah, sorry, I know the cynical perhaps first. Yeah, no, I feel really guilty about criticizing
the book because I enjoyed it so much. You know what? I agree with you. I feel guilty about
criticizing it too, not just because I liked the book and not just because of like all of Nathan
Lowell's books, but I think I really like Nathan Lowell. I really think I like him as a person.
Yeah, he's, I mean, he sounds like the guy that you could quite happily have a conversation
we then get to know and just really enjoy listening to. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I've heard,
I've heard him, well, I heard one interview that he did with the Linux like tech show years and
years ago, which is actually how I found audio books. I was just listening to, you know, audio
on CD from the library at the time. And he just seems like such a nice guy. He's just a really
cool person to be around and just talk to. I mean, I don't think he's the guy. I, you know,
maybe expect to go go-carding with, but going for a hike and walking through the woods and just,
you know, checking stuff out or sitting around a campfire for sure. He's definitely invited to that.
And Nathan, anytime you want to come by my campfire, you're a new hamster. Give me a buzz. You're
invited. Well, there you are, Pokey. I think you're doing a good job of passing on the
baton there because I picked up audio books from listening to the HBIR audio book club.
And, you know, I completely agree. I'd quite happily spend some time talking to Nathan.
And I might have to go and hunt down a couple of those podcasts if they're still online
or in an archive to Google or something like that. Yeah, right. And oh, Tilt says everything.
Yeah. And now I feel kind of guilty because I, I, um, the last audio book club we did,
I invited Cristiana Ellis to come on with us and talk about her book with us. And while I got
some very positive feedback about that publicly, a couple of people said to me behind the scenes
that they didn't come on the show with us and they wanted to. But they didn't want to come on
and criticize the book with the author right there. So I thought it seemed to me that, you know,
okay, maybe, maybe we shouldn't have the author on them if people are afraid to criticize the book.
So I didn't invite Nathan for that reason and that reason alone. That was the only reason.
But now I'm thinking that it might have been a mistake because well, it's only two of us here
anyway. So that's not what kept people away this time, I guess. I don't know.
Yeah, it's an interesting point. I suppose there's pros and cons in both directions. It would have
been kind of nice to have Nathan here to just get into a discussion with him. But, um, I mean,
I listened to the the KC podcast as well. And I thought it did benefit from having her there,
and particularly in terms of, I mean, I won't get into a review of doing a book previously.
But I had a few difficulties with the book in terms of listening to it. It wasn't really my kind of
book. It wasn't anything to do with the way KC written it particularly. But having her there,
having listened to the book kind of helped me understand where she was coming from a bit more
and actually helped me appreciate the work that she's done that little bit extra.
But having said that, I listen back to some of the episode today and it started to feel a bit
more like a conversation with her than a book review to be fair. So I don't know. I think it can
work either way, Pokey. Perhaps you need to do two shows for each book. That might be the key to it.
Ken would love that. It's not even a bad suggestion, just an interview.
Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't know whether you want to do it before or after the show,
that you know, the actual review show, it depends on whether you want to pick out some points
that people have made and use it for questions in the interview, perhaps. I'm not sure whether you
want to provide them the episode to listen to or not. I guess that depends on the maybe review.
I would definitely want to talk to the author after the show because I kind of use other
people's comments. When I do interviews, I usually ask if I'm doing an interview, I usually
put something out and say, hey, I'm going to interview this person. Does anybody have any good
questions? Because I can't come up with all that on my own. Well, that's fair enough. That's
what communities for. Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, too, because people always tell me they're
impressed with the Richard Stallman interview that I did, but mostly that was everybody else's
questions. I can't take any credit for that. That's the way I would feel about Nathan Wall as well.
I need everybody else's comments. That's fair enough, Pokey, but you were there and you put the
questions to it. You were there interacting with Richard Stallman. I've sat in one of his lectures
before, and that's not always the easiest job to do. I'd love to go see one of his lectures. I
keep meaning to try and make it down to Leaver Planet because he usually speaks at that,
but anyway, sorry, didn't mean to sidetrack us. Where were we? We were feeling guilty about
criticizing a book that we like so much. I think that was it. It would be nice to speak to Nathan
just to try and understand a couple of aspects a bit more and where he was coming from perhaps
and understand why he did or didn't go in certain directions. Yeah, that's a fair point.
When I say that I don't like it as much of his other books, keep in mind, dear listener, that
I hold his books in such high regard. Not liking it as much as his other books. His other books
are stellar. They're far and above most books that you could purchase or find for free or
get at your library any other way. Their good quality time spent with art. It's good art.
Just because I happen to like his other art better than this art, I don't mean to come across
and say that I didn't like it. Yeah, I think I ought to support that, Pokey. I think it's quite clear
that having listened to the shaman tales, but one that I'll definitely be picking up his other books
to catch up with you in terms of what's going on in this universe because I really enjoyed
to enjoy the book and want to go and pick out his other work to get that more complete film.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can't wait for more of his stuff to come out. I have, I'm embarrassed to say,
I only have one of his books in paperback on the shelf. I've been meaning to pick up a few more,
and I'll probably never open any of them just to support him and what he's doing. So I feel guilty
that there's only the one. Yeah, he's definitely, I don't know what we call him, a writer or a broadcast
that's definitely worth supporting. Yeah, I'd say both. His writing is fantastic. I enjoy it
tremendously, but even the books that he hasn't written that he's just, he's read them aloud for me
are tremendously, he's just just tremendously good job with it. They're fantastic books.
