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Post by Duragizer on Feb 8, 2020 18:57:18 GMT -5
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky) I've set The Writings of Jonathan Swift aside for the meantime to concentrate on this. I finished Part 1; it is certainly an absorbing read. I've less than two weeks left in which to finish it before I have to return it to the library; hopefully I can do it, but I am a slow reader.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 9, 2020 8:01:40 GMT -5
The Vorkosgian saga is one of many SF series knew were popular but never heard enough details about to know whether it was something I'd want to try myself. Reading about it here has moved it a few places up on my list. Same! I was encouraged to actually pull the trigger and read it by a goodreads group that focuses on Hugo and Nebula award winners... they're doing a year long 'challenge' to read the series, so I thought having a ready made group to discuss with made it a good time Mountains of MourningLois Bujold McMaster (Vorkosigan Saga) This was a story I was looking forward to when I read the first book of the series... I was just expecting Cordelia to be the main character for it though... bringing the modernization of the galaxy to isolated Barrayar. Instead, 20 years later in universe, we get Miles doing exactly that. While it makes sense given his disability, and it certainly made it more poignant, but it does make me feel like all the fire that made Cordelia a great character in the first two books is made a bit hollow by the fact she hadn't affected any change. Sure, they are sure to point out that there are LOTS of little backwater villages, and it's implied that change is well in progress, but still, I can't help by think Cordelia should have been in on it. That said, this is a great story.. perfectly done with just the right measures of morality and story without getting preachy. While the resolution of the mystery was 100% predictable, that's not a bad thing, any twist would have been done for the sake of a twist, and not in service of the story. I also loved the ending... I wasn't really sold on Miles as a character in Warrior's Apprentice... he definitely moved up quite a bit in my estimation... he was able to be interesting without any supporting cast.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 11, 2020 22:40:44 GMT -5
The Vor Game Lois Bujold McMaster (Vorkosigan Saga)
This one seemed a bit of a gear shift for me... more Military/Naval Sci fi (ala David Weber) than the more space opera-y first couple books.
It's got all the elements, a bad posting, and event that catapaults you the character into a more important role, etc.
I enjoyed that aspect alot... this is definitely a GOOD space navy story (after the intro, which you can definitely tell was a short story first and added in later).. the main complaint I have it the same on that's been there in the other stories... too many coincidences, and the main character being made to look smart while others that should be smarter fail.
Those are pretty forgivable sins though.. there are plenty of books out there that try too hard to be mysterious or unpredictable at the expense of the plot, or goes out of the way to make a character fail so things are not too easy. This one, the story really develops in a clear, logical way that makes total sense and just begs to be read.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 13, 2020 15:05:55 GMT -5
The Secret History of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman's Empire by Blake BellFirst off, if you're you're looking for a history of Marvel Comics, this isn't what you're looking for. There are a number of other place you can go. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe comes to mind. And there are others. While you may find out some things about the comic book side of Martin Goodman's business enterprises here that's not the focus. This is, by and large, a look at Martin Goodman, his businesses and more particularly his pulp and magazine publishing (with a bit out paperbacks thrown in). And for that I'm thankful. If you combine books, interviews, articles, etc., I've read hundreds of works on the history of Marvel Comics over the years. But they usually mention Goodman's other publishing enterprises in passing, if at all. So there was a ton of new ground here. And there was carry-over. For those of us who looked at the indicia (that's those little boxes of small text usually on the bottom first page of a funnybook) you knew that the early Marvel Comics were technically published by various different entities. This book goes in to some detail on the way Goodman set up his publishing empire to minimize risk across titles. This was something a lot of us knew, but this is the best explanation I've seen so far. And most of us knew that Goodman published pulps and sweat mags and whatnot. But we didn't know a lot about them. This fills in some of those gaps. There are also a number of spot illustrations from those pulps and magazines that were done by artists that were mostly known as comic book creators. Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Dave Berg, Dan DeCarlo and a passel of others did illustrations and cartoons for Goodmans publications and number of them show up here. Also keep in mind that this is a coffee-table book. It's not as in-depth as some of us might like. But it's still something different and a good new look at one of the most important publishers in comics history.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 14, 2020 8:44:52 GMT -5
King's Ransom (87th Precinct #10) Ed McBain
Definitely my favorite so far.
The title, of course, is word play, as McBain seems to love. He must be a champ at bad dad jokes.
I'll grant that you have to be immersed in the series to think so... the men of the 87th take back stage to the players in the crime here.. they're barely in the story. That's OK though, because we get two great stories in one with the victim of the crime and the criminals.
