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Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 12:48 pm
by Jarlaxle
Econoline wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 5:21 am
Scooter - ?????

I haven't read this trilogy but now that I know of its existence, it's on my "to do" list. I've read and enjoyed many other works by Harry Harrison. From what I've been able to gather, it's not so much pro-Confederacy as anti-British, with the CSA re-uniting with the USA to battle a common enemy. It's no more "pro-Confederacy" than The Man in the High Castle is "pro-Nazi".

:shrug Or maybe you just don't get the whole concept of "Alternative History"?
Don't worry...I doubt Scooter has read it, either. It is DEFINITELY not "pro-Confederacy".

It's not complimentary to the British...though that might be due in part to Harrison's father being Irish, and his living a large part of his life in Ireland.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2021 3:57 am
by Jarlaxle
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's latest Pendergast book is our, Bloodless. WOW!

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:31 am
by Jarlaxle
Finished Bloodless. Catching up on Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series...just finished 1636: The Ottoman Onslaught.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:52 pm
by Burning Petard
As I wrote in an other thread, I have been binge reading the crime novels of Robeert B Parker. An ecclesiastical friend recommended I try Loise Penny and her Armand Garmache series. I pulled one off the shelf of my local public library. It was #11 in a series currently at 17. Way too much back story and I just could not get into it. Amazon had the first "Still Life" for no cost to me and I tried it. IMNSHO it is worth the time. Convincing look at a culture very different from my own--Quebec, Montreal, and a tiny village near the USofA border. I am now in the middle of #2 Fatal Grace. One character is a very old woman with a very complex personality. She is a nationally known poet and near the beginning of the story she has a book signing at a department store in Montreal. Her latest book poems: "I am FINE"

Chief Inspector Garmache asks the poet about the title: what does FINE mean? The inspector's wife told him that a word in all caps is usually an acronym.

The poet Ruth tells him with great glee, that his wife was the first to catch that. "FINE stands for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Egotistical. I'm FINE"
"You certainly are," agreed Gamache

My default answer when asked 'How are you?'' is I'm fine. Now I can truthfully say, "I'm FINE"

snailgate

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:17 pm
by BoSoxGal
There’s a film version of Still Life that’s not bad.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:58 pm
by Burning Petard
TOO LATE ! BSG. I already have wonderful casting of all the characters of the book, all acting powerfully (sometimes eating the scenery) in my theater of the mind. A cine version would only be a disappointment.

snailgate

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2021 6:35 am
by Gob
Reading Damien Lewis's WWII SAS books, interesting to read the exploits of some very brave men.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2021 8:11 am
by Jarlaxle
Obscure one: Sandra Saidak's From The Ashes is excellent.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:18 pm
by Jarlaxle
BoSoxGal wrote:
Sat Oct 07, 2017 12:55 am
I didn’t know Marcia Clark was writing fiction, I’ll definitely check those out, as well as the Cunningham novels set in RI - thanks for the recommendations!

Keeper of the Keys was very good, I agree!
FYI, new Samantha Brinkman book is out

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 6:33 am
by Jarlaxle
About halfwah through 1637: No Peace Beyond The Line, from the Ring of Fire series. Very good.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 8:48 am
by Econoline
read before you die.jpg

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 11:30 am
by MajGenl.Meade
Image

This crime/mystery/comedy is far from Pointless

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 11:36 am
by Gob
Didn't enjoy that one, de gustibus etc...

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 12:29 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
There you go. It helps to be English and over 70 years old. (Instead of Cornwelsh and lively)

How about this then? Image

Not forgetting Mythos and Heroes - just purchased all three. Mythos 85% done, Troy finished and just starting on Theseus in Heroes. Bright stuff

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 1:07 pm
by Gob
Enjoyed Mythos, but found it a bit hard going.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 4:50 pm
by Bicycle Bill
Image

I was seeing my dermatologist yesterday.  After my treatment and as he was leaving the exam room, he wished me a 'Merry Christmas', so I started to explain that Christmas wasn't coming any more, based on this meme.  The doctor immediately 'got' the reference (although we did have to explain it to the 20-something-year-old nurse), and then told me about a book entitled "Redshirts" by John Scalzi —

Image
In the prologue, several senior officers of the Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union, lament the unusually high number of casualties of low-ranking crew members during recent away missions and conclude that they will need more crewmen to replace them.

