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I am currently reading An Army at Dawn: The Fight for North Africa 1942 to 1943 by Rick Atkinson.
It is the first of three books detailing America's fight with the Germans in WWII. The first book is about the fighting in North Africa. I am only halfway thru it, but it is very interesting and engaging. It details how unprepared everyone was for the fighting. The uncoordination between the Allies, and the lack of proper training by the Americans who had not fought since WWI.
Very good book. A must for WWII or history buffs, but also a good read that would keep anyone reading interested in what comes next.
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There's a very odd POV shift right at the end of Death's Heretic. It wasn't enough to make me stop suspending my disbelief (if that's actually a requirement for readers, which I doubt). I'm just pointing it out because it is the very last paragraph of the whole novel, and it shifts to a character whom I didn't notice that close-3rd POV being on before. Frankly, I wasn't sure where Sutter was going with it.Well, nowhere near the last paragraph, but, I must say, I can't remember the last time I read a "gamer novel" with so many prostitutes.
I applaud. In fact, I wonder if we could get WoTC to go back and retrofit, say, the Driz'zt books or DragonLance with more whores.
Maybe it's the sun flower orchid, maybe it's the vice, but I keep picturing Salim as looking like Bogie in The Big Sleep.
There's quite a bit of male-gaze going on in that novel [/understatement?], which [shrugs] is pretty par-for-course I figured, given all the s-&-s tropes and the "Neo-Arabian-exoticism" it plays to. Which is what made the POV shift at the end stand out for me, and made me ask, Why this scene? Why now? Why this character? And I really don't have an answer.
Also, please keep Bogie out of my brain. I read Chandler before I saw any of the movies and Bogie is NOT the Philip Marlowe I know!
Actually, for a story set (largely) in Thuvia, I remember being a bit disappointed that it didn't feel more "not-Western."
Spot on about it being very male-gazey, though - I even seem to recall Sutter writing something about realising that at a later point due to a comment someone made in a different discussion.
So, not really an answer to your question, but that's what I've (well, Genovese's) got. In general, his thesis is that British slaveholders were mostly absentee who would invest in, say, Jamaican sugar, and, as soon as they made their fortune rush back to ol' Blighty to live it up (Lord Rochester from Jane Eyre?) and, hence, never developed a consciousness distinct from the rest of the British bourgeoisie. When emancipation came (with compensation? I don't recall), they just grumbled a bit, shifted their capital, and went happily about their plutocratic way.
That would mesh with what I've read elsewhere, which isn't much. Unlike later efforts, mostly in Africa and India, scads of middle class British people did not move to the islands to stay. Dawkins has some ancestors who got rich on Jamaica slavery sugar and lost the lot a few decades later.
The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 did include compensation, which is how we know who owned how many of whom at the time. The Exchequer wasn't about to scatter twenty million quid about without making note of where it went.
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Also, please keep Bogie out of my brain. I read Chandler before I saw any of the movies and Bogie is NOT the Philip Marlowe I know!
My bad. Here's Elliott Gould, instead.
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Oh, and pertaining to nothing, really, I am happy to report that my hetero life partner has finally stopped reading Tolkien. In an unforeseen course of events, he has taken his listening to books on tape in an entirely different direction and started listening to Moby-Dick. I was very pleased when he called me to ask if it was funny on purpose.
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Also, please keep Bogie out of my brain. I read Chandler before I saw any of the movies and Bogie is NOT the Philip Marlowe I know!My bad. Here's Elliott Gould, instead.
Huurrk...[vomits into a flowerpot] Darn you, Anklebiter! You'll pay for this!
I think, Zeugma, it's time you showed us all what Philip Marlowe should look like.
Wings? Horns? Eyes on stalks with jets of flame shooting out of the pupils? Fedoras with built-in miniguns? Ablative pantyhose? Who can say?
Not only did Death's Heretic turn out to be deliciously male gaze-y, but the protagonist also
A rolling stone gathers no moss, baby!
Then was looking for something else quick and easy, considered Heinlein's Door Into Summer for some promised creepiness, but opted instead for Starship Troopers. Enjoying it thus far.
Politics aside, I thought Starship Trooper was a pretty enjoyable read.
Politics not aside, it's pretty obviously a militarist's wet dream fantasy, but I had a pretty hard time seeing it as an endorsement of either fascism or, I think I've read, (American-style) libertarianism.
[Shrugs]
F*$$ing Bugs...
Next, back to the Book of Kings.
Politics aside, I thought Starship Trooper was a pretty enjoyable read.Politics not aside, it's pretty obviously a militarist's wet dream fantasy, but I had a pretty hard time seeing it as an endorsement of either fascism or, I think I've read, (American-style) libertarianism.
[Shrugs]
F+!$ing Bugs...
Next, back to the Book of Kings.
