With the onset of gardening weather, my reading time has been much impinged upon, but I'm working on:
The Paradiso by Dante--I think I just discovered the source for lantern archons. The Divine Comedy is a much weirder work than I thought, but I'll post my thoughts on that when I finish.
Orsinian Tales by Ursula K. Le Guin--I was tricked by the castle on the cover into thinking this was more fantasy, but it turns out to be short stories set in a fictional Eastern European country. One story set in the 1100s could pass muster as sword-and-sorcery, but most of the tales concern quarry workers falling in love. High grade lit, just not what I was expecting.
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs--Bashed this book a couple of months ago, but since then I've had recurring flashbacks to Barsoom, so I thought I'd give it another shot.
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, by Carl Zimmer. A very interesting read, looking at the use of E. coli in figuring out aspects of how life works and its role in determining that DNA, rather than proteins were responsible for inheritance.
niel wrote:
Be aware 'The Keep' is only the first book of Wilson's Adversary Cycle and that the other books of the cycle are being re-written. The cycle includes Repairman Jack novels as well as others.Why is he rewriting them? To tie them all in?
He's been upgrading the individual books one by one.
Evidently, even though the series was completed, he wanted to add stuff.Also, the Repairman Jack stuff keeps adding background that pertains to the Adversery Cycle.
Including a series of young adult books covering the teen years of Jack.
Just started Guns, Germs and Steel. Also on the list is Gilligan's Wake.
Finished UKLG's Orsinian Tales.
Man, she's a pretty awesome writer. She can take 25 pages and craft a story about a quarryman and a farmgirl eloping and craft it into the most poignant tale you've ever read. The woman can write.
Two stories might qualify as fantasy-esque, but they aren't necessarily the best ones.
If you've ever enjoyed her Earthsea or Hainish books, I'd highly recommend giving this a shot.
Finished A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
On the one hand, this book isn't very good. It's ridiculous on many levels and on the others it's simply preposterous. The writing is clunky and awkward. The characters are flat (with the exception of Woola, the hideously ugly, ten-legged space hound). The pacing is all wrong. The not very subtly hidden race politics are horrendously reactionary (I shudder to think what I'm going to find if I ever read the Tarzan books).
On the other hand, I tried to be more open to the book this time and I found its energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness quite charming. It reminds me of reading collections of Stan Lee stories from the sixties. I'm assuming he invented the whole subgenre of space opera, and right from the start he comes up with some crazy stuff especially in the first half when John Carter is hanging out with the green Martians. Some pretty unconvincing world-building gets steamrollered over by a big, dumb plot involving illicit Martian sexual relations and John Carter's mastering of Mars with the patience and manners he learned from owning slaves. But that brings up the whole shibboleth of the white man's burden and we're back up on the first hand again.
I'm going to read the next two books because I read somewhere he gets better, but I don't have high hopes that it's going to be anything other than enjoyable trash.
I don't have high hopes that it's going to be anything other than enjoyable trash.
I've got Burroughs' entire ouvre on my Kindle (most is available for free). 100% of it is trash, from a literary standpoint. About 90% of it is more enjoyable than just about any other author out there.
Put it this way: I went from reading ERB's Son of Tarzan straight into Dumas' The Three Musketeers and hardly noticed the transition.
H. Rider Haggard's She
H. Rider Haggard's She
How's that?
I read and enjoyed King Solomon's Mines when Alan Moore started putting out LXG, but I never followed up on it.
I don't have high hopes that it's going to be anything other than enjoyable trash.I've got Burroughs' entire ouvre on my Kindle (most is available for free). 100% of it is trash, from a literary standpoint. About 90% of it is more enjoyable than just about any other author out there.
Put it this way: I went from reading ERB's Son of Tarzan straight into Dumas' The Three Musketeers and hardly noticed the transition.
I like the anecdote I read about ERB that said he was motivated to start writing because he was intellectually insulted by all the crap he read in the magazines and thought he could do better.
I like the anecdote I read about ERB that said he was motivated to start writing because he was intellectually insulted by all the crap he read in the magazines and thought he could do better.
Apocryphal, I assume. No one could possibly take ERB as "intellectual." A chimp is more intellectual...
... but less fun.
Finished A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
On the one hand, this book isn't very good. It's ridiculous on many levels and on the others it's simply preposterous. The writing is clunky and awkward. The characters are flat (with the exception of Woola, the hideously ugly, ten-legged space hound). The pacing is all wrong. The not very subtly hidden race politics are horrendously reactionary (I shudder to think what I'm going to find if I ever read the Tarzan books).
<snip>
I'm going to read the next two books because I read somewhere he gets better, but I don't have high hopes that it's going to be anything other than enjoyable trash.
