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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 3, 2023 4:58:03 GMT -5
The Gold CoastKim Stanley Robinson, 1988  The second in the ‘Three Californias’ trilogy, which means the geographic setting, the Orange County coast, is the same, but everything else is entirely different. Chronologically, it takes place at some point in the late 2020s (now the very near future) and the world Robinson presents here is an extrapolation of what he saw happening if the So Cal car culture and urban sprawl of the late 1980s just kept going unfettered. So as in The Wild Shore, it is a dystopian setting, but a very unsettlingly familiar one. The story itself centers around a number of characters, as we peer into their daily lives and problems and interactions with each other. The more or less main character is Jim McPherson, an idealistic but rather aimless guy in his late twenties who works at two jobs (writing professor at a community college and clerk in a real estate office) just to stay afloat. He spends a good deal of time with his extended friend group, the core of which is several of his college buddies, some of whom have quite successful careers while others are more directionless like Jim. They spend their evenings partying, sampling all kinds of designer drugs provided by Jim’s friend Sandy, who works in a pharma company’s biochemical research lab and is also a drug dealer on the side. Another major character is Jim’s father, Dennis, who is a high-level engineer for a defense contractor that makes weapons systems for the Pentagon. This is the other main narrative line in the story, as it gives readers a glimpse into the immense power wielded by the defense industry, which Robinson sees as having a greater stranglehold on the American economy than it did in the 1980s (and the US is at this point involved in dozens of wars throughout the world). For his part, Jim, in his desire to make a difference in the world, gets convinced by an acquaintance named Arthur to engage in anti-war activities, initially involving simple vandalism, but then progressing into acts of sabotage – like setting off bombs at defense industry plants. Even though some of Robinson’s predictions about certain things were a bit off, others are disturbingly close; definitely a book worth reading.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 3, 2023 16:09:30 GMT -5
 The Sword in the Stone by T. H. WhiteAnother one of those books I'd never gotten around to reading. I do feel bad that I didn't read the original 1938 version (I believe there have been three fairly distinct versions of the book). Obviously this deals with the childhood of Arthur, who will be King, but is here simply Wart, the ward of Sir Ector and the student of Merlin. I don't know that I have a lot to say about it. It was entertaining overall and I'm glad I've now read it. But now I don't have to read it again. |
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Post by berkley on Jan 3, 2023 20:25:04 GMT -5
The Sword in the Stone by T. H. WhiteAnother one of those books I'd never gotten around to reading. I do feel bad that I didn't read the original 1938 version (I believe there have been three fairly distinct versions of the book). Obviously this deals with the childhood of Arthur, who will be King, but is here simply Wart, the ward of Sir Ector and the student of Merlin. I don't know that I have a lot to say about it. It was entertaining overall and I'm glad I've now read it. But now I don't have to read it again.
The Once and Future King, of which this is the first section, was a very important book to my childhood. I read it a year or two before getting into Tolkien and it had a similar effect on me to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I read everything I could find related to Arthurian legend afterwards, which at the time was mainly the Penguin paperbacks of Malory's Morte d'Arthur and one or two shorter things, e.g. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I strongly recommend carrying on with the rest of The Once and Future King, the whole of which is usually published as a single volume.
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Post by berkley on Jan 3, 2023 20:42:58 GMT -5
My first book of 2023 was Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), famous as one of the earliest and most popular "kitchen sink" novels - realistic approach, set in northern England (Nottingham in this case), working-class milieu, and often, as here, an "angry young man" protagonist. It was very entertaining, full of memorable scenes and characters. Interesting to compare to Room at the Top, which I read last year: lots to compare and contrast - for example, SN&SM's Arthur is an early-20s Teddy Boy who works in a factory and is mainly concerned with getting the most he can out of the environment he's been born into, while Room's Joe Lampton is trying to raise himself out of the working class and make a place for himself at a higher social level. Both were made into commercially successful and critically well-regarded movies just a few years after their publication so I'll be trying to see those in the coming months as well.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 5, 2023 20:03:17 GMT -5
The Sword in the Stone by T. H. WhiteAnother one of those books I'd never gotten around to reading. I do feel bad that I didn't read the original 1938 version (I believe there have been three fairly distinct versions of the book). Obviously this deals with the childhood of Arthur, who will be King, but is here simply Wart, the ward of Sir Ector and the student of Merlin. I don't know that I have a lot to say about it. It was entertaining overall and I'm glad I've now read it. But now I don't have to read it again.
