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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 18, 2019 15:08:27 GMT -5
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore. Charlie Asher, Minty Fresh, Sophie and the rest are back in the sequel to A Dirty Job. Unfortunately it feels more like a re-run or a re-write than a sequel. Main antagonists from the first book are back with a slightly altered Big-Bad. The world is unraveling because the Death Merchants haven't been doing their jobs. The way death is going to work is to be reset...again. Rinse...repeat. I found Dirty Job to be one of Moore's weakest books. Well...this is almost certainly THE weakest. Which is not to say that it's not readable. Moore is nothing if not readable. There is fun and funny stuff here. But very little of it is new. It all just feels very re-tread. If you're a Moore completest it's probably worth the read. If you aren't...it almost certainly isn't.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 18, 2019 21:36:54 GMT -5
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
Some authors have one great idea, then they beat it to death. Others have lots of great ideas, and dazzle you with the variety of their work.
Then there's some that have the ideas, but just can't wait to tell you about them and jumble them all together in the same book.
That's what we get in this first novel by Genevieve Cogman. It's a mystery.. and a crazy reality bending multiverse story.. and a Holmes analog with Steampunk thrown in. Oh, and there's Dragons, and fairies and vampires and... just too much. What does out the window is good characterization. The main character, Irene, is a pretty generic spunky heroine, and her sidekick Kai a standard chivalrous guy with a mysterious past.
The thing that annoyed me the most, though, is that the Library, the central organization which the series is named after, has no defined purpose until one reads the preview for the 2nd book. Vale (the Holmes analog) asks are heroes a variety of questions in story about it, and no answers are given. It's one thing to leave some mystery for later, but it's another to have the characters not know what's going on.
The seeds are here for some good stuff, and the story itself is engaging enough, but there's just too much. To do the whole thing justice would have needed another 500 pages at least... perhaps the later books help things out.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 24, 2019 11:27:43 GMT -5
Springfield Confidential by Mike Reiss with Mathew Kickstein Reiss gives us his view on the way things work on The Simpsons and why they work. Along the way he looks at his other work including creating The Critic and the webtoon Queer Duck. But the focus here is on The Simpsons. Reiss was one of the original writers and was, along with his writing partner Al Jean, the showrunner on The Simpsons seasons 3 and 4, generally regarded as among the strongest seasons of the show. Following his departure to work on The Critic, and its subsequent cancellation (twice) Reiss worked as a screenwriter, script doctor, etc. before he was drawn back to The Simpsons to work on the Simpsons Movie. Since that time he's been a writer on the show again. If you're a Simpsons fan, this is a must read. I've watched the show since the shorts that were on The Tracy Ullman Show. No...it's not as good as it used to be. But it's also still consistently watchable...and occasionally shows flashes of the brilliance of the best seasons. Reiss doesn't hold a lot of punches. He dishes a bit of dirt (though most of it is pretty well known). He doesn't hold back his political feelings, though they are not nearly as "in your face" as a lot of right-wing snowflakes have complained. What you get is a funny, readable look at what is definitely one of the most important TV shows of all time and a cultural touchstone of the latter part of the 20th Century.
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Post by brutalis on Jan 30, 2019 8:12:53 GMT -5
White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America by Stephen Brumwell. History of Robert Rogers and his Rangers in the 1700's. A very worthy and easy to read book of history about the British, French and Indian's conflicts. The book grabs you and never lets go until you have devoured it like a Thanksgiving feast. Afterwards you are stuffed full and ready for a nice nap so you can take in all that you have read. Providing lots of facts but never getting bogged down in them, Brumwell manages to keep the narrative flowing smoothly.
The book covers many facets of the 1st special elite team created for battle (much of which they created are still in use today) and reveals much of the brutality and politics of the time before there was a "free" America. It was a struggle between the French and British for control with Indians caught in the middle of it all. This book is a good overview which entertains and instructs as you read of the colonial adventures and courage and cruelty of war.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 30, 2019 14:08:08 GMT -5
This is a fascinating history of reference books (defined as a book that is not designed to be read from beginning to end, but to collect pieces of information that can be looked up individually). It starts with some of the earliest known writing (the code of Hammurabi) and ends with Wikipedia. Each chapter discusses a particular type & age of reference work and spotlights two examples, and there are little mini-chapters between each of the main chapters to explore topics related to the adjacent chapters. The author is a professor at Rutgers University. If you've ever enjoyed reading (or reading about) dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and the like, you'll enjoy this book.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 3, 2019 23:32:41 GMT -5
Conan the Freebooter I know it's been mentioned before, but As I read these all together in a group, I scratch my head and wonder why no one has pulled the trigger yet and done a Game of Thrones like TV series with these stories as the base.. you have Conan quickly going from a towering lone adventurer to a real leader of men that is impacting the world around him... lots of fun political intrigue that could easily be expanded upon, and set ups where you could crank up or tone down the magical/fantastic elements as you wanted.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 4, 2019 14:29:51 GMT -5
The Demolished Man by Alfred BesterThis is probably the third time I've read this one. The first time was almost certainly in high school. The second was roughly ten years ago...at which time I really loved the book. This time around...I liked it okay...but I did not love it. Part of it may have been that I just wasn't feeling it at this time. It took a LONG time to read it. Part of it may be that I've moved a bit and this one is showing its age. In a world where Espers (mind readers) exist, crime, particularly violent crime is exceedingly rare. Ben Reich, one of the richest men in the solar system is going to change that. He has a plan to kill an rival businessman and avoid detection by the Espers. So this isn't a whodunit. The crux of the story is how to avoid being tagged for a crime where that is close to impossible. There's a lot to like here. And I can see why this book won the first Hugo for Best Novel (along with the IFA). But a lot of it hasn't aged terribly well. Reich's motivation is pretty deeply Freudian. The female characters scream 1950s. And the ultimate love interest is...squicky! But it's an important work. Now I need to re-read The Stars My Destination. I always maintained I was the one person who liked The Demolished Man better. I'm not sure that will still be the case.
