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Post by berkley on Jan 20, 2016 0:15:36 GMT -5
He will be, yeah. I did read one of his Lew Archer books back in the early 80s, right after I had just gone through the Raymond Chandler novels and was looking for something along the same lines. I liked it enough to finish it but was a little disappointed - unfairly so, I suspect, because of course I was comparing him to Chandler and he wasn't aping that style, to his credit (in contrast to, say, Robert Parker's Spenser, which I think sometimes tries to do just that, unsuccessfully, IMO). Can't recall which of the Archer books it was now and nothing from the list at wiki rings a bell, though I think I'll remember it when I read it again because a few scenes and lines have stayed with me.
I want to give him another chance but don't want to make the same mistake again, so I think I'll wait a while after reading Chandler this time, maybe jump ahead and read a few other detective series for a bit, before trying the first Archer book, Moving Target (1949).
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 20, 2016 21:00:56 GMT -5
From 2006, a nice 500+ page anthology od short stories originally appearing in the magazine. The selection was voted upon by their readers. Never having read from the mag beforehand and never having read short mystery tales in general, they were all new to me and quite enjoyable. Some stories were adapted into episodes of the Hitchcock TV show or other TV mystery series like McMillan and Wife. Some authors I was aware of from their SF output or from general recognition as being famous. The selections run sequentially from the first year of the mag's publication in 1956 thru the new millennium with small write-ups of each of the authors. The 34 stories include The Frightening Frammis by Jim Thompson The Day of the Execution by Henry Slesar #8 by Jackie Ritchie Not a Laughing Matter by Evan Hunter A Genuine Alectryomancer by Charles Willeford Good Night! Good Night! By Donald E Westlake The Cost of Kent Castwell by Avram Davidson The Long Way Down by Edward D. Hooch The Method Sheriff by Ed Lacy Death of a Nobody by Bill Pronzini Recipe for Murder by James Holding New Neighbor by Talmage Powell Historical Errors by William Brittain A Candle for the Bag Lady by Lawrence Block Making a Killing With Mama Cass by Wiliam Bankier The Takamoku Joseki by Sara Paretsky My Brother's Wife by Rob Kantner Final Rites by Doug Allyn The Search for Olga Bateua by Stephen Wasylyk Hawks by Connie Holt Unbearable Temptations by Jeffry Scott Priests by George C Chesbro Pusan Nights by Martin Limon Body Englis by S. J. Rozan The Muse by Jan Burke Sinkhole by Carol Cail Saturday Night at the Mikado Massage by Loren D Estleman Lord of Obstacles by Gregory S. Fallis Black Spartacus by James Lincoln Warren Eries Last Day by Steve Hockensmith Tabloid Press by Janice Law The O-Bon Cat by I. J. Parker Leaving Nairobi by Ed McBain Voodoo by Rhys Bowen
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 23, 2016 16:45:36 GMT -5
This site has an amazingly comprehensive list of fiction about time travel, from 1733 to the present. At least I assume it's all fiction... www.storypilot.com/It's a lot of data, so it can take a few minutes to load.
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Post by berkley on Jan 23, 2016 20:51:01 GMT -5
This site has an amazingly comprehensive list of fiction about time travel, from 1733 to the present. At least I assume it's all fiction... www.storypilot.com/It's a lot of data, so it can take a few minutes to load. Nice, thanks for posting that, will have a closer look later on.
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Post by berkley on Jan 23, 2016 21:11:51 GMT -5
I'm currently reading two new books, one being The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Vol.1: The End of the Story. I'm enjoying it so far and I'll post my mini-review when I'm finished. This series is publishing all of Smith's work chronologically, which I love. Amazon has a nice complete set of H.P. Lovecraft's work that I'm going to get as soon as it comes back in stock. My only wish is that someone would do the same thing with Robert E. Howard. The Del Ray series' were fantastic, particularly since it featured Howard's stories as he intended with no editing or pastiches, but it still didn't cover EVERYTHING he wrote. Missed this earlier. I remember enjoying this Clark Ashton Smith anthology back in the 70s: I like the covers on these old Panther paperbacks and have been slowly tracking down the rest of them the last few years.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 24, 2016 2:11:30 GMT -5
You can't beat those old paper back artists. The wraparound cover art design is something that seems to have gone out of style with fantastic and sci-fi books.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 24, 2016 14:22:44 GMT -5
I don't understand why today's sci fi doesn't do cool covers... clearly that's a big part of the appeal of the old paperbacks.
I read this one off my wife's library pile...
Witch's Trinity by Erica Mailman
I don't really have any idea if the depictions in this book of a peasant village in 1500s Germany are historically accurate, or if the witch trial histronics depicted (which match those of the more popular Salem witch trials) really happened, but this is a really well written story.
The author does a fantastic job of capturing the main character (an old woman) and describing what she experiences... be it actual witches covens in the woods, waking dreams, or hunger delusions. There's also some really interesting character studies showing both the good and the bad of how people deal with adversity.
The best part, though, was the ending, which was both surprising and entertaining... well worth reading!