The Once and Future King, of which this is the first section, was a very important book to my childhood. I read it a year or two before getting into Tolkien and it had a similar effect on me to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I read everything I could find related to Arthurian legend afterwards, which at the time was mainly the Penguin paperbacks of Malory's Morte d'Arthur and one or two shorter things, e.g. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I strongly recommend carrying on with the rest of The Once and Future King, the whole of which is usually published as a single volume.
I’ve got them on my list and will get to them. I feel like it probably would have had a bigger effect on me at a much younger age. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 5, 2023 20:08:26 GMT -5
Completed my Goodreads Reading Challenge with a few days to spare. #87 was a GN (Lily Renee, Escape Artist), but I set the goal with the idea a number of the books I read will by GN or tpb collections. It breaks down to 19 prose books, 4 rpg books, 3 art books, and 61 OGN/TPB for the year. I am not sure how I am going to approach 2023 yet, considering some changes-thinking of tracking prose by pages rather than books as there is a handful of really hefty volumes I want to dive into this coming year, but Goodreads doesn't do offer that kind of tracking. But if I, say read a Robert Jordan Wheel of Time book that clocks in at like 1800 pages, that's like 9 pulp adventure novels worth of pages, and if I am trying to hit a # of books goal, I tend to shy away from those doorstopper volumes either consciously or unconsciously, and tracking pages seems a way to keep the playing field level. -M I met mine as well. I’m pretty selective as which funnybooks I count. Mostly it’s big strip reprints and the odd OGN. I too kind of wish there was an option to have a page goal rather than a book goal. I do tend to steer clear of super long fiction books as a result. Not as much with non-fiction as I’m better able to read them during down times in Court or while waiting for clients at the jail. My goal last year and this was 72 books. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 6, 2023 9:24:27 GMT -5
The Japanese Myths: A Guide to Gods, Heroes and Spirits
Joshua Frydman
This one was an impulse borrow at the library... Some background on the various inspirations that use in manga? And perhaps a bit more clarity on Japanese history (of which my knowledge mostly comes from manga and video games).. yes, please.
This book is essentially a textbook, and is very neatly organized, and even has little boxed summaries if you wanted to skim for info, so it's great as a reference. It was less interesting to read.. the material was was presented very quickly, and without alot of background or color.
The book also spent alot of time talking about how the myths are evolving with time, but little showing it... the discussion of how the myths were co opted during the Imperial Expansion era, then their influence on current manga, was just a few pages, and what I was really most interested in.