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 7, 2019 14:03:22 GMT -5
I picked up this book at a thrift store recently. I expected to like it, and it turned out to be better than I expected. I devoured each page; had a hard time putting it down, and when I finished it I immediately wanted to read it again. Yes, the New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History by Colin McEvedy (revised edition, 1992). What can I say, I love this kind of stuff. Like all atlases, it consists of a series of maps, all of Europe and environs, at approximately 40-year intervals starting with 362 AD (the book uses AD instead of CE), which the author identifies as the year the territorial contraction of the Roman Empire began following Emperor Julian's defeat by the Persians, and ending with 1483, the year that Portuguese explorers reached the Congo River on their way to circumnavigating Africa. The maps were enough to get me to buy the book, but each map is accompanied by a page or so of narrative text describing what's going on. The text along with the maps really brings the story alive. I can't find an example from the 1992 edition, so here's a pair of pages from the original 1961 edition to give an idea of what it looks like: My only quibble with the book is that it focuses completely on the ruling class. This is understandable, because nobody wrote anything down about the common people until later in history, but it would be nice to know when the rulers were speaking the same language and following the same religion as their subjects and when they weren't. If you have any interest in the medieval era in Europe, I highly recommend this book.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 7, 2019 14:24:07 GMT -5
I picked up this book at a thrift store recently. I expected to like it, and it turned out to be better than I expected. I devoured each page; had a hard time putting it down, and when I finished it I immediately wanted to read it again. Yes, the New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History by Colin McEvedy (revised edition, 1992). What can I say, I love this kind of stuff. Like all atlases, it consists of a series of maps, all of Europe and environs, at approximately 40-year intervals starting with 362 AD (the book uses AD instead of CE), which the author identifies as the year the territorial contraction of the Roman Empire began following Emperor Julian's defeat by the Persians, and ending with 1483, the year that Portuguese explorers reached the Congo River on their way to circumnavigating Africa. The maps were enough to get me to buy the book, but each map is accompanied by a page or so of narrative text describing what's going on. The text along with the maps really brings the story alive. I can't find an example from the 1992 edition, so here's a pair of pages from the original 1961 edition to give an idea of what it looks like: My only quibble with the book is that it focuses completely on the ruling class. This is understandable, because nobody wrote anything down about the common people until later in history, but it would be nice to know when the rulers were speaking the same language and following the same religion as their subjects and when they weren't. If you have any interest in the medieval era in Europe, I highly recommend this book. My middle son would go nuts for that. The only thing he likes better than atlases are old globes.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 7, 2019 22:59:07 GMT -5
That looks very cool! I love old maps!
The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong
This book wasn't exactly what I expected.. but it was a really interesting character sketch... the author did a great job documenting a decent into madness. The main character really has you convinced he's a nice guy at first.
The plot was a little clunky, and either Korean police are really dumb, or just not accustomed to this sort of crime, but overall it was a pretty good read.
My main issue was the constant time shifts and flashbacks made things a little hard to follow, and as is often the case with translated books, the language didn't flow that well.
I'd definitely recommend it if you enjoy seeing how what was a pretty typical story can change with a different cultural setting.
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Post by berkley on Feb 8, 2019 0:12:10 GMT -5
The Demolished Man by Alfred BesterThis is probably the third time I've read this one. The first time was almost certainly in high school. The second was roughly ten years ago...at which time I really loved the book. This time around...I liked it okay...but I did not love it. Part of it may have been that I just wasn't feeling it at this time. It took a LONG time to read it. Part of it may be that I've moved a bit and this one is showing its age. In a world where Espers (mind readers) exist, crime, particularly violent crime is exceedingly rare. Ben Reich, one of the richest men in the solar system is going to change that. He has a plan to kill an rival businessman and avoid detection by the Espers. So this isn't a whodunit. The crux of the story is how to avoid being tagged for a crime where that is close to impossible. There's a lot to like here. And I can see why this book won the first Hugo for Best Novel (along with the IFA). But a lot of it hasn't aged terribly well. Reich's motivation is pretty deeply Freudian. The female characters scream 1950s. And the ultimate love interest is...squicky! But it's an important work. Now I need to re-read The Stars My Destination. I always maintained I was the one person who liked The Demolished Man better. I'm not sure that will still be the case.
