by Richard K. Morgan
Published:
Started: 01/17/18
Finished: 10/24/18
Setting: 2107
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
In the King’s Service
by Katherine Kurtz
The Childe Morgan Trilogy - Book 1
Published: 2003
I didn't start this note taking thing for books until I was over halfway through this book so this is all I've got in the way of notes for this book
Started: 10/16/17
Finished: 03/07/18
Monday, December 31, 2007
Book Notes (LJ) 2007
04/29/07
I recently reread Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker, which I first read about ten years ago. Its a science fiction novel. I used to read very little other than sci-fi, when I was a teen. Back then it was science fiction & fantasy. Now I find myself wanting to go back and reread many of the books that I have fond memories of. I did enjoy rereading Midnight at the Well of Souls. I'm sure the experience won't be the same, but I still want to revisit many of these books and series of books.
Here's a partial list of some of the books that I want to reread:
Collections
- Well World series by Jack Chalker
- Deryni trilogies by Katherine Kurtz
- Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony
- Amber series by Roger Zelazny
- Gap Cycle by Stephen R. Donaldson
- Mordant's Need by Stephen R. Donaldson
Individual Novels
- I am a Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs
I don't plan on reading nothing but these series. Instead I will layer then in with the other books I am reading for the first time.
Like many entries this one evolved. Originally I was going to write about how I am regressing. Instead of looking forward I am looking backward. This worries me because I don't want to get too set in my ways. I always want to be open to new experiences and new perspectives. Instead I seem to have make a list of books that I want to read, with a little bit of commentary.
05/04/07
I've started rereading Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. I first read it when I was in high school. I think I am going to need a score card to keep track of the royal family: nine princes and four princesses, at last count. Its a fun light read. One thing that cracks me up about it is some of the descriptions. The scene where Corwin and his sister Flora sit down for a meal is a good example. For some reason I was amused that they had steak and beer. There's something about that combination that reminded me of my days playing Dungeons and Dragons. I'm not sure if it says more about the writer or the time that the book was written.
Anyhow, it is a nice light read. It is the first book in a series of five, which is followed by another series of five. I think I've read all ten books, but I can't remember. I'm sure I read the first five and at least the first couple books in the second series.
05/11/07
In other news I am still reading three books:
~ Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
~ The Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon
~ Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
I am steadily making progress in all three. None of them is extremely long. Two are retreads but I am enjoying them all. I wouldn't be rereading if I didn't think I would get something from them.
05/30/07
Out by Natsuo Kirino is a kind of twisted book but I am enjoying it. Then again I am kind of twisted myself so maybe it is logical that I should enjoy it. Plot? Working married mom murders her very irresponsible husband in a fit of rage one night and then turns to her coworkers to help her cover her tracks. So far so good. I can't wait to see where the story goes and what role the Yakuza will play.
06/14/07
Out by Natsuo Kirino - I'm past the halfway point and enjoying this book immensely. I certainly didn't see some of the twists and turns coming. It zigged when I thought it was going to zag, more than once.
Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz - All finished. Yes, I enjoyed reading it for the third time in 20 years. It isn't the first book chronologically speaking, but it was the first one written. I am strongly in favor of reading books in the order they were written/published and not the order in order in which they are supposed to take place. When I first started reading the Deryni novels I started with the second trilogy which takes place (about 200 years) before the first trilogy but was written after it.
Exiles at the Well of Souls - Book Two of the Well World series. I just started it today. This is another retread. I first read it about 10 years ago.
Books I plan to buy and read in the very near future:
Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones
Boyproof by Cecil Castellucci
and now I am blanking. I know there is more.
06/27/07
I've started reading Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones. I only just started reading it but the introduction is pretty heart-wrenching. It is the story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the creators of Superman.
07/05/07
Don't laugh but I'm reading a teen romance: Boyproof by Cecil Castellucci. So far I like it, probably because it isn't too girly. The main character is a tomboy who always dresses up like her favorite science fiction hero, a woman named Egg. She also insists that everyone call her Egg. Its a fast read, but as with most books I am taking my time. Ten pages here, a dozen there. This is definitely light reading.
I'm also knee deep in Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones. Excellent read. I think I'm going to have try and get my father to give this one a try. Its more than just a story about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. It is also the story of the origins of the comic book industry. The most interesting thing I have learned about so far is how the Prohibition Era (in the United States) helped to provide bank to the one of the men who would later publish Action Comics, Superman, Detective Comics, Batman, etc. In other words without the money made from smuggling booze there might never have been a comic book industry.
07/22/07
I'm still reading Men of Tomorrow and for the most part I am enjoying it quite a bit. The only thing that really bothers me about it is the way the author, Gerard Jones, keeps making derogatory comments about accountants and accounting. Jack Liebowitz One of the men who swindled Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster out of their share of their biggest creation, Superman, was an accountant. He's the only one in the story and yet because he obviously done them wrong, no argument from me there, Jones seems to think its alright to make comments like "accountancy breeds complicity" (on page 165). WTF?
08/05/07
Exiles at the Well of Souls - ...finished this one on Friday. It isn't a comic book but it is sci-fi. Its the second book of (at least) five in the well world series by Jack Chalker. This series in general is a lot of fun, for me at least. I see it as the ultimate role-playing fantasy series. People find themselves on a strange planet which is subdivided into hexagonal pieces of land. Each hex is governed by different rules of science. Not all technology functions in all hexes. Additionally each hex has its own dominant sentient race. When people arrive on the Well World, which doesn't happen too often, they are required to enter the Well. It selects a new life for them and reassigns them to one of the hexes. Although they retain all their memories, their DNA is restructured so that they become a member of the dominant species of the hex they are sent to. To me that sounds like the ultimate role-playing fantasy.
Plot? Mavra Chang (good gal), Antor Trellig (bad guy), and a few others find themselves unwittingly transported to the Well World. They crash land on the planet in two different space ships. The ships soon become the things to have and a war ensues. Chang and Trellig end up on opposite ends of the war and before it is all over Chang pays a horrible, although not life-ending, price for her efforts. The story begun in this volume concludes in the next volume, Quest for the Well of Souls.
08/11/07
I finished Men of Tomorrow, which I really liked except for some of the comments that the author makes about accountants in general, despite the fact there is only one mentioned by name in the book. If you have any interest in the origins of the comic book industry then I recommend you read this book. It was interesting to see how the birth of the industry tied back into Prohibition and gangsters, among other things.
I've started reading The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I've been reading to read this for a long time. I believe some of the material in this collection was used as the basis for the movie Smoke, which Auster also wrote and is - like - one my favorite movies. I should probably watch it again after I finish reading this book. Anyhow, I'm only twenty or so pages into the first story but I really like how he writes.
09/05/07
Today, on the way to work I read what is probably my favorite chapter (# 14) in Deryni Rising, and is possibly the turning point in the Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy. Father Duncan McClain forced to reveal his true nature and the first hint on dissension within the ranks of the bishops of Gwynedd.
Marc Evanier's story about the cruelest thing he ever did (the subject of an essay from Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life) made me laugh out loud, on the bus this afternoon. It involves setting fire to a fake Jack Kirby sketch in front of a fan. I can only imagine how any comic book fanatic would react to such an act if they believed it was an authentic sketch.
09/06/07
One of the more recent essays that I read from Comics and Other Necessities of Life struck me as being rather useless. Of course, that's just my opinion. I think it is useless because I found it very unconvincing. Basically Mr. Evanier was arguing against story lines (in comic books) that involve bad things happening to the heroic characters. He says he reads comic books because he wants to read about supernatural beings doing heroic things, more specifically: saving the day.
I'm chagrined by the author's opinion. I don't share it. I like gritty stories; stories in which things don't turn out for the best. I don't want to read them to the exclusion of all else but I do like them. He on the other hand seems to think (or thought at the time the essay was written) that when in doubt too many authors were writing stories about things going horribly wrong rather than writing "good" stories. Of course it isn't exactly clear to me what elements Mr. Evanier thinks a "good" (comic book) story usually possesses but I think it is safe to say that generally speaking it will have a happy ending. He doesn't completely shut the door on sad or bad endings, but he definitely has a bone to pick with writers who use them as often as not.
OK, my problem with his reasoning, or at least my perception of it, is that he seems to be saying that unless your (comic book) story is well written then it should have a happy ending or at least not have a sad one. There are plenty of badly written (comic book) stories out there with happy endings and considerably more (comic book) stories with happy endings than sad endings. So, why do we need more badly written stories with upbeat endings?
Deep down I think that my problem with Mr. Evanier's argument is that he seems to be defending the status quo. If change is to occur he wants it to occur within very narrow bounds. Innovation means taking risks. Things aren't always going to work out. If you don't give writers and artists latitude to work then will likely stay very close to the status quo. Boring! I don't like every innovation that I see, but I do like to see change and innovation even when I don't like the form it takes.
I don't mean to single out the writer of this essay. He is by no means the only creator, in comic books, who feels this way. I believe John Byrne has expressed similar opinions and I am sure that there are others.
Actually the worst thing about this essay is the way in which he introduces the topic by writing about lawyers. Very close to being a non-sequitur.
OK, that's it. I've said my piece. Good night.
09/08/07
I went to the Wheaton Library today. They have a used book store in the basement. I went looking for science fiction and fantasy novels. I bought four: Camber of Culdi by Katherine Kurtz, The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through both by Stephen R. Donaldson, and Split Infinity by Piers Anthony. All are books that I read as a teenager and plan to reread in the months ahead.
Camber of Culdi is the first book in the second trilogy that Katherine Kurtz wrote about the medieval world of the Deryni. It takes place roughly 200 years before the first series, which I am reading now.
Split Infinity is the first book in the Apprentice Adept series. I've read the first three books but no farther. Aside from the author's name I think what originally drew me to this series was the dual worlds of Phaze and Proton that exist side-by-side. One (Proton) is a world of high technology and the other (Phaze) a world with comparatively primitive technology but where magic works. This series is taking the place of the Amber series which I decided to stop rereading.
09/10/07
I finished Deryni Checkmate on the way to work this morning. Good book. Much better than the previous book, which was also a good book, it is just that this one is more elaborate, has more characters, and does not seemed as rushed as the prior volume. Also this book ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, as Gwynedd is about to erupt in civil war. The first book was much more self contained.
Now I need to decide what to read next:
- Quest for the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker
- Split Infinity by Piers Anthony
- The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson
I plan to read all three, its just a question of which to read next. Hmmmmm.....
Also on the subject of books: I feel a little guilty re-reading all these novels that I enjoyed when I was younger. Guilty because instead of seeking out something new I am rereading books I have read before. I don't like being stagnant, I like growing. I am seeing things that I didn't see before in some of these book but I still feel as though I should be seeking out new SF/F instead of rereading. I tend to look down on people who prefer to re-live the past rather than live in the present so I think that it is understandable that I am torn over this.
On the other hand I am trying new books, new fiction, it is just that it isn't new SF/F. I am also in the midst of reading New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I've read the first of the three stories. I'll get back to it once I finish off Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life by Marc Evanier. I also have The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont to read. None of these are books that I have read before or even authors I have read before.
09/13/07
I started reading Quest for the Well of Souls the other day. This isn't the best written series in terms of the beauty of the language or the composition of the sentences and paragraphs but I do love me the characters and the pace at which at which the story is revealed. At least that's how I feel right now. I honestly cannot remember what is coming in this volume of the Well World saga, other than Mavra Chang eventually being restored to a more dignified physical appearance.