And if we get nothing else to say, that reminds me, that makes me think of the one I would like to
recommend. Go for it. Okay, fantastic. So for our next audiobook club, I'd like to change gears
a little bit, and I don't know if we've done a fantasy book yet. I don't think we have,
but there's a book on, again, this is on potty of books, I'm sorry, everybody, it's always,
it's been potty of books every time, and I keep meaning to find a good one on LibraVox or some other
place. But on pottyobooks.com, there's a book called The Crown Conspiracy, written by Michael J. Sullivan,
and it's read by Nathan Lowell. So here's a slightly different take on Nathan Lowell, where
you hear him read it, it's in his voice or his interpretation of someone else's voice, rather.
It's a book I really enjoyed multiple times. It's one that I've listened to with my 13-year-old
daughter, so it's more or less family-friendly, maybe PG, I don't think it's quite G, but it's
certainly there wasn't any points where I had to turn the sound down real quick and was blushing
about it. But I thought it was a great book, and then be fun to review.
Yeah, well, I can definitely listen to more of Nathan Lowell, so I'll be sticking that into my
podcast catch up. Excellent, excellent, thank you so much Colin, and thank you for joining me
tonight, joining the book club. We're always looking for new members, and you're a fantastic one,
I hope you'll come back. Well, I'm really glad to be here, and thanks for being so welcoming,
Pokey, I have to say it was a bit daunting knowing that I'd be the only other person on the podcast
rather than having a group of us, but I've really enjoyed it, it's been great fun, I've really
liked listening to the two books that you've reviewed last, and I look forward to going for the
next one and joining you on the review. Yeah, and in some respects you carried the show because
you brought the good beer. Wait, I think you were just I'm lucky, you're no better next time.
Well, I knew better getting into it, I kind of knew it was not a good choice for a beer, but
I thought it'd be a fun choice for the show. Definitely, your reaction to trying the first
as was one of my highlights anyway. Thanks man, I didn't expect it to go to my head quite as bad as
it is. I don't I think I'm maybe two thirds done with it, and it has definitely been interrupting
my speech patterns. Well, at least you've got an excuse, I on the other hand do not.
Oh, you did fantastic. Yeah, and for everybody else out there listening, if this sounded like fun to
listen to, it's probably even more fun to do, so please come join us next time. We're going to
we're going to do the next book club on month, sorry, Tuesday, May 13th.
7 p.m. Eastern time unless that time isn't working for people, but we'll just remember it's patch
Tuesday of, if we've been doing every month or every other month, we'll try may. We'll try to make
in the next one for May. It's a month, a little less than a month from now. We pushed this one
back a week. It's not patch Tuesday, but I'm rambling. Any closing thoughts, Colin?
I don't think so. I think we've said everything about the book. Obviously, I hope that we get a few
more people on next time, and if Ken's listening with any luck, I'll put together and elevate myself
to doing my own shows rather than just hanging along pokies. Right on, please do. Yeah, and everybody
right now we are really low on shows on HPR. We really could use your contribution right now.
If you've got an idea for a show, please record it. Get it out there for us. If you haven't got an
idea, have a look at our contribution page. There's plenty of requested topics you might know
something about. We don't need you to be an expert. We just need you to be enthusiastic and let
us know what you think. And the instructions and tutorials on the HPR website are really clear.
Just so people know, I've set out number first time pretty much tonight using those instructions,
and with a little bit of help from Poké, I think it's worked pretty well. I had no real problems,
and if I can also give a quick shout out to the old planet cast. I'll catch plenty.
That's it. Thanks, Poké. That just goes to show how new I am. Went in there this afternoon just to make
sure I had the right details for your show and the most helpful bunch that I could have asked for.
Oh God, I love our cast planet. I haven't been able to log in there. I used to be able to do so
from work, you know, an awful lot, but I just haven't. My work situations changed a bit, and I miss
going in there so much. I miss those guys. I love those guys and ladies in there so much.
But yes, please contribute to Hackapublic Radio and think of joining us next month,
and thank you so much for listening, and have a great day. Goodbye, everyone.
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You're on the community news last, weren't you, Pokey?
Yes, it was. Yeah, from we were at the northeast Linux fest we called in from there and
people were coming by. That was it. I remember now. You guys mentioned about a show
where you teach someone new to record a show and do that as a kind of mentor, mentee thing.
Yeah, we were talking about doing that. Did we get anyone prepared to be the newbie in that
show? No, you volunteered? Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Given that all I've managed to do so far
is get mumble running and I've been looking at it for a while but never really got around to it.
So be a way of putting a show together, I guess. Yeah, right on, we could do that sometime.