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Post by brutalis on May 22, 2018 7:52:51 GMT -5
This weekend spent reading Sharpe's Rifles, book 6 of the series. This one introduces Sharpie's cohort in war Private (soon to be Sergeant whether he likes it or not) Patrick Harper the living large Irish man. As yet again Sharpe espies a young lady what catches his eyes this time in Spain fighting the French. The 95th rifles team up with a Spanish Major to perform a miracle of rebellion to inspire the Spanish to resist the French incursion. Here is the start of a true and great friendship between Sharpe and Harper: one of the best bromances in history to be certain!
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 12:04:52 GMT -5
Based on Slam_Bradley post here about it, I picked up Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero from our local library and just finished reading it. I quite enjoyed it overall, though there were some quirks in the prose style (switching to a play/screenplay format for dialogue at times and meta commentary to the audience in particular) that I found a tad off-putting. In the first case, the author is going along, characters are interacting, events are occurring and then suddenly the format changes: The characters are screaming at each other... Kerri: Nate no don;t do that. Nate: But we need to... Andy: Nate listen to Kerri... Tim: woof* and then back into prose describng the action and regular dialogue style within the prose. (*Tim's the dog) An example of the second is there is a big shock scene that scares two of the characters, then there are two blank lines to create a space in the text, and the next paragraph open with the line-Even after two blank lines the two girls are still trembling in terror. These types of format changes and sudden inexplicable metatextual/fourth wall breaking just took me out of the narrative of the story. Aside from that, the book was quite enjoyable. Cantero is quite clever in his presentation of Lovecraftian tropes and in channeling the Scooby-Doo vibe, his characters are compelling, flawed and mostly likable, transcending the archetypes of the characters they are analogues for to form their own identity. And he includes enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing often enough that even some of the more predictable elements don;t feel stale or hackeneyed because there is an uncertainty when they will follow form and when they'll take the proverbial left turn at Albuquerque. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 23, 2018 14:52:08 GMT -5
I'm sorry you weren't fully satisfied. I'll admit I didn't quite understand why he added in the script portions...but they didn't really bug me. I think what I liked was that this was a natural mash-up...but Cantero didn't take the lazy way out. The characters were their own people as opposed to being full pastiche. And the monsters were very real and convincing.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 22:53:15 GMT -5
I'm sorry you weren't fully satisfied. I'll admit I didn't quite understand why he added in the script portions...but they didn't really bug me. I think what I liked was that this was a natural mash-up...but Cantero didn't take the lazy way out. The characters were their own people as opposed to being full pastiche. And the monsters were very real and convincing. I have no regrets for having read it, and I really did like it, it's just the creative choice to go script and to break the fourth wall in a few select moments baffled me and those took me out of what was otherwise a gripping narrative. And I agree about the characters and the monsters. I am actually quite glad you brought it to my attention. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 28, 2018 16:44:53 GMT -5
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov Sometimes you just need an old friend. This was one of the first, possibly the very first, SF books I ever read. It was this edition and it probably came from a high school class my older brother took called Fantasy Literature. I've since read it a number of times and it always holds up well. This is one of my go-to books if I have reader's block. There's been a murder in Spacetown. Now Lije Bailey must, very reluctantly, team up with a very human looking robot from Spacetown, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve the murder and possibly save Earth from the wrath of the Spacers. Earth is a hive. Billions of people packed into huge cities subsisting, but not thriving and fearing and hating robots and their capacity to replace humans. The Spacers are the Adonis' of the galaxy. They have a plan for Earth...which Earth does not want. This both cracking good SF and a nice mystery (though Asimov outdoes himself on the latter point in the sequel). It's also good world-building. Asimov, as always has his short-comings. There's only one female character though she's probably the best Asimov had done up to this point in his writing. There a better look at how humans work and how they view technology than the average Asimov up this point. In a lot of ways this book was a turning point for Asimov's SF...unfortunately he would abandon the genre for non-fiction writing soon after and not return for decades. A classic of SF and, along with The Naked Sun, the tentpole of SF mysteries.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 29, 2018 14:49:47 GMT -5
Gun by Ray Banks. Sharp little neo-noir novella. Richie has recently gotten out of the Young Offenders Institute. His girlfriend wants him to get on the dole and find a job. Instead he gets a simple job from Goose, the local criminal headman. Go get a gun from Florida Al and bring it back to Goose. A simple job that Richie hopes will lead to more. But the simple job goes very much awry. Banks packs a lot into a small package in this one. It's high quality neo-noir with a nasty ending that hearkens back to the best paperback originals. It's also very British and it sent me to Google a few times to be sure I knew exactly what people were talking about. I'm familiar with Banks' work by reputation but this is the first I've read. It will definitely not be the last.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 29, 2018 15:01:02 GMT -5
Gun by Ray Banks. Richie has recently gotten out of the Young Offenders Institute. Sounds like the name many people would give every high school in America.
