Well, it seems that times have changed and one cannot nowadays reasonably expect to insult one’s wife while still expecting a decent dinner. When she made a grilled cheese sandwich with the butter on the inside of the bread, that’s when I asked for forgiveness. When she mixed my peanut butter with olive oil, that’s when I begged for mercy.
Right now I just cook my own meals, thankyouverymuch Mr. Dahl.
Asswipe.
When the Game Was Ours, by Jackie MacMullen. Another basketball book, a follow-up to “When March Went Mad” following the career arcs of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson once they went into the NBA. Very enjoyable book for basketball fans, and there was a fair amount that I learned.
Texasville, by Larry McMurtry. Great characters, no plot. Story follows a man (Duane) having a midlife crisis, falling into depression (though he doesn’t understand he’s depressed until late in the book.) Duane got a $12 million loan at the height of the mid-80’s oil boom, only to see the bottom fall out of the market… and you would think that’s the main plot of the story, but actually his relationship with his bed-hopping wife Karla takes center stage. Oddly, this one was constantly referred to as a “comedy”, but it wasn’t really funny. Some funny bits, yes, but not much in the laugh-out-loud department.
I bought the follow-up, Duane’s Depressed, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
This Alien Shore, by C. S. Friedman. Now that’s what I’m talking about – a great bit of Space Opera following a young girl sent on a mission to destroy an interstellar monopoly. In my discussion thread about Dan Simmons’s Flashback, I mentioned that I’m not really one interested in stories about the human heart in conflict with itself, that I like thinking about the background, setting, “world building” and other aspects of the story that English Lit professors argue is secondary.
So sue me.
Anyway, this one had it all – a great setting, believable history, a good, fast-paced plot, and if the human heart resolved its conflict, fine, whatever. Regardless, if you like space operas, I HIGHLY recommend this one.
As well as Friedman’s In Conquest Born, her first novel and one that’s possibly better than This Alien Shore. The novel follows two characters raised in two separate, and warring, interstellar empires. Friedman obviously prefers one of the characters for most of the novel is spent dealing with their story, their background, and their reactions. One of the things I liked more about this novel than TAS was that much of the story was told from the perspective of minor, secondary characters – in one chapter, the story of a man who plotted revenge against his father highlighted something key about the society in which one of the main characters was raised. Again, like TAS, I HIGHLY recommend this one for you space opera/science fiction fans out there.
And to think I avoided this one for years because of the slightly cheesy cover. :o
Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson. An “alternate history” science fiction story in the vein of Flint’s 1632 stories (but written before Flint’s work) in which a small Michigan town is transplanted to an Earth with a different timeline, Mysterium is likely far more “realistic” in its approach in that, pretty much, the town is royally and completely fucked. Refreshing in some ways as, unlike 1632, there’s no jingoism, no “our modern ways will make you ashamed of your illiberal bullshit”, nothing like that. While Christianity exists in the alternate universe, it’s a Gnostic Christianity, where Jesus/Yahweh are just two deities in a polytheistic society, and the alternate history peoples are just fine with that. This one doesn’t end with a happy ending, so if you’re looking for one, you may wish to search elsewhere.
Darwin’s Blade, by Dan Simmons. Simmons is odd – a very gifted writer who can be quite hit-or-miss. He’s given us the unparalleled Hyperion as well as one of the all-time stinkers in Flashback. Writing in a number of genres, DB is a police/detective procedural following crash-scene investigator Darwin Minor as he unravels a chain of traffic fatalities in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. A surprisingly fast read, this one moved.
The World Turned Upside Down, edited by Eric Flint, James Baen, and David Drake. A collection of “Golden Age” and later science fiction gathered under the theme of “What SF story blew your mind when you first read it?” To be completely honest, I did not read all of this book as some of the stories I have read earlier (“Who Goes There” by Campbell, “The Cold Equations” by Godwin), but in the end I can say that I’ve read every story compiled. It was a better than average collection of GA science fiction and while I didn’t care for every story, none of them were so long that I thought it might be a better use of my time skipping it. My favorite was Ted Sturgeon’s Thunder and Roses, and my most disliked was P. Schuyler Miller’s Spawn. A note to the likely-dead P. Schuyler – just tell the damned story, willya?
And last on this list is a book I didn’t finish, Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Roald Dahl. When I bought this one I thought it was a book of his short stories, but upon reading found out it was a collection of ghost stories that Mr. Dahl once compiled for use in a (failed) TV show. That wasn’t the deal breaker – the deal breaker was that almost every one of the stories was of the Ye Old English vintage, where the final line was of the
variety, complete with “Duh-duh-DUUUUHHH!” playing in the back of my head. Heady stuff in 1952, I’m sure, but not enough to keep me reading 15-odd stories of the same type.
Best thing about the book was the prologue, where Mr. Dahl gives us his reasoning/observation that the best ghost stories happened to be written by women. Gotcha, buddy.
Currently re-reading Peter F. Hamilton’s Fallen Dragon, I might get it done in April but likely will update it with my May entries.
