Bookses
Anything about books and authors
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Friday, September 08, 2006
Donate to Dean or Buy His Book
Dean Esmay is unemployed and as a result is having only his second pledge drive in all his years of superlative blogging. You might consider helping out.
Alternatively or additionally, you might consider purchasing a copy of the newly released novel by Dean Esmay and John Eddy, Methuselah’s Daughter, which I am assured remains available as a signed, limited edition hardcover first printing. I was lucky enough to be one of those getting advance installments to review as they were completed. It’s been edited and modified since, but I liked what I saw and look forward to reading it all in one not-on-screen pass. If the special hardcover is too costly for you, despite its special nature, the paperback should be available Real Soon Now through typical bookseller channels.
The blog of Methuselah’s Daughter.
An excerpt
Another excerpt
Testemonials
Monday, August 21, 2006
Nantucket Trilogy
I recently finished the “Nantucket” trilogy by S.M. Stirling, which starts with Island In The Sea Of Time, and continues and completes in Against The Tide Of Years and On The Oceans Of Eternity. I can’t recommend it highly enough, though if you are into the alt-history or time travel genres at all heavily, no doubt you have already read them.
The first book stands on its own, and could have been taken as a one-shot novel, at the same time it leaves you curious about the world and the scenario the author spawned.
Don’t read the second one without the third handy to follow immediately, as they are effectively the two parts of one contiguous story, taking place several years after the first volume.
How famous is the original book? I lurk sometimes on the Soc.History.What-If usenet newsgroup, and it is common - or was for a while - to see posts there titled [something] ISOT, where ISOT means “in the sea of time,” shorthand for applying the same thing as happened to Stirling’s late 20th century Nantucket, and [something] is generally a specific geographical area and time, or perhap a person or people.
What did happen to Nantucket in this series?
It begins with something that comes to be called simply “The Event.” It’s as if the electrical storm to end all EMPs engulfs the island and some surrounding waters in March, before the summah people have much chance to arrive. Next thing they know, they are back around 1250 BC, cut of from everything and everybody in the modern world. Survival and conflict ensue. “They” fortuitously includes a Coast Guard training vessel, its captain and crew.
While it’s especially bad to break between the 2nd and 3rd volumes, I would also suggest reading them promptly after the first. It must have been awful, waiting for them to come out. Not that a Robert Jordan fan would know anything about that kind of anguish. Speaking of which, I had an amusing crossover idea: Island In The Wheel Of Time. Heh.
I haven’t started them yet, but there is another near-complete trilogy about what happens “up in the twentieth” as a result of The Event, starting with Dies The Fire. That set is known as the Emberverse series. Deb read and loved the first one. The setup? Basically in our time The Event is something of an EMP to end all EMPs, changing physics as we know it, rendering modern technology obsolete. Action ensues. I’m not hurrying to read it because I will want to read them as close together as possible.
Anyway, I bought Island In The Sea Of Time originally for the premise and because I saw it mentioned so often. Then it became one of those ones I would pick up and say “do I want to read this next… naw, I’ll read this one instead” over and over, like the cover made me question whether I’d like it.
As so often happens, it turned out to be near impossible to put down, starting with a bang and not letting go.
I frankly would love to see more in that world, and would be unsurprised to find fan fiction exists. The essential conflict is tied up at the end of the three - something you will have trouble believing even 50 pages from the end - but there are enough loose ends and potential consequences for endless speculation and extrapolation. Apparently there is a short story set 15 years later, in with a collection of other stories.
He seems to cover everything in these books. For instance, what happens with religion? Whither Christian churches before Christ is born? At one point I told Deb it sometimes felt like the radio on Gilligan’s Island. I’d think of an angle or a question, and within pages it would just happen to be addressed.
Anyway, highly recommended.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Happy Birthday
To blogger VW Bug of One Happy Dog Speaks, who is The Answer today.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
So I finally got around to reading The Da Vinci Code
One word review:
Meh.
Friday, June 30, 2006
The Theory of Money And Credit Goes HTML
I was excited to see Billy Beck reporting that The Theory of Money And Credit by Ludwig von Mises is now online.
Beck notes it’s on his list of recommended books, itself a fascinating post to read. I’m not so sure about some of the “know your enemy” selections, on which it’s heavy, but I found myself lusting after many of the titles listed… and contemplating rereads.
At any rate, it’s not as if I read the whole Mises book, but in referencing it in the college library for this old paper, it was hard to keep myself from getting sucked in, dry as it may be. It resonated.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Rest In Peace Jim Baen
Via Glenn, the news that Jim Baen has died following his recent stroke.