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Post by brutalis on May 29, 2018 15:49:25 GMT -5
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov Sometimes you just need an old friend. This was one of the first, possibly the very first, SF books I ever read. It was this edition and it probably came from a high school class my older brother took called Fantasy Literature. I've since read it a number of times and it always holds up well. This is one of my go-to books if I have reader's block. There's been a murder in Spacetown. Now Lije Bailey must, very reluctantly, team up with a very human looking robot from Spacetown, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve the murder and possibly save Earth from the wrath of the Spacers. Earth is a hive. Billions of people packed into huge cities subsisting, but not thriving and fearing and hating robots and their capacity to replace humans. The Spacers are the Adonis' of the galaxy. They have a plan for Earth...which Earth does not want. This both cracking good SF and a nice mystery (though Asimov outdoes himself on the latter point in the sequel). It's also good world-building. Asimov, as always has his short-comings. There's only one female character though she's probably the best Asimov had done up to this point in his writing. There a better look at how humans work and how they view technology than the average Asimov up this point. In a lot of ways this book was a turning point for Asimov's SF...unfortunately he would abandon the genre for non-fiction writing soon after and not return for decades. A classic of SF and, along with The Naked Sun, the tentpole of SF mysteries. This was also a high school required reading for an advanced English class I took my freshman year. Started me upon a Bradbury hunt forevermore after that! Truly classic as you said!
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Post by Prince Hal on May 29, 2018 15:54:36 GMT -5
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov Sometimes you just need an old friend. This was one of the first, possibly the very first, SF books I ever read. It was this edition and it probably came from a high school class my older brother took called Fantasy Literature. I've since read it a number of times and it always holds up well. This is one of my go-to books if I have reader's block. There's been a murder in Spacetown. Now Lije Bailey must, very reluctantly, team up with a very human looking robot from Spacetown, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve the murder and possibly save Earth from the wrath of the Spacers. Earth is a hive. Billions of people packed into huge cities subsisting, but not thriving and fearing and hating robots and their capacity to replace humans. The Spacers are the Adonis' of the galaxy. They have a plan for Earth...which Earth does not want. This both cracking good SF and a nice mystery (though Asimov outdoes himself on the latter point in the sequel). It's also good world-building. Asimov, as always has his short-comings. There's only one female character though she's probably the best Asimov had done up to this point in his writing. There a better look at how humans work and how they view technology than the average Asimov up this point. In a lot of ways this book was a turning point for Asimov's SF...unfortunately he would abandon the genre for non-fiction writing soon after and not return for decades. A classic of SF and, along with The Naked Sun, the tentpole of SF mysteries. This was also a high school required reading for an advanced English class I took my freshman year. Started me upon a Bradbury hunt forevermore after that! Truly classic as you said! For many years I taught Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes to my high school freshman classes. Most of them loved it!