I liked The Stars My Destination better: with the Demolished Man, I found the premise a bit thin for a novel-length work; perhaps a short story would have worked better.
But neither of these two Bester classics ever hit me with quite the amount of force I'd been expecting, given their reputation. It's possible that I came to them just a few years too late, when my SF tastes had moved more into the Philip K. Dick area. I'll re-read them both one of these days, though - once I get through some of the classics I haven't read yet.
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Post by berkley on Feb 8, 2019 0:26:45 GMT -5
I picked up this book at a thrift store recently. I expected to like it, and it turned out to be better than I expected. I devoured each page; had a hard time putting it down, and when I finished it I immediately wanted to read it again. Yes, the New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History by Colin McEvedy (revised edition, 1992). What can I say, I love this kind of stuff. Like all atlases, it consists of a series of maps, all of Europe and environs, at approximately 40-year intervals starting with 362 AD (the book uses AD instead of CE), which the author identifies as the year the territorial contraction of the Roman Empire began following Emperor Julian's defeat by the Persians, and ending with 1483, the year that Portuguese explorers reached the Congo River on their way to circumnavigating Africa. The maps were enough to get me to buy the book, but each map is accompanied by a page or so of narrative text describing what's going on. The text along with the maps really brings the story alive. I can't find an example from the 1992 edition, so here's a pair of pages from the original 1961 edition to give an idea of what it looks like: My only quibble with the book is that it focuses completely on the ruling class. This is understandable, because nobody wrote anything down about the common people until later in history, but it would be nice to know when the rulers were speaking the same language and following the same religion as their subjects and when they weren't. If you have any interest in the medieval era in Europe, I highly recommend this book. That looks really good. What are the book's dimensions, roughly? I wonder if it was part of a series, I'll have to check that out. I'd like to get the ancient world, Renaissance, Modern age versions as well.
You'd think all this kind of thing would be better accessed on-line these days but to my surprise I haven't found that many good map or atlas sites - not that they don't exist, but the ones I've looked at almost always have something that bugs me, whether it's too little detail, bad colour choices, weird size or other formatting issues, or whatever. Maybe they think google earth covers everything you need.
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 8, 2019 13:31:14 GMT -5
That looks really good. What are the book's dimensions, roughly? Amazon says it's "7.1 x 0.2 x 8.7 inches". There are similar Penguin atlases of Ancient, Modern (to 1815), Recent (Europe since 1815), North American (to 1870), African and World Population History by Colin McEvedy, and other Penguin historical atlases by other authors.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 9, 2019 20:25:55 GMT -5
Howard Fast's Edge of Tomorrow by Howard Fast This set of short stories is very a story of the cold war mentality.. all the stories are centered around it. While it dates it very specifically, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can tell the author writes historical fiction... most of his main characters are set made pulled-up-by-the-bootstraps types. While there's nothing super Earth-shattering here, there are some fun twists on classic tropes. My favorites were 'The Cold, Cold Box', which was just dripping with irony, and the only story that had any sort of hope for humanity. "The Martian Store" was also a very clever story about a first contact. Quite a few of these read as if they could easily be expanded to novels. It was a bit down on the human race in general, though. Not too surprising consider it was 1960 and many at the time were quite certain we would blow ourselves up, but still was a little sad. Overall, some great stuff that definitely makes me want to read some of his historical fiction.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 11, 2019 14:14:15 GMT -5
The Thicket by Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale gives us another historical/western noir novel. Set in the first decade or so of the 20th Century in east Texas (it's Lansdale) the story finds Jack and his sister being taken to an Aunt's home by their grandfather following the death of their parents from smallpox. After his sister is captured by a group of fleeing bank robbers young Jack seeks help from the only people available, a dwarf bounty-hunter and an African-American grave-digger. The trio (though they don't remain a trio) goes on a journey to rescue the stolen sister...and the body count stakes up as they head toward The Thicket, a no-man's land where desperadoes can still find safety in a still wild and woolly east Texas. If you're looking for a comparison, think True Grit with the patented Lansdale dark humor. The protagonists are all flawed which is a strength of Lansdales. And this is set in the very early 1900s with protagonists that are black and a dwarf. So if your sensibilities are easily upset you may want to avoid it. Lansdale is as good a genre writer as there is working today. And this is a solid entry in his oeuvre. If I had a complaint it is that the ending is telegraphed a bit and maybe a tad pat. But it's still a fun ride and well worth the journey.
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