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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2018 12:59:39 GMT -5
I inherited a large stack of Erle Stanley Gardner novels when my Grammy passed a few years ago and I’m finally getting around to reading some of them. The second Perry Mason novel was an improvement on the first one but I still like Cool & Lam better. Nevertheless, it was a quick, enjoyable read.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 14, 2018 13:17:44 GMT -5
The second Perry Mason novel was an improvement on the first one but I still like Cool & Lam better. Nevertheless, it was a quick, enjoyable read. I'm a fan of Cool & Lam even though they start to fall into formula pretty early on. I've never been a big fan of Perry Mason though.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 14, 2018 13:54:49 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley , I have Empire and now will move it into the "on deck" spot in the batting order King Zeno by Natahniel Rich, which I'm really enjoying, is up now. Ostensibly a mystery, but so much more: Jazz, the Spanish Flu, New Orleans, the mob, World War One, and a whole lot more, not to mention the author's engaging style. I'll be looking for his other books. In the hole is The Saboteur, by Paul Kix, about a French aristocrat who escapes the Nazi occupation, trains as a commando in England and becomes the frikkin' best there was and becomes a leader of the Resistance. Best of all, it's non-fiction.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2018 22:45:32 GMT -5
The second Perry Mason novel was an improvement on the first one but I still like Cool & Lam better. Nevertheless, it was a quick, enjoyable read. I'm a fan of Cool & Lam even though they start to fall into formula pretty early on. I've never been a big fan of Perry Mason though. So far I’ve only read the first two and the lost “second” novel that Hard Case Crime put out. At my current reading pace and with the size of my to read pile, I doubt I’ll ever get too far in Cool & Lam let alone in Perry Mason.
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Post by berkley on Feb 14, 2018 22:58:59 GMT -5
Empire and Wanderer are both going on my list.
Right now I'm reading Zola's Franco-Prussian War novel, La Débâcle. Only about 1/4 way thorough but it already gets a recommendation from me, even though I'm not particularly drawn to war stories. I've read a fair bit of Zola over the last few years and so far this is looking like one of his best, which is high praise indeed.
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 15, 2018 7:43:13 GMT -5
12 rules for life, by Jordan Peterson, is turning to be more than the simple self-help book it is sometimes presented as. A criticism I’ve seen of it is that it does not offer anything radical in tems of advice to better one’s life, but while I agree with the statement I also think that the things Peterson says need to be said because they are no longer fashionable; they are also pretty obvious in hindsight, but are somehow never addressed nowadays. In a nutshell, his main advice is for people to take responsibility for their own life, and to grow the hell up.
”Taking responsibility for one’s life” is often seen as a right-wing sentiment, one that equates “don’t expect the state to do what you should be doing for yourself”. Well, that’s not what Peterson is saying at all. What he says is that the key to a happier life is not searching for happiness in and of itself (because life is hard and happiness is fleeting) but embracing one’s responsibilities. It is by being all that we can be, by refusing to take the easy road, by living up to our own and our loved one’s expectations, that we may eventually say “O.K., it was hard, but overall I did good, sorta”. And there lies true happiness, in the satisfaction of a job well done.
Peterson must be an excellent teacher, because he has a knack for finding the right images, the right examples, to make his point clear. I really enjoy his pointing out that it is a bit odd to see fired-up young activists who are unable to keep their room clean try to tell governments and multi-national conglomerates how to run the planet.
The book is rife with biblical references, because the author is quite the biblical scholar, but it’s not a religious book (no matter what some critics might say, trying to tag him as a conservative, religious, this-and-thatphobic fellow). I’m sure that religious folks will appreciate the references as being theologically sound, but agnostics will also appreciate them for their psychological relevance. In any case, I appreciate an author whose culture is that widespread, be it in a novel, an essay or a cookbook.
If you’ve watched a few of his long interviews or some of his lectures online, you’ll find a lot of the same material... But even if I did watch a lot over the last few months, I find Peterson’s voice refreshing enough to greatly enjoy this book. Even when I disagree with him on certain points (hey, he is a conservative and I’m mostly not, and he’s a psychologist, not a “hard science” kind of guy) I appreciate where he’s coming from.