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Post by berkley on Jan 25, 2016 1:05:16 GMT -5
You can't beat those old paper back artists. The wraparound cover art design is something that seems to have gone out of style with fantastic and sci-fi books. I don't understand why today's sci fi doesn't do cool covers... clearly that's a big part of the appeal of the old paperbacks. I remember a few years ago looking at all the god-awful covers on the shelves of the science fiction section in a local book store and thinking that if I were a writer today I would probably ask that my books be given plain covers with just the title and the author's name rather than take a chance on whatever artwork the publishers might see fit to slap on there.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 27, 2016 0:23:34 GMT -5
At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs The first of Burroughs' Pellucidar novels finds David Innes (Burroughs hero) and Abner Perry in a primeval world within the Earth's Core. Even this early on in his writing career, Burroughs had pretty well found his formula. It consists of an exotic local, a hero figure, a damsel (usually an otherworldly damsel) in distress and some sort of monster! This is a fun read on its own even if it is definitely running to form. On a different level it's also a super important book as it is a progenitor (though certainly not alone) of the various "lost world" and "inner world" books. You definitely can see a large part of Skartaris here. This is certainly recommended for pulp adventure fans.
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Post by berkley on Jan 27, 2016 22:50:20 GMT -5
My first Pellucidar book was Tanar of Pellucidar, from the middle of the series, and it was some years before I managed to find a copy of At the Earth's Core and its sequels. Though it didn't bother me to read other ERB series somewhat out of order, I did find it impacted my enjoyment of the Pellucidar books, for some reason, so I'm looking forward to re-reading it from start to finish one of these days.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 5, 2016 20:29:15 GMT -5
Lost Michael Robotham
I read this for a new book club at the library... I definitely would not have picked it up otherwise. I like British detective novels well enough, but there are plenty of those I KNOW I like without grabbing a random one. I'm also not a big fan of the literary device of using amnesia as the device to inform the reader what's going on.
This almost was a good book, but not quite. The story telling was definitely weird...flashbacks intermixed at random times, as the main character remembers things. The heart is your basic 'Cop goes off the books to find justice', but only this time, it turns out he's completely wrong, and his bosses were completely justified... until an extra twist ending that made it so everyone was wrong. Then there was a completely random death at the end that went completely unexplained.
The main character, DI Ruiz, was pretty much completely unlikeable, and mostly unsympathetic. The two interesting characters, Ali (the Havers to Ruiz's Linley) was in the hospital most the book and Professor Joe (the Holmes-like psychogist with Parkinson's) were both in pretty minor roles.
On the upside, most of the criminals were very realistic and seemed very real, as did the caper. It certainly kept me turning the pages to get to the end. The big bad guy, however, a Russian mobster that fit every stereotype, was pretty darn boring. You can definitely give it a pass unless you're really, really into British Mysteries.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 8, 2016 12:10:28 GMT -5
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith This is one of those books that kept getting "suggested" via Goodreads and Amazon and was very well reviewed so I worked it in to my rotation. And I'm really glad that I did. This is apparently a first novel for Smith. It's ambitious. It's in many cases non-linear. It has an unreliable narrator. It introduces main characters very very late in the book and has a pretty major infodump right at the end. It treads the line between SF (very soft SF) and Fantasy. Any of these could have tripped it up...but none of them did. I really feel bad that I'm just finding this book 22 years after publication...but I guess that's what happens when you go on an SF reading hiatus for a couple of decades. The narrator, Stark, a private investigator lives in "The City" which seems to pretty well span the globe. But it's divided up into autonomous "neighborhoods" that mostly seem to cover some theme of living. It's an interesting concept and Smith just touches the surface of it, because the book goes in strange and unexpected directions at almost every turn. It's a mind-trip (maybe literally) and it's very much worth the time it takes to make the journey. Very high recommendation.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 12, 2016 10:59:05 GMT -5
I just noticed that in John Scalzi's Old man's war, among the new recruits are two guys named Gaiman and McKean.
Cei-U would summon the Easter egg!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 18, 2016 10:28:32 GMT -5
I grabbed a couple of previous recommendations from people here over at Chamblin's BOokmine here on my Jacksonville trip (amazing book store, but a bit pricey).. the Mucker (Burroughs), The Space Merchants (Pohl), The Best of Stanley Weinbaum (which I've wanted for a while) and .. ANd Having Writ (Benson) who either Ish or someone recommend WAY back and I couldn't find.... I might read some of the others I brought first, but manybe not, because I'm excited.. we'll see.
Yesterday's plane read:
Blood Sport by Dick Francis
I thought this felt different than some of Francis' other books, both because the horse racing element is such a minor factor (it's really more a straight detective novel), and because the main character is such a flawed, tragic figure. Or maybe that it takes place mostly in America.
I was ready to give this one 2 or 3 stars as Gene Hawkins (the main character) was really just a drag, and things were really all too easy (which happens in Francis mysteries sometimes).. then they weren't. The last 20 pages really tied the book up nicely... it was both a surpise and an excellent ending.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Feb 18, 2016 19:42:28 GMT -5
I've been downloading and listening to many audiobooks and its time for me to give a new (to me) author a try. I'm contemplating on picking up some Harold Coben books. Seen many good write ups and he's extremely popular. Anyone here familiar with his work?
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