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Post by berkley on Feb 25, 2019 18:25:22 GMT -5
I think the Circe of the Odyssey is a fascinating character - very different and much more complex than the popular conception of straightforwardly evil sorceress - but from the few things I've read about it, I'm not convinced that Miller's book does justice to this complexity.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 26, 2019 22:29:18 GMT -5
I think the Circe of the Odyssey is a fascinating character - very different and much more complex than the popular conception of straightforwardly evil sorceress - but from the few things I've read about it, I'm not convinced that Miller's book does justice to this complexity. It's not all that complex, no... it's a straight 'bad guy was really just misunderstood' version.
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Post by berkley on Feb 27, 2019 0:06:21 GMT -5
I think the Circe of the Odyssey is a fascinating character - very different and much more complex than the popular conception of straightforwardly evil sorceress - but from the few things I've read about it, I'm not convinced that Miller's book does justice to this complexity. It's not all that complex, no... it's a straight 'bad guy was really just misunderstood' version. And there's nothing wrong with that; but I feel like I'm looking for something more, when it come to this mythological figure, as I often do when it comes to modern re-imaginings of mythological subjects, whether in novels, comics, or movies: I had a similar feeling about Atwood's Penelopiad: I was looking for something that went a little deeper, rather than just the obvious reversal of good guys vs bad guys. Still, I might try Miller's book anyway, one of these days, if I find myself in the mood.
Didn't Henry Kuttner have a book called Circe that took the title character as the heroine? I must look for that one sometime, too.
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Post by brutalis on Feb 28, 2019 10:12:05 GMT -5
Made my way through 2 more art book collections. 1st up The Art of the Pulps: An Illustrated History by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse, Robert Weinberg, F. Paul Wilson, Tom Roberts and Michelle Nolan. Very full 240 pages of art and history about Pulp magazine covers with some information on writers as well. A lot of smaller pictures from 1/2 page to quarter page to smaller trying to accommodate as much art as possible within the pages allowed. Very gorgeous and entertaining and educational. Book has individual chapters to highlight Mysteries, Adventure, Romance, Westerns, Police/Detective, War, Aviation, Sports, Horror and Science Fiction. You can tell the folks doing this one have much love and admiration for the subject matter.
Next book is Out of the Forest: The Art of Paul Bonner. A major fantasy illustrator/painter from RPG's and novel covers. 176 pages with over 150 paintings shown in full page with extra pages of closeups to show highlights from the paintings as well as pencil/ink preliminary sketching. Very gorgeous and scrumptious looking book. Bonner doesn't go for the more sensual/erotic barbarian men/women and his main focus is on Orcs, Fantasy World building, LOTR style fantasy and exotic creatures with lush background's full of mountains, forests, hills and cloudy skies. Worth every penny you spend on this book. Includes Bonner writing about his start and continued learning and anecdotes of some of the art his done. I can stare at many of his paintings all day taking in the details and depth of backgrounds.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 28, 2019 15:48:33 GMT -5
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss. You could almost call this The League of Extraordinary Daughters. And I don't mean that in a derogatory manner. I'm a fiend for the kind of mash-up that we see in Moore's League, The Wold-Newton Universe, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, etc. Goss has made a good (though not flawless) start to her own literary mash-up. This one gives us Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Cat Moreau, Justine Frankenstein and Beatrice Rappaccini gathering together and beginning the work to unravel the mysteries of the Société des Alchimistes and their "fathers" involvement therein. But to begin, they have to solve a series of murders in Whitechapel with the aid of The Great Detective and his aide. There's a lot that can go wrong with this sort of thing. And the book isn't without some minor flaws. But overall it's a very fun romp and Goss gives each of the fairly large cast a distinct voice. For those of us with reasonable familiarity with Victorian literature (even if it comes from secondary sources) there a plenty of Easter eggs to be had. And while our group wrap up the immediate mystery there is plenty more for them to dig into. Definitely recommended, particularly for those who love their classic monsters with a twist.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 1, 2019 13:47:55 GMT -5
Citizen Tom Paine Howard Fast
While Fast's sketch of Paine is a little bit relentlessly depressing, he does a great job showing his role and importance in the founding of the nation, which is sometimes glossed over in favor of others that stayed around the political scene after the Revolution was won.
