posted
I just happened to get a notice from B&N about "The Wind".
Oh the is a parody of the "Hobbit" out. Forget the name-- Maybe Bored of the Rings. so it could be a parody of LoTR but it's only one shorter book.
Anyway, an update on The Sweet. For not liking the world, McLeod made, I certainly read it fast. She's a great story teller, lots of good suspense. Seems like that is a pen name but I can't recall where I read that and I looked.
So the ending came out better than I thought so there's a possibility I might read the second one. Have to wait 'till I see it and can look it over.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Bored of the Rings, from the Harvard Lampoon, I think...came out sometime around 1970, I think, too...never actually read past glancing inside a couple times...what always struck me was that the parody cover art was a parody of the really awful despised-by-Tolkien-among-others Ballantine Hobbit / LOTR covers, but when Ballantine ditched them not long after, Bored of the Rings never did...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Havard Lampoon's classic LOTR parody BORED OF THE RINGS was writtern By Henry Beard and Douglas Kenny--who later went on to start the National Lampoon (I miss that magazine)--and it was published in 1969. It's a classic that other Tolkien parodies ("The Soddit", "The Wobbit", "The Sillymarillion", "The Sellamillion") can only aspire to. The 1st edition cover was by Michael Frith (of later Muppets fame):
While Tolkien disliked the art, it was so popular with the readership that it warranted the printing of a large wall mural size poster thats old well (a copy of which I possess and hung on mu teenage bedroom wall for years).
posted
Ah...must've missed those reissues. As for the Ballantine covers...well, copies of both were lying around at the school I attended, fifth-through-eight grades...and I found the covers so off-putting that I wouldn't pick up a copy of The Hobbit until I was sixteen. (A lot of Ballantine covers of that era were off-puttingly bad.)
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Matter of taste, then, as is true for stories themselves. Some hate the same ones others loved. I liked the Ballantine covers for The Hobbit and LOTR, and for most of their Adult Fantasy series. http://phantasma.onza.net/biblio/lists/baf.html "Fantastic" artwork (as in surreal) was just fine for me for fantasy literature.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Started "A Mighty Fortress" by David Weber. fourth one is the Safehold series.
He's my favorite Space opera writer, for one reason he does a lot more than just blow up space ships even though that happens.
However this one isn't SO. I'm not sure what you would call it. SF but it's sort of historical, sort of alternate universe, sort of a couple other things. With sailing ship to sailing ship fighting and palace intrigue.
This one I won't finish any time soon. It's like two to three times as long as usual 1,086 pages.
Not sure if this is the end of the series but someone dies evidently-- as in main characters and probably a few minor characters. OH, more than likely it isn't the last one, the humans still have one thing to do whatever happens in this book.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
On the "Ballantine Adult Fantasy" covers...once I knew what these books actually were, I dug up as many as I could find...but the covers weren't much. I never got a complete set, some eluded me to this day---I picked 'em up in used bookstores, never went to SF collectors selling things like that. (I never had a complete list of 'em---anybody got one?) Like I always say, I bought 'em to read, not to collect.
But the covers never impressed me much. I liked the work of Gervasio Gallardo when it appeared, but the rest was much like the Ballantine Tolkien covers---too self-consciously arty, not very interesting as artwork, not what you'd call eyecatching...a lot of it looked amateruish, almost.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
I managed to collect all except: KHALED and THE WORLD'S DESIRE
What made this series particularly appealing were the insightful introductions by Lin Carter. I still consider his IMAGINARY WORLDS a great review and guide to the genre of (and precedents to) modern fantasy: "a book about fantasy, about the men who write it, and how it is written. It is a joyful excursion by a man who himself loves fantasy, into the origins and the magicks of such writers as Dunsany, Eddison, Cabell: it examines the rise of fantasy in the American pulp magazines and delights in the sturdy health of 'sword and sorcery': it looks with pleasure on the works of some modern masters and knowledgeably explores the techniques of world-making."
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
Having finished King's new Dark Tower novel/fable THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, delightful btw and not as "heavy" in tone as the series in general, our converse inspired me to read one of the Ballantine series I've never got around to the last four decades: LUD-IN-THE-MIST by Hope Mirlees.
This novel was published in 1926 and has the remarkable reputation of being a little known work by a little known author that has somehow remained in print, through love of a select few who have discovered (or rediscovered) and cherished the work.
I've read the first five chapters and have been transported to the langurous fantasies that filled the dew-laced spring mornings and warm summer evenings of my youth. Tales filled with rich descriptions and plaintive longings for past days and quiet lands of myth and mystery that lie over the hills and far away beyond the fields we know. Stories where, if one peered a little deeper, one can see starkly revealed the poignant play of human folly and hope, of loss and joy, with lessons that say-ya true for today and everyday
Such stories as these I fear now languish, and would never sell today, because they were for times before cinema and television and internet when reading was the premier form of entertainment...to be enjoyed at leisure at a leisurely pace. Does such a pace exist today?
