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Post by driver1980 on May 9, 2024 11:53:02 GMT -5
I’m looking for books about the development/design - and then the operational history of such craft. Hope that makes sense. Thanks. My first instinct was to recommend Len Deighton's "Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain" (1978), which, as I recall, spends a good deal of time on the details of the development of the Spitfire, but it seems you've got that covered. The go-to book on the B-17 is apparently Edward Jablonski's "Flying Fortress," which was first published in 1965, but was updated about ten years ago. Like Slam_Bradley , my interest has been less on the technical and more on books about the pilots and the overall story of the war in the air. FWIW, a biography of James Stewart focusing on his time as a pilot of B-24s, "Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe," had a good bit of information about the planes themselves. Thanks, I’ll look those up.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 10, 2024 20:11:36 GMT -5
Heart of the Nile Will Thomas
I was a little sad about reading the book flap of this one.. it seems like they were going to kill off Liam Sharp, who they just made a big deal about last book, and I didn't really want that to happen.
Turns out Thomas created a different eccentric volunteer at the British Museum to kill off instead, so while that was weird, it was better.
This book, as the title indicates, talks about the Egypt craze at the time, which was fun. There was also a thinly veiled but very obvious reference to a certain mystery writer of another famous duo. (thoughI still think they are much more like Batman and Robin than Holmes and Watson). It was a pretty fun story with a twist that was pretty obvious but good none the less.
Apparently, there is not going to be much more character development (in fact, Llewelyn's wife was shipped out of the country for most of the story to get her out of the way) but that's ok, the stories are still good.
I'm looking forward to the next (perhaps last?) one.
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 12, 2024 3:32:34 GMT -5
Lest Darkness FallL. Sprague de Camp, 1941 Already reviewed here, with a capsule plot summary, by Slam. I’ll just say that for my part this is my first time reading this book, and I quite enjoyed it. One aspect that I really liked is the plausible way that de Camp made the way the main character, Martin Padway, get his bearings in 6th century Ostrogothic Italy, i.e., he was a Classically educated archeologist, so he knew Latin, as well as modern Italian, and could thus engage in rudimentary communication with the people populating Italy at the time. Also, I loved that he went about initially earning a living by brewing and selling brandy. The book is also amazingly fast-paced: there’s a brief discussion between Padway and an Italian scholar in Rome about the possibility of alternate time-lines and individuals falling through certain focal points in the four-dimensional web of time, and then on page 3 it happens to Padway and we’re off and running. And given the type of story being told, i.e., a guy changing history, it’s incredibly short – the edition I read only has about 120 pages. The book’s title by the way, is a reference to the fact that later scholars, i.e., from the Renaissance and then Enlightenment and onward, saw the 6th century, and esp. events that played out in Italy, as the beginning of the ‘Dark Ages’ – a term that became controversial by the mid-20th century and has been largely discarded by historians.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 13, 2024 21:37:01 GMT -5
The Railway Detective
Edward Marston
I grabbed this one as part of my going through my old 'to read' books... I read a book from a different Edward Marston series and noticed this one... mystery AND trains? How could it go wrong?
I had trouble getting into it at first (might have been me... I read the first 20-30 pages in bits while i was distracted with other things), but once I got into it, it was definitely a page turner.
I think I would retroactively call this a cozy mystery... everything works out nicely in the end, and the bad guy even gave money to the widow of a witness/lackey he had to kill. Marston uses a technique I don't think I recall seeing before... the detective is shown doing his thing and comes up with a theory, then the story cuts to the bad guys showing that theory correct and giving the crooks some screen time.
It made it so there was no mystery to figure out, but it did flesh out the bad guys nicely. There was also plenty of love for the rail system and even a bunch of technical details, which I will never say no too.
Just one problem... if every book is a series to read, you don't make alot of progress on the list![/b]
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 15, 2024 3:12:47 GMT -5
AnarchaosDonald Westlake, 1967 Written under one of his many, many pseudonyms, Curt Clark, this is, I think, Westlake’s only science fiction novel (although he wrote a few SF short stories using the same pseudonym). The titular non-rotating planet, Anarchaos, orbits a red sun that’s nicknamed Hell by its inhabitants. The planet’s name is derived from that fact that there is no government nor even any laws, so life there is cheap and cutthroat (sometimes literally), and ‘syndicates’ that are actually fronts for large interstellar corporations engaged in resource extraction are the only entities that wield any kind of power. All of the major cities also have outposts of the Union Commission, UN-like structure that links the various human colonies, where offworlders can take refuge if necessary. Otherwise, there is brief mention in the first few pages that the planet’s original settlers had wanted to set up an anarchist society in line with the writings of, say, Bakunin or Proudhon, with the first-person narrator (but actually Westlake) opining that the Hobbesian nightmare that resulted is inevitable outcome of these ideas – which is questionable, but this really isn’t important to the story as a whole. Said first-person narrator is the protagonist, Rolf Malone, who arrives on the planet after being released from prison on Earth, as he was initially supposed to be employed by one of the syndicates to assist his older brother, a mineral surveyor. However, his brother was killed shortly before Malone arrived, so he sets about finding out who killed him. Things go sideways pretty quickly, and Malone ends up going through the wringer (even getting enslaved at one point) over the course of what turns out to be several years – he loses sense of time because there are no days on the planet. I found this readable, as most of Westlake’s prose is, and the conclusion was kind of interesting, but ultimately I didn’t necessarily like it, in part because Malone is very amoral (something he has in common with the characters in many of the books I’ve read by Westlake).
