RBeffa's New Adventures in Time and Space 2016

A new year and new books to read.

My 2015 reading adventures can be found here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/185134

I think my 2016 reading will be similar to prior years but I am going to do it a little different. I'm going to very loosely follow the British and American Author and other challenges and join in there from time to time with books off my shelf that I want to read or re-read. I've wanted to revisit some favorite authors and the challenges will let me go after some like Thomas Hardy. The recent challenges have also given me some new names to explore and I plan to do that in 2016. What I also very much want to do, which was neglected severely last year, is work on some series - I have a long list of authors who I have read one or more books in a series and really want to continue with, and I really hope to make that a focus in 2016. I also would like to do some focused reads now and then where I pick a topic I'm interested in and read several books by the author or on a topic in a relatively short period of time. This is something I used to do all the time years ago but it has not been something I have done very often in recent years.

Possible theme reads for me include:

one revolving around Paris and peoples including Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast", but more

The 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 2016 with additional books about Hawaii and Japan and the Paciic War

Childhood favorites and some that could have been which might include some Anne of Green Gables stories and ?

WWII in Europe and the Pacific

For the American Author Challenge I'll probably dive in with:

May- Ivan Doig
July- John Steinbeck

For the British Author Challenge I may go for these:

March : Thomas Hardy
April : George Eliot
June : Joseph Conrad
July : H.G. Wells
August : Diana Wynne-Jones
December : WEST YORKSHIRE writers
Wildcard : Rumer Godden and George Orwell - I'll do both I think

So here we go ...

Nice to see you back again Ron

Welcome back!

Hey, Ron:).

Thanks Paul, Jim and Karen.

Happy New Year!

Welcome Back.

Thanks Roni and Matthew. I'll be keeping watch on your threads. Although I never seem to keep up with the busy threads, I always enjoy dropping in and lurking.

Have a wonderful bookfilled 2016, Ron.

>9 PaulCranswick: thank you Paul

This didn't start out as a New Year's Resolution, something I almost never think about, but reading this can't help but make me think ... and gain a resolution in the process. I should probably talk more on the strengths of the book but this will have to do.

1. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, finished January 4, 2016, 4 stars, borrowed from my daughter





Pollan picks up the sword and goes to battle against nutritionism. I'm not sure he wins this war but he leaves them bloodied.

Pollan is a persuasive journalist but not always convincing. For me the reason is simple. He tells us a lot of things, many of which are evident by common sense thinking, things we knew or our mothers knew, or our grandmothers, but which have been swept aside by not thinking of food as food but as nutrients. Some of these statements the author backs up and others seem to fall into the "we hold these truths to be self-evident" category. When that happens I think Pollan falls a little way (sometimes headfirst) into the trap of playing loose with how things correlate or not that he finds so many other theories to have fallen into. It may also be that he has covered that territory well in his other books. I'm willing to give him some benefit of the doubt here because I thought most of the information presented was well documented, but he does fail in places.

This book emphasizes using common sense and a healthy skepticism of nutritionism. I like to think that I have already embraced some of the strongest principles from the book - to eat simple foods - the less processed the better. I've long since downsized my meat eating, especially beef, so that it is frequently not the central part of a meal. I have long been an urban (well, suburban) gardener and have grown fruits and vegetables for roughly 30 years or so. There is a lot to pay attention to, but Pollan presents his case in a very readable fashion. There is good information here. Going forward I think I'll be a better eater. I'm both a grower and a cook, who loves having farmer's markets, and I realize I can do a lot better and I plan on it. This isn't a book of recipes - it is a book to get you to think about what you eat and why and how. There are a lot of takeaways from it. I've heard and read bits of Pollan before and I'm glad I read this one. Recommended for anyone who wants to live long and prosper.

The strength in the book comes in part in his documentation of how food is labeled and looked at since the 70's. Remember, if you are old enough, when you could buy imitation ice cream. Or imitation anything. That label went away and there is a reason for it. Almost all the "food" you buy now would be considered imitation or adulterated by common sense and government required labeling in the past. He is also working from strength when he rails against the science of nutrition and the fads of the day about what is good and what is bad and the many mistakes that have been made (for various reasons). The book is good reading on that account. The problem for me was that Pollan really goes overboard in condemning nutrition science. You can see why he is mad about it, but I don't think all nutrition science is bunk. I had other bothers also and one of the big ones to me is a clear anti-science bias.

There is an extensive reference list of his sources at the end of the book as well as resources and index.

My daughter bought this book when Pollan came to speak at her college, Cal Poly, in 2009. It proved to be a rather controversial event. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/california-agribusiness-pressures-... and http://www.newtimesslo.com/news/3411/controversy-erupts-over-michael-pollans-pol... and http://www.hearstranch.com/michael-pollan-speaks-cal-poly/ among others. Youtube has the eventual diluted forum that resulted.

>10 RBeffa: Sounds fantastic! I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a few years ago, and it really changed the way I eat as well.

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread, Ron! It has been nice, seeing you on AAC. I always enjoy your comments and hope to see you again this year.

>11 Cait86: Cait, I've expanded and revised my discussion/review above a little. Expanded on some of the strengths and bothers. Debated knocking off a half star but left it at 4 because I think it is an important book. Let's call it 3 1/2 - 4 stars.

>12 msf59: Hi Mark. I'll be diving in on some months but passing on other AAC months. I've read Tyler before and don't feel like I need to visit her again, although I do think there is a Tyler or two in the house I never read. I thought we still had Patchwork Planet but my wife may have donated it. We do have Ladder of Years, but that seems to be considered one of her lesser works so I'll probably pass.

>10 RBeffa: Hmm, I might have to pick that one up after all, keeping in mind the anti-science bias (arrrgh). I've been eating "clean(er)" for a few years now, but can always use a dose of motivation as it's easy to fall back into old habits. Like you, I've downsized meat eating and like to think I'm 90% vegetarian these days, trying to only buy and eat meat products that are ethically sourced. I've also only managed a garden once, though I have tons of seeds and a massive backyard...I'd love to turn at least half of it into a garden, but I haven't found a clear enough motivation (also I worry about failing to actually grow anything, but I do realize most of that will come with trial and error). Sounds like the Pollan book would be a strong reminder of those practices and principles, if read with a critical eye to avoid being sucked in by the "off" bits...!

>14 dk_phoenix: check it out from a library. The message of the book is pretty simple and the rather lengthy introduction gives you a capsule summary of everything. His mantra is eat food. not too much. mostly plants. Pollan isn't totally anti-science but he's ready and willing to trot out a lot of the failures of nutrition science since the beginning of it. It is valuable for his history of it, however biased it might be. But anyone who has been alive more than a few decades (I'm 62) has seen the back and forth things we've been told. eat this. don't eat that. ooops decades later. flip around, and so on. He's big on the blame finger and he gives a good education on things he perceives to be pretty wrong. It sounds like he enjoys a good steak too. but mostly plants. If you are 90% vegetarian you are more than there because you are probably not eating highly processed foods which is what he really rails against. foodlike stuff rather than actual food.

I may be mislabeling Pollan as anti-science myself, it was an impression I picked up. I think what he is really mad at is how science has been misused, and certain science thinks it has the answers when it clearly doesn't. He really rang true to me when he was talking about how people try to follow the nutrition guidelines we have been told are best and time and again those guidelines are clearly not the best. The book is important in giving one an extra impetus to take charge.

gardening is not hard - start simple. it does take an investment of time. Take a small area and plant a few tomatoes and squash. different things do better in different areas and soils. see what works for you. I've had no luck with certain veges over the years and so I don't spend my energy on them anymore. you'll discover surprises. I can grow chard so easily it is scary. it reseeds itself and I have an endless supply.

This third issue of Asimov's from 2015 again fails to wow me and to me is weaker overall than the January and February editions.

2. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 39, No. 3 (March 2015) edited by Sheila Williams, finished January 11, 2016, 2 stars





This issue contains 3 short stories, 3 poems, a novella and 2 novelettes as well as the usual variety of essays, articles and book reviews.

I begin to wonder, am I getting too picky as I get older, more demanding of a story? Maybe I'm just getting too old. The recent issues of Asimov's science fiction have really been underwhleming me, not just these 2015 stories. It seems I find one or two good stories and the rest fail for various reasons. I can't believe all the best stories have already been written. What I am beginning to think is that current trends in science fiction have moved quite away from what I want to read.

I'm not going to individually critique the stories, just throw out a few snarky comments.

Novellas
"Inhuman Garbage" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (this longer story I thought was the best in the issue but I didn't love it - it is a police procedural murder mystery type story set in the author's long running "retreival artist" future. It felt too long and a bit draggy, but is a reasonably good story.)

Novelettes
"Pareidolia" by Kathleen Bartholomew & Kage Baker (didn't like ... skimmed and DNF)
"Twelve and Tag" by Gregory Norman Bossert (trying to be edgy, it failed me. This is a long one, close to novella length)

Short Stories
"Tuesdays" by Suzanne Palmer (annoying constantly shifting POV laid on a blah story)
"Military Secrets" by Kit Reed (OK, and actually a rather affecting story about the children of soldiers who are MIA)
"Holding the Ghosts" by Gwendolyn Clare (this one was interesting and inventive)

Poetry
"Red Shift" by Barbara Duffey
"The Fates Rebel" by Ruth Berman
"Prince/Glass" by Jane Yolen

I read this in chunks over perhaps 7 weeks which is not a fair way to read a novel.

3. Shadows In Bronze by Lindsey Davis, finished January 13, 2016, 2 1/2 stars, acquired in 2015





This novel is a direct sequel to The Silver Pigs which I read early last year; it begins just after events in the prior novel. I would have read this sooner if I had realized how closely they were related, but Davis does a good job of bringing a new or returning reader up to speed. I really enjoyed 'Silver Pigs' and the beginning of 'Shadows in Bronze' was promising but it rather quickly became plodding. The snarky, slapstick, sometimes comic Falco is dialed up a notch or two. It was a bit too much for me this time around in a novel much longer than the tighter 'Silver Pigs'. There are some good parts in what amounts to a travelogue of parts of the roman empire, but this just simply did not dazzle me like the first novel. I do like the light romance in here, though again, not like the first book.

I had high hopes for this series but will be a little more reserved in enthusiasm now. I'll undoubtedly tackle another book in the series this year with fingers crossed.

Uh-oh...I read The Silver Pigs well over a decade ago (and got to hear Lindsey Davis speak at Classics conference once, that was fun!), so I guess if I want to read more in the series I'll have to go back to it before tackling this one. I guess the upside is that the first book is a fairly quick read, but it's a little disappointing to hear how this one became plodding after a while.

>18 dk_phoenix: I think the reaction to these books is very much an individual thing. No one seems to hate them, most readers seem to enjoy them, but as I gave a quick scan over reviews of later books in the series you see a big range in reactions with the frequent comment of liking a book, "but not the best Falco."

I've read a couple of Steven Saylor's Roman mysteries in the past and have picked up most of them the last few years in anticipation of revisiting the Gordinius series so I think when I return to Rome I may have a go at Saylor next time.

I'll confess to not paying attention to what David Bowie has been up to in recent years. Still, his death was rather striking because years ago I paid a lot of attention to him and considered him one of the rare chameleons who could move through the chaos of the music business through the decades and adapt. Very few can. "Space Oddity" is possibly my wife Melanie's favorite song of all time. Bowie's film work and music was always interesting. When Melanie and I flew off to Tahiti on March 6, 1982, I brought along a couple of books for beach reads because I am strange like that. Before we had even left the airport I was working on "The Man Who Fell To Earth". You can see the book on my lap in the photo with Bowie on the cover. I left the book behind in Bora Bora. Who Knows who may have read it after me.

>20 RBeffa: Wow.

Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov's, wrote on Facebook on Jan 8th, "A count of the year's submissions brings the 2015 total to around 7600. Published 70 stories in 2015."

Yikes. So less than 1 in a hundred stories gets selected to be published and the results I have been reading have been pretty disappointing. I still don't know whether the current editor's choice of good stories is wildly divergent than my tastes, or whether almost everything being written is dreck, or more likely some of both. I do know that I liked the stories being published by Sheila a decade ago when she took over as editor a lot more than the stories now. There are still some good stories in the issues but the overall effect does not impress me now, and more importantly doesn't make me want to read every issue like they once did. My casual browsing through the year (and prior years) of online publications has continued to also disappoint me. There is simply too much stuff - everyone thinks they should be a writer and the filters that used to control this (i.e. excellent editors and a limited number of venues in which to publish) seem to be broken. This is a sad state of affairs.

I'm jumping ahead to the final issue of Asimov's from 2015.

4. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 39, No. 12 (December 2015) edited by Sheila Williams, finished January 17, 2016, 3 1/2 stars





This issue contains 4 short stories, 4 poems, a novella and 2 novelettes as well as the usual variety of essays, articles and book reviews. I'm primarily going to comment only on things that I thought were above average and/or quite good in some way. As it happens this was a pretty strong issue and I liked it quite a bit primarily on the strength of two longer excellent stories and the fact that we had science fiction stories here, not a bunch of little emo things and middle school dramas. There is still some uneven storytelling here which interferes with good ideas, and another family drama/emo thing using a science fiction element to hang a story on, as well as a story that seems more fantasy than anything, and a story I disliked ...

Included fiction is:

Novella
"The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred" by Greg Egan

Novelettes
"Empty" by Robert Reed
"Of Apricots and Dying" by Amanda Forrest

Short Stories
"We Jump Down Into The Dark" by M. Bennardo
"Riding the Waves of Leviathan" by Garrett Ashley
"Bidding War" by Rich Larson
"Come-from-Always" by Julian Mortimer Smith

Poetry
"Slicing Time" by Bruce Boston
"Shatter" by Jane Yolen
"Circumstantial Evidence of Time Slippage" by Robert Frazier
"Magic in the Air" by Flip Wiltgren

Robert Reed's "Empty" is a long challenging story to read and understand, and I read parts of it two and three times trying to wrap my head around it, which is at least partly why this novelette felt more like a novella. I realized afterwards that what I was doing was what the primary character was doing with some data to analyze - going over it again and again, examining it frontwards backwards and from the middle, in order to understand what it was. The author gives us some info at the end which would affect ones reading if given at the beginning, so I think this was an intentional story element. It is a story set in the age of machine intelligence and really a hard, challenging piece of science fiction.

My favorite story in this and other recent issues of Asimov's is Greg Egan's novella, "The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred" which is set in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA's DAWN mission from a few years ago gave us discoveries about two proto-planets there, Ceres and Vesta, and Egan has woven us a fascinating tale of the future of exploration, colonization and mining there. We get contrasting societies and moral considerations against what amounts to a sort of civil war and discrimination and hate against certain colonists.

This is a double size issue of Asimov's. I had started this but found it so disappointing that I jumped ahead to the December issue (reviewed above) which was a lot better. Then I returned to this and finished it off.

5. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 39, Nos. 4 & 5 (April/May 2015) edited by Sheila Williams, finished January 18, 2016, 1 to 1 1/2 stars





This issue of the digest contains six short stories, two novellas and three novelettes as well as the usual variety of poems, essays and articles.

I dislike bashing an author's work so going forward I am going to primarily discuss stories I liked a lot or that I thought were remarkable in some way. I may also discuss themes of stories now and then. Robert Silverberg wrote a nice 'Reflections' column in which he reflects on his brief periods where he reviewed books. It resonated with me in several ways and he concluded he would rather praise good books and keep negative comments on others to himself. He found it difficult speaking his mind on the works of friends. He cites John Updike: "Praise and share, don't blame and ban." I'll try to keep my negative comments brief.

I was looking forward to this issue because it has a story by Allen Steele that is a follow-up to one I read this past December. The included story fiction is:

• The New Mother • novella by Eugene Fischer
• Day Job • novelette by Tom Purdom
• Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters—H'ard and Andy are Come to Town • novelette by Michael Swanwick and Gregory Frost
• Paul and His Son • shortstory by Joe M. McDermott
• The Marriage of the Sea • shortstory by Liz Williams
• What I Intend • shortstory by Robert Reed
• The Gun Between the Veryush and the Cloud Mothers • novelette by Anna Tambour
• Willing Flesh • shortstory by Jay O'Connell
• How to Walk Through Historic Graveyards in the Post-Digital Age • shortstory by Fran Wilde
• The Sentry • shortstory by Frank Smith
• The Children of Gal • novella by Allen Steele

Quite a few of the stories here were not my cup of tea. Out of eleven stories I liked exactly two. One of the stories I couldn't bear to read and others I skimmed. Simply put they aren't the sort of stories I want to read, in a science fiction magazine or elsewhere. There seems to be an overabundance of paranoia about near-future society in the stories. Several are also rather dull, to put it kindly.

The first story, the long novella "The New Mother" by Eugene Fischer I did not finish. It was not the only story I bailed on. That perhaps set me up for further fails, but this was the most disappointing digest from Asimov's that I can recall reading. Allen Steele's novella "The Children of Gal" also didn't engage me the way the best of his fiction usually does. I did like it but I think I was overwhelmed with the poor stories that preceded it.

I am reading a non-fiction book and decided to pause for some light entertainment. This is one of a group of ST novels I picked up at a library bag of books sale.

6. The Klingon Gambit by Robert E. Vardeman, finished January 22, 2016, 1 1/2 - 2 stars, acquired in 2015





This book is #3 in the series of Star Trek novels based on the original series. First published in 1981.

I have only read a few of these, but clearly this is not one of the better Star Trek novels. I was squirming within the first few pages. Since it was a short novel I soldiered on rather than tossing it. The story has some interest, and a feeling that matches some of the TV episodes of the original series. The actual writing of this, and the behavior of familiar crew members is rather uneven and bothersome (no one acts normal as part of the mystery of the story). For me, the ending of the story was unsatisfying. Not recommended.

I have a bad habit of picking up old novels and short story collections (especially when they are in interesting editions like this 30 pence New English Library paperback) and never getting around to reading them. I am going to work on that.

7. The Sky is Falling by Lester Del Rey, finished January 24, 2016, 2+ stars, acquired long ago





This is a short novel first pubished in a shorter form in 1954 as "No More Stars" in 'Beyond Fantasy Fiction' under the pseudonym of Charles Satterfield. My book dates to the expanded novel version from 1974. The story is very strange with an absurd premise but enjoyable nevertheless. Describing the plot would scare most people off. The book is labeled "science fiction" but it is really a fantasy, or at most a science fantasy book which is not the same as science fiction. The only things missing from the first page was eye of newt and "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." A curious person might wonder what the author was smoking as he wrote this.

I can't recommend this oldie except for folks that like slightly zany old-style magic, runes, spells, astrology, mandrake root men zombies and other really strange stuff. Generally magic anything is a turn-off for me, but this is so strange it kept me reading and mildly entertained. I wondered a few times if this was intended as a spoof/parody of something.

Tell me, how can you resist a line like this:

"They clambered up the loose rocks of the moraine, which were stacked at the angle of repose, and usually stable."

For the last 20+ years one of my favorite authors has been Kim Stanley Robinson. He primarily writes science fiction that has a literary quality to it - as well as a lot of science - not your pulp fiction. I'm reading his latest novel "Aurora" and looked at wikipedia to see what it says. He lives in Davis where I went to school and lived for a number of years. Wiki says "In 1978 Robinson moved to Davis, California to take a break from his graduate studies at UC San Diego. During this time he worked as a bookseller for Orpheus Books." 'Squee!' my brain says. I loved Orpheus books and was in that shop all the time in 1978. It had a great science fiction section including some nice used books. I've always remembered the bookseller in my memory since he had such an interesting store beyond the fiction. I even kept my well worn bookmark. Who woulda known ...

8. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, finished January 29, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars, library book





I like this novel a lot but it doesn't quite make the leap to really excellent, but I'll give it a "really good." I would expect this to be a serious contender for a Hugo nomination this year.

Kim Stanley Robinson writes science fiction with science in it. This is the story of a generation ship on a 170 year mission to an earth-like moon on a planet orbiting the star Tau Ceti. The moon is given the name "Aurora". We join the story with the ship about 11 years away from the destination. There have been a number of generations born (and died) as the voyage progressed. Very believable stuff in here. The story is primarily told by an artificial intelligence - the ship - after one of the engineers tutors it for many decades and near the end of her life encourages the ship to create a narrative of the journey.

There's a lot of science in here of all kinds - I think I actually learned a few things although much of it is way over my head. Beyond the hard science there is also the social science. The story is primarily about people, and how the current generation will deal with life and challenges to their starship, aided by the increasingly conscious artificial intelligence that is the ship ... and a sun and planetary system 12 light years away - and once there, how or if they can survive at their new home. Some interesting characters and interpersonal relationships to follow. Most of what we read is the ship telling us the story. It makes for an unusual viewpoint and I found I liked it. The story gets better as it goes, building upon all that has gone before. It surprised me. I wasn't happy at all with the ending but I'm not going to be spoilery to say why.

9. Analog 6 by various authors, edited by John W. Campbell Jr., finished February 2, 2016, 2+ stars, acquired long ago





I like the idea of this anthology. The editor John Campbell picks what he thinks were the best and/or most interesting stories from a (then) recent year of Analog Science Fiction Magazine. A Year's Best from one source. This series only lasted for 9 years and I only have two of them. We have 14 stories and a lengthy introductory essay by the editor. The stories are all from 1966, exactly 50 years ago, and was assembled and published in 1968.

• Introduction • essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Prototaph • shortstory by Keith Laumer
• Bookworm, Run! • novelette by Vernor Vinge
• The Easy Way Out • shortstory by G. Harry Stine as by Lee Correy
• Giant Meteor Impact • essay by J. E. Enever
• Early Warning • shortstory by Robin Scott Wilson
• Call Him Lord • novelette by Gordon R. Dickson
• CWACC Strikes Again • novelette by Harry Harrison as by Hank Dempsey
• Stranglehold • shortstory by Christopher Anvil
• The Message • novelette by Piers Anthony and Frances Hall
• Light of Other Days • shortstory by Bob Shaw
• Something To Say • novelette by John Berryman
• Letter from a Higher Critic • shortstory by Stewart Robb
• . . . Not a Prison Make • novelette by Joseph P. Martino
• 10:01 A.M. • shortstory by Alexander Malec

One of these stories is one of my favorite short stories of all time; "The Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw is something of a classic of science fiction - the development of slow glass which captures light from one side and very slowly passes it through to the other. Imagine if this were real and you could sit in your house and the view coming through your window is what was there many years before, or somewhere else and the window might show you a beach scene or the heart of a city - or it could show your life and family many years or decades before - wherever it was long ago. Sort of like us looking at the stars ... the stars are not making this light now - it was sent long ago. This is a great story even after all these years. I've read it a number of times since discovering it long ago.

Unfortunately the rest of the stories don't come close to this classic, and most are pretty uninteresting. There are some good ideas (and some lame ones) in some of the stories but frequently it seemed the storytelling didn't quite rise to the task. Several of these stories tried to be clever and cute - maybe they were in 1966, but now, not so much.

A few comments on the stories I thought were more memorable:

I thought Vernor Vinge's "Bookworm, Run!" had an interesting story idea with some bits of humor and cleverness mixed into the storytelling that even if a little lame by today's standards still managed to entertain. A chimp has been wirelessly connected to a supercomputer and once he figures out how to make some sense of everything, off he goes.

"Call Him Lord" by Gordon R. Dickson was perhaps the second best story in this collection. Don't want to spoil this powerful story but it is about the measure of a man who would be king who comes to earth. Sad story.