The writing loses it's way a bit after the Revolution, and a bit too much time is spent analyzing Paine's state of mind, which clearly is just the wildest of guesses, but overall and excellent piece.
I didn't find the politics at all overdone as some have written, while it's clear Fast is a socialist of some sort, it's doesn't get in the way of the story at all.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 6, 2019 23:19:48 GMT -5
Winter of the Witch By Katherine Arden
There are quite a few writers in the world that could learn from Katherine Arden. She managed to write a fantastic fairy tale trilogy around real events, and tell a complete story from beginning to end in a very reasonable (even quick) period of time. I'm 100% on board for whatever project she does next.
As for the book, our hero comes into her own, we learn much more about the Chyerti, some traditional, some created by the author, and the themes of new religion vs. old come to a head and get resolved.... one really couldn't ask for more in a trilogy.
I could have done for a bit more details in the final battle, myself, but I get it.. this wasn't a history book or military fiction, it was a fairy tale... in fairy tales, the battles are simply won or lost by some stroke of brilliance or so great folly.
Now, to go find a good collection of Russian folk tales...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2019 23:19:58 GMT -5
Just finished reading Frazetta Sketchbook Vol. II complied by J. David Spurlock and published by Vanguard Productions. I have a backlog of Frazetta books on my shelf, but picked up the most recently acquired one, as this was a new edition just released in January. There's an deluxe hardcover slipcase edition with additional plates available as well, but I got just the ordinary paperback edition (for $40 less). Spurlock offers a lot of insightful commentary in his contribution to the book and does a good job of including comments from various associates and coworkers of Frank when examining the pieces. The chapters are organized thematically rather than chronologically, and some have more commentary than others. Of particular interest to me were the chapters on Frazetta's Tolkien works, the chapter on Fire and Ice with long recollections from Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway about the experience, and the Death Dealer chapter. Other chapters include the expected, a chapter on Tarzan, one on Conan, one on his commercial and movie work, etc. plus a chapter of life drawings Frank did in the 50s and a chapter of personal work. My favorite chapter though, is the one on Came the Dawn, the never published and unfinished reworking of Wally Wood's story from Shock Suspense Stories #9 that Frank was doing for the Picto-Fiction magazine line, but EC ended the line before Frank completed the work. Rather than taking the pay from Gaines and surrendering the art, Frank kept the art and most of it was only seen by friends and associates of Frazetta. Several pages of it are published here for the first time along some that have seen print before. I don't have access to my scanner right now, but I did find this one image from that chapter in a blog to showcase what it looked like... The Conan chapter also mentioned that Frank was influence by Wally Wood and Kelly Freas Conan illustrations that pre-dated his own work on the character If I knew they had done Conan illustrations, I had forgotten, so I had to spend a little time and do some google fu to find examples of their work. All in all, I really liked this particular Frazetta book as it brought something new to the table for me, and included a lot of never before published preliminary works to some of the more iconic Frazetta images we are all familiar with. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 8, 2019 23:17:58 GMT -5
Witness to Myself (Hard Case Crime #19) by Seymour Shubin
I'm finding that the Hard Case Crime series are not always hard case crime novels... a decent percentage are novels that are of a more general mystery/thriller type category by writers who have done noir in the past.
This is one of those... mostly its a character sketch of Alan Benning, a lawyer and all around good guy that seems to be good because of guilt he has over an incident that happened when he was 15 where he may or may not have killed a girl.
It's pretty good as a character study, and Alan and his cousin (the narrator) are both interesting, but the actual plot leaves alot to be desired. While I was happy the author avoided a couple cringe-worthy twists that presented themselves, it was TOO straight to the end... nothing really happens.
There was a few things that seemed off as well (besides some really poor editing)... the book seems to be set in the current time (2006) but no one has a cell phone. Sure, smart phones weren't around yet, but cells were, and a lawyer and a crime writer would both have them... not a single character has one. Alan does use the internet though, so it's clearly meant to be current.