09/21/07
I finished off the second story in New York Trilogy. I'm starting to wonder what is drawing me through this book. It is well written but the style isn't one that I am usually drawn to. There isn't much dialogue although there is much interior monologue. When there is conversation no quotation marks are used. Normally these are the sorts of things that turn me off. Yet I continue to read.
I think it must have something to do with the way the story seems to suggest implicitly that there is more than meets the eye to the story. This one had a very meta feel to it, like the author was writing about writing without explicitly writing about writing. I find that interesting.
I'm planning to give the book a rest now. I want to finish off the Well World book I am currently reading before I dig into the final installment in New York Trilogy. At this point I would say that I am interested in reading more by Paul Auster, but that could change.
09/24/07
Ravage by René Barjavel arrived in the mail today. I think it has been less than a week since I ordered it. Very impressive. I read a few more pages tonight as my dinner was warming up on the stove. I guess this means that I should return the copy I borrowed from the bibliotheque at the Alliance Française. I seem to be looking up fewer words the further I get. Not sure if that is because of the content or if my vocabulary is just expanding exponentially.
10/05/07
I've started reading The Mirror of Her Dreams. First time reading it in over 20 years. Loving it again. I remember being really impressed by the writing the first time I read it. I am impressed again. Stephen R. Donaldson really knows how to write intelligently. His plots aren't always spot on but his composition makes it well worth the read. That probably sounds incredibly geeky, but hey, that's me. It also occurs to me that on a subconscious [level] his writing style may have appealed to me when I was younger because, unlike many sci-fi and fantasy novels, Donaldson's books don't repeat facts over and over in the same language. He also uses a very broad vocabulary.
One aspect of the story that I don't remember and I wonder if I even took note of it the first time I read it is the importance of mirrors to the main character Terisa. I should probably explain a little about the story. Terisa is a young woman (mid 20s?) who lives in New York City in the late 20th century. Her parents had money but did not want to acknowledge her presence. As a result she now surrounds herself with mirrors because seeing her reflection reminds her of her own existence. She ends [up] getting pulled through a mirror one night and ends up in another world. A world that seems much more medieval by today's standards. In this world mirrors are used to view other worlds. There are no reflective surfaces. And the people she meets question whether she even existed before she came through the mirror.
There's more to the story than that but that's the part that intrigues me now: the whole question of existence. What happens now that she is outside of her comfort zone? How does she cope in a world without reflective surfaces, like mirrors?
10/06/07
On a slightly different matter, I've started thinking that I need to try and read some of the books I hear discussed on Bookworm. I've been listening to the show for over a year now and have yet to try one of the books. There are a couple that stick out in my mind. Maybe I'll start by making a list of all the books they have discussed.
10/07/07
Last night I finished reading Quest for the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker. I didn't remember exactly how it ended. The book is less than perfect but there is something or things about it that I like. One thing that I can pinpoint without any trouble is the ideas behind it. I love how Chalker posits this idea about the universe being created by a race of beings with godlike powers, the Markovians. They don't just create the universe they also created a world to experiment with creating various sentient life forms: the Well World. This world is run by a giant computer: the Well of Souls, which is far too complex for any of the races created by the Markovians to control. I like the energy with which the author infuses this idea.
I also like some of the characters, the main character in particular: Mavra Chang. She goes through quite a bit before the story is over. First she is transformed against her will into a human/donkey hybrid creature, then a pig-like creature, then a talking horse and finally back to a donkey/human hybrid. She is very resourceful. A couple other characters in the book are from the first book in the series: Midnight at the Well of Souls. I had forgotten that they were also in these two books or that there was a connection between them and Mavra.
10/11/07
I started reading the third novella in New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I needed something else to read. I wasn't satisfied with just reading The Mirror of Her Dreams. I needed something else to provide some contrast. I'm not sure if it is fair to judge Auster based on just one book (three stories) but he comes off as very wordy. I like his writing but I don't understand it all the time. This is may be a sign that I should reread NYT in the future.
11/13/07
Still working my way through The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson. I'm around the 3/4 mark in the book. I'm not going to finish it this week, but maybe next week. I need to find something else to read, something other than the sci-fi and fantasy series that I am currently reading, something to balance them out. It doesn't have to be non-fiction, but it needs to be something in a very different vein.
11/17/07
I drove to the Wheaton Public Library after finishing my sandwich. I was looking for something good to read, something not sci-fi or fantasy. I was in the basement where they have their book sale. I looked around a lot and ended up buying a couple of novels (Carousel, Mannequin) about criminal investigations in Paris during World War 2. The author's name is J. Robert Janes. I'm unfamiliar with his books but they looked interesting enough for me to pick them up. They were only asking $1.50 for each of the books. I was about to start reading the second Ripley novel but I think I will read the first of the two novels I bought today and then jump back to the trio of Patricia Highsmith novels that I bought several years ago. I read the first one, The Talented Mr. Ripley, when I first bought the three-volumes-in-one collection but haven't gotten back to read the other two novels since then.
12/05/07
I finally finished The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson. It definitely lived up to my memory of how good it is. I first read it about twenty years ago. I think I appreciated it somewhat differently this time around. I think I was much more taken and focused a lot more on the erotic aspects (which are an important but not overwhelming part) of the story. Of course I was teenager then and much more easily distracted by the subject of sex. Enough of that. It is a great read. Each chapter seems vitally important to me. There's no filler material in this book. It is always on the go, up to the very last chapter. It kept me guessing the whole way, because I couldn't remember how it all turned out. I still have the second part of the Mordant's Need to read, A Man Rides Through. Can't wait to see how it all turns out but I think I will by way of next reading the final book in Katherine Kurtz' Chronicles of the Deryni, High Deryni.
12/06/07
After two attempts I have decided to give up on Carousel by J. Robert Janes. Its a novel about a couple of detectives, one French and the other German, investigating a couple of murders in Paris in December 1942. It sounds like it could be good but the writing is just a little too confusing and muddled for me. The thing that I have the most trouble with is how the perspective of the narration seems to shift frequently and without warning. One minute you are inside the head of one character, then another, then a third. There doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of characters who take turns narrating. Often I couldn't tell who was narrating or that the POV had changed until a paragraph or two after the change. Glad I only paid $1.50 for this one.
12/07/07
High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz is a big improvement over Carousel. As always there is an adjustments period when I start a new book. Each author is different and writes with a different sort of voice. I get used to the voice I am listening to while I read a book. Once I finish it or move on to another book I find that I am still expecting to hear that author's voice, even though I am reading someone else's book now. So I have to take it slow when I start a new book and acclimate myself to the new voice that is speaking to me. Otherwise I tend to become frustrated and not finish the book or not enjoy it.
I'm debating whether to order the biography of Milton Caniff or maybe even the first collection of a comic strip he drew 70 years ago, Terry and the Pirates. I understand that at least one of the Asian characters is drawn and acts in way that makes him seem more of a caricature than a character; yet I'm still curious about this strip which is supposed to have influenced many creators who were of an age at the time it was being produced. Anyhow, I'm definitely thinking I want to read more non-fiction about the comic book business/industry. Not just books about the art of creating comics but also ones that delve into the ideas behind the stories.
12/11/07
On the way home from tutoring tonight I started reading the second of Patricia Highsmith's novels about Tom Ripley, Ripley Under Ground. I'm only a few pages into it. It has to have been at least three years since I read the first one, The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Ripley has been involved in selling forged paintings, some suspects that the paintings are forgeries (the artist committed suicide a couple years earlier but Ripley and friends have told the world he is living in a small town in Mexico) so now Ripley is going to impersonate the artist. That's what I got from the first chapter
12/12/07
I've only read one chapter so far but I'm liking Ripley Under Ground. Can't wait to see what twists and turns it takes. Its kind of fun reading a book about a villain or antihero, like Ripley.
I recently reread Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker, which I first read about ten years ago. Its a science fiction novel. I used to read very little other than sci-fi, when I was a teen. Back then it was science fiction & fantasy. Now I find myself wanting to go back and reread many of the books that I have fond memories of. I did enjoy rereading Midnight at the Well of Souls. I'm sure the experience won't be the same, but I still want to revisit many of these books and series of books.
Here's a partial list of some of the books that I want to reread:
Collections
- Well World series by Jack Chalker
- Deryni trilogies by Katherine Kurtz
- Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony
- Amber series by Roger Zelazny
- Gap Cycle by Stephen R. Donaldson
- Mordant's Need by Stephen R. Donaldson
Individual Novels
- I am a Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs
I don't plan on reading nothing but these series. Instead I will layer then in with the other books I am reading for the first time.
Like many entries this one evolved. Originally I was going to write about how I am regressing. Instead of looking forward I am looking backward. This worries me because I don't want to get too set in my ways. I always want to be open to new experiences and new perspectives. Instead I seem to have make a list of books that I want to read, with a little bit of commentary.
05/04/07
I've started rereading Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. I first read it when I was in high school. I think I am going to need a score card to keep track of the royal family: nine princes and four princesses, at last count. Its a fun light read. One thing that cracks me up about it is some of the descriptions. The scene where Corwin and his sister Flora sit down for a meal is a good example. For some reason I was amused that they had steak and beer. There's something about that combination that reminded me of my days playing Dungeons and Dragons. I'm not sure if it says more about the writer or the time that the book was written.
Anyhow, it is a nice light read. It is the first book in a series of five, which is followed by another series of five. I think I've read all ten books, but I can't remember. I'm sure I read the first five and at least the first couple books in the second series.
05/11/07
In other news I am still reading three books:
~ Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
~ The Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon
~ Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
I am steadily making progress in all three. None of them is extremely long. Two are retreads but I am enjoying them all. I wouldn't be rereading if I didn't think I would get something from them.
05/30/07
Out by Natsuo Kirino is a kind of twisted book but I am enjoying it. Then again I am kind of twisted myself so maybe it is logical that I should enjoy it. Plot? Working married mom murders her very irresponsible husband in a fit of rage one night and then turns to her coworkers to help her cover her tracks. So far so good. I can't wait to see where the story goes and what role the Yakuza will play.
06/14/07
Out by Natsuo Kirino - I'm past the halfway point and enjoying this book immensely. I certainly didn't see some of the twists and turns coming. It zigged when I thought it was going to zag, more than once.
Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz - All finished. Yes, I enjoyed reading it for the third time in 20 years. It isn't the first book chronologically speaking, but it was the first one written. I am strongly in favor of reading books in the order they were written/published and not the order in order in which they are supposed to take place. When I first started reading the Deryni novels I started with the second trilogy which takes place (about 200 years) before the first trilogy but was written after it.
Exiles at the Well of Souls - Book Two of the Well World series. I just started it today. This is another retread. I first read it about 10 years ago.
Books I plan to buy and read in the very near future:
Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones
Boyproof by Cecil Castellucci
and now I am blanking. I know there is more.
06/27/07
I've started reading Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones. I only just started reading it but the introduction is pretty heart-wrenching. It is the story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the creators of Superman.
07/05/07
Don't laugh but I'm reading a teen romance: Boyproof by Cecil Castellucci. So far I like it, probably because it isn't too girly. The main character is a tomboy who always dresses up like her favorite science fiction hero, a woman named Egg. She also insists that everyone call her Egg. Its a fast read, but as with most books I am taking my time. Ten pages here, a dozen there. This is definitely light reading.
I'm also knee deep in Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones. Excellent read. I think I'm going to have try and get my father to give this one a try. Its more than just a story about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. It is also the story of the origins of the comic book industry. The most interesting thing I have learned about so far is how the Prohibition Era (in the United States) helped to provide bank to the one of the men who would later publish Action Comics, Superman, Detective Comics, Batman, etc. In other words without the money made from smuggling booze there might never have been a comic book industry.
