I promptly sent the link to the education specialist at the dinosaur and mineral museum at the college. Many thanks for sharing this.
Toby’s Room - WWI fictional story based on real traumas British soldiers experienced during WWI. Eleanor’s twin brother is killed during WWI except his body is never found. Kit Neville, a soldier who was with her brother is not replying to her letters and won’t tell the truth when probed about what occurred. Elenor has secrets of her own.
Finished two books. The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson. This non-fiction bestseller covers two overlapping Chicago-based events from the late nineteenth century. The first being the World’s Fair, the second being a slew of murders committed by the infamous Herman Webster Mudgett. Larson proved to be a talented writer, and I was hooked with the serial killer half of his book. But his World’s Fair chapters were stuffed with project details, and sometimes it felt like a chore to get through them. Rating: 3 stars Dark Crusade, Karl Edward Wagner. This was my third Kane novel from Wagner. The other other two — both great sword & sorcery yarns, if you’re into that sort of thing — were Bloodstone and Darkness Weaves. This novel, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly as satisfying as either of those. One reason for that is that it’s short on the bizarre, Lovecraftian fantasy elements which help give Kane’s stories their mystical and otherworldly flavor. Another reason is Wagner’s character work in this book, outside of Kane, was less compelling than usual. Rating: 2.5 stars
I'm on the last book of the Babel series, The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft. I have thoughts, but I'm waiting to finish the book before I go too far into them.
Pardon my double post, but I finished The Fall of Babel, and immediately started The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. It's usually my soft spot to read WWII fiction, but something about this opening has made me feel like I might not like this one. I'm going to keep going, of course, because I always feel rude not finishing a book I've gone past the first page in.
For me it is more a case that, that author didn't do their job where I am concerned. Maybe I am not the demographic the author is going for, but the authors job is to hook the reader in a way that makes them want to know something, so they keep reading.
Thanks for this. Just finished the first book - excellent spy/action stuff with a ton of tradecraft. Now I have seven more books on my reading list (all available on Kindle Unlimited).
Finished three books. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton. (3 stars) The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker. (4 stars) John Quincy Adams, Robert V. Remini. (4 stars)
Too many for me to do a mega review. I'll be typing for an hour and I know those posts are incredibly boring. I'll just summarize. "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells (★★★★) A naked man terrorizes the British countryside. Thank God he's invisible! "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells (★★★★★) A scientist travels into the far future and sees the final state of Man. "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner (★★★ 1/2) Imagine "To Kill A Mockingbird," but everyone's loathsome and they each tell multiple stories at the same time. It probably takes a first read, a study of notes, and a re-reading to fully grasp. Deliberately complex and pretty confusing work. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac (★ 1/2) I never realized I hated beatniks so much. They're much worse than hippies. You're meant to be amazed at outlandish characters who all seem to have ADHD. Highly, highly over-rated book, even more than "Catcher in the Rye," I'd dare say. It's embarrassing to have it represent a generation. No story, no purpose. I'll give it a slight star just because a few paragraphs made me laugh, but only barely. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson (★★★★) This may be the most Jungian book ever written. A scientist releases his dark, hidden nature. It consumes him. "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath (★★★★★) A young woman's tenuous grip on her place in the world is lost. Best book I've read this year. Good lord, what a talented writer! I will speak of it below. "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe (★★★★) Mr. Crusoe is shipwrecked. He survives by his own wits. Probably more of a three star book, but I love, love books where someone gathers supplies from a wreck. re: "Swiss Family Robinson." Did you know there are two sequels? "Crusoe: Reloaded" and "Crusoe: Revolutions." (Just kidding, but there are two sequels. Cha-ching! Raking in that sequel cash.) "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (★★★★ 1/2) Scarlett vs. the Yankees. Yankees win. Scarlett endures. Rhett Butler is a boss! He sees through her villainy every step of the way. And she does border on being a villain. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson (★★★★★) Absolutely hilarious journey of Cheech and Chongish journalist-philosophers in Las Vegas. They are seeking the American Dream. (See, "On The Road?" This is how it is done with purpose.) "The Trial" by Franz Kafka (★★★ 1/2) A man becomes lost in a system which prosecutes citizens out of a sense of inertia. Not a finished book, so I don't understand why it's on "Greatest Books" lists. The idea is intriguing though. It jumps around a bit at the finish in an attempt to end. You can tell it's incomplete. "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank (★★★★★) I think we all know this story. A young girl dwells on her tiny world as she hides from the Nazis with her family. I can't subtract any stars from this. Its flaws don't matter. It is an honest chronicle of war and persecution as seen by a teenage girl. I hope karma comes for whatever creep turned the family in at the end. I'm just glad Anne gets to kiss that boy. At least she had that moment. "The Methods of Breaking Bad" by Jacob Blevins (★★ 1/2) An analysis of Breaking Bad by several authors. Some chapters were great, others were lacking. It was okay. --------------------------- "On the Road" is now the most over-rated book I've ever read. There are some undeserving Pulitzers in that lowly list and a couple other works that I don't care to mention. What a waste of time though. Avoid this book if at all possible. If you're forced to read it for a class, then I pity you. My previous over-rated champion was "Catcher in the Rye." I don't hate that book. It's . . . alright. It just doesn't deserve the attention it gets. Its strength is its dialog, but even that is somewhat hollow. Salinger is clearly ripping off banter from old movies, which is also why his characters are always lighting up and having languid smokes. It's imitative of a Hollywood form. I have a list of issues with it: The book is repetitive, you phony. Ten pages in and you've heard all it's going to say, you phony. You phony. Know-it-all, sarcastic anti-hero MC is truly unlikeable. No moments of redemption to link us to him. Non-events: characters just sit in restaurants, smoke and philosophize. No event happens with impact. The setting is static. Lacking scope. We need more than a couple days to feel this character. Book hints at mental illness yet completely avoids the obvious "cures" of the day. Stops right when it feels like the main point of the story should begin. If the true danger to the MC is his own self-destruction, shouldn't that be explored in text? Bland descriptions throughout, simply functional. Salinger's "Nine Stories" is a better book. He was more skilled with the short form. Catcher is basically a short story stretched into a novel. The plot: At the turn of the decade, a young adult is lost in the city. He roams about and sees how he's separate from the world. There's something sincerely wrong with him. His "outsiderness" is destructive, a lit fuse. Right? That's the plot of "The Bell Jar" too. This time the MC is a girl, a college-aged woman. Here's the thing though. Plath's dialog is at least as good as Salinger's. I would argue it's better. Every one of the points I listed above is addressed and corrected with expert style. All of them. There are scenes that are awkward, revolting, brutal, surprisingly amusing, etc. They hit full force. It's almost as if Salinger's editor told him to keep the story idea but fix these failings, and he did so while somehow becoming twice the writer. I have no idea why this book hasn't supplanted "Catcher in the Rye." It seems to only be famous in college classes. It's the same general theme of a young person's isolation in society. It's the same rambling journey in the beginning, but then it focuses on what Catcher was missing. I seek out a lot of famous, great works, and many of those are wonderful, but only a few, I feel, are technically perfect. This is one of them. I won't give away any plot points other than what already I've hinted at. The female MC has issues. So did the author. If you liked "Catcher in the Rye," but are curious what would happen if Caulfield were female and had more variation of thought within interesting events all of which lead to a meaningful destination, you'll probably be looking at a new favorite book. Edit: I just thought of another one! Crusoe 2: Cuh-ruise Control.
If you haven't seen it, Terry Gilliam directed Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson in a movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1998. It's not perfect, but it's one of the better book-to-film adaptations that I've seen, and given the source material that's a pretty difficult trick to pull. Depp nails HST, spent a lot of time with him studying up for the role and eventually hosted his funeral and the launching of his ashes out of a cannon, per the author's wishes. The intro:
I'm going to be sure to. I always try to read the book first and so now I'm set! I see what you're saying. That scene is exactly like the book.
