Just Talking About Books
Quite a few things have been added to the list since last time. Let's review some of the highlights, in no particular order.
I knocked off some recent additions to some of my favorite series. I greatly enjoyed the Weber/Flint Honorverse collaboration Torch of Freedom, which is in the Wages of Sin trunk. The first main-line book in 5 years, Mission of Honor, is (supposedly) coming out this summer. Unfortunately the main-line books are following the Tom Clancy model - as the books get later in the series, there's more politics and supporting characters and less Honor and less Navy, resulting in slower moving books. MoH book might reverse that trend, but I'm not hopeful.
Terry Brooks came out with the first new Landover book in fourteen years. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, A Princess of Landover was bad enough to turn me off the series forever. Landover was always Brooks' weakest series, so that's not a disaster.
Speaking of sequels, I read The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, which although not a direct follow up to Oryx and Crake is set in the same world with some of the same characters. I actually liked it better than O&C. It's top notch science fiction (although Atwood wouldn't call it that, feh on elitism) and I highly recommend it.
I also read the next book in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, Victory of Eagles. I'm not sure the historical Napolean would have acted quite as stupidly as the real one does in this book after invading England, but on the hand the man did invade Russia, so maybe he would For me personally the series is starting to flag, mostly because the titular dragon is acting like a stupid adolescent. I have hopes that he'll grow out of it, and await the new one eagerly.
Jasper Fforde has a new series called Shades of Grey. In the world of Chromatacia, social standing is determined by how much color you can see. The protagonist of The Road to High Saffron can see more red than most, which gets him into a lot of trouble. If you like Fforde even the slightest bit you need to read this; it is arguably the finest thing he's ever written.
As far as great books go, I didn't make too much progress this time around. I did read Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, which is one of the most effective anti-war books I've ever read in that it's completely and utterly horrifying at every level.
I struggled through another long poem by Shakespeare. The Rape of Lucrece was better than Venus & Adonis, but not by much. Thankfully, this concludes the long form poems for the moment; next up is A Comedy of Errors, which I'm quite familiar with.
On the comics front, I read the award winning Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by messieurs Gaiman and Kubert. Bah. It had its moments, but it's no Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? For Batman or Gaiman enthusiasts only.
On a more positive front, the greatest Hellblazer writer of all time, Jame Delano, penned a one-shot called Hellblazer: Pandemonium that features Constantine getting dragged to Iraq to interrogate a djinn, who is in the service of Nergal. This leads to a poker game for souls; fortunately for Constantine he's the greatest bluffer of all time. Highly recommended - this is one the best Hellblazer volumes in years.
I read a bunch of history this time around. I got a pile of books from xhollydayx's uncle at Easter. One of these, One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw was a short and very enjoyable read; the contents are just as marked on the tin but despite the prosaic subject matter it is well worth your time. Witold Rybczynski has a talent for making the mundane extremely interesting.
Another similarly enjoyable book was also a refugee from a friend's slush pile. theferrett and zoethe let us take a pile from their discards. So far the most fun of these has been Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. The long subtitle is completely correct, although the bits about the making of the OED are by far the most interesting.
Another refuge from their house was So Sad to Fall In Battle by Kumiko Kakehashi. This is the Japanese book that served as source material for the Clint Eastwood film Letters from Iwo Jima. The movie was not all that great, but the source material succeeded in gaining and holding my interest with its examination of Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander at Iwo Jima. Recommended to those who enjoy military history.
I read an interesting history called The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty. Author G.J. Meyer spends a lot of time puncturing various myths about King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I in particular, and the Tudors in general. The author argues compellingly that QEI was concerned solely with her own survival, and that any benefit accrued to her subjects as accidental. And despite that she looks really good in comparison to her dear old dad, who was arguably the greatest tyrant in British history.
Finally, I read Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World. Sharon Waxman takes on the topic of repatriating artifacts from Western museums to their country of origin, be it Egypt, Turkey, Greece or elsewhere. Both sides are set out in detail without bias; it's a remarkably evenhanded book. Of particular interest is the story of the Lydian Hoard which was returned to Turkey, where it was promptly stolen from its new home.
The count stands at 40 books on the year so far. It'd be higher it wasn't for my recent infatuation with a video game that I won't mention by name lest you be sucked into it and never return.