07/22/07
I'm still reading Men of Tomorrow and for the most part I am enjoying it quite a bit. The only thing that really bothers me about it is the way the author, Gerard Jones, keeps making derogatory comments about accountants and accounting. Jack Liebowitz One of the men who swindled Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster out of their share of their biggest creation, Superman, was an accountant. He's the only one in the story and yet because he obviously done them wrong, no argument from me there, Jones seems to think its alright to make comments like "accountancy breeds complicity" (on page 165). WTF?
08/05/07
Exiles at the Well of Souls - ...finished this one on Friday. It isn't a comic book but it is sci-fi. Its the second book of (at least) five in the well world series by Jack Chalker. This series in general is a lot of fun, for me at least. I see it as the ultimate role-playing fantasy series. People find themselves on a strange planet which is subdivided into hexagonal pieces of land. Each hex is governed by different rules of science. Not all technology functions in all hexes. Additionally each hex has its own dominant sentient race. When people arrive on the Well World, which doesn't happen too often, they are required to enter the Well. It selects a new life for them and reassigns them to one of the hexes. Although they retain all their memories, their DNA is restructured so that they become a member of the dominant species of the hex they are sent to. To me that sounds like the ultimate role-playing fantasy.
Plot? Mavra Chang (good gal), Antor Trellig (bad guy), and a few others find themselves unwittingly transported to the Well World. They crash land on the planet in two different space ships. The ships soon become the things to have and a war ensues. Chang and Trellig end up on opposite ends of the war and before it is all over Chang pays a horrible, although not life-ending, price for her efforts. The story begun in this volume concludes in the next volume, Quest for the Well of Souls.
08/11/07
I finished Men of Tomorrow, which I really liked except for some of the comments that the author makes about accountants in general, despite the fact there is only one mentioned by name in the book. If you have any interest in the origins of the comic book industry then I recommend you read this book. It was interesting to see how the birth of the industry tied back into Prohibition and gangsters, among other things.
I've started reading The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I've been reading to read this for a long time. I believe some of the material in this collection was used as the basis for the movie Smoke, which Auster also wrote and is - like - one my favorite movies. I should probably watch it again after I finish reading this book. Anyhow, I'm only twenty or so pages into the first story but I really like how he writes.
09/05/07
Today, on the way to work I read what is probably my favorite chapter (# 14) in Deryni Rising, and is possibly the turning point in the Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy. Father Duncan McClain forced to reveal his true nature and the first hint on dissension within the ranks of the bishops of Gwynedd.
Marc Evanier's story about the cruelest thing he ever did (the subject of an essay from Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life) made me laugh out loud, on the bus this afternoon. It involves setting fire to a fake Jack Kirby sketch in front of a fan. I can only imagine how any comic book fanatic would react to such an act if they believed it was an authentic sketch.
09/06/07
One of the more recent essays that I read from Comics and Other Necessities of Life struck me as being rather useless. Of course, that's just my opinion. I think it is useless because I found it very unconvincing. Basically Mr. Evanier was arguing against story lines (in comic books) that involve bad things happening to the heroic characters. He says he reads comic books because he wants to read about supernatural beings doing heroic things, more specifically: saving the day.
I'm chagrined by the author's opinion. I don't share it. I like gritty stories; stories in which things don't turn out for the best. I don't want to read them to the exclusion of all else but I do like them. He on the other hand seems to think (or thought at the time the essay was written) that when in doubt too many authors were writing stories about things going horribly wrong rather than writing "good" stories. Of course it isn't exactly clear to me what elements Mr. Evanier thinks a "good" (comic book) story usually possesses but I think it is safe to say that generally speaking it will have a happy ending. He doesn't completely shut the door on sad or bad endings, but he definitely has a bone to pick with writers who use them as often as not.
OK, my problem with his reasoning, or at least my perception of it, is that he seems to be saying that unless your (comic book) story is well written then it should have a happy ending or at least not have a sad one. There are plenty of badly written (comic book) stories out there with happy endings and considerably more (comic book) stories with happy endings than sad endings. So, why do we need more badly written stories with upbeat endings?
Deep down I think that my problem with Mr. Evanier's argument is that he seems to be defending the status quo. If change is to occur he wants it to occur within very narrow bounds. Innovation means taking risks. Things aren't always going to work out. If you don't give writers and artists latitude to work then will likely stay very close to the status quo. Boring! I don't like every innovation that I see, but I do like to see change and innovation even when I don't like the form it takes.
I don't mean to single out the writer of this essay. He is by no means the only creator, in comic books, who feels this way. I believe John Byrne has expressed similar opinions and I am sure that there are others.
Actually the worst thing about this essay is the way in which he introduces the topic by writing about lawyers. Very close to being a non-sequitur.
OK, that's it. I've said my piece. Good night.
09/08/07
I went to the Wheaton Library today. They have a used book store in the basement. I went looking for science fiction and fantasy novels. I bought four: Camber of Culdi by Katherine Kurtz, The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through both by Stephen R. Donaldson, and Split Infinity by Piers Anthony. All are books that I read as a teenager and plan to reread in the months ahead.
Camber of Culdi is the first book in the second trilogy that Katherine Kurtz wrote about the medieval world of the Deryni. It takes place roughly 200 years before the first series, which I am reading now.
Split Infinity is the first book in the Apprentice Adept series. I've read the first three books but no farther. Aside from the author's name I think what originally drew me to this series was the dual worlds of Phaze and Proton that exist side-by-side. One (Proton) is a world of high technology and the other (Phaze) a world with comparatively primitive technology but where magic works. This series is taking the place of the Amber series which I decided to stop rereading.
09/10/07
I finished Deryni Checkmate on the way to work this morning. Good book. Much better than the previous book, which was also a good book, it is just that this one is more elaborate, has more characters, and does not seemed as rushed as the prior volume. Also this book ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, as Gwynedd is about to erupt in civil war. The first book was much more self contained.
Now I need to decide what to read next:
- Quest for the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker
- Split Infinity by Piers Anthony
- The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson
I plan to read all three, its just a question of which to read next. Hmmmmm.....
Also on the subject of books: I feel a little guilty re-reading all these novels that I enjoyed when I was younger. Guilty because instead of seeking out something new I am rereading books I have read before. I don't like being stagnant, I like growing. I am seeing things that I didn't see before in some of these book but I still feel as though I should be seeking out new SF/F instead of rereading. I tend to look down on people who prefer to re-live the past rather than live in the present so I think that it is understandable that I am torn over this.
On the other hand I am trying new books, new fiction, it is just that it isn't new SF/F. I am also in the midst of reading New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I've read the first of the three stories. I'll get back to it once I finish off Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life by Marc Evanier. I also have The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont to read. None of these are books that I have read before or even authors I have read before.
09/13/07
I started reading Quest for the Well of Souls the other day. This isn't the best written series in terms of the beauty of the language or the composition of the sentences and paragraphs but I do love me the characters and the pace at which at which the story is revealed. At least that's how I feel right now. I honestly cannot remember what is coming in this volume of the Well World saga, other than Mavra Chang eventually being restored to a more dignified physical appearance.
09/21/07
I finished off the second story in New York Trilogy. I'm starting to wonder what is drawing me through this book. It is well written but the style isn't one that I am usually drawn to. There isn't much dialogue although there is much interior monologue. When there is conversation no quotation marks are used. Normally these are the sorts of things that turn me off. Yet I continue to read.
I think it must have something to do with the way the story seems to suggest implicitly that there is more than meets the eye to the story. This one had a very meta feel to it, like the author was writing about writing without explicitly writing about writing. I find that interesting.
I'm planning to give the book a rest now. I want to finish off the Well World book I am currently reading before I dig into the final installment in New York Trilogy. At this point I would say that I am interested in reading more by Paul Auster, but that could change.
09/24/07
Ravage by René Barjavel arrived in the mail today. I think it has been less than a week since I ordered it. Very impressive. I read a few more pages tonight as my dinner was warming up on the stove. I guess this means that I should return the copy I borrowed from the bibliotheque at the Alliance Française. I seem to be looking up fewer words the further I get. Not sure if that is because of the content or if my vocabulary is just expanding exponentially.
10/05/07
I've started reading The Mirror of Her Dreams. First time reading it in over 20 years. Loving it again. I remember being really impressed by the writing the first time I read it. I am impressed again. Stephen R. Donaldson really knows how to write intelligently. His plots aren't always spot on but his composition makes it well worth the read. That probably sounds incredibly geeky, but hey, that's me. It also occurs to me that on a subconscious [level] his writing style may have appealed to me when I was younger because, unlike many sci-fi and fantasy novels, Donaldson's books don't repeat facts over and over in the same language. He also uses a very broad vocabulary.
One aspect of the story that I don't remember and I wonder if I even took note of it the first time I read it is the importance of mirrors to the main character Terisa. I should probably explain a little about the story. Terisa is a young woman (mid 20s?) who lives in New York City in the late 20th century. Her parents had money but did not want to acknowledge her presence. As a result she now surrounds herself with mirrors because seeing her reflection reminds her of her own existence. She ends [up] getting pulled through a mirror one night and ends up in another world. A world that seems much more medieval by today's standards. In this world mirrors are used to view other worlds. There are no reflective surfaces. And the people she meets question whether she even existed before she came through the mirror.
There's more to the story than that but that's the part that intrigues me now: the whole question of existence. What happens now that she is outside of her comfort zone? How does she cope in a world without reflective surfaces, like mirrors?
10/06/07
On a slightly different matter, I've started thinking that I need to try and read some of the books I hear discussed on Bookworm. I've been listening to the show for over a year now and have yet to try one of the books. There are a couple that stick out in my mind. Maybe I'll start by making a list of all the books they have discussed.
10/07/07
Last night I finished reading Quest for the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker. I didn't remember exactly how it ended. The book is less than perfect but there is something or things about it that I like. One thing that I can pinpoint without any trouble is the ideas behind it. I love how Chalker posits this idea about the universe being created by a race of beings with godlike powers, the Markovians. They don't just create the universe they also created a world to experiment with creating various sentient life forms: the Well World. This world is run by a giant computer: the Well of Souls, which is far too complex for any of the races created by the Markovians to control. I like the energy with which the author infuses this idea.
I also like some of the characters, the main character in particular: Mavra Chang. She goes through quite a bit before the story is over. First she is transformed against her will into a human/donkey hybrid creature, then a pig-like creature, then a talking horse and finally back to a donkey/human hybrid. She is very resourceful. A couple other characters in the book are from the first book in the series: Midnight at the Well of Souls. I had forgotten that they were also in these two books or that there was a connection between them and Mavra.
10/11/07
I started reading the third novella in New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I needed something else to read. I wasn't satisfied with just reading The Mirror of Her Dreams. I needed something else to provide some contrast. I'm not sure if it is fair to judge Auster based on just one book (three stories) but he comes off as very wordy. I like his writing but I don't understand it all the time. This is may be a sign that I should reread NYT in the future.
11/13/07
Still working my way through The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson. I'm around the 3/4 mark in the book. I'm not going to finish it this week, but maybe next week. I need to find something else to read, something other than the sci-fi and fantasy series that I am currently reading, something to balance them out. It doesn't have to be non-fiction, but it needs to be something in a very different vein.
