I picked up several books at the Arisia convention this past weekend. After reading things about Poul Anderson’s “Operation” stories, I found that they were “fixed up” into a novel that I’d never read, Operation Chaos, which I found there right off the bat. People seeing me reading this kept telling me “You know, he wrote a sequel…” I did, but tht doesn’t stop them. So eventually I bought a copy of the sequel, Operation Luna that I also found there.
My friend Jeff Hecht wrote a book Beam Weapons ages ago, which I read before I met him. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, and he finally wrote a new book, Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon, that just came out. (I’d covered the cultural history of the ray gun in my own book How the Ray Gun Got Its Zap!, which Jeff had attended one of my talks about. we traded information on Ray Gun History).
I also picked up a copy of Terrytoons: the Story of Paul Terry and his Classic Cartoon Factory by the unlikely-named W. Gerald Harmonic. I’ve read several books about the Disney cartoons and Warner Brothers cartoons, and Leslie Cabarga’s great book on the Fleischer studios, but AFAIK there hasn’t been one out about Terrytoons. I grew up watching Mighty Mouse, Deputy Dawg, Tom Terrific, Heckle and Jeckle, Hashimoto Mouse, and others from his stable (He called it “the Woolworth of animation” , in comparison to Disney’s “Tiffany” studio. But Terry started making cartoons seven years before Disney ever did,) This incredibly detailed book grew out of interviews Harmonic and earlier historians conducted with Terry and those who worked with him, research at cartoon collections, and twenty years of writing. It looks interesting.
I enjoyed The Rooster Bar too. Haven’t read Ragtime in a while, but really liked it when I read it a while back. I haven’t been moved much by Doctorow’s other novels; this one was terrific. (Look up, or read, Heinrich von Kleist’s novella Michael Kohlhaas after you finish if you want a little literary background…)
I read a potato chip mystery–Simon Brett’s most recent novel about actor-slash-alcoholic Charles Paris, A Deadly Habit. The mystery is a little light, as it often is, but the theatrical background is always fun, and Charles is an interesting guy in his own rather pathetic way. “Oh, Charles,” I typically sigh when I finish one of these novels, and this one was no exception.
I read L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time when I was a boy, and loved it. Read it again as an adult, twice, and still like it a lot (though I see its flaws more clearly than I did at age ten). L’Engle wrote a couple of sequels which I only read in my early twenties, Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I recalled liking the latter and not thinking much of the former, but couldn’t have told you why lo these many years later. So I decided to try rereading *Wind in the Door *and–
oh, good Lord, it’s awful. I’m about a third of the way through and maybe it gets better later, but I ain’t counting on it. Repetitive, wordy, and did I say repetitive? The characterizations seem random and the plot equally so; the dramatic tension is lacking; the author seems more interested in telling rather than showing. I’ll probably finish it, because I can’t believe it’s going to remain this dreadful, but wow, it’s bad.
Finished it. Pretty good, although there’s a weird homoerotic vibe in the scenes where Spenser is teaching a teenage dweeb, caught in a custody dispute between his parents, how to be a man. A bit too many mentions of them exercising shirtless together, their chests gleaming with sweat.
Next up: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bachman, a novel about a Swedish curmudgeon. My sister loved it.
I finished the Not a… series by Madeline Kirby about a cat shifter cop and his oddly psychic boyfriend (Jake’s dreams take him inside the heads of dogs). The premise sounds too weird, but the series is a lot of fun. She has a great ear for realistic dialogue and realistic feeling relationships between characters.
Finished Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor. Started the final book in the trilogy, Dreams of Gods and Monsters, today. There’s also a side novella, Night of Cake and Puppets, that I’ll get to sometime, but it’s not critical to the central story.
Finished After the Fire; it held my interest but was unremarkable. Then I started on Echo Room, by Parker Peevyhouse. After 25 pages, I was having to backtrack and re-read because my mind was wandering everywhere. Ditched.
Started today on Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, a novel about a young girl and her family participating with a group of students who are reenacting life as it was lived in the Iron Age. I’m really liking it so far, although it’s one of those books that leaves out the quotation marks. :rolleyes:
I re-read Shogun and Gai-Jin by James Clavell over the holidays, and I just read another Amazon Prime free release, True Places. I keep stumbling into what I call suburban gothic, ie a seemingly perfect, upper middle class (if not wealthy) family with deep dark secrets. This one had an interesting twist but I felt the twist could have been explored a bit better.
Almost finished with [Taken By Bear in Yellowstone](Taken by Bear in Yellowstone: More Than a Century of Harrowing Encounters between Grizzlies and Humans). I was on a Bear v. Human reading binge and my library was kind enough to procure this one for me. I love my library. If something is available to purchase and they don’t have it, they take requests. Yay.
Finished Ragtime, by EL Doctorow. Fictional and historical characters interact in the greater New York City area largely from 1902-12, with brief scenes continuing to 1917 at the very end. The main story is a black man takes matters into his own hands when a bunch of Irish firefighters vandalize his car and indirectly lead to the death of his fiancee/mother of his child. I especially liked the Harry Houdini story line. Ranked No. 86 on the Modern Library’s top 100 novels of the 20th century. This is a great book. I remember watching the 1981 film when it came out and enjoying that. It was 80-something-year-old James Cagney’s last movie role, as the NYC police commissioner, although I think he did appear in a TV movie after that. He had not acted in a movie in something like 20 years, and he was terrific. Pat O’Brian’s last film too. Like Ulf above, I had read only Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate before and found itt only so-so. Ragtime is fantastic.