Make Something Wonderful by Steve Jobs. A collection of parts of speeches, presentations and emails by Jobs from the very beginning. A fascinating look at pre-internet tech. Available (free download) in various formats here: https://stevejobsarchive.com/book/download
Talking of over rated I read Hells Angels by Hunter S Thompson, while i was doing the research for my immortals series, i was substantially underwhelmed on that theme i also read '10 years with the Hells Angels and why i turned against them' by Dave Atwell and came away from it sympathising with the Angels. I mean i know they're criminals and everything, but his justification of why he turned rat was weak, he basically did it for the money but didnt want to own that so he dresses it up in a lot of self agrandising bullshit...i don't have much time for criminals but i have even less for someone who sells out his friends. I came across an account of the same episode from the other side in Satan's Choice by Lorne Campbell and found myself agreeing when he called him 'Ratwell'...Campbell was a genuinely bad man who did a lot of bad things, but i found myself more impressed with him than with Atwell
I took an Anthro 101 class in uni where the prof went on about "participant observation," in which the researcher joins the group that they are studying. Think any of the White Messiah movies (Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, Dances with Smurfs I&II) but with the gaijin going home and writing a paper about it afterwards. Hell's Angels is a brilliant example of that, Thompson immersing himself in and later reporting on the biker subculture. Dunno, I liked it a lot, but just my 2yen.
Read this a while back. Looking back, I see I did not mention it on this thread. Went to Amsterdam and visited the Anne Frank house, where she was cooped up when she wrote the majority of this diary. That house is now a popular spot for tourists visiting Amsterdam. You even get a tour of inside the house but I only saw it outside. Besides that, Amsterdam is quite famous for their cheese and it’s delicious. Even After all these years they still don’t know who the arsehole was who turned her in.
Finished The Nightingale, and it was much better after a bit. Usually I'm not a fan of books that take a moment to get going, but this one ended up being good. Now I'm reading Villette by Charlotte Brontë. Very much her style, which seems obvious to say, but I feel like some authors aren't always so consistent with their storytelling style. If one has read Jane Eyre, then it's easy to figure out the vibe of Villette. Which isn't to say it's a bad thing, because I very much enjoy the sarcasm, and the self deprecating narrator is again, very Charlotte Brontë. It's a bit of fun.
I have been working through the Ian Douglas Star carrier series. The book length fits with my driving day, about 11 hours. I was surprised to find Hard science fiction in today's marketplace. That seemed to have passed away with Asimov and Clark. While it also falls into the military fiction genre, that is a vehicle for exploring the extrapolation of physics, biology, psychology, AI, and several other sciences. Much of the science presented is based on several current theories, like those of Miguel Alcubierre and his warp drive theory.
The thing with "hard" sf is it's gotten a lot harder to do (no pun) in the days since Clarke and Asimov were writing. We know so much more about what we can't do now than they did then. One series I recommend for near-term hard sf is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars), about the colonization and terraforming of Mars. The first book was written in 1993 but the edge of what we know is possible, what might be possible, and what we don't have a handle on yet is really blurry and hard to find. And, among others, he predicts the rise of the computer tablet, although he calls them "lecterns." No internet though, oddly enough. Anyway, worth a read.
The first two books of the Mars series were good. But the third book was a bit out there for my taste. One thing that stood out was his concept for a colony on mercury, which as I recall was a train that kept the colony in either the twilight region or on the dark side of the planet. It has been years so I don't recall which. What bothered me the most was the way he glossed over some of the tech, like the material scene that kept the rails from melting when on the day side. Contrast that with The Star carrier series and the discussion of using artificial singularities as both a drive and a power source. Along with discussion of the negative aspects of the technology. I would class Robinson as more speculative SciFi than hard Scifi. Probably the best Hard SciFi of the last decade was The Martian.
The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley for some serious reading Men Are Frogs by Saranna DeWylde for some rom-com fun Super Crooks graphic novel by Mark Millar. I enjoyed the netflix adaption of it but it felt really rushed. so I decided to just read the graphic novel to see what the series was missing out on. (This is now the 3rd time an animated adaption of a graphic novel has lead me to the source material because of how unfulfilling the series was) and the audio for Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I started reading it like a year or 2 ago. I enjoyed what i read so far...but i kind of fizzled out. I'm going on vacation so I figure, i'd listen to the rest of it on the plane
Children of Memory, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The first two books were pretty awesome so I have high hopes.