It’s a sad day in the world of science fiction.
David Drake remembers his friend.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Rest In Peace Harry Browne
Harry Browne, perhaps best known for his Libertarian runs for President, has died. I knew his name and outlook from having read How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World in my early twenties. As I recall, it ran counter to the idea of there being an organized Libertarian party or attempts to get into office by same, but I could be misremembering that part. The thing I most remember and carried with me from the book was the concept of “the previous investment trap.”
Via Glenn
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Alchibah
Jeff Soyer is working on a most fascinating blog group participation project, in which participants will play the roles of Alchibah colonists. It’s an interactive science fiction story. Some of you may be interested in signing up, even if you aren’t regular readers of Jeff’s blog.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Off-Topic Book??
So I’m looking at a crossword puzzle and one of the clues is “OT book.” I read that and think “off-topic? overtime? HUH?” (Insert scrunched eyebrows and puzzled look here.)
A minute later, after looking at some other clues and openings, I exclaimed, “oh! Old Testament!” (Insert big sigh here.)
It was four letters starting with an E, if you’re curious and would not have ever been confuzzled by the shorthand expression “OT book” as we were.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Buncha Sickos
Light blogging is connected in part to the fact that we are all sick, Sadie most of all. Deb is off at a midwife appointment today, followed by some shopping for stuff needed for the hospital stay, the baby, and more generally. Sadie is clingy, so I am lucky to get to the computer to check for and respond to client e-mails. Not to mention I’d like nothing better than to go to sleep for a few hours.
I received an advance review proof of a fiction book this morning, and have also not been allowed to read beyond the brief prologue.
I have been ordered to stop typing by Sadie almost wiping the above text out for me…
Friday, January 13, 2006
Gilmore Girls
Another post before I head out to spend too much at Wal-Mart on the rest of the restocking the house project.
We’ve been watching a lot of Gilmore Girls lately, going through the DVD sets of the first two seasons that I got so insanely cheap a while back. It has resulted in things like dreams featuring GG characters and/or settings. It has also increased our native tendency to sound like them when we talk. Meaning the types of banter, references and such.
I’ve been thinking that Gilmore Girls has an element in common with Wonderfalls.
Wonderfalls was a perfect 13 episodes of the longest romantic comedy you’ve ever seen.
The Luke and Lorelai thread that runs throughout the series, starting earlier and more vehemently than I’d remembered, reminds me of that, even though it’s not exactly the same because it will have taken years to tie up and, presumably on that happy note, end the series. Which is why I am kind of glad Wonderfalls didn’t get to go beyond the season they’d filmed.
Speaking of that, in watching them on DVD, I find myself saying “that was the first season?” and “that was the second season?” There are things that, if I were to recount events from memory as best I could, I would have placed a season or two later than they actually happened. That also tells me I saw more of the first season than I realized. All this time I thought I’d missed big chunks I didn’t miss, at least not at the beginning.
For instance, Jess showed up in the second season. I would have sworn up and down he showed up in the third season. I still don’t like him, though I warmed to him some, and his recent guest appearance this season was a Good Thing. Not that I have to like the character or the actor to appreciate the monkey wrench he represented, delaying the inevitable Luke and Lorelai lurve match.
Anyway, my big question about the series is this: Where are the books?
We hear about what a voracious reader and buyer of books Rory is, and sometimes we see her reading or carrying them. Based on the bookish buildup of her character, their house should resemble our apartment in the many overflowing bookcases department. At least Max’s place actually looked the part, or close to it.
Since that really hit me, I haven’t made a special effort to examine every room they show as backdrop to be sure I haven’t missed anything, so I could simply need to look closer. Somehow I doubt they’re under the floorboards like Lane’s CD collection, neatly out of sight.
It’s very weird.
Even Sadie already has most of a shelf full of books. If she stays as interested, her room could be lined with them by the time she’s at Chilton in high school. Even with all the ones of ours she’ll also be able to read.
Finally, I am jealous of Rory’s Compact Oxford English Dictionary. (Hmmm… On Amazon the full OED is only $600 more than the Compact. I’d have expected it to be more.)
