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Post by Jesse on Nov 4, 2017 13:16:03 GMT -5
Just started the sixth Jack Reacher book Without Fail by Lee Child after finishing... Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin The inspiring story of how a mountain-climber and part time registered nurse dedicated his life to building schools for girls in impoverished rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. After co-founding a non-profit group called the Central Asia Institute he reports to have overseen the construction of over 170 schools that have educated tens of thousands of students. In 2011 the CBS News program 60 minutes did an expose alleging that many of the claims in the book were made up and Mortenson has also been accused of mismanaging the funds of this charitable institution. At times the book feels like an ego stroke for Mortenson but the story is still pretty interesting. Unfortunate if it is partly fiction presented as non-fiction though. I've yet to watch the 60 Minutes episodes but plan to if I can find it online.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 7, 2017 14:26:52 GMT -5
Beyond by Theodore Sturgeon Boring cover, sadly. There's a later editon from 'The Bones' that's much better, but this is the one I have. Nice early sci-fi collection... none of these stories are very far from reality.. there's just a small bit of sci fi in each that makes you thing about the main point, which is what I like in old school sci fi. Need: Very Twilight Zone... about a man name Gorwing that might or might not be a guardian angel Abbreaction: the runt of the bunch... totally fell out of my brain right after I read it Nightmare Island: A good fish story from a drunken sailor.. very amusing Largo: An obsessed musician writes his masterpiece around the end of the world.. very cool setting, and a surprising ending that after I read it made me realize I shouldn't be surprised by it. The Bones: Revenge story with a Ouija Board type twist.. meh Like Young: Otters look like the next dominant species after the apolcalpse.. so we should help them.. right? Good stuff.. Sturgeon isn't my favorite, but it's rare for his stuff to be bad, so his story collections are always worth it.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 11, 2017 22:47:19 GMT -5
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi The second in Scalzi's Old Man's War series this isn't a direct sequel to Old Man's War but continues in that universe with some recurring characters. This one gives us a deeper look at the Special Forces, aka The Ghost Brigades. While I don't think this was quite as strong as Old Man's War it was a very good follow-up and Scalzi raises significant questions about the choice or lack thereof of the Colonial Defense Forces in general and the Special Forces in particular. A good follow-up and further proof that Scalzi is one of the stronger voices in modern SF.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 14, 2017 11:38:12 GMT -5
Journey to the End of Night By Louis-Ferinand Celine
I grabbed this on the recommendation of a French internet friend.. I can see why Celine is so highly regarded... even through the translation (which was very good), his mastery of painting pictures with words shines through.
He also seems to have a great understanding of the typical, down and out person.. his insights on life's realities are certainly brilliant at times. I think, read in small chunks, it would be more enjoyable. The narrative is just so relentlessly depressing, it's hard for me to read. I'm just a happy guy at heart, and I just don't relate. I have the same problem with punk music... I appreciate the art, but it just doesn't register with me on a basic level.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 14, 2017 12:08:18 GMT -5
Manhunter's Mountain by Wayne Dundee. Another novella starring U.S. Marshall Cash Laramie. This time around Laramie has to get a prisoner and two soiled doves off a mountain ahead of snowstorms, a bounty hunter and miners who don't want 'their' women leaving the mining camp. Dundee takes Edward Grainger's character and tells a tight little western that's well worth the short time it will take to read.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 14, 2017 12:14:48 GMT -5
Hey Slam, are those Westerns set in the frontier era, or modernish ones like Longmire? I had trouble with the Longmire book I read because it was too different from the show, but a similar, good series would be just the thing
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 14, 2017 13:02:17 GMT -5
Hey Slam, are those Westerns set in the frontier era, or modernish ones like Longmire? I had trouble with the Longmire book I read because it was too different from the show, but a similar, good series would be just the thing These are set in the Old West era. Late 1800s mostly in the Wyoming Territory. I've never read Longmire. I did watch the first season or two on Netflix. It was okay, but didn't set my world on fire and I ended up watching other things. I probably have a hard time with a small Wyoming county having the highest murder and crime rate in the world.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 14, 2017 13:39:07 GMT -5
yeah, you definitely have to just pretend like that's normal. Just like it would be fine for said county that had all those deaths to have a police force of 4. The sub plots really kick into high gear as the series continues, which is really what makes the show.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2017 21:15:58 GMT -5
The book was entertaining & educational. Tells you what the life of an astronaut is like (training, education, etc) plus what it was like to live at the space station for one year. Nice style that does not get bogged down in the technical details. Yet descriptive enough that you could imagine how exhausting it would be to work in space in a bulky space suit. How your life would be so different without gravity. And so on. For those of us that wanted to be an astronaut growing up...or just interested in space exploration....or what mankind can achieve when we work together...this book is for you.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 17, 2017 22:15:29 GMT -5
Tarkin by James Luceno
I've always been a big fan of the Grand Moff... I was always intrigued at how this small, proper man was able to hold his own with Darth Vader. His back story has always been one I wanted to know, but it was already pretty good in the 'old' canon.
Happily, little was changed, things were just fleshed out a bit more. There were a few parts that were a little bit unreasonable, but, for the most part, the journey seemed believable.
What really shone in the book is the developing relationship with Vader. I loved his portrayal here, more like Anakin Skywalker in from the cartoon than the movie monster.. it was an interesting transition that worked really well for me.