11/17/07
I drove to the Wheaton Public Library after finishing my sandwich. I was looking for something good to read, something not sci-fi or fantasy. I was in the basement where they have their book sale. I looked around a lot and ended up buying a couple of novels (Carousel, Mannequin) about criminal investigations in Paris during World War 2. The author's name is J. Robert Janes. I'm unfamiliar with his books but they looked interesting enough for me to pick them up. They were only asking $1.50 for each of the books. I was about to start reading the second Ripley novel but I think I will read the first of the two novels I bought today and then jump back to the trio of Patricia Highsmith novels that I bought several years ago. I read the first one, The Talented Mr. Ripley, when I first bought the three-volumes-in-one collection but haven't gotten back to read the other two novels since then.
12/05/07
I finally finished The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson. It definitely lived up to my memory of how good it is. I first read it about twenty years ago. I think I appreciated it somewhat differently this time around. I think I was much more taken and focused a lot more on the erotic aspects (which are an important but not overwhelming part) of the story. Of course I was teenager then and much more easily distracted by the subject of sex. Enough of that. It is a great read. Each chapter seems vitally important to me. There's no filler material in this book. It is always on the go, up to the very last chapter. It kept me guessing the whole way, because I couldn't remember how it all turned out. I still have the second part of the Mordant's Need to read, A Man Rides Through. Can't wait to see how it all turns out but I think I will by way of next reading the final book in Katherine Kurtz' Chronicles of the Deryni, High Deryni.
12/06/07
After two attempts I have decided to give up on Carousel by J. Robert Janes. Its a novel about a couple of detectives, one French and the other German, investigating a couple of murders in Paris in December 1942. It sounds like it could be good but the writing is just a little too confusing and muddled for me. The thing that I have the most trouble with is how the perspective of the narration seems to shift frequently and without warning. One minute you are inside the head of one character, then another, then a third. There doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of characters who take turns narrating. Often I couldn't tell who was narrating or that the POV had changed until a paragraph or two after the change. Glad I only paid $1.50 for this one.
12/07/07
High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz is a big improvement over Carousel. As always there is an adjustments period when I start a new book. Each author is different and writes with a different sort of voice. I get used to the voice I am listening to while I read a book. Once I finish it or move on to another book I find that I am still expecting to hear that author's voice, even though I am reading someone else's book now. So I have to take it slow when I start a new book and acclimate myself to the new voice that is speaking to me. Otherwise I tend to become frustrated and not finish the book or not enjoy it.
I'm debating whether to order the biography of Milton Caniff or maybe even the first collection of a comic strip he drew 70 years ago, Terry and the Pirates. I understand that at least one of the Asian characters is drawn and acts in way that makes him seem more of a caricature than a character; yet I'm still curious about this strip which is supposed to have influenced many creators who were of an age at the time it was being produced. Anyhow, I'm definitely thinking I want to read more non-fiction about the comic book business/industry. Not just books about the art of creating comics but also ones that delve into the ideas behind the stories.
12/11/07
On the way home from tutoring tonight I started reading the second of Patricia Highsmith's novels about Tom Ripley, Ripley Under Ground. I'm only a few pages into it. It has to have been at least three years since I read the first one, The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Ripley has been involved in selling forged paintings, some suspects that the paintings are forgeries (the artist committed suicide a couple years earlier but Ripley and friends have told the world he is living in a small town in Mexico) so now Ripley is going to impersonate the artist. That's what I got from the first chapter
12/12/07
I've only read one chapter so far but I'm liking Ripley Under Ground. Can't wait to see what twists and turns it takes. Its kind of fun reading a book about a villain or antihero, like Ripley.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Book Notes (LJ) 2006
01/04/06
I finished reading The Scar by China Mieville. I really enjoyed it. Early on I would have said that Perdido Street Station was a much better book. I think I still prefer PSS but TS runs a close second. It doesn't take off anywhere near as quickly as PSS, but once it does it is a very fun ride. I didn't see most of the twists and turns in the plot until they were just about to be revealed.
01/05/06
Back to reading The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Its been a while.
01/26/06
I've started reading The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein. Its about 50 years old. Funny how archaic some of the story is. It isn't just his idea of what of the future would be like but also the narration and dialogue. Heinlein uses quite a few expressions that old-fashioned. There is also the censorship. If the author wanted one of the characters to curse he had to refer to it a round about way, like on page 53 when he writes Belle answered with a word I didn't know she used. My eyebrows went up.
Anyhow its a fun little book so far. I get the impression that Dan (the main character) is about to go into deep sleep and wake up thirty years later (if the description on the jacket is accurate). He finds things very different from the way he expected and spends the rest of the book trying to figure out exactly what happened.
02/02/06
I finished The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein. Like a lot of his books it isn't particularly deep. That's okay. I like the whole time travel thing. Lots of fun, for the most part. Light reading. Now I am on to Richard K. Morgan's second Takeshi Kovacs novel, Fallen Angels.
03/04/06
Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan - I finished it last night on the ride home. The end wasn't quite as satisfying as it could have been but all in all I liked it. It isn't exactly like the previous book about Takeshi Kovacs, Altered Carbon. The previous novel is mixture of sci-fi and noir fiction a la Raymond Chandler, set in the SF Bay area. This one is set 150 light years from Earth on a world called Sanction Four. A world wide war is being waged between capitalist and socialist interests on Sanction Four. Kovacs is serving in a mercenary unit, Carrera's Wedge, which is fighting for the capitalists. Backed by a corporate executive he deserts his unit to go after an archeological find.
Until the end this book really had me. I think what disappointed me in the ending was that it didn't follow through on what came before. Or at least that's how I feel. Up until the end the book has a very existential tone. It is very downbeat until the last twenty to thirty pages. I expected follow through with this tone to the last page. Unfortunately the author insisted on having a "decisive" battle at the end between Kovacs and someone else. It didn't fit with the rest of the book. If it had been quick it might have, but given how the fight dragged out over about twenty pages I got the impression it was supposed to be a climax to book which (up until that moment) I figured would be climax-less. Part of the author's message seems to be that there are no decisive moments; that life just goes on; the names might change but nothing really changes in the long run. That leaves me wondering why he insisted on making that fight stand out the way he did. *shrug*
Anyhow, all in all I enjoyed it. A stupid ending doesn't usually ruin a book or movie for me, provided I enjoyed what came before.
03/05/06
I need to find something new to read since I finished Broken Angels.
03/08/06
I need a new book to read. I've tried picking up Start Making Sense, but it reads like a magazine. I hate it when books written by journalists, newspaper writers, etc. read like a newpaper or magazine. Not all of them do, but its not that hard to spot them. *sigh* So I want to buy something but I think I should wait until after I get my birthday presents, just in case someone gets me something to read.
03/22/06
I got the first of three books I ordered over the weekend, Software by Rudy Rucker. Its an early cyberpunk novel. Its written back in the early days of the personal computer era. Back before GUI was everywhere. Can't wait to see how it reads. It's fairly short.
03/28/06
Wined and dined or stoned and boned? software by rudy rucker is such a trippy novel.
05/06/06
Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn - This is the first book in the Star Wars series that will probably never be made into a movie. It picks up 5 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. Han and Leia are married and she is expecting twins. She is training to become a full-fledged Jedi. The remnants of the Empire are trying to regroup to strike back at was once the Rebel Alliance and is now the New Republic.
I'm only six or seven chapters in but so far it is a fun read. More plot driven than character driven, but that's more or less what I expected.
05/20/06
Heir to the Empire - This is the follow up to Return of the Jedi. It is set 5 years later. The empire is starting to regroup. OK, there aren't any real suprises here but this is a fun read. Its a shame that this trilogy won't be made into movies. They would be much better than the crap Lucas palmed-off on the public for the prequel trilogy.
09/30/06
I've been reading this biography of W.C. Fields and some of the scenes in the movie, It's a Gift, are discussed in the book and they sounded familiar so I decided to rent it.
10/30/06
Star Wars is crack. Since making disparaging remarks about Dark Force Rising I have been enjoying it more or less. Its b-movie quality in terms of the plotting, pacing, and dialogue but I'm not about to stop reading now. Like I said, it is crack.
11/08/06
I'm almost done with Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn. Will I buy/read the next/final book in this series? Yes, but not right away.
I finished reading The Scar by China Mieville. I really enjoyed it. Early on I would have said that Perdido Street Station was a much better book. I think I still prefer PSS but TS runs a close second. It doesn't take off anywhere near as quickly as PSS, but once it does it is a very fun ride. I didn't see most of the twists and turns in the plot until they were just about to be revealed.
01/05/06
Back to reading The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Its been a while.
01/26/06
I've started reading The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein. Its about 50 years old. Funny how archaic some of the story is. It isn't just his idea of what of the future would be like but also the narration and dialogue. Heinlein uses quite a few expressions that old-fashioned. There is also the censorship. If the author wanted one of the characters to curse he had to refer to it a round about way, like on page 53 when he writes Belle answered with a word I didn't know she used. My eyebrows went up.
Anyhow its a fun little book so far. I get the impression that Dan (the main character) is about to go into deep sleep and wake up thirty years later (if the description on the jacket is accurate). He finds things very different from the way he expected and spends the rest of the book trying to figure out exactly what happened.
02/02/06
I finished The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein. Like a lot of his books it isn't particularly deep. That's okay. I like the whole time travel thing. Lots of fun, for the most part. Light reading. Now I am on to Richard K. Morgan's second Takeshi Kovacs novel, Fallen Angels.
03/04/06
Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan - I finished it last night on the ride home. The end wasn't quite as satisfying as it could have been but all in all I liked it. It isn't exactly like the previous book about Takeshi Kovacs, Altered Carbon. The previous novel is mixture of sci-fi and noir fiction a la Raymond Chandler, set in the SF Bay area. This one is set 150 light years from Earth on a world called Sanction Four. A world wide war is being waged between capitalist and socialist interests on Sanction Four. Kovacs is serving in a mercenary unit, Carrera's Wedge, which is fighting for the capitalists. Backed by a corporate executive he deserts his unit to go after an archeological find.
Until the end this book really had me. I think what disappointed me in the ending was that it didn't follow through on what came before. Or at least that's how I feel. Up until the end the book has a very existential tone. It is very downbeat until the last twenty to thirty pages. I expected follow through with this tone to the last page. Unfortunately the author insisted on having a "decisive" battle at the end between Kovacs and someone else. It didn't fit with the rest of the book. If it had been quick it might have, but given how the fight dragged out over about twenty pages I got the impression it was supposed to be a climax to book which (up until that moment) I figured would be climax-less. Part of the author's message seems to be that there are no decisive moments; that life just goes on; the names might change but nothing really changes in the long run. That leaves me wondering why he insisted on making that fight stand out the way he did. *shrug*
Anyhow, all in all I enjoyed it. A stupid ending doesn't usually ruin a book or movie for me, provided I enjoyed what came before.
03/05/06
I need to find something new to read since I finished Broken Angels.
03/08/06
I need a new book to read. I've tried picking up Start Making Sense, but it reads like a magazine. I hate it when books written by journalists, newspaper writers, etc. read like a newpaper or magazine. Not all of them do, but its not that hard to spot them. *sigh* So I want to buy something but I think I should wait until after I get my birthday presents, just in case someone gets me something to read.
03/22/06
I got the first of three books I ordered over the weekend, Software by Rudy Rucker. Its an early cyberpunk novel. Its written back in the early days of the personal computer era. Back before GUI was everywhere. Can't wait to see how it reads. It's fairly short.
03/28/06
Wined and dined or stoned and boned? software by rudy rucker is such a trippy novel.
05/06/06
Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn - This is the first book in the Star Wars series that will probably never be made into a movie. It picks up 5 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. Han and Leia are married and she is expecting twins. She is training to become a full-fledged Jedi. The remnants of the Empire are trying to regroup to strike back at was once the Rebel Alliance and is now the New Republic.
