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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2019 0:35:00 GMT -5
Finally got around to reading the William Rotsler Blackhawk novel I picked up about a year ago... It was a fun little take on the Blackhawks, but filled with a few jarrings bits that just didn't seem to mesh well with the WWII setting and tech level (for example, he explained the Nazi superplane weapon as if someone had photocopied and enlarged another type of German aircraft-the photocopier didn't hit the market until the late 1950s and this was set in 1940. Granted it was the writer/narrator telling the story that used this and not one of the characters, but it still seemed odd to use in a story set in 1940. There were a few other bits like that as well that just threw you out of the narrative and setting when you hit them. It was filled with lots o little Easter Eggs too, especially naming secondary characters after creators like Dick Dillin and Paul Levitz, and was overall enjoyable, except for those anachronistic tics. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 15, 2019 12:05:15 GMT -5
All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I've been trying to intersperse new SF with my reading/rereading of classic SF. I also find I'm doing better right now with shorter works. So I decided to read this, the first Murderbot novella, because it cleaned up at the awards in 2018 winning the Hugo and the Nebula for Best Novella and placing first in the Locus Poll. The story centers around a cyborg that is tasked to provide security for a scientific team on an uninhabited planet. The universe seems to be largely corporate controlled and the cyborg mechanism is owned and rented out by a corporate entity. This particular droid however has hacked its governor unit and is autonomous. When shenanigans start going down with its clients, it's up to the droid, which refers to itself as Murderbot to save itself and its clients. This a really fun and thought-provoking read. Wells does a great job of developing the personality of the Murderbot who would much rather be watching downloaded soap operas than actually working. The secondary characters aren't as well developed, but that's largely to be expected in a novella length work. Well worth the limited time commitment. I've only read one other novella that was competing with this one, Sarah Gailey's River of Teeth, a very different but also very good SF novella. Give this one a read. You should be glad you did.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 15, 2019 12:38:13 GMT -5
Now You See It by Stuart KaminskyThe twenty-fourth and final Toby Peters novel finds Toby and Phil (now partners) working for magician Harry Blackstone. It's vintage Peters in many ways. Famous client. Convoluted mystery. Villain who becomes victim. But you can also see that Kaminsky was trying to clear up at least some things for the end of the series. Toby and Phil will never be best friends as well as brothers. But Phil's presence as a partner makes life easier for Toby, eases things with the police, and has resources that Toby just didn't have. We get a bit of actual background on Mrs. Plautz, not just her fanciful family history. We get some nice closure with Jeremy and Alice and hint of something that may be with Gunther. Unfortunately the last page doesn't have that phone-call or message from the celebrity client that will show up in the next book. I started my reread (initial read for the last 1/3 of the series) in Feb. of 2014. So every 2 1/2 months or so I've joined Toby and his friends in their adventures. I'm going to miss them. No...they aren't great literature. But they're a fun diversion and Kaminsky makes you care about not just Toby Peters, but also his friends and relations. So goodbye to you, Toby, Phil, Gunther, Jeremy, Mrs. Plautz, Sheldon, Anita and all the rest. Thanks for the glimpse into your lives.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,411
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Post by Confessor on Mar 15, 2019 12:51:08 GMT -5
Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick. This book is a series of essays by Guralnick about blues and early rock & roll artists. And as such it's a little hard to review. Less because of the format and more because the book is a product of its time. The book came out in 1971. So obviously Guralnick was interviewing the subjects well before that date. These were some of the first glimpses that the public would get into the likes of Skip James and Johnny Shines. The blues revival was over and the early days of rock & roll were long past. So Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had been somewhat forgotten and Jerry Lee Lewis was a country troubadour rather than a one of the madmen of early rock. At a point in time when one was at the mercy of the radio, the odd article in a national magazine and what you could find at the local record store, this book would have been a revelation. In the age of Spotify, Wikipedia, Allmusic, etc. it has to depend on Guralnick's writing and ones general interest. And Guralnick is a great writer. If he has a rival within blues writing it is probably only Robert Palmer. If he has a rival in early rock and its crossover with country it's...well it might not be anyone. Guralnick doesn't have the verbal ticks and self-reference that marks Nick Tosches work, for example. The problem here, at least for me, is that the portraits in this book probably aren't deep enough for my liking. I've already read more about Chess and Sun Records (and Guralnick has since written the definitive work about Sam Phillips). I've read more about Jerry Lee and can...and will...read more about Muddy and Wolf. That said, I'm not sure that I need that much more about Johnny Shines and I certainly don't need more about Robert Pete Williams. The stand-outs here, for me, were the looks at Skip James and Charlie Rich. James probably because of the interesting place he sits in blues history. Barely recorded in the 20s and 30s...completely out of music until his rediscovery with the Blues Revival. His influence has grown since then. Guralnick's finds Rich just a couple of years before his career exploded in the 70s with his work with producer Billy Sherrill. Guralnick gets as deep a look into what made Rich tick and the tortured path of his career as I've seen. Rich never really got over wanting to be a jazz musician and it shows in his attempts at rock & roll with Sun and Smash and his countrypolitan sound of the 70s. Guralnick gets as much as you can expect out of a reticent interview like Rich. There's a lot here to like. It just has to be what you're looking for. And this wasn't always what I was looking for. In that the fault lies in me..and not in Guralnick's writing or the tome itself. Weirdly, I saw a copy of this book yesterday down at my local Oxfam shop. As I think I've mentioned to you elsewhere in the forum, I've owned Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson for a long time. I leafed through this book in the shop, but ultimately decided against purchasing it and picked up Daredevil "Born Again" instead. Maybe I should go back and pick it up?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 15, 2019 13:18:29 GMT -5
Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick. This book is a series of essays by Guralnick about blues and early rock & roll artists. And as such it's a little hard to review. Less because of the format and more because the book is a product of its time. The book came out in 1971. So obviously Guralnick was interviewing the subjects well before that date. These were some of the first glimpses that the public would get into the likes of Skip James and Johnny Shines. The blues revival was over and the early days of rock & roll were long past. So Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had been somewhat forgotten and Jerry Lee Lewis was a country troubadour rather than a one of the madmen of early rock. At a point in time when one was at the mercy of the radio, the odd article in a national magazine and what you could find at the local record store, this book would have been a revelation. In the age of Spotify, Wikipedia, Allmusic, etc. it has to depend on Guralnick's writing and ones general interest. And Guralnick is a great writer. If he has a rival within blues writing it is probably only Robert Palmer. If he has a rival in early rock and its crossover with country it's...well it might not be anyone. Guralnick doesn't have the verbal ticks and self-reference that marks Nick Tosches work, for example. The problem here, at least for me, is that the portraits in this book probably aren't deep enough for my liking. I've already read more about Chess and Sun Records (and Guralnick has since written the definitive work about Sam Phillips). I've read more about Jerry Lee and can...and will...read more about Muddy and Wolf. That said, I'm not sure that I need that much more about Johnny Shines and I certainly don't need more about Robert Pete Williams. The stand-outs here, for me, were the looks at Skip James and Charlie Rich. James probably because of the interesting place he sits in blues history. Barely recorded in the 20s and 30s...completely out of music until his rediscovery with the Blues Revival. His influence has grown since then. Guralnick's finds Rich just a couple of years before his career exploded in the 70s with his work with producer Billy Sherrill. Guralnick gets as deep a look into what made Rich tick and the tortured path of his career as I've seen. Rich never really got over wanting to be a jazz musician and it shows in his attempts at rock & roll with Sun and Smash and his countrypolitan sound of the 70s. Guralnick gets as much as you can expect out of a reticent interview like Rich. There's a lot here to like. It just has to be what you're looking for. And this wasn't always what I was looking for. In that the fault lies in me..and not in Guralnick's writing or the tome itself. Weirdly, I saw a copy of this book yesterday down at my local Oxfam shop. As I think I've mentioned to you elsewhere in the forum, I've owned Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson for a long time. I leafed through this book in the shop, but ultimately decided against purchasing it and picked up Daredevil "Born Again" instead. Maybe I should go back and pick it up? Good call on Born Again. Probably my favorite Daredevil arc. I guess my first question would be how much is the Guralnick book? I'm all about cheap stuff. I really do like his writing style. And there is worthwhile stuff in the book. I just think that it was much more worthwhile in 1971. Since then there have been major biographies of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sam Phillips, the Chess brothers. So I think its value is largely as a snapshot in time, a look at a point after the blues revival had faded and before the internet made information about and actual roots music readily available. So...yeah...that's probably not a great answer.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,411
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Post by Confessor on Mar 16, 2019 7:13:22 GMT -5
Weirdly, I saw a copy of this book yesterday down at my local Oxfam shop. As I think I've mentioned to you elsewhere in the forum, I've owned Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson for a long time. I leafed through this book in the shop, but ultimately decided against purchasing it and picked up Daredevil "Born Again" instead. Maybe I should go back and pick it up? Good call on Born Again. Probably my favorite Daredevil arc. I guess my first question would be how much is the Guralnick book? I'm all about cheap stuff. I really do like his writing style. And there is worthwhile stuff in the book. I just think that it was much more worthwhile in 1971. Since then there have been major biographies of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sam Phillips, the Chess brothers. So I think its value is largely as a snapshot in time, a look at a point after the blues revival had faded and before the internet made information about and actual roots music readily available. So...yeah...that's probably not a great answer. I think it was only a two or three quid. Leafing through it, my feeling was that it was probably an interesting read, but ultimately inessential. I know what you mean when you say it provides "a snapshot in time" though; one of the reasons that Hunter Davies' The Beatles: The Authorised Biography is such an interesting read is that it was written in 1968, before the Beatles had split up, and certainly before they became canonized in the public consciousness. Yes, they were the biggest band on the planet and widely regarded as iconic avatars of an entire generation in 1968, but they were still just another pop group. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into how they were perceived in their own time, without any of the revisionist content that has crept into the Beatles "myth" over the ensuing 50 years. Ditto for Nicholas Schaffner's 1977 book The Beatles Forever.
