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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 17, 2024 17:35:15 GMT -5
 Benjamin Harrison by Charles W. Calhoun
U.S. history and the American presidents were like my third love (after Batman and Pogo). But I can say that I really I didn't know much of anything about Benjamin Harrison other than he was from Indiana and his term was between those of Grover Cleveland. He is definitely one of those you think of when you hear that song from The Simpsons, "We Are the Mediocre Presidents." So when I saw this for like 99 cents for the Kindle version I decided to see what made Harrison tick. What I found is a pretty interesting Presidency that was certainly the precursor for William McKinley being considered the first "modern" President. Harrison was significantly less laissez-faire than probably any President before...and many that came after. He attempted, to no avail, to pass a voting rights act to protect the vote for black voters. While he was in favor of the tariffs that were in place he did believe in modifying them to allow for freer trade, particularly within western hemisphere. He was fairly centerist when it came to the prevailing labor issues of the time. Understanding his Presidency (and the book) is going to be a whole lot easier if you have a grounding in Reconstruction, bimetallism, Labor issues of the period, tariffs, and general gilded age politics and issues. I do think that the book just barely steered clear of hagiography. And I'd really like to read good bios of both Cleveland and of James G. Blaine to have a better feel for more sides of what was going down. But I came away thinking that Harrison is probably underrated as a President and that he may have been ill-used by party members and by the public in the 1892 Presidential election. This is still funny though. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 20, 2024 12:41:45 GMT -5
The MaxKen Bruen & Jason Starr, 2008  This is the third installment in the ‘Max Fisher & Angela Petrakos’ series (the first two are reviewed above here and here). In this one – and I’m afraid this is a bit of a spoiler for the end of the preceding book – Max is doing time in Attica for some pretty serious crimes. He’s still pretty clueless and has delusions of grandeur, which inadvertently (and against all logic) work out in his favor. He even gets contacted by a down-and-out mystery writer named Paula Segal who thinks his story would make a good true-crime book. Meanwhile, Angela is initially on the island of Santorini, in Greece, doing what she does best: mooching off of easily fooled men who have some money or at least seem to. One of the latter, a British con man and thief named Sebastian who pretends to be a writer (and he bears some resemblance to Lee Child), gets tangled up with her, and they get into some serious trouble involving Angela’s landlord. Sebastian skips off back to England with some of Angela’s money, while Angela ends up in jail, although she finds a way to sneak out after one night. Desperate, she heads back to the US, and as in the previous book, the storylines converge. As this series goes on, the stories get progressively more ridiculous, and not necessarily in a good way. If I hadn’t bought all three as part of a Hard Case Humble Bundle, I don’t think I would have read past the first one.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 20, 2024 14:12:54 GMT -5
A question for Robert E. Howard readers...
If Solomon Kane comes from Devon, does it mean he sounds like a pirate?
Now I can't get the voice of Jack Sparrow out of my head!!! 
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 20, 2024 15:11:00 GMT -5
A question for Robert E. Howard readers...
If Solomon Kane comes from Devon, does it mean he sounds like a pirate?
Now I can't get the voice of Jack Sparrow out of my head!!!
Couldn't tell you, but I know a certain Cimmerian doesn't sound like a certain Terminator. Oh, btw, tomorrow is the Howard's Eve; he was born on January 22, 1906. "Howard's End" is June 11. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 20, 2024 23:46:50 GMT -5
Red Prophet
Orson Scott Card
Continuing my re-read... I definitely remembered alot of more of the events and characters in this book than in the first one. In fact, in mind a good portion is the beginning of the story.. its funny how the mind plays tricks like that.
Trying to work out the alternate history part in this one becomes impossible... at one point one of the character (Lafayette, I think?) says England had been a republic for a century and a half, yet they still talk about the king. So I guess he's going for Cromwell never lost? But then why is there still a king? And then he's got Robespierre and Napoleon as both being important at the same time... that especially hurts my head.