I agree, except for the "enjoyable" part. The only thing that motivated me to finish reading that book was the vague promise of an explanation for how Carter got resurrected, and how he got teleported to Mars. And in the end... there was no explanation.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Just started reading "To Kill a Mockingbird." I skipped a couple of grades in school, and apparently one of those grades was the one where everyone else in America read the book. Supposed to be really good, so I figured I should give it a go. I was helping my mom pack to move and came across it on her shelf and borrowed it.
I also have started reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" to my wife as a bedtime story. Just started that one as well.
H. Rider Haggard's SheHow's that?
I read and enjoyed King Solomon's Mines when Alan Moore started putting out LXG, but I never followed up on it.
Really interesting. It's a bit more a novel of ideas than I had expected.
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There are people who don't enjoy the first several Jn Carter of Mars books? Did they mamma drop them on they head?
I also have started reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" to my wife as a bedtime story. Just started that one as well.
Hehheh My wife and I do that as well.
Currently we are reading Mark Chadbourn's Age of Misrule Book 1 in this manner.
Finally finished Nixonland. Now I'm reading something infinitely lighter: Elminster in Myth Drannor.
I like the anecdote I read about ERB that said he was motivated to start writing because he was intellectually insulted by all the crap he read in the magazines and thought he could do better.Apocryphal, I assume. No one could possibly take ERB as "intellectual." A chimp is more intellectual...
... but less fun.
From the Introduction to Fall River's Library of Wonder omnibus of the first three books, by Mike Ashley:
In July of 1911 at the age of thirty-five, Burroughs was living in Chicago, broke and with no prospects. So, like Arthur Conan Doyle, Burroughs turned to his imagination....[I]n his idle hours he had been reading the latest pulp magazines and decided that--as he later told reporters--"if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten."
So my paraphrase got it wrong; no false pretensions of intellectuality from ERB!
I also heard a funny anecdote about Dumas (or was it Victor Hugo?) meeting Honore de Balzac, but I can't recall exactly how it went. Basically, they were jealous of each other's commercial and critical success, respectively, and although they were cordial face-to-face, they both made snarky comments to their friends as soon as the tete-a-tete was over.
Citizen Dingo linked an interesting article about the Bronte sisters in the Off-Top Discussion forum under the title Today In D&D News.
Who would win in a PvP face-off, Jane Eyre or Heathcliff? Discuss.
EDIT: All votes for Agnes Grey will be disregarded.
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Finished A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
On the one hand, this book isn't very good. It's ridiculous on many levels and on the others it's simply preposterous. The writing is clunky and awkward. The characters are flat (with the exception of Woola, the hideously ugly, ten-legged space hound). The pacing is all wrong. The not very subtly hidden race politics are horrendously reactionary (I shudder to think what I'm going to find if I ever read the Tarzan books).
On the other hand, I tried to be more open to the book this time and I found its energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness quite charming. It reminds me of reading collections of Stan Lee stories from the sixties. I'm assuming he invented the whole subgenre of space opera, and right from the start he comes up with some crazy stuff especially in the first half when John Carter is hanging out with the green Martians. Some pretty unconvincing world-building gets steamrollered over by a big, dumb plot involving illicit Martian sexual relations and John Carter's mastering of Mars with the patience and manners he learned from owning slaves. But that brings up the whole shibboleth of the white man's burden and we're back up on the first hand again.
I'm going to read the next two books because I read somewhere he gets better, but I don't have high hopes that it's going to be anything other than enjoyable trash.
Strictly speaking, it's planetary romance (in the jargon) rather than space opera that ERB invented. EE Doc Smith invented space opera with the Lensmen series (and others).
I haven't read A Princess of Mars for maybe thirty years. However, you are right that what it lacks in political-correctness, subtlety and style it makes up for in vigour. Also, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was serialised, which might account for the odd pacing.
Juggling several books, Venice by Peter Ackroyd, Superfreakonomics, Order of the Stick Vol 1, and Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien.
There are people who don't enjoy the first several Jn Carter of Mars books? Did they mamma drop them on they head?
Yeah, for a long time now, I've been wanting to speak badly of A Princess of Mars, but didn't, because so many people speak so highly of the John Carter series on these forums. I was relieved last night to find others speak badly of it as well. In fact, one of the major reasons I picked up some of the Planet Stories volumes was that I hoped that some imitator could write a similar story, but in a different style.
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I've got Burroughs' entire ouvre on my Kindle (most is available for free).
Nice use of "ouvre", by the way. I've used it tons of times in my writing, but I have no idea how to pronounce it correctly!
EE Doc Smith invented space opera with the Lensmen series (and others).
What's this? I've never heard of it.