I'm only six or seven chapters in but so far it is a fun read. More plot driven than character driven, but that's more or less what I expected.
05/20/06
Heir to the Empire - This is the follow up to Return of the Jedi. It is set 5 years later. The empire is starting to regroup. OK, there aren't any real suprises here but this is a fun read. Its a shame that this trilogy won't be made into movies. They would be much better than the crap Lucas palmed-off on the public for the prequel trilogy.
09/30/06
I've been reading this biography of W.C. Fields and some of the scenes in the movie, It's a Gift, are discussed in the book and they sounded familiar so I decided to rent it.
10/30/06
Star Wars is crack. Since making disparaging remarks about Dark Force Rising I have been enjoying it more or less. Its b-movie quality in terms of the plotting, pacing, and dialogue but I'm not about to stop reading now. Like I said, it is crack.
11/08/06
I'm almost done with Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn. Will I buy/read the next/final book in this series? Yes, but not right away.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Book Notes (LJ) 2005
01/12/05
I finished reading Battle of Wits last night. Not a book I would recommend, because it is tough going in places unless you have a strong background in cryptology or maybe mathematics. Next I plan on reading Hell to Pay by George Pelecanos.
01/21/05
I'm over halfway through Hell to Pay by George Pelecanos. Its good. I like the fact that it is set in DC, and not the DC that most people think of. DC is more than just the capital of the United States. While there is a transient population that moves based on who is in power, there are also people whose families have lived here for generations. It also isn't quite as white a city as you might get the impression it is from watching TV. Anyway, I'm enjoying the book.
02/08/05
I'm currently reading Boyos by Richard Marinick. Its a novel about thugs (mostly Irish-American ones) in South Boston. Its a fun read. There are a lot of characters and sometimes it can get a little confusing trying to remember who's who. The chapters are pretty short, sometimes as short as a page or two; none are longer than seven or eight pages.
02/22/05
We went to the Strand. Its a used book store, one of NYC's biggest. They boast having over 18 miles of books. We browsed for over 3 hours. I was a little disappointed with the selection of fiction. They seem to specialize in history and art books. I did pick up a couple of classic SF novels that I hadn't read before: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman and The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein. I've started the one by Haldeman and so far I really like it.
03/07/05
I'm just about done with The Forever War. Good book. It would probably appeal most to those who are interested in it for its critique of war or for the SFness of it. I've enjoyed it on both levels.
03/09/05
I finished reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Good book. I enjoyed it, but its probably not for everyone. Not sure what to read next. Maybe that Heinlein book I bought in NYC.
03/13/05
I've also started in on Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. I guess that means that I have set aside The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, for now. I don't know if I will read all of this book on Anime, but I want to at least give it a test drive. Its only 200 pages. It is more analysis that that revue. Analysis of the anime culture and the culture that creates it as well as of the various movies and tv shoes produced in this format.
03/16/05
The book I am reading about anime is good, but I'm not wild about all the anime that it covers. I didn't think much of the chapter on Akira and Ranma 1/2 or the chapter on pornographic anime. I skipped the chapter on mecha by mistake. The only chapter that has really resonated with me so far has been the one on Ghost in the Shell. Part of the problem is the approach the author seems to take. For the most part I think she over-analyzes the movies. I'm also not interested in some of the sorts of movies she has chosen to write about. I dunno if I will finish the book now.
03/23/05
I'm still reading The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Its good stuff. It makes you think. Taken as a whole it is not the sort of perspective that you will get from getting your news and commentary from the mainstream media. I'll probably take a break from it after a few more essays and read something else before returning to this volume. Not only is there a lot to read but it is very dense stuff to read. He really packs a lot into each sentence he writes.
I finished reading Battle of Wits last night. Not a book I would recommend, because it is tough going in places unless you have a strong background in cryptology or maybe mathematics. Next I plan on reading Hell to Pay by George Pelecanos.
01/21/05
I'm over halfway through Hell to Pay by George Pelecanos. Its good. I like the fact that it is set in DC, and not the DC that most people think of. DC is more than just the capital of the United States. While there is a transient population that moves based on who is in power, there are also people whose families have lived here for generations. It also isn't quite as white a city as you might get the impression it is from watching TV. Anyway, I'm enjoying the book.
02/08/05
I'm currently reading Boyos by Richard Marinick. Its a novel about thugs (mostly Irish-American ones) in South Boston. Its a fun read. There are a lot of characters and sometimes it can get a little confusing trying to remember who's who. The chapters are pretty short, sometimes as short as a page or two; none are longer than seven or eight pages.
02/22/05
We went to the Strand. Its a used book store, one of NYC's biggest. They boast having over 18 miles of books. We browsed for over 3 hours. I was a little disappointed with the selection of fiction. They seem to specialize in history and art books. I did pick up a couple of classic SF novels that I hadn't read before: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman and The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein. I've started the one by Haldeman and so far I really like it.
03/07/05
I'm just about done with The Forever War. Good book. It would probably appeal most to those who are interested in it for its critique of war or for the SFness of it. I've enjoyed it on both levels.
03/09/05
I finished reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Good book. I enjoyed it, but its probably not for everyone. Not sure what to read next. Maybe that Heinlein book I bought in NYC.
03/13/05
I've also started in on Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. I guess that means that I have set aside The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, for now. I don't know if I will read all of this book on Anime, but I want to at least give it a test drive. Its only 200 pages. It is more analysis that that revue. Analysis of the anime culture and the culture that creates it as well as of the various movies and tv shoes produced in this format.
03/16/05
The book I am reading about anime is good, but I'm not wild about all the anime that it covers. I didn't think much of the chapter on Akira and Ranma 1/2 or the chapter on pornographic anime. I skipped the chapter on mecha by mistake. The only chapter that has really resonated with me so far has been the one on Ghost in the Shell. Part of the problem is the approach the author seems to take. For the most part I think she over-analyzes the movies. I'm also not interested in some of the sorts of movies she has chosen to write about. I dunno if I will finish the book now.
03/23/05
I'm still reading The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Its good stuff. It makes you think. Taken as a whole it is not the sort of perspective that you will get from getting your news and commentary from the mainstream media. I'll probably take a break from it after a few more essays and read something else before returning to this volume. Not only is there a lot to read but it is very dense stuff to read. He really packs a lot into each sentence he writes.
03/28/05
I've started reading Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress. Its a sci fi novel about a group of genetically modified humans who don't need to sleep. It seems to be a commentary on capitalism and the United States as much as it is a sci fi story, and I am enjoying it so far.
04/04/05
I'm over halfway through Beggars in Spain. I'm enjoying it but not as much as I enjoyed the first 50 or so pages. The author pushes the plot forward too much and there isn't enough character development. There is also a little too much telling and not enough showing. Also I'm having a hard time feeling much sympathy for the main character. Still its not bad if you like sci fi. *shrug*
04/04/05
I'm over halfway through Beggars in Spain. I'm enjoying it but not as much as I enjoyed the first 50 or so pages. The author pushes the plot forward too much and there isn't enough character development. There is also a little too much telling and not enough showing. Also I'm having a hard time feeling much sympathy for the main character. Still its not bad if you like sci fi. *shrug*
04/06/05
I'm still reading Beggars in Spain. My opinion of the book hasn't improved. It just doesn't give my brain enough to chew on. It is too straight forward. Maybe I'm not working the material hard enough, but that's how I feel.
05/13/05
Innocent Blood by Christopher Dickey - An intense novel about a former Army Ranger who converts to Islam and starts working for a terrorist organization. It isn't a facile read or a simple story. He has his reasons for converting. His experiences in the first Gulf War and his lack of grounding seem to have a lot to do with the path he chooses to take. He doesn't see the world in black and white terms. He wants to effect change, not just wreck havoc. Possibly the most interesting fact about the book is that it was written five years before 9/11. I strongly recommend it. Its not a long read, but it is thought provoking, and doesn't speak from the sort of perspective that you ever hear from in the mainstream media in the United States.
King Rat by China Mieville - A convoluted story as only China Mieville knows how to write. Love the mix of horror, fantasy, and city life. The main character is Saul, who wakes up one morning to find his father dead and himself the prime suspect. After spending some time being interrogated by the police he is locked away in a cell. A rat-like man, King Rat, helps him to break out and teaches him his true heritage.
That's about as far as I have gotten. I only started the book a few days ago. So far I love it. I'm reading this one based on the strength of how much I enjoyed Perdido Street Station. KR starts off a little slower than PSS, but it is picking up steam. I loved the horrific and wonderous images in PSS and can't wait to read more of them in KR.
05/17/05
King Rat - Saul is accused of murdering his father. He is broken out of jail by his uncle, King Rat, who Saul didn't even know of. King Rat isn't human but some sort of rat-like humanoid. Meanwhile a mysterious flute-playing stranger, named Pete, has cozied up to Natasha, one of Saul's friends. Who is he? Who is King Rat, really? Well, apparently Pete and King Rat have met before, but they aren't friends and it has been hundreds of years since their last meeting in a town known as Hamelin.
Its taken me a little longer than I had hoped, but I am finally starting to enjoy and understand this book. For a while there I wasn't sure what direction it was going in. It isn't as much like Perdido Street Station as I had hoped it would be. It is set in London in the late 1990's and there aren't quite as many exotic creatures.
05/27/05
I finished King Rat by China Mieville on the ride to work. Great ending. Its a much simpler book than Perdido Street Station, no where near as elaborate. Still its very clever, love the way he writes.
05/31/05
I started reading Anime Explosion! by Patrick Drazen. Its written in a very user friendly style, but doesn't seem to be quite as rigorously thought through as Anime: from Akira to Princess Mononoke by Susan Napier. It does seem to be more of an overview of the anime world that the Napier's book, but the more I learn about anime the more I begin to think that I'd prefer to read books that are more focused and less scattershot. Still, I think I'm going to take a crack at reading the whole book, I just don't think I'll buy a copy.
06/02/05
I think the author of Anime Explosion is a bit homophobic. He seems to think that unless it is explicitly stated that a couple characters of the same gender are having sex then they are not gay. I applaud him for recognizing that not every guy who acts effeminate is gay, but to me at least sexual orientation isn't so much about what you do in bed as much as it is about whom you are attracted to. *sigh*
06/14/05
I finished reading Superman on the Couch. Good book. Very entertaining and thought provoking. It gave me a few new perspectives on comic books. One of those books that probably bears reading again.
06/18/05
I finished reading Superman on the Couch earlier this week, or was it last week? I can't remember. Anyway, it really gave me some interesting insights into comic books and American culture. I hate using the term: American culture. It makes me shiver to think of the things that can pass for culture and values. Anyway, the author (Danny Fingeroth) makes some very interesting observations about the nature of heroes and villains. If you are at all interested in the subject I recommend giving it a try. Its not very long (under 200 pages) and very accessible.
10/12/05
I've been reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Great book. Very intellectual but also very accesible. It is a graphic non-fiction book. In it he breaks down what makes comic books special, how they differ from books, pictures, movies, etc. He looks at examples from the whole range of the medium, from Jack Kirby to Herge to Osamu Tezuka. There are some really fascinating insights. I'm so glad that I finally got around to reading it.
10/24/05
I'm winding down on Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Excellent book. Very informative. Highly recommended. I noticed that I haven't read from the Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison lately. I think I'm gonna blame that on the CPA exam. I need to get back to it. It was a Christmas present from my youngest brother last year. Its great reading, but its also very long. I've got to read it in chunks. Too much of a good thing and all that.