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Science Fiction & Fantasy
There is a great comment discussion at Jen’s regarding what to read for fantasy and science fiction. What really started it off were the questions of whether she ought to read the sequels to Ender’s Game, and whether reading the first book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Lord Foul’s Bane, would be a good next read to get a taste of the fantasy genre. My answers were yes and no, respectively. The comments have turned into a broader discussion of books and authors in the genres. It’s not too late to influence Jen’s next purchases! Or at least borrowings.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Going OCD On Books
Partly because a couple times recently I couldn’t find books, and partly because I couldn’t work at my desk due to the smoke (we determined for a fact that major leakage comes into my office, independent of the kitchen, because when I closed the door for a little while, it became so bad the smoke was visible), I went all OCD last night and attacked the book organizing project. I’ve kept resisting the compulsion to do it.
Then I got deeper into it than planned.
So it is that the top of the tall bookcase nearest my desk holds a stack of Greg Bear, a row of Robert Jordan and Vernor Vinge, and a stack of Ayn Rand (who will probably have to move because I know I didn’t find all hers yet and the stack is more than tall enough already). The top shelf is all Terry Pratchett and some Jeffrey A. Carver, with a few Spider Robinson and Rick Cook stacked on top. I’ve also stacked duplicates on top. For instance, we have 25 Pratchetts, but 5 are duplicates, including two spare copies of The Light Fantastic. Don’t ask me. The second shelf down is Tad Williams and James P. Hogan, with a few Terry Goodkind tentatively stacked on top. Tentatively because I thought I had more than four, and even those four are thick. Of 20 Hogans, there are 4 duplicates, 2 of which are The Proteus Operation, which is one of my all time favorite books. Third shelf down is Jack L. Chalker, Arthur C. Clarke, and Allen Steele. Hmmm… I just realized I have been at conventions with five of the authors I’ve mentioned, talked with two of them, and in the case of Hogan, been responsible for his being at the convention. Also, these are only paperbacks I’ve sorted. I have hardcovers by some of these authors.
Anyway, another of the tall bookcases in my office now has a shelf full of Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, and Zenna Henderson. Heinlein rates 32 books, with 9 duplicates. Yeesh.
Another tall bookcase in the office now has a shelf of Larry Niven and/or Jerry Pournelle, Ben Bova, David Brin, and Gregory Benford. On top of the row I have stacked some Gordon Dickson and two of the three (the other is around here somewhere) books in the Tripods trilogy by John Christopher. Which seems to be perpetually rumored to be getting filmed.
In the bedroom I so far have all Piers Anthony across part of the combined top shelf, and have C.J. Cherryh segregated. I have started stacking Anne McCaffrey and Isaac Asimov to go in there, as there is already a concentration on those shelves. A lot of Robin Hobb is in a box in the bedroom, so I started adding other Hobbs to that to organize it. In the office I have preliminary piles of Kim Stanley Robinson, Orson Scott Card, David Eddings, Frederik Pohl, James Patterson, and Christopher Stasheff. On the antique bookcase, I moved around the Michael Chrichton so it would all be adjacent, but haven’t combed the place to see if there’s more to move there.
A good start. Most of the major names and favorites of mine are segregated, subject to finding books I missed seeing, and organizing hardcovers too.
This isn’t as OCD as it could be. I’ve been known to shelve everything alphabetically by author. And then sometimes by title. I did put some series together, and even in publication order, but that’s as far as I went.
There you have it, a great post for inspiring discussion of compulsions, books and authors, and even how you shelve your books. Have at the comments.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Knife of Dreams
I finally finished reading Knife of Dreams, book 11 of The Wheel of Time. The long time I took reading it is not because the book drags; it’s all me. I read almost exclusively in bed, already so sleepy I was out in as little as sentences and seldom more than a chapter. I’d have probably enjoyed the book even more had I read it in fewer sittings.
Anyway, this is going to be a spoiler filled commentary on the book and the series. If you are a fan and haven’t read the latest, you may want to avoid this. In short, however, I can say it’s the best since book six, Lord of Chaos. That and I give nothing away by saying I was surprised how short it was. I give little away by noting that Jordan insists the next one will be the last, and saying “yeah, right” in response. If book twelve is to be the last, it will have to be a couple thousand hardcover pages (this one was fewer than 800 not counting the glossary). It has always made the most sense to me for there to be thirteen, simply due to the overwhelming significance of that number throughout the series. I predict that if he finishes the series in one more volume, of similar or not much greater length to this one, it will be a disappointment.
The rest, very spoilish, basically for fellow fans who have read all the books, is in the extended entry. Comments welcome…
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Never Heard of It
take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.
and go to mewing.net. not as good as reading a good book, but way better than a bad one.