John Berryman's "Something To Say" was a bit long and very dated, but was an interesting and enjoyable first contact story with a lot of aeronautics.

Overall this falls into the lower end of an OK read. I think the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 60's as a backlash to the sorts of stories included here. Something new was needed.

10. Next Stop The Stars by Robert Silverberg, finished February 3, 2016, 2 1/2 - 3 stars, acquired in 2013





This was the first collection of Robert Silverberg's short stories to be published. The stories were written early in his career, from 1954-1957 and the author explains in the introduction to my 1977 edition that he originally wanted a collection of 10 stories from the period but was only able to choose five of them for the first publication in 1962. He's especially proud of the four shorter stories and I can see why because to me they are a step higher in quality than the usual stories of the period and certainly stand the test of time to still be enjoyable despite obviously being from another time. These originally appeared in various magazines of the era.

Slaves of the Star Giants • novella
The Songs of Summer • shortstory
Hopper • novelette
Blaze of Glory • shortstory
Warm Man • shortstory

I don't think any of these stories would knock your socks off, but I enjoyed each one. The Star Giants novella has a good opening sequence to start this small collection of stories. It is the only 'adventure' story here - the others are more thoughtful pieces. Two of the stories involve a man being transported far into a post-apocalyptic future - with no scientific (or any) explanation of how this transport happened. The stories were long on storytelling, very short on science. And that was fine.

11. Little Known Tales in California History by Alton Pryor, finished February 6, 2016, 2 1/2 stars





I'm a minor student of California history and looked forward to finding some interesting tales in this book. In his preface the author describes this book as 5 minute history lessons. There are 41 short chapters that cover a range of people, places and events early in California history. I knew about some of these, but just about all of them were at least mildly interesting. These were handy to read when one had a few minutes and didn't want to dive into a novel. Unfortunately, in fleshing out the stories I noted errors creeping in. The most egregious of these was a man catching a fever (and subsequently dying) during a trip through the Panama Canal in about 1863. (The Canal wasn't opened until 1914!) The stories also tend to be light on details and omit dates in places that I think would be helpful.

I read this over a couple of weeks. One of the stories I immediately recognized was about the real Indian girl behind the story of Scott O'Dell's "Island of the Blue Dolphins," although the author here didn't mention that. I think the value of a book like this is it can pique your interest to explore further on a particular topic.

Beyond my interest in WWII history I have wanted to learn more about Japan. I've had an interest in the country and history for quite a long time but have not read beyond 20th century history. So I tackled a non-fiction book, something I read a lot less of than I used to do. I've accumulated a number of Japan related books and will be reading further this year with both literature and history of the country, war and peoples.

12. The Japanese experience : a short history of Japan by W. G. Beasley, finished February 14, 2016, 2 1/2 - 3 stars





When I bought this book I didn't realize that it was widely used as a college textbook. The University of California Press publishes a wide variety of books. I was looking for what the title says: "a short history of Japan." I wanted to know something more than I get from art history books, or from the films of Kurosawa, Miyazaki and Ozu, something more than World War II in the Pacific.

As it turned out for me, the book did give a broad review but this really felt like a history book for those who already knew some (much?) of the history. What I need I think is more specialized works in areas that interest me. I did learn things and think this was a worthwhile read; it just didn't match what I was looking for. I suppose I like my history exciting but this wasn't - it was informative but not engaging. It is told in a rather dry style, somewhat non-linear, and broken up by topic and a few of those topics I ended up skimming a little as they did not interest me. I thought some parts were pretty informative so overall I'd give this an OK.

Starting on more Japanese related books, this is one I intended to read decades ago.

13. Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard, finished February 20, 2016, 4+ stars





When I saw the film based on this book in the late 1980's I decided it was a book I should read. All these years later I get to it. Even though it had been so long since I had seen the film I was surprised at the elements in the beginning of the book seeming mildly familiar. Perhaps I had read some of this book years ago or perhaps it is just that the film is very true to the book. I didn't think I had any strong recollections of the film, just general ones. This is a semi-autobiographical memoir that feels completely authentic. It is the story of an english boy living with his parents in the International Settlement of Shanghai that begins with the day Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Japanese taking over the international settlement and attacking/capturing British and American ships there. Young Jim is separated from his parents at the outbreak, and this is his story. Ballard writes in the foreward to the novel that this is for the most part an eyewitness account of his experiences from 1942-1945.

I think the most remarkable thing about this book is that from the very beginning the boy takes all the death that surrounds him very matter-of-factly. The story is sad, sometimes scary, and gives a view of things one does not commonly find elsewhere. There's an odd dichotomy here - for the most part the Japanese were the least of Jim's problems and he survived because of them - however, the Japanese overrunning Shanghai was what created all the problems in the first place. It was an unsettling read and disturbed my dreams for many nights. It is however an excellent book and I look forward to reading the follow-up book soon. I am going to read Ballard's autobiography next, since I want to learn more about his early life. I cannot fathom how an 11-14 year old child can come through an experience like he had.

Recommended.

14. Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography by J. G. Ballard, finished February 25, 2016, 4+ stars





This proved to be an excellent follow-up to Empire of the Sun, documenting many additional details of young Jim's childhood in Shanghai and later in life. Frankly I wish the book was longer. Here Ballard gives us additional details before the Japanese takeover and the initial 1937 invasion and to me it was a fascinating picture in addition to giving me a broader look at this crucial period in Asia. It was also interesting to see where Ballard had rearranged and omitted experiences to craft the semi-true story of Empire of the Sun. What was most surprising to me was how much the internment camp material was fictionalized. Ballard assigned to himself many things that had happened to people around him. The biggest change, he notes here, is that he decided to fictionalize being in a different camp from his parents. This was actually a friend of his at the camp in that situation. To me the other big change was that in real life Ballard and his family (he had a sister also in real life who is not in Empire of the Sun) were among the last of the families interred and it was a very simple and orderly process, unlike the descriptions in the book which were incredibly horrific. I also really was moved by the passages here where Ballard revisits China and the internment camp about 45 years after he left, and some of the ghosts were finally able to rest.

Equally interesting here was Ballard trying to find his way in post-war Britain, a place he knew only from books since he had been born and lived in China his entire life. Ballard gave us glimpses of the various events and forces around his life that eventually shaped his writing.

Ballard wrote this while he was dying of prostate cancer - I think of it as gift to readers and history. Absolutely recommended for anyone who is a fan of Empire of the Sun or other Ballard novels. I was quite affected by this book. Now I need to get to his novel "The Kindness of Women" before too long.

ETA: A thought that frequently came to me while reading this and 'Empire of the Sun' was how readable Ballard's prose was. I had read some of his short fiction decades ago and frequently disliked it. I have a collection of some of his short stories that I may have to unbury and give a read to later this year.

I've started a little early on Paul C's March British Author Challenge, reading Thomas Hardy's third collection of short stories 'Life's Little Ironies'. I read two before bedtime. I didn't remember reading this collection before but I recognized both stories so perhaps I did, or found them in another anthology collection across the years. These are excellent stories. I have a high regard for Hardy but have not read him in a very long time. I am reminded that I can increase my SAT English score immensely by reading him, and I didn't need reminding how the author specializes in tragedy and sad stories. The several Hardy novels I have read I regard as among the saddest tales I have come across - although my daughter insists that Wuthering Heights takes the highest honor over Hardy.

I intended to read the Mayor of Casterbridge first, but my copy has gone missing, boxed away somewhere I can't recall. I have read it before and think of it as almost my favorite, but I think Jude takes that honor. I do want to do a Hardy novel also this month. So I have four other Hardy's at close hand, some I've read before, some not. Woodlanders, Madding Crowd, Tess and Return of the Native. I've had Native since high school I think but never read it (that I recall) eeny meeny miney mo ...

15. Oh, the Thinks you can Think! by Dr. Seuss finished March 2, 2016, 2 1/2 stars





Today is Dr. Seuss's birthday, and to remind myself of my childhood, my children's childhood and the present, why not reach into the box of children's books and pull one out. I always thought that this was one of Seuss's cleverer titles, but less successful as whimsy. I don't think there was ever a Seuss I didn't like and this is no exception - there are many I enjoy more, but this is still full of fun.

My favorite Seuss when I was young was "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins." But this thinking stuff ...

"And Left! Think of Left!"

"And think about BEFT. Why is it that beft always go to the left? And why is it so many things go to the Right? You can think about THAT until Saturday night."

This Dr. Seuss is deep. I must study more.....

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The following book is for the March British Author Challenge, and was a great excuse to spend time with an author I admire.

16. Life's Little Ironies AKA 'Selected Short Stories' by Thomas Hardy, finished March 2, 2016, 4+ stars





Hardy is a remarkable writer, whether with novels or short stories. I have not read his poetry, but love his prose. Hardy stories are built on tragedy of one sort or another, and this collection seems to take extra delight in stabbing at the institution of marriage and English social classes. There are 8 short and longer stories here; the 8th one is a story of stories. Two of these seemed familiar to me while reading and I am rather certain I have read them elsewhere quite some time ago.

I'm not sure I could claim a favorite story in this collection, but perhaps the first, "An Imaginative Woman" which certainly started these stories off well.

17. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 40, No. 3 (March 2016) edited by Sheila Williams, finished March 4, 2016, 3 1/2 stars





I'm not going to talk (much) about the stories in this issue.

Recently arriving in my mailbox, this issue opens with an editorial by Sheila Williams titled "Age Diversity in Asimov's". She explains and defends her choices for stories in the magazine. I don't think this editorial would have appeared if she were not receiving complaints. I have been unhappy with the story selections in recent years - in a magazine I started reading casually about 35 years ago and more seriously in the early 80's when Shawna McCarthy became editor followed soon by Gardner Dozois. I became a subscriber in the early 80's and kept my subscription to the present - I have seen ups and downs, but my subscription will be ending this year. I still find stories in Asimov's that I like - I just find too many that I don't want to read in it. Overall the editorial made me a little sad. Three years ago I almost did not renew my subscription but decided to give it a few more years. I believe in the genre and supporting print magazines. I've never enjoyed Analog on a regular basis in modern times. I've relied on Asimov's and to a lesser extent on The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to find stories and writers, new and old, to entertain and delight me, sometimes with that "sense of wonder" and other times with interesting ideas and storytelling.

Of the stories in this issue, some were OK to pretty good. I liked Ted Kosmatka's opening novelette well enough but it left me unsatisfied at the end. A young woman, Caitlin, is a number cruncher who is hired to help with the making of a President. She looks for patterns in data. She's a miner. She's good at predicting things but notes places were things aren't what she would expect. But is this science fiction or something close? I really don't think so. It's just fiction. Some might call it slipstream fiction - a story with a touch of strange to it. An X File conspiracy type maybe. Who knows? I would gripe that this isn't a science fiction story and I'd prefer to read science fiction in the magazine. Sheila Williams would disagree with me because as she says in her editorial: "Stories can be set anywhere and anytime. They can be told via hard SF or social science SF, fantasy or horror, slipstream or magical realism."

I think this is one of those deaths by a thousand tiny cuts things. Asimov's has finally lost my interest.

I don't feel a need to critique the stories here. Most are pretty good (one is really good) and a couple flopped for me - which is to be expected as not every story works for everyone. Despite this month's editorial, this issue featured more of the types of stories I enjoy reading in Asimov's. The stories I liked best in this issue were "A Little Bigotry" by R. Neube, "New Earth" by James Gunn and "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" by Dale Bailey.

Robert Silverberg's column is almost always interesting. I'm going to miss that.

I don't know about Asimov's, but you can get a free limited subscription to Fantasy & Science Fiction which includes the columns of review of books and films. (and the cartoons)

>37 ronincats: I think each of the magazines makes some of their content available for free. I know Asimov's has had a few stories on their website available as well as the columns. I've got a backlog of F&SF (as well as some other) issues. I tend to read a story that catches my eye and then nibble on them for a while, frequently not getting very far. So, when I feel like a short story I have a good supply on hand.

Looking at my reading to date this year I see that I have read a lot of underwhelming things. Of my favorite reads so far this year, in rough order, I'd name them as:

Fiction
1 Empire of the Sun by J R Ballard
2 Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
3 Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy

Non-Fiction
1 "In Defense of Food" Michael Pollan
2 almost a tie, Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography by J. G. Ballard

I've got a mix of pulp fiction and some books I expect good things from on deck, so we'll see how the reading goes from here. I've also got a few oddballs to mix in.

Going to the Friends of the Library sale can be a bad thing. Only 2 or 3 books I said to myself. I failed. $14 for a bunch of great books and a small collection of interesting Star Trek magazines. My only excuse is that I could have been twice as bad.

>40 RBeffa: Great haul, there Ron. I read Mosley's Long Fall recently, and it was very good. I bought another in that series myself yesterday at a book sale. I went with only so much money in my pocket...it's the only way I can restrain myself.

>41 laytonwoman3rd: I was pleased to run across the first McGill by Mosley. I've wanted to try one of his series. I only have one other book by him.

I hadn't seen so many tempting books in a very long time. Everywhere I looked I was finding stuff I wanted. Eventually I made myself stop looking. My sister-in-law had more than me. We just had to stop.

The Star Trek magazines are a lot of fun. Very high quality. I should have taken more - I didn't realize I would enjoy them so much. They were a last minute impulse as my wife was picking out several quilting magazines.

Indeed a great haul! The Moon book is part of a great series, and I see you have a James Schmitz Telzey book--he's one of my favorite authors and those can be hard to find.

>42 RBeffa: my wife and I loved James Schmitz in our younger days and we have a number of his books. That is a little mint condition 40cent Ace from 1964. I couldn't resist.

My Ace is newer, cost $1.95. Love those old Aces!

My very favorite Schmitz is The Demon Breed, still excellent today.

>45 ronincats: That is the one we already have!

I've been meaning to re-read Demon Breed for a couple years now. One day ...

I haven't read the later books in Moon's series and i was hesitant to grab it but I'll just hold on to it and (re)start the series for a full read one day.

I want to do a group read of Demon Breed at some point, to introduce people to Schmitz and to a strong woman protagonist in early science fiction. Maybe this summer.

>47 ronincats: It would be like a fresh read for me. I read it when I was a teenager and the book was nearly new at the time. At the time I filed it in my mental "great book" file. Re-reading some of these I sometimes find myself a little let down, so I re-read personal classics with caution. I probably don't need to worry about this one.

Until recently our local library still had a hardback on their shelves (the library where I just made the book haul from). Then one day I saw it with the purged library books at the friends sale and I was sad. There are now exactly zero copies of Demon Breed in all the branches in our county and Napa county.

Nice haul! I have The Map of Time and Oath of Fealty also on the shelves, they both look so good!

>49 dk_phoenix: Faith, a year or two ago I re-read HG Wells excellent "The Time Machine" as well as the sequel by Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships. I think this set me up to be intrigued by the blurb on the back cover of Map of Time. I had heard of the book before but forgotten about it.

So many good books waiting to be read!

DNF Farley Mowat's "The Boat That Wouldn't Float." not rated March 13, 2016

This is a short novel that I have been nibbling away at for a full week and haven't got much more than a third through it. It isn't a bad book - it just isn't entertaining me so I'm going to cut my losses this afternoon and pass it on for another reader to find. I was reading this for the Canadian Author Challenge.

Started on March by Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer prize winner. Verrry interesting premise. Mr. March is the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

The following book is for the ANZAC Author Challenge, and was a great introduction to an author new to me.

18. March by Geraldine Brooks finished March 20, 2016, 4 stars





Upon starting this book I rather quickly realized that this was not a story to rush through. The author obviously went to great effort to write lovely prose, and I suspect it was at least partly to honor the sort of prose written by some soldiers in the American Civil War. I've read enough of it to realize that at times it can be quite purple, but more often just a little flowery. Brooks goes for flowery here. It might bother a few people but I found it rather gorgeous. I read this novel at half speed. I found myself constantly re-reading lines in various places. This was not for a lack of understanding, but rather to savor the vision created in words.

This is the story of Mr. March, and his year away at war and recovery. Mr. March is the father of the Little Women of Louisa May Alcott's novel. War stories frequently can be disturbing when revealing the horrors of war. The Civil War had fields of dead and dying at many engagements. It is disturbing in the extreme to think of all the young lives damaged and destroyed by the war. It is disturbing to think that the war even had to be fought. Are there such things as just wars? One needn't lose limbs to be damaged by wars.

There are many things to enjoy in this book as well as unpleasant things. There are some things in here that will bother some readers. I was a little bothered, but the storytelling trumped the weak points. Mr. March I found to be a man that was hard to like as the book progressed - that wasn't my initial impression, but it slowly turned that way. I didn't really dislike him but he's a bit of an odd bird and made some unfortunate choices. I might suggest that the reader review the author's afterword before reading the story to get a better understanding of Mr. March and the story. In the telling, the story shifts back and forth in time, from his days as a young man, and then to his trials during the Civil War. Back and forth. We see who he was, who he is, and who he becomes.

This novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2006.

I'm happy to see that you liked March as much as I did, Ron. Excellent writing.

>52 RBeffa: Thanks for the great and promising review of March, Ron. Promising because I am about to start it myself.

>53 scaifea: >54 PaulCranswick: Thanks for the notes Amber and Paul.

Paul, I hope you find the book rewarding like I did. I've had mixed feelings about our American Civil War for a long time. Even though there clearly seemed to be a righteous cause for the northern states, the author shines lights on the failings on both sides of the war. To the best of my knowledge I have no American ancestors who were slave owners - in fact my earliest American ancestor was indentured to pay for his passage from London to the colonies and soon found himself fighting in Washington's Army. But I did have ancestors fighting on both sides of the civil war and it has long had interest to me.

I wish more books were written as well as "March", Amber.

Have a wonderful Easter.

>56 PaulCranswick: Thank you Paul for the good wishes.

Finished up a book this morning.

19. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by by George R. R. Martin, and illustrated by Gary Gianni finished March 28, 2016, 4 stars





I keep telling myself that I should start reading the Game of Thrones series and I keep putting it off. I haven't kept up with the series on television but I really enjoyed parts of the early series. Here however, rather than a novel is a book with three good length novellas that are prequels, set about 100 years before the start of events that begins with the first Thrones novel. each novella was published before in various anthologies and they are collected here in sequence. This edition is very nicely illustrated with many pen and ink drawings throughout.

The three separate stories together are rather closely related and good to very good reading if one is in the mood for medieval type knight's tales with some interesting twists. We follow Ser Duncan The Tall and his squire Egg. I liked them a lot. The three stories are:

The Hedge Knight
The Sworn Sword
The Mystery Knight

The Hedge Knight was probably my favorite, but each story had something to offer. I'm rounding my rating up to 4 stars because of the illustrations. At the end of the book we are told there will be more stories. I look forward to them.

After reading about Martin's Hedge Knight for a week - read the three stories separately with breaks, I was rather at a loss as to what to read next. I had nibbled on several novels in between and after and nothing was clicking. So I told myself, with some trepidation to sit down with "The Demon Breed". This is a book I first read more than 40 years ago during what I consider my personal golden age of science fiction and fantasy reading. Some of these classics of mine do not hold up so well over time, but some do. I'm reading the 1968 SFBC first edition that my wife and I rescued recently from a library sale. I'm happy that the old checkout slips were left in the book even after it was given a digital barcode and magnetized for current systems. There's a story behind this book which I will briefly tell.



In my mid 20's I was at a work meeting - a large gathering in an auditorium and my future wife was sitting a couple seats away. We didn't know each other. As I recall she had an Andre Norton book in her hand and when we had a break or were leaving I asked her about it. The conversation went roughly, he: I really like Andre Norton stories - I've read her stuff for years. Daybreak 2250 is my favorite of hers. she: I love Daybreak 2250 I love Andre Norton. he: What others are your favorites ... I like Robert Silverberg a lot, Asimov, James Schmitz she: I LOVE James Schmitz, Witches of Karres, The Demon Breed ... and so, I knew instantly I had met "The One" Well, maybe not so instantly but almost. And here we are almost 38 years later.

I never liked the title "The Demon Breed" but I remember loving the book as a teenager - top ten of the time for me absolutely. I thought I had forgotten the story other than a very broad and faint memory but as I started reading a couple pages I was getting those it's deja vu all over again vibes. I remember it as I read. I bet I'm going to love it.

I bet you are going to love it as well. My library doesn't have ANY Schmitz--such a pity.

20. The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz, finished March 30, 2016, 4+ stars





James Schmitz is a science fiction author who seems to be getting forgotten, although to their credit Baen books has done an excellent job of bringing books back into print. I read several of Schmitz's stories in the late 60's and in the 70's and what I remember about them more than anything was that they featured strong female characters. They are not damsel in distress types, not decorations, they don't swoon or fall to pieces. What they are are strong characters who just happen to be women.

The Demon Breed was first published in John Campbell's Analog magazine in 1968 as "The Tuvela" a title I prefer because it really is what the story is about. I won't tell you what a Tuvela is. You need to read the book. You need to learn as the reader and if you don't figure it out you will be gently guided. They are all around us even if you don't notice them until they are needed. Nile Etland is the star of our story, a young female scientist who steps up to an unexpected challenge.

Schmitz has created a unique and very interesting world that the story is set in - interesting characters, interesting critters and very interesting plants. This is really science fiction and very much an adventure story, but there are some subtleties and interesting speculations about ecology, evolution and psychology laced into it to make this much more than a plain vanilla adventure. I really enjoyed this re-read and did not want to put the book down.

21. The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks, finished April 2, 2016, 3 1/2+ stars, acquired in 2014


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This historical fiction novel doesn't seem to get a lot of love. When I read the short intro at the front of the book it really piqued my interest and I decided to read this before I tackled Birdsong. When historical fiction is done well I really enjoy it and that was mostly the case here. I really felt I was visiting the times. The story itself as well as the characters were a mixed bag but I found myself very intrigued about it all. Faulks builds the story off of a small item in a French newspaper in the 1930's. A love affair is central to the story, but this is also a picture of the times and peoples in France in between the wars. The damage to the French people from the first world war is undeniable. I understand some of the criticisms of the book but the perceived faults didn't seem so noticeable (or perhaps bothersome is the better word) to me. I very much enjoyed this novel, somewhat to my surprise.

First quarter recap for 2016.

By the numbers I'm doing very well - 20 books which would have me on target for 80 for the year. My reading lately has slowed a bit with the advent of Spring, other interests and various real life things.

I've had a number of very good reads this first quarter, among them the two books by J.G. Ballard, Geraldine Brooks' "March," Schmitz's "The Demon Breed," George Martin's Novella collection, The Thomas Hardy short story collection, Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora," and Michael Pollan's book. I'd have a tough time picking a favorite. Quite a lot of stuff that I'd classify as filler too. I'm thinking I'm going to let my reading this year be even less planned than my original "Less planned" expectations. I'm going to work away at my ridiculous number of unread books. I'm also going to continue to pick stuff up at the library based on things I run across on LT or that randomly catch my attention. I've got a short list of books I plan to read from the library in coming months and I hope it doesn't grow too big. I really need to keep working on books off the shelf.

At the library while dropping some stuff off I came across "Night Train To Lisbon" by Pascal Mercier. I thought I'd sit down with it for a quick browse and got totally sucked in. I must have read for an hour+. I'm reading other stuff at the moment but I will certainly return to this book this month and continue reading.

Right now among other things I'm reading Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast."