I also wonder at the fact that alot of Alan's guilt came from him considering himself a pedophile, when the crime he committed happened when he was 15 and his victim was 13... that seems like just trying to make it worst for effect... while I get that that could be part of him beating himself up with his guilt, the impression was that other considered it such as well, when the events showed that was clearly not the case (he was depicted as a hormonal teenage boy that just didn't know what to do with his urges and got scared).
While there were certainly interesting bits, it could have been SO much better.
Also of note, this is one of the rare books in the series that doesn't have a scantily clad woman on the cover (which is a good thing, because it would either have to be completely irrelevant to the plot or be the 13 year old).. sadly I couldn't find a good scan to post.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 10, 2019 5:45:09 GMT -5
City of Illusions by Ursula Le Guin When I saw this in a used bookstore early last year, I realized it was one of the few earlier books by Le Guin that I hadn't read. City of Illusions is her third published novel - it fits into her Hainish cycle, set on Earth in a distant post-cataclysmic future, and deals with its main character, a humanoid alien with amnesia (actually, he's totally mind-wiped) who is taken in by an extended family living in a forest somewhere east of the Mississippi River. Despite his condition, he still has his intelligence, and quickly (re)learns how to speak, read and function in general. After a few years, he gets restless and decides to travel west, to what is apparently the only city left on Earth, to find out who he is from the planet's mysterious, ostensible overlords - who may or may not be aliens themselves. Although it's not as good as her later work, her talent as a writer/storyteller were apparent from the get-go. So this is still well worth reading, just like pretty much everything else she wrote.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 11, 2019 12:53:55 GMT -5
Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick. This book is a series of essays by Guralnick about blues and early rock & roll artists. And as such it's a little hard to review. Less because of the format and more because the book is a product of its time. The book came out in 1971. So obviously Guralnick was interviewing the subjects well before that date. These were some of the first glimpses that the public would get into the likes of Skip James and Johnny Shines. The blues revival was over and the early days of rock & roll were long past. So Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had been somewhat forgotten and Jerry Lee Lewis was a country troubadour rather than a one of the madmen of early rock. At a point in time when one was at the mercy of the radio, the odd article in a national magazine and what you could find at the local record store, this book would have been a revelation. In the age of Spotify, Wikipedia, Allmusic, etc. it has to depend on Guralnick's writing and ones general interest. And Guralnick is a great writer. If he has a rival within blues writing it is probably only Robert Palmer. If he has a rival in early rock and its crossover with country it's...well it might not be anyone. Guralnick doesn't have the verbal ticks and self-reference that marks Nick Tosches work, for example. The problem here, at least for me, is that the portraits in this book probably aren't deep enough for my liking. I've already read more about Chess and Sun Records (and Guralnick has since written the definitive work about Sam Phillips). I've read more about Jerry Lee and can...and will...read more about Muddy and Wolf. That said, I'm not sure that I need that much more about Johnny Shines and I certainly don't need more about Robert Pete Williams. The stand-outs here, for me, were the looks at Skip James and Charlie Rich. James probably because of the interesting place he sits in blues history. Barely recorded in the 20s and 30s...completely out of music until his rediscovery with the Blues Revival. His influence has grown since then. Guralnick's finds Rich just a couple of years before his career exploded in the 70s with his work with producer Billy Sherrill. Guralnick gets as deep a look into what made Rich tick and the tortured path of his career as I've seen. Rich never really got over wanting to be a jazz musician and it shows in his attempts at rock & roll with Sun and Smash and his countrypolitan sound of the 70s. Guralnick gets as much as you can expect out of a reticent interview like Rich. There's a lot here to like. It just has to be what you're looking for. And this wasn't always what I was looking for. In that the fault lies in me..and not in Guralnick's writing or the tome itself.