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Post by brutalis on May 29, 2018 16:21:01 GMT -5
Dang it Prince Hal you got me remembering my long ago misbegotten youth! and that makes my old brain hurt like the blazes! More Asimov required reading during my High School science fiction/fantasy writing class: I, Robot and Martian Chronicles and A Sound of Thunder. And in Junior High (7th/8th grade) the Advanced English teacher gave us Robert A. Heinlen: Starship Troopers and Have Space Suit will Travel to start us off and then moved us into Methuselah's Children and The Puppet Masters.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 29, 2018 17:05:31 GMT -5
I'm not entirely sure what the reading was for the Fantasy Lit class at my high school. I know it included The Hobbit, Caves of Steel and The Martian Chronicles. The teacher wouldn't let me take the class because she knew I'd already read all the works in the class multiple times. I forgave her because we really got along well.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 29, 2018 21:04:35 GMT -5
YOu guys had way cooler high school teachers than I did... I was reading Victorian stuff, Shakespeare and the like.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2018 21:53:16 GMT -5
YOu guys had way cooler high school teachers than I did... I was reading Victorian stuff, Shakespeare and the like. At our school, there was a couple of classes that got to read the Hobbit in senior year, but it was the lower level tracks, not the honors classes I was in (though I had read it about 4-5 times by the time I was a senior). Faranheit 451 was the only sci-fi book in the currculum, but again for lower levels, not the classes I was in. In the honors track this is what I can recall reading: 9th grade i.e. Literary Arts Honors class Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger A Separate Piece by John Knowles A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Life After Life by Raymond Moody Our Town by Thorton Wilder whatever short stories/excerpts & poems we read from our text book-the standout for me was An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Journey of the Magi by TS Eliot and of course the Turabian Guide for our research papers. I did get to do my term paper on Tolkien though, examining The Lord of the Rings through the lens of a traditional medieval romance and identifying all the part of the romance and then showing their presence in the LOTR trilogy (this was my first exposure to the idea of the Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell as well. I had wanted to do a comparison of high fantasy a la Tolkien with sword & sorcery style fantasy of Howard and the like but was told by my teach that Tolkien had merit but the pulp stuff wasn't worthy of academic study, and he countered with the idea of the LOTR as medieval romance. Times have changed a bit since then as to what merits scholarly inquiry). 10th grade i.e. American Studies Honors class (a double class that paired American Lit and US History over 2 class periods with 2 teachers. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper Billy Budd by Herman Melville more short stories/excerpts & poems from the text book (our lit teacher paced the class so badly we never got past the romantics) 11th grade: Humanities Honors class (another double class pairing a lit class with a history/philosophy class) summer reading going into the tear (this was the inaugural year for this at our school): The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone The Iliad by Homer (the W.H.D. Rouse translation that was more prose than poetry) Agamemnon by Aeschylus The Inferno by Dante Canterbury Tales by Chaucer the Prince by Machiavelli MacBeth by Shakespeare Utopia by Sir Thomas More 12th grade: 2 semester long classes, semester 1: Advanced Placement writing-no reading assignments; semester 2: Psychology & Literature summer reading going into the year: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad Psychology & Literature an anthology of short works & poems by Edgar Allen Poe Sybill by Flora Reta Schreiber Ordinary People by Judith Guest there may have been more but that's what I recall. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 30, 2018 22:00:05 GMT -5
That sounds more similar to my high school reading... I honestly don't remember a whole lot, but definitely Tale of Two Cities... Grapes of Wrath(which I hated)...Les Miserables (which I appreciated way more as an adult.. at 13 it was just a slog)...Oliver Twist... Diary of Ann Frank... Call of the Wild.... Lost Horizon (which I liked)... Moby Dick. The Shakespeare was Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Taming of the Shrew. Definitely read the Scarlet Letter, but I think that was in Middle School (around the same time as Johnny Tremain).
I definitely read Homer (both the Odyessey and Illiad) and the Inferno for summer reading, but never actually did anything with them in class, to my disappointment.
I did a paper on Catch-22, but it was for US History (and by choice). I read the Prince around then too, but I think it was just for fun. I definitely read Catcher in the Rye at some point, but I recall not really getting it.
I did take a utopian literature class sophmore year of college, and in between a fair dose of feminist propaganda (it was at UMASS in 1991) was some great stuff... 1984, Farhenheit 451, Slaughterhouse Five and Left Hand of Darkness. I seem to recall reading Atlas Shrugged as well, which was totally a 'which of these doesn't belong' moment.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 31, 2018 5:11:47 GMT -5
Shipping news by Annie Proulx is the colourful chronicle of a small village in Newfoundland where a big lug of a man settles down with his daughters and energetic aunt. As one would expect, most characters are really characters, odd and amusing and usually sympathetic, with their idiosyncracies, secrets and desires. It reminded me, in its tone, of Icelandic sagas... an impression perhaps made stronger by the grabbing description of the harsh Newfoundland coastal environment (which, come to think of it, really resembles the shores of the St. Lawrence where I grew up).
It’s a pleasant read, but may be a little long... The high expectations I had after reading the first hilarious and grabbing hundreds of pages sort of petered out toward the end.
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