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Post by Jesse on Dec 23, 2014 15:44:05 GMT -5
Redwallby Brian Jacques I'm not generally into fantasy but I really enjoyed this. It has lots of colorful characters, swashbuckling, a mystery steeped in its own mythology and a quest for a legendary sword. The quest is genuinely exciting and the battles are tense. I felt the ending was very touching. Not sure if I should read all the sequels in the series or just cherry pick the better ones.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 23, 2014 21:33:15 GMT -5
It was a while back when I read this, but I agree it's a really fun, well-written fantasy book. It's a shame that every book in the series is pretty similar, or it'd be one hell of a series.
Flash for Freedom!
For some reason it took a while to get into this one... I think it was my own fault, not the books. Flash is once again up to his usual antics... as he gets set up for scandal during a game of 21 with some ladies and his overreaction leads to a scandal that forces him to lead England. His father-in-law arranges him to be semi-Shanghai'ed on a slavers, and the usual hilarity ensues.
I think there was a little bit TOO much of a black cloud following Flashy in this one, to the point where I was groaning a bit at times. Fraser's portrayal of pre-Presidential Lincoln is awesome, though, and makes the book well worth reading. It's also a great look at the slave trade, which to my eye, seemed pretty darn true to life.
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Post by dupersuper on Dec 24, 2014 1:18:00 GMT -5
Nihm, Mouseguard, Mice Templar, Fables...what's with fantasy mice?
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 24, 2014 9:27:34 GMT -5
Redwall FAR predates the others...welll ,maybe not Nihm... I think those were both in the mid-late 80s? Mice Templar, I assume is a bit of a riff off Mouseguard, or vise versa. Fables has fantasy EVERYTHING... so some mouse were bound to turn up
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 28, 2014 22:48:22 GMT -5
Get off my World! Eando Binder Curtis Books 1971 Not too much seems notable about this one, other than Murray Leinster has a short story collection of the same name. This one's an interesting mix of tropes... Earth is reeling from a Martian Invasion.. the aliens (who aren't really from Mars, but that they call Martians anyway, since that's their staging ground), have far superior tech, but are fighting a ground war anyway to achieve total submission. Meanwhile, Ethan Page and his buddy desert from the fighting to go underground, to find out if the scientist they work for's theory about an underground civilization is correct... they find two warring countries in the center of the Earth, with some tech advances (mostly weaponry) that's just want the doctor ordered for the Martians... they proceed to convince the world 'above' exists, and try to get them to come to the surface, which they do by tricking them into 'invading' their 'cavern' city. They find the martians, see they're aliens, and join each other and their fellow humans above to fight the aliens... hopefully they won While, on the surface, mixing War of the Worlds with Journey to the Center of the Earth is really silly, but somehow it works decently well... kinda predictable, but a fun read.
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Post by gothos on Dec 30, 2014 16:15:56 GMT -5
A Case of Conscience James Blish C. 1959 (orginally a novella from 1953) Wow, this book was really amazing. One of the most thought-provoking novels I've read. I don't think a mere summary would do it any sort of justice, but I'll give it a shot. The Lithians seem to be a perfect society... there's no crime, no sadness, everyone just goes about their lives in harmony. There's also no art, no leisure, no religion... it's a strange place. Four humans are there to decide how Earth with interact with them... if at all. One (the 'ugly American' trope) wants to harvest the world's metals... the sociologist of the group wants to figure out how such a society could be created. The 3rd, a geologist, doesn't seem to have an opinion. Then there's Father Ruiz-Sanchez, a Jesuit priest and the resident biologist. He thinks that the Lithians are a trap laid by Satan... a trick to turn people away from God. Of course, thinking so is heresy, as it ascribes too much creativity to Satan, but he feels so strongly he commits the opinion to tape to attempt to keep the planet closed. The 4 men are split, so the verdict is undecided. The Lithians happily give a parting gift... a baby Lithian, for the humans to raise to help foster understanding. They do so, and he(Egtverchi by name) turns out to be a rabble rouser of the first order, touching off the powder keg that Earth had become... he escapes on a ship back to Lithia, where the UN had decided to allow the