Sunday Morning Book Thread - 06-30-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

(HT: Iris)

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...(50% less PRIDE starting tomorrow...)

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

Iris sent me today's picture, which is a neat little sculpture of book turned into a bench. Doesn't look all that comfortable, but might be a nice place to sit for a few minutes to watch the people passing by and possibly read a chapter or two on a warm summer day. This is located in Zaporozhe, Ukraine, which is in the southeastern region of that country. It's entirely possible the bench is nothing more than twisted rubble right now...

MID-YEAR REVIEW

Today marks the midway point through the calendar year, more or less, so let's take a moment to pause and reflect on what I've read so far. It's quite a long list, so I won't bore you with the details, just focus on some stats and describe the more memorable reading experiences.

• NUMBER OF BOOKS READ: 81 (Includes books that have been combined into omnibus editions)
• NUMBER OF PAGES READ: 33,301
• LONGEST SERIES READ: Malazan - Books of the Fallen by Steven Erickson
• MOST BOOKS BY SINGLE AUTHOR: Tie between Steven Erickson's Malazan - Books of the Fallen (10 books) and Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber (10 books combined in omnibus edition)
• WEIRDEST BOOK READ THIS YEAR: Richard Littler's Discovering Scarfolk which is a disturbing "travelogue" for a fictional town in England stuck in the 1970s.
• MOST DISAPPOINTING BOOK READ THIS YEAR: William Gibson's Neuromancer - There's a lot of hype around this book, but I didn't find it all that engrossing. The world building was OK but the characters just didn't grab my attention.
• MOST REWARDING BOOK/SERIES READ THIS YEAR: Steven Erikson's Malazan - Books of the Fallen - Truly an awesome, epic fantasy series. I can understand why people love it. The action scenes are *intense* and the world-building is top tier. The characters are fun and interesting, without going too far down into grimdark territory. Well worth the investment of time and energy to read this series. Highly recommended.

NOTABLE READING EXPERIENCES:

I read all of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, including the prequel that led up to the creation of Foundation by Hari Seldon. It was OK, but not great. Asimov is much better at writing short fiction, as he can use those as "thought experiments." His longer stories just aren't all that phenomenal, even though they do sometimes explore larger issues. I find them mildly entertaining, but also a bit bland.

I also read Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series. It's interesting to see how much influence her stories have had on the fantasy genre. There's a direct link from her portrayal of witches and wizards in Earthsea to they way that Terry Pratchett portrays them in his Discworld series. It's pretty blatant when you see it. Though Pratchett gives both wizards and witches his own distinctive twist.

Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos was a very pleasant and engaging series of novels, with some very wild ideas. The first one is modeled after Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with it's narrative framework of a group of pilgrims sharing their stories during their journey. However, the later books get weirder and weirder, once the mystery boxes start being revealed. The Shrike, for instance, is an all-powerful being in the first couple of books, having mastery over time and space. But then we see the truth behind the Shrike in the last two books...Another highly recommended series for fans of space opera.

Finally, I've greatly enjoyed my discovery of authors Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz. I've known about both of them for decades, of course, but I probably would not have explored them without encouragement and recommendations from the Moron Horde. So thank you, for helping me expand my own horizons and find two authors that are new to me that I can savor over the next several months...

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I just finished reading a bio of Thomas Cochrane, the British naval hero of the Napoleonic era whose career was even more implausible than any of the fictional characters like Aubrey or Hornblower based on him. He really did capture a frigate with a sloop, and then later fight three ships of the line with the same sloop for most of a day before he had to surrender. When his enemies in the Admiralty forced him out (a manufactured scandal and a rigged trial -- hmm) he went off to South America, founded the Chilean Navy, also helped win the independence of Peru, then commanded the Brazilian and Greek navies as well.

The book's called simply Cochrane, and it's by Donald Thomas. Recommended.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 23, 2024 10:03 AM (QkS9F)

Comment: Some people are cursed and/or blessed to lead very interesting lives indeed. Whether they seek out a life of adventure or stuff just happens to them, they always seem to have a wild story to tell. Just hearing the description above reminds of Audie Murphy, whose own military career was so incredible that Hollywood had to *tone it down* for the movie about his life because no one would believe it.

Just started Judi Dench's Shakespeare The Man Who Pays the Rent wherein she recounts her stage appearances in the Bard's plays and her thinking about each role. So far so good. I was surprised to learn Dame Judi is 89 years old.

Posted by: Tuna at June 23, 2024 09:30 AM (oaGWv)

Comment: I've always enjoyed Dame Judi Dench's performances. She always struck me as a classically trained British actor who knew her business and excelled at her job. I'm not surprised she'd have some entertaining stories to tell about her time in Shakespearean theater.