On a personal note, I admit that a lot of what Peterson has to say about order and chaos resonates a lot with ideals I've long held. As I sometimes tell my own students in biology class, one thing that differentiates us (living, intelligent beings) from the rest of the universe (a lot of rocks and gas) is how thermodynamically improbable we are. To assemble a thinking being, the universe had to invest a lot of energy. To maintain the order of a decent society, we, too, must invent a lot of energy. Because it's all a matter of moving energy around, really, and the natural way of the universe is that of entropy, of an increase in chaos. As living beings, as intelligent and social ones, I think it is really a matter of self-serving duty to fight everyday against chaos, to devote energy to the maintenance of order: to keep what is currently functioning (relationships, environment) in optimal shape; to repair what is broken, to not let things degrade, either wantonly or by neglect. Our battle is lost in advance, because entropy will win out in the end, but our struggle allows life and civilization to endure that much longer in this tiny island of order carved out in a sea of chaos.
Peterson’s having quite a lot of success as a public figure after denouncing the grotesque bill C-16 in Canada, and he fully deserves it. I hope his book may help a few people to grow out of their existential funk, and our politicians to realize a few things.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 16, 2018 8:07:39 GMT -5
Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey
In this 2nd installment, our main characters are again trying to save the universe against the same alient virus/zombie thing, only this time its parts of the government trying to weaponize it instead of a first discovery.
Alot of the basic plot here is the same as the first one...hard boiled dectective Miller is replaced by Neurotic scientist Prax and Martian Marine Bobbie, but otherwise there's honestly not a whole lot different going on. They main cast is still in their ship, running from just about everyone and trying to save the universe anyway.
There is some interesting stuff comparing Miller to Holden, but it felt kinda forced. It made it seem like Miller had this huge impact on Holden's life, and that didn't totally make sense to me in the context of what actually happened... probably why they had to tell us so many times. Then there was the point where they were talking about Miller as a shoot first cowboy type character, which he really wasn't...I get why they were doing it for character development, but it felt off a bit.
We get a bit more character development for the crew of the Roci (mostly Holden), which is nice, but it seems like the new characters introduced here may not stick around, which is an interesting choice. On the one hand, these sort of epic sagas tend to get a bit sprawling and lose focus, so that could work out well, but considering how similar this book was to the first one, I wonder if it will limit things.
That said, it ended on a heck of a cliffhanger, and it was still a great read, so I'll probably still continue the series.
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Post by Calamas on Feb 16, 2018 8:43:43 GMT -5
The second Perry Mason novel was an improvement on the first one but I still like Cool & Lam better. Nevertheless, it was a quick, enjoyable read. I'm a fan of Cool & Lam even though they start to fall into formula pretty early on. I've never been a big fan of Perry Mason though. I’ve come to the conclusion that Erle Stanley Gardner is not for me but I still want to complete the experience. I’ve gotten Perry Mason and Doug Selby under my belt. Can you give a recommendation or two for Cool & Lam? Thanks.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 16, 2018 12:37:09 GMT -5
Bullets For a Ballot by Nik Morton. The fifth Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles work (probably novella length) it's the second not written by Edward Grainger (David Cramner) and the first that I've been quite disappointed with. The plot has promise. It starts with a very young Cash Laramie saving a young widow who is advocating to extend the vote to women. Years lady this same lady is running for mayor of a small town and things turn ugly. There's a lot that could be said about gender in the old west and women's suffrage (Wyoming was the first state to extend the vote to women). The problem is that the main character never quite feels in character. And the tone of the book is...off. It's published by Beat to a Pulp Publishing. So you expect violence and sex. But it doesn't feel the same as it did in the earlier works. The sex is more gratuitous. The violence isn't quite the same. Neither of those things bother me. But everything about this just seemed...off. Not recommended.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 16, 2018 13:02:12 GMT -5
I'm a fan of Cool & Lam even though they start to fall into formula pretty early on. I've never been a big fan of Perry Mason though. I’ve come to the conclusion that Erle Stanley Gardner is not for me but I still want to complete the experience. I’ve gotten Perry Mason and Doug Selby under my belt. Can you give a recommendation or two for Cool & Lam? Thanks. If you can find it I'd say go ahead and read the very first one The Bigger They Come. It's a good read and sets the stage. And Donald Lam pulls a very cool lawyer trick that I think would have worked at the time, though it would not work now. Otherwise you could go with Top of the Heap, which was one of the earlier Hard Case Crime books and is more readily available than most of the rest of the series. Honestly the quality of the books is pretty uniform (though I've only read about half). There are a few that are just a bit less enjoyable, largely because there becomes a formula in the series and some are a bit more egregious in their use of the formula. But none of them that I've read have been actively bad.