It did for me this morning, an unseasonably warm one for March in Maine, with a light cool breeze sliding beneath the crack of an open window, wafting the lace curtains, my wife sleeping (and snoring softly) warm against my side. As I silently turned the pages of this old yellowing paperback with the Sign of the Unicorn, I could only nod in commiseration and melancholic joy as I read, "This nostalgia for what was still there (that) seemed to find voice in the...smell of the country, the placid bustle of the farm, happening now, all around one; and which, simultaneously, mourns them as things vanished centuries ago."
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Foundation by Asimov currently. Also started to read The Prince by Machiavelli but thats on my computer and I'm at work today. =-/ Bothersome.
Posts: 91 | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
After being online for fourteen years, I still have yet to learn to look for things like that...it's the list I've been looking for since I started collecting / reading them. (Also reminded me of how fond I was of Lin Carter's work...)
Some of them I read in later reprints, usually by Del Rey, and with what I thought were better cover artwork...the abovementioned "Lud-in-the-Mist" and Cabell's books come to mind...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
As a storyteller with a "literary" bent since my undergraduate days, I am finding Lud-in-the Mist to be a delightful surprise--like Lucy opening the wardrobe only to discover Narnia, or Alice falling into Wonderland down a perfectly normal rabbit hole.
As Micahel Swanick wrote: "This is not your standard size 6, off-the-rack War between Good and Evil.
What we have here is that rarest of creatures, the fantasy novel of ideas. Now, what these ideas are is difficult to epitomize in a handful of words. One academic has characterized Mirrlees' novels as being about "the contested boundaries of Art and Life." True enough. I see also the influence of Jane Ellen Harrison in the division of the world into Apollonian and Dionysian aspects, the homely and the wild. Nor are the centuries-long struggle between Classicism and Romanticism or Freud's theories of the conscious and unconscious mind or the relationship between terror and beauty irrelevant to our understanding of this work.
Neil Gaiman once said in conversation that Lud-in-the-Mist "deals with the central matter of fantasy -- the reconciliation of the fantastic and the mundane." Which, perhaps, comes as close to the heart of the question as anybody's going to get.
To learn more, you'll simply have to read the book." --http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/introduces/mirrlees.htm
In regard to James Branch Cabell (another must read for fantasy writers, in my humble opinion), Carter never considered his most infamous work JURGEN for the Ballantine Sign of the Unicorn imprint. I suspect because of its controversial somewhat bawdy nature, though he later did include a revised chapter for hisanthology Realms of Wizardry(Doubleday, 1976). You can get this novel free on Kindle [ http://www.amazon.com/Jurgen-A-Comedy-Justice-ebook/dp/B004TPHYTW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1332091425&sr=8-3 ] though if you can find a copy of one of the old trade PB Dover press editions, it includes the original illustrations by artist Frank Pape [ http://www.amazon.com/Jurgen-James-Branch-Cabell/dp/0486235076 ].
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, I read the copy of Jurgen from my college library...I think why it didn't appear in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was that it was still in print from someone else. Jurgen was Cabell's most notorious book, after all. (I don't know its current status.)
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hmm, I've heard of her from someplace. Hmmm, think think think.
But not sure if I have ever seen it on any list I look over. Of course some of those I don't look over very often.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just finishing up the third in the series of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". I was wondering if anyone one has read them and what they thought. I've read some reviews elsewhere that sorta panned the second two, but other than the fact they are really one extended story I liked them better than the first one. He still spends much more time in Swedish politics and infrastructure than I'm interested in, but the underlying story is very good, I thought.
Posts: 459 | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
@Utahute72: I've read all three of Larsson's books. They do get too heavily into Swedish politics. I skipped over some of those parts. And the whole first section of the second book could have been eliminated. But overall, I enjoyed reading them.
@Meredith: Agreed, "Shades of Milk and Honey" is fantastic. I look forward to reading the sequel.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jennifer, I agree with the comment on the first part of the second book. That whole section could have been a great start for a fourth book, but just looked out of place in that book.
Posts: 459 | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've recently finished DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth. INSURGENT, the sequel, comes out in May. DIVERGENT was her first book. It's a YA distopia set in a futuristic collapsed City of Chicago (my hometown) so I enjoyed many of the geographical references. It's very, very good. Hard to believe it's this author's first book. I'm curious to read the sequel as it's sometimes telling how much time/effort an author puts into a first versus a second in a series.
Kids and I are listening to Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan, the second in the newer Percy Jackson series. It's terrific. He's a great writer to study in terms of keeping the pace moving, embedding action in almost every scene even the non-fighting ones, giving characters very clear and unique backstories (using a lot of flashbacks, which is not my favorite device but it's fine and it's useful to see how it can be done effectively even if I won't choose to use it in my own fiction), etc.
Did I say yet that I also read WINTERLING, by Sarah Prineas, recently? It's a YA fantasy, very cool stuff. I like the way she invents her own worlds and puts really interesting characters, animals, creatures, what have you in them. I really enjoy her writing (The Magic Thief series is some of my all-time favorite books) so this was a win for me, too.
And thirding the rec on SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY. Excellent, Excellent book. GLAMOUR AND GLASS (or is it IN glass? I forget) comes out very soon. Excited!