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Post by berkley on Mar 17, 2019 19:28:19 GMT -5
I like the reading or viewing "snapshots in time" too and those Beatles books will be going on my list, as well as similar books for other acts, if I come across them. Ian Hunter's recently re-issued Diary of a Rock n Roll Star, for example. I'd prefer to avoid the too obviously superficial or commercially pandering, of course.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 19, 2019 13:52:31 GMT -5
Finally got around to reading the William Rotsler Blackhawk novel I picked up about a year ago... It was a fun little take on the Blackhawks, but filled with a few jarrings bits that just didn't seem to mesh well with the WWII setting and tech level (for example, he explained the Nazi superplane weapon as if someone had photocopied and enlarged another type of German aircraft-the photocopier didn't hit the market until the late 1950s and this was set in 1940. Granted it was the writer/narrator telling the story that used this and not one of the characters, but it still seemed odd to use in a story set in 1940. There were a few other bits like that as well that just threw you out of the narrative and setting when you hit them. It was filled with lots o little Easter Eggs too, especially naming secondary characters after creators like Dick Dillin and Paul Levitz, and was overall enjoyable, except for those anachronistic tics. -M I bought that from a grocery store rack when it came out. I have almost no memory of the story...probably been 35 years since I've read it.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 19, 2019 17:21:44 GMT -5
The Drifter Detective by Garnett Elliott. The first novella (would likely be a novelette in SF parlance) in Garnett Elliott's Drifter Detective series. The Drifter Detective is Jack Laramie, grandson of famed U.S. Marshall Cash Laramie (see the Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles series). Laramie is a P.I. who travels around Texas dragging a horse-trailer behind his vehicle and looking for work. The first story isn't anything special, but it's okay. The concept has merit and Elliott a good enough writer that I hope he can take it someplace better. Laramie is a World War II vet and the story is set in the late 40s or some time in the 50s. There are few anachronisms that stuck out enough to make me go "huh". Some could be glossed over (a barmaid opening a beer bottle with her fingers and not an opener...possible, but highly unlikely). Others were more problematic. But overall...a good start. It also contains a bonus short story "Fighting Chance" about a boxer trying to save himself from a mob boss during the fight of his life. In some ways this one eclipsed the main feature. Elliott is a bit of a jack of all trades as a genre writer. But his hard-boiled stuff tends to be his best work. I'll try the next adventure and see.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 19, 2019 20:45:12 GMT -5
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
I admit most of my reticience in reading Agatha Christie is due to PBS... of all the most excellent mystery novels they've brought to the screen.. I like the Poirot ones the least. He always seemed a poor reflection of Holmes to me. After reading Murder on the Orient Express to compare it to the recent movie, he still didn't thrill me.
Life happens, and this book popped into my path for $1 at the library not long ago, and having just seen a review for it, I decided to give it another shot.
The first, oh, 98% of the novel didn't do much to change my opinion. I like the narrator well enough, but he was clearly meant to be a refection of Dr. Watson, and even though he was substituting for Poirot's usual sidekick, served the function well.
We are taken through a sleep English town where the tragedy of a murder of a prominent citizen bring out (and, in many ways, is the culmination of) the various secrets and evils of the people in town. It's well put together and moves along, but nothing that can't be found in any number of mystery set in the same general time and place.
The we get our hero actually in character staging his big reveal while having all the main players over for dinner.. not an organic thing that just happens, but staged for effect (I guess it's more honest this way at least). Poirot does his thing and reveals how he's more clever than everyone else, as these things go, then finishes without actually solving the case... huh?