Saturday my wife and i had the privilege to hear a talk by Congressman John Lewis of Georgia. The man is a kind, friendly soul which amazes me considering what he has gone through in life. Talk about living history. Sheesh. Here is a pic of my wife and I with him at the museum where the event took place.

>62 RBeffa: "Like". Great photo. I'm a John Lewis fan.

>63 jnwelch: Thanks Joe. My wife is a huge Bernie fan as well as John Lewis, both for many years. She wasn't thrilled with Lewis's recent comments about Bernie, but at least he backstepped. Lewis in person was really a treasure to see and hear. He's a friendly, kind person who is still out there fighting the fight. Very inspiring to listen to him, esp in the current political climate. When he gave his talk he unexpectedly began speaking perhaps 6 feet away from us, and was frequently just a foot or two away.

I have a few additional pics on my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ron.beffa

>64 RBeffa: Sounds great, Ron. I first learned a lot about him in his March graphic books, and then connected with him on Facebook. (FB is blocked at work, so I'll have to wait to see those pics). I'd love to meet him in person some time. I'm glad to hear that in person he's what we'd expect.

>61 RBeffa: That one is in one of my TBR piles...it sounds like I will enjoy it when it struggles to the top. I thought Birdsong was very powerful stuff.

How exciting to meet John Lewis...

Are you enjoying A Moveable Feast? I'm not Hemingway's biggest fan, but I do rather love that one.

>65 jnwelch: Joe, I popped the first John Lewis graphic novel into my basket at Amazon to lie in wait for some future order. It has great reviews.

And today I was at the de Young museum in San Francisco and thought of you when I ran across three works by Wayne Thiebaud grouped together - the iconic gumball machines with two others I was unfamiliar with. I took pix and if they came out OK you might get a visit in your thread - or here, with them.

>66 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, I had it in my mind that I had already read A Moveable Feast but upon reading it I am pretty positive I must only have browsed it in the past, at best. I remember when that Woody Allen movie was out, Midnight in Paris or something like that, the very first thing that popped into my mind and probably out of my mouth at Gertrude Stein's house was "A Moveable Feast!"

Hemingway sure dishes on Stein, and others. I'm enjoying it a lot. I don't know why I generally enjoy Hemingway so much - the muy macho stuff is not my thing, but something about the way he observes and writes about life just connects. I've had "A Paris Wife" by Paula McLain waiting to be read practically since it was out and then recently I picked up a book on Hadley and I figured after the setting of Faulks novel in France between the wars there was a great itch to dive into those books. Apparently A Paris Wife may make one hate Hemingway so I shall find out.

I have The Paris Wife hanging around waiting too. I have a feeling I already know a few of the unpleasant things the man was guilty of in his treatment of Hadley (and other women). I don't care for much of his fiction, and I'm sure I would not have liked the man, but his life is fascinating, and I've read several biographies.

>67 RBeffa: Excellent! Looking forward to seeing the Thiebauds.

22. March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell (Illustrator) finished April 6, 2016, 4 stars, library book





March: Book One is the first part of a memoir by Congressman John Lewis told in a graphic novel format. In other words, it is a very high quality black and white comic book that covers the early years of his life in some detail. What I really liked about this beyond the excellent illustrations was that in the talk I heard Lewis give several days ago he covered some parts of his life that are portrayed here, so it was a reinforcement of part of what I had heard and seeing the story come a bit more alive it enhanced my reading. This is a serious story about his early experiences and the civil rights movement and using non-violence to end segregation. He's been telling this story for a long time so it is well polished and very good. In person he tells this story extremely well.

I'll be reading part 2 soon.

23. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, finished April 7, 2016, 4 stars


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I read a lovely high-quality Book-of-the-Month Club edition of this book from 1964 that still had a flyer with discussion by Clifton Fadiman in it. His remarks heightened my appreciation of this interesting book. I hesitate to call it a novel - it is really a memoir of Hemingway's time in Paris in the 1920's - pieces of it told via 20 remembrances of people and places as well as his own struggles with writing and defining himself as a writer. He and his wife Hadley, and son, were quite poor. Hemingway started writing this in Cuba in 1957. Hemingway was writing this thirty years after the events and many of his thoughts do not treat his companions of the times well. Hemingway can flatter and praise some, but he reveals his true thoughts on others quite a lot. Altogether this was a fascinating look at life, love, racing, cafes, just all the places in Hemingway's rather small area of Paris that is just fun to read and drift back into history.

There are some lines throughout the book that just zing you when you come across them. Perhaps the most famous is the epigraph: If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Ernest Hemingway to a friend, 1950" The very last words of the book zinged me: "But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy." I think I got teary-eyed there.

>71 RBeffa: I like what Hemingway said in his 1960 preface "If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction."

Oh, yay for Hemingway! I love that one, myself. And I'm happy to see that you did, too.

>71 RBeffa: I loved Moveable Feast, Ron. What a time that was. Someone should make a movie based on it. Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" had some of its flavor.

>72 laytonwoman3rd: I like what Hemingway said in his 1960 preface "If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction."

I like that too Linda. I think Hem is suggesting/telling us to allow him a little literary license, don't you think?

>73 scaifea: >74 jnwelch: Yes it is a great memoir and chronicle of a time that didn't last long but was esp poignant to readers and writers. I was so sure I had read it before, perhaps 20 years ago, but I've concluded that I must only have sampled it. Yes Joe, "Midnight In Paris" has some of the flavor.

Have you heard the song that Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a few years ago about Hadley - "Mrs. Hemingway"? I seem to recall that she is a big lover of Moveable Feast.

My thoughts at the end of last year and the start of this year was to do a big Paris read that included "A Moveable Feast" and "The Paris Wife" as well as others set in the interwar period primarily and through WWII - it has certainly inspired me to go forward that way. I've been looking through the books I own and finding all sorts of inspiration and I picked up a book at the library yesterday that I have been looking forward to reading with these.

24. Hemingway in Love: His Own Story by A.E. Hotchner, finished April 10, 2016, 3 1/2 stars, published October 2015


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This book came out a few months ago and I've wanted to read it since I first saw a review of it. The inside jacket blurb says this, in part: "In characteristically pragmatic terms, Hemingway divulged to Hotchner the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic life in Paris and how he lost Hadley, the real part of each literary woman he'd later create and the great love he spent the rest of his life seeking."

Since I plan to read "The Paris Wife" soon, and having just finished "A Moveable Feast," the time now seems perfect to read this.

Half a century ago, the author, now 94 wrote one of the definitive books on Heningway, Papa Hemingway: A Memoir. Hotchner was a close personal friend of Hemingway, and he gives us here some material that the legal minds of the publisher cut from Papa - I guess you can dish on the dead but not the possibly living. There is also, per the author, material he held back out of kindness for Hemingway's 4th wife Mary, who was a close friend to him like Hem. He also includes a number of photos he took, and archival ones as appropriate, but the real story here is a story Hemingway himself could not put to paper so he told his friend, who has held the story until now.

The reveals were a result of a near death experience in 1954 when Hemingway nearly died in a plane crash. I do have some sympathy for Hemingway, but the guy was a total jerk falling for a femme fatale and expecting his wife Hadley to accept it. Hemingway does not present a convincing argument that he couldn't cut Pauline the huntress loose. Only Hemingway would know why not and perhaps even he would not know. We are all our own worst enemy at times.

Sad story. The plane crash however seems to have been pretty much the beginning of the end for Hemingway, and the stuff in this book (and elsewhere) about his rapid descent into paranoia in the last year of life is not nice. The author mentions something about why this may have been (the FBI and Hoover really were tapping his phones and had planted agents around him in all probability.) There's a lot of other stuff in here also. I think this book is mostly for Hemingway obsessives, although I 'enjoyed' it well enough.

ETA: I do think it an excellent companion to "A Moveable Feast" and would recommend it to anyone who liked that novel. There is quite a bit of background stuff in here to flesh out Hemingway's original sketches. On reflection after after a few days I think my comment about Hemingway obsessives is also a bit wrong. This is a good book for those interested in Hemingway and his works and life. It is not a good entry point - a familiarity with some of Hemingway's works and life is pretty much a requirement.

I've been trying to decide about this one. I'm certainly not a Hemingway obsessive, nor even a fan, but I always enjoy Hotch's writing, and one cannot ignore Hemingway on the American Literature scene. I think his life informs his fiction far more is the case with most authors. Sometime I think he lived his life as though it were fiction. I do have this nagging feeling that I have given his writing short shrift, and I keep trying to appreciate it.

>77 laytonwoman3rd: I really liked Hotchmer's Doris Day memoir. I should rate this 3 1/2 stars, and I also think it is an excellent companion to A Moveable Feast, so I'd grab it from the library if you came across it. There's a lot more to it than just the Hem-Pauline-Hadley triangle. There's a fair bit about the Paris people, but there is a lot in here that makes you think about who Hemingway was - good and bad. And there's bits about some of his stories and why things were changed. Rather interesting little bit on Josephine Baker as well. Perhaps Hemingway Obsessives is a stretch, but a familiarity with Hemingway and wanting to see under the covers is what is needed i think. I'd say go for it Linda.

I'm trying to talk myself into re-reading The Sun Also Rises. It would fit in with all of this. I didn't appreciate it at all when I read it in my early 20's. I loved some of his short fiction back than including The Old Man and the Sea, but I doubt I fully appreciated the novel "The Sun Also Rises."- I may find myself loving it or hating it now.

I really like The Paris Wife, though I read it while in Paris, so that probably helped :) I also find Hemingway fascinating, yet dislike his writing. I'm trying to force myself to read A Farewell to Arms this year, since I've owned it since 2008.

>79 Cait86: I'm a fan of A Farewell to Arms so I'll give you a gentle nudge that way. It is biographical fiction.

I've decided to read the Hadley biography before I read the paris wife.

Time to squeeze in an early reviewer book before I get back to my Hemingway/Paris binge.

25. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, finished April 13, 2016, 4+ stars, to be published August 2016


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This story cannot be talked about other than in scant details because it would spoil both the reading experience and the author's construction. So I'll say what I can. Jason Dessen, our protagonist, is a college professor who has a happy good marriage of 15 years to Daniela Vargas, an artist but now stay at home mom, and a 14 year old son Charlie. You can tell they are a happy family with a good but not perfect union, but one they are comfortable with. Both Jason and Daniela gave up budding careers when Daniela discovered they were going to have a child, decided to marry and their life went a different way than it could have. Jason was a fast rising star in the world of physics when this happened, but he stepped aside and now his college roommate Ryan is taking the honors that could have been his. Jason stops off at a gathering to celebrate with his old college buddy and he and the reader are taken for a ride.

This is the first page-turning can't put it down stay up far into the night read that I have had in quite a while. It caught me off guard and caught me up. The book is primarily a thriller, a type of story I only read rarely, but it crosses genres bringing in a mystery story (which is revealed more or less before the half-way point), science and science fiction. The science fictional part here isn't a new idea, but the way it is presented seems pretty innovative. I don't buy it, which isn't necessarily the author's fault, and the story in a number of places read to me like I was having movie scenes described to me, which is probably why this doesn't have an extra half star. This does really feel like it was written to be a movie and I'll be very surprised if we don't see Dark Matter the Movie as a big blockbuster in a couple years. Can Matt Damon pull off 39? We'll see ...

I don't think the science fiction element is a deal killer for thriller readers, but it is a big part of the story. I can recommend this to folks who like exciting science fiction and Bourne Supremacy type thrillers. I'm glad to have read this although there were a few story elements that dissatisfied me (and that I can't talk about without a reveal.)

I received an advanced reading copy of this book for review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in exchange for a review.

26. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 39, No. 6 (June 2015) edited by Sheila Williams, finished April 15, 2016, 2 1/2 stars

Catching up with an issue of the digest that I hadn't read last year. I have a few more from last year still to go. Compared to other recent issues I'd say this one was typical. For the most part the stories being selected for Asimov's continue to disappoint me in various ways and while some are interesting and/or enjoyable, too many are not. There are six stories (4 long, 2 short) in this issue as well as three poems, several columns, editorials and book reviews.

The opening story is a military science fiction piece that reads like a video game (intentionally I believe). Then we go to an overcooked parody of what? Jane Austen maybe? that was so whacked I skimmed and did not finish. There is also a clan of the cave bear early man story in here that didn't ring my bells. This stuff is not science fiction.

"Mutability" by Ray Nayler was the most interesting story to me - the one story in this issue really worth the read. A subtle mystery written around memory in the future when the lifespan of humans seems to have become quite long. How much memory can an individual retain? Will they remember relationships from several hundreds of years before? What are true memories and what are something else? Thoughtful atmospheric slow piece that lets the reader ponder.

27. Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon, finished April 18, 2016, 3 1/2 stars


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A different sort of mystery set in Venice. In the middle of a performance of an opera the conductor is found poisoned during a break. I liked this a lot - and I'll be reading more in the series as I track down the early novels. The author gives us a lot of atmosphere and adds color to many of the secondary characters. This was just a nice pleasurable read that didn't break my brain and the ending came as a bit of a surprise. I quite enjoy being inside of Commissario Brunetti's head as he interacts with people. Quite entertaining and this really feels like the start of a series I'm going to get comfortable with. The humor in here is everywhere but it is rather subdued.

I've heard good things about that series. One of these days I may need to get to it.

>84 laytonwoman3rd: I had heard good things also and I'm glad I gave it a try.

28. A Cupful of Space by Mildred Clingerman, finished April 25, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars


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This 1961 collection of 16 short stories is the sole book output from Mildred Clingerman. I found this delightful somewhat old-fashioned book a few years ago with a vague recollection of the author and I now regret not having read it immediately. As it turns out she was one of the earliest 'science fiction' authors I have read because she has a short story in A Treasury of Great Science Fiction: Two Volume Set (Volumes 1 and 2) that was first published in 1959 and was one of my first adventures into science fiction and fantasy stories in the late 60's. The cover bills this as a "heady brew of science fiction stories" but that is rather misleading. These are the sorts of stories that seemed to be very popular when I was a child. Some are simply cute such as the story of the little men from Mars who go trick or treating. Some are stories with a touch of strange to them. Some fantasy, some horror, certainly what one would call supernatural stories. Science fiction ideas? Some, but not so much. There are indeed science fiction stories such as the trick or treating martians, but they are of an innocent sort like that, or as "Minister Without Portfolio" where an older woman out on a bird-watching walk happens upon a group of young men a long way from home who are delighted to meet her. Several of these stories I could imagine fitting well with anthology TV series of that era, such as Rod Serling's The Twilght Zone, or EG Marshall's radio program "CBS Radio Mystery Theater" in the 1970's. These aren't just spooky stories though. They are all sorts and very well written slices of time. Not every story is a zinger, but these all have interest in one way or another. One story, 'The Last Prophet" is perhaps the closest to a dud in here. "The Wild Wood" is really creepy and seems rather edgy for a story published first in 1957. I did also like the sweet romance through time of "The Day of the Green Velvet Cloak."

The last three stories are perhaps the best, or perhaps I had just grown fond of the author's stories and appreciated them all the more. "A Day For Waving" had a touch of Ray Bradbury about it - good Bradbury. I think a few other stories had a bit of Bradbury magic as well when I think back, and a couple of the stories were reminiscent of something Shirley Jackson might have done.

The stories were first published in magazines from 1952 to 1957 with 2 new stories for the book, and except for a few stories published later, this collection represents almost the entire output from this author. That is a shame. This is a small treasure and these are almost all very good stories. Recommended if you enjoy this sort of thing.
The included stories are:

First Lesson • (1956)
Stickeney and the Critic • (1953)
Stair Trick • (1952)
Minister Without Portfolio • (1952)
Birds Can't Count • (1955)
The Word • (1953)
The Day of the Green Velvet Cloak • (1958)
Winning Recipe • (1952)
Letters from Laura • (1954)
The Last Prophet • (1955)
Mr. Sakrison's Halt • (1956)
The Wild Wood • (1957)
The Little Witch of Elm Street • (1956)
A Day for Waving • (1957)
The Gay Deceiver • (1961)
A Red Heart and Blue Roses • (1961)

29. When The Emperor Was Divine: a novel by Julie Otsuka, finished April 29, 2016, 2 1/2 stars


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A fictional story of the internment of a Japanese family who lived in Berkeley. It is a sometimes sad story told from the point of view of a 41 year old mother and her two children. The shifting of the story between the mother and children was an interesting and effective way of presenting the story, but at times it didn't seem to be handled well and was confusing to me with viewpoint shifts. There's a rather flat affect to the telling. Although I thought this was an OK read I really wouldn't recommend it.

30. The Thin Man by Dashiel Hammett, finished May 3, 2016, 2 - 2 1/2 stars


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I expected to like this book a lot more than I did. Nick and Nora Charles and their schnauzer Asta. There was some clever dialogue in here and an interesting complex murder mystery that I wanted to enjoy - but Nick Charles is such an alcoholic that you can't have two lines of dialogue without him asking for a drink etc. It was funny for about 10 pages. If that. Then it was distinctly irritating. The plot was overly convoluted for my taste as well.

31. Fantasy Annual 5 edited by Terry Carr, finished May 6, 2016, 2 1/2 - 3 stars


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Quite a few famous fantasy and science fiction authors appear in this collection of the year's best fantasy short stories and novelettes of 1981, as selected by editor Terry Carr. Of the eleven selected stories I probably read one or two in the early 80's, but the distance of time erased them from my memory if they were ever there. I read very little "fantasy" at the time these stories were published so this proved to be a good collection for me to have a go at.

These are described as "tales of the fantastic." The opening story is almost a novella and it is a contemporary (well, 1981) ghost story. The second story by George R.R. Martin, "Remembering Melody" is another ghost story I did not remember reading, but I remembered seeing it as one of the earliest very memorable episodes of "The Hitchhiker" HBO TV series in the early 80's. Susan Blakely was Melody in the TV version. The book version is done pretty well. "The Haunted Tower" by C. J. Cherryh seems to be set in a dystopian future and a woman taken to the infamous Tower of London. The ghosts of past executions such as Anne Boleyn visit the young woman. It wasn't a WOW story but I found it to be interesting enough.

For me the most interesting and very best story was by James Tiptree Jr, "Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo" which is also titled "What Came Ashore at Lirios". This story was nominated for a Nebula in 1981. It is one of several stories written by Tiptree set on the shore of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. It is not quite a ghost story - part of the fun of the story is trying to figure out exactly what it was. Let's call it magical realism. This story made the book for me.

Most of these stories first appeared in "Rod Serling's Twilight Zone magazine" and "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction." Generally speaking I found these to be OK-good but not great stories. Disliked some too. The editor gives each story a brief intro, something I like as a warm-up teaser to the tale. There's also a one page recommended reading list of additional stories from 1981 included at the end (think of them as Honorable Mentions.) There was also a summary of happenings in the year of fantasy that served as a nice time capsule. Overall I enjoyed this well enough but I expect better stories in a "Best of the year" type collection.

viii • Introduction (Fantasy Annual V) • essay by Terry Carr
2 • The Fire When It Comes • (1981) • novelette by Parke Godwin
50 • Remembering Melody • (1981) • shortstory by George R. R. Martin
70 • The Grown-Up • (1981) • shortstory by Thomas M. Disch
82 • The Haunted Tower • (1981) • novelette by C. J. Cherryh
122 • And I Only Am Escaped to Tell Thee • (1981) • shortstory by Roger Zelazny
128 • Dinosaurs on Broadway • (1981) • shortstory by Tony Sarowitz
146 • Werewind • (1981) • novelette by J. Michael Reaves
172 • The Regulars • (1981) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg
184 • Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo • (1981) • novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
214 • Lincoy's Journey • (1981) • shortstory by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
228 • The Quickening • (1981) • novelette by Michael Bishop
257 • The Year in Fantasy (Fantasy Annual V) • essay by Jeff Frane
264 • Recommended Reading - 1981 (Fantasy Annual V) • essay by Terry Carr

This was published under the "Timescape" line of Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster), which only existed from 1981-1985. Timescape published many of the first Star Trek novels. I really enjoyed some of the Timescape books but they didn't seem to be able to establish themselves as a "go to" book line.

I've been working on Neal Stephenson's Seveneves which I won as an early reviewer book. It will be the only book I have read that is up for the Hugo awards for best novel which will be voted on in a few days. This is a big book 860+ pages so I will be reading it for a while. I'm almost at 200 pages. This is an ambitious novel by Stephenson and there are some story elements that were bugging me for a while but I seem to have gotten used to them.

I was nearing the halfway point in Neal Stephenson's massive "Seveneves" and needed a break - this book has had some buzz ...

ETA: I decided to expand my comments a bit and will post it as a review on the book.

32. Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit, finished May 18, 2016, 2 1/2 stars, library book


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This hot off the presses young adult novel has been described in a number of places as literary fiction and not just for kids. My library and various places have it marked as appropriate for grades 7 or 8 and up. I'm not a person who can write a proper review of a book like this. Right from the start I felt like it was talking down to me. There's a paragraph that begins like this: In 1939 a group of people called Germans came into a land called Poland and took control of the city Krakow, where Anna lived." I felt like inserting Once upon a time ...

When I first finished the book I was pretty disappointed with the story, especially the latter part of it and at a loss to understand much of the high praise it received. Sometimes it is very real and sometimes it's a little woo-woo. The story is told rather like a fable, a surreal fairy-tale and it is a good story and it certainly often rises above something a 10 or 12 year old might read, but still, it is an odd book. I was never sure what to make of it and the narrative voice, something was strange about it - is Anna relating this many years later? I just never could get comfortable with it. My analytical side just rejected too much.

I will say this - I don't think it is an appropriate story for grade 7 or 8, and even though much of it seems geared to that grade level, I'd raise the bar for recommended reading to perhaps 14 or more years of age because of the disturbing elements in the story, particularly near the end. I was also bothered by how this ends and that the story doesn't really have a resolution. We don't know who the swallow man was although he was clearly much more than a man with no name.

I won't recommend this one although there's some good parts in here. Not a "Wow" book for me. I could easily be convinced that this isn't a book intended for young teens at all, but a modern fable for adults. I can't tell who the intended audience is.

I also won Seveneves as an ER book, but haven't started it yet. I've read Uprooted and The Aeronaut's Windlass and also have Ancillary Mercy and The Fifth Season here on my tbr shelves. Looks like I'd better get busy.

I liked both the books I've read quite a bit. The Butcher was very entertaining, one of my top reads last year, and the Novik was traditional fantasy with a punch! Both were good stories.

>91 ronincats: I'm really surprised that Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora didn't make the cut of the top five. I think the Hugo's have been unreliable for quite a few years now, not just the latest puppy debacle. A small number of people can sway the nominations and hence the finals up for consideration. Sometimes excellent books just barely miss the top 5 nominations. I like the ranked voting method but maybe we need a field of ten to winnow down. or something.

As for Seveneves I paused a little before halfway through it. It is going to have to significantly improve the story structure to get me to really like it. So far I'd rate it OK, but Jack McDevitt already did a "Moonfall" and I'm sure others have as well. I really don't care for some of the character choices and the way they are handled. I purposely have not looked at any reviews of Seveneves since I won it so I will look forward to yours and others when I finish.

>92 RBeffa: I wouldn't be able to pass comment meaningfully on the Hugo's Ron, but I reckon you and Roni (and possibly Lucy) would be a formidable judging panel.

Have a great weekend.

>93 PaulCranswick: Paul, I'm afraid I would be too critical. As in the review that follows for a Hugo nominated work.