Posts: 1911 | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
I missed my usual first of the month posting, so I'll do it now.
I ran across some inspiring books---nonfiction, all.
Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case, Debbie Nathan. You might recall the original book Sybil, or the TV movie miniseries with Sally Field---I read the book and saw the movie, way back. The story, as originally told, is false, and false in a way that damaged the treatment of mental illness and the criminal justice system. This book blows the lid off all that...and, furthermore, has people and places wander in and out of the story that just floored me when I reached the page they were on.
Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, Willard Sterne Randall. I often know something of these figures in history---I knew Ethan Allen as the man who captued Fort Ticonderoga, as well as a number of myths and legends (and the furniture business stuff)---but I had somehow missed that he had been a captive of the British after that, and wrote a narrative of the account. This was an enlightening book.
(Aside to that: I mentioned a written narrative by Ethan Allen above---after a couple of passes through the local bookstores, I ordered a copy of it online---which proved to be a print-on-demand copy of a 19th century reprint, a little blurry and blotched but still readable. I hadn't thought that things like this were being reprinted in this way...I must look for others.)
Coming up this month is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and anniversaries like this usually bring out a host of good books, new and reprint. This is no exception, and, since the subject has always fascinated me, I found several. I'll recommend Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From, Richard Davenport-Hines. It spends considerable time on the people on board, where they were coming from, and where they went after.
I'm about three-fourths through a rather unusual book: Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath, edited by George H. Nash. This was kind of Herbert Hoover's magnum opus: he worked on it extensively and prepared it for publication before his death in 1964. It covers just how, in Hoover's view, World War II was "botched"---before, during, and after. It's very dense reading, and I don't necessarily agree with Hoover's conclusions about what could and should have been done---but it's worthy of attention nonetheless.
I've still, of course, got piles of unread books and I'll be getting to some of them shortly...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"House of Leaves" keeps getting weirder and I have to turn the book in more and more different ways to read it properly. Very interesting though.
"Lud in the Mist" sounds VERY interesting, Doctor Bob...may have to check that out soon.
Posts: 2626 | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just finished Scalzi's Old Man's War. In many respects, it was a great novel. Good narrative voice, pacing, and enough ideas to make me think. On the negative side, it has an epic storyline put into 300 pages, so some of the characters are quite flat and the setting/action rushed.
About to start Low Town by Daniel Polansky
Posts: 475 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
I read through the last one way too fast for 1100 pages. But the writing was too good, had to keep reading to see what happened next.
Anyway, I'm reading "Vamparzzi" by Laura Resnick. Fourth in a light hearted UF series. Good writing also even though not quite on the same level as David Weber. Even though I must say that both writers educate their readers. "Fortress" was full of all types of sailing ship lessons. Previous books talked of muskets and rifles, why a rifle is a rifle etc. Resnick has had "classes" on the real Voodoo and New York city guard towers. Don't know yet what she will "teach" in this one except a thing or two about human nature.
Oh, I may have mention "Vamparazzi" before because I started it months ago when I bought it but I decided that it needed to wait its turn so I put it down. Now is its turn. Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Guess I'll post the things I read in the last two weeks:
バカとテストと召喚獣 by 井上 堅二 (Baka to Tesuto to Shyoukanjuu) Idiots, Tests and Summoned beasts by Inoue Kenji
This was a BLAST. Possibly my favorite light novel series besides Haruhi. It's the kind of idea that makes you want to kick yourself for not thinking of it.
Highschool is rough - BUT even more so if the classes are divided into grades ranging from A to F. To advance from a lower class to a higher one (and thus into a better classroom with luxurious furniture and snacks) you have to fight your way up with your summoned beast. The problem is that your summoned beast's strength equals your test score in a given subject - depending on the teacher who assists in the summoning.
A lighthearted fantasy novel about a noble who fell from grace and now carries a dormant God in her head. Lots of swashbuckling fun, solid writing but at times silly. Good read if you feel like having a thief-centric fantasy.
RECOMMENDED
Croak by Gina Damico
Loved this one. Lex, a former A student turns deliquent and is sent to her uncle Mort, where she learns to ply the trade of a Reaper. An awesomely delicious YA series that touches upon many subjects that YA in my opinion should - teeenage life can suck and yes, minors swear and drink sometimes.
posted
Bought SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY today. Finally remembered I could work with my Nook while waiting for my wife to finish selling her crafts online.
Started it-- easy reading-- but not sure when I will finish it. I am in the middle of another book and have a few others in line.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
@LDWriter: I have the next book in that series Glamour in Glass waiting on reserve for me at the library. I just have to find time to go pick it up.