Read Colonial Nightmare by Moron author David M. Vining. This historical tale recounts Major George Washington's mission by the governor of Virginia to deliver a message to the French General who has decided to overstep his bounds and colonize the Ohio Valley, which at that time was being colonized by English settlers in the Colonies. The trip undertaken by GW is harrowing, not only because of unknown territory and horrible winter weather, but also because GW has multiple encounters with what can only be described as an otherworldly being intent on killing anyone it encounters. No one knows for sure if the dark force has been unleashed by France as a weapon, or whether it resides outside the Ohio Valley. I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the new territory, the harrowing journey from Virginia, up through what is now Pittsburgh, and up north nearly to Lake Erie, and the recounting of everyday life for those tasked with the mission. GW's official diary of the mission omits any reference to the strange and deadly being. Recommended. (The book's editor was missing during the final read of the manuscript, but don't let those errors detract from a well-told and gripping adventure.)

Posted by: Legally Sufficient at June 23, 2024 09:26 AM (U3L4U)

Comment: As usual, I like to feature reviews of Moron-Authored books as a means of encouraging any current or future Moron Authors to continue their work. I would also like to remind Moron Authors that you MUST spend endless hours proofreading and copyediting your work again, and again, and again. It's very, very easy to turn off readers if the story is filled with glaring typos, mechanical errors, and grammatical mistakes. Now in TJM's book, he could argue that he was writing in the style of an American colonial, but even then you have to be very careful with your writing style so that those "mistakes" come through naturally.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Sandman Slim Book 2 - Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim (a.k.a. James Stark) is back! Now he's working for the Golden Vigil on the side, hunting down monsters. It's a job. Then Lucifer comes to town to hire Stark as a bodyguard. Then the zombies start taking over the city and Stark has to figure out who let out this plague of undead on the unsuspecting city of L.A. and who is targeting Lucifer. Like the first Sandman Slim novel, this one has a lot of very dark humor, but it can be pretty entertaining. Stark's "roommate" is the head of a man who he decapitated in the first book, but now that head "lives" on a mobile platter that gives him control over his surroundings. Pretty weird setup. The zombies in this book are a bit more dangerous than most. Some of them are aware enough to pass for human most of the time. And the only way to kill them permanently is to destroy their spinal cord.

Star Trek #6 - The Abode of Life by Lee Corey

This is a very early Star Trek novel and involves Kirk exploring ramifications of the Prime Directive while his ship is under dire threat. Damaged by a gravitational anomaly, the Enterprise limps into orbit around an unknown planet in a remote sector of the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. The planet orbits a star that it unstable and will erupt soon after the Enterprise arrives. Meanwhile, Kirk and his crew need to solicit help from the inhabitants of the planet, but they have to be careful because they do not want to interfere in the local culture any more than they have to. Fortunately, the planet already has a high level of technology--including an incredibly powerful and ubiquitous transporter network. However, internal politics has split the people into three main factions, one of which is at odds with the other two and threatens the societal stability.

Weirdly, the three factions remind me of the Minbari castes from Babylon 5, as the Technics, Proctors, and Guardians in this novel serve much the same roles as the Worker caste, Warrior caste, and Religious caste serve in that series. At the end, Kirk gets to display his diplomatic prowess when he brings the three squabbling factions together, shows them the truth of their world, and formally invites them to join the United Federation of Planets.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Several Morons have recommended this in the past. I had the opportunity to pick it up at a library book sale for $2. Kind of like Crichton's Next, there does not appear to be an overarching plot (at first). Mostly it's a collection of narratives that tie into each other at the end. Along the way, we get to see a variety of positions on global warming from the perspectives of those who believe the earth is doomed and from those who believe otherwise. At the end of the book, Crichton lays out his own unambiguous position on the subject. This is one reason why I like Crichton's novels. He does a fair amount of research on the subject, gives you the bibliography for further reading, and also provides his own honest opinions on the subject. They are also well-written and fast-paced, so you never feel like it's a slog to read to his "lectures" to the audience.

The Darkest Night of the Year by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz LOVES dogs. This is his love letter to golden retrievers, his favorite breed, but he's quite fond of all dogs in general. They often show up in his books in one way or another and sometimes play a crucial role in the climax of the plot. This is the case here. A woman who rescues golden retrievers for a living pulls a dog out of an abusive home and finds out the dog is just the sweetest gal ever. She and her boyfriend soon find out there is more to the dog than meets the eye, once the main plot gets rolling. It's a very sweet novel in many ways, as Koontz shows us just how much he really loves dogs through the eyes of the main characters. If you love dogs, you will most likely enjoy this novel, as long as you don't mind too much extreme evil on the part of the human antagonists. It is Koontz, so you can expect a reasonably happy ending.

Sandman Slim 3 - Aloha from Hell by Richard Kadrey

James Stark--a.k.a. Sandman Slim--is pulled into yet another adventure in L.A. and beyond. His nemesis from the first book, the warlock Mason, has sent Stark a message from Hell. Mason has taken over the place after Lucifer left and is now conspiring with a fallen angel to wage war against Heaven and displace God as the ruler of the cosmos. His plan is just crazy enough to work. Now Mason wants to rub his success in Stark's face and lures him to Hell with the one bait he knows Stark can't resist--the soul of Stark's one true love, Alice.

As with the other books in the series, there is a lot of black humor because Stark is an unkillable asshole and he knows it. He does have friends and comrades that he can call on for assistance. They see him as the monster that fights monsters, which is a role that he himself embraces. Entertaining urban fantasy fluff.

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