I knocked off some recent additions to some of my favorite series. I greatly enjoyed the Weber/Flint Honorverse collaboration Torch of Freedom, which is in the Wages of Sin trunk. The first main-line book in 5 years, Mission of Honor, is (supposedly) coming out this summer. Unfortunately the main-line books are following the Tom Clancy model - as the books get later in the series, there's more politics and supporting characters and less Honor and less Navy, resulting in slower moving books. MoH book might reverse that trend, but I'm not hopeful.
Terry Brooks came out with the first new Landover book in fourteen years. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, A Princess of Landover was bad enough to turn me off the series forever. Landover was always Brooks' weakest series, so that's not a disaster.
Speaking of sequels, I read The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, which although not a direct follow up to Oryx and Crake is set in the same world with some of the same characters. I actually liked it better than O&C. It's top notch science fiction (although Atwood wouldn't call it that, feh on elitism) and I highly recommend it.
I also read the next book in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, Victory of Eagles. I'm not sure the historical Napolean would have acted quite as stupidly as the real one does in this book after invading England, but on the hand the man did invade Russia, so maybe he would For me personally the series is starting to flag, mostly because the titular dragon is acting like a stupid adolescent. I have hopes that he'll grow out of it, and await the new one eagerly.
Jasper Fforde has a new series called Shades of Grey. In the world of Chromatacia, social standing is determined by how much color you can see. The protagonist of The Road to High Saffron can see more red than most, which gets him into a lot of trouble. If you like Fforde even the slightest bit you need to read this; it is arguably the finest thing he's ever written.
As far as great books go, I didn't make too much progress this time around. I did read Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, which is one of the most effective anti-war books I've ever read in that it's completely and utterly horrifying at every level.
I struggled through another long poem by Shakespeare. The Rape of Lucrece was better than Venus & Adonis, but not by much. Thankfully, this concludes the long form poems for the moment; next up is A Comedy of Errors, which I'm quite familiar with.
On the comics front, I read the award winning Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by messieurs Gaiman and Kubert. Bah. It had its moments, but it's no Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? For Batman or Gaiman enthusiasts only.
On a more positive front, the greatest Hellblazer writer of all time, Jame Delano, penned a one-shot called Hellblazer: Pandemonium that features Constantine getting dragged to Iraq to interrogate a djinn, who is in the service of Nergal. This leads to a poker game for souls; fortunately for Constantine he's the greatest bluffer of all time. Highly recommended - this is one the best Hellblazer volumes in years.
I read a bunch of history this time around. I got a pile of books from xhollydayx's uncle at Easter. One of these, One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw was a short and very enjoyable read; the contents are just as marked on the tin but despite the prosaic subject matter it is well worth your time. Witold Rybczynski has a talent for making the mundane extremely interesting.
Another similarly enjoyable book was also a refugee from a friend's slush pile. theferrett and zoethe let us take a pile from their discards. So far the most fun of these has been Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. The long subtitle is completely correct, although the bits about the making of the OED are by far the most interesting.
Another refuge from their house was So Sad to Fall In Battle by Kumiko Kakehashi. This is the Japanese book that served as source material for the Clint Eastwood film Letters from Iwo Jima. The movie was not all that great, but the source material succeeded in gaining and holding my interest with its examination of Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander at Iwo Jima. Recommended to those who enjoy military history.
I read an interesting history called The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty. Author G.J. Meyer spends a lot of time puncturing various myths about King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I in particular, and the Tudors in general. The author argues compellingly that QEI was concerned solely with her own survival, and that any benefit accrued to her subjects as accidental. And despite that she looks really good in comparison to her dear old dad, who was arguably the greatest tyrant in British history.
Finally, I read Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World. Sharon Waxman takes on the topic of repatriating artifacts from Western museums to their country of origin, be it Egypt, Turkey, Greece or elsewhere. Both sides are set out in detail without bias; it's a remarkably evenhanded book. Of particular interest is the story of the Lydian Hoard which was returned to Turkey, where it was promptly stolen from its new home.
The count stands at 40 books on the year so far. It'd be higher it wasn't for my recent infatuation with a video game that I won't mention by name lest you be sucked into it and never return.