Yeah, for a long time now, I've been wanting to speak badly of A Princess of Mars, but didn't, because so many people speak so highly of the John Carter series on these forums. I was relieved last night to find others speak badly of it as well. In fact, one of the major reasons I picked up some of the Planet Stories volumes was that I hoped that some imitator could write a similar story, but in a different style.
From what I've heard, APoM was the first thing he ever wrote; allegedly he gets better as he practices, which is why I'm going to give the next two a shot.
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What's this? I've never heard of it.
EE Doc Smith invented space opera with the Lensmen series (and others).
<spits drink across screen in outrage>
Actually, I haven't read it either, but it is one of the early seminal works of space opera involving galactic empires, evil aliens in spaceships, and so on. I suspect (based on the EE Doc Smith stuff I have read) that it is rather dated now.
What's this? I've never heard of it.
EE Doc Smith invented space opera with the Lensmen series (and others).
BLASPHEMY!!!
It still stands unbeaten in terms of sheer rate and scale of an escalating arms race across a very small series of books. Again, the writing is goofy and passe and somewhat less than PC -- but again, it's muscular enough that I'm inclined to overlook those things and enjoy it for what it is. Anyway, if you thought "Thrawn" from those Zahn Star Wars books was cool, he learned everything from "Doc" Smith.
I've got Burroughs' entire ouvre on my Kindle (most is available for free).Nice use of "ouvre", by the way. I've used it tons of times in my writing, but I have no idea how to pronounce it correctly!
In English I've heard the ERV pronunciation most, but sometimes something closer to urvruh. I avoid the issue by using "body" or "corpus" instead, depending on what register I want. My recollections of French class are that it varies by accent but the ER part uses a slightly different sound than the one in the normal anglophone inventory. The final consonants are sometimes pronounced in certain accents, but not others. (I think the Marseilles dialect was the one that pronounced them the most, but my firsthand experience with it is limited to hearing it in a few movies.)
My second French teacher (who lived in France full time for four or five years and spent her summers there just about every year) tried to teach the vowel, but it was very hard to even hear the difference and later teachers had similar problems and so hoped we could eventually get it by osmosis. If I'm really listening, which I rarely get a chance to do these past thirteen years, I can just hear the difference but doubt I was ever able to produce the sound.
Short version, oeuvre is the last part of hors d'oeuvre.
I've got Burroughs' entire ouvre on my Kindle (most is available for free).Nice use of "ouvre", by the way. I've used it tons of times in my writing, but I have no idea how to pronounce it correctly!In English I've heard the ERV pronunciation most, but sometimes something closer to urvruh. I avoid the issue by using "body" or "corpus" instead, depending on what register I want. My recollections of French class are that it varies by accent but the ER part uses a slightly different sound than the one in the normal anglophone inventory. The final consonants are sometimes pronounced in certain accents, but not others. (I think the Marseilles dialect was the one that pronounced them the most, but my firsthand experience with it is limited to hearing it in a few movies.)
My second French teacher (who lived in France full time for four or five years and spent her summers there just about every year) tried to teach the vowel, but it was very hard to even hear the difference and later teachers had similar problems and so hoped we could eventually get it by osmosis. If I'm really listening, which I rarely get a chance to do these past thirteen years, I can just hear the difference but doubt I was ever able to produce the sound.
Short version, oeuvre is the last part of hors d'oeuvre.
Raison d'etre is another phrase I avoid in spoken conversation.
Raison d'etre is another phrase I avoid in spoken conversation.
I use that one, but rarely. Roughly: ray-zone dettra. The ai isn't quite the same sound in French, but I could never train myself to hear it. Something about how we automatically make two vowels together into a dipthong, but French does not. I never had the benefit of a native speaker to learn from so I was always trying to hear something outside my sound inventory produced by someone who didn't have it in theirs either.
I use that one, but rarely. Roughly: ray-zone dettra. The ai isn't quite the same sound in French, but I could never train myself to hear it. Something about how we automatically make two vowels together into a dipthong, but French does not. I never had the benefit of a native speaker to learn from so I was always trying to hear something outside my sound inventory produced by someone who didn't have it in theirs either.
Raison d'etre is another phrase I avoid in spoken conversation.
I have no ear. I even have trouble understanding Americans outside of New England. And some from within.
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Well, I pronounce hors d'oeuvre "or derv" but "oeuvre" by itself "ervrer". I don't think it really matters as we aren't talking French, but English using loaned phrases. Or maybe just stick to "opus". And you guys can't pronouce oregano right, anyway.
My boss is French and has quite a strong accent. He told me I was going on a trip to "Vasso" the other day. I was like "?" and it turned out he meant Warsaw. I asked our Polish secretary, out of curiosity, how she pronounces it and she said "Varshava". So go figure.
And you guys can't pronounce oregano right, anyway.
Says a guy who adds an extra syllable to "aluminum" (as if the word weren't long enough already)!