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Post by berkley on Mar 12, 2019 19:27:57 GMT -5
First I heard of Guralnick, sounds interesting. I expect to be reading a fair number of pop-music-related books once my reading gets further into the 20th century, looks like this will be a writer I'll want to check out.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2019 19:49:18 GMT -5
Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick. This book is a series of essays by Guralnick about blues and early rock & roll artists. And as such it's a little hard to review. Less because of the format and more because the book is a product of its time. The book came out in 1971. So obviously Guralnick was interviewing the subjects well before that date. These were some of the first glimpses that the public would get into the likes of Skip James and Johnny Shines. The blues revival was over and the early days of rock & roll were long past. So Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had been somewhat forgotten and Jerry Lee Lewis was a country troubadour rather than a one of the madmen of early rock. At a point in time when one was at the mercy of the radio, the odd article in a national magazine and what you could find at the local record store, this book would have been a revelation. In the age of Spotify, Wikipedia, Allmusic, etc. it has to depend on Guralnick's writing and ones general interest. And Guralnick is a great writer. If he has a rival within blues writing it is probably only Robert Palmer. If he has a rival in early rock and its crossover with country it's...well it might not be anyone. Guralnick doesn't have the verbal ticks and self-reference that marks Nick Tosches work, for example. The problem here, at least for me, is that the portraits in this book probably aren't deep enough for my liking. I've already read more about Chess and Sun Records (and Guralnick has since written the definitive work about Sam Phillips). I've read more about Jerry Lee and can...and will...read more about Muddy and Wolf. That said, I'm not sure that I need that much more about Johnny Shines and I certainly don't need more about Robert Pete Williams. The stand-outs here, for me, were the looks at Skip James and Charlie Rich. James probably because of the interesting place he sits in blues history. Barely recorded in the 20s and 30s...completely out of music until his rediscovery with the Blues Revival. His influence has grown since then. Guralnick's finds Rich just a couple of years before his career exploded in the 70s with his work with producer Billy Sherrill. Guralnick gets as deep a look into what made Rich tick and the tortured path of his career as I've seen. Rich never really got over wanting to be a jazz musician and it shows in his attempts at rock & roll with Sun and Smash and his countrypolitan sound of the 70s. Guralnick gets as much as you can expect out of a reticent interview like Rich. There's a lot here to like. It just has to be what you're looking for. And this wasn't always what I was looking for. In that the fault lies in me..and not in Guralnick's writing or the tome itself. Guralnick revisited this with Martin Scorcese as part of the blues history documentary series for PBS entitled Martin Scorcese Presents the Blues. Guralnick was the lead writer for the docuseries, and the series was subtitled Feels Like Going Home after the book. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 13, 2019 23:38:49 GMT -5
Conan the Adventurer I think this is my favorite cover of the series... not that any of them are bad.. but this one is just awesome. Happily, the stories inside do it justice.. only one non-Howard one (and it's from an outline), and at that Drums of Tombalku is easily my favorite on de Camp's work. Sakaumbe is a great contrast to Conan, and Almaric makes a great sidekick. I would have like to have seen a bit more of the 'brother kings' thing explored, but, as is every situation when Conan gets to the top of a heap, it never lasts long. It's funny reading People of the Black Circle after all the various and sundry comic adaptations of things... Yasmina is really far more deep as created by Howard as some of the others that Marvel did better with (like Belit).
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Post by brutalis on Mar 14, 2019 7:58:30 GMT -5
Finished book 4 in the Soulwood Series from Faith Hunter: Circle of the Moon. The "earth witch" Nell Ingram is coming into her own realizing her power and self as a Psy-LED agent investigating paranormal crimes. Lot more focus on Nell this time around and less on her team as her team leader a were-leopard is caught up in blood summoning's that are also affecting the Vampires of the city. As the mystery unwinds, new history of boss man Rick Lafleur (former lover of Jane Yellowrock from another series) unfolds and his complicated story finally receives some closure with his gaining freedom from the blood tattoo cursing in his were veins allowing him control of his leopard aspect.
Very fast moving and intricate story line weaving lots of characters well (old and new) while taking you on dark journey's of the deeper paranormal/monster world. This series along with the Jane Yellowrock series has made Faith Hunter one of the strongest urban/paranormal/romance writers at the moment. Her books are all very creative and avoid the stereotypical "monster" mythology and create a moody, entertaining world to lose yourself in for the several hours of reading.
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