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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 4, 2021 11:14:35 GMT -5
I really need to read those at some point... I think it'll be different enough from Fables to not annoy me They're nothing like Fables. I'll add, that while The Big Over Easy wasn't published until July of 2005 it was actually the first book that Fforde wrote, pre-dating The Eyre Affair. So it was actually written before Fables started.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 4, 2021 11:26:10 GMT -5
I don't think Willingham has a monopoly on Fairy Tales based lit or anything, it's just that Fables is so good, and it's character so connected with me it was hard for me to read anything similar and not think 'You're doing it wrong!' Once upon a Time had that effect (for all that I think if I watched it fresh I probably would have gotten into it before it went over the deep end... I was in the room often enough when my kids watched it)
I think I'm over that now that it's been a while and there's so much other stuff out there. I think one played for comedy is just the thing.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 9, 2021 15:49:10 GMT -5
Coco Butternut by Joe R. LansdaleAnother novella with the continuing adventures of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. The boys are hired to pay a ransom for a dead dog by the name of Coco Butternut. If that sounds odd...well it sounds odd to the boys as well. And the exchange of the money for the mummified remains and the coffin it's in leads to murder, a talk with the police and our favorite slackers turned P.I.'s to solve a decades old missing persons case. Nice return to form for Lansdale, Hap and Leonard. I've liked but not loved the last few novels before this short work. Still I'm always happy for more time with Hap and Leonard
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 13, 2021 9:57:29 GMT -5
A Certain Point of View (Empire Strikes Back Edition)
I haven't quite decided if the reason this didn't amuse nearly as much as the first one is the fault of the book or my high hopes and anticipation. Empire Strikes Back is clearly the best of the Star Wars movies, so a few fun side stories should be fantastic, right?
Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible, there are definitely some really good stories. The one with the Tie pilot giving 'rules to live by' is quite fun, and the one documenting the formation of Wedge's Rogue Squadron is great. (It's been too long since I read those for me to remember if they ever did that story before that is 'legend' now).
The Jaxxon story was fun, surprising, and totally nonsensical, but it was a nice call out. Maybe some time in the future we'll get some sort of special edition that shows him in a background shot?
My favorite was from SA Chakraborty , (not an author I expected in the collection) about the chef making Vader's meal at Cloud City...this is the sort of thing I'm looking for in this collection. There were alot more of them in the first one than this time.
They took the 'certain point of view' thing too literally. A story from the Wampa's point of view? Fine. The Tauntaun? A bit of a stretch. The Space Slug? just silly. The CAVE ON DAGOBAH? just no.
There were also more then a few that were just writing out scenes of the movie. I get that there's was no extra people on Dagobah, but maybe do other stuff as they did in the first book (which they did a bit, but...). Why did we need a grumpy ghost of Ben Kenobi's story, when it was really just the movie scene? I feel like there was alot less humor in this one, and it was missed.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,057
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Post by Confessor on Mar 14, 2021 22:15:17 GMT -5
The Jaxxon story was fun, surprising, and totally nonsensical, but it was a nice call out. Maybe some time in the future we'll get some sort of special edition that shows him in a background shot? Ooh, do tell me more. This sounds intriguing.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 15, 2021 12:19:35 GMT -5
The Golden Torc by Julian MayContinuing my re-read of this series that was so huge when I was in high school. Though it wasn't just with the kids. Volume one did some serious business with the various SF awards when it came out. Looking at this almost forty years on with a more adult eye this is still and interesting series. There's a ton to like here. May's world-building is fabulous. It's an interesting intersection of SF and fantasy. May clearly attempts to show empowered characters within marginalized groups. And that's really where this hasn't aged well. You know that May was trying to write powerful female characters. And ultimately she mostly failed. And she is to be commended for at least placing some LGBTQ characters in the book at a time when that was a dangerous thing. But again, ultimately, she largely fails to make them more than caricatures. This volume definitely moves the plot along to an unexpected climax (well I expected it because I've read it before). One does not expect that ending with two more books to go. Ultimately I'm not sure I'd recommend these books, though there's a lot to like about them and a lot to recommend them. I'm not sorry to revisit them with older eyes.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 15, 2021 15:33:13 GMT -5
The Jaxxon story was fun, surprising, and totally nonsensical, but it was a nice call out. Maybe some time in the future we'll get some sort of special edition that shows him in a background shot? Ooh, do tell me more. This sounds intriguing. The story is called 'Fake it till you make it' By Cavan Scott. The premise is Jaxxon arrives in Cloud City to ask Lando for a loan to 'got legit' and start his own Cargo company. He of course arrives just after Vader, and is there when everything happens. It's pretty fun, and is consistent with his recent comic appearance character wise.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 16, 2021 6:39:22 GMT -5
Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler
I think I've found a new favorite fictional religion. Earthseed is very cool. I'm not the biggest fan of dystopias, but this won, for a good portion at least, was surprisingly realistic. No magical caches of supplies everywhere, no lack of death and destruction among the main characters (at least until the last 3rd).