Military service as part / prerequisite for citizenship goes back to democracy in ancient Athens. Heinlein just brought it up in a science fiction setting. Athens also required it's citizens to be born in Athens, no immigrant citizens period. But then the ancient Greeks were extremely patriotic / nationalistic.
Since this thread came up as I was browsing the boards, I thought, "Why not?" Almost all of my books are currently in boxes as I'm moving at the end of the month, but while one or two are still open, I'm reading Evangeline Walton's The Island of the Mighty, otherwise known as The Virgin and the Swine. It's an expansion on my favourite Branch of the Mabinogi, but I haven't got more than a fifth of the way into it. So far it's all right, but I think I'm detecting some evolutionary mysticism of the "wisdom of the Secret Ancient Masters will usher the human race into a new era" variety, which isn't quite my thing. Also, I'm just coming out of a volume of ancient comedy in translation, which has its moments, but the misogyny gets old really, really fast.
Athens also required its citizens to be born in Athens, no immigrant citizens period. But then the ancient Greeks were extremely patriotic / nationalistic.
The great thing about history is that you can compare different models and see how well they work. When Genghis Khan's armies defeated a particularly good foreign general, for example, they'd offer him a job and full Mongol citizenship on the spot; rather than a single city-state, they were able to manage the largest empire in history.
Politics aside, I thought Starship Trooper was a pretty enjoyable read.
Politics not aside, it's pretty obviously a militarist's wet dream fantasy, but I had a pretty hard time seeing it as an endorsement of either fascism or, I think I've read, (American-style) libertarianism.
[Shrugs]
F*!$ing Bugs...
Next, back to the Book of Kings.
Huh. I enjoyed it too, but I understood it as a commentary on the latent fascism present in American society... But that could have been entirely a result of my preconceptions.
And yeah, bugs suck.
"And [Elisha] went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
"And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."
You ask me (and, I know, you didn't), The Old Testament is way more frightening than Starship Trooper.
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She-bears are definitely more frightening than bugs...
But not more frightening than Bugs.
Anyway, finished up The Books of Kings. Glanced at The Books of Chronicles, realized that it was just a retelling of the previous 13 or so books with genealogical tables (like I said, book needs an editor) and decided to skip them.
The Second Book of Kings: The Musical Interlude
In a recurring theme for me and gospel-y tunes, I liked this song a lot more before I knew the epilogue to the healing of Naaman.
I'm reading Evangeline Walton's The Island of the Mighty, otherwise known as The Virgin and the Swine.
Hmm, never heard of her, but sounds interesting.
But not more frightening than Bugs.
Anyway, finished up The Books of Kings. Glanced at The Books of Chronicles, realized that it was just a retelling of the previous 13 or so books with genealogical tables (like I said, book needs an editor) and decided to skip them.
A lot of it is like that. If you take out the verbatim repetition, the near-verbatim repetition with minor changes, and all the "stories" that are really just the same story with slightly different details and proper nouns, I'm not sure you'd have enough left to fill 200 pages at regular font sizes.
It's really neat to read through it and note the different ideologies involved, but not what I'd call pleasure reading. :)
I liked the Book of Kings, but then it got so commercial...
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
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Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
Read the first two last year - you've just inspired me to read them again. Any word when the next one's due?
I assigned The Name of the Wind to a Varisian-playing, um, player, for the Edema Ruh parts.
I liked the Book of Kings, but then it got so commercial...
Yeah, when it got to the matzoh balls product placement, I was like, "Really? You know, I can get that for you wholesale."
Haven't yet picked up my Leiber. Tried to read the Mignola/Chaykin comic adaptation, but it wasn't doin' nothin' for me.
Switched over to David Levering Lewis's King: A Critical Biography for some 50th anniversary politrolling.
I've started reading the Narnia books (via kindle). I watched Dawntreader on TV and it got me to thinking about how the books have to be different from the movies. I started out of order because I didn't know what it was and started with 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'.
I just got done with 'The Magician's Nephew'.
I have to get the rest of the books now.
Comrade Anklebiter, if you've never read it, I would highly recommend White Lotus by John Hersey. Find a hardback copy if you can; the print in the paperback version will ruin your eyesight. Yes, it's fiction, and, yes, the author is obviously trying to make a point. It's still well worth the effort of tracking it down.
The Book of Judith (generally stuck in the Apocrypha by wimps) always entertains me. Esther is wussy; she goes crying to her male relatives. Judith and Ruth, now, will do their own jobs.
Some neocon relatives of mine tried to talk Starship Troopers up to me as The Great American Novel once, and I got all wide-eyed and high-minded (think Greenpeace) about fascism, cultural/militaristic imperialism, etc., right back at them ([fang-y_grin]hee, hee[/fang-y_grin]). Truly, viscerally satisfying.