11/07/05
I started reading The Scar by China Mieville. So far I like it. The book, so far, takes place at sea or under the sea. The main character Bellis Coldwine, is fleeing New Crobuzon. She is heading for the colonies, but winds up in Armada; a pirate city that is made up on hundreds of ships that have been tied together. I haven't gotten too far into the story, but once again I am impressed by the author's imagination. This is the third book of China Mieville's that I have read.
11/17/05
I'm still reading The Scar by China Mieville. Its different from Perdido Street Station. I'm still getting used to the whole idea of Armada, a floating city that is made up of hundreds of ships tied together. The plot is also a bit lacking in direction, but the imagery and the characters make up for the missing plot.
Innocent Blood by Christopher Dickey - An intense novel about a former Army Ranger who converts to Islam and starts working for a terrorist organization. It isn't a facile read or a simple story. He has his reasons for converting. His experiences in the first Gulf War and his lack of grounding seem to have a lot to do with the path he chooses to take. He doesn't see the world in black and white terms. He wants to effect change, not just wreck havoc. Possibly the most interesting fact about the book is that it was written five years before 9/11. I strongly recommend it. Its not a long read, but it is thought provoking, and doesn't speak from the sort of perspective that you ever hear from in the mainstream media in the United States.
King Rat by China Mieville - A convoluted story as only China Mieville knows how to write. Love the mix of horror, fantasy, and city life. The main character is Saul, who wakes up one morning to find his father dead and himself the prime suspect. After spending some time being interrogated by the police he is locked away in a cell. A rat-like man, King Rat, helps him to break out and teaches him his true heritage.
That's about as far as I have gotten. I only started the book a few days ago. So far I love it. I'm reading this one based on the strength of how much I enjoyed Perdido Street Station. KR starts off a little slower than PSS, but it is picking up steam. I loved the horrific and wonderous images in PSS and can't wait to read more of them in KR.
05/17/05
King Rat - Saul is accused of murdering his father. He is broken out of jail by his uncle, King Rat, who Saul didn't even know of. King Rat isn't human but some sort of rat-like humanoid. Meanwhile a mysterious flute-playing stranger, named Pete, has cozied up to Natasha, one of Saul's friends. Who is he? Who is King Rat, really? Well, apparently Pete and King Rat have met before, but they aren't friends and it has been hundreds of years since their last meeting in a town known as Hamelin.
Its taken me a little longer than I had hoped, but I am finally starting to enjoy and understand this book. For a while there I wasn't sure what direction it was going in. It isn't as much like Perdido Street Station as I had hoped it would be. It is set in London in the late 1990's and there aren't quite as many exotic creatures.
05/27/05
I finished King Rat by China Mieville on the ride to work. Great ending. Its a much simpler book than Perdido Street Station, no where near as elaborate. Still its very clever, love the way he writes.
05/31/05
I started reading Anime Explosion! by Patrick Drazen. Its written in a very user friendly style, but doesn't seem to be quite as rigorously thought through as Anime: from Akira to Princess Mononoke by Susan Napier. It does seem to be more of an overview of the anime world that the Napier's book, but the more I learn about anime the more I begin to think that I'd prefer to read books that are more focused and less scattershot. Still, I think I'm going to take a crack at reading the whole book, I just don't think I'll buy a copy.
06/02/05
I think the author of Anime Explosion is a bit homophobic. He seems to think that unless it is explicitly stated that a couple characters of the same gender are having sex then they are not gay. I applaud him for recognizing that not every guy who acts effeminate is gay, but to me at least sexual orientation isn't so much about what you do in bed as much as it is about whom you are attracted to. *sigh*
06/14/05
I finished reading Superman on the Couch. Good book. Very entertaining and thought provoking. It gave me a few new perspectives on comic books. One of those books that probably bears reading again.
06/18/05
I finished reading Superman on the Couch earlier this week, or was it last week? I can't remember. Anyway, it really gave me some interesting insights into comic books and American culture. I hate using the term: American culture. It makes me shiver to think of the things that can pass for culture and values. Anyway, the author (Danny Fingeroth) makes some very interesting observations about the nature of heroes and villains. If you are at all interested in the subject I recommend giving it a try. Its not very long (under 200 pages) and very accessible.
10/12/05
I've been reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Great book. Very intellectual but also very accesible. It is a graphic non-fiction book. In it he breaks down what makes comic books special, how they differ from books, pictures, movies, etc. He looks at examples from the whole range of the medium, from Jack Kirby to Herge to Osamu Tezuka. There are some really fascinating insights. I'm so glad that I finally got around to reading it.
10/24/05
I'm winding down on Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Excellent book. Very informative. Highly recommended. I noticed that I haven't read from the Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison lately. I think I'm gonna blame that on the CPA exam. I need to get back to it. It was a Christmas present from my youngest brother last year. Its great reading, but its also very long. I've got to read it in chunks. Too much of a good thing and all that.
11/07/05
I started reading The Scar by China Mieville. So far I like it. The book, so far, takes place at sea or under the sea. The main character Bellis Coldwine, is fleeing New Crobuzon. She is heading for the colonies, but winds up in Armada; a pirate city that is made up on hundreds of ships that have been tied together. I haven't gotten too far into the story, but once again I am impressed by the author's imagination. This is the third book of China Mieville's that I have read.
11/17/05
I'm still reading The Scar by China Mieville. Its different from Perdido Street Station. I'm still getting used to the whole idea of Armada, a floating city that is made up of hundreds of ships tied together. The plot is also a bit lacking in direction, but the imagery and the characters make up for the missing plot.
12/12/05
I keep wanting to compare The Scar to Perdido Street Station. I look for analogues but I can't seem to find any. I get I'm still trying to get a handle on the story. The details are sometimes hard to follow but it is a fun read.
12/13/05
The Scar - I was thinking about it on the way home and one of the things I love about this book are some of the names: Bellis Coldwine, Tanner Sack, Uther Doul, Tintinnabulum, Silas Fennec. The characters behind the names are just as good as the names themselves.
I keep wanting to compare The Scar to Perdido Street Station. I look for analogues but I can't seem to find any. I get I'm still trying to get a handle on the story. The details are sometimes hard to follow but it is a fun read.
12/13/05
The Scar - I was thinking about it on the way home and one of the things I love about this book are some of the names: Bellis Coldwine, Tanner Sack, Uther Doul, Tintinnabulum, Silas Fennec. The characters behind the names are just as good as the names themselves.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Book Notes (LJ) 2003
07/23/03
I'm still plowing through If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell. It is enjoyable, but not exactly great writing. In other words I am enjoying the content and not the writing style of the author. I'm not sure what to read next. I have a number of books. I just got another one today. I ordered it last week; Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock. I read it once before about ten or twelve years ago. If I remember correctly I found it at Hornbake (aka Cornflake) Library at U of MD.
08/10/03
I'm Working my way through John's book, Nathan's Run. What do I think of it? Melodramatic. I think that sums it up best.
09/15/03
I finally finished off Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock. I think I enjoyed it more the first time around. In the past twelve years (or so) I think my tastes have gotten a little more refined and also it was probably just a case of it being the right sort of book at the right time back then.
I started reading Only Girl in the Car by Kathy Dobie. It is nonfiction. I heard the author interviewed on Fresh Air a few months ago. It sounded interesting enough. It is a memoir of a woman who was very sexually active as a teenager. Learned a lot of lessons about herself and life in general through her experiences. Not the sort of book I would walk into Borders and pick up, I ordered it through Amazon.com, but I feel uninhibited enough to read it on the train ride to and from work. So far so good.
09/23/03
I started reading The Girl Next Door by Hank Ketchum recently. I've been reading it on the train, but given the content, given that it seems to be getting more and more violent and that there is a good deal of sexual content in the book I think I'll continue to read it just at home. Instead I think that I will start reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which I bought not too long ago.
09/24/03
I started reading Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, this morning. I'm into it already. The man can write and the topic is fascinating, or at least I think it is.
09/29/03
I got some reading done. More of Fast Food Nation. I've gotten past the first four chapters which deal with looking at the corporate side of the fast food industry and started in on the rest of the book which deals with the food itself. If you have ever wanted to know what it means when one of the ingredients of a food product you buy is natural or artificial flavoring then you should read chapter 6 of this book. Chapter five is all about the fries.
10/01/03
I'm still plowing through Fast Food Nation. I'm up to the chapter about the stockyards and boy is it grizzly. I'll never complain about my job again. The number of on the job injuries and deaths is amazing. Given the connections of all the food companies reading the book even has me thinking about non-fast food that I eat.
10/07/03
I finished reading Fast Food Nation this evening on the way home. What a read. I highly recommend it. It will really make you think twice about eating fast food, and eating red meat for that matter.It also has a lot of good information about the food processing industry. Up next I think I am going to read Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. Neal Conan of Talk of the Nation has plugged it more than once. I hope it turns out to be worth it. From what I understand it is a sci-fi detective novel.
10/12/03
I'm a good fifty pages or more into Altered Carbon. I like sci-fi and I like detective novels, and I love this story so far. It takes place in the future when people can be stored electronically and downloaded into another body. The main character, Takeshi Kovacs, is a criminal who has been let out of jail, temporarily to help solve a crime. Jail in this future consists of being stored on a disk somewhere until your sentence is up. The crime he is asked to solve is the attempted murder of a very wealthy man. The man was killed, but there was a backup copy in storage and he is back. The police have classified it as a suicide. Kovacs deal is that if he can solve the crime he will have the rest of his sentence nullified, otherwise he is going back to storage.
10/21/03
I'm still reading Altered Carbon. It is still good.
10/24/03
I'm winding down on Altered Carbon. So far I love it; probably because it combines two of my favorite genres: science-fiction and crime fiction. The author also does a nice job of occasionally emphasizing the ethical, moral, and philosophical issues surrounding a society in which a person's consciousness and intelligence can be downloaded on to a disk and then uploaded into another body. He doesn't come down on one side or the other of the argument. The main character (Takeshi Kovacs) is someone who has lived through countless numbers of bodies, but who has as a result become (in some ways) numb to living. Working with him is a cop (Kristin Ortega) who is still in her original body and does not relish the idea of changing bodies.
There are other supporting characters who range the spectrum. From assassins who have survived multiple deaths by having back up copies of themselves made, including one killed by Kovacs who later comes back and doesn't hold her death against him. the fact that she can't remember her death or ever meeting before probably has something to do with her forgiving nature. To a hacker who gets out of storage (jail) only to find herself in a body other than her own, because someone has purchased her body, or sleeve as they call them in the book, and is desperate to get it back.
I think that next I will read the book about Cantor Fitzgerald. That's the company that had offices on the top floor of one of the Twin Towers. Someone from my neighborhood, who I didn't know, worked for them. Needless to say, no one who was at the office that day made it out alive. I heard the author interviewed on the radio a few months ago and ordered it from Amazon a month or so ago.
10/29/03
I have started reading Top of the World, which is about Cantor Fitzgerald. The company used to have offices on the top five floors of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Only four employees made it out of the building alive, none of them were at or near the top of the building at the time. 678 out of 1000 employees were killed. The CEO arrived late that day just as the first (or maybe it was the second) plane hit. He survived to rebuild the company.
It is not a long book, or hard one to understand, but that doesn't mean it isn't a tough read. Very emotional stuff. Gut-wrenching at times.
11/01/03
Still reading On Top of the World. I'll probably finish it by this time next week. I can't empathize completely with Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. He is richer than I'm sure I'll ever be. There are things that I feel go unsaid that a more objective account would probably encompass, but it is tough not to feel some compassion for his loss and some awe for what he and the other surviving employees managed to do in pulling the company back together (practically overnight) after 70% of the staff was killed.