-----------------------------

Well, this turned out to be a mixed bag, and the short review: A disappointment. Unexpectedly, not a good fit for me.

33. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, finished May 25, 2016, 2 1/2 stars


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Where to begin ... With a page count close to 870 pages the author has written a novel that requires quite a commitment from a reader. In truth this is 2 or 3 books in one. As a reader I expect a payoff from that commitment and upon finishing the task I feel like I didn't get it, or if I did, just barely. This is an ambitious project, there is no doubt about that. The setup for the story is not the most original - Jack McDevitt covered the breakup and planetfall of the Moon nearly two decades ago in Moonfall. In McDevitt's case I believe it was a stray comet hitting the moon. Here I don't think we quite know what did it, but among the theories it is speculated on page 16 that a "primordial singularity", a tiny black hole "The Agent" from the birth of the universe may have zoomed through our system and pierced the moon, and in an instant or two it is broken. Once the Moonfall is about to begin we ignore the earth (mostly) for 5,000 years.

The book is in three large parts - one set in the near future that covers the roughly two year period from moonstrike until moonfall, what is called the "Hard Rain" when the pieces of the moon fall to earth en masse and obliterate the surface of the earth in a firestorm and life on it. The second part of the novel is life and politics and survival of the remnants of humanity that have taken refuge in and around an enhanced International Space Station. The third part jumps forward "FIVE THOUSAND YEARS LATER" as the subtitle of Part 3 tells us, and is the return to earth in the future.

I liked elements of the story. There are some very good things in here, but I had problems with each part as well, and the middle third of the story was a mix of interesting things and very disturbing things with the scenario of a power hungry megalomaniac former President. I did not like the storyline. To condense my criticism I'll say that the story is buried in too much information, a numbing amount of scientific detail in too many places and an excess of politics. I am a reader who likes science in his science fiction, but the amount of science in here is several orders of magnitude larger than I need or want. I would add that a few character choices bore too much of a resemblance to real world characters or amalgams of them, and that was distracting to the extent that I could only see the real world characters in my mind - this was obviously an intentional choice by the author, perhaps to make the story seem more real, I dunno, but it bothered me a lot at first and although that annoyance lessened it never quite went away in the first two thirds of the book. To a lesser extent I was reading about characters in each part who I disliked or I didn't sympathize or bond with in any way. I prefer to be hooked into a story rather than just an observer receiving a science lesson. This is of course a personal criteria and other readers will react differently. One of my biggest minor gripes is that I find it impossible to believe that facing known death society worldwide is going to keep on doing what it does, you know, flipping burgers, driving the buses, filling your Amazon orders, selling you shoes, growing and harvesting crops, doing all the things of everyday life for the greater good - to build rockets and materials to hoist a few selected people into orbit before the hard rain and the end of life on earth. The 99.9999% is gonna work their butts off, worldwide, for the 1000 or 2000 survivors and a cache of DNA collected worldwide. Right.

The last third of the book, 5000 years in the future is rather different than the rest of the story. It started off well and I found some of it intriguing and although it required events in the first two-thirds of the book to establish this, the third part could almost really be read as an entirely separate novel. There are a bunch of references from things in the future back to people in the earlier books which was for the most part lost on me (and I would assume other readers) because we got so little on many of the people other than names and brief interludes in the earlier parts of the novel. We get bits of information of how we got from there (present day+) to here (5000 years from now). The future tech is imaginative. Unfortunately the author still has to bury things in mind numbing detail. The characters manage to be even less interesting (to me) than the previous batch of people in the story. And, unfortunately, we have politics again. I found myself skimming through pages for a while trying to pick out the pieces of the story among the information overload.

Overall this was on the low end of an OK story. The extraneous information overwhelmed the story. I could have used more actual story and character development. It started off looking like it would but it only covered a few people that way. There were token bits of backstories on many people. There was a lot of noble sacrifice in here and yet the Megalomaniac and the big baddie survived. Perhaps that is the moral of the story.

I received a copy of the book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review. There you have it. I wish I could have raved over the book, because that would mean I loved reading this, but my enthusiasm was muted.

I would not recommend this novel.

I have to confess that I've often found Stephenson to be a struggle to read, mostly for the reasons you describe with this one. Someday I'll tackle his stuff, but not now...

>95 drneutron: The last Stephenson I partly read was Anathem, and I bailed on that at about 200+ pages I think. This was just about when I joined LT and I subsequently learned I was not alone in my reactions but apparently the first several hundred pages of slog has a payoff. I bailed too soon! Possibly the longest I ever went in a book before giving up. I enjoyed his early works but this infodump excess is just not for me. There is a LOT of interesting stuff in Seveneves for people who speculate on the future, but the storytelling just was not for me.

I have a bit of book burnout at the moment and have not started another yet.

I know the feeling, Ron. I liked his early ones, too, and I've been leery of his whoppers. I did read and like Reamde, and I've got Cryptonomicon, which I've heard is a good one.

>97 jnwelch: I am absolutely leery of the whoppers going forward. I tend to avoid the giant books by anyone but that is just me.

Some sort of nostalgia has been prompting me to pick up old Star Trek paperbacks recently when I come across them at library sales. I got a quite large number of them this past year esp earlier this month at the semi-annual bag of books sale at one of our local libraries. I have not read many of them but they serve as a sort of comfort food equivalent. I noticed elsewhere on LT this morning that this year, come September, is the 50th anniv of Star Trek. Yikes, or as Takei might say, oh myyyyy. So I'm a certainly going to squeeze in a handful of these old paperbacks (most of which are a lot less than 50 years old) in this year's reading. You've been warned!

I rescued this ex-library book from the free recycle cart, along with several others. It seems to be in good shape and was probably in storage for many years.

34. The general zapped an angel; new stories of fantasy and science fiction by Howard Fast, finished June 3, 2016, 3 stars


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This may be the first book by Howard Fast that I have read altho I have vague memories of reading bits of my mom's copy of The Immigrants many years ago. I think that is a book that I should seek out one day - I see it now and then.

Fast was not a fantasy or science fiction writer, he was a writer of epic historical fiction, so this little collection of fantasy and science fiction stories is a unique things and a mildly surprising treat. It was published in 1970 and the opening title story is about a gung-ho 2 star general in Vietnam who likes nothing more than leading his cavalry in the choppers and blazing the machine gun from the side at anything that moves. He's what Tarantino would call a natural born killer. And after returning to base he gets a call from the line that he shot down an angel. A real 20 foot tall angel.

A story that I thought among the best was called "The Mouse". There are not a lot of stories here, just nine, but among them are some very good ones, with unexpectedly strong moral and social commentary elements. Amongst the satire and farce is a bit of silliness that may not have aged so well, but there is thought provoking bits as well. These are by no means "great" stories but I was happy to get in the time machine and go visit 1969-1970 sensibilities briefly. I don't think Fast was really trying to write Fantasy or science fiction stories to stand up to much scrutiny - he was trying to write stories to make you look at the world from a different angle,
and think about things.

Fast writes on the flyleaf: "The book is really not about a general who zapped an angel. Rather it is about the general childishness of man, the only form of life that refuses to grow up."

So I took a look at Howard Fast on wikipedia and see this:

"Fast spent World War II working with the United States Office of War Information, writing for Voice of America. In 1943, he joined the Communist Party USA and in 1950, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities; in his testimony, he refused to disclose the names of contributors to a fund for a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War (one of the contributors was Eleanor Roosevelt), and he was given a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress.

It was while he was at Mill Point Federal Prison that Fast began writing his most famous work, Spartacus, a novel about an uprising among Roman slaves. Blacklisted by major publishing houses following his release from prison, Fast was forced to publish the novel himself. By the standards of a self published book, it was a great success, going through seven printings in the first four months of publication."

You just never know what the library is throwing away and probably shouldn't ...

>99 RBeffa: I remember reading that one and enjoying it, even though I am not usually a short story fan, in the 80s!

>100 ronincats: I'm glad you remember it well, Roni! Sorry to read about your Mom but she sure sounds like a fighter and I send my good wishes for her continued recovery.

I'm working my way through another rescue book, an anthology from the 60's, The Tenth Galaxy Reader. This one is well worn and well read.

>99 RBeffa: Wow. Just....wow. The things you learn about around here! I read The Immigrants and April Morning ages ago, but don't remember much about them (I seem to recall a graphic bloody scene in April Morning). Had no idea about all that other info on Fast, and had even forgotten (giving myself the benefit of the doubt that I ever knew it) he wrote Spartacus.

>102 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, I love all the interesting things people discover and/or share with each other on LT. I wish I could say that I remembered Howard Fast wrote Spartacus because it is undoubtedly something I knew at one time, and I did remember it was written by someone on the McCarthy era blacklist but it had certainly slipped my mind. Since I was born in San Francisco the Immigrants should be right up my alley.

Another rescued ex-library book from the free recycle cart, this one was very well worn and read. I suspect that may in part be due to the inclusion of one of Harlan Ellison's most famous works. I'd probably rate this 3 1/2 stars normally, but I'm giving this one 4 stars compared to other books of the era because of the high quality older science fiction it contains.

35. The Tenth Galaxy Reader by edited by by Frederik Pohl, finished June 6, 2016, 4 stars

I enjoyed reading books from this popular series during my high school years. I may even have read this one since I read quite a few then from my local library. I've picked up several of these anthologies in recent years to read the ones I missed and revisit the others. There are eleven stories in this collection from 1967 and they are:

1 • Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night • (1961) • novelette by Algis Budrys
24 • An Elephant for the Prinkip • (1960) • shortstory by Joseph Wesley (as by L. J. Stecher, Jr.)
35 • The Place Where Chicago Was • (1962) • novelette by Jim Harmon
66 • Heresies of the Huge God • (1966) • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
78 • Devil Car • (1965) • shortstory by Roger Zelazny
93 • The Tunnel Under the World • (1955) • novelette by Frederik Pohl
127 • Auto-da-Fe • (1961) • shortstory by Damon Knight
134 • Door to Anywhere • (1966) • novelette by Poul Anderson
169 • The Primitives • (1966) • novelette by Frank Herbert
205 • If You Were the Only— • (1953) • shortstory by Richard Wilson
220 • "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman • (1965) • shortstory by Harlan Ellison

Each of these stories originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine with the year of publication indicated above. These are above average stories - the good stuff from 50-60 years ago, and although it would be impossible for some not to become dated, I really enjoyed these. Many (most?) of these would fall into a dystopian type of future category, and others such as "An Elephant for the Prinkip" fall into the timeless two guys in a bar tell a tale with a twist category and are fun to read. There is however a sort of overall gloom to much of this so I would NOT call this a happy get relaxed beach read kind of book. I'll touch on several stories... Only one of these didn't catch or hold my interest - surprisingly Frank Herbert's "The Primitives".

The closing story, Harlan Ellison's story '"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman' is now 50 years old. For its time it was quite unconventional, and yet accessible to a general reader who could empathize with a society that increasingly was regulated by time. Having the story opening with a lengthy excerpt on civil disobedience by Henry David Thoreau still sets it apart from run of the mill fiction and the story still retains an unusual power. Over the last 50 years I've probably read this more than half a dozen times and each time I admire it. It won both the Hugo and nebula awards for short story.

I thought Brian Aldiss's "Heresies of the Huge God" a rather wild story being told 900 years in the future about an event that seems to have begun in our present time when the huge god, an alien artifact, spaceship or being of some sort as large as some continents plops itself down on earth in various places. Things do not go well for the earth and civilizations.

Zelazny's "Devil Car" takes a look at the future when some computerized cars have gone rogue, wild, killing people and other cars. Sam has a custom Swinger built that is loaded with everything, and he and the swinger, "Jenny" drive across the plains to revenge the death of Sam's brother ten years before. There is a bit of humor snuggled into what is otherwise horror science fiction. I liked this, and I am not always a fan of Zelazny's stuff.

Fred Pohl's "The Tunnel Under The World" is a nightmarish piece that plays with the excesses of advertising. It is genuinely creepy, but it does have one piece of misdirection that doesn't gel with the end - that bothered me just a tiny bit. A man and his wife awaken each morning from a nightmare and enter something of a real world nightmare - this story could give the mild paranoia in a person a good workout.

Damon Knight's "Auto-da-Fe" is a rather dark and somewhat sad and upleasant last man on earth story where the last man, the king, rules the remaining dogs on earth, who are themselves intelligent. It is a well written story, as just about everything I've ever read by Knight is, but this one fits right into the gloom and not happy feel of most of the stories in the book. Was worth the read tho, and it is short.

Poul Anderson is a great author and I've enjoyed a number of his stories and books over the years, whether it was light fantasy such as "Three Hearts and Three Lions" or his many adventures in space. I rated him a favorite author for a very long time. Here we have "Door To Anywhere" with stargates (called jumpgates here) and more, now 50 years old and still impressive storytelling. A Senator investigates an accident that befell his brother-in-law on Mars. Here's a pic from the original Galaxy magazine story:

http://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B1%2F0%2F4%2F1%2F2%2F10412240%5D&amp...

Overall a very good to excellent collection that I would recommend to other readers of science fiction.

>103 RBeffa: The film script for Kirk Douglas's movie Spartacus was written, at least in part, by Dalton Trumbo, another blacklisted writer. Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given screen credit.

>105 laytonwoman3rd: I was going to say Dalton Trumbo did the screenplay for Spartacus and I should have looked it up. That probably explains my remembrance of the blacklist author and Spartacus rather than Howard Fast.

I decided my Joseph Conrad book for this month will be the novel Lord Jim. I've never read it altho many people seem to in high school or shortly thereafter. I may also do a novella or some short stories paired with one depending on what I can find at the library or library booksale coming up.

What I really want to do is dive into a Thomas Hardy novel. I really enjoyed the collection of short stories from Hardy that I read in March.

I seem not to be in a Conrad mood so I am pausing my reading of Lord Jim before I get too far. I may switch off to another Conrad story although I would like to get Lord Jim under my belt. I've switched over to a Geraldine Brooks novel "Year of Wonders." Altho I had a few problems with "March" that I read a few months ago I rated it highly overall, esp for the writing. The first several pages of "Year of Wonders" really caught my interest and my sister in law brought that book as well as Caleb's Crossing over for me to read.

Last night was the Friends of the Library preview sale and I indulged just a bit:

A virtuous woman : a novel by Kaye Gibbons
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
Raise the Red Lantern: Three Novellas by Su Tong
Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson
Appaloosa by Robert B. Parker
The Immigrants by Howard Fast
A couple Star Trek novels and old science fiction novels that looked promising
Wicked Greg Maguire
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Greg Maguire

The last two are for my daughter but I plan to read Wicked after I give the actual novel of Wizard of Oz a read first. The two books by Kaye Gibbons caught my eye - not something I would normally read probably but they were lovely books and comparisons to Eudora Welty and southern literature appealed to me to give them a try.

Having recently read Geraldine Brook's "March" and liking it a lot I borrowed several of her other books from my sister-in-law.

36. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks, finished June 12, 2016, maybe 2 1/2 - 3 stars


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This is the second book of historical fiction by Geraldine Brooks that I have read. Brooks is an excellent writer as far as words go, but she makes some odd choices in storytelling. I noticed this a bit when I read her novel "March" and it is much more evident here. For most of this book I really liked it and was somewhat immersed in the world of 350 years ago, 1665-1666. Brooks uses bits of old language and expressions and archaic words for things to continually remind the reader that we are in the 17th century - not the 20th or 21st. Brooks paints us a picture in words of life during the black plague in a small village near London. This is based on a true story of a village, people who chose to isolate themselves rather than risk further spreading this horrible epidemic. Since very little actual documentation of events exists in writing, the author has a free hand in putting her imagination to use in constructing the story. The story thus is primarily fictional, although it uses some interpretations of real people. It is a first person narrative told by Anna, who has two small children and was recently widowed when her husband died in a lead mine collapse shortly before the arrival of Plague to the village. She is a maid for the Rector and his wife Elinor, the two other main characters. We see the good and the bad as members of the community die horrible deaths over the course of a year, not all because of the disease, and madness takes hold of others in various forms. Once in a while a couple of the main characters seem a little too modern to me for 1665, which does happen with historical fiction.

The story took a few odd turns somewhere towards the middle that I didn't care for, and this prefaced a change in the focus of the story. The deaths from the Plague continue but the story is increasingly a series of scenes that are primarily people doing bad things to each other. It seemed bent on destroying the image we the reader had built up about about a couple good characters, the Rector especially. The book more or less "jumped the shark" towards the end. My initial impression of the later part of the story was quite poor. Upon thinking on it for a while I make myself recognize that this was the author's story - not mine.

I read March and loved it, too, and also then planned on reading more of her stuff, but just haven't done it yet. Soon? Hopefully?

>110 scaifea: Amber, I'm going to read more of Geraldine Brooks. She really writes about diverse topics and clearly does a lot of research to give some authenticity to her historical fiction. I have two more at hand, Caleb's Crossing and The People of the Book which I hope to get to this year in between other reading. I think Year of Wonders is her first fiction novel and for that it is very good. I'm just unhappy with some of what she did with characters.

I'm revising the comments I wrote yesterday a bit and will post it as a review - altho there are already plenty of reviews of the book and many people unhappy with the ending of the book. What I realized after a day's thought was that I was unhappy with more than the ending, but with the dark turn (on a very dark subject!) that the author chose to take.

>111 RBeffa: I have Caleb's Crossing on my shelves - my mom read it and absolutely loved it. Brook's writing is just beautiful, I think, so the actual plot and ending is kind of secondary to me - I just love reading what she does with words.
I look forward to reading your revised review!

Sorry Year of Wonders didn't work better for you overall, Ron. I thought it was terrific. I really got caught up in the atmosphere and stories of that village. Oddly, though, none of her others has tempted me. As Amber says, her writing is beautiful, so that may change.

>113 jnwelch: Joe, I think I was mostly bothered by the author choosing to tear the Rector apart at the end of the novel (and destroy his faith as well, which wouldn't have bothered me based on what had happened to all the people he cared for) after he had given so much to the village in so many ways. He and Elinor and Anna were rather noble figures here, so giving the Rector and Elinor this dark past was like a poke in the eye, and Elinor's death in particular. I was probably less bothered than some by the lust in the dust and other oddities at the end of the novel.

I too got caught up in the atmosphere and stories of the village people. So many interesting things in there. Having read The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis last year with the part about lead mining in Roman Britain I got an extra kick from the story where lead mining was the primary business of the village and felt I knew a bit of what it was about. She had so many small details of things woven into the story. I just felt it was a 4+ star story with a 2 star finish. The epilogue too was a very strange happy ending.

>99 RBeffa: >102 laytonwoman3rd: >103 RBeffa: I'm about two weeks late to your discussion of Howard Fast. We inherited four Howard Fast books from my wife's maternal grandmother, including a copy of the self-published Spartacus. I've read that and Citizen Tom Paine. I thought it ironic that this great story was told in print, then on film by two "pinko" writers (as Linda pointed out).

Then just today I read that Newt Gingrich has suggested establishing "something like" that old House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Oh Good Lord. Did that junta ever do anything good and decent?

Anyway, you and Linda have given me three more Fast titles to keep an eye out for.

The Immigrants
April Morning
The General Zapped an Angel

>115 weird_O: It is never too late to chime in Bill. what is that expression about those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it?

"It's like déjà vu all over again."

I should be reading Conrad's "Lord Jim" but just wasn't in the mood for it so I left it sitting there, again, and picked this one up. I think I got a message from the book gods when on page 7 a woman puts down her detective mystery and goes and pulls her husband's well worn copy of Lord Jim from the shelf and loses herself in it for several hours. OK OK I get the message. Soon, soon ...

I owned this book for many years, and never read it. When I started logging my books into LT some years ago I deep-sixed it, along with others that I figured I was never ever going to read. Of course a few that I gave the heave-ho I regret getting rid of, but most I never give another thought to. Long ago I read a lot of Poul Anderson's stories and generally liked them. He's a smart writer and he writes about all sorts of things. I think I bought this one for the cool cover more than anything. My inner Tarzan responded. When I saw this last week at the library book sale the cover called to me again so I said OK, for 50 cents you're mine, I'll read you.

37. Brainwave by Poul Anderson, finished June 15, 2016, 2 1/2 - 3 stars


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I thought this was a book from the late 70's and was surprised to find it dates originally to 1954. The concept of the story is really out there - all life on earth has had intelligence suppressed because of a field the solar system has been passing through while we rotate around the galaxy. Now we are moving out of it and then, one day, it no longer is influencing the planet. This is intelligently written science fiction from the golden age. The story clearly is set in the 50's and it feels 50ish but tries I think to rise above that to a more modern way - the 50's elements seen from now are like reading historical fiction whereas the story itself tries to stretch to bigger ideas. It can't quite do that since among other things it has a guy smoking a cigar on a starship.

The story plays out better than I expected as mankind worldwide (and animalkind worldwide!) deals with a huge growing boost in intelligence. There was a lot of gobbledygook here and there and the attempts for a scientific explanation of why intelligence had been suppressed was pretty silly to me. What I liked were some of the personal stories of how people reacted to a changed mental state and how the world was going to change. This part of the book, the bulk of it, was hit and miss - the story revolving around the man attempting to keep running a farm I liked a lot - glimpses of other people were intriguing - the New York City stuff, and the central focus on a particular scientist pretty much not interesting at all.

We could have a lot of fun with animals throwing off the yoke and taking on man. There is a bit of fun like that but the story primarily goes other ways. So there's no rise of the rats, or insect takeovers or good dogs gone bad. This book gets an OK from me. I did like the ending.

XX Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, did not finish

I just cannot read this book. I have tried and tried again. The way the story is written is mind-numbing dull. I can't quite call it boring but it is. I want to get engaged in this story and it is not happening. I read a bit more than a quarter of the story. I would not recommend this to anyone.

>118 RBeffa: I discussed with Joe recently authors who we would place in a NOT MY THING Club and I put Joseph Conrad at the very top of that list of members. My inclusion of him in the BAC this year was an exercise in masochism if truth be known.

Have a great Sunday, Ron, now that you've put that one down again.

>119 PaulCranswick: It is a better man or woman than I who can read Conrad. Usually I give authors the benefit of the doubt, esp when they are highly regarded. It could be my mood, or something else interfering. Conrad is just not for me! I welcomed him in the BAC as it would stir me to try again. oh well!

Quiet Sunday here. Hope your Father's Day was a happy one. We are past graduations in my family but they were always exciting times.

Picked this up from the new books shelf at the library. First book I have read by Stewart O'Nan.

38. City of Secrets by Stewart O'Nan, finished June 19, 2016, 3 1/2+ stars


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This story is set in the British Mandate for Palestine (a creation of the League of Nations following WWI). It is just after WWII, and the story is centered around Jerusalem. The story is from the point of view of Brand (I don't think we are given any other name). He is a Jewish refugee from Riga, Latvia and between the Russian and German death squads as well as the camps, he has lost his wife and entire family. This is primarily a story of terrorist acts against the British, and some Arabs, before the establishment of the state of Israel.

It was an interesting piece of historical fiction. I think I would have appreciated it better if I had some knowledge of the city and nearby areas, but I imagine the majority of readers would be like myself. I never really connected until late in the story with the main character as he was rather disassociated himself and for the first half of the book at least he was basically just waiting to die (Survivor's guilt I'd say). I did become concerned though for his welfare and what his associates were up to without his knowledge. I just wanted Brand and his paramour Eva to leave it behind and run. The ending of the tale packs quite an emotional punch.