[Scribbles furiously, adding to the very long list]
Seeing as how I am finished with, I believe they are called, the Deuteronomistic (sp?) histories, I finally requested the Finkelstein and Silberman volume from the library on the recommendation of Comrade Samnell.
I've started reading the Narnia books (via kindle). I watched Dawntreader on TV and it got me to thinking about how the books have to be different from the movies. I started out of order because I didn't know what it was and started with 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'.
I just got done with 'The Magician's Nephew'.I have to get the rest of the books now.
You should be aware that the Narnia books are not written in chronological order. IIRC, The Magician's Nephew is one of the last ones written, and everything started with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I may be mistaken. Just an interesting point.
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The Narnia books were published in mostly chronological order. "A Horse and His Boy", book 5 in order of publication, took place towards the end of book 1, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Book 6, "The Magician's Nephew", was indeed a prequel. But other than those 2 exceptions, the series is chronological.
[Scribbles furiously, adding to the very long list]
Seeing as how I am finished with, I believe they are called, the Deuteronomistic (sp?) histories, I finally requested the Finkelstein and Silberman volume from the library on the recommendation of Comrade Samnell.
You spelled it right. Finkelstein & Silberman really do a great job of presenting things. They summarize the Bible story first, then analyze it and tear it apart based on what we know about the Ancient Near East. I found their chapters on the development of Jewish identity a bit hard going, and I understand it's the weaker part of the book to the academy, but the stuff about the more famous stuff is really both a good read and very educational.
In the same vein, I also like Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. It's concerned entirely with the text, but with the possible exception of his identification of one of the redactors it's actually very conservative textual work. (NB: Conservative for the relevant academy, not conservative theologically.) There are more radical scholars who want to push the entire developing of canon into the post-exilic, but I'm not familiar with their work.
But just last night I spent some time with this, which is so useful it's almost pornographic. I don't even like the founders, generally speaking, but I had it then forgot about it, then remembered it again right after I got some papers I needed from elsewhere. Figures, eh? :)
Raced through a number of books about women homesteading, courtesy of Project Gutenburg: Two Wyoming Girls and Their Homesteading Claim, Roughing It In the Bush, and Letters of a Woman Homesteader. The last was my favorite of the three. (If any of those sound appealing to you, I also recommend Molly Gloss's Jump-Off Creek, and her sci fi book Dazzle of Day, which is about a Quaker generation ship.)
Now working on Samuel R. Delaney's Trouble on Triton at Hitdice's recommendation. I was surprised by the academic philosophy tone of the intro—but turns out it was by computational linguist and sci fi author Jean Mark Gawron (I recommend his Dream of Glass!), so that makes more sense now. Just got to the bit with the war game with the insane scoring calculation.
But just last night I spent some time with this, which is so useful it's almost pornographic.
Dude -- that's AWESOME. Thanks for the link!
But just last night I spent some time with this, which is so useful it's almost pornographic.Dude -- that's AWESOME. Thanks for the link!
Thought you might like it. :)
I was in it for the Coles-Jefferson correspondence of July-September 1814, but I'll be back into it again eventually.
The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase. Both fascinating and disturbing if you happen to live near SF!
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Finally got my Leiber back over the weekend.
"The Snow Women" was hawt!!!
Just started with The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, by Edward N. Luttwak. It's about how Byzantium managed to stay alive for so long under such impossible circumstances. History, but presented in a way that almost feels like a novel.
Oh yeah, not books, but this is where the book nerds usually talk about PBS, so:
Finally got around to watching the first two episodes of Downton Abbey. Liked it enough to order the next two discs, but as I was watching it with my hetero life partner and that duke showed up and
You can't fool me, PBS/BBC, I can see this shiznit from miles away!
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Oh yeah, not books, but this is where the book nerds usually talk about PBS, so:
Finally got around to watching the first two episodes of Downton Abbey. Liked it enough to order the next two discs, but as I was watching it with my hetero life partner and that duke showed up and ** spoiler omitted **
You can't fool me, PBS/BBC, I can see this shiznit from miles away!
I'm pretty sure everyone could see that shiznit from miles away. It was not precisely covert.
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Warning: Season 2 starts pulling in every soap-opera cliche ever aired in the last 50 years.
I'm pretty sure everyone could see that shiznit from miles away. It was not precisely covert.Oh yeah, not books, but this is where the book nerds usually talk about PBS, so:
Finally got around to watching the first two episodes of Downton Abbey. Liked it enough to order the next two discs, but as I was watching it with my hetero life partner and that duke showed up and ** spoiler omitted **
You can't fool me, PBS/BBC, I can see this shiznit from miles away!
As soon as he said his name?
Anyway, my hlp didn't see it.
Fine, fine, I guess you're all much more cosmopolitan than us New Hampshire hicks.
I'm not saying you're an inattentive viewer, Doodlebug, but when something's revealed in the first episode, a claim of miles away sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.
