i look forward to jd robb’s books. there is a new one coming out on tuesday.
I’ve only read a few, hated one and enjoyed the rest. My main complaint is the lack of progression in Eve’s character. Everyone else grows and changes but her’s is so cardboard cutout never changing.
i thought the same. then i had occasion to reread the series. reading one after the other, after the other… i did see eve a bit differently. she has changed, slowly but surely.
Nothing new from the library this week, so I’m re-reading Stephen King’s* Dreamcatcher*. I’ve only read it once before and hated it then, so I’m giving it another chance.
I’m up to page 89 and find the writing quite indulgent and the pace slow, but overall it’s not so bad.
Of course, I’m not up to the shitweasels yet. :dubious:
I finished [b} The Original Frankenstein**. I was surprised at several items that I didn’t recall from previous readings, which I was sure must have been excised before the first printing. But checking the printed text, I saw they were in there. Aside from fixing misspellings and “typos”, I don’t think that Percy Shelley’s additions really improved the text.
I also finished Fred Nadis’ The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey I knew that Raymond A. Palmer had been editor of Amazing Stories, founded Fate, and was the first guy to push the case for Flying Saucers. I also knew about his creation and promotion of the notorious Great Shaver Mystery (or Hoax, as many preferred). But I hadn’t realized that he was founder of the first fanzine, an important and influential editor in the pre-Shaver days, who published Isaac Asimov’s first SF stories, was friends and colleague with Forrest J. Ackerman, Siegel and Schuster (even giving them a story to turn into a comic, in their pre-Superman days), Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz, and others. Or that Schwartz and Weisinger named the secret identity of their re-vamped superhero The Atom “Ray Palmer” after the diminutive editor.* Fascinating stuff. I also hadn’t realized that he lived until 1977.
I’m now starting August Ragone’s Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters about the special-effects man behind most of Toho’s kaiju and fantastic cinema in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, including, most notably, Godzilla. I’ve known about him and a bit about his life from the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland when I was growing up, but this book covers it in immensely greater depth. It came out years ago in hardcover, but the paperback just came out last year.
On audio, I’m more than halfway through Clive Cussler’s The Lost City., an older (2004) Kurt Austin book I hadn’t read before, but which I found in the library. It’s as ludicrously comic book-l;ike as his others, and a fun read. If Cussler had been a bit less prima-donna-ish, his books might have cleaned up at the box office as a sort of latter-day James Bond. But the only to Dirk Pitt movies both flopped.
*Palmer was hunchbacked and short, the result of a childhood accident that fractured his spine)
I’m reading about writing - “The Art of Fiction,” by David Lodge. It’s a collection of a bunch of columns he wrote for the Independent. Each one is a short analysis of different tools used by authors (Interior Monologue, Metafiction, The Unreliable Narrator, etc), each paired with a passage from a well-known novel that uses it. It’s quite readable, and more than a bit addicting. I’m just jumping in at random inserting segments rather than reading it from cover to cover.
Cussler hit a career high with *Raise the Titanic!, *which is still a great adventure, and it’s been downhill ever since IMHO.
I lost track of the fact that I finally finished SK’s Revival. It was an enjoyable read, and I found the tone very delightfully creepy … but it didn’t add up to an especially memorable book. I can tell in 6 months I am going to completely forget how this panned out.
I really liked Greenglass House, by Kate Milford, which is a very smart middle reader mystery story, which, like all good middle reader mysteries, is about solving a mystery with clues hidden in an old house. I would highly recommend for kids who are strong readers and about at the age where they like picking apart the clues in books like The Westing Game.
I lost track of the fact that I finally finished SK’s Revival. It was an enjoyable read, and I found the tone very delightfully creepy … but it didn’t add up to an especially memorable book. I can tell in 6 months I am going to completely forget how this panned out.
I really liked Greenglass House, by Kate Milford, which is a very smart middle reader mystery story, which, like all good middle reader mysteries, is about solving a mystery with clues hidden in an old house. I would highly recommend for kids who are strong readers and about at the age where they like picking apart the clues in books like The Westing Game.
Just now reading*** Pere Goriot***. The real plot has hardly gotten under way, but I can already state confidently that Balzac is a genius at describing a scene.
I adored Greenglass House (and I’m 43). 
This strikes me as a great read-aloud / read-along for parents and their 4th, 5th, or 6th grade kids. Good read-alike recommendation too, delphica.
I’m fairly bogged down in Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s an easy book in which to bog down, in my defense… lots of jumping between the points of view of tangentially related characters. I would call it downright picaresque, except that it’s the narrative jumping from person to person rather than a person going from place to place. We do return a lot to Slothrop, so that does help to focus things a little. I understand the central conceit is sort of a Moby Dick concept based around the A4 rocket, but I can’t say that I find that particularly compelling, even 400 pages in.