One more thing worth mentioning about the On Top of the World. Lutnick definitely got a raw deal from the media in the first weeks following September 11, 2001. Eventually their coverage of him improved, but he certainly doesn't pull any punches in the book, when it comes to naming names of people who gave him a very hard time when he was struggling to pull his company back together and provide for the literally hundreds of widows left in the wake of collapse of the World Trade Center. In particular he singles out Bill O'Reilly, who it could probably can be argued singled himself out, for some very harsh criticism.
11/02/03
I was looking through the photographs in On Top of the World this morning, before I went to do my laundry. I had to stop before I got through all of them. It got me all choked up thinking about the loss. It wasn't much easier reading the book at the laundromat.
11/05/03
On the way home I finished reading On Top of the World. It's a good book, but I didn't find it terribly uplifting. Up next is another downer, I can't remember what the title is, but I'll write about it once I can. I'll probably start it tomorrow morning.
11/06/03
I started in on The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by JT Leroy. It's rough stuff. I'm starting to question the value of reading such emotionally charged material on the Metro. If I were home I am sure that I would be shedding tears, but I don't feel comfortable doing that in public, every morning, or even on a regular basis. So I tap my foot instead and do my best to make sure that my eyes don't tear up. It doesn't dull the intensity of the words, but it keeps my potential public display of emotion at bay.
Anyway, the book is not a novel, but a collection of short stories about a young boy. In the first story he can't be more than four, I'm guessing. He has been returned to his birth mother, who was 14 at the time he was born, and now at 18 has decided she wants him back. She treats him pretty badly, lies to him about his foster parents, and verbally and physically abuses him.
The story is told by the boy. The author (so far) has done a great job. Showing, but not telling. Including all the sorts of details that help to give me a picture of what the main character is experiencing. It's powerful stuff, but it is good.
11/07/03
I'm all worn out. I worked late tonight, a couple hours late. I read some more off The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things on the train ride home; heartbreaking stuff. I think the fact that the main character is a male child makes it that much tougher to take. Why? Because females are often portrayed as victims, males are supposed to be strong. Listening to a young child talk matter of factly about wetting the bed or his Bugs Bunny doll for some reason gets to me. I don't know why, but they get to me. It probably has to do with the main character juxtaposing those memories with ones of abuse and neglect. Excellently written, but not for the faint of heart.
11/10/03
I'm still reading The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. It is getting truly disturbing. Glad I didn't read it over the weekend. I am almost halfway through and, depending on my schedule, may be able to finish it before next Monday. I need to look for some happy books to read.
11/11/03
I decided to start another book this morning, How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years by Tom Arnold.
I still plan on finishing The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, but I don't think I want to read it on the train anymore. It is just too dreary, depressing, etc. In the last story from the book that I read, Babydoll, what was hinted at before becomes very apparent. The main character, Jeremiah, has some serious sexual identity issues.
Anyhow, I needed to read something a little more upbeat so I started in on Tom Arnold's autobiography. I know that at times he had it rough growing up but from what I read about the book I get the impression that he also does a good job of not weighing the book down too much.
11/14/03
I'm almost finished reading The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
I am about halfway through I lost Five Pounds in Six Years.
11/18/03
I almost finished Tom Arnold's book this evening. I only have about ten pages to go. I think I'll just start in on another book tomorrow and finish off How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years later this week. At the moment I am down to two books: Half Mast by Christopher Null and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. I'm leaning toward At Play... because I think it will probably be a little more up beat than a book about a high school kid getting revenge on the jock who has been bullying him.
11/19/03
I started in on Half Mast, by Christopher Null, on the train ride in this morning. I was gonna pass on it for now, but I took a look at the first couple pages and I liked the tone of the narrator, so I decided to give it a try. Well worth it, so far; that's my assessment. Well written. Brought back some memories of high school, when I felt picked on at times, but not consistently so, and also elementary, when I also was picked on occasionally. Fifth grade was a different story. I didn't take it lying down, not all the time. There were fights. I was usually on the losing end, but I suppose they helped to toughen me up some. Anyway, I never went though anything like the narrator of the book goes through.
The way the book starts is by telling you the ending, that the main character killed this guy who was bullying him, when they were in high school. It is now 10 years later and he is having trouble sleeping and his therapist has recommended that he keep a journal. So the novel consists of journal entries about his memories of high school, along with odds and ends about his life, now and then. I'm thirty pages in so far.
12/03/03
I've started reading At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiesen. It's about missionaries and mercenaries in South America. I'm about 65 pages into it and so far so good. They made a movie out if it which I saw part of several years ago. IIRC, it stars John Lithgow, Tom Berenger, Kathy Bates, and Daryl Hannah. It is a long movie (3 & 1/2 hours) but the book is about average length (320 pages). The movie still hasn't been released on DVD so if I am ever going to see it again I'll probably end up having to buy a VHS cassette of it.
12/17/03
Thanks to the delay, I did manage to read about fifteen more pages of At Play in the Fields of the Lord on the ride home and while waiting for the Orange Line. I've got about fifty pages to go.
12/18/03
I did get some reading done on the train and bus this morning. I'm down to 30 pages in At Play in the Fields of the Lord. It certainly has enough twists and turns, and doesn't seem too predictable to me. Not the easiest novel I've ever read, but it's I'm thinking I'm going to read The Time Traveler's Wife next.
12/19/03
I started reading The Time Traveler's Wife this morning. I have ten pages to go in At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
12/24/03
I've been reading The Time Traveler's Wife for the last few days now. The parts I was reading this morning got me feeling a little bit weird. Let me explain.
Henry is eight years older than Claire. They get married sometime after they meet, when she is 20 and he is 28. He has this disease that causes him to jump backward in time for relatively short periods of time. In the part I was reading today (and last night), Claire is twelve to thirteen and has developed a crush on Henry. When Henry visits her, during this period in her life, he is usually in his thirties. He knows that he is eventually going to marry her, but doesn't tell her. There is a tension between them that I find to be very erotic, despite her age. He doesn't do anything or take advantage of her crush, but there is definitely something unspoken, some tension in the air. And I find it erotic; he wants to tell her and sometimes he sees her as he knows she will be, but he doesn't, won't try to change the past or take advantage of her crush (when she is 12-13) or the love he feels for her.
This gets me feeling a little bit weird. You couldn't get away with showing something like this on TV or in a movie, but in book you can.
Anyhow, I am also starting to put together a chronology of events, since it gets very confusing very quickly as to when he visited Claire and how old he was each time. For instance, the first time he vists her he is 36, but the second time he is 35. It might be simple enough if he kept getting younger and younger, but infortunately it doesn't work that way.
12/28/3
I have started on a chronology of The Time Traveler's Wife. Why? Because I want to. I have only done the first five chapters.
The Time Traveler's Wife: Chronology
Book - Listing of Henry and Claire's encounters in the order in which they appear in the book.
Note: Underline indicates time travel.
First Date, One
10/26/1991 - Claire: 20, Henry: 28
A First Time for Everything
06/16/1968 - Henry: 5, 24
First Time, Two
09/23/1977 - Claire: 6, Henry: 36
02/09/2000 - Claire: 28, Henry: 36
09/29/1977 - Claire: 6, Henry: 35
Lessons in Survival
06/07/1973 - Henry: 9, 27
12/10/1978 - Henry: 15, 15
11/17/1982 - Henry: 19
09/28/1982 - Henry: 19
05/14/1983 - Claire: 11
04/12/1984 - Claire: 12, Henry: 36
06/27/1984 - Claire: 13
09/23/1984 - Claire: 13, Henry: 35
After the End
10/27/1984 - Claire: 13, Henry: 43
02/02/1987 - Claire: 15, Henry: 38
06/05/1987 - Claire: 16, Henry: 32
09/27/1987 - Claire: 16, Henry: 32
09/18/1987 - Claire: 16
07/12/1995 - Claire: 24, Henry: 32
09/11/1988 - Claire: 17, Henry: 36
01/13/2000 - Claire 28, Henry 36
Christmas Eve, One
(Always Crashing in the Same Car)
12/24/1988 - Claire: 17, Henry: 40
Christmas Eve, Two
12/24/1988 - Henry: 25
04/08/1989 - Claire: 17, Henry: 40
Eat or Be Eaten
11/30/1991 - Claire: 20, Henry: 28
12/14/1991 - Henry: 36
05/09/2000 - Henry: 36
12/15/1991 - Claire: 20
12/22/1991 - Claire: 20, Henry: 28, 33
12/29/03
Dead Men (pp. 1 - 15)
12/30/03
I've started reading Dead Men, although on the train this morning I read from The Time Traveler's Wife.
I'm still plowing through If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell. It is enjoyable, but not exactly great writing. In other words I am enjoying the content and not the writing style of the author. I'm not sure what to read next. I have a number of books. I just got another one today. I ordered it last week; Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock. I read it once before about ten or twelve years ago. If I remember correctly I found it at Hornbake (aka Cornflake) Library at U of MD.
08/10/03
I'm Working my way through John's book, Nathan's Run. What do I think of it? Melodramatic. I think that sums it up best.
09/15/03
I finally finished off Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock. I think I enjoyed it more the first time around. In the past twelve years (or so) I think my tastes have gotten a little more refined and also it was probably just a case of it being the right sort of book at the right time back then.
I started reading Only Girl in the Car by Kathy Dobie. It is nonfiction. I heard the author interviewed on Fresh Air a few months ago. It sounded interesting enough. It is a memoir of a woman who was very sexually active as a teenager. Learned a lot of lessons about herself and life in general through her experiences. Not the sort of book I would walk into Borders and pick up, I ordered it through Amazon.com, but I feel uninhibited enough to read it on the train ride to and from work. So far so good.
09/23/03
I started reading The Girl Next Door by Hank Ketchum recently. I've been reading it on the train, but given the content, given that it seems to be getting more and more violent and that there is a good deal of sexual content in the book I think I'll continue to read it just at home. Instead I think that I will start reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which I bought not too long ago.
09/24/03
I started reading Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, this morning. I'm into it already. The man can write and the topic is fascinating, or at least I think it is.
09/29/03
I got some reading done. More of Fast Food Nation. I've gotten past the first four chapters which deal with looking at the corporate side of the fast food industry and started in on the rest of the book which deals with the food itself. If you have ever wanted to know what it means when one of the ingredients of a food product you buy is natural or artificial flavoring then you should read chapter 6 of this book. Chapter five is all about the fries.
10/01/03
I'm still plowing through Fast Food Nation. I'm up to the chapter about the stockyards and boy is it grizzly. I'll never complain about my job again. The number of on the job injuries and deaths is amazing. Given the connections of all the food companies reading the book even has me thinking about non-fast food that I eat.
10/07/03
I finished reading Fast Food Nation this evening on the way home. What a read. I highly recommend it. It will really make you think twice about eating fast food, and eating red meat for that matter.It also has a lot of good information about the food processing industry. Up next I think I am going to read Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. Neal Conan of Talk of the Nation has plugged it more than once. I hope it turns out to be worth it. From what I understand it is a sci-fi detective novel.
10/12/03
I'm a good fifty pages or more into Altered Carbon. I like sci-fi and I like detective novels, and I love this story so far. It takes place in the future when people can be stored electronically and downloaded into another body. The main character, Takeshi Kovacs, is a criminal who has been let out of jail, temporarily to help solve a crime. Jail in this future consists of being stored on a disk somewhere until your sentence is up. The crime he is asked to solve is the attempted murder of a very wealthy man. The man was killed, but there was a backup copy in storage and he is back. The police have classified it as a suicide. Kovacs deal is that if he can solve the crime he will have the rest of his sentence nullified, otherwise he is going back to storage.