I felt like it was a real change of pace, and was all the better for it. Not every book in the series could be like this... the cops of the 87th need time too, or they might as well not exist, but for the 10th book, it works.. great insight into both the victim's family and the criminals.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 18, 2020 11:33:49 GMT -5
The Million-Dollar Wound by Max Allan CollinsHeller is back in the last of the "Nitti Trilogy." The books opens with Heller recovering from wounds he suffered in WWII. Heller joined up along with pal Barney Ross (Ross really did join up when he was well past draft age) after a long night of drinking. He also finds he's to be called by a grand jury investigating Frank Nitti's role in labor racketeering in the film industry. This, of course, takes us to a flashback to the late 30s and Heller getting caught up in that very labor racketeering doing work for both Robert Montgomery against the the Outfit and Willie Bioff the mob backed manipulator of the Stagehands Union. We then flash back forward to the last days of Frank Nitti as Collins has Heller tie together a number of threads that run through the first three books. Along the way we see old friends like Barney Ross and Sally Ride. And we get to see Heller growing his detective agency. Overall this was a good conclusion to Nitti's era. There was one coincidence in it of Edgar Rice Burroughsian proportions. And it really wasn't necessary for the story to work. So that wasn't so great. But it was a good read and we saw some real growth in both Heller and Ross.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 19, 2020 1:00:08 GMT -5
Rage of Dragons Evan Winter
I had really high hopes for this book, and I admit it was a faced paced read that definitely made me want to finish it. Sadly, though, there's really nothing in it that makes it stand out from 100 other epic fantasy books.
The magic system is too similar to that in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and the society seems exactly like a tribal version Red Rising... where class differences are emphasized by actual physical differences.
More importantly, though, is that it seems clear early on that the main characters might well be the bad guys... and nothing in the story changes my opinion. That the main character is obsessive and nearly impossible to root for makes it worse.
Then there's the fact that the thing that makes it so my wife can't read the book happens, and that's strike three.
Extra points for having an actual conclusion, though... I don't feel bad about breaking the Rothfuss Rule (no reading current fantasy series until they're done!) as I did when I started it.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2020 0:39:20 GMT -5
Finished Mickey Spillane's The Death Dealers... it's the third Tiger Mann novel, but the first I have read. Not one of Spillane's better efforts (and I generally like Spillane). Tiger Mann is a second rate Bond riff without any of the style or charm, and is essentially a hard boiled PI type that a thin coat of spy has been painted on and the results are pretty much what you'd expect. There's a lot of lazy writing, coincidences and cliches throughout the pages, though there are sequences that are well done, but the are few and too far between. Spillane hammered out 4 of these Tiger Mann novels in a 2 year span at the height of the spy craze of the 60s and it just feels like a slap dash effort meant to cash in rather than something he was wanting to write. It was a quick read though... -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 20, 2020 11:30:22 GMT -5
Finished Mickey Spillane's The Death Dealers... it's the third Tiger Mann novel, but the first I have read. Not one of Spillane's better efforts (and I generally like Spillane). Tiger Mann is a second rate Bond riff without any of the style or charm, and is essentially a hard boiled PI type that a thin coat of spy has been painted on and the results are pretty much what you'd expect. There's a lot of lazy writing, coincidences and cliches throughout the pages, though there are sequences that are well done, but the are few and too far between. Spillane hammered out 4 of these Tiger Mann novels in a 2 year span at the height of the spy craze of the 60s and it just feels like a slap dash effort meant to cash in rather than something he was wanting to write. It was a quick read though... -M I don't think I've ever read any of the Tiger Mann books. I've read all of the Hammer books up to the point that Collins started dusting off shelved manuscripts. I love Spillane on Hammer but just have never moved beyond that.
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Post by Calamas on Feb 20, 2020 17:52:19 GMT -5
Finished Mickey Spillane's The Death Dealers... it's the third Tiger Mann novel, but the first I have read. Not one of Spillane's better efforts (and I generally like Spillane). Tiger Mann is a second rate Bond riff without any of the style or charm, and is essentially a hard boiled PI type that a thin coat of spy has been painted on and the results are pretty much what you'd expect. There's a lot of lazy writing, coincidences and cliches throughout the pages, though there are sequences that are well done, but the are few and too far between. Spillane hammered out 4 of these Tiger Mann novels in a 2 year span at the height of the spy craze of the 60s and it just feels like a slap dash effort meant to cash in rather than something he was wanting to write. It was a quick read though... -M If I remember right I really liked The By-Pass Control, the fourth Tiger Mann, but I was fairly young when I read these books and don’t know if I’d still feel the same way.