Via Caltechgirl, who is a non-awful book I never finished reading because I was bored.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
What We Face With Sadie
Just one example, which we forgot to blog about a week or so ago when it happened.
At bed time, Sadie always gets one of two books - sometimes both - read to her, then she gets put in bed. One is The Going To Bed Book, and the other is The Moon In My Room, which we call “the moon book.” She gets to choose which one.
Well, she decided that if she hid both of those books, we wouldn’t make her go to bed. She was irritated when a different book got read to her and she was put in bed anyway.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
A little behind the times, I know, but we have finally seen it and heartily approved. It was probably as close as one might ever hope to having the book accurately rendered to film with appropriate adjustments.
If anything, they improved it by explaining why Wonka is the way he is.
I loved the “it’s as if he knew it would happen” treatment of especially the first mishap.
The guy who played the Oompa Loompas deserves an Oscar or some kind of award. At any rate, I hope they paid him exceedingly well.
Charlie was a perfect Charlie. Of the others, Violet was the best done. Augustus was something of a caricature, but that is partly a result of being the first casualty.
Anyway, I will always love the old one with Gene Wilder, but I knew when it came out that it was a big departure from the book and had to make myself accept it as such. This is the real deal.
The Insidious Influence of Dr. Seuss
Moments ago, Sadie was sitting in her favorite cubby between “her” metal toolbox and a box of stuff against the wall under the window behind me. She touched one of her socks as if she wasn’t sure she liked having it on, so I pointed out I also had socks, and came out with:
White socks, blue socks
We each have two socks
This is what comes of reading too many Seuss and other books over and over, plus being relatively quick with wordplay myself.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Sadie Loves Books and More
I wrote this the night before last, was interrupted, didn’t finish, and have no idea what else I might have planned to say. Figured I’d post what’s sitting in the editor anyway…
Looks like books will be the single biggest thing on Sadie’s Christmas list this year. She is absolutely nuts about them, to the point she has us convinced she’s going to learn to read as early as humanly possible.
The trouble is, they still have to be board books or similarly sturdy ones, as she still lacks the coordination to turn regular pages, and is kind of hard on them, despite having improved dramatically.
She has to have books in her crib, which she will sit and “read” before going to sleep, and in the morning when she first wakes up, if she doesn’t hear us or doesn’t feel like getting our attention yet.
Even if people ger her duplicates, she has and will be tough enough on them that it might be as well.
She also loves her water book we read in the tub. It floats, so you can let it set on the water and turn the pages without holding it. Bob the duck can also use it as a raft if he doesn’t feel like bobbing directly in the water.
She rotates through other toys, but books seem to be eternal. However, if there is one thing she’ll especially want that is a toy, it would be blocks, whether wooden or Mega Blocks. Those seem to be in current favor over the dolls and animals.
She confounds us by making objects that aren’t toys into her favorites. The latest is my hairbrush. She’s into grooming and hygiene to a strange degree for her age, and walks around attempting to brush her hair, and otherwise playing with the brush. She loved her an empty Kleenex box the other day. She stuffed her glass into the slot, where it was held fast, then held the whole box up to drink. She also experimented with putting other stuff in there.
She likes to “help” clean, above and beyond her fascination with the Swiffer as a toy. If you let her loose, after a while she gets most of the dust off the floor, even though it’s random and she doesn’t get larger stuff. She’s moved away from throwing her toys in the rubbish and toward throwing trash in there instead.
Modeling clothes is another of her favorite things. She’s already started not fitting into some of the 18 month stuff, having a challengingly overlong torso compared to her legs. I am not sure if there is anything specific she needs, but we tend to have an overabundance of clothes generally, and the ones we have to buy are minor. For instance, her first shoes for $10 several weeks ago, which are about ready to be replaced with the next size up. And oh she loves shoes! I called her Imelda one day. There are some nice hand me down ones that are not quite her size yet.
One thing we can’t get soon enough is more Baby Einstein videos. She has only the neighborhood animals video, which she stands raptly watching for the duration, and asks to watch regularly.
Monday, October 31, 2005
In The Mail
Well, actually it was in the mail several days ago. I just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it yet. Courtesy of Rob May, I have a copy of More Space: Nine Antidotes To Complacency In Business.
Sadly, I am still reading book 11 of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, Knife of Dreams. The addiction comes first, and it appears to be the best since at least book 6. About time. It’s only going slow because I read mainly in bed, and a hardcover is tough to read that way, so I tend to put it down and go to sleep when my hand all too quickly gets sore. That and having been busy/distracted enough not to sit and pointedly read on through for hours. Last night I actually sat in the living room and read an entire chapter, but then Deb started talking about judges and her negative impression of Alito, and I got strangely sleepy. Heh. But I digress.