Juggling several books, Venice by Peter Ackroyd, Superfreakonomics, Order of the Stick Vol 1, and Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien.Loved Unfinished Tales. I so wish half those stories had been completed.
I'm going through a Tolkienalia Revival right now
My boss is French and has quite a strong accent. He told me I was going on a trip to "Vasso" the other day. I was like "?" and it turned out he meant Warsaw. I asked our Polish secretary, out of curiosity, how she pronounces it and she said "Varshava". So go figure.
One of my French teachers was named Heather. A French friend took her to meet the family, but advised her to let them call her something that francophones could pronounce. I think she want by Katerine or something like that.
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I have no ear. I even have trouble understanding Americans outside of New England. And some from within.
Oh, that's easy to overcome. When speaking to people from outside New England, just remember that they don't pronounce the letter "R" when it is not in the spelling of a word but do pronounce it when it is in the spelling of a word. See? Easy. =P
I have no ear. I even have trouble understanding Americans outside of New England. And some from within.Oh, that's easy to overcome. When speaking to people from outside New England, just remember that they don't pronounce the letter "R" when it is not in the spelling of a word but do pronounce it when it is in the spelling of a word. See? Easy. =P
If you pahk youa cah in Hahvahd Yahd, it'll get towed to Meffa. Pahk it in the Squaya like a nohmal pehson. I'm goin' to da packie.
And, speakin' of Massachusetts, I'm readin' Louisa May Alcott again.
Aftah you get bahk from da packie, we can go and get some paster from Papa Ginos. That's a wicked pissah place!
I have no ear. I even have trouble understanding Americans outside of New England. And some from within.Oh, that's easy to overcome. When speaking to people from outside New England, just remember that they don't pronounce the letter "R" when it is not in the spelling of a word but do pronounce it when it is in the spelling of a word. See? Easy. =P
Not true when you get into GA, SC, and those places in the south
Armuchee, GA is not pronounced are-mur-chee, except it is.
Not true when you get into GA, SC, and those places in the south
Southerners are congenitally afraid of consonants... but vowels are always on a 2-for-1 sale.
Thus, "cabinet" becomes something more like "caneh."
"I remember you" becomes "Ah rememmer yooooouuuuuuooooouuuu!"
BOOM! Ha, ha, preemptive fatwa strike on you!
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Being from Boston, I can' tell you how frustrating it is to have everyone assume we have that accent. At this point that accent is rare and only played up in the movies.
Now as for books, I'm read Dan Simmons' "Terror" right now, which is slowly creeping up on me. Before that I just read "Daddy's" by Lindsay Hunter which was a great compilation of short stories.
BOOM! Ha, ha, preemptive fatwa strike on you!
Being from Boston, I can' tell you how frustrating it is to have everyone assume we have that accent. At this point that accent is rare and only played up in the movies.
Now as for books, I'm read Dan Simmons' "Terror" right now, which is slowly creeping up on me. Before that I just read "Daddy's" by Lindsay Hunter which was a great compilation of short stories.
As someone who lived in Eastie for over a decade and knew many Teamsters from Southie, I have to disagree. Omnipresent? No. Still entrenched firmly in the greater metropolitan area's white ethnic working classes? Hell, yes.
The Terror's great, by the way.
The Book-Lovers by The Divine Comedy.
I know, I know, I'm mixing the threads.
EDIT: After years of listening to this song, I still have no idea who the first writer is. Even looking at the picture, I still can't tell. Anyone?
Being from Boston, I can' tell you how frustrating it is to have everyone assume we have that accent. At this point that accent is rare and only played up in the movies.
Now as for books, I'm read Dan Simmons' "Terror" right now, which is slowly creeping up on me. Before that I just read "Daddy's" by Lindsay Hunter which was a great compilation of short stories.
As someone who lived in Eastie for over a decade and knew many Teamsters from Southie, I have to disagree. Omnipresent? No. Still entrenched firmly in the greater metropolitan area's white ethnic working classes? Hell, yes.
The Terror's great, by the way.
I may not agree with DA on much, but I agree on this. And it's not just the working class. My parents were teachers and they both had it in spades. I consider myself fairly well-educated and when I lived in California I had two different people ask me if I was Australian (for the record: I don't think my accent is all that pronounced)
Anyway, just picked up a $.25 yard-sale special while out doing some errands: In Other Worlds by A.A. Attananasio. The cover and blurb were positively Philip Jose Farmer in gonzo concept, so I picked it up. We'll see how it reads.
Anyway, just picked up a $.25 yard-sale special while out doing some errands: In Other Worlds by A.A. Attananasio. The cover and blurb were positively Philip Jose Farmer in gonzo concept, so I picked it up. We'll see how it reads.
Yard sale scores rock!