The image of the curse of the people from Vigor Church is just amazing... stuff like this is why Card is a memorable writer I can keep going back to.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2024 23:43:17 GMT -5
 Finished Jon Messmann's The Revenger. Obviously, a riff on Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan: The Executioner, this one was an above average classic 1970's men's adventure/revenge story. I don't know how Messmann will get 5 more novels out of the character, but it was certainly entertaining enough that I will be picking up the second installment. |
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Jan 23, 2024 3:27:51 GMT -5
Slow start to prose to start the year, but I finished an anthology that I'd been slowly making my way through since the end of last year-Sword and Sorceress III edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  As with many anthologies, this one was a mixed bag, Highlights included stories by Charles Saunders and Mercedes Lackey, among others, but nothing that made me want to run out and track down more work from an author I didn't wasn't previously aware of. I liked the first 2 volumes more, but this was still a solid read. We only own about 10-12 more volumes of this series, so I will eventually get to more of them, but I have a few other things to get to first. -M |
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Post by berkley on Jan 23, 2024 9:38:29 GMT -5
Slow start to prose to start the year, but I finished an anthology that I'd been slowly making my way through since the end of last year-Sword and Sorceress III edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. As with many anthologies, this one was a mixed bag, Highlights included stories by Charles Saunders and Mercedes Lackey, among others, but nothing that made me want to run out and track down more work from an author I didn't wasn't previously aware of. I liked the first 2 volumes more, but this was still a solid read. We only own about 10-12 more volumes of this series, so I will eventually get to more of them, but I have a few other things to get to first. -M
I like the concept of this series so I picked up a bunch of them when I saw them cheap a few years ago. Still haven't read any but now that I'm just beginning to get back into some 20thC fantasy I should be trying the first one within the next year or two, I hope.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 23, 2024 11:53:39 GMT -5
(...) As with many anthologies, this one was a mixed bag, Highlights included stories by Charles Saunders and Mercedes Lackey, among others, (...) Oh, yeah, a Dossouye story. Those are always good. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 23, 2024 15:11:38 GMT -5
Oh look...another Hugo Awards controversy. I mostly think awards are pretty dumb, but the Hugos have been having a bad decade or so. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 25, 2024 19:26:37 GMT -5
 A Ship of the Line by C.S. Forester
The second Hornblower novel (in publication order) this book was a rough go for about the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book. It took forever for anything to happen. And, quite frankly, Hornblower isn't interesting enough as a character (and none of the supporting characters amount to anything of interest) to support a book where not a lot is going on. Once Hornblower and company finally made it to the western Mediterranean and started started some naval action as part of the British blockade of Spain and France it kicked it up enough to actually be interesting. Following his exploits in Central America with The Lydia, Hornblower is given command of The Sutherland, a ship of the line, that is a captured and reconditioned Dutch ship. He is put under the command of the new husband of Barbara Wellesley, a Rear Admiral, and the four ships in that group escort an East India Company convoy until they break off in to the Mediterranean for blockade duty. The book ends on a cliffhanger, which may well have been unusual and annoying in 1938, but isn't such a big deal now. Honestly, until about the half-way point I thought this might be my last Hornblower book. I'm only luke-warm on Forester at this point. But I do want to see how the cliffhanger ends, and there is juuuuust enough of interest going on to make it worth giving him one more book to get things going. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2024 0:34:05 GMT -5
I've never actually read any of the books. I really enjoyed those movies that aired on A & E here in the states with future Mr. Fantastic Ioan Gruffudd as Hornblower in the late 90s and early OOs.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 26, 2024 21:59:26 GMT -5
The Secret
Lee Child
I haven't visited with Jack Reacher since he became a big TV star, so I was excited to read this when it turned up for Christmas (thanks, Mom). I was very curious as to how his leave no trail philsophy of life would hold up to our internet cookies and phone tracked society.
I didn't get to find that out, since instead this is I guess a period piece now (set in 1992), seemingly pretty early in the series when he's still an MP. It starts with a pretty easy, mundane case that felt like a short story intertwined with beginning of the main story, which Reacher gets pulled in on.
Who the ultimate bad guy was became clear pretty early on, but the story was good anyway. The main point was definitely that women were criminally underestimated... I'd like to think that wasn't still the case in 1992, but as I wasn't out in the world yet I guess I can't really say.
I definitely need to watch the show one of these days.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 26, 2024 22:02:38 GMT -5
I've never actually read any of the books. I really enjoyed those movies that aired on A & E here in the states with future Mr. Fantastic Ioan Gruffudd as Hornblower in the late 90s and early OOs. I read some Hornblower in my naval fiction phase.. not sure how far I got.. I found him not as good as the Patrick O'Brian but better than Dewey Lambdin. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 26, 2024 22:09:45 GMT -5
Oh look...another Hugo Awards controversy. I mostly think awards are pretty dumb, but the Hugos have been having a bad decade or so. Sounds like more of the same, but maybe from a different source. Doesn't seem like it should be that hard to let people vote for a thing and have the thing that gets the most votes win. but it seems our current world really struggles with that. Personally I would have voted for Scalzi, but Babel was definitely a more serious work and it didn't deserve to get excluded for what sounds like political reasons. |
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