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Post by MRPs_Missives on May 16, 2024 13:47:37 GMT -5
Finished the second book in my reread of the Prydain Chronicles-The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander. This is the one that got the Disney animated treatment, so is likely the best known of the books, and was my favorite as akid long before Disney animated it. Really enjoying the reread despite being in a bit of a prose slump lately. It's a nice comfy read, I've just not been spending a lot of time reading prose the last 2 weeks (read a lot of comics though) for whatever reason. Not sure if I will start Castle of Llyr immediately or try to get to something else. I do plan on rewatching the Disney version sometime this week or weekend though. The Welsh mythology in this though, is giving me a hankering to revisit the Mabinogion, but I am not sure where my copy currently is. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 18, 2024 14:55:47 GMT -5
The Eternal Savage previous titled the Eternal Lover Edgar Rice Burroughs What do you do when Tarzan just isn't savage and primal enough? apparently you go back to the Stone Age, where, we find Nu, son of Nu. The entire book feels very much like someone bet Burroughs he couldn't make a more 'noble savage'... and here he definitely tries to do just that... and even has the man himself in the story just for comparison. All the typical bits of a Burroughs book are here.. just bigger. It's pretty good for what it is, and of course it has an awesome cover. At a few points of the story I was thinking it was going to go all mystical, but in the end everything had a plausible explanation... even if it was confusing at the time. Certainly not Burroughs best, but perhaps the most extreme of the the type.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 18, 2024 15:09:45 GMT -5
The Eternal Savage previous titled the Eternal Lover Edgar Rice Burroughs What do you do when Tarzan just isn't savage and primal enough? apparently you go back to the Stone Age, where, we find Nu, son of Nu. The entire book feels very much like someone bet Burroughs he couldn't make a more 'noble savage'... and here he definitely tries to do just that... and even has the man himself in the story just for comparison. All the typical bits of a Burroughs book are here.. just bigger. It's pretty good for what it is, and of course it has an awesome cover. At a few points of the story I was thinking it was going to go all mystical, but in the end everything had a plausible explanation... even if it was confusing at the time. Certainly not Burroughs best, but perhaps the most extreme of the the type. You liked this a WHOLE lot better than I do. I consider it to be among the very worst of Burroughs’ early work, along with The Monster Men.
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Post by drunktusken99 on May 20, 2024 11:53:52 GMT -5
i just got the new Stephen King book You Like it Darker a day ago this week. been reading the first 3 stories in it. Willie the Weirdo is strange it almost reminded me of the story in The Willies a little bit.
also this month and for June, im pretty much busy reading Stephen King's The Talisman
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 20, 2024 14:57:18 GMT -5
ZorroIsabel Allende, 2005 A sort of a retcon of the Zorro mythos, which focuses on the formative years of Diego de la Vega and how he came to be the legendary, swashbuckling defender of the oppressed in Alta California. So the book is broken down into several sections, the first focusing on his early childhood in California, and then the next three (the bulk of the book) on his adolescent years in Spain (mainly Barcelona) from 1810 to 1815, while the last covers his return to California and his first adventures as Zorro. It’s a very wonderfully written novel; Allende tells a romantic tale that pays homage to the pulp hero while weaving in grounded historical events and realistic depictions of people and places. I liked that she addressed some of the misgivings I had with the source material, mainly elevating the role of California’s natives (e.g., it’s revealed here that Diego himself is one-quarter native; also, Bernardo, the mute man-servant in the original stories, is here also a native and basically Diego’s brother – they grew up together – rather than being a subordinate). Probably the only aspect I didn’t care for too much is an episode involving the real-life Caribbean pirate Jean Lafitte; outside of that, though, I very much enjoyed this one.
