Geez, tough crowd!

I do agree that it's not a patch on the first Stainless Steel Rat book, and I also agree that it takes a while to get going. In addition, I'm not convinced that the reason behind the Cliaandian's enslaving of other worlds really makes any sense. But that said, once Harry Harrison finds his groove I found this to be a fairly entertaining action-packed sci-fi romp.

47
Walter Mosley, 2005

This is, as far as I know, the only young adult book written by Mosley. It’s set in the antebellum American South, mostly on a plantation in Georgia in 1832. The story is told as a first person narration by a man the reader only knows as ‘47’, which was his designation when he was an enslaved boy on said plantation. Initially, the book seems like a recollection of slave life and its brutality as told by a former slave, as 47 recounts the time when he became old enough to begin working in the fields picking cotton rather than living in the barn and being taken care of by the plantation owner’s cook. However, the story takes an odd turn at that point, because soon after 47 moves into the adult men’s slave quarters, an apparently fugitive slave appears at the plantation and the owner decides he’s going to keep him. He’s a thin man with oddly copper-colored skin who calls himself ‘Tall John’. He immediately befriends 47 and tells him he’s destined for great things. It’s at that point that some pretty incredible things start happening and you realize that this is a science-fiction story – although, as stressed in the book’s preface: “Slavery might be the most unbelievable part of this story but I assure you – it really happened.”
Another amazingly well-written and engrossing book by Mosley.

I mentioned I had been reading art books and such, this was one of them...



The Art of the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull

It's an interesting read, but a bit of a misnomer. Tolkien only had a handful of actual art pieces for the LOTR, mostly watercolors of locales. What the book spends most of its time on is the development of the maps drawn by Tolkien and how they evolved throughout the writing process of LOTR. The conceit of Hammond & Scull is that the maps are pieces of art, and I don't necessarily disagree, that conceit makes the title of the book misleading about what the actual thrust of the book is. They aren't doing much original scholarship either, as most of what he draws upon is laid out by Christopher Tolkien in the War of the Ring volumes of the History of Middle Earth. They did do a lot of visual research though, hounding all the archival material of Tolkien's papers at Oxford and in university archives in the U.S. to assemble every extant hand drawn map of Tolkien that he made in the process of writing Lord of the Rings, plus what artwork Tolkien did on his own and for the dustjackets. They also do a minor study of the written alphabets Tolkien developed and their us on the maps and manuscripts. Much of the actual art pieces are doodles in the margins of original hand-written manuscript pages where it seems Tolkien was trying to visualize the places he was writing about to get them clear in his head so he could describe them in the text.

So overall it is an interesting book and a nice overview of the evolution of Middle Earth. Hammond & Scull's prose is quite dry though, even for an academic work, and not very informative beyond pointing out the obvious changes in the map's evolution. Much of it devolves into quoting passages from early versions of the manuscript that Christopher had used on the War of the Rings volumes. It's certainly a visually appealing book, but overall not the greatest read for readings sake.

-M

It was shocking to me that most, if not all, of the survivors went back to sea.  I guess they figured they'd dodged that bullet, though Pollard had another ship sink on him in Hawaii. 

It was amazing that the three who stayed on the island were rescued, particularly after it was found they were on Henderson Island instead of Ducie Island as they had all thought.  

The whole thing kind of felt like karmic revenge for not just the whaling but for the severe damage the crew did to Charles Island in the Galapagos. 

Yeah.  He mentioned it.  But, as usual, the real wealth went to the owners not the actual sailors.  He also went in to reasonable detail about the degradation of the land on Nantucket Island.  It may still have been more lucrative than many other available occupations.  But when you've spent 90 days starving and then eating your shipmates I'd lean toward a life on land.  

The other Tolkien inspired art book I read was this one...



Middle Earth: Journeys in Myth and Legend by Donato Giancola published by Dark Horse Books, with a forward by David Wenzel and an introduction by Ted Nasmith.

I read this via Hoopla, which, with an art book of this nature is not ideal, but I had no local source for this so I made do. Giancola's been associated with Tolkien art for a few decades now, and his art is more reminiscent in style to the classical masters than the generation of fantasy artists who defined the genre in the 20th century. His art is lush and gorgeous, and this book is an excellent overview and survey of his Tolkien related art, from the oils that have graced several book covers, to private commissions, to studies he did in other mediums. All of it is accompanied by commentary by the artist himself that gives insight into his technique and more interestingly his mindset to approaching Tolkien's body of work and interpreting it visually. Well worth a read for any Tolkien fan, fantasy art fan, or just fans of artistic endeavors. Giancola was an artist whose work I recognized form some covers, but wasn't someone I knew who they were or was familiar with outside of those casual encounters with their published work on covers. He is someone I will now seek out more of ther work to explore what he has done outside of Tolkien art.

-M