planet to be used for energy collection experiments.. the Lithians don't like it, but are too passive and nice to object. As Father Ruiz (from Earth) watches the ship land... he performs an exorcism, as the Pope demanded... at the moment he finishes, the experiment goes wrong, destroying the planet. Divine intervention? Co-incidence? Or did letting Egtverchi return home insert the Serpent into Eden.. or were we the Snake? I'd love to hear what any of you guys thought of this one... it really just SCREAMS for discussion. A CASE OF CONSCIENCE is the only Blish book I really like. I find a lot of his other works intellectually accomplished but rather cold and un-involving, though YMMV. i also disliked his original TREK novel, SPOCK MUST DIE, because I didn't think he understood the dynamics of the Enterprise crew. CONSCIENCE, though, is a smart way of incorporating a religious outlook into a SF cosmos, without entirely invalidating either one.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 30, 2014 18:37:03 GMT -5
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE is the only Blish book I really like. I find a lot of his other works intellectually accomplished but rather cold and un-involving, though YMMV. i also disliked his original TREK novel, SPOCK MUST DIE, because I didn't think he understood the dynamics of the Enterprise crew. CONSCIENCE, though, is a smart way of incorporating a religious outlook into a SF cosmos, without entirely invalidating either one. That's interesting considering Blish wrote the short story "novelizations" of Star Trek episodes that ran in the books Star Trek 1 through at least Star Trek 7. Working from original, if not necessarily shooting, scripts.
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Post by berkley on Dec 31, 2014 1:23:57 GMT -5
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE is the only Blish book I really like. I find a lot of his other works intellectually accomplished but rather cold and un-involving, though YMMV. i also disliked his original TREK novel, SPOCK MUST DIE, because I didn't think he understood the dynamics of the Enterprise crew. CONSCIENCE, though, is a smart way of incorporating a religious outlook into a SF cosmos, without entirely invalidating either one. That's interesting considering Blish wrote the short story "novelizations" of Star Trek episodes that ran in the books Star Trek 1 through at least Star Trek 7. Working from original, if not necessarily shooting, scripts. I haven't read any of them since I was a kid, but back in the early 70s they felt pretty much spot on to me.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 31, 2014 16:07:06 GMT -5
A Case of Conscience James Blish C. 1959 (orginally a novella from 1953) Wow, this book was really amazing. One of the most thought-provoking novels I've read. I don't think a mere summary would do it any sort of justice, but I'll give it a shot. The Lithians seem to be a perfect society... there's no crime, no sadness, everyone just goes about their lives in harmony. There's also no art, no leisure, no religion... it's a strange place. Four humans are there to decide how Earth with interact with them... if at all. One (the 'ugly American' trope) wants to harvest the world's metals... the sociologist of the group wants to figure out how such a society could be created. The 3rd, a geologist, doesn't seem to have an opinion. Then there's Father Ruiz-Sanchez, a Jesuit priest and the resident biologist. He thinks that the Lithians are a trap laid by Satan... a trick to turn people away from God. Of course, thinking so is heresy, as it ascribes too much creativity to Satan, but he feels so strongly he commits the opinion to tape to attempt to keep the planet closed. The 4 men are split, so the verdict is undecided. The Lithians happily give a parting gift... a baby Lithian, for the humans to raise to help foster understanding. They do so, and he(Egtverchi by name) turns out to be a rabble rouser of the first order, touching off the powder keg that Earth had become... he escapes on a ship back to Lithia, where the UN had decided to allow the planet to be used for energy collection experiments.. the Lithians don't like it, but are too passive and nice to object. As Father Ruiz (from Earth) watches the ship land... he performs an exorcism, as the Pope demanded... at the moment he finishes, the experiment goes wrong, destroying the planet. Divine intervention? Co-incidence? Or did letting Egtverchi return home insert the Serpent into Eden.. or were we the Snake? I'd love to hear what any of you guys thought of this one... it really just SCREAMS for discussion. I loved that book because of its twist ending. I took it at face value. Unlike what I expected, the planet was a trick by Satan and the exorcism removed it from existence. Talk about pulling the carpet right from under our feet!!!
