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Post by berkley on Jan 23, 2020 23:12:13 GMT -5
I might be reading Pick-Up soon myself so Ill try to avoid reading Slam's review till afterwards.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 25, 2020 11:00:38 GMT -5
Barrayar (Book 2 in the Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois Bujold McMaster
I was expecting this book to build on the first one, but instead it turned inward... focusing just on Barrayar (hence the title, I guess), instead of mentioning the rest of the universe that was began last book.
The main theme is one of of a society dealing with technology... Barrayar is new to the tech of the rest of the universe, and was starting from a point most similar to medieval Europe. Cordelia is a combination of point of view character to tell us about society and an agent of change to bring 'modern' views to the world, which works really well.
As in the first book, the characters are fantastic, and action flows really well, and if there were a few things that were a little too easy, or where the bad guys were a bit stupid, that's not really unique in sci fi.
I'm a bit skeptical of the next book, since it's a big fast forward, but the 1st two have definitely been good enough to give the benefit of the doubt.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 26, 2020 5:35:03 GMT -5
Palisades ParkAlan Brennert, 2013 Another historical novel, this one, obviously, set against the backdrop of Palisades Park, which was a popular amusement park in New Jersey across the Hudson River from New York City for most of the 20th century (until 1971). As local resident, Brennert used to go there frequently as a child, and he openly admits that he was prompted to write the book as part of a nostalgia trip. However, the book is not rose-colored look at the park steeped in nostalgia. The story, which runs from the 1930s through the mid-1960s, centers around a family who initially worked as concessionaires (a French fry stand) in the park. Initially the focus is on Eddie Stopka, who loved going to the park as a kid, and then later gets odd jobs in the park and finally takes over said concession stand. He meets a young woman working at another stand and they marry and have kids. Then the focus shifts more to their older daughter, Toni (short for Antoinette), who, with her brother, basically grows up in the park and later becomes a performing high diver, initially touring with a carnival in the Midwest. As in his other novels that I mentioned upthread, Brennert incorporates a great deal of the park's real history and personalities, from management and other staff through performers and concessionaires, but never loses focus on his main characters and telling a damn good story.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 27, 2020 9:32:29 GMT -5
'Til Death Ed McBain (87th Precinct)
This installment is focused on the Carella family... we get Steve's sister's wedding, and Teddy ready to have their baby.
The wedding, of course, goes a bit wrong.. not quite as bad as a comic book superhero wedding, but close. The mystery part was pretty interesting in that it was pretty straight forward.. no big twist or red herring... made me feel like the detectives were doing a good job.
In keeping with the theme of the series, we get 'introduced' to Bob O'Brien, who appeared briefly before but got some screen time today.. he seems to be the new 'heavy' on the force, but with that comes that he's a jinx, since there is always shooting when he's around.. should be interesting going forward.
Meyer is the lead here, and we see him doing some fine detecting, while Steve has his guys (Cotton Hawes and Bert Kling) as wedding guests to make sure nothing goes wrong... Cotton is especially incompetent this time out... to the point where he's going to have to make up for it soon.
I just hope we don't start getting too many crimes centered on the family and friends of the detectives.. while it was fun to 'meet' Steve's family, that can start pushing the suspension of disbelief pretty quickly.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 28, 2020 16:26:28 GMT -5
Dead Aim by Joe R. Lansdale. Hap and Leonard take on a job protecting a woman from her soon-to-be-ex. But as usual things are not all what they seem and the boys end up with a few corpses and Hap gets questioned by the police again. Lansdale let's the boys show some growth in their abilities as sleuths rather than relying solely on Marvin Hansen for the solution. And they don't make as many mistakes as usual...though still more than a few. But they remain endearing and compelling protagonists. This is a novella and the story here is pretty slight. But that's okay. I love that Lansdale likes to work at varying lengths and if doing that with Hap and Leonard means we also get other short works from him so much the better. This one isn't great Hap & Leoanrd. But it's good and worth the short commitment. But oh my...that cover. What were they thinking? I don't know who those two pretty boys are, but they're at least two decades too young to be Hap & Leonard.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 4, 2020 18:11:47 GMT -5
The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette KowalAs much as I enjoyed The Calculating Stars, this second part of Kowal's Lady Astronaut series was just that much better. The novel finds an ongoing small Lunar colony, the Mars project well under way and an Earth (and particularly a United States) that's not entirely sold on the project. Kowal gives us clear parallels to the current "controversy" about climate change while giving us great science fiction. The story follows the work on the Mars project from the early stages through training to the eventual culmination of the project. Along the way we get a lot of great SF and also a lot of character growth, not just from Elma and Nathaniel, but moreso from a number of secondary characters old and new. It's not without faults. There were some decisions made by characters that were questionable. The dialogue is occasionally a bit clunky. The second half of the book is so much better than the first. But overall this is very strong SF that I can give my highest recommendation.