10/21/03
I'm still reading Altered Carbon. It is still good.
10/24/03
I'm winding down on Altered Carbon. So far I love it; probably because it combines two of my favorite genres: science-fiction and crime fiction. The author also does a nice job of occasionally emphasizing the ethical, moral, and philosophical issues surrounding a society in which a person's consciousness and intelligence can be downloaded on to a disk and then uploaded into another body. He doesn't come down on one side or the other of the argument. The main character (Takeshi Kovacs) is someone who has lived through countless numbers of bodies, but who has as a result become (in some ways) numb to living. Working with him is a cop (Kristin Ortega) who is still in her original body and does not relish the idea of changing bodies.
There are other supporting characters who range the spectrum. From assassins who have survived multiple deaths by having back up copies of themselves made, including one killed by Kovacs who later comes back and doesn't hold her death against him. the fact that she can't remember her death or ever meeting before probably has something to do with her forgiving nature. To a hacker who gets out of storage (jail) only to find herself in a body other than her own, because someone has purchased her body, or sleeve as they call them in the book, and is desperate to get it back.
I think that next I will read the book about Cantor Fitzgerald. That's the company that had offices on the top floor of one of the Twin Towers. Someone from my neighborhood, who I didn't know, worked for them. Needless to say, no one who was at the office that day made it out alive. I heard the author interviewed on the radio a few months ago and ordered it from Amazon a month or so ago.
10/29/03
I have started reading Top of the World, which is about Cantor Fitzgerald. The company used to have offices on the top five floors of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Only four employees made it out of the building alive, none of them were at or near the top of the building at the time. 678 out of 1000 employees were killed. The CEO arrived late that day just as the first (or maybe it was the second) plane hit. He survived to rebuild the company.
It is not a long book, or hard one to understand, but that doesn't mean it isn't a tough read. Very emotional stuff. Gut-wrenching at times.
11/01/03
Still reading On Top of the World. I'll probably finish it by this time next week. I can't empathize completely with Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. He is richer than I'm sure I'll ever be. There are things that I feel go unsaid that a more objective account would probably encompass, but it is tough not to feel some compassion for his loss and some awe for what he and the other surviving employees managed to do in pulling the company back together (practically overnight) after 70% of the staff was killed.
One more thing worth mentioning about the On Top of the World. Lutnick definitely got a raw deal from the media in the first weeks following September 11, 2001. Eventually their coverage of him improved, but he certainly doesn't pull any punches in the book, when it comes to naming names of people who gave him a very hard time when he was struggling to pull his company back together and provide for the literally hundreds of widows left in the wake of collapse of the World Trade Center. In particular he singles out Bill O'Reilly, who it could probably can be argued singled himself out, for some very harsh criticism.
11/02/03
I was looking through the photographs in On Top of the World this morning, before I went to do my laundry. I had to stop before I got through all of them. It got me all choked up thinking about the loss. It wasn't much easier reading the book at the laundromat.
11/05/03
On the way home I finished reading On Top of the World. It's a good book, but I didn't find it terribly uplifting. Up next is another downer, I can't remember what the title is, but I'll write about it once I can. I'll probably start it tomorrow morning.
11/06/03
I started in on The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by JT Leroy. It's rough stuff. I'm starting to question the value of reading such emotionally charged material on the Metro. If I were home I am sure that I would be shedding tears, but I don't feel comfortable doing that in public, every morning, or even on a regular basis. So I tap my foot instead and do my best to make sure that my eyes don't tear up. It doesn't dull the intensity of the words, but it keeps my potential public display of emotion at bay.
Anyway, the book is not a novel, but a collection of short stories about a young boy. In the first story he can't be more than four, I'm guessing. He has been returned to his birth mother, who was 14 at the time he was born, and now at 18 has decided she wants him back. She treats him pretty badly, lies to him about his foster parents, and verbally and physically abuses him.
The story is told by the boy. The author (so far) has done a great job. Showing, but not telling. Including all the sorts of details that help to give me a picture of what the main character is experiencing. It's powerful stuff, but it is good.
11/07/03
I'm all worn out. I worked late tonight, a couple hours late. I read some more off The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things on the train ride home; heartbreaking stuff. I think the fact that the main character is a male child makes it that much tougher to take. Why? Because females are often portrayed as victims, males are supposed to be strong. Listening to a young child talk matter of factly about wetting the bed or his Bugs Bunny doll for some reason gets to me. I don't know why, but they get to me. It probably has to do with the main character juxtaposing those memories with ones of abuse and neglect. Excellently written, but not for the faint of heart.
11/10/03
I'm still reading The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. It is getting truly disturbing. Glad I didn't read it over the weekend. I am almost halfway through and, depending on my schedule, may be able to finish it before next Monday. I need to look for some happy books to read.
11/11/03
I decided to start another book this morning, How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years by Tom Arnold.
I still plan on finishing The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, but I don't think I want to read it on the train anymore. It is just too dreary, depressing, etc. In the last story from the book that I read, Babydoll, what was hinted at before becomes very apparent. The main character, Jeremiah, has some serious sexual identity issues.
Anyhow, I needed to read something a little more upbeat so I started in on Tom Arnold's autobiography. I know that at times he had it rough growing up but from what I read about the book I get the impression that he also does a good job of not weighing the book down too much.
11/14/03
I'm almost finished reading The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
I am about halfway through I lost Five Pounds in Six Years.
11/18/03
I almost finished Tom Arnold's book this evening. I only have about ten pages to go. I think I'll just start in on another book tomorrow and finish off How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years later this week. At the moment I am down to two books: Half Mast by Christopher Null and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. I'm leaning toward At Play... because I think it will probably be a little more up beat than a book about a high school kid getting revenge on the jock who has been bullying him.
11/19/03
I started in on Half Mast, by Christopher Null, on the train ride in this morning. I was gonna pass on it for now, but I took a look at the first couple pages and I liked the tone of the narrator, so I decided to give it a try. Well worth it, so far; that's my assessment. Well written. Brought back some memories of high school, when I felt picked on at times, but not consistently so, and also elementary, when I also was picked on occasionally. Fifth grade was a different story. I didn't take it lying down, not all the time. There were fights. I was usually on the losing end, but I suppose they helped to toughen me up some. Anyway, I never went though anything like the narrator of the book goes through.
The way the book starts is by telling you the ending, that the main character killed this guy who was bullying him, when they were in high school. It is now 10 years later and he is having trouble sleeping and his therapist has recommended that he keep a journal. So the novel consists of journal entries about his memories of high school, along with odds and ends about his life, now and then. I'm thirty pages in so far.
12/03/03
I've started reading At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiesen. It's about missionaries and mercenaries in South America. I'm about 65 pages into it and so far so good. They made a movie out if it which I saw part of several years ago. IIRC, it stars John Lithgow, Tom Berenger, Kathy Bates, and Daryl Hannah. It is a long movie (3 & 1/2 hours) but the book is about average length (320 pages). The movie still hasn't been released on DVD so if I am ever going to see it again I'll probably end up having to buy a VHS cassette of it.
12/17/03
Thanks to the delay, I did manage to read about fifteen more pages of At Play in the Fields of the Lord on the ride home and while waiting for the Orange Line. I've got about fifty pages to go.
12/18/03
I did get some reading done on the train and bus this morning. I'm down to 30 pages in At Play in the Fields of the Lord. It certainly has enough twists and turns, and doesn't seem too predictable to me. Not the easiest novel I've ever read, but it's I'm thinking I'm going to read The Time Traveler's Wife next.
12/19/03
I started reading The Time Traveler's Wife this morning. I have ten pages to go in At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
12/24/03
I've been reading The Time Traveler's Wife for the last few days now. The parts I was reading this morning got me feeling a little bit weird. Let me explain.
Henry is eight years older than Claire. They get married sometime after they meet, when she is 20 and he is 28. He has this disease that causes him to jump backward in time for relatively short periods of time. In the part I was reading today (and last night), Claire is twelve to thirteen and has developed a crush on Henry. When Henry visits her, during this period in her life, he is usually in his thirties. He knows that he is eventually going to marry her, but doesn't tell her. There is a tension between them that I find to be very erotic, despite her age. He doesn't do anything or take advantage of her crush, but there is definitely something unspoken, some tension in the air. And I find it erotic; he wants to tell her and sometimes he sees her as he knows she will be, but he doesn't, won't try to change the past or take advantage of her crush (when she is 12-13) or the love he feels for her.
This gets me feeling a little bit weird. You couldn't get away with showing something like this on TV or in a movie, but in book you can.
Anyhow, I am also starting to put together a chronology of events, since it gets very confusing very quickly as to when he visited Claire and how old he was each time. For instance, the first time he vists her he is 36, but the second time he is 35. It might be simple enough if he kept getting younger and younger, but infortunately it doesn't work that way.
12/28/3
I have started on a chronology of The Time Traveler's Wife. Why? Because I want to. I have only done the first five chapters.
The Time Traveler's Wife: Chronology
Book - Listing of Henry and Claire's encounters in the order in which they appear in the book.
Note: Underline indicates time travel.
First Date, One
10/26/1991 - Claire: 20, Henry: 28
A First Time for Everything
06/16/1968 - Henry: 5, 24
First Time, Two
09/23/1977 - Claire: 6, Henry: 36
02/09/2000 - Claire: 28, Henry: 36
09/29/1977 - Claire: 6, Henry: 35
Lessons in Survival
06/07/1973 - Henry: 9, 27
12/10/1978 - Henry: 15, 15
11/17/1982 - Henry: 19
09/28/1982 - Henry: 19
05/14/1983 - Claire: 11
04/12/1984 - Claire: 12, Henry: 36
06/27/1984 - Claire: 13
09/23/1984 - Claire: 13, Henry: 35
After the End
10/27/1984 - Claire: 13, Henry: 43
02/02/1987 - Claire: 15, Henry: 38
06/05/1987 - Claire: 16, Henry: 32
09/27/1987 - Claire: 16, Henry: 32
09/18/1987 - Claire: 16
07/12/1995 - Claire: 24, Henry: 32
09/11/1988 - Claire: 17, Henry: 36
01/13/2000 - Claire 28, Henry 36
Christmas Eve, One
(Always Crashing in the Same Car)
12/24/1988 - Claire: 17, Henry: 40
Christmas Eve, Two
12/24/1988 - Henry: 25
04/08/1989 - Claire: 17, Henry: 40
Eat or Be Eaten
11/30/1991 - Claire: 20, Henry: 28
12/14/1991 - Henry: 36
05/09/2000 - Henry: 36
12/15/1991 - Claire: 20
12/22/1991 - Claire: 20, Henry: 28, 33
12/29/03
Dead Men (pp. 1 - 15)
- Fast Read
- Smooth Flowing, maybe a bit too smooth
- Some dialogue, but not too much.
- Seems to be about a woman who was raped in a motel room. She wakes up the next morning hung over. She wants revenge. She doesn't remember who she is or who the man who raped her is, but she wants revenge.
12/30/03
I've started reading Dead Men, although on the train this morning I read from The Time Traveler's Wife.
Monday, December 31, 2001
Book Notes (LJ) 2001
11/21/01
I'm a few chapters into I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I am very impressed. It is excellent. Powerful and moving. I strongly recommend it.
I'm a few chapters into I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I am very impressed. It is excellent. Powerful and moving. I strongly recommend it.
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