I finished reading TIMELESS by Gail Carriger last night. It's the fifth and final book in her Parasol Protectorate series, which I described to my dad today as Victorian/romance/steampunk/fantasy. The series ended well, and I'm sad it's over. RECOMMENDED
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
NOT RECOMMENDED The last book I read was "The Lady of the Rivers" because my mom recommended it. I wasn't fond of it, especially because it was written in present tense, which was disconcerting since it took place in the 1400s. The author's purpose was probably to pull the reader into the tale, but it was just jolting to me. I thought at first it was going to include more about Joan of Arc, who was in the first chapter, but then it turned into a romance and then detailed the battle maneuverings during the War of the Roses. I wasn't impressed.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Right now I'm reading "BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME", a non-fiction true story about a murder in a small town in North Carolina during the height of the civil rights movement. I find it especially interesting because I moved to a small town in North Carolina very much like the town where this incident occurred, and I'm familiar with many of the other locations mentioned. It's given me great insight into the civil rights struggle in the South during the 60s. It reads like a novel and has kept me riveted. The style is very "homey" and relaxed, but full of facts, analysis, and southern charm. The author is excellent at portraying the people in the town, making them fully dimensional. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone interested in the subject, but also for anyone who enjoys human psychology. It poses some ethical, legal, and sociological questions that we all could benefit from trying to answer.
Posts: 95 | Registered: Mar 2012
| IP: Logged |
posted
I started "Tricks of The Trade" by laura anne gilman,
I read the one by Resnick too quickly which I seem to be doing a lot of lately.
This one is the third in a series by Gilman. The unique thing about this series is that it takes place in the same city, and time as a previous series. The Wren or Retriever series. Bonnie, the MC of the current series, was a very minor character in the first one. I'm surprised that Wren hasn't shown up in this one yet they live in the same building after all. Gilman says that Wren is suppose to guest in the next book.
I partly credit the Retriever-therefore Gilman- series for this explosion of Urban Fantasy. I have said that Butcher is the King of UF and Gilman is the Queen. But I modified that a bit. One Rachael Craine (?) might be the true Queen since her Storm Warden series was first. But Gilman must be a close second.
I would have to reread the first series again to be sure but I believe the second series is written differently. At least in the first book, my impression was that it was written for YA while the first series was written for adults.
This series is also more of a mystery style while the first one is more adventure so that might be the difference I am sensing.
If you like mysteries with magic and some personal emotional turmoil mixed in then you will like the second series. Yes, they use magic to solve cases but it's a tool like anything any mundane detective would use. There is danger even though not as much as usual.
I would recommend both series even though you can decide which one to read first or if you are adventurous read both at the same time. There are now three and soon will be four in the second and somewhere around eight to ten in the first- which is all there will be for the time being.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm wading though one called "The Unearthing" that I picked up through the Amazon kindle sight. It has been an interesting experience because while the guy has a pretty good premise he has some major flaws in the writing. Poor grammar, bad spelling, etc. really detract from what should be a good story. He also has some issue with the technical aspects he tries to explain, because he obviously has no clue what he's talking about so he gives bad information and gets off track trying. I probably won't even try to read the follow on novels.
Posts: 459 | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just finished reading the Riyria Revelations by Michael Sullivan. I really appreciated that he was one of the indie authors whose success brought him a standard publishing contract with Orbit. The story is classic fantasy without any gimmicks to try to artificially make it "new" or "original". It was great and I highly recommend it.
Posts: 46 | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've read several books lately, none of which I found noteworthy of recommending to the general audience here.
But... I am 100+ pages into Dan Simmon's Hyperion (for the first time) and am in absolute awe. I can't wait to keep reading more -- it's been awhile since a book has done that to me.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Usually I post on the first, but yesterday was, despite being kinda on vacation, pretty busy. (Today was pretty busy too, but it's calm right now.)
I read a few more things. Picked up some more "Titanic" literature, including a new copy of A Night to Remember. But the books that impressed me the most were:
Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell (revised and enlarged edition). This is a lengthy and well-documented exploration of how the world-view and actions of intellectuals nearly always does not correspond to the reality of the situation---often to great detriment. I'll recommend this, and anything else by Thomas Sowell, for all the would-be intellectuals among you out there.
Watergate: A Novel, Thomas Mallon. It is fiction, but impeccably researched fiction, maybe more so than some of the actual nonfiction books about the Watergate Affair. This may be dusty and forgotten history to a lot of you younger types, but it was practically my first exposure to politics-in-action, and my opinions have undergone several sets of revisions over the years as new facts come to light. But what I liked about this book was how it conveyed the humanity of many of the principal players, something a lot of the abovementioned nonfiction often fails to do.
I interrupted my reading on that to start reading a book I bought yesterday: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, Robert A. Caro. This is a long-awaited and long-promised fourth volume of a series on the life of Lyndon Johnson, with Volume One first printed back in 1982 and the other volumes only appearing at long intervals over the last thirty years. (I didn't even find out it was coming out yesterday until last week!) If you're familiar with previous volumes in this work, you know how good it is---there's a chapter in Volume One on what it's like to live without electricity that should be required reading for every would-be fantasy writer---and, so far, the read in this volume hasn't let me down, either. The volume covers Johnson's vice-presidency and part of his presidency, with a fifth volume now promised. (It was supposed to end with the fourth volume.)
Being on vacation, and about to leave on a week of travels, I should pick up more books, get more of a chance to read them, and have more of interest to report next month. But I'm not leaving yet.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thomas Sowell is one of the writers I want to read if I had more reading time. Of course I could put aside my fiction and spend my fifteen minutes a day on non-fiction or sacrifice some writing time.