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Post by berkley on Feb 4, 2020 19:52:26 GMT -5
I've put more contemporary or recent SF reading on the back burner for now until I catch up on some of the older stuff but it's always good to take down some names and titles to check out in the hopefully not too distant future.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 6, 2020 14:47:17 GMT -5
A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark ForsythPopular history that looks at the history of drinking and drunkenness across history and across the world. The book starts even before the invention of beer with a look at the pre-historic evidence of the eating of overly ripened fruit. But it really gets going with the invention of beer (or ale), something that happened relatively contemporaneously around the globe. Again, this is a popular history. Any one of the chapters could reasonably be expanded into its own monograph. But for what it is, this is a fun, breezy, informative book. And one of the best things about it is that it's not excessively Euro-centric (only moderately so). No matter what you think about alcohol (though yes, I'll judge you) the discovery of beer was one of the hallmark moments in human history. This book is a short enjoyable beginning for a wider look at alcohols effect on our history and how we lived and evolved as societies.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2020 15:24:58 GMT -5
Finished the Godwulf Manuscript last night, the first of the Spenser books by Robert Parker. This is what I said about it on Goodreads... I realized a couple chapters in that I had read this at some point before, as I recognized the set up with Terry Orchard and the murder, but I couldn't recall a single thing about the resolution of the book, so I am not sure I ever finished it before or just didn't remember. It was a library borrow that first time, as I just found the copy of this I read at Goodwill last week, so it's possible I had to return it before I finished it. It may even have been a book I was reading at the time I had to go in for emergency surgery a couple years back and didn't finish. -M
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2020 16:51:09 GMT -5
So that I don't buy only what I like, I always buy the Waterstones Book of the Month, no matter the subject. This allows me to read things outside my comfort zone. This is the Waterstones Book of the Month, bit of a dark subject but I'll give it a go: This is the Waterstones description: Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.
Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.
The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that 'the Ripper' preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told.
Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time - but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 6, 2020 16:56:03 GMT -5
So that I don't buy only what I like, I always buy the Waterstones Book of the Month, no matter the subject. This allows me to read things outside my comfort zone. This is the Waterstones Book of the Month, bit of a dark subject but I'll give it a go: This is the Waterstones description: Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.
Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.
The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that 'the Ripper' preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told.
Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time - but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.It’s supposed to be excellent.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 6, 2020 22:40:46 GMT -5
Finished the Godwulf Manuscript last night, the first of the Spenser books by Robert Parker. This is what I said about it on Goodreads... I realized a couple chapters in that I had read this at some point before, as I recognized the set up with Terry Orchard and the murder, but I couldn't recall a single thing about the resolution of the book, so I am not sure I ever finished it before or just didn't remember. It was a library borrow that first time, as I just found the copy of this I read at Goodwill last week, so it's possible I had to return it before I finished it. It may even have been a book I was reading at the time I had to go in for emergency surgery a couple years back and didn't finish. -M I just picked up the 2nd Spencer book at a local used book shop (got this, an early 60s 87th precinct book, and 2 Arthur Clarke books from the 60s I didn't own for $3.74... the shop specialized in Harlequin romances, so it was a banner trip!) .. I was planning to grab this out of the library soon.. if I don't luck into finding it at Savers or something. I vaguely remember the TV show.. been meaning to check it out for a while. That's a great cover for 'The Five', but I'm not sure I could read a factual book on the Ripper... I've read so many fictional ones, it'd be weird.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 6, 2020 22:43:13 GMT -5
Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan Book #3)
I was rather skeptical of this book, with it's big time skip and shift of focus... Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan are such great characters, and there was lots of stuff i wanted to read about that happened during the skip! Alas, one can't read books that don't exist.
Miles reminds me very, very much of Tyrion Lannister... so much so I wonder if there's a connection (is George RR Martin a fan?). While I like him well enough, his lack of uniqueness was a bit of a drain for me.
The plot was very entertaining, and it was nice to get off Barrayar and back into the universe, but the happy accident meter was off the chart.... I felt like it was on purpose to prove a point, as Miles blundered into one success after another.
The book was almost a 5 star one despite that, but the one BIG coincidence (this was possibly the mother of all convienent writing coincidences) knocks a full star off the rating.. not only did the fact that it happen silly, but the results, while in character should have had far greater consequences.
I find myself wanting the next book to be about the Dendarii Mercenaries rather than Miles' exploits in the academy, but we'll see if he can sell me on himself as a character as the series continues.
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Post by berkley on Feb 7, 2020 2:16:24 GMT -5
The Vorkosgian saga is one of many SF series knew were popular but never heard enough details about to know whether it was something I'd want to try myself. Reading about it here has moved it a few places up on my list.
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Post by brutalis on Feb 7, 2020 13:47:40 GMT -5
This is just a quick impromptu review/recommendation for DK Encyclopedic Books which cover a variety of subjects. I happened upon a several used from a thrift store and thoroughly enjoyed them. These are more or less simple photographic encyclopedia's which run the gamut from children's subjects to movies and television shows and history and science and art and animals and dang near anything else you may think of. They are not necessarily thorough or the last statement on subjects, but they are quick reference material and make for interesting and informative reading highlighted with drawings or pictures in helping to understand what is being discussed.
I have been watching over the last year or so and managed to pick some up for the $5-10 range used. In my collection now are their "encyclopedia's" on Star Wars Characters/Creatures/Ships/Weapons/etc (covering ALL the movies up until The Last Jedi), Star Trek covering ALL the television series and movies main characters/ships/weapons/etc, a Muppets Character book, Scooby Doo characters and villains book, Disney Princesses book, 2 different Dinosaur books, A Space book, a book on the American Revolution, one on Horses and 2 on Wildlife/Animals of the World. Currently building up more in my Amazon bucket of used books on WWI, WWII, Civil War, Gems/Minerals, Edible Foods/vegetables/spices/etc and others which will attract my attention.
These make for nice quick browsing and/or light reading while providing learning with entertainment to stimulate the eyes, mind and brain. I highly recommend grabbing any up which you may find used or in yard sales. New they can run around $20-40 depending upon the actual subject and how many pages it requires. But finding these little treasures for $5-10 makes for splendid reads down the line!
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