Interesting novel that reminds me I should read Leon Uris's Exodus some day.

39. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 40, No. 7 (July 2016) edited by Sheila Williams, finished June 21, 2016, 3+ stars

This was a good edition of the monthly digest with 8 stories for the month as well as various editorials/columns, book reviews and poems.

What struck me as I read through these is that several felt like they had a better story to tell but it wasn't there. The idea was better than the telling. There are a couple of weak stories but also several better ones to balance these out. No real favorite for me among the stories, although I would probably say "Looking for Josh" by Robert Thurston if pushed. A story about an alien stranded on earth and the town where he lived his life, but the story is really about a man who grew up around Josh. Oddly, 7 of the 8 primary authors have their name on the cover. Thurston does not. One of the 4 poems I really liked: "Chimpans and Humanzees" by John Philip Johnson. "Filtered" by Leah Cypess was especially frustrating as I thought perhaps something profound was going to show up as it deals with a near future facebook type world where the feed is all important and a reporter wants to get a story through the filters to a wide audience. Looked promising until it rolled over and went to sleep with no appreciable conclusion that I could detect. The reader never even gets a clue what this important story was! sheesh

I did also like the last story, "Lost:Mind" by Will McIntosh. It's a future tech story where a man searches for the stolen pieces of a chess set that contain his wife's lost mind. Sounds strange but it was well told.

40. Hit Parade by Lawrence Block, finished June 23, 2016, 3 stars


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This is the third collection of stories about Block's Hit Man Keller. The first collection of stories, "Hit Man" was excellent (4 stars). The second collection "Hit List" was not nearly as good (2 stars). I'd say that the 3rd collection is a bit better than the 2nd but still lacks the punch that the first group of stories had. Block retreads many things we have seen before and does constant recapping of events within a couple stories as if the reader had forgotten what happened 20 pages before. If the information was material to what was about to happen then a bit of it would be understandable, but frequently it is just conversation filler with his contact "Dot". The sparkle in the conversations between Dot and Keller just isn't there as much and that detracts from these stories. This constant recapping of history caused the 2nd collection to suffer as well. When these stories are assembled into a novel format it would improve them to spend some editing time to remove the extraneous duplicate material that slows the stories down, and weakens them when put together.

Still, these are enjoyable light reading and can be read a few chapters at a time for a story and then set aside to pick up later. Keller's stamp collecting hobby which figures in some stories is always a kick for me to read and reminds me of my collecting days many years ago. Despite being a killer, Keller has his own moral code of sorts, and sorting that out inside his head is interesting at times. Some of the jobs he is hired for challenge him at times, and have twists such as when he is sent to kill a fellow stamp collector. He didn't want to do the job and he liked the guy a lot. He was a friend. Frequently though, Keller doesn't really want to know much about the intended victim other than what is needed to get the job done. So the reader never knows if a particular job is going to be quick and clean or lead to something else entirely - which happens sometimes when Keller digs a little deeper into things. The dog story in here was like that where Keller got just a little too close to everything and it was one of the best in a very twisty way.

There are two more books in the series and I will be reading them.

Oh that failed British Author Challenge in >118 RBeffa: .

I've gone to Plan B with Joseph Conrad, which is really Plan A. I have a book that has 4 Conrad stories, plus a long intro about the author, timeline, etc and perhaps most importantly I now note, a section of explanatory notes for the stories and a glossary. So when I start reading "Youth", which was my original intention and I encounter "The Director had been a Conway boy,*" the asterisk tells me I can look to the explanatory notes to see what that means or refers to. This has two advantages, the obvious being I understand things a little better, but it also gets me more involved in the reading experience. If I didn't already know roughly where Java Head was, the glossary tells me

So back to Plan B that was A, and I'm reading "Youth" and enjoying it much more than Lord Jim. This Oxford World Classics edition also has "An Outpost of Progress," "Karain" and "Heart of Darkness". All four stories are linked in some way, which is why they were put together here. I'll probably read Heart of Darkness as the companion to "Youth"

This style of prose from Conrad is clearly not my thing, but now at least I feel I can read a bit of him. And, Surprise! Surprise!, I am actually enjoying the story of "Youth."

Still nibbling on some Conrad, and finished "Youth" but before going on gave this a try.

41. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, finished June 26, 2016, 2 - 2 1/2 stars


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This short novel gets a lot of love on Librarything, but not from me. I'm not going to attempt a review of it. It is too artsy I guess for my taste. I see frequent references to it being poetic but I don't get that - I see affectation. This is a German novel, translated to English in my copy. At first I thought this rather odd, distant, flat telling was a product of the translation but over time I decided it was a stylistic choice by the author, of which there are many in the book.

I liked bits of it, I wanted to follow the story of "The Gardener" throughout, but some parts I skimmed through. Many reviewers say this is all about a house but I'd say it is all about the land. I'll rate it an OK. I have no idea who would really like this story.

42A. Youth by Joseph Conrad, finished June 26, 2016, 3 1/2 stars


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This long short story was a much more satisfying read than my attempt at Lord Jim. This is a fictionalized account of Conrad's own first voyage at sea, an absolute disaster, and it was a trip doomed, double doomed and triple doomed from the start. It is narrated by Marlow, Conrad's fictional counterpart, who relates the story as told to him I thought at first, but then I realized he was actually telling his story. The prose is over the top here and there but the story is a good one.

On to "Heart of Darkness ...

42B. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, finished June 27, 2016, 2 1/2 stars

Conrad's very famous work is a short novel (novella) written before he next did Lord Jim, my personal nemesis. The overwriting mind-numbing prose which drove me away from Jim seemed quite apparent early on with Heart of Darkness. The story here is stronger however, and the superfluous descriptions and narrative detours are less, which allowed me to read the story. There are places where I found myself caught up in the narrative, fascinated. I also had to put the story down at times, when Conrad ran away with himself, which was too often. After a coffee break or something I could return to it with a fresh mind again. Not the best way to read a story but it was pretty much the only way I could seem to handle it. The story is narrated by Marlow again, as it was in youth and would be in Lord Jim. Marlow was a much better narrator in Youth.

No formal review from me of this work - I can clearly mark myself as not a Joseph Conrad fan. I don't consider myself easily confused with things, but Conrad's storytelling confuses me.

Time for the second quarter recap. I'm still reading at a fairly good pace and am on target to make 75 or more books for the year. My personal goal was about 70.

There were some disappointments this quarter but also a number of surprises. I enjoy keeping this reading diary and reading back through this log to remind myself of the good (and the bad).

My favorites for the second quarter were quite good ones for me - Hemingway's A Moveable Feast was excellent, and the science fiction thriller Dark Matter by Blake Crouch was also a highlight. I enjoyed the new to me start of a mystery series, Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon. I fit in several short story collections which I enjoyed as well. Several of the books that I wouldn't quite label "favorites" I still thought were good to very good in various ways such as Stewart O'Nan's "City of Secrets" and Geraldine Brooks "Year of Wonders."

So for the rest of the year, I'm not sure where reading will take me. With the new Tarzan movie coming out (I rarely get excited about movies but this one looks really good) I feel I should finally read the original unedited version of the novel that I've had sitting here on the TBR pile. I'll squeeze in at least one, hopefully more, Star Trek novels in deference to the 50th anniv of the show which began in the Fall of 1966. I really want to sit down with a Thomas Hardy novel. I will certainly be doing some WWII era reading for the second half of the year, which I haven't quite done yet despite plans to. I also hope to revisit Paris and Hemingway again (Paris Wife finally?). If I dive into another Alan Furst novel I should be able to cover both Paris and WWII in one swell foop. I do want to read another Lawrence Block book too. He can be clever and funny.

At the moment I am reading Scott Turow's Ordinary Heroes and it will take me another couple days to finish it up. It is a really good to excellent novel that is surprising me as the story plays out. Easily a 4 star book at the halfway point. It is a fictional story set both in the present and during WWII.

July is Steinbeck month for the American Author challenge and I am really looking forward to it. If I stick to the shorter novels I should be able to read quite a few. On deck for the month I have Pastures of Heaven, To A God Unknown, Cannery Row and Burning Bright, as well as several others that I would love to get to.

"I suppose there are never enough books" - John Steinbeck

That's what my Tshirt says as my wife and I stand on the California coast. Steinbeck country begins in the far distance behind us.



July is Steinbeck month for the AAC (American Author Challenge) and I am ready to read several short novels and may explore this month what my library has in non-fiction regarding Steinbeck. I will be starting with Pastures of Heaven.

It is also H.G. Wells month for the BAC (British Author Challenge) and I have several to choose from that I have never read. I will probably go with In The Days of the Comet.

Great photo, Ron!

>129 RBeffa: Great photo, Ron! Steinbeck country - love the sound of that.

I looked around and decided on his The Wayward Bus. I enjoy his character sketches, with Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday being among my favorites.

>130 ronincats: >131 jnwelch: Thanks! I really like that pic too.

Joe, growing up here I guess I always knew what Steinbeck country was, but I think I hooked in to the expression itself from a booklet we got at the Steinbeck Center in Salinas many years ago. I plan to scan in a few photos from our visits there in years past. Here's the booklet: Steinbeck Country

A few novels I am unsure if I have read. Wayward Bus is one of them. I thought I had read most of Steinbeck in high school and and my early 20's but there were a few I missed. I didn't read East of Eden until maybe 15+ years ago. I'm not sure I would have appreciated it so much if I had read it as a teen. The area where the farms are in the novel are near where my great-grandfather farmed in the 1890's-1920 or so. When I was doing genealogy research some years ago looking through old newspaper records for my family I was coming across Hamiltons and Steinbecks in the papers. It was a kick. I remember seeing John's birth notice.

I've noticed that there are Penguin editions with a lot of critical discussion, background etc for some of his novels. I've picked up a couple in recent years and hope it will give me a fuller experience on reading them. I need to see what our libraries have on hand.

43. Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow, finished July 1, 2016, 4 - 4 1/2 stars


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This is going to be one of my favorite books of the year. A really excellent character driven story set in the present (circa 2003-4) and during 1944-45 in World War II. There are a couple of mysteries in here as well as a legal thriller (Turow's specialty). I became quite attached to several of the characters which I regard as a sure sign of good writing. The story itself feels like a true one even though it is apparently entirely fictitious. Parts of the story are set within larger real events with WWII (anyone who watched Band of Brothers will immediately recognize the winter battles around Bastogne in December 1944 as part of the Battle of the Bulge). This is much more than war fiction however. The novel is a little slow to start and has a rather slow pace for the beginning, but that is how we get to know the characters so well and become immersed in the stories. When the story kicks into high gear it is something of an emotional roller coaster with twists and turns. Some deaths are hard to take.

words of caution: The graphic gore level gets pretty high during the Christmas battle sequence at Bastogne. I was so immersed in the story that it felt quite appropriate to what was happening. But it might upset some readers. There is a bit of a romance within the novel - an unconventional one - but love in the time of war is nothing new. Just ask Hemingway. Personally I enjoy a bit of romance in stories when it is handled well.

Recommended

44. The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck, finished July 3, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars


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It has been a long time since I first read this novel. I thought I had completely forgotten it, but was surprised as I read it that I remembered elements of most of the stories told here. I couldn't have said what was going to occur from one page to the next, but as I read, small things would come back, memories tickled awake after a long sleep. As I read I remembered how much I liked these stories. If these were written now, in 2016 and I was reading them for the first time I think I would think of them as almost like folk tales and a kind of historical fiction. But since they were written long ago and published in 1932 they feel more like stepping into the past in a different way. I'm rating these a bit higher than I would if I had picked this up as a brand new book, because for 1932, these were pretty darn good. Twelve interconnected stories set in a valley above Salinas, the Corral de Tierra that Steineck calls "The Pastures of Heaven." These are strange and haunted stories. Sad stories.

Good stuff.

>135 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul.

45. In The Days of the Comet by H G Wells, finished July 5, 2016, 1 star


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I read this for the British Author challenge. I've read most of Wells famous science fiction and this was one I'd not read before. Put simply I found it dreadful. I had to skim parts. Worst book I've read in quite a while.

46. Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery, finished July 9, 2016, 3 - 3 1/2 stars


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I read this for the July Canadian author challenge. Haven't read one by Montgomery since reading about half a dozen Anne books in the 80's after my wife and I got hooked on the Anne/Avonlea series. This is old fashioned sort of storytelling and an enjoyable book. Jane Victoria (and her mother) suffer under an insufferable Grandmother. Jane thinks her father is dead. The beginning of the book is Jane in Toronto living with Mom, Grandmother and Aunt in a grand, old, and cold mansion. Jane discovers her father is not dead as she always thought and he has sent for her to come stay the summer with him on Prince Edward Island where she was born. The first quarter of the book is a tad depressing, but once away to meet her father Jane gets a big surprise and comes to life. If I have a complaint it is that we went from bitter to sweet in an instant, and the story does get more than a bit twee. I suppose that is what one is looking for when one goes with Jane to Lantern Hill.

Jane matures and becomes very self-reliant and more than anything wants to know why her parents are no longer together. Of course her wish is to get the family to be whole again.

I've been debating with myself as to whether I want to read any Montgomery this month. I know I read some of the Anne books with my daughter back in the day, but I don't recall much about them or my reaction to them. There don't seem to be any of them around here now (unless they are hopelessly boxed and buried in the attic). I think they are the sort of thing I should only revisit if I recall loving them (as I so often do with Josephine Lawrence's Rosemary), and that's not the case here.

>138 laytonwoman3rd: Hi Linda. I had written and almost completed a fuller review of the Jane book and then it was one of those rare times where the laptop just decided to shut itself off and the review disappeared. I wasn't in a mood to re-write. What I really enjoyed about the Jane book was the descriptions of rural life and the landscape of Prince Edward Island. I think these are the sorts of books for an 11 year old girl to love. It was a pleasant read for light stuff.

>139 RBeffa: Well, there's still an 11-year-old girl in me somewhere...I still may read one of hers this month, as an antidote to the Current Events read for the Non-fiction challenge, which is going to be a downer, I'm sure.

47. Burning Bright, a play in novel format by John Steinbeck, finished July 11, 2016, 2 stars


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Steinbeck was experimenting with this book. He tells the reader so in a foreword in which he explains that plays for the theater are rarely read by anyone other than the actors. Steinbeck wanted to create something more accessible to general readers and to keep alive the stories that are within plays. He also thought that more description of characters within the format of a short novel/play would give actors a better base to work from. That's the theory here anyway. The story was published in 1950.

The result for me: I didn't really like this. Didn't hate it. It didn't feel like a Steinbeck novel. The story and characters couldn't get a hook in me. Lots of angst over achieving immortality by passing on one's bloodline. A man is going crazy about not fathering a child. Did I say this was heavy on the angst? The 4 characters here don't act like people. What I like about Steinbeck is the sense of place. Of course characters are important but Steinbeck had a skill with giving one a sense of the land the people in his stories were tied to, and that gets short shrift here. This short novel is a play/melodrama thing initially set in a circus then a farm, then the sea. I think I'll watch a Douglas Sirk film when I want 50's melodrama. Steinbeck was trying something different and this is different, and strange. Steinbeck is a bit clever here though, telling us the story in three different places and ways in the three acts. Unlike the play "Of Mice and Men" however, this just isn't very good. I'm not sorry I read this but I suspect this must be the weakest thing Steinbeck ever published.

"I suppose there are never enough books" - John Steinbeck

^Love that J.S.!

Hi, Ron! I thought I would pay a visit. I appreciate your Steinbeck comments over on the AAC. Sorry, Burning Bright didn't float your boat. I think I will take a pass too and give Of Mice and Men a revisit on audio.

I hope the rest of your reading is going much better.

>142 msf59: Thanks for dropping by Mark. Other than a huge HG Wells dud this month, reading has gone well lately. Besides a bit more Steinbeck this month I intend to read a bit of fun stuff.

like this:

48. The White Mountains by John Christopher, finished July 13, 2016, 3+ stars


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This is a boy's adventure story that was first published nearly 50 years ago in 1967. It is part of a trilogy from 1967-8 that was very popular in England apparently. I had heard of it and wanted to read this and was pleased to come upon a copy recently. The story is set in a future England and France, perhaps a hundred years in the future, after machines called Tripods took over and now rule the earth and mankind. We do not know if the machines were created by man and given artificial intelligence perhaps as part of a war, or not. Or, perhaps more likely they came from an invasion from the stars. Are the machines alive or are they guided by someone or something else? At a young age children are 'capped', roughly at puberty, and a thought control device is implanted onto their heads to subject them to thought control by the Tripods.

This story is about young Will who lives in a small village near Winchester who doesn't want this and runs away with a cousin after his best friend is "capped" and altered. He has been told by a wanderer that to the south in white mountains there are free uncapped humans who live where the Tripods cannot or do not wish to go. This is his journey. There is more to the story of course, and I think I was expecting something better, but this was still entertaining. This is a self contained story but there are a lot of unanswered questions and things we want to know and I look forward to reading the other books in this short series.

Ah, I read that trilogy when it came out over here.

>144 ronincats: I've gone and misplaced books 2 and 3!

>145 RBeffa: Oh, no!

I do the "where did I put that book" often enough.

I did find them this morning completely by chance. They were hiding in plain sight. I don't remember putting them where they were which was not with any scifi books at all - but in another bookcase with some misc trade fiction tbr. I try to be semi-organized with my books, but clearly not so well!

I'm in the middle of a book hat I am really enjoying so I will get back to the series later.

I fell asleep reading this last night because I didn't want to put it down to go to bed. I marathoned it this morning to finish it up.

49. Black Fire (Star Trek) by Sonni Cooper, finished July 16, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars


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Honestly, even though I've only read a handful of Star Trek novels, this must be one of the best. It is a very early entry and the author clearly gave us a treat. The characters in here rang very true and did so even in unconventional settings. Fans of Spock must love this book! Theodore Sturgeon, the great science fiction author who gave us the classic episode "Amok Time" writes a long and engaging introduction to the book and author. It is really too bad we didn't have more from Sonni Cooper.

The story set its hook from the first page and I'm not going to spoil the plot, except to say that Spock and Scotty "borrow" a starship and take it to the far side of the galaxy. Sound like an adventure? This story is full of twists and surprises. For those who like Star Trek novels or enjoyed the original series I'd say this was a must read. This would have made a great two-part episode of the original series.

I've had a couple of fun books and now dive headfirst back into the serious.

50. In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck, finished July 19, 2016, ? stars, maybe 3 1/2 - 4 stars


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One more for the American Author challenge for July. A Steinbeck I had never read before.

The opening was intriguing, like stepping into a noirish 1930's film. I half expected Jimmy Cagney to step through a door. I had to take a look again at the publication history and note this was first published in 1936. No wonder! The blurb on the back cover of my 1961 edition describes this as "Steinbeck's brilliant forerunner of the Pulitzer Prize-winning THE GRAPES OF WRATH."

I was surprised to find that there were many elements of the book that I disliked quite a bit. This is not a happy story. The "good guys", well, the red leader, 'Mac', goes about the union business as if it is war, because casualties, "collateral damage" lets call it at best, acceptable losses more realistically, are not only acceptable to him, they are fuel for the cause. I came to hate him. It is hard not to root for people who only want a living wage and don't want their existing wages cut by the landowners to pick the apple crop. I think Steinbeck has managed to write something that is still relevant 80 years after publication and that shows the good and the bad of man. I use the word man rather than mankind because if there is one element that reflects this as a product of several generations ago it is the lack of strong women characters. I also recognize that women's rights is not what Steinbeck's social cause is here. This is about worker's rights. Steinbeck certainly shows us the bad and ugly of the depression and how unions had to fight to be, and fight for workers. However, the big however, the communist agitators can be almost as ugly as the big bad employers who buy off the cops and let vigilantes have free reign.

Steinbeck was shining a light on a horrible social cost of crop pickers and the great depression of the '30's. This is interesting history even though fiction. Steinbeck makes comments on quite a variety of things and peoples throughout the novel and it kept striking me how true these observations were ... even though Steinbeck wrote this 80 years ago. This is a rather disturbing and scary book.

and the end will kill you.

>148 RBeffa: Hello RBeffa! I have seen this one many times, but have never read it. I usually don't care for the books which figure after the 5 year mission. However, your review is encouraging. I'll keep a look out for it.

I'm reading a more recent TOS novel at the moment titled A Choice of Catastrophes. Good so far.

>150 brodiew2: I think the story is set not too long after the initial series and before the first film. sorta. it provides an explanation via the story as to why the enterprise in the film looks a bit different then the one from the TV series. I enjoyed Black Fire quite a bit and hope you do also.

Part of my personal celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek 1966-2016. This also fits in with my goal to revisit a few old friends from childhood.

51. Star Trek 3 adapted by James Blish, finished July 21, 2016, 2 1/2 stars


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James Blish gets to turn Star Trek scripts/episodes into short stories. These stories are among the earliest Star Trek material published. When this came out in April 1969 the show was just about finished being broadcast and had already been cancelled. Who would guess that the voyage was really just beginning?

We have seven adapted scripts here: The Trouble With Tribbles, The Last Gunfight, The Doomsday Machine, Assignment: Earth, Mirror, Mirror, Friday's Child, and Amok Time. There are a couple genuine classic episodes here, as well as some lesser ones. None of these are from the final 3rd season. They are all from season 2, including the season 2 opening classic episode "Amok Time" written by Theodore Sturgeon in which Kirk and Spock face a duel to the death on Vulcan.

Honestly, one reads this for a little nostalgia. There is no great writing here, just some enjoyable stories to revisit in your memory. I'm not sure how true to the original episodes these stories are, because it has been a very long time since I watched any of them.

Well, if you've got Netflix streaming, they're on! I did a binge watch of all the original series earlier in the year. It's been decades since I've read any of the adaptations, though.

>153 drneutron: I was thinking I should check! A year or so ago I enjoyed watching most of the Star Trek animated series. I may have seen one or two long ago but I know I didn't pay much attention to Saturday morning cartoons at that point in my life. I found the episodes (animated) surprisingly good.

>149 RBeffa: Very good and balanced review Ron. It is one of my favourites of Steinbeck to be honest and I would rank it just below The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men in his canon. I would certainly agree that it was very disturbing.

Have a great weekend.

>155 PaulCranswick: Thanks for the visit and comments Paul. In Dubious Battle is going to haunt me for some time.

It is Saturday morning here, almost 9 AM and the weather is lovely if a touch too warm later in the day. Have a great weekend too!

Another Steinbeck for the July American Author challenge. May do Of Mice and Men next.

52. The Pearl by John Steinbeck, finished July 24, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars


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This short novel is another sad one from Steinbeck. We get a fable here, set on the Baja California coast where a poor Indian man and his young family live a hardscrabble existence. I've read this one before, though not recently, and it is a story not easy to forget. The descriptions the author gives us of the land and the peoples are the best part of the story for me. The story itself is so bleak, with what seems the entire world of the young man allied against him and his family, when he finds a great pearl, "The Pearl of the World," that is his one chance to break away from his desperately poor existence is crushed. That's my problem with this book - a very well written story, but is the message really as bleak as it seems, that one has no hope, no chance for a better lot in life? One should not dream for a better life for one's child for to merely think some things about the future is a siren call to evil to come for you and what you hold dear.

Sometimes Steinbeck gives Thomas Hardy a real run for his money. Kino, Juana and the young baby never had a chance.

Another Steinbeck for the July American Author challenge.

53. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, finished July 25, 2016, 4+ stars


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This is a Steinbeck novella that I've read before, but not for many years. I've also seen a couple filmed versions of the story and they sort of mix themselves up together in memory. I think of this as one of Steinbeck's best works. Unlike several stories, this one is a sad story that doesn't make me the reader overly sad. I can read it as a tragedy with an almost inevitable conclusion. The end is clearly sad, though, and may very well bring a few tears to one's eyes.

There are many excellent summaries of this work available and I don't feel any need to recap. In this story Steinbeck once again shows he has the ability to create a timeless story. This is set in California in a ranching area just south of Soledad (a small town south of Salinas) and I've driven through this area many times. This long valley has mountain ranges both east and west of it and it is picturesque, if a little lonely feeling. The Gabilan mountains on the eastern side rise very high from the valley floor and are a bit spooky, esp in the Pinnacles area that lies directly east from where the story is set. Loneliness, as it happens, is something of a theme of the novel, which focuses on two lonely men, George and Lennie, who have each other for companionship. One is smart, one is slow. All the other characters in the story have a lonely feeling about themselves as well - most of them are looking for the human touch, a connection. Lennie, however, has a fondness for soft things, esp rabbits.

54. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck, finished July 27, 2016, 2 1/2+ stars


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I don't recall when I first read Tortilla Flat but it must have been during my teen years. I didn't remember it as a favorite and never re-read it until now. There's a certain amount of charm to the cast of characters here, a ragtag group of layabout paisanos led by Danny who live in the hilly area above the town of Monterey. The manner of storytelling, with a mimicry of King Arthur's knights of the round table also adds a bit of charm. One can only listen to so many thees and thous however. My personal problem with the book is that I just can't identify with the drunken no-account lets steal the neighbors chickens, throw rocks through the windows on Alvarado street life, and the "charm" here wears thin. These guys would do anything but work. There are some interesting little vignettes and character sketches in here that pretty much save the story but I had my fill of drinking yourself into a stupor until the house burns down pretty early on.

In a sense I'm breaking my own rules on reading Steinbeck where I try not to put a late 20th/early 21st century sensibility on early 1930's life, but it is what it is. I'm pretty sure I felt this same way in the 60's or 70's when I first encountered this. These guys are serious alcoholics who drink gallons of wine and steal and slum their way for more wine or brandy.

Danny goes looney tunes near the end and destroys his little paisano Camelot.

I listened to much of the story via an audiobook narrated by John McDonough. He does an excellent job reading this with a relaxed pace just about perfect for the story. I did a bit of spot reading/recapping as well as reading the last portion of the story from a physical paper book.

There are better Steinbeck stories than this one.

Good review, Ron. That's pretty much my reaction to Tortilla Flat. I was hoping for another Cannery Row or {Sweet Thursday, but it had the flaws you describe. Nonetheless, as you say, I did enjoy some of the interesting little vignettes and character sketches.

Thanks Joe. Cannery Row really seems to be the book that sets the Steinbeck hook for most people. I'm pretty sure it was the one that hooked me. My daughter read the Pearl in late middle school and it made her so sad she never touched another Steinbeck as far as i know.

>161 RBeffa: I fell off the Steinbeck wagon as a yute after strongly disliking East of Eden. Then, on a whim, a few years ago I picked up The Log from the Sea of Cortez, an NF from him featuring the guy "Doc" was based on in Cannery Row, and liked it a lot. Coincidentally, LT had a "Steinbeckathon" going shortly thereafter, and during it I loved Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday and Grapes of Wrath, and liked a bunch of others of his.

I would recommend Cannery Row as a starting place for a newbie, although most folks, like your daughter, get assigned other Steinbecks early on in school.

>159 RBeffa: These guys are serious alcoholics... This observation applies easily to Cannery Row, in my opinion. I just read CR; I'm sure I read TF but certainly not in decades. I'm baffled by the extraordinary destruction that "parties" spark, by the devolution of so many activities into alcohol-fueled mayhem. That last sentence sounds sanctimonious to me, but there it is.

Reading Steinbeck is a mixed experience. I read a lot of his novels in my youth, and I read three of his books for Mark-eMark's AAC. I think I have liked A Russian Journal best, and think meh of The Short Reign of Pippin IV and CR.

>163 weird_O: I saw your comments on the AAC about Russian Journal and it sparked my interest. I suspect I will pick it up some day. I'll see what my current reaction to Cannery Row is when I squeeze in a re-read of it and Sweet Thursday. Revisiting Steinbeck has been interesting.

55. Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 40, No. 8 (August 2016) edited by Sheila Williams, finished July 30, 2016, 3 1/2 stars


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This latest digest issue of the magazine is pretty good. There are 3 novelettes and 4 short stories as well as a number of poems and various columns and book reviews.

Notable to me is the opening story "Wakers" by Sean Monaghan which is a longish short story that takes place on a generation ship that we soon find has been travelling for a long time. A lone caretaker is awake with the AI, named "Aye" and as he is ageing out it is time for him to choose another to awaken and carry on. We soon find that what had initially been a 150 year journey could turn into a 3,000 year journey because of an explosion that knocked the ship off course shortly after the journey had begun. The artificial intelligence here, Aye, was a really good character as was the caretaker Grayson. Aye was damaged in the explosion and does the best it can. Human intelligence and problem solving must rise to the challenge.

There is also an interesting alternative history story at the end of the issue about John F Kennedy, astronaut.

NN. Double Cross The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben MacIntyre, did not finish


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This non-fiction book is a thoroughly researched story of a group of WWII double agents who seemingly played a big part in the success of the D-Day invasion of France. I read the first several chapters and then the end, and then spot read parts in the middle. Overall I read perhaps a quarter of the book. Although I was interested in this story there were really a great many people involved in this story that demanded more attention than I wanted to give. I sorta keyed on a few interesting ones and then spot read some of their stories. It was just too overwhelming otherwise. There is a thorough index as well as extensive reference notes at the end of the book.

I had no idea this stuff even happened so the behind the scenes spy stuff was kind of eye opening. I had read a bit of this book a year or two ago as I have been reading some material in recent years on the french resistance and WWII in Europe. The book really didn't grab me on first look or now. That is just me however. The book is well regarded and anyone who is interested in this stuff should take at least a look at the book. There are a number of photos as well which really enhance things.

56. Barren cove : a novel by Ariel S. Winter, finished August 3, 2016, 3 - 3 1/2 stars


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I picked up this recent release at the library. Some people will really like/love this novel and some won't. I'm somewhere in the middle, but on the like side and I admire the construction of this. The cover of the book caught my attention, even if it is a little off-putting, but the flyleaf and comments on the back of the book made me want to give this a try. Well done literary science-fiction is rather rare in my experience.

Some mild spoilers here.

This is a dark gothic tale of sorts set in the future, but not too far in the future. Instead of Heathcliff and Cathy we have robots. Instead of a foundling Heathcliff we have a human boy found on the beach by robots who they name Beachstone. Instead of Cathy befriending and eventually loving Heathcliff we have a similar arrangement with the robot Mary (including Mary's brother who does not take well at all to the intrusion of Beachstone into the family dynamics). I know, that sounds ridiculous. But here it isn't. This is a future where very few humans remain. Instead sentient robots populate the places where people once lived, and they behave pretty much like people. The story is told partly from the viewpoint of Mr. Sapien, a rather rare human built robot, and he goes away from the city to a beach house he has rented. I wish the story had stayed more focused on Sapien and how he would figure out what he was going to do with his life, but the story scatters among other characters. We also move back in time to when a young human boy was adopted by the father robot, Asimov3000, and how the boy bonded to his "sister" Mary. Unfortunately when Mr. Sapien arrives at the beach house for a sort of personal retreat, all the crazy robots live in the big house above the cliff and if I were Mr. Sapien I would have left oh about one day later. But then we wouldn't have this story.

This story is a bit of fun (there's even a nod to "The Jetsons" and "Lost in Space" robots) and is rather touching at times mixed with macabre and some rather sicko elements within this tale of robot on human violence and other stuff (not a lot of this but enough). The dark scenes are rather critical to the story development and serve very well to keep the reader on the edge of things. They also serve to show very well that the robots do not follow Asimov's laws of robotics in this future tale as they go forward and create new versions of themselves. They seem almost universally warped mentally. Part of my dissatisfaction with this story came from my inability to learn something - as a robotic mimic of Wuthering Heights it is well done, but what was it trying to tell me?

Overall this was a good read that kept my attention and had me turning the pages to see how it was all going to develop. Kate Bush provided my mental soundtrack at times with her song "Wuthering Heights."

>165 RBeffa: I'm listening to John Lee's stellar narration on Double Cross Spies right now. I've been a vacation for a week so that slowed things down, but I've crossed that halfway mark and look forward to the home stretch.

>167 brodiew2: It should have worked for me but after two tries I figure I gave it a fair chance. Some books do work best as audio books I think, but then you wouldn't have the various photos of the people involved here. I did like studying the faces of the people within the book. They are described very well but seeing the pictures and settings really adds to it for me.

In other news I've pearl ruled two books recently, both by Philip Kerr. I didn't really give Kerr's newest The Other Side of Silence a fair shot. I just didn't feel like reading about a guy ready to off himself since he was so done with life. The story looks very good but it clearly wasn't what I was interested in reading.

So then I gave Kerr's early novel March Violets a try. This is one I expected to like a lot, but the main character (20 years before the book I had just tried) was just way too snarky and Kerr is doing his best Raymond Chandler but I got tired of it rather quickly. Very good atmosphere of 1936 Berlin but at 60 pages I had enough. There was a time in my life where I enjoyed some detective fiction but I seem to have outgrown it.

57. Leonard: My Fifty-year friendship with a remarkable Man by William Shatner with David Fisher, finished August 9, 2016, 3 1/2 stars


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I grabbed this off the new books shelf at the library. It fits in perfectly with my 50th anniv of Star Trek read this year.

Part memoir, part confessional, part biography, this was much better than I expected. Shatner being Shatner, this isn't just about Nimoy. The infamous ego does seem to have been dialed back a bit and Shatner comes clean on various times that don't show him in the best light. I found his observations and history of Leonard Nimoy very much worth the read. It is somewhat surprising that they could become friends. Shatner does not have close friends. He repeatedly admits it. He even more or less ackowledges that he was a jealous dick about Nimoy's popularity when "He" was the star of the show. Their relationship certainly had ups and downs.

Some of the really important issues in Nimoy's life are barely touched on, or handled gently, while others get a more in depth accounting. As such, this is a very selective look back on their working lives. Despite the title I kept wondering as I read this, when do we get to the friendship part? It does come, eventually. And there are some touching moments.

Overall good reading, although I think this could be arranged a little better by an editor. There are some glaring typos as well scattered throughout the book. Someone wasn't doing their job.

I miss Leonard Nimoy. I may seek out one of his autobiographies at some point.

>169 RBeffa: Thanks for this review, RBeffa. I have enjoyed listening to Shatner narrate his books over the years and it sounds like this one will be good as well.

I highly recommend I Am Spock. I liked that one a lot. There is also an Alien Voices series that Nimoy and John DeLancie did in character as Spock and Q. Highly entertaining.

>170 brodiew2: The library had the audiobook as well, read by Shatner, and that would be an ideal way to experience this (but you don't get the pictures then do you?). I'll track down I am Spock.

This really revved up my Star Trek enthusiasm for this year.

clearly this book thing is not something new with me

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I am enthused as well regarding Star Trek. I really enjoyed Star Trek Memories. I never got my hands on Star Trek Movie Memories and can't find it in either of the local library systems.

I am going to try and find Star Trek Black Fire and read it before the end of the year.

>173 brodiew2: I'm reading the Trek novel Star Trek Triangle at the moment - it is #9 following Black Fire's #8 in the Bantam series. I'm having a mixed reaction to it - characters seem pretty spot on but the whole premise of the story strikes me as stupid beginning with the prologue. I'll see how it goes. This is essentially early fangirl fiction.

Tonight and tomorrow is our Friends of the Library sale and I'll be looking for the I Am Spock book. Only a chance it will be there but sometimes you get lucky. I got lucky with a signed copy of Doohan's memoir a couple years ago.

I'm bummed to learn that John Steinbeck's son Thomas has passed on. I've enjoyed the two books of his that I read and had hoped to read more from him.
http://www.ksbw.com/news/john-steinbecks-son-fellow-author-thomas-steinbeck-dies...

58. Triangle by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath, finished August 13, 2016, 1 - 1 1/2 stars


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This novel follows Black Fire, which I recently read, in the Timescape/Pocket book series of Star Trek novels. This one is set sometime not long after the events of Star Trek the Motion Picture, the first film that gave new life to the TV series franchise. I must say I have a hard time rating this story. The characters for the most part feel very authentic. The writers clearly know the shows and the characters and their history very well. The story however started off very poorly for me. I can see some readers throwing this in the trash. I seriously thought about quitting it about 75 pages in. I thought it was going to get better and then it went to this ridiculous (to me) love triangle bit. The story is written as if the reader has already some familiarity with a central character, Sola Thane, as well as some understanding of a cult-like New Human "Oneness" and another, the "Totality." As near as I can tell this novel is not actually a sequel or follow-up to some prior work. The bad romance novel stuff in here threatened to gag me - I had enough of Kirk being the irresistible babe magnet in the TV series - now they lust for him across species and across the galaxy. There is more here that I won't bother to mention, and some characters and ideas that could have been developed a lot better. There's a lot of philosophizing in here that I read as nonsense. I can't recommend this to anyone.

Do you know about the History Channel special that premieres tonight, Ron?

No I did not! Thank you Linda. I barely pay attention to TV and we have mostly just had the Olympic swimming on - I would certainly have missed this. We get the eastern feed of History channel out here so I need to pay attention at 5 Pacific.

This should be fun. Thank you again. I'm looking forward to the Nimoy interview. I wonder if he will discuss his estrangement from Shatner in recent years?

59. The wolf road : a novel by Beth Lewis, finished August 16, 2016, 3 1/2 stars


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When I first began this novel my initial reaction was not a positive one. The backwoods dialogue and rather dark and gruesome scene that starts this did not appeal to me. The story, however, quickly caught my interest. There was more darkness to come, and rather quickly in this bleak wild western set in Canada a couple generations in the future from now after at least two wars seemed to have ruined the world. This is the story of a young girl, named Elka by the Trapper who finds her after a fierce storm and more or less adopts and raises her and teaches her skills to hunt and survive in the bleak northwest with 8 month long winters and very hot summers. The Trapper, however, has a very dark secret.

The story is a very good one and I really became immersed in it. It is one that will stay with me for a long time. There are undercurrents in this story that I was a little slow to catch on to. I must warn that there are scenes of very graphic violence and torture, but it really is part of this story. I'll say that not much good happens in this book, but there is a very good friendship that develops slowly, against the odds. Despite the darkness of the story, it is an excellent portrait of survival against the odds in a future I hope never comes to pass.

I received an advance reading copy of this book through the LibraryThing early reviewers program.

eta: I've been thinking about this book the last few days - it is a dark one not easy to get out of your head. I have decided with a few days of reflection that I am ultimately disappointed with this book. I've been trying to think of why would I recommend this book to someone - is it going to tell them something new - and I think not. This is pretty much a horror story. The young girl's backwoods speech was a constant annoyance - no one else in the book spoke that way including the man who raised her, so other than as a marker that the girl was uneducated, which a great many people would be in the post nuke war world - it is just an affectation that was tiresome and really didn't make sense. Different readers will have different reactions, of course, and I do not regret reading this, but I wouldn't suggest anyone read this unless they liked horror.

>176 RBeffa: Yikes! That sounds awful. I'm sorry to hear that 'Triangle' is so much nonsense. It's kind of sad considering that you liked Black Fire so much. That said, I rather enjoyed you're vexed review. It is sometimes a joy to read a well written deconstruction. :-)

>177 laytonwoman3rd: Ack! I missed it. I'm sure it will be back around soon.

>180 brodiew2: I found the ST show rather underwhelming. I turned it off after about 40-45 minutes. The few interesting bits in the first half hour I had already read about in more depth in the Shatner Nimoy book I had just read or already knew.

Triangle ... yuck. i had planned to read more of the early ST novels but think I will jump ahead now. I found a nice HB copy of Sarek recently.

Thanks for the heads up on the ST special, RBeffa. I'll pass.

I'd be happy to recommend a couple of others from the first 50 of the Pocket Series. I did not read them all, but I read 10 or so, most were enjoyable. I never read Sarek or any of the Spock series that came later. I have always enjoyed the TOS era for novels. That said, I have a some very good TNG novel. Q-Squared. Just saying. :-)

These are the early ones I have, most of which I have not read. Fairly recent reads are noted. I had picked up several (Yesterday's Son, Ishmael, Uhura's Song, Doctor's orders and several others) based on LT recommends previously and got carried away this past year grabbing more at the library book sales ... I have a copy of the TOS/TNG crossover novel Federation around here somewhere but it seems to have not made it into my catalog. I'm planning on reading 7, 17 and 39 at least this year.

The Klingon Gambit by Robert E. Vardeman - read 3
The Abode of Life by Lee Correy 6
Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan by Vonda N. McIntyre 7
Black Fire by Sonni Cooper - read 8
Triangle by Sondra Marshak - read 9
Web of the Romulans by M. S. Murdock 10
Yesterday's Son by A. C. Crispin - read - 11
Mutiny on the Enterprise by Robert E. Vardeman 12
Corona by Greg Bear 15
The Final Reflection by John M. Ford 16
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock by Vonda N. McIntyre 17
Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan 21
Ishmael by Barbara Hambly 23
Dwellers in the Crucible by Margaret W. Bonanno 25
Pawns and Symbols by Majliss Larson 26
Crisis on Centaurus by Brad Ferguson 28
Dreadnought! by Diane Carey 29
Battlestations! by Diane Carey 31
Chain of Attack by Gene DeWeese - read 32
Deep Domain by Howard Weinstein 33
Dreams of the Raven by Carmen Carter 34
How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford 36
Bloodthirst by J. M. Dillard 37
The IDIC Epidemic by Jean Lorrah 38
Time for Yesterday by A. C. Crispin 39
Timetrap by David Dvorkin - read 40
The Three-Minute Universe by Barbara Paul 41
Memory Prime by Garfield Reeves-Stevens 42
The Final Nexus by Gene DeWeese 43
The Cry of the Onlies by Judy Klass 46
The Pandora Principle by Carolyn Clowes 49
Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane 50
Enemy Unseen by V. E. Mitchell 51
Home is the Hunter by Dana Kramer-Rolls 52
A Flag Full of Stars by Brad Ferguson 54
The Rift by Peter David 57
Faces of Fire by Michael Jan Friedman 58
Ice Trap by L. A. Graf 60
Death Count by L. A. Graf 62
Shell Game by Melissa Crandall 63
From the Depths by Victor Milán 66
Firestorm by L. A. Graf 68
Crossroad by Barbara Hambly 71
The Fearful Summons by Denny Martin Flinn 74
First Frontier by Diane Carey 75
Mind Meld by John Vornholt 82
Assignment: Eternity by Greg Cox 84
Across the Universe by Pamela Sargent 88
Wagon Train to the Stars by Diane Carey 89
Thin Air by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 93

Ah, my teen years are flashing before my eyes. The below are some of the ones I enjoyed the most.

The Final Reflection by John M. Ford 16
Ishmael by Barbara Hambly 23
Dwellers in the Crucible by Margaret W. Bonanno 25
Dreadnought! by Diane Carey 29
Battlestations! by Diane Carey 31

There was also one called Killing Time which and dark alternate timeline story which I really liked as well.

>184 brodiew2: I read the first few pages of The Final Reflection before bed last night. I got that "familiar" feel almost immediately and when we shortly get to the book within a book I had the aha moment. This is one of a small handful of ST novels I read back in the mid-late 80's when they were new or almost new. I never kept my copies as we had an active paperback swap set up at the library and I was constantly exchanging books. I don't really remember this story other than it was one I liked so I am looking forward to continuing it.

You will enjoy it. :-) I believe it ranks pretty high among fan favorites. I never have gotten around to reading his How much for just the planet? I'll have to rectify that soon.

I need to get this book log up to date. I'm currently nibbling away at "The Last Ship" by William Brinkley but I think I am going to set it aside and possibly return to it later sometime. The story is good but the telling, for various reasons, leaves something to be desired. I'll leave it at that.

Besides that, since mid August I have read:

60. The 1989 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald A Wollheim with Arthur W. Saha, finished about August 26, 2016, 3 1/2 stars


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This is the second to last, or as the cognoscenti might say, the penultimate collection of what editor Donald Wollheim thinks were the best stories of the preceding year. The 1989 annual year's best has 11 stories in this collection, and all date from 1988. There were 26 years in the series starting with 1965 and I made it a point to try and read these every year for many years. I probably read 2/3 or more of these collections from about 1970. 1990 would be the last year of the series coinciding with Wollheim's death. Several of the last ones I never did get to, and this was one of them. The first seven years of the series, 65-71 were co-edited with Terry Carr and the later ones (72-90) with Arthur Saha.

There are what seems to me to be a few weak stories here, including the opening story which I found hard to believe was among the year's best despite having been written by notable author David Brin. It isn't bad, i just can't see it as "best." Other readers liked it better as it was nominated in the short story category for a Hugo. There are however a few very good or better stories in here, and no clunkers, and that made this an enjoyable read overall. The included stories are:

1 • Introduction • essay by Isaac Asimov
5 • The Giving Plague • shortstory by David Brin
25 • Peaches for Mad Molly • novelette by Steven Gould
49 • Shaman • novelette by John Shirley
83 • Schrödinger's Kitten • novelette by George Alec Effinger
109 • The Flies of Memory • novella by Ian Watson
159 • Skin Deep • shortstory by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
175 • A Madonna of the Machine • novelette by Tanith Lee
197 • Waiting for the Olympians • novelette by Frederik Pohl
241 • Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog • shortstory by B. W. Clough
253 • Adrift Among the Ghosts • shortstory by Jack L. Chalker
269 • Ripples in the Dirac Sea • shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis

I'll comment on several that I thought were among the best here.

"Schrödinger's Kitten" was pretty good (and it won the 1988 Nebula award for best novelette), an early entry in Effinger's series of stories and novels set in a future world with a heavy arabic influence. "The Flies of Memory" by Ian Watson was long, just about novella length and luckily was modestly entertaining with a scenario of bug-like aliens arriving on earth. Do they come in peace? Are the here merely to watch and "remember" the earth with their flyselves all over the planet? I thought this might be light fluff at first but it became much more weird, complicated and interesting. The story was apparently expanded into a novel a couple of years
later. I don't find Watson's writing style reader friendly however and it prevents me from saying I really liked it.

"Skin Deep" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was very good. To me it had the feel of one of Ray Bradbury's better Martian Chronicles stories where colonists deal with the unknown. Nice, compact story that really packs a surprise punch. I was surprised to discover this was one
of the author's first published stories. I also found Tanith Lee's "A Madonna of the Machine" quite interesting - it is set in a future where humans live and their needs met inside of a giant machine. All goes along until the visions start.

Jack Chalker's "Adrift Among the Ghosts" is a powerful story I have read before, and it is one that will stay with you. Out there among the stars a man is collecting the televised programs of earth.

"Ripples in the Dirac Sea" by Geoffrey Landis was the final story and my favorite of the collection. A man had discovered time travel and can travel backwards in time only. A very thoughtful and moving story is wrapped around this.