I came back to add I finished Tricks. This time it didn't go quickly because I read too much of it, I did some of that but Tricks is easy to read and I believe it's shorter than normal.
Now I am reading "Wolfbane" By Patricia Briggs (Wonder why I keep having thoughts of Star wars when talking about her)
The book is the sequel to Briggs first published novel. I read that one a few months ago. I either misunderstood something in the forward of that book or she contradicts herself. I'm betting I misunderstood--or misremembered.
I thought she wrote "Wolfsbane" quite a few years after the first one was published because she kept thinking about it and/or her fans demanded it. She went back and revised her first one because she had learned so much by than she was surprised it was picked up at all. I read the revised reprint.
She considers "The Hob's Bargain" her first professional novel. Which I remembered from the other forward. In this forward she says her sells didn't really take off until "Dragon Bones" which I read. I'm not sure actually how close it came but she seems to feel that at one point she was almost let go because of low sells and the lost of the editor who was a big help with her. But she kept on. At that time I noticed that she didn't seem to like to do series. Two, at the moste three books was it about a certain character. But now she has two paranormal series and I wish she would do another Dragon book.
But her "adventures" as a writer would make an interesting study and maybe lesson for us non pro writers.
I almost said wanna be writers but we are writers already--published or not we write.
posted
I've read several Thomas Sowell books. I always find it takes a unique kind of intelligence to take a complex subject and make it understandable for the layperson. Sowell is skilled in that.
I have avoided the Caro tetralogy (soon to be 5 books). Robert, you said you avoid new fantasies series like George Railroad Martin until they finish. Caro keeps adding to his LBJ series ;-)
I love biographies -- last one I read was isaacson's bio on steve jobs. But I am completely reading sf for the time being.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Unfortunately, I got sucked into it before I developed that rule---in fact, it was one of the factors in my developing that rule---and one can pick up biographical details from other sources, in most cases. As I said, the first book was published in 1982. I might've avoided them altogether if I'd'a known the next volumes weren't coming right away...
I have been burned in other cases. There's a second half of a biography of Bing Crosby, that in the published first half said certain things would be told in the second half---but there's no report of it coming any time soon. (A publishing dispute, I gather, held it up, probably for good, but who can say for sure?) That recent best-selling Mark Twain autobiography was supposed to be in three volumes---where are the other two? And where's the second half of the Heinlein bio?
I always thought these Lyndon Johnson books would be there, sooner or later, possibly even cobbled together after the writer had departed the scene.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Reading, finally, "SIde Jobs" by Jim Butcher.
A Harry Dresden anthology. Some of the stories I've read before when they were published in other anthologies. However interesting enough the first story in Jobs is the very first Harry story. Written before he published and perhaps even wrote "Storm Front".
Sounded like it never was picked up by an editor, Jim says he knows why now but I didn't think it was that badly written. The story also is the first time he meets Murphy. And has a very interesting, creative ending for a certain Troll. I may go back and read it for critting instead of enjoyment and see if I can spot the problems.
Oh, I skimmed though that story before, it was published on the official Jim Butcher web site. Actually there's more than one but this is the complete one.
So since I will be skipping some stories I will be going through the book kinda fast. Not to mention the some stories are pretty short. But the last one in the book takes place after "Changes" and might be long.
And I was just at that official web site and found out two interesting things. Well, three Jim likes April Fools Day pranks,
But there will be a series of I believe short stories that take place in Dresden's universe but without him. I think those are the Bigfoot stories. Yeah evidently Harry has a Hairy client.
And Jim is doing a stream punk story or novel.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
I read a lot on vacation. Here's a list of some of the books I read, omitting some that are overtly (contemporary) political since we agreed not to get into discussions of that nature 'round here...but these ones impressed me in varying degrees. In no particular order, not even alphabetical:
The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo---and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation, James Donovan.
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, John M. Barry.
Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV, Warren Littlefield with T. R. Pearson.
The Barefoot Mailman, Theodore Pratt.
Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason, Christina Shelton.
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, David McCullough.
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, Andrew Nagorski.
Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, Joe Jackson.
My Happy Days in Hollywood: A Memoir, Garry Marshall with Lori Marshall.
I took some books with me, and bought more along the way. I bought others, still unread---and have since I got home---but I'll pass on them for the moment, except one:
I bought the new just-this-month reprint of Heinlein's The Star Beast, a fine book---but it maddens me that this edition, like every other edition since the first Scribners printings, omits a couple of pages smack-dab in the middle of the book!
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm finally reading Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It's the uncut version. I debated for a long time whether to read that or the originally published version. Ultimately, I chose what happened to be easy to get a hold of at the time.
This is one of those SF classics that I feel like I should have already read. I imagine being in a room full of SF enthusiasts, and when I admit that I haven't read this, everyone stops talking to stare at me.
Posts: 20 | Registered: May 2012
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ah! I thought the uncut version of Stranger in a Strange Land read a little smoother than the originally-released version...but I thought that it could also be I "grew" into the story---I was ten or eleven when I read it the first time, and, at that age, I just may not have "got" it...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Started "Ghost Of A Chance" by Simon R. Green. Second in a new series by him. If you don't mind blood, suspense and continual critical comments on humans in general Green is a great writer and story teller. You never know what is coming next.