I thought the book looked fascinating, at a first glance, and impressively professional for what could be labeled a blogger vanity project of sorts (well, except things like this are Todd’s business). But it’s completely serious, and not your ordinary business book. Deb enjoyed the part of it she read, and is interested in reading more, despite it not being her usual thing to read business books. Obviously I can review it for real once I have, you know, read it. I just thought I ought to make people aware of it more timely to its official release.
How can you not appreciate a business book in which the first chapter, which happens to be Rob’s, starts with the sentence:
“I only need to drink five more beers.”
You should visit the More Space site, which has more info about the book and the process of creating it, and allows you to read online or download chapters from it at no cost.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Logic most non-chronological: Narnia edition
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe comes first. This is not and has never been up for debate in my corner of the universe. Here’s a great article that outlines why I’m right and the publisher--and everybody else who disagrees--is wrong.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Conceptual Leaps
Sadie has identified that hair on illustrations of Dr. Seuss characters corresponds to hair on an actual person such as herself.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Rand Skypotter Breaks The Horcruxes On Darth Voldemort’s Prison, Saves World, News At 11:00
Today I finished the latest Harry Potter, which I read back to back with the one before it, as previously I’d only read the first four.
I felt like Order of the Phoenix was slow; not the most compelling of them to date. It took me a while to finish, mostly in few pages before falling asleep snippets. Not that it was bad. It just didn’t grip me as well as I might have expected. It was interesting seeing more of the political end of things, the ministry, and the behind the scenes activities with the order.
By contrast, Half-Blood Prince was compelling and kept me picking it up and reading any chance I got. I flew through it in a few days, which for me anymore is super fast. She has done a great job aging the kids, and giving Harry maturity and a don’t mess with me attitude. I’d allowed myself to be spoiled, so I knew of the death and perhaps it changed the tone, but in both of the books it seemed as if the respective major deaths were foreshadowed or logical outcomes to expect.
She has a lot to do in the final installment. It reminds me of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, in which finishing in two more books has to mean the most exciting, fast-paced read ever, eclipsing even the most compelling previous volumes, such as The Shadow Rising. Heck, the horcruxes remind me of the seals.
Anyway, this leads me to note that I now need to select another book to read. However, mentioning Jordan reminded me that it was time for Knife of Dreams, the latest book, to be out. Doh! So nevermind picking something off the shelves; I need to get to a bookstore.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Island In The Sea Of Time and The Stand
I just finished Island In The Sea Of Time, by S.M. Stirling. I’d long seen it recommended, bought it a while back, and just got around to it. I concur with the general sentiments about its greatness. The concept is sufficiently cool and intriguing to have sparked chronic threads on the alt history newsgroup where I used to lurk, usually titled [fill in the blank] ISOT, where everyone knows ISOT means in the sea of time. People play with the implications of various places to and from various times. Alternate history is always intriguing enough, but then there are disaster/survival story elements of upheaval as well.
The setup is that a strange, massive electrotemporal event, in the before-tourist-season month of March, drops our little island of Nantucket into 1250 BC, bringing (presumably) the 1250 BC version forward in trade. Along with the island comes a small amount of adjacent sea, and fortuitously a Coast Guard training ship. Given the sudden cutoff of mainland resources and the limits of the island, it really is a survival situation. The author handles that aspect well, and we see, perhaps, things we might not have thought of casually.
Naturally we see the beginnings of the influence of modern Nantucket’s arrival on the rest of the world. I hadn’t realized until after I started reading it that there were sequels, but it only makes sense.
I’d also wondered what the people “up in the twentieth” made of Nantucket’s swap to a pristine state. Turns out that there is a series underway of books on the other end of this electrotemporal disturbance, in which late twentieth century earth is rendered untechnological. Apparently the event was the biggest imaginable EMP, then some. So in that one it’s survival of people with more primitive skills. Should be an interesting read.
One of the more amusing scenes in the book is when one of the moderns starts to break it to the locals that the world is round, and they’re like “duh, we knew that.” Well, actually they were each surprised the other did, as it was closely guarded knowledge, but the moderns were the most surprised.