Next up was a just published book

61. Chilar: Journey of a Lifetime by Kaye Kvam, finished August 31, 2016, 4+ stars


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Before I read this I was afraid it might break my heart, but I was wrong. Author Kaye Kvam died 10 days ago, August 22nd, from ovarian cancer and ALS. She's the bravest person I've ever known, and that goes back to our sophomore year in college when we met in 1972. This book, just published, covers a year in her life. It is a memoir of something she did from 1974-5. Instead of a senior year in college at UC Davis with the rest of us, she volunteered for participation in a program, "Project Piaxtla" in Mexico. She told me stories in letters and when she came back, of her time in very rural Mexico as a healthcare worker. With only the briefest of training it was an on the job experience program and it shaped who she became. She had wanted to be a nurse but instead she became a pioneer, as one of the earliest Physicians Assistants in a program at Stanford University.

This book is about her time in the Sierra Madre mountains in Sinaloa, Mexico, mostly in a small village called Chilar. She had told me bits of some of these stories years ago but I had no idea of what it all was. I already thought she was a hero and now I have not the slightest doubt.

I need to write a better review for this book also.

Today is Edgar Rice Burroughs birthday. He would be 141 if he had magical powers as good as his magical imagination. LT says I have 99 books by him. hmmph. so i looked at the list. aha. I have The Oakdale Affair right there in the bookcase but it isn't in my catalog. Ok. Voila 100 ERB books. I betcha one or 2 others could be added as well. someday.

That is a lot of ERB. Do you a favorite you would like to share?

> I think A Princess of Mars is pretty terrific.

^Ditto. I read a bunch of those as a kid. Carson of Venus was fun, too, as I recall.

I had no idea it was ERB's birthday. He and Jules Verne were my sci-fi intros when I was a kid.

>190 RBeffa: I had this on audio just a last week, but didn't listen. The timing wasn't right. I'll give it another try.

NN The Final Reflection by John M. Ford 9/12/2016, about 3 stars for me

I'm not going to count this Star Trek novel as a book read. I did read this many years ago but on a re-read it failed to inspire me. It is 95+% Klingon stuff which is fine if that is what you wanted, but I didn't. I recall thinking this was a good read back in the 80's but it just didn't click with me this time and required a lot of attention that I didn't want to give it. I heavily skimmed several parts esp an early section on a Klingon game that I found utterly confusing to read. I can see it making a great movie scene but to try and follow what it was all about in words felt like too much work.

eta: I don't mean to sound like I might be bashing this novel in some way. Re-reading my post I sound pretty dismissive. When the book came out, information on Klingons was essentially non-existent and this was a very good attempt by the author to create a culture for the Klingons. And there is a rather interesting story woven into this. I'd say Klingon fans would probably love it. This is pre-Worf era Klingons mind you, but most certainly a large step beyond Tribble Klingons.

On to Ishmael?

>194 brodiew2: I was thinking Time For Yesterday and/or Star Trek 4, one of the Blish adaptations as my next Trek. Then I may jump forward to one of the newer books.

I never read Time For Yesterday. Is that the one with Spock's son? Is it the first or second in the duology?

Time for Yesterday is the 2nd one. I read the first one, Yesterday's Son about 3 years ago and liked it a lot. I see I rated it 3 1/2 stars but as far as Trek novels go it is a 4 star I'd say. It is about Spock's son.

I realized it had been five years since I read a Stephen King novel, the fabulous 11/22/63. I was going to read "Joyland" which i have on hand or perhaps another when I saw this one at the library.

NN. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King, did not finish


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Leave it to Stephen King to be the very first person to throw me out of a story with the very first sentence of the story. Really. This is how we begin:

"April 9–10, 2009

Augie Odenkirk had a 1997 Datsun that still ran well in spite of high mileage, but gas was expensive, especially for ..."

Well, I once owned a 1974 Datsun 610 coupe which I loved despite its faults as it aged. I got smart and bought a brand new '84 Camry to replace it eventually. When 1987 came along we thought we needed a pickup truck to replace my wife's old Dodge, so i went to buy a Datsun pickup and came home with a Nissan. In 1987 there were no more Datsuns.

OK, we must be dealing with an alternate reality in this story. King is doing this on purpose, telegraphing that this isn't "our" earth.

OK, that wasn't it either. I guess he just goofed. So Stephen and I started off wrong here. However, I realized before long that I wasn't enjoying this story, and so I bailed.

>198 RBeffa: Wow. I'm surprised that King and his editors would allow such a mistake. Not entirely surprised that one of his stories didn't work for you, though. He is hit-or-miss with me. Unfortunately, this one had rather intrigued me---now I don't know whether to give it a try or not.

>199 laytonwoman3rd: King has been hit or miss with me also. Regardless of the Datsun goof I realized quite quickly that this wasn't a story I wanted to read. I stopped on pg 31 I think. This has been described as crime fiction and I suppose that is what it would be if I kept at it - but I just did not like how this started at all.

Please don't let me scare you off. It gets reasonably good reviews, but as I see now it also gets some comments on the down side. Maybe I didn't give it enough time but I think my mind was made up by about pg 15. I think this was one brodie recently read and liked.

eta: i take that back. I went and read a few more pages. The dialogue in here makes my head explode - it is like Stephen King is channeling very very bad Dean Koontz or something (someone who used to write good stories long ago). Between the set-up scenario, ultra-lame characters and dialogue, give this a pass. this is gawdawful

I've got piles of books here screaming at me to read them. Life in general has been rather demanding lately and I haven't had long stretches to sit down and really enjoy a story. Quick snatches of books here and there isn't fair to me or the book. I was nibbling away at a Doris Lessing novel and realized i was being unfair to it. Instead I've started spending my odd reading moments on some magazines and have started a pretty undemanding series book I have wanted to read.

I'll be back in the groove soon.

I think your piles have been communicating with mine - they're screaming at me too. Maybe it's a book pile rebellion... :)

I hope things settle down so you can get groovin' again.

Good morning, RBeffa. I have stayed the course on Mr. Mercedes. It is narrated by the very capable and often creepy, Will Patton. Though it is not supernatural horror, King does well in establishing his characters and I have enjoyed the ride so far (in the final quarter). It is the first King I have listened to in some time.

>202 drneutron: thanks for the note Jim.

>203 brodiew2: Some books work better as audio books - this might be one of them (and of course some books are done awful as audio books). Mr Mercedes really hit me as sub-par King.

Fair enough. Admittedly, I don't have a deep history with King. I have enjoyed a couple here and there, but I am by no means a fan. The Stand is still my favorite. I plan to try Salem's Lot and The Gunslinger in 2017.

>205 brodiew2: I read the original edition of The Stand long ago - It was King in his prime then - It had been out a while when I read it. I went through a flurry of his books in the 80's but tapered off by the end of the decade and only read him lightly after that as I started to get a few misses among the hits. A small group of friends at my work at the time were reading them and we kind of egged each other on. There are tons of King stories and novels that I have not read - and I've thought of reading the expanded uncut version of The Stand but that would be a task. Maybe someday. Plenty of King to try. I've never read one of the Gunslinger/Dark Tower books.

I'm hoping to finish up or get real close on The City of Gold and Lead today while having our car serviced. This is the followup novel to The White Mountains by John Christopher that I read a couple months ago. I enjoyed that pretty well for an older British boy's sci-fi adventure novel. My first impression on the sequel was that it was good but maybe not as good as the first book. However the novel really ups the game somewhere around the middle and this will, I'm sure, be a better book than the first. I'll write more when I finish it up. I have the third and final novel of the trilogy on hand and I will get to that very soon I hope.

62. The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher, finished September 28, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (ratings are for the genre)


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This is a boy's adventure story, a followup to The White Mountains, that was first published in 1970. My copies of these first two books date from 1988 and feature cover illustrations by Tim Hildebrandt which was a nice little bonus. The first story ended with three boys travelling from England and France to a refuge in the Swiss alps in a very dark future where the world has been overtaken by machines called "Tripods." It is part of a trilogy. We learn here that the machines are not of earth and the planet is ruled by a race that the people refer to as "The Masters." The first part of this story was a rather bland continuation from the first novel where a plan has been devised to infiltrate the Tripods domed city to learn about them - who are they and can they be stopped?

This story about midway rather suddenly got VERY interesting when three of the boys, by winning places in a games competition are sent to the tripods city to serve the masters. It is considered a great honor by the populace who are almost all under a mind control. The story is a first person account told by Will, who is again our main character as in the first novel. The author does an excellent job of giving us really nasty aliens and the unusual society that is theirs. There's a bit of horrific stuff in here, well, darn shocking anyway, as Will and we the readers see what has been happening and learn a little about how the world was conquered. I don't want to give stuff away, but Will "lucks out" by being chosen to serve a master that is a little different than the majority, unlike one of his companions Fritz who gets a nasty one. Still, things are nasty for anyone enslaved in the Tripod city. I can see why this series was popular because if I had been reading this as a 12 year old I would view this as something like "The Hunger Games" and similar series are now.

Anyway this is very good stuff and I eagerly await reading the final book.

63. The Pool of Fire: The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher, finished October 4, 2016, 2 1/2 - 3 stars (ratings are for the YA SF genre)


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The third and final book of the original Tripods trilogy was something of a disappointment to me in a variety of ways. Again, this is a boy's adventure story from the late 60's and it was probably aimed at 10-12 year olds. I won't dwell on this too much but I thought it the weakest of the three novels. The story here is interesting and carries on right from the second book, "The City of Gold and Lead." The angle here is to capture one of the "Masters" to supposedly learn more about how they can be stopped. They are under a deadline however as in the second story it was revealed that a massive ship from the Master's homeworld would arrive in 4 years to begin the process of transforming the earth into a planet suitable for habitation by the Masters and that will result in death to all current life on earth.

So what really bugged me by the end of the story was how the earth survivors basically living at a middle ages subsistence level mount a challenge within this time frame. Secondly, I was really bothered by the lack in all three books of women characters in any position in this story - I guess that reinforces the "Middle ages" setting, but I can only remember vaguely, briefly, a boy's mother in the first novel as well as a young maiden at a tournament who could have developed as a significant character but instead had a rather unpleasant fate laid out for her, and at the beginning of the third book there is a brief mention of a woman who mothered one of the boy heroes here back to health after nearly dying of pneumonia. Otherwise one would not even know a woman existed on the planet anymore and they certainly don't exist in the resistance movement. Thirdly, the social and political framework of the earth survivors by the end of the story was a bit strange. Perhaps there is an allegory here lost on an American reader of this British science fiction adventure.

Overall this series was an enjoyable read but it strikes me as very dated.

Last October I went rather crazy and read 9 or 10 Ray Bradbury books. That won't happen this year but I do plan to read a couple this month. Right now I'm reading "The Illustrated Man" - I thought I had read this before but it is hard to tell - A fair number of the stories were included in Bradbury collections I read last year - there are 18 stories here and I recognize quite a few titles whether I read them last year or years before. In any event, the stories have been assembled here with an intriguing framework story - that of the illustrated man, and I'm enjoying the read/re-read.

64. The Illustrated Man (Grand Master Editions) by Ray Bradbury, finished October 12, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (ratings are for the classic SF genre)


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It is pretty easy for me to give this collection of stories 3 1/2-4 stars, in comparison to other works of 1950's era science fiction. There's a wraparound story here of the Illustrated Man, but it isn't much of anything as it turned out, despite a promising beginning, and just leaves this reader wishing there was more. It should have been a beter story of the Illustrated man. The treasure here are the 18 stories assembled. This book is older than I am, which says something. I read this as a teenager in High school, and I don't think I read it since, although a number of the stories have appeared elsewhere and a few of those I have read more recently. Despite a few dated characteristics and ideas, the writing here is almost uniformly excellent and I really savored reading these stories one or two at a time. Bradbury slips in social commentary just about everywhere. I'd recommend this one as an introduction to Ray Bradbury.

The leadoff story "The Veldt" appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, which goes to show you how mainstream Ray Bradbury was, and yet so wildly imaginative.

The contents are:

• 1 • Prologue: The Illustrated Man • (1951)
• 7 • The Veldt • (1950)
• 19 • Kaleidoscope • (1949)
• 27 • The Other Foot • (1951)
• 39 • The Highway • (1950)
• 42 • The Man • (1949)
• 53 • The Long Rain • (1950)
• 65 • The Rocket Man • (1951)
• 75 • The Fire Balloons • The Martian Chronicles • (1951)
• 90 • The Last Night of the World • (1951)
• 94 • The Exiles • (1949)
• 106 • No Particular Night or Morning • (1951)
• 114 • The Fox and the Forest • (1950)
• 128 • The Visitor • (1948)
• 139 • The Concrete Mixer • (1949)
• 156 • Marionettes, Inc. • (1949)
• 162 • The City • (1950)
• 169 • Zero Hour • (1947)
• 177 • The Rocket • (1950)
• 186 • Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) • (1951)

Thanks for the review, RBeffa! I am a quarter into Something Wicked and the 'Illustrated Man' gets a shout out within the book as a sideshow attraction.

Bradbury is wildly imaginative. I am experiencing this fist hand in the book I am reading. I feel like I'm on a boat in a sea of brilliance; some linear, keeping the story moving forward and other, near nonsensical exposition, but non the less brilliant prose. A little Lewis Carroll flavor.

I am enjoying and expect to finish by the end of next week.

>211 brodiew2: I am glad you are enjoying your Bradbury. I might try and fit Something Wicked or another one in before the month is over. Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors, and when he is good he is very good. All of it isn't brilliance - I've hit a few books along the way that just went too over the top for me, but overall he is very very good.

Have fun with yours!

I should add that most, maybe all of the stories in the illustrated man are really science fiction stories - outer space exploration is a running theme for example.

I'll touch on this over in my thread tomorrow, but I know you know that The Wrath of Khan is a special film. I don't care if you are a Star Trek fan or not, Khan is good cinema. Nuff said.

Have a good night.

>210 RBeffa: Wonderful to see your positive review, Ron. Maybe at some point we need to have a "Bradbury-athon" like we had a Steinbeckathon a few years ago. The Illustrated Man is one of my favorites of his. Like you, I read it when I was young, and I'm glad to hear it stands up to a re-read at an older age. The Veldt has stayed vivid in my mind all these years, and I feel like we're just now approaching the VR capability it describes.

>214 jnwelch: There's a bit of a nostalgia factor built in to a successful re-read. The Veldt, for a circa 1950 story is wonderful. It can't be directly compared to a story written today, and this was a Bradbury story along with some others that my daughter and I shared on an audiobook many years ago that we listened to driving to school and back. She's never forgotten it!

The nice thing about reading this was that i had forgotten many of the stories and they were very fresh (with a '50's feel of course) to experience again. Some re-reads of classics really fail. For me, this one did not.

I needed a change of pace - didn't know what I wanted ... history, thriller, mystery, historical fiction? Need a science fiction break and didn't want to tackle a fantasy, and I didn't want something huge. I enjoyed a Kent Haruf novel last year and thought something by him or maybe Ivan Doig might do the trick. I had recently acquired books by each. I opened Haruf's Plainsong and started reading. Well, that did it. I read a couple dozen pages and didn't want to put it down. But bed is calling and after I post this message I'm heading straight there.

>216 RBeffa: I have not read Plainsong yet, but it's on list for 2017 or early given I need something to read outside audio books. I just picked up Ninth City Burning which appears to be a Ender's Game dystopia mash up.

Something Wicked did not end up working for me. The further I got into the story, the less I cared. The language became a burden rather than a joy, kind of like eating too much desert.

>217 brodiew2: I'm sorry Something Wicked didn't work out - I'll leave it on my backburner for another October perhaps. Bradbury can do that to me also, as much as I really like most of his stuff. Halloween Tree is way too over the top with the language for me, even though many people like it a lot. I really didn't like it when I read it a few years ago.

I felt i needed to get away from sci fi/fantasy for a bit. Plainsong is a different kind of book for sure!

Go Plainsong! Glad you're reading it, and that it grabbed you, Ron.

>219 jnwelch: Plainsong is like a breath of fresh air Joe. I keep saying to myself as I read along "damn this is good." I am purposely reading this slow - I realized rather quickly I could just zip through it and miss out on the quality of writing here. The whole way we meet the characters and learn about their lives just seems different than the usual. We have elements familiar from many many stories, but here they are arranged quite artfully for the reader. Good stuff.

Anyway, I'm also reading in short spurts another book that I think you warbled about a year or two ago - The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys. Here again is a book, smaller of course, that one could zip through and enjoy but miss the beauty of the writing. There's a certain charm to this book that I hope does not wear out by the end.

We are having some fabulous Fall weather after a gush of rain last week and I am loving it.

>220 RBeffa:. Great to hear, Ron! No worries re The Frozen Thames. It's a beaut throughout. I just added her as a favorite author. That one's still my #1 of hers.

65. Plainsong by Kent Haruf, finished October 22, 2016, 4+ stars


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This is a beautiful and very fine novel. It may not work for everyone but it did for me. The writing is a bit different than I am used to - this attracted me but I think it also kept me just a little at a distance. I can certainly recommend this book as a fine example of American literature.

and another lovely little book

66. The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys, finished October 22, 2016, 4 stars


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This is a quick and easy read but it is very much worth the time to read it slowly and in little bits. 40 little portraits of moments in time when the Thames river froze in recorded history. I really liked this.

Two very different books, but they share a beauty of language and storytelling.

>222 RBeffa: Glad to hear it, Ron.

Two very different books, but they share a beauty of language and storytelling. Yes!

>223 jnwelch: I am certainly going to be on the lookout for more of Helen Humphreys' books. Our library has one other, "The evening chorus," which looks interesting. I just really liked her writing in "The Frozen Thames."

I've read three others by her now. Besides Evening Chorus, Coventry and The Lost Garden are really good.

Sorry to read of the death of Sheri Tepper. I really liked her The Gate to Women's Country which I read a few years ago. I've accumulated several other books by her and kept intending to read another but other books always seem to jump ahead. I'm going to pick one to read before the year is over.

I am currently reading Mara and Dann by Doris Lessing which I had briefly started a couple months ago but set aside. I'm not sure what to make of it so far. It is interesting, I'll say that.

ETA: I don't like to abandon books but I am going to do that with Doris Lessing's Mara and Dan. I've given this two tries and spent another hour with it last night and I have to conclude that for me it is boring, and although Lessing has an interesting story to tell, the way it is told just doesn't pull me in and I am no longer interested in it. Deleting it from the library and donating.

Hello Ron. I know you're taking a break from the sf, but the new Star Trek: Prey by John Jackson Miller looks intriguing. It's the second book trilogy celebrating the 50th Anniversary. Miller announced, today, that it will get an unabridged audio treatment.

>227 brodiew2: Looks like a very interesting series Brodie. I hope my library gets it in.

67. Space Lords by Cordwainer Smith, finished October 28, 2016, 3 stars


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Space Lords was published in 1965 and is a collection of 5 stories that first appeared in science fiction magazines between June 1961 and August 1964. Four of these appeared in "Galaxy" while Fred Pohl was editor. Cordwainer Smith was a unique voice in science fiction. His stories aren't like other stories and as the author states in his Prologue "There are five stories here. They all concern the future, more or less around A.D. 15,000." The author gives away his inspiration for each of the stories in the prologue, and adds some pointers in the Epilogue. The author writes what may be the most unusual and long dedication to this collection that I have ever read. He was apparently quite ill at the time, as was his wife, and he would pass away and be buried in Arlington cemetery the following year.

These are somewhat scary stories of a dark future for mankind, and there is a bit too much weirdness mixed in here for me to say I really like this stuff. The standout story for me is "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", pronounced as k-mel, a story I read 6 or 7 years ago and the story that woke me up belatedly to this man's talent. Each of the other stories is also OK to good. The first story, "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" serves as an excellent introduction to the future universe that most of the author's stories are set in, but the ending took a very intriguing story and veered way off into weird.

I thought I would enjoy these stories more than I did.

---------------------

I might read Sheri Tepper next. Haven't decided yet.

68. Baby's in Black: Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and The Beatles by Arne Bellstorf, finished October 28, 2016, 2 stars


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I read so few graphic novels that it really isn't fair for me to rate or review them. You need a good story and you need good artwork to make me happy. The artwork here, with just a couple exceptions, I thought was rather bland. It didn't hit me with any emotional impact and it felt repetitive and unexciting. The story starts with Klaus Voorman finding the Beatles playing in a club in Hamburg in October 1960. He tells his ex-girlfriend Astrid that she must come see them with him the next night. The story ends on April 10, 1962 with the sudden death of Stu Sutcliffe.

I approached the book with a bit of excitement but was ultimately disappointed. I love the Beatles but can't recommend this.

eta: For those interested in these early days of the Beatles in Hamburg and the 5th Beatle, Stu Sutcliffe, I'd recommend a film from about 20 years ago called "Backbeat"

Read part of this earlier in the month and finished it up last night and this morning.

69. The Green Hills of Earth by Robert Heinlein, finished October 30, 2016, 3 stars


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I was looking through a couple of boxes of stored paperbacks and came across this book. This collection of ten stories is one of the first science fiction books I owned and read. It is a 1958 paperback that I bought used along with a couple issues of Galaxy science fiction magazine in the late 60's. In my memory it made a huge impression on me at the time. I had outgrown comic books and stories like Big Red, or so I thought, and these stories captured my interest.

The stories were originally published in a variety of magazines between 1941 to 1949. I would expect them to feel incredibly dated, and elements of these stories are laughably outdated; yet for the most part they hold up fairly well as stories. It isn't easy or possible to fit myself back into a teenager in the late 60's to know why this collection caught my interest so much. "The Green Hills of Earth" was a great title. I could not recall at all what these stories were about, not even a favorite one, except that story, The Green Hills one, did have some elements to it that I did indeed remember these 46 or 47 years later.

These stories are really only of interest to someone who likes better than the average early moon and solar system exploration stories from that long ago pre-spaceflight time. I'm glad I re-read it even though it no longer packs a punch. When I first read this Armstrong had just walked upon the moon, and that was a marvelous time to be excited about spaceflight. Even then however these stories would have been wildly out of date.

I'm a Cordwainer Smith fan from my youthful days, Ron. I thought Norstrilia was really good, and The Best of Cordwainer Smith. The latter may have sifted out some of the lesser stories you encountered in Space Lords.

Like you, I read The Green Hills of Earth (and a lot of other Heinlein books) many, many moons ago.

>232 jnwelch: I've been a little hesitant to re-read some of my favorite books from my youth. There is a lot of Heinlein that I never read, or have completely forgotten if I did, and those I look forward to reading.

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I thought I'd take a look at Len Deighton for the British Author Challenge

70. Berlin Game by Len Deighton, finished November 2, 2016, 3 1/2 - 4 stars


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I've never read Len Deighton before, and perhaps just as important I very rarely read spy thrillers - just a handful a decade I'd say. This is supposed to be one of Deighton's better novels, and for me this was an enjoyable interesting read. It seemed really slow to build and it took about 75 pages to set things up before we suddenly see the story kicked up a notch and begin to get interesting. At that point I was invested and really wanted to see where this would go.

Our hero here, Bernard Samson, is presented as if he is the only competent fellow in British Intelligence. His wife is a bit of a snark, and several slightly red herrings are dangled about. Things start almost looking like a setup for Bernard to take a fall in this West Berlin vs East Berlin, Brits vs the Russians and just who is the traitor and/or double agent who may have turned? Cold War drama stuff, but fairly well done.