I said started but it's really picked up where I left off. When I bought the book I started it but then decided it needed to go back in line and I would finish it when I got to it.
I finished "Side Jobs". I won't say much except that two of the stories are not from Dresden's POV--come to think of it make that three. Two are friends of Dresden's so we get to "see" him from their POV. Interesting Butcher had to come up with how each would think of Dresden. Nicely done and I think he was able to do that from both person's personality.,
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm reading and critiquing (too slowly) Matt Leo's new novel The Keystone, a unique 1930's sf space opera cum 1940's Hollywood cinema comedic love triangle.
Admittedly, I keep getting distracted--or have developed adult ADHD--by the following:
* Writing ten thousand words of my own this past month, continuing the 1400 words I submitted (to mixed review) for snapper's 2012 trigger challenge. I think I can be forgiven this diversion.
* Reading an omnibus of Alan Moore's 1st two graphic novels concerning The League of Extraordinary Gentleman after re-watching the critic-panned (but I found enjoyable) movie of the same title starring Sean Connery as H.Rider Haggard's aged adventurer Alan Quartermain (of She and King Solomon's Mines fame). The concept is intriguing: the "Gentleman" being special agents of the British government composed of the said Quartermain, Captain Nemo (Jules Verne's infamous genius pirate of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Robert Louis Stevenson's Edward Hyde/Dr. Jeckyl (whose story arc I found the most intriguing), Hawley Griffin (Well's The Invisible Man), and Mina Harker nee Murray (from Bram Stoker's Dracula). What makes these graphic novels such a treat is the dearth of allusions and references to both known and forgotten classics of fantastical literature of the last four centuries--many I knew only by vague rumor and some of which I was completely unaware but thrilled at their discovery (my internet searches were frequent and delightfully fruitful).
* The second volume of Moore's "League" has Well's The War of the Worlds martians as antagonists, and begins on the ruddy surface of Mars itself with, appropriately, its inhabitants at war. We meet both (Edgar Rice Burrough's) John Carter as well as Burrough's inspiration (Edward Lester Arnold's) Lt. Gulliver Jones. While I've read the original novels of both these warriors' adventures, in Moore's League they speak of an earlier earthborn martian hero (Michael Moorcock's) Michael Kane. I recall Moorcock once said of his trilogy of Burroughs Barsoom pastiches that he "wrote them all in one week" (I believe drugs and alcohol may have been involved), and the first, City of the Beast/Warriors of Mars in just one weekend. Decades ago, I collected the DAW Books' reissued works of Michael Moorcock, of which the Mars trilogy which has sat on my book shelves unread since then. This, plus the curiosity aroused by our own Foste's achievement of writing a novel in one week, triggered my ADHD to pull out and finally read Moorcock's oft-published first Mars book.
I will share that it read like it had been written in two days. The plot was predictable and I marveled at how the protagonist, a brilliant scientist cum swordsman, could be so oblivious to what was so obvious. The prose is plain and rushed, and I found little to recommend it other than to -1- show how far and fast he has progressed as an author, and -2- to demonstrate how a novel can be first published from the initial networking made by the author (an established editor of the time) and then subsequently reprinted time and time again solely (I need surmise, though this is solely my opinion) by the fame of the author. On a positive note, I would say if this was published, then there is hope (someday) for the rest of us. I have yet to decide to read the final two books in the trilogy.
* Being a long-time collector of sf/fantasy books for nearly half a century has had some advantages as the preceding demonstrates. By whim, I chose to again read, after a 40 year hiatus, historian and traveler L. Sprague de Camp's The Tritonian Ring, his nod to REHoward, albeit de Camp's Pusaden/Poisedonis stories are told more light-heartedly (which is, at times, disconcerting at the callousness in regard to killing and rape). I possess both the original 1953 hardcover which includes three additional Pusaden short stories and the George Barr illustrate 1977 Owlswick Press edition which includes only the title novel. I also discovered I have the 1968 paperback in my cllection as well...it seems in addition to ADHD I suffer either from OCD or precocious Alzheimer's. I surmise the former is the more likely (at present)for, on utilizing the internet, I discovered that there are in total seven Pusaden short stories in addition to the novel. It was both with delight and chagrin that I found the remaining four in scattered out-of-print books and periodicals I've acquired over the years (de Camp's collection The Spell of Seven, Lin Carter's Adult Fantasy Series collection The Young Magicians, WPaulGanley's Weirdbook 12, and Lin Carter's s&s collection Flashing Swords! #2). These are standard sword and sorcery fare yet with a touch of humor and a fascinating metahistorical immediate post-Ice Age geoscape derived from the legends and myths of mankind's earliest known civilizations. The setting is an Earth when Eurasia and Africa were one massive continent whose coastline once extended much further west than today and where small continents once dotted the Atlantic, their highest peaks now submerged or mere islands today. There are gods and demons and satyrs; swordsmen and magicians and amazons; politics and intrigues and love affairs, the latter difficult to separate from the former two.