I also read Stephen King’s The Stand recently, which made for an interesting contrast. I started to write a commentary about that book, but never completed and posted it. That’s one of those books where people would express shock on learning I had never read it. My impression from poking through one King book one time was booooring writing, and horror isn’t ordinarily my genre. The Stand barely qualifies as horror, being more of a disaster novel. You could have a 99+% deadly virus escape and result in a similar scenario without any supernatural elements.
The book was excellent, but I kept thinking in other directions. Like… how long can all the food left behind by the dead people remain good and be enough to feed everyone? What are they going to do when food, gasoline, medical supplies, etc. run out or get harder to scavenge? What direction will a rebuilt civilization take? (An answer we have well in hand by the end of ISOT.)
Both books were engaging and hard to put down. I heartily recommend them. By comparison, Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South, an excellent alt history novel, was a bit slow and hard to get into or stay with in places. Now I’ve started reading the fifth Harry Potter, in preparation for reading the sixth one that had everyone so excited of late. So I’m a little slow.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Serenity
There is a new Serenity trailer. I never watched Firefly, but I can’t wait to see this movie!
And speaking of Serenity, can you imagine Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy on film?
Friday, June 17, 2005
Book Meme
The challenge, via Steven Taylor: “five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult,” followed by a bonus challenge I found oddly easier…
1. The Narnia series, of which The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is number 1 and The Magician’s Nephew (possibly my favorite) is number 6, vile revisionism by the publisher notwithstanding. I didn’t read these until I was about 13, oddly enough.
2. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Niven and Pournelle. I have read it several times.
3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I never read The Hobbit because I got bored when I originally tried.
4. McCaffrey’s Pern series (the ones that were around when I was teen/young adult, anyway)
5. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Probably many others I am not thinking of offhand.
Books as a Child (from Middle School back) that Helped Establish my Love of Reading:
1. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
2. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time
3. The Brains Benton Mystery series by George Wyatt & Charles Spain Verral
4. The Far Distant Oxus by Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock
5. The Secret Garden by by Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. Grimbold’s Other World by Nicholas Gray
7. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
The original second part from Steven Taylor only had six, but I easily came up with seven and could have probably thought of more.
Feel free to join in, or discuss books here. I don’t believe in tagging anyone with these things.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Doc Savage
Via Jeff, here’s news that all the Doc Savage books are being reissued. 181? Wow! I only ever read about three of them that were kicking around when I was a kid, but they were great.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
The Paths of The Oompa-Loompas
And so, much to his chagrin, Aragorn mistakenly took not the Paths of the Dead, but the paths of the Oompa-Loompas…
Oompa Loompa, Loompa Dee Doo,
We’ll clean out Minas Tirith for you,
Oompa Loompa, Loompa Dee Dee
We’ll kill those Orcs and kill them with glee!
Sunday, May 08, 2005
The Christ Clone Trilogy
Finished it today and must say it is an excellent, engaging read, especially the second volume. The whole saga took a different turn than I’d expected, though a logical one.
I would note that you needn’t be religious to enjoy the books, and vice-versa. Nor are they likely to turn you religious, or vice-versa.
More than a hearty recommendation, I don’t want to say. Deb, who started reading first, has not yet completed the first book. I don’t want to give anything away, which saying almost anything would.
To give you an idea how gripping they were for me, these days I can take months even to finish a good book. I don’t read in bed as much. I don’t make a point to read, and am generally busy enough to avoid that. It’s only been a couple weeks since I started reading the first one. I just flew through them voraciously.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Sucked In
Deb started reading the first book in The Christ Clone Trilogy, found it good if sometimes oddly paced (always paced about the same, no matter what the level of action). She left it in the reading room, where I started picking it up and reading bits of it. She already had it bookmarked, so I’d just remember the page or chapter number start I had reached.
Suddenly I am done, while she’s still halfway through it, havinghad to listen to me “wow” at her. I read at least half the book in the course of a day or so, and wound up removing it from the reading room.
It’s a grippingly entertaining disaster/end times/political thriller that obviously draws on religious themes, but you don’t have to be religious to like it. Nor will you necessarily dislike it if you are religious. It’s sad that the author felt he had to put a “hello people, this is fiction!” disclaimer at the front of the book, and worse, footnote in a few places referring the reader back to it in case they might be thinking of taking offense at his twist on things. Heck, I take more offense at the heavy role and power of the UN in the book, and the obvious high regard in which it is held, but it’s a part of the story. Fiction.
I’m only a third of the way through the trilogy, and already I highly recommend it. I figure it’ll get loaned out to my father and/or sister when we’re done, as they will both enjoy it.
No reading today, though. Too busy.