Then we get the last 5 pages... I was genuinely surprised, which doesn't happen all that often to me these days when reading mysteries. Totally shocked. Well Done!
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Post by berkley on Mar 20, 2019 1:38:14 GMT -5
The Murder of Roger Ackroydby Agatha Christie I admit most of my reticience in reading Agatha Christie is due to PBS... of all the most excellent mystery novels they've brought to the screen.. I like the Poirot ones the least. He always seemed a poor reflection of Holmes to me. After reading Murder on the Orient Express to compare it to the recent movie, he still didn't thrill me. Life happens, and this book popped into my path for $1 at the library not long ago, and having just seen a review for it, I decided to give it another shot. The first, oh, 98% of the novel didn't do much to change my opinion. I like the narrator well enough, but he was clearly meant to be a refection of Dr. Watson, and even though he was substituting for Poirot's usual sidekick, served the function well. We are taken through a sleep English town where the tragedy of a murder of a prominent citizen bring out (and, in many ways, is the culmination of) the various secrets and evils of the people in town. It's well put together and moves along, but nothing that can't be found in any number of mystery set in the same general time and place. The we get our hero actually in character staging his big reveal while having all the main players over for dinner.. not an organic thing that just happens, but staged for effect (I guess it's more honest this way at least). Poirot does his thing and reveals how he's more clever than everyone else, as these things go, then finishes without actually solving the case... huh? Then we get the last 5 pages... I was genuinely surprised, which doesn't happen all that often to me these days when reading mysteries. Totally shocked. Well Done! It's funny, I don't find Poirot a particularly fascinating character either but I still enjoyed reading pretty much all the books in the series. I assume there must have been one or two duds in there but if there were, I can't remember them.
I read all the Christie I could get my hands on back in my childhood and teenage years, and one of these days I'd like to re-read at least a good few of them. But first I want to get to some of the earlier examples of the English detective or crime story that I missed along the way. I just started reading a selection of Arthur Morrison's Martin Hewitt stories - so far not bad, but very obviously written in response to Conan Doyle's Holmes. I also have The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, another collection of various contemporaries of the famous detective.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 22, 2019 9:37:49 GMT -5
I saw that rivals book in the store the other day... it's definitely intriguing... might lead to some new to me discoveries.
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Post by berkley on Mar 22, 2019 11:45:06 GMT -5
I saw that rivals book in the store the other day... it's definitely intriguing... might lead to some new to me discoveries. The three Martin Hewitt stories I read weren't bad - some pretty inventive crimes and so on - but Hewitt is a bit of a faceless nonentity with nothing of Holmes's charisma. This was probably deliberate on Morrison's part, as everything else about them closely follows the classic pattern set by Conan Doyle.
I've put the Rivals on the back-burner for now and moved on to Conan Doyle's Exploits of Brigadier Gerard.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 23, 2019 15:55:25 GMT -5
Bite Me by Christopher Moore. The third of Moore's vampire love story trilogy (thus far). I've not made it a secret that these are not my favorite of Moore's work. I'd put any given book in the bottom half of his oeuvre. I do think this was the strongest chapter, though probably in spite of itself. The big thing was vampire cats. How can you not love vampire cats. And the ending was more satisfying than one would tend to expect from this type of book. That said, I really don't care one bit about any of the main characters in the book. And Abbie...well she kind of annoys me. So overall, while it's the best of the three...and I don't feel bad that I read it....I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. And I almost certainly won't be reading it again. Three more books (two of which I've not read) and I'll have read all of Moore's books at least once.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 27, 2019 22:21:58 GMT -5
Froomb! by John Lymington This one got my attention because of the title.... apparently it stands for 'fluid's running out of my brakes!' and is from a political cartoon at the time commenting on the nuclear arms race. The basic theme here is beware of the wrong sort of progress.. but Lymington is really all over the place with his themes. The main plot, one which the British minister of Science kills a guy on purpose with the intent to bring him back after 24 hours so he can see if Heaven exists, is weird, but a good point for discussion. What happens is the guy goes into the dreary future instead, and, after figuring out that's what happened, tries to get back as soon as possible to prevent it from taking place. Time Travel! Ugh! The author chooses not to actually tell us what happens at the end,.. I guess that's better than making my head hurt. Just. His post-apocalyptic vision is not nuclear war, but in alot of ways both worse and more plausible at the time.. the science is a bit questionable, but that shouldn't get in the way of a good story. There's some really ahead of his time stuff about genetically modified foods, and the the science guy, Packard, is a great study in Science v. religion, but each of those themes can have a story on their own... mixing them all together is a messy hodge podge with barely a plot is kinda a mess.. but at least it's not boring.
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