Of the preceding, I'll recommend Alan Moore's League as the best of the past month's reading and it is also more readily acquirable.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
P.S. [2 JUN 2012]: Re: The Spell of Seven (Pyramid Books, 1965,1969). Am I demonstrating nostalgia or merely showing my age that this contains novelettes of some of my most favorite fantasy authors, worlds and protagonists? *Fritz Leiber's Bazaar of the Bizarre -- Lankhmar (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) *Clark Ashton Smith's The Dark Eidolon -- Zothoque *Lord Dunsany's The Hoard of the Gibbelins -- Dreamland *L Sprague De Camp's The Hungry Hercynian -- Pusaden *Michael Moorcok's Kings in Darkness -- The Young Kingdoms (Elric) *Jack Vance's Mazirian the Magician -- The Dying Earth *Robert E Howard's Shadows in Zamboula -- Hyborian Age (Conan) These are must reads, imho, for any lovers and would-be writers of fantasy.
[ June 02, 2012, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: History ]
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Funny thing a guy at work just mentioned The League of Extraordinary Gentleman last week. He thinks I should see it. You haven't been holding out on us on what you do for a living have you?
Sounds interesting and steampunkish.
But congrats on the writing that much in the novel and that short story. You better publish that short story some place...I want a copy of my very own. After one or two little tweaks.
I know some Butcher fans I would love to introduce your writing to.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh no, LD. I'm definitely the armchair adventurer with a tower of stacked books close to hand on the endtable and nightstand and dresser.
Mrs. Dr. Bob and I do love playing tourist but our "adventures" are far more Hobbit-like (Baggins not Took, excluding the famous two exceptions). We have a penchant for warm inns, comfortable beds, and good food and wine (in plentitude). My military days are long behind though I'd regale anyone who cared to listen (and who offered a cordial to wet my throat and loosen my tongue)--much like Lord Dunsany's famous Jorkens (and my stories may be similarly, um...emphasized). http://www.dunsany.net/jorkens.htm http://www.amazon.com/The-Collected-Jorkens-Vol-Remembers/dp/189238955X
I am a fan of Alam Moore's work (Watchmen, V is For Vendetta, From Hell) These were all also made into movies, which is pretty remarkable for any writer save, perhaps, Steven King. The movie of League was fun, but it is the graphic novels themselves and their multitude of common and obscure literary references that are truly superlative.
I have not yet started writing the second Kabbalist novel (though I do get frequent requests--how kind), nor returned for a final rewrite of the first (which I feel I'm near ready to do after three years of growing, albeit slowly, as a writer). The three shorter Kabbalist stories have yet to find a market (and only one is still in circulation). My vignette for snapper's WOTF 2012 Trigger challenge (a Kabbalist piece, although the protagonist is never named) I've just sent it to DSF on a lark, although I concur with a number of the commentors that it is more of a forschbise ("appetizer"). It is this work that I expanded to 10K this month. I estimate the Act 3 will add 3-5K more words; thus again creating a novelette of unsaleable length and possibly plot: this story is more a relationship-centered tale than a fantasy adventure (despite the inclusion of a broxa, a golem and an Assyrian demon.)
My Jack Vancian science fantasy novelette is also 2/3 complete. It is an exercise in world-building with spectacular (at least for me) natural and architectural settings--with human colonists now reverted to medievalism, native alien species, adventure and political intrigues, sun crystals and sky galleons, princes and merchants...well, you get the idea. I've sketched a world and city map and drawn one artistic rendering of the cliff-hanging capital city. I considered opening this up as a "shared world" to those who may be interested--though Extrinsic's late-lamented "Hatrack anthology" thread with its plethora of legalistic, editorial, financial, copyright, and time-demanding, etc. requirements has made me think twice. If I cannot find a simple way to make this work and not impinge my primary creative rights and control, I'll need let go of the shared world idea. Too bad. I think it would be fun.
You are correct that my stories are not avaiable, with the exception of two published flashpieces. I'm hoping to become a part-time doc in two years and in the interval I'll continue to "build content" and write when I can (though not as faithfully as yourself or, I surmise, most Hatrackers). With the help of my cousins (whose business is website creation), I'll put up an author's site and blog then and have all my stories, including the Kabbalist ones, available electronically and probably for free. Perhaps I'll follow my mother-in-law's gracious example, though require less reader commitment, with have a button to donate voluntarily to charity for those so inclined.
Ok, enough wool-gathering. Lunchtime is nearly over. As always, LD, thank you for your encouragement.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
P.S.S. on my recommendation above re: Lord Dunsany's The Hoard of the Gibbelins a near flash piece--written 100 years ago! (1912)--that I still find to be a masterpiece of fantasy, and inspires awe (and envy) in me as a would be writer. Read it here: http://www.sff.net/people/DoyleMacdonald/d_hoard.htm
posted
This month recommendation, delayed first by being busy on the first, followed by blackouts on the second:
Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln, Jason Emerson.