Docking at a spaceport, the Intrepid takes on five new ensigns including Andrew Dahl, an expert in alien religions and xenobiology.  Dahl quickly discerns that the crew is extremely phobic of being near the senior officers and of going on away missions due to their unusually high fatality rate.  Over the course of several away missions, various crew members suggest that the deaths are due to incompetence, superstition, or cosmic forces, requiring "sacrifices" of some crew members so that others will survive.

After several close calls, Dahl meets Jenkins, a crew member who offers a different theory:  their reality and timeline are under periodic influence of a badly written television show from the past.  As the writers create the plot, characters' free will temporarily ceases in order to progress "the Narrative" of the show.  This is why otherwise good officers occasionally seem incompetent, Ensigns make poor decisions, and the ship has mysterious technology on board to produce last-minute inventions and medicines which would otherwise be impossible to produce.  Jenkins explains that with Dahl and the other Ensigns' otherwise routine duties, their colorful histories will inevitably make them targets of "the narrative" when the writers need "glorified extras" to kill for emotional impact.

The Ensigns kidnap a senior officer and proceed to travel to the past with the mission of convincing them to stop the show.
There's more, but I don't want to spoil the story for anyone else whose curiosity might be piqued.   It's also available as an audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from 'Star Trek: TNG').

Apparently it's quite good.   It won the Hugo award for Best Novel of 2013, and — unlike a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame — they don't hand those out to just anybody (seriously, the Rugrats characters have a star?!??).   Although it does sound like it has parallels to the fairy-tale manipulations sub-plot in Terry Pratchett's novel, "Witches Abroad", I've already got it on my 'reserve' list through inter-library loan...  it'll give me something to hunker down with during the colder part of winter in late January / early February.
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-"BB"-

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:29 am
by Jarlaxle
Taylor Anderson has a new one out: Purgatory's Shore.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 3:42 pm
by Burning Petard
'How Civil Wars Start' by Barbara F. Walter. (2022) After hearing this author talk on two separate NPR radio programs. I had to get this book [Very possible it was one interview, edited for use in different formats] It has the big view, supported by lots of real world data points, boiled down to understandable action alternatives. The current condition of politics in the USofA, from unpaid local school boards to national cabinet functions, to the POTUS and everything in between, gives me nightmares. I see the nation yearning for the 'Man on a White Horse' to fix it all. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, I conceive of an America that no longer wants to keep the Republic.

The author is personally experienced in back-room politics at the national level, front line chaos and noise and stink, Ivory Tower 'objectivity'. She presents a framework for analysis that indicates the coming civil war in America can be avoided--but it seems unlikely.

I strongly recommend getting it from a library and at least looking at it. Perhaps you will decide to buy, that it is worth your bookshelf space and time to carefully read it. It is on Kindle but not cheap.

snailgate

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2022 9:10 am
by MajGenl.Meade
Image

Highly readable and relevant to our own times on more than one level (see "We all love puns"). Imperial Chinese policies on opium demonstrate the dictum that history does not repeat itself but it does echo. Likewise the matters of east/west politics and of corrupt officials and business interests.

Drug combat proposals were a mixture of:
1. punish all users with birchings, etc.
2. legalize opium; provide education, treatment plans and hospitals
3. punish and replace all government-employee users; let all others die from their addictions (always more peasants born)
4. execute all users
5. shame all users
6. destroy all paraphernalia
7. destroy all domestic suppliers
8. encourage poppy plantations and make opium a home-grown business

It was the 7th one that was actually beginning to work until things went wrong.

One of the peculiar problems of the "trade" was that the smugglers (Chinese) paid the middle-men (Anglos etc) illegally in Chinese silver. Canton's legal trade was conducted in Mexican/South American Spanish silver coins. Because it was illegal to export Chinese silver, and therefore illegal to receive it, Chinese merchants could not accept Chinese silver in payment for their tea and silk etc. Thus Chinese silver poured out and never came back in business dealings.

Ordinary people earned only copper coins, but had to pay their taxes in silver. As silver went away (and the Latin supply fell due to revolutions), inflation was universally ruinous. The "opium problem" for the Chinese government was less moral and more practical - the loss of silver was destroying the economy and emptying the imperial coffers.

When the demand is high and growing exponentially, punishing the users is not the right answer. It's the supply chain and dealers who must be rooted out.

Re: Books and literature recommendations

Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2022 11:18 pm
by Jarlaxle
Jarlaxle wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:29 am
Taylor Anderson has a new one out: Purgatory's Shore.
And the sequel, Hell's March.