Still a very worthwhile reference though, I wouldn't mind having it on my shelf to look stuff up.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 6, 2023 12:43:42 GMT -5
Pacific EdgeKim Stanley Robinson, 1990  Unlike the preceding two installments, this final book in the ‘Three Californias’ trilogy presents a (grounded and realistic) utopian vision for Orange County’s future. It’s also set the farthest in the future, covering the events of a summer in 2065 in El Modena – which is currently a section of the city of Orange, but here it is a separate town. The main character is a 32 year-old builder named Kevin Claiborne, who just begins serving his first two-year term on the town council. As the story progresses, we see that in this future, a number of aggressive legislative and other measures had been taken by the world's major governments about 40 or so years earlier to curb corporate power, scale back excessive industrialization and use resources more equitably and wisely. For example, Kevin’s work involves refurbishing existing buildings to make them more eco-friendly and livable, and while through his work in the town council, he realizes that the mayor (who also co-owns a biotech company) is trying to rezone one of the only untouched hills in town to build some kind of commercial complex. This becomes one of the major drivers of the plot, as Kevin and his political allies try to find ways to fight the proposal, and there’s much talk about zoning laws and water management. The other plot driver is a love triangle between Kevin, the mayor and the latter’s former lover – because Robinson always tells good stories with a lot of emotional depth. So while this future setting presented in this book is one that I think most of us would like to live in, the story itself has a rather melancholy tone toward the end (hope that’s not too much of a spoiler). By the way, in these reviews I’ve been posting the covers to the older mass market paperback editions of these books, although the copy I have is a recently purchased omnibus edition: 
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 7, 2023 14:59:15 GMT -5
Cycle of the WerewolfStephen King; illustrations by Berni Wrightson, 1983  I’ve had this on my shelf for so many years (after finding a very cheap water-damaged copy in used bookstore) and finally got around to reading it today. This is a novella broken down into twelve chapters (one for each month of the year) that recounts a year in which a small town in Maine, Tarker’s Mills, was terrorized by a werewolf. Every month on the full moon, someone or, in two instances, a farmer’s hogs and several deer, are found brutally dismembered and partially consumed. Initially the townsfolk think it’s some kind of serial killer, but based on footprints and esp. after the slaughtered animals are found, some begin to suspect that it is indeed a case of a werewolf. And in July, a 10 year-old wheelchair bound boy named Marty Coslaw narrowly escapes becoming the werewolf’s next victim, and eventually learns who it is and decides to do something about it. This isn’t a bad story; there are some nicely written passages, but it’s not particularly scary or creepy. What really makes it remarkable are the many beautiful illustrations in both black & white…  …and color by Berni Wrightson.  As many may be aware, the 1985 movie Silver Bullet is based on this story, although it was significantly changed: for one thing, the focus is placed on Marty and his family, and the events are squeezed into the late spring and summer of the year. Also, while the novella takes place in the ‘present,’ i.e., early 1980s, the movie is for some reason set in 1976.
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Post by berkley on Jan 7, 2023 19:23:27 GMT -5
I'm interested in the Kim Stanley Robinson trilogy might have a look for that next time I'm in a bookstore.
I feel like I must not ever have seen the Bernie Wrightson + Stephen King collaboration around at the time or I'm pretty sure I would have bought it, since I was a big Wrightson fan and also had read and enjoyed several of King's books. Yet it sounds familiar ... possibly it's just that I've heard about it over the years but I wonder if I did see it and just didn't like the look of it enough to buy a copy.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2023 3:26:09 GMT -5
Finished my first prose book of the year, a short story anthology-Sword and Sorceress edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley...  I was looking through my wife's bookshelves to see if I could find a couple of Tanith Lee books I remembered us having but weren't on my shelves upstairs when I ran across the dozen or so volumes of this anthology series that my wife owns. I'd seen them many times before, but never really gave them much of a look, just noted, someday I will see what is in these. Well, I picked up the first and looked a the table of contents to see who was in there, and found stories by both Charles Saunders and Charles de Lint, so decided to give it a go. Overall, it was a mixed bag, but I did find several stories I liked and authors I want to perhaps explore more form, and others I will likely avoid. Saunders and de Lint were the definite highlights, but not the only good stuff there. It's pulpy sword and sorcery for the most part, with female protagonists, and was released in the early-mid eighties, so if definitely has some tics from genre and time, but it's worth checking out, even if you just read the Saunders and de Lint tales and sample a few others. Looking at the contents to Vol. II, there's another tale by each of Saunders and de Lint, so I will at least check out one more volume, but I am not sure I will still be in by Vol. XIX, which I think is the highest numbered one she had (there are some volumes in there my wife is missing, so I wouldn't be reading all 19 even if I kept finding stuff I liked). -M |