Man, I liked that Duke, though; there's a member of the Peerage who had his priorities sorted out!
Blah blah blah. I've only seen the first two episodes.
I can see that shiznit from fifteen minutes away.
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There's a very odd POV shift right at the end of Death's Heretic. It wasn't enough to make me stop suspending my disbelief (if that's actually a requirement for readers, which I doubt). I'm just pointing it out because it is the very last paragraph of the whole novel, and it shifts to a character whom I didn't notice that close-3rd POV being on before. Frankly, I wasn't sure where Sutter was going with it.Well, nowhere near the last paragraph, but, I must say, I can't remember the last time I read a "gamer novel" with so many prostitutes.
I applaud. In fact, I wonder if we could get WoTC to go back and retrofit, say, the Driz'zt books or DragonLance with more whores.
Maybe it's the sun flower orchid, maybe it's the vice, but I keep picturing Salim as looking like Bogie in The Big Sleep.
There's quite a bit of male-gaze going on in that novel [/understatement?], which [shrugs] is pretty par-for-course I figured, given all the s-&-s tropes and the "Neo-Arabian-exoticism" it plays to. Which is what made the POV shift at the end stand out for me, and made me ask, Why this scene? Why now? Why this character? And I really don't have an answer.
Also, please keep Bogie out of my brain. I read Chandler before I saw any of the movies and Bogie is NOT the Philip Marlowe I know!
The author of the book, James Sutter, has acknowledged that as an issue and made a real, honest apolegy about it. His exact words (from the product discussion thread):
"This is a worthwhile discussion, and one I've had with friends who've read the book, so I'd like to take the chance to talk about it. (WARNING: The following contains spoilers, but I'm not going to hide it behind a spoiler tag, as I feel it's an important part of the conversation.)
To begin with, I'll fess up and say that, when writing Death's Heretic, I didn't pay as much attention to gender balance as I would nowadays. I simply wrote the characters as they appeared in my imagination. Though there are a few more named women than you mention (for instance, Shyka is half female), you're right that the majority of the rather small cast is male or neuter (Calabast, Ceyanan, the protean, etc).
Which is not to say that I ignored gender issues, however. In fact, it's a pretty central theme to the novel. In my mind, the most important character arc for Salim over the course of the book isn't that he falls for Neila--it's that he starts out totally discounting her as some spoiled, inexperienced girl, and over the course of the book is forced (somewhat against the will) to acknowledge her as the smart and capable woman she is. There's a lot of focus on her because I'm trying to show how Salim's view of her is changing, and the fact that they hook up is intended to be a *result* of his new understanding. By the end, such as in his musings on page 356, he's forced to admit to himself that his protective, paternalistic feelings toward her are a problem with *him*, not her--that she's truly his equal, and thus ought to be treated like one:
Yet that wasn't fair, and even the anxious pre-battle stillness, Salim couldn't quite make himself believe it. The girl had proven herself as well as any legionnaire--more, if he wanted to be fair. She'd saved his life in the markets of Axis, and held herself together in the face of some of the strangest things a mortal could bear witness to. She was smart, she was fast, and she was stubborn--all things which he knew could be said about him, in his better moments. And if it made him uneasy to take her into combat, to see that delicate skin go before the sword, then that was his problem, his weakness.
It was a challenge to try and write that character arc when the novel's point of view is in Salim's head--I was afraid that folks might think *I* was discounting Neila as a character in the early chapters, rather than Salim--but my hope was that by the end, people would see that she was a badass all along, and more importantly that Salim had grown enough as a person to appreciate that. Whether I succeeded or not is, of course, up to the reader.
Similarly, while some of the other women--such as Lady Jbade the madam, or Salim's former wife--are indeed sexualized, I tried to show them all as strong, confident, and independent. I'm not interested in writing subservient women or damsels in distress, and in my mind sexuality doesn't necessarily lessen a character. But I could definitely stand to have added some more women whose sexuality wasn't a part of their character.
All of that said, it wasn't until after the book was published that one of my friends pointed out that women don't have a lot of on-stage time in the book, particularly as supporting/background characters. This is totally true, and a rookie mistake on my part. Were I writing the book today, I would go back and shift some supporting characters (such as the major domo, or the Jackal's bodyguard) to female.
I apologize if the gender imbalance disrupted your enjoyment of the novel. I realize that author intentions don't matter--a book is what it is, and needs to speak for itself--but for what it's worth, please know that such problems were the result of ignorance rather than malice!"
I expect that the issue will not repeat itself in "The Redemption Engine".
Well, if Citizen Sutter, Paizo and the Paizo community want to agonize over sexualized harlots and a lack of female major-domos in their products that's their prerogative, but compared to a lot of the other fantasy novels we've mentioned in this thread over the years, it's