After that, sadly, it did fall into some less-than-stellar tropes. All the strays that got picked up along the way were, of course, wonderful additions to the party, and while one person did die, for the most party they made a massively perilous seeming journey without any trouble. I know you kinda have to do that in a dystopian novel, but it never feels right.
Society's downturn seemed quite realistic, and the story was able to be told without any 'hook'... just a general sense of some global warming related issues. It was implied that the rest of the world might be better off the then US, in fact, which was an interesting twist. (or perhaps it was just Northern climates.... it wasn't totally clear).
I'm not sure they can actually get anywhere near space colonies from crumbling dystopia, but I'm definitely looking forward to the next book.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 18, 2021 10:28:59 GMT -5
The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic by Richard SandomirI watched Pride of the Yankees a little while back with my middle son and I had purchased the Kindle edition of this book for quite cheap some time back and decided it was time to give it a read. Pride of the Yankees is an interesting movie. It's the sports movie that is absolutely not a sports movie. It was released just over a year after Gehrig died, so it cemented him in the public mind, though it cemented him as Gary Cooper more than as Lou Gehrig. It was also a Rah Rah All-American movie as America was moving in to the early days of World War II. Sandomir has to tread a fine line writing about a movie that was "based" on a real life. The focus has to be on the movie. But we also have to have enough background about the people making the movie to understand from where it came. Overall I think we get that. There is enough background on Gehrig, Eleanor Gehrig, Cooper, Theresa Wright and Samuel Goldwyn to give context and help us understand the story without getting bogged down in biographies of those key players. And the story of the film is here. Its genesis. Why it was made the way it was. Why it is really a romance movie and not a sports movie. Its aftermath and legacy. If there's one thing that is missing, for me, it's that there's not a lot about the actual filming. Does every classic movie need a book about it? Maybe not. But this one was enjoyable and it resides near books on The Searchers and High Noon. So I guess I'm not complaining about them.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 20, 2021 16:44:22 GMT -5
Star Wars High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule
Being the first book of a totally new Star Wars setting, and one that is sure to have a huge multimedia blitz, I wasn't expecting a work of fine literature.
There's a new setting, new characters, and a new time period to introduce. And on that score, Soule does a good job. There's plenty of new characters introduced, and we lead about the tech of the time period, etc. We learn about where the Republic is at, and it's a very good place, or at least that's what we are TOLD.
What we see in the book, though it that the Republic has no defense against a bunch of pirates that have 3 capital ships. Three. The Jedi can't really stop them either. Only 200 years later, there is the Empire, and the death star. But now, we have pirates with three ships.
It just doesn't add up. Then there's the fact that this is when everything is supposed to be good, and there a seriously high body count here. It's odd. Not sure I'm a fan of Charles Soule, he's not a bad comic writer, but this is his 2nd book I've read by him, and both have been disappointing so far.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 25, 2021 15:25:07 GMT -5
The One From The Other by Philip KerrFifteen years after "A German Requiem" Kerr returned to Bernie Gunther and post-war Germany. Gunther and his wife have moved from Berlin to an inn that was owned by his wife's family just outside Dachau. Bernie is not cut out to be a hotelier and his wife is not cut out for life, so she ends up in an asylum in Munich and Bernie goes back to the one thing he was good at, opening an office as a P.I. in Munich. At one point Gunther talks about the Byzantine plots of his adversaries in the book. But ultimately he may as well have been talking about the plot of the book. Whether it was the long time away or just over-plotting this particular book, there's a significant drop off in quality over the first three Gunther novels. Gunther acts out of character and even acknowledges near the end that he should have seen the problems coming. Admittedly he ends up at logger-heads with parts of the American Government, but he just isn't himself. To be fair, the book isn't all bad. Kerr, as always, did his research. It's an interesting look at the aftermath of W.W. II in both Germany and Austria. It also looks at the machinations that the Allied governments went through as the East-West divide grew out of the war and the concern over Soviet aggression overcame the distaste for the actions of Nazis during WWII. With Bernie we get a look at someone who was not a Nazi, but still went along with things that should never have happened as an exercise in self-preservation. Ultimately it's a decent book but a let-down as a return to a high quality series.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 31, 2021 8:11:51 GMT -5
Priory of the Orange Tree Samantha Shannon
Reading this for book club... I'd already had it on my list though... a single book epic fantasy? No waiting 20 years to not get the end of the story? Fantastic!