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Post by berkley on Feb 21, 2020 2:44:32 GMT -5
I read the first 4 or 5 Mike Hammer books for the first time just recently - the last year or two. I think I posted here already about one or more of them, but in a nutshell, I loved the energy and found the over-the-top-ness of Hammer as a character even more extreme and therefore entertaining than I had been expecting, but on the downside, I felt there was a kind of mean-spiritedness underlying the basic attitude of the narrative that sometimes came through.
It's always a bit unfair to judge books from another era by today's standards and it's quite probable that I myself wouldn't have felt this as strongly had I read them 30 or 40 years ago, but I'm also comparing Spillane to a few other hard-boiled writers from his time or earlier that I've been reading recently and the difference is noticeable. I'm not talking necessarily or only about things like misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc, mind you, though all that is a factor, but there's something more basic, but also more vague, less well-defined, and thus hard to describe. Anyway, I don't want to give the wrong impression: I very much enjoyed reading the Hammer books and will eventually finish the series, I'm sure.
The other writers I had in mind, BTW, were Hammett, Chandler, Carrol John Daly (an avowed influence on Spillane), Richard S. Prather (Shell Scott series), and Ross MacDonald (Lew Archer series). Probably everyone would acknowledge Chandler and Hammett as masters of the genre who were operating at a different level and had different goals with their writing to Spillane and therefore perhaps shouldn't really be used as comparisons or measuring sticks. And MacDonald, though not an originator or innovator like Hammett and Chandler, would be included in there too. Daly and Prather are I think more on Spillane's level in that they were writing for entertainment or just to make a living and didn't have many higher ambitions for their writing, as a craft or as a calling.
A couple other American hard-boiled detective writers of the 50s I intend to try soon: Stephen Marlowe (Chester Drum series) and Edgar S. Aarons (Sam Durell) - though the latter might turn out to be more spy/espionage. But that's OK because I'm starting to explore that genre as well, though mostly the British stuff.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 25, 2020 13:37:32 GMT -5
Snuff Fiction by Robert RankinIt's been a while since I've read any Rankin. I went on a tear reading his stuff some time back and then drifted in to other things. I decided to take up where I'd left off and...maybe it wasn't the best place. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the book. It's just not up with the best of Rankin's work. The book is premised on the lead-up to the turn of the millennium and the Millennium Bug. To that end we follow the life of Edwin, the biographer of The Doveston, who goes from being an urchin in post-war Brentford to being one of the movers and the shakers in the world as the millennium wans. Story is never Rankin's strongest suit, but it takes more of a back-seat here as we really get a series of events leading to the ending. Unfortunately what Rankin is best at, running gags, run characters, general wackiness, just never quite pans out here. It was nice to see the cameo's by Pooley and O'Malley and Archroy. And it was nice to see Norman Hartnell get some serious time. But that wasn't enough to make this more than middling Rankin. Probably worth it if you're a fan. But passable and very definitely not the place to start.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 29, 2020 17:26:47 GMT -5
Coming soon to this thread..... After the discussion in the other thread, I found a good ebay auction (26 books in the series, including the 1st 18) I'm excited!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 1, 2020 21:41:03 GMT -5
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
This was a really hard book to rate... I liked it, but it could have been so much better. The concept is fantastic hard sci-fi, which uses that unique situation to give us a few excellent looks at the psychological reprocussions of events, but there was just too much focus on the relationship between the main characters for my liking. There was nothing new or exciting about those relationship, and quite frankly at times it seemed a waste, especially a few particular items.
I feel like more time spent on the world at large, and less on the Lawton family, or even better, more about Mars, would have been most welcome.
Then there's a storytelling... for reasons unknown, the author decided to spoil his own story with a non-linear set up.. switching back from the 'present' (where the Spin had been essentially resolved) and the lead up to it. I'm not big on caring about that sort of thing, but in this case it was really vexing.
Not sure yet if I'll read the rest of the series... it seemed a pretty decent ending to me. I'm not sure I need to know more... I suppose it'd be nice to know what the motivation of the 'Hypotheticals' are, but I'm not sure I believe that'll be revealed, or that I"ll like the answer. We'll see.
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Post by berkley on Mar 1, 2020 23:22:17 GMT -5
Coming soon to this thread..... After the discussion in the other thread, I found a good ebay auction (26 books in the series, including the 1st 18) I'm excited! What other thread?
I've picked up 3 or 4 Perry Rhodan books over the last few years but haven't read any of them yet. I know RR here is a big fan.
Also have a copy of spin, but Robert Charles Wilson is one of many current SF writers I haven't tried yet. a lot of his books sound like they have interesting premises, though, so I'm looking forward to it.
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