On the downside, the good guys (well, I guess the bad guys, since this is Tarkin's book), are pretty boiler plate... not only are they boring, but there's no real reason for them to be. While I appreciate that they didn't decide to retcon any movie characters in, they could have done better.
Luceno is a good, but not great writer, he does a good job, and the pages turn quickly. While it isn't the best of the new canon, it's certainly worth reading.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2017 21:26:52 GMT -5
Finished Will Murray’s The Sinister Shadow. It was Good, but based on its nature as an unused idea for a Shadow story it felt more like Doc and his crew were the guest stars in a Shadow novel rather than it being part of the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage series.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 22, 2017 12:03:54 GMT -5
Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller
I'm getting ready to give watching Rebels another try, and this was nicely packaged with the Tarkin novel, I thought I'd give it a shot.
I suspect if I was invested in the characters, I might have liked it more... Hera was a little too mysterious, and a little too perfect. Kanan tries too hard not to care in the way you know he's always going to do the right thing, every time. He even came with his own Obi-Wan type mentor. Hopefully they're better on the cartoon.
The story was pretty decent, and definitely builds on some of the other new EU books... we get more of the story on Rae Slone (who figures prominently in all the novels, it seems) and Count Vidian (who was also featured in the Tarkin book)...while neither are any Grand Admiral Thrawn, they are decent characters. I suspect the other 'good guys' are throw aways, but Skelly the crazy miner and Zuldana the Sullustan that watches security cameras for a living were much more interesting.
I'm more familiar with the author for his comic book sales reporting web site than his fiction, but he did a passable job, not as good as Claudia Gray, but far, far better than Chuck Wendig.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2017 2:15:43 GMT -5
It's not quite a comic/graphic novel (but is about comics and graphic novels), so I think it belongs here and not in one of the what comics have you read threads, but I just finished rereading Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art for the first time in a decade and a half or more This edition has Will addressing the role of computers and making comics in its nascent stages (this is the 1999 edition of the book with a semi-chapter/appendix on the subject added for that edition). I was amused to read my own annotations and marginalia from the first time I read this circa 1999/2000. It was also interesting to read this after having reread McCloud's trilogy on comics. Eisner was the inspiration for McCloud, but juxtaposing their style and approach to the topic and material is illuminating. Eisner seems to be addressing a more specialized audience with nods to a general audience whereas McCloud is definitely aiming more towards the general audience and it affects the way certain things are presented and addressed. Eisner is also definitely addressing someone looking to make comics, which McCloud does in Making Comics and in parts of Reinventing Comics, but not as much in Understanding Comics. They take on the same topics, but the perspective of the approach is different because of the intended audience. Eisner draws all his examples from his own work, and excepts Spirit strips and his graphic novels extensively, while McCloud draws examples form a broader spectrum of creators, but doesn't excerpt any, limiting himself to recreating panels in the styles of the different creators to illuminate points as an example, and creating all new sequences of narrative when he wants to provide a longer demonstration/example for a point. It really does make for two entirely different reading experiences even though they are addressing the same topics and making many of the same points. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 25, 2017 11:38:19 GMT -5
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont. I first read this shortly after it first came out...so a bit over ten years ago now. I recently got the sequel for crazy cheap as an e-book so I decided it was time for a re-read before tackling the next one. And I'm glad I did, because while I remembered the sweeping arc of the story I'd lost a lot of the specifics. And while I read it with a more discerning eye this time I still loved it. And why not? If there was ever a book that was written for me...it's this one. It's pure pulp. It grabs a hold of my 11-16 year old loves and mashes them all together into a stew of pulpy goodness. Walter Gibson and Lester Dent are thrown together to save the city and maybe the world from a menace straight out of The Shadow and Doc Savage. The whole thing spirals out of the death of H. P. Lovecraft. And along for the ride are L. Ron Hubbard, (and here lie spoilers folks) Robert Heinlein and Lew (I'll leave that one a mystery). There are tong hatchet men, deadly chemicals, zombies and a whole passel of fun There were also a few things that gnawed at me this time around that I don't think bugged me last time. Heinlein and Hubbard being constantly referred too as "the boys." This was particularly egregious with Heinlein who was only three years younger than Dent and was both a Annapolis graduate and a navy veteran. His characterization also didn't ring true. A little too naive, a little too skittish. On the other hand, it's pulp. People don't necessarily act on their nature in pulp...they act as necessary. And in pulp things happen because they need to happen. That's what the story dictates so that's what we get. And there were so many fun little things. The Golden Vulture being a plot-point. The creation of The Avenger. The fact that Lew's identity isn't ever really revealed (though you can figure it out if you try). The cameos by a number of other authors and comic creators...I know I didn't catch who Chester was the first time around. Thanks for this one. It's a very good read. And thankfully it's not great literature...it's PULP.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 27, 2017 0:38:50 GMT -5
After the funeral Agatha Christie
I'd had this lying around for a while, and was finally inspired to read it after seeing the recent version of Murder on the Orient Express (which I liked, having no previous version to compare to).
I didn't find this book nearly as good.. Poirot seems like a pale French imitation of Holmes to me, and the mystery itself was not so much a twist as a u-turn. While I appreciate when a writer can make several people in the story pausible suspects until the end, in this case the resolution was too far afield, and the explanation just didn't really work for me. There was also quite a bit of time spend on one particular character(the butler) that had no real purpose in the story, which really dragged down the pace. While I wouldn't say I was disappointed exactly, reading this didn't make me want to rush out and read more, either.
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