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Post by driver1980 on May 22, 2024 11:49:17 GMT -5
I’m looking for books about the development/design - and then the operational history of such craft. Hope that makes sense. Thanks. My first instinct was to recommend Len Deighton's "Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain" (1978), which, as I recall, spends a good deal of time on the details of the development of the Spitfire, but it seems you've got that covered. The go-to book on the B-17 is apparently Edward Jablonski's "Flying Fortress," which was first published in 1965, but was updated about ten years ago. Like Slam_Bradley , my interest has been less on the technical and more on books about the pilots and the overall story of the war in the air. FWIW, a biography of James Stewart focusing on his time as a pilot of B-24s, "Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe," had a good bit of information about the planes themselves. I meant to tell you this: not long after we discussed this, I spoke on the phone to a friend about this topic. Soon after, an ad for the book The Mosquito Log: The Most Versatile Aeroplane of World War II appeared on my social media. I ordered the book, naturally. And they say the internet does not listen to you? Well, if they want to “listen” to me, they’ll find me to be a very boring man. Still, I’m glad I got the book.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 23, 2024 12:16:28 GMT -5
Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Another super fun book by Scalzi on the heels of The Kaiju Preservation Society. Charlie feels like a loser. His job as a reporter has been eliminated in the new economy. He gets by as a substitute teacher, was caring for his father before he passed away and has adopted two stray cats. Then his long lost Uncle dies and Charlie starts on an entirely new trajectory. Because his uncle was a villain. And he's left his villain operation, complete with volcano lair, to Charlie. And now the other villains are out to eliminate the competition while he's still new to all this. A Starter Villain if you will. This book is a lot of fun and I actually really liked the ending, which did not go in the most obvious direction. And really, how can you not love a villain with a volcano lair and a cat? Oh...and throw in a little Day of the Dolphin while you're at it. That's always a good thing.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 23, 2024 22:43:44 GMT -5
The Excursion Train Edward Marston
This second installment of the series switches to a more standard mystery structure... while there are a few scenes with the suspects, the reader doesn't find out what's going on until the characters do. there would a couple twists (including one particularly skeevy one) but for the most part this series seems to be pretty 'cozy' as far as the mystery goes. I do wonder how many times the writer can manage to make a train ride be essential to catching the bad guys with out it being the same every time (or maybe it will just be the same every time)
It takes place a year after the 1st one and none of the characters change at all.. that's a bit of a long time to still be in the same opening stages of a romantic relationship as far as that part goes, and no one else changes at all either. That could definitely get annoying quickly.
It was still a fun page turner though, and has some great history bits... this one focused on boxing as it was in mid 19th century England, which was fun. The author also does a great job depicting it as an era of change and progress (lead by the rails, of course)... we'll have to see if there can be enough variety in this narrow theme for me to not get bored after the next one or two.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 23, 2024 22:45:26 GMT -5
Solomon Kane: Hound of God John Mayberry
I noticed Titan putting out these short stories as part of owning the license to Robert E Howard's stuff looking for something from the comics, and this was the first time I had Amazon had tossed me some free digital money in a bit to check one out.
Nothing too exciting here... there's really not enough to it for it not to be a generic adventure story. The twist in the middle was interesting, but not worth building a story around. There was far too much flowery description for a 39 page story.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 24, 2024 14:22:12 GMT -5
Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America by Bill Schelly
Another excellent biography of another titan of comics by longtime comics fan and historian Bill Schelly. Harvey Kurtzman's influence on popular culture in the last half of the 20th Century is honestly hard to overstate. Kurtzman, of course was the creator of Mad. And that alone would put him near the top of the pantheon of not just comic creators, but of artists in general. Add to that his editing and writing on EC's war books (Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat) and the influence, if not success of Humbug and Help! (I think that Trump was simply too short-lived to really have much influence) and Kurtzman influenced the likes of René Goscinny, Terry Gilliam, R. Crumb, John Cleese, Roger Ebert, Frank Conniff, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, Stephen Spielberg, and the list goes on and on. Schelly gives us Kurtzman's entire life, his formative years, his early work in comics, leading to "Hey Look!," his move to EC and the creation of his books there, particularly Mad. His failed attempt to gain control of Mad and his subsequent failed attempts to catch that lightning again. It seems pretty clear that, for all his genius, Kurtzman was his own worst enemy. He was too much of a perfectionist to be able to grind out fast work to pad his income. He wasn't a good enough businessman to be able to make any of his self-directed ventures really succeed. In a better world Kurtzman would be a household name and his contributions to our culture would be lionized. As it is, large amounts of the great comic community no doubt haven't got a clue who Harvey Kurtzman was or what he accomplished. This is a more than solid biography of a very important artist.
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