Now, some of you may have seen my rants 'round here on this subject, but one of the things that just sets me off is finding out that somebody's had some kind of success and is "the son of" somebody well-known. Literary success or otherwise. Both by the notion that they "made it" just by being "the son of," and that maybe I haven't because I'm not. (There are other reasons for my not making it, I freely admit that.)
But the obverse also fascinates me: how somebody who is the "son of" somebody manages to break through and establish themselves.
Robert T. Lincoln is likely the ultimate "son of." This is a person I've always wanted to know more of, but he almost always appears as a footnote to his father's story. The thesis of this book is, to quote a bit of it...
quote:...had Robert Lincoln not been the son of Abraham Lincoln, his achievments today would be studied by schoolchildren along with other captains of industry such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Pullman.
It's well-supported by the narrative and gathered facts, and tells an interesting story along the way. There was a lot of tragedy in Robert T. Lincoln's life---not just what you already know.
*****
Something comes to mind that's generally neglected here. This book is kinda pricey---these high-end university-press things tend to be that way. I can afford it, but if you can't, well, there are lots of good books for considerably less. (I don't know if it's available for Kindle or Nook, which I hope would be a lot cheaper...)
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Now reading MYTH-FORTUNES by Robert Aspirn and Jody Lynn Nye.
Latest in the M.Y.T.H. series. A lighthearted fantasy.
I was going to read the next in The Walker Papers ---talk about outstanding openings try a great last sentence in the pervious Walker book--- But I grabbed the MYTH one since I needed a smaller book then decided to keep reading it because I needed lighthearted one after the Green book. Of the his three current series it's his heaviest. So lighthearted is good right now.
Hopefully there's not too much in there and it all makes sense.
And I forgot to add they get involved in a pyramid scheme with real pyramids.
posted
Well, the recent theft of my Kindle and IPod along with my writer's laptop left me without reading material for my flight home from Los Angeles to Maine. Thus, I could neither continue reading the last few stories in Writers of the Future Vol #28 nor continue listening to an audiobook recording of E.R. Eddison's fantasy classic The Worm Ouroborous.
The airport newstand had little in their "science fiction" section that was not a paranormal-romance-urban fantasy-young adult genre with cloaked male figures or vixens in tight leather(and these were all mid-series volumes to boot). I finally selected a steampunk novel, because I've read so few, even though it was also the third volume by the author in his created world: Stephen Hunt's The Rise of the Iron Moon. The setting is an alternate steampunk Europe with familiar countries, peoples, and mythologies despite the different names. In the Kingdom of Jackals (a pseudo-England) five centuries after a mercantile revolt that topples and imprisons the monarchy, a young royal has about of insanity, kills one of her jailors, and escapes the Royal Breeding House prison with the help of a strange lad. The boy has come to warn and help save the Earth from the Army of Shadows that threatens to make the Earth a wasteland and its people slaves or food. There is earth magic, living metal men, political intrigue, and worlds war (plural intended).
What I like about the book was the intimations of old classics (a strange mix of Dumas, and Verne, Wells, Lovecraft, and Burroughs) as well as some intriguing characters and new fantasy concepts (I surmise developed in his earlier two books) with old familiar ones (Druidic, Celtic).
It was an entertaining if not fantastic read (I'd give it 3.5 stars out of five), the ending full of action but I felt some of the major characters reverted to archetypes and thus lost their human relatability. Somewhat inevitable for this tale that mixes myth and steampunk science (a delightful mix, btw). However, the story is full of many wonders and distinct characters (even the mechanical ones) that I found very intriguing, and each of the plethora of characters do complete their story arcs.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
DR. Bob sounds interesting even though I'm not sure if I have seen that series. But recently there are tons of steampunk. I bought the second in one series today and thought about buying an anthology of 30 steampunk stories.
But I am reading, finally, the next C.E. Murphy Walker Papers. Been waiting for it-more so then usual-since I read the last line in the pervious book. Talk about great first lines this one would in the running for great last lines.
The books is "Raven Calls" and the series seems to be taking a sudden turn. Well, it did that last book, but this is even more so. One thing though the opening is great but something seems subdued almost like someone else wrote it. Hopefully what I am feeling doesn't mean it's the last one.
Murphy is one of two writers whose storytelling ability I want. There just something special there.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I surmise the former is the more likely (at present)for, on utilizing the internet, I discovered that there are in total seven Pusaden short stories in addition to the novel. It was both with delight and chagrin that I found the remaining four in scattered out-of-print books and periodicals I've acquired over the years (de Camp's collection The Spell of Seven, Lin Carter's Adult Fantasy Series collection The Young Magicians, WPaulGanley's Weirdbook 12, and Lin Carter's s&s collection Flashing Swords! #2). These are standard sword and sorcery fare yet with a touch of humor and a fascinating metahistorical immediate post-Ice Age geoscape derived from the legends and myths of mankind's earliest known civilizations. The setting is an Earth when Eurasia and Africa were one massive continent whose coastline once extended much further west than today and where small continents once dotted the Atlantic, their highest peaks now submerged or mere islands today. There are gods and demons and satyrs; swordsmen and magicians and amazons; politics and intrigues and love affairs, the latter difficult to separate from the former two.