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Post by Calamas on Jan 7, 2015 0:34:32 GMT -5
Well, the idea was to knock off a book a week. That didn’t go as planned. I was doing well until about halfway through the year, then other things got in the way. I closed 2014 at thirty-two. I wrapped with:
Recently finished:
The Dame by Richard Stark Continuing my way through Donald Westlake’s work as Richard Stark. Alan Grofield is more interesting than Parker but Parker’s adventures are better. Whichever protagonist, the novels are always quick, light entertainment.
Silent Prey by John Sanford Usually the blurb gives away too much. Here it didn’t tell me enough. Billed as the revenge story of the previous novel's villain, I had no particular interest; he was a character, I felt, not deserving of a return appearance. Silent Prey involved so much more. I regret having initially skipped it.
Rough Weather by Robert B. Parker The return of another villain, this one from 1997. In his third appearance, the Gray Man and Spenser, moral opposites with a degree of mutual respect, come into conflict. Some good character bit and psychological exploration--standard Parker--but also standard with the second half of his career, no clear ending. The story sort of peters out.
The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos My first non-series Pelecanos. My preference is for running characters but there is no denying the man’s brilliance, particularly with street-level life. I’ll end up reading them all.
The Fools in Town Are on Our Side by Ross Thomas I once heard Thomas described as “readable.” Not sure whether that was a compliment or insult--irregardless of how it was intended--but I tend to agree. This novel, in alternating chapters, follows three time periods in the hero’s life until it catches up to the present day, which in this case is 1970. Then the story moves to a unnamed Southern city--and that’s where I become uncomfortable. The N-word is thrown around liberally. Not just with bigots and villains but with everybody: good, bad; innocent, guilty; even black and white. I know recent real-world events have made clear that we are not as enlightened as we once thought, but this was just too much to look past to enjoy a story, particularly since I know Ross Thomas called it the way he saw it. Too much truth in fiction.
The Sour Lemon Score by Richard Stark I could imagine this being a response to complaints that Parker always wins. Of course, since Parker lives when few seldom do in these stories, Parker does win again. But not everything. Still enjoyable, still worth the read.
Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory McDonald Another series I’m working my way through. Here Fletch becomes the Press Liaison for a presidential campaign. Like his protagonist McDonald was once a reporter, and he had intimate knowledge of how these things worked in 1983. It is fascinating to compare that world to today’s of instant knowledge. The conclusion is almost irrelevant, and it reads that way, like McDonald belatedly realized he actually had to solve the murders to get out of the book. And that’s fine; the killings were besides the point.
In progress:
Kings of Many Castles by Brian Freemantle Whiskey River by Loren D. Estleman
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Post by berkley on Jan 7, 2015 1:19:29 GMT -5
Blish's A Case of Conscience, and crime authors Stark and Pelecanos are all on my to-read list, but it'll be some time, probably a couple years at least, before I get to any of them.
Among the books I've finished the last little while, the most recent was a collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories that I had been reading off and on over the last year or two. Perhaps I'll change my mind after I read more late 19th and early 20th century American fiction, but right now it's confirmed my previous opinion that Hemingway's style was an immense influence on almost everyone who came after him, even those who didn't directly imitate him. No matter what your opinion of Hemingway, I'd recommend this collection (it's just called "The Short Stories" and contains the 49 stories he wrote up to around the mid to late 30s) to anyone interested in the short story as a literary form.
Right before that one, I read PG Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves, a novel (rather than a short story collection) in that series. If you've read any of the Jeeves books you know what you're in for here. If you haven't, this might be a good one to start with, but if you're like me you'll want to begin at the beginning of the series. There are a few references to earlier incidents, not that that matters much - it'll just make you want to read the earlier books.
Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics is a collection of Calvino's science fiction stories. Like nothing else I've ever read in the genre - perhaps the closest I could think of in terms of a name that might be familiar to SF fans would be RA Lafferty, but only in the sense that Lafferty too offers a completely unique voice that appears to have little connection to anything else in the field. It took me a story or two to get into the groove of Calvino's style, but once I did I was won over. I'll be reading the rest of Calvino's SF, probably later this year.