The author excels at dropping astute observations about life here and there. They were rather brilliant sometimes. I can see myself reading another book by Deighton. Soon. I might have just gotten hooked by another series. sigh. Next would be Mexico Set in this series. I'll be watching for a copy at the next book sale. Not stocked in any local library.

>233 RBeffa: Glad to see that you enjoyed the Len Deighton, Ron. I have always found him much more readable than Le Carre to be honest.

Hope your weekend has been a good one.

>234 PaulCranswick: Hello Ron! Thank you for the review of Berlin Game. It is a series I have eyed over time, but never read. Now that I think about it, I may have listed to one of them years ago, but my memory is not eve jogged by your review. I'll have to take another look.

>234 PaulCranswick: Theoretically a quiet weekend Paul - lovely weather and I got some gardening chores done. However the anxiety level around here with a number of contentious local and state elections as well as the big Presidential kahuna leaves something to be desired. At least we will have an idea of where things might be headed locally and nationally very soon.

>234 PaulCranswick: >235 brodiew2: Just going by my one book sample I would agree with Paul about readability vs. Le Carre. I've never been overly fond of Le Carre's stuff with only a few exceptions. I was rather purposely vague in my "review" of this book as spoiling things would be much too easy. Truthfully I thought I knew what was up very early on, but Deighton writes so well that you want to see it play out. Berlin Game is 30 years old now but reads very much like historical fiction from our future view.

--------------------------

This was for the November British author challenge. Not really a review, just thoughts on the book.

71. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, finished November 7, 2016, 3 1/2+ stars


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I thought this short novel would be a very quick read. It was not. My modern library edition includes two introductions to the author and her works. The author apparently had harsh criticism for other authors using "empty sentences." West writes with very dense sentences. So dense that there were places I had to repeatedly re-read sentences (sometimes quite long ones) and paragraphs to determine subject focus and meaning.

Despite my lack of appreciation for the structure of her writing (I really do not like to work so hard when reading a novel), I did really like the story itself. This century old work was worth the read. There are plenty of recaps of the story available for those who are intrigued by WWI anti-war novels. For me the interest was not the shell-shock but the repellant behaviour of the class conscious women. I felt like our war torn soldier Chris was fleeing the home environment just as much as the war itself and only wanted to live in the past when his life was much simpler and love was more honest for him. Sad story with a sweet thread buried in it. No winners in this story.

Book sale coming up this weekend.

I read this in bits over the course of many months. Horror stories are not my usual thing so a little goes a long way. The good part is that short stories like this are a way to get a taste without the length of a novel.

72. The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series 1 edited by Richard Davis, finished November 10, 2016, 3 stars


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This is the first in a long running annual collection of horror stories. The book dates from 1972 and includes 14 stories first published from 1968-1971 with most from 1969-70. There are some famous authors included in here as well as several I do not recognize, but horror is not a genre I read very often. A little goes a long way with me, so to speak.

These are genuinely creepy stories, and that is apparent from the very first one, "Double Whammy" by Robert Bloch (author of Psycho). This story is about a carny and how a gypsy witchy woman gives him what he deserves, only worse. Central to the story is an act he barks for and participates in - a pit with a wild man in it, a geek. A geek as in the kind that bites the heads off of live chickens. This story is creepy in all kinds of ways. I found Brian Lumley's Cthulhu Mythos tale "The Sister City" deliciously old-fashioned and a treat to read.

There is really quite a variety of stories included, and some sensibilities such as attitudes toward women and repellant behavior in a couple stories that really show they were written in a different time than the present with some things that I think would bother some modern readers. But, these are supposed to be creepy horror stories so it is a little hard to tell what is included for shock value, and I would assume most of the ick is there for that reason. Most of the stories are set in what would be the present (1970ish), some in the past. I read these over a period of time and a few stories were not fresh in my memory when I wrote this.

There was only 1 or 2 stories I disliked and a couple so-so ones, but most were quite effective with what they did. I found E. C. Tubb's science fiction horror story "Lucifer" along with Richard Matheson's "Prey" among the best stories in the collection, but there are several other very good stories. "Prey" felt very familiar as I read it, about a murderous Zuni doll, and I thought it must have been made into a Twilight Zone episode like a number of Matheson's stories had been. It turns out that it was filmed as part of a "Trilogy of Terror" three part movie. This one can give you nightmares and more. Folks who like this sort of stuff should like this collection.

The included stories are:

Double Whammy • (1970) • shortstory by Robert Bloch
The Sister City • (1969) • shortstory by Brian Lumley
When Morning Comes • (1969) • shortstory by Elizabeth Fancett
Prey • (1969) • shortstory by Richard Matheson
Winter • (1969) • shortstory by Kit Reed
Lucifer • (1969) • shortstory by E. C. Tubb
I Wonder What He Wanted • (1971) • shortstory by Eddy C. Bertin
Problem Child • (1970) • shortstory by Peter Oldale
The Scar • (1969) • shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
Warp • (1968) • shortstory by Ralph Norton
The Hate • (1971) • shortstory by Terri E. Pinckard
A Quiet Game • (1970) • shortstory by Celia Fremlin
After Nightfall • (1970) • shortstory by David Riley
Death's Door • (1969) • novelette by Robert McNear

73. A Choice of Gods by Clifford Simak, finished November 13, 2016, 3 stars


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Time to dip into my science fiction past. "A Choice of Gods" was published in 1972 and was one of six novels nominated for the best novel Hugo award in 1973. It didn't win. Isaac Asimov's "The Gods Themselves" won which at the time I thought an excellent novel. Simak was also up against Robert Silverberg who had two novels nominated that year including the outstanding "Dying Inside".

Simak was one of my favorite science fiction/fantasy authors in my younger years. "A Choice of Gods" I have always remembered as one of my favorite books by him, but after all these years I could not recall a bit of the story. That turned out to be a good thing because I could then read it almost as if I had never read it before and enjoy it all over again. A few memories did get tickled as I read, particularly the part about the robots remaining on earth studying religion after most of mankind left 5000 years before, trying so hard to find a truth in religion. Faith they have aplenty. Most of humanity simply disappeared from the earth, leaving a small number of people and many robots behind. Some of the remaining humans have stayed behind by choice or inability to leave whereas some of the remainder have gone off among the stars on their own. Some apparently return from the stars now and then. Things don't make much sense at the beginning of the story, and there is more going on, but Simak leads us along and we get to enjoy the journey.

Parts of the story are very very good, but in a few places Simak stumbles quite a bit trying to build things up, particularly concerning something called "The Principle." The middle of the story felt like a slump. My other general problem really is the entire premise of the story where a number of events simultaneously happen to the human race. I don't want to talk and spoil things, but it is really absurd. Simak's aim appears to be to contrast a peaceful rural society vs. technologically driven, but he fails to convince with the scheme he has set up here and a number of elements of the story become bothersome with even the least amount of half-critical thought.

In summary, Simak is a good storyteller and although this could be considered more fantasy or science fantasy than science fiction, I was unable to be convinced with what supposedly was going on. Some elements of this story are really well done, especially the description of the future earth and remaining inhabitants and this part felt very Simak. I'm glad to have revisited this even though I am no longer of an age to naively read without thinking too hard. Also, if you want an excellent example of 'pastoral science fiction', this would be one. Simak's "Waystation" would be another.

Thought this might be a good lead up to the 75th Anniv of Pearl Harbor.

74. The Commodore by P.T Deutermann, finished November 17, 2016, 3 stars


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I've appreciated and enjoyed two prior WWII naval warfare novels by Deutermann. The author can really put you into the action, but this latest one set during the Guadalcanal campaign didn't seem to connect with me as well. This is a fictional story set during 1942 as near as I could tell. The author is rather meticulous about slipping an explanation about all the naval terms and distinctions of rank into a story, so unless one isn't paying attention there should be no problem for someone (like me) unfamiliar to various degrees with jargon and rank distinctions during WWII in the American navy.

The book was a page turner throughout the entire story, and that says something about the readability.

Good morning, Ron! I hope all is well with you. I remember that Deuterman started with police detective stories a la Wambaugh. I'm glad you've enjoyed this series. With WWII novels, I'm never sure whether I should go with WEB Griffin, Jeff Shaara, or someone else. This is good information. Thanks.

>240 brodiew2: Morning Brodie. I enjoyed Deutermann's Pacific Glory and especially Sentinels of Fire. I got this latest one from the library. I've gotten a head cold and feel rather rundown and didn't write a fuller review of 'The Commodore" as I normally would have. I read one of his police books quite a few years ago and can't recall the title off-hand (pre-LT!). I wanted to read several WWII stories this year and have a couple more at the ready.

Will be interested to see what you present to us, Ron, for your 75th selection.

Good morning, Ron! Happy Friday.

I agree with Paul. I am always interested to see what you are reading. Do you have anything special planned for 75?

>242 PaulCranswick: >243 brodiew2: I have three or four books going at once but I do indeed have an appropriate, if predictable, selection for #75 to get past the post first.

I really didn't think I would get to 75 books this year after my recent slump.

Sorry A Choice of Gods dimmed a bit on the re-read, Ron. I'm going to re-read City at some point, and my fingers are crossed that it holds up.

>245 jnwelch: I still like Simak a lot, Joe. He writes an almost unique type of science fiction story.

-------------
December 7, 2016 is the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the entrance into WWII by the United States. I thought for book #75 I would read what is considered one of the definitive non-fiction books on the event. I will continue my reading in the future on both the Pacific and European war, fiction and non-fiction.

75. Day of Infamy by Walter Lord, finished November 22, 2016, 3 stars


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This was first published in 1957 and I read a 2001 edition published for the 60th Anniversary of the event.

This book was reminiscent of the style that Lord used in his book of two years before, "A Night To Remember" (1955) about the sinking of the Titanic. The story recounts events from official records and eyewitness reports and interviews. The story is told very matter-of-factly and recounts events small and large from the beginning of Japan's plans through the attack. It primarily is told via little bits of many, many people's stories from the night before through the day of the event. The small pictures let us see the big picture unfold. This really isn't so much about how the attack was carried about but rather about some of the people on both sides of the event.At the end of the book is a 9 page list of contributors and a detailed index.

I don't find it so shocking that signals and clues were ignored. This was a very different time than the modern day - there was no instant communication. What is shocking and disturbing is the apparent lack of preparedness by the armed services. I was also bothered by how the events are presented by the author - quite a bit is virtually like a slapstick comedy. No one believes an attack is happening - time after time after time. Since this is apparently how it really was I just found myself shaking my head in disbelief.

I very much appreciated the inclusion of a very detailed map of Ford Island and nearby as well as the path the Japanese navy took.

My overall impression was I wanted more from this book.

Happy Thanksgiving Ron and congratulations on reaching 75!

>247 PaulCranswick: >248 ronincats: Thank you Paul and Roni. Busy couple days and right now I am very very full!

Hope to start reading again soon.

Good morning, Ron! I hope all is well with you.

I don't think I mentioned it, but I am reading The Atlantis Gene by A.G. Riddle. It has been on my radar for a couple of years, but I only now decided read. So far, it is pretty good. It hits the ground running and keeps the intensity up. I'm still only near the beginning, but it looks to be good.

>250 brodiew2: Hi Brodie. That book shows up a lot as recommended when I visit Amazon. I'm looking forward to your review and seeing how you enjoy it.

My reading has slowed to a bit of a crawl. i've been catching up on a few magazines and movies and especially have been enjoying the Netflix series "The Crown" with my daughter. I am certainly gaining a better understanding of Queen Elizabeth than I previously had.

The book i am currently reading, Alan Furst's A Hero of France is excellent - I have only read a few of his books but have enjoyed every one - this may be the best so far of what I have read. I need to read his books a bit more often than I have. He is becoming a favorite author it seems.

"The Crown" series on Netflix was excellent. My daughter says there are plans for a season 2.
---------------

This is Alan Furst's most recent novel.

76. A Hero of France by Alan Furst, finished December 2, 2016, 4 stars


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A story told in four parts of a French resistence cell in occupied France, primarily in Paris, during WWII. The story begins March 10, 1941 and continues in intervals over a period of several months. I've read several of the author's novels before, and Furst is very good at this. This story follows a resistence leader, nom de guerre of Matthieu, and various operations rescuing downed RAF pilots and escorting them out of the country, usually by way of Spain. However, the resistance is changing, new operations are starting and the Germans are going after the resistance and the stakes are getting higher. The internal stories don't always let you know how things turn out, but the end of this book I found to be very satisfying.

Recommended

Nice review of A Hero in France, Ron. It sounds interesting.

So, how did you enjoy Matt Smith in 'The Crown'?

>254 brodiew2: Hi brodie.
Rather surprisingly I think Matt Smith was my least favorite actor in The Crown. He at first seemed perfect with the role as Prince Phillip, but he really overplayed the sulky bit for me. I assume it was written that way, and all Smith has to do is throw a look to convey poutiness, etc but it just got to seem overplayed. The rest of the cast seemed to turn in marvelous performances all around. I give the show 5 stars. Claire Foy is really good as the young Queen.

John Lithgow wasn't quite right for the part of Churchill either - he's too big of a man and it took me quite a while to accept him in the part - but he played it very well.

With one month left to read in 2016, and despite a couple of in progress books I thought, why not tackle a doorstopper before year's end. The 70's seemed to usher in the era of big books of popular fiction. Novelists like Herman Wouk, Irwin Shaw, James Clavell, James Michener and so on. I was browsing my shelves and then I saw "The Immigrants" by Howard Fast. Set in my birth city, San Francisco, I knew that would be the one.

Yeah, I have one queued up for December too - doorstopper that is... :)

>257 drneutron: Jim, I find myself really enjoying one of those monster books now and then - something like Stephen King's 11/22/63, for example. I should read them more often - I just have had my fingers burned a few times as well and sometimes regret commiting to a biggie that disappoints.
------------------

All this AAC and BAC challenge planning has already gotten me thinking about reading plans for next year. Just dipping in to the challenges seems to have worked for me this year, although I do miss the interaction that participating most or all months brings. There were a few months this year where I would have liked to be in the monthly read but various things interrupt the best laid plans, esp with the American authors. I think just aiming for participation in 3 months as a basic goal for each of these challenges will be a good balance for me.

The British Author Challenge hosted by Paul Cranswick is looking like this for 2017:

JANUARY : IRISH BRITONS - ELIZABETH BOWEN & BRIAN MOORE

FEBRUARY : SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY - MARY STEWART & TERRY PRATCHETT

MARCH : A DECADE OF BRITISH NOVELS : The 1960s - 10 Novels by Men; 10 Novels by Women

APRIL: SOUTH YORKSHIRE AUTHORS : AS BYATT & BRUCE CHATWIN

MAY : BEFORE QUEEN VIC : 10 Novels written prior to 1837

JUNE : THE HISTORIANS (Historical Fiction / Historians) GEORGETTE HEYER & SIMON SCHAMA

JULY : SCOTTISH AUTHORS : D.E. STEVENSON and R.L. STEVENSON

AUGUST : BRITAIN BETWEEN THE WARS (Writers active 1918-1939) WINIFRED HOLTBY & ROBERT GRAVES

SEPTEMBER : THE NEW MILLENNIUM (Great Books Since 2000) A novel chosen from each year of the new century

OCTOBER : WELSH AUTHORS (Born in or associated with Wales) : JO WALTON & ROALD DAHL

NOVEMBER : POET LAUREATES : British laureates, children's laureate, National Poets

DECEMBER : WILDCARD (Chosen via a vote) : ELIZABETH GASKELL & NEIL GAIMAN

This is a theme read and looking at my to read shelves I should be able to jump in with at least three, and though some of these evade both my books on hand and my local library holdings, I can see me trying with Brian Moore, one or both Stevenson's, Mary Stewart, Georgette Heyer, Roald Dahl (maybe) and Neil Gaiman.

The American Author Challenge hosted by Mark looks like this for 2017:

January- Octavia Butler
February- Stewart O' Nan
March- William Styron
April- Poetry Month
May- Zora Neale Hurston
June- Sherman Alexie
July- James McBride
August- Patricia Highsmith
September- Short Story Month
October- Ann Patchett
November- Russell Banks
December- Ernest Hemingway

I'm planning on Ernest Hemingway which I have on hand. I'll pick up at least one other author from the library along the way hopefully.

77. The Immigrants by Howard Fast, finished December 7, 2016, 2 1/2 stars


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The Immigrants is one of those big 70's novels that were very popular well into the 80's, which often had sequels. Think Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw, or John Jakes series, or any number of James Michener books. These are often generation spanning epics and 'The Immigrants' from 1977 is the first in a seies of books of that type. Initially I liked it quite a bit - I thought it had a lot of promise with a story of a young man, a fisherman in San Francisco with his father who sees everything destroyed in the 1906 earthquake as a teenager. He loses both parents.

Against the odds the young man of this story, Dan Lavette, begins a rags to riches journey. Perhaps a quarter of the way into the novel my interest began to fade and I'm not sure if this is because things started to get just a little too much like a soap opera, or I simply tired of this main character who could do just about anything by sheer force of will, charm, bluff, what have you. I persevered with the story, and there were parts here and there I liked well, particularly with several of the side characters. But the main story of rags to riches and then when 1929 comes, to rags for Dan Lavette just didn't hold my interest and the latter third of the novel just felt drawn out and rather weak. I read the story with interest, but without any passion. I liked the setting in San Francisco and the various elements of history woven throughout.

I'll rate this one as just OK. This is the first of what became a six book series. I think it unlikely I'll read more, but I won't rule it out.

I've been looking over my booklog and thinking already about my best/favorite reads of the year. I think I have had a pretty good reading year. In chronological order they would be:

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography by J. G. Ballard
Life's Little Ironies AKA 'Selected Short Stories' by Thomas Hardy
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Chilar: Journey of a Lifetime by Kaye Kvam
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Berlin Game by Len Deighton
A Hero of France by Alan Furst

A couple of these books have had a stronger impact than others, but each one i could consider a better than average read for me. Usually I can point to one or maybe two books and name that as my absolute favorite for a year. I'm not sure I could do that this year although several of the above stories clearly have had a larger effect on me than others, such as Ballard's 'Empire of the Sun.'

Read this for the December British Author challenge

78. Not Safe After Dark by Peter Robinson, finished December 14, 2016, 2 1/2 stars


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There is more than one version of this collection and I read the original edition that my library had. There are 13 stories first published between 1989 and 1998, many in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. These are crime stories, murder mysteries, and for the most part I didn't enjoy them. The ick factor is a little too high for me in a couple of these stories. There were a couple I thought pretty good but my overall impression was that these are not stories I want to read. I very rarely read stories of this type so I have no way of judging whether these are better or worse than the usual.

The last story, "In Flanders Field" was my favorite of the collection I'd say, and it was newly written for this book. I also really liked the Thomas Hardy inspired "Two Ladies of Rose Cottage." For my tastes the subject matter and story quality improved greatly as we moved from early stories to later ones. The sex crimes at the start of the collection put me off.

>261 RBeffa: Yeah I don't recall being blown away by the short stories either.

Nice to see you planning a few BAC reads for next year, Ron.

Have a great weekend.

>262 PaulCranswick: Hope you have a great weekend also Paul. I do enjoy playing along with the BAC challenge - if nothing else it gets me reading some of these books I've accumulated over the years, but also to explore new to me authors. I was glancing through my books and have ones by both D.E. Stevenson and R.L. Stevenson to read so I should add at least that month to my plans!

I really intend to focus even more this year on books I have on hand that I want to read.

One more in honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek

79. Star Trek 4 by James Blish, finished December 18, 2016, 3+ stars


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This collection of six story adaptations of episodes gave me pleasure out of proportion to the small size of the book. Six stories, one of which "The Menagerie" differs quite a bit from the broadcast episode (but probably rings true to the original pilot episode released many years later). Blish explains why he chose to edit out the wraparound story and include the original ending. I've watched a dozen or more of the original episodes on TV the last couple months (kudos to BBC America for really high quality presentations). Many of the episodes reveal the weaknesses of the show - however the story adaptations manage to ring very true and are an honorable testament to the original series. I was glad to have read these and will read more.

included was:
ix • Preface
1 • All Our Yesterdays
23 • The Devil in the Dark
45 • Journey to Babel
69 • The Menagerie
95 • The Enterprise Incident
117 • A Piece of the Action

Wouldn't it be nice if 2017 was a year of peace and goodwill.
A year where people set aside their religious and racial differences.
A year where intolerance is given short shrift.
A year where hatred is replaced by, at the very least, respect.
A year where those in need are not looked upon as a burden but as a blessing.
A year where the commonality of man and woman rises up against those who would seek to subvert and divide.
A year without bombs, or shootings, or beheadings, or rape, or abuse, or spite.

2017.

Festive Greetings and a few wishes from Malaysia!

>265 PaulCranswick: Thank you for the heartfelt sentiments Paul. Wouldn't it be nice, indeed. Good wishes right back to you.

Good wishes from me to all Librarythingers who together make this a place to share and learn. I am very happy to have been a member.

-Ron

Merry Christmas from the Koons household to yours!

This is the Christmas tree at the end of the Pacific Beach Pier here in San Diego, a Christmas tradition.

To all my friends here at Library Thing, I want you to know how much I value you and how much I wish you a very happy holiday, whatever one you celebrate, and the very best of New Years!

Thank you Linda and Roni. A Happy Christmas day to both of you and your families.

Good morning, Ron! I hope you had a good Christmas. I hope to see you in 2017.

I was considering rereading Q-Squared, my favorite Star trek novel.

>270 brodiew2: Sick with a flu/cold Brodie - my reading as well as many things have ground to a halt. I was hoping to finish one or two more books this year. I'll be including some Trek in the new year. Hope you are well and your holidays were happy ones.

My final book for 2016.

80. Pearl Harbor ghosts : a journey to Hawaii, then and now by Thurston Clarke, finished December 30, 2016, 4 stars


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This book was published 25 years ago in 1991 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. It proved to be an excellent companion, in an odd sort of way, to Walter Lord's 'Day of Infamy'. This book let me understand how the failure of the armed forces to protect Hawaii could happen. It covers more than that, and I sense the book ended up going in ways the author didn't really expect. He touches on a great number of things and the overall impression I couldn't shake was how the armed forces were so poorly managed so as to allow the attack to happen. The overconfidence of the United States and believing and reinforcing its own propanganda on how powerful the US was led to this dark day in history.

Many of the minor events that are covered in Lord's book are picked up here, but sometimes with interviews with the people 50 years later, as well as photographs of some of the people. Like Lord's book, Clarke finds that the survivors memories and histories showed a complete disbelief that the attack was happening. Honolulu 1941 was a very different world than Honolulu 1991 and we get a good sense here just how different society and perceptions were and how they are now.

The big takeaway here is how much racism played a huge part in allowing the Pearl Harbor attack to succeed.

Excellent book that I'd recommend to history buffs.

Looking forward to your continued company in 2017.
Happy New Year, Ron

>273 PaulCranswick: Thanks for the message Paul.

2016 has finished. Time for a quick recap. My 2017 thread begins here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/245078

In post >260 RBeffa: I recapped my favorite books of the year and could not decide which of those were my very favorites, but I'll push myself a little and say that two were more important to me as a reader.

Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast is a special book and one that goes a long way for me in helping to understand the author.

J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun is another special book that will probably stick with me for a very long time. Amazing book.

Each of the other books listed in post 260 were very worthy reads in various ways and I'd recommend every one of them.