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Post by Calamas on Feb 20, 2018 19:52:57 GMT -5
I’ve come to the conclusion that Erle Stanley Gardner is not for me but I still want to complete the experience. I’ve gotten Perry Mason and Doug Selby under my belt. Can you give a recommendation or two for Cool & Lam? Thanks. If you can find it I'd say go ahead and read the very first one The Bigger They Come. It's a good read and sets the stage. And Donald Lam pulls a very cool lawyer trick that I think would have worked at the time, though it would not work now. Otherwise you could go with Top of the Heap, which was one of the earlier Hard Case Crime books and is more readily available than most of the rest of the series. Honestly the quality of the books is pretty uniform (though I've only read about half). There are a few that are just a bit less enjoyable, largely because there becomes a formula in the series and some are a bit more egregious in their use of the formula. But none of them that I've read have been actively bad. Thank You. And, no, I don’t need to read the first one. I’ve read enough reviews to know the formula of which you speak: A rich client arrives Donald is suspicious Bertha wants the money The client lied Donald gets in deep And deeper A convoluted ending solves everything But who cares because the fun is watching Donald works his way out of it. I just want to complete the Gardner experience.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 20, 2018 20:41:35 GMT -5
If you can find it I'd say go ahead and read the very first one The Bigger They Come. It's a good read and sets the stage. And Donald Lam pulls a very cool lawyer trick that I think would have worked at the time, though it would not work now. Otherwise you could go with Top of the Heap, which was one of the earlier Hard Case Crime books and is more readily available than most of the rest of the series. Honestly the quality of the books is pretty uniform (though I've only read about half). There are a few that are just a bit less enjoyable, largely because there becomes a formula in the series and some are a bit more egregious in their use of the formula. But none of them that I've read have been actively bad. Thank You. And, no, I don’t need to read the first one. I’ve read enough reviews to know the formula of which you speak: A rich client arrives Donald is suspicious Bertha wants the money The client lied Donald gets in deep And deeper A convoluted ending solves everything But who cares because the fun is watching Donald works his way out of it. I just want to complete the Gardner experience. I found them to be really compulsive reads. I usually read each one in 2 days and it wasn't unusual for me to lose sleep reading to find out what Donald was going to do. I had the same thing with the early Parker books. Now the Parker books are much better, but the Cool & Lam books just chug forward and you want to turn the page.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2018 20:51:09 GMT -5
Warren Ellis wrote about the latest volume in the Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch in a recent newsletter, and I was intrigued, so I borrowed the first book int he series, The Lies of Locke Lamora from the library and have been reading it the past few days. The first volume was Lynch's debut novel and its been quite good so far. Think a hard crime book set in a fantasy city like Leiber's Lankhmar crossed with an Italian Renaissance city-state and you start to get a sense of the scope and tone of it. The protagonist is a con-artist extraordinaire who we meet as an orphaned child in the prologue before diving into his adult career. The characters are lively and well developed, gritty and realistic as you would expect in a crime novel and the world building of the city and its environs is top rate. I am still early enough in reading it that I haven't yet seen the full plot development or gotten a full sense of the pacing, but it's been an engrossing read so far. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 20, 2018 21:24:22 GMT -5
Warren Ellis wrote about the latest volume in the Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch in a recent newsletter, and I was intrigued, so I borrowed the first book int he series, The Lies of Locke Lamora from the library and have been reading it the past few days. The first volume was Lynch's debut novel and its been quite good so far. Think a hard crime book set in a fantasy city like Leiber's Lankhmar crossed with an Italian Renaissance city-state and you start to get a sense of the scope and tone of it. The protagonist is a con-artist extraordinaire who we meet as an orphaned child in the prologue before diving into his adult career. The characters are lively and well developed, gritty and realistic as you would expect in a crime novel and the world building of the city and its environs is top rate. I am still early enough in reading it that I haven't yet seen the full plot development or gotten a full sense of the pacing, but it's been an engrossing read so far. -M That is on my extremely long list of books to read. Along with about 5500 other books.
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Post by berkley on Feb 20, 2018 21:57:48 GMT -5
yeah, I like the concept of the Lynch book so it's on my list as well. But realistically it'll be years before I get to it, unless I feel a sudden urge to read it right away some time.
I don't believe I ever thought much about reading Erle Stanley Gardner, probably because the immediate association that springs to mind is Perry Mason, a character that's never caught my interest for whatever reason. But the Cool and Lam series sounds more like my kind of thing. I'll probably try at least the first instalment or two, one of these days.
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