And the last one I'll mention - I'm getting back to mid December now - is Charles Dickens's unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This book has been dismissed by some critics as a weak effort that wouldn't have ranked with the classic Dickens even if hadn't been left in an incomplete state, but I enjoyed it thoroughly, while it lasted, and wish he'd lived to finish it.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 7, 2015 12:00:17 GMT -5
And noticed it's been a LONG time since I updated on this thread.
The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett. I debated skipping these as I'm not given to reading YA books. But I'm kind of glad I did. It was pretty entertaining.
Nobody Runs Forever - Richard Stark. I'm almost done with Parker. The later books are a mixed bag. They're definitely busier than the early ones. This definitely shows that Parker is not infallible as the wheels never really get on this particular bus.
The Return of Tarzan - Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is probably my favorite Tarzan novel. There's just a ton happening here. And we get the first appearance of Opar. Here it's still fresh and we haven't seen Tarzan's Africa where there is a hidden city around every third tree.
The Devil is in the Details: Examining Matt Murdock and Daredevil - ed. Ryan Lindsay. SeqArt examines The Man Without Fear. Obviously the quality varies from essay to essay, but overall very entertaining.
The Hand of Oberon - Roger Zelazny. Penultimate chapter in my re-read of the First Chronicles of Amber.
Never Cross a Vampire - Stuart Kaminsky. Toby Peters picks up two clients at the same time in this one. Bela Lugosi is being threatened and William Faulkner is accused of murder. Fun light-weight stuff.
Skull Island by Will Murray. One of the "All-New Wild Adventures of Doc Savage". From the title it should be obvious...Doc meets Kong. And that should be good enough for anyone.
Grand Central Noir - ed. Terrence P. McCauley. Short story anthology based around Grand Central Terminal...all with a noirish twist. Overall very successful.
The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs. Modern man stranded on an island with primitive men. This is definitely second-tier Burroughs.
Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics - Blake Bell. Nice coffee-table type biography of Bill Everett one of the fore-fathers of comics.
The Ugly Swans - The Strugatsky Brothers. The second book by the acclaimed Soviet SF writers...and the second I didn't care for. This one worked for me less than Roadside Picnic. I at least finished it. I didn't make it through this one.
Flashman and the Mountain of Light - George MacDonald Fraser. Flashy is back...with a very early adventure in the First Anglo-Sikh War. Again...I seem to like these more when I'm not very familiar with the setting...so this fits the bill.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 7, 2015 12:57:15 GMT -5
I didn't know Bill Everett had a biography! Cool.
Russian SF is intriguing...especially cold war era.. what was bad about it?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 7, 2015 13:01:44 GMT -5
I didn't know Bill Everett had a biography! Cool. Russian SF is intriguing...especially cold war era.. what was bad about it? It's certainly possible that I just wasn't in the mood for it as it is very well reviewed. It just drug. It had no WOW factor for me. Again, I'm willing to take a fair piece of the blame. I do the vast majority of my prose reading at night in bed. And quiet introspective books tend not to work for me in that setting. They put me to sleep and I never finish them.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 13, 2015 13:36:05 GMT -5
Double Star Robert Heinlein 1956 12th Printing Artist Unknown
Lorenzo Smythe, down and out stage actor, accepts the role-of-a-lifetime by impersonating a politician who has been kidnapped and who's political party is desperate to hide that fact. Mr. Bonforte is the kidnap victim, the head of the leading opposition political party on Earth and spokesperson for the policy of signing a treaty with the Martian civilization. Negotiations with the Martians are at a crucial juncture, Earth will soon be holding new elections and Bonforte's kidnapping could lead to interstellar war. Can Lorenzo Smythe pull off the impersonation while Bonforte's allies search for him?
This is a Heinlein novel written at his prime before his works got bogged down with his pontificating on particular ideology or political theories. Its a breezily written entertaining piece written for the adult market. His main protagonist, Lorenzo Smythe, is a flawed man, an actor with an inflated sense of ego even though he doesn't have 2 nickels to rub together. There's not a lot of action to this story. It mainly dwells on the art of acting and misleading the public as well as the political process of future earth. Heinlein in his later years could get heavy-handed in his views or earlier in his career he would write light entertaining juvenile novels. This is a satisfying novel smack in the middle. It is as entertaining as the best of his short stories which revolutionized the SF field in the 1940s. Very much recommended
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