Sadly, while it was a page turner (at least in the 2nd half), I can't say I enjoyed it. There were some interesting parts to it, but most of those were done better in other places. We have 4 POV characters.. 2 were practically the same character (I realize that was purposeful.. they were meant to be mirror images of each other I think), and one could quite easily been replaced with chapter headings.. he served only to wallow in his misery and be a walking exposition dictionary.
That said, the world created was pretty interesting... I liked that there were actually good and bad dragons, and that (logically) religions would be based around them.. because.. Dragons! I mean, if they were real, they'd be pretty darn impressive.
Sadly, the plot just doesn't really hold together. 1000 year old jealousy does not make a compelling villain. Nor does it make sense that an entire society would shrug off their complete relgious and social structure on a whim and come together with their arch enemies in a couple days after a game of chess with the emperor.
Then there's a big scary plague, that was the reason the world was divided, that just gets completely ignored in the 2nd half of the book.. oh, and there's a cure for it anyway, just no one knows about it? yeah, that's not going to fly with me.
If you can stand that though, it's not a bad book.. the ending battle was pretty epic, and all the characters get a nice wrap up in the end, which both ends the story, and leaves the door open for new ones, which is something that rarely happens these days.
I personally could have used alot less time on romance and pining, and more time on the interesting politics of the world, but I'm sure people that like the book would disagree. I don't think I liked it enough to go out and read the author's other series, but depending on what path is taken I might check on another book in this one if such a thing happens.
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Post by dbutler69 on Apr 7, 2021 17:19:20 GMT -5
I'm reading the either Doc Savage novel in the series, The Land of Terror. In all of the previous issue, it's stated that Doc avoids killing. He and his aides use mercy bullets, etc. However, in this book, they state early on that many evil men who have opposed Doc Savage have died, or words to that effect. Sure enough, in the opening scene, Doc does kill five bad guys. This is a pretty shocking departure from the previous Doc Savage books. I don't know if the mood of the public demanding this, or what the story is. I know some of these novels were written by somebody else, but as far as I know, this one was written by the same guy who wrote the first seven, Lester Dent. It's almost like picking up a Batman or Superman comic and having them killing guys left and right.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 7, 2021 20:21:04 GMT -5
I'm reading the either Doc Savage novel in the series, The Land of Terror. In all of the previous issue, it's stated that Doc avoids killing. He and his aides use mercy bullets, etc. However, in this book, they state early on that many evil men who have opposed Doc Savage have died, or words to that effect. Sure enough, in the opening scene, Doc does kill five bad guys. This is a pretty shocking departure from the previous Doc Savage books. I don't know if the mood of the public demanding this, or what the story is. I know some of these novels were written by somebody else, but as far as I know, this one was written by the same guy who wrote the first seven, Lester Dent. It's almost like picking up a Batman or Superman comic and having them killing guys left and right. The Land of Terror was written by Lester Dent. But it was actually the second Doc novel after The Man of Bronze. The Bantam reprints were frequently out of order. So really this isn't much different than reading a super early Batman story where he was carrying a gun. So Dent (who wrote or co-wrote all but 26 super-sagas) was still getting a feel for the character.
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Post by dbutler69 on Apr 8, 2021 6:03:09 GMT -5
I'm reading the either Doc Savage novel in the series, The Land of Terror. In all of the previous issue, it's stated that Doc avoids killing. He and his aides use mercy bullets, etc. However, in this book, they state early on that many evil men who have opposed Doc Savage have died, or words to that effect. Sure enough, in the opening scene, Doc does kill five bad guys. This is a pretty shocking departure from the previous Doc Savage books. I don't know if the mood of the public demanding this, or what the story is. I know some of these novels were written by somebody else, but as far as I know, this one was written by the same guy who wrote the first seven, Lester Dent. It's almost like picking up a Batman or Superman comic and having them killing guys left and right. The Land of Terror was written by Lester Dent. But it was actually the second Doc novel after The Man of Bronze. The Bantam reprints were frequently out of order. So really this isn't much different than reading a super early Batman story where he was carrying a gun. So Dent (who wrote or co-wrote all but 26 super-sagas) was still getting a feel for the character. Thanks! I was getting thee suspicion that it took place shortly after the first novel, since it mentions that his father died recently, and he's also not yet famous.
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