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Post by berkley on Jan 13, 2023 16:15:48 GMT -5
Finished my first prose book of the year, a short story anthology-Sword and Sorceress edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley... I was looking through my wife's bookshelves to see if I could find a couple of Tanith Lee books I remembered us having but weren't on my shelves upstairs when I ran across the dozen or so volumes of this anthology series that my wife owns. I'd seen them many times before, but never really gave them much of a look, just noted, someday I will see what is in these. Well, I picked up the first and looked a the table of contents to see who was in there, and found stories by both Charles Saunders and Charles de Lint, so decided to give it a go. Overall, it was a mixed bag, but I did find several stories I liked and authors I want to perhaps explore more form, and others I will likely avoid. Saunders and de Lint were the definite highlights, but not the only good stuff there. It's pulpy sword and sorcery for the most part, with female protagonists, and was released in the early-mid eighties, so if definitely has some tics from genre and time, but it's worth checking out, even if you just read the Saunders and de Lint tales and sample a few others. Looking at the contents to Vol. II, there's another tale by each of Saunders and de Lint, so I will at least check out one more volume, but I am not sure I will still be in by Vol. XIX, which I think is the highest numbered one she had (there are some volumes in there my wife is missing, so I wouldn't be reading all 19 even if I kept finding stuff I liked). -M
I haven't read any of them yet but I like the concept behind the series and have picked up a few cheap used copies over the years when I've seen one. I look forward to trying them once I get back into reading more contemporary fantasy (as in published during my lifetime, more or less). Right now I'm still on the 19th century stuff, as far as fantasy fiction goes
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 13, 2023 16:27:47 GMT -5
 Black Pulp edited by Tommy Hancock, Gary Phillips and Morgan Minor If collections are hard to review, anthologies are next level hard. In a perfect world one would look at the individual stories. But who has time for that? The conceit of this one is that all the protagonists are all black and the settings are pulpy. And for what it is, it's pretty entertaining. The only story that I actively disliked was the final one by editor Hancock. The stand-out, as could almost be expected, was the opener by Joe R. Lansdale. I got this as an e-book for pretty cheap and as such I was not disappointed. I usually read a short story or two in between starting longer works and for that purpose this worked just fine. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 13, 2023 17:03:04 GMT -5
Black Pulp edited by Tommy Hancock, Gary Phillips and Morgan Minor If collections are hard to review, anthologies are next level hard. In a perfect world one would look at the individual stories. But who has time for that? The conceit of this one is that all the protagonists are all black and the settings are pulpy. And for what it is, it's pretty entertaining. The only story that I actively disliked was the final one by editor Hancock. The stand-out, as could almost be expected, was the opener by Joe R. Lansdale. I got this as an e-book for pretty cheap and as such I was not disappointed. I usually read a short story or two in between starting longer works and for that purpose this worked just fine. Read this a few years ago. I liked Hancock's story well enough. In fact, I'd say the worst, by far, is the one by D. Alan Lewis ("Black Wolfe's Debt"), which I found *really* skeevy. The best story is, of course, the one by Charles Saunders... |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 16, 2023 10:08:36 GMT -5
Fire with Fire
Charles Gannon
I've been looking for a good series to get me out of my reader's block, and I was hoping this was it. I'm a big fan of Baen books in general, so I thought I'd give this one a shot.
There are definitely some positive bits, Gannon's handle on realpolitik was very good. His world on 100ish years in the future is pretty reasonable (given the tech advances), with blocs, but not quite a world government and rising corporate power, you can definitely see that being the case.
Then, of course, there are the aliens. They are of the Star Trek variety, complete with the equilivent of Vulcans and Klingons... mostly humanoid and all speaking English and having similar emotions and motivations as humans.
That's not terrible, but definitely the opposite of the current trend (though of course that trend hadn't happened yet when this was written. The story, for that, was pretty engaging, but the characters are a problem.. they are absolutely perfect in every way... very annoying.
Its good enough that I'm interested to see where it's going and read the next one, but not the best.
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