Side reads: Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams and Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry Pratchett. Tailchaser’s Song focuses on a young cat called Fritti Tailchaser who seeks a lost female and finds a much bigger, darker problem than he anticipated. It’s got a sort of ‘Tolkien among cats’ feel, partially because there are thrown-in words of ‘cat language’ and ‘squirrel language’ with attendant treaties amongst these folk. The ur-cat mythos feels like a blend of the same kind of Old English and Norse legend that Tolkien drew on, too, but Williams is no Tolkien. Entertaining when I’m on the treadmill, though. Dragons at Crumbling Castle is slight and early Pratchett, but Quentin Blake’s enchanting illustrations assist the stories in their whimsy and charm.
Finished Eiji Tsuburaya. I’ve started To Do My Best: James E. West and the History of the Boy Scouts of America by Edward L. Rowan, M.D. It’s about the virtually forgotten first President of the Boy Scouts of America. A fascinating individual who had an unbelievably hard childhood (suffered from tuberculosis while in an orphanage and rejected multiple times), he rose to prominence through incredible dedication and hard work. A controversial figure, nonetheless, who opposed both Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts, but was surprisingly progressive in other matters. I used to live near the old BSA headquarters and museum, and don’t recall ever hearing about him, although they told of Baden-Powell, Dan Beard, and Wiliiam D. Boyce*. Looks like an interesting read.
*Boyce was the American businessman who was supposedly helped in the London fog by one of Baden-Powell’s original British Boy Scouts. The event has become a key bit of Boy Scout lore, practically a Founding Myth. It had its own diorama in the old New Brunswick NJ Boy Scout Museum. Rowan presents a slightly different version of the story recorded later by Boyce.
We had a James E. West campsite in the Scout summer camp of my youth. He was a giant of early Scouting in the U.S.
I read a biography of Ernest Thompson Seton entitled Black Wolf: it is, among other things, a mostly sympathetic portrait of his struggles with Baden-Powel, Dan Beard, and James West. It would be interesting to read another account of their clashes.
As may be. But, as I say, although I’d heard of Dan Beard, William Boyce, and even Seton, I don’t recall hearing or reading of West.
As a side note, Seton’s animal short stories Wild Animals I have Known and his semi-autobiographical Two Little Savages are both well worth reading - though not necessarily for anyone too sensitive (in WAIHN, each animal story ends with the animal-protagonist dying, often horribly). Make sure, if you read them, to get copies with the author’s original illustrations! The reprints sometimes leave them out, which is a shame and a crime.
Just finished:
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides. An account of the ill-fated attempt of the USS Jeanette to reach the north pole in late 19th century. A well-written account, and I generally enjoy reading stories like this in the middle of winter 
Starlight Detectives: How Astronomers, Inventors, and Eccentrics Discovered the Modern Universe, by Alan Hirshfeld. This is a pretty extensive history of optical telescopes and observatories, and the scientists, inventors, and enthusiasts who built, operated, and financed them. Hirshfeld also does a great job chronically the astronomical discoveries made possible by the scopes and how the increasing demands on them drove innovation.
Currently Reading:
The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
Finished Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain. Very good. I thought I had read this before, but no, I think I was conflating it with my memory of the 1928 silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc, a copy of which we have. This was Twain’s final novel, published when he was 61. It was first seralized in Harper’s magazine under a pseudonym, supposedly a French translator. Twain had been disappointed at the lackluster response to his previous non-comedy The Prince and the Pauper and was hoping this work would be taken more seriously. But his authorship soon came out, and the story was then published in book form under his name. The book takes the form of personal recollections by Joan’s secretary and childhood friend, writing them down as an old man in 1492 for the benefit of his grand-nephews and -nieces. Very interesting. And the copy I read contains an essay Twain wrote on her in 1904. The very secular Twain had much admiration for her, and the fact remains that she’s the only person in history, male or female, to have been given command of an entire nation’s armed forces at the age of 17.
Next up is Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville.
stupid double post :mad:
I thought I posted this the other day… but I’ve been sick this week so who knows what I did…
I finished New York to Dallas by JD Robb. It’s extremely well paced and suspenseful. Roarke and Eve are splendid in their fabulous Mary Sueness, behaving nearly perfectly to each and every challenge. Their obligatory fight scene is short and of course there is the obligatory make up sex afterwards (which fortunately for us is not described in detail)
I have started A Bone of Contention by Susanna Gregory. I really enjoy the way she brings the 14th century to life and while Bartholomew is forward thinking for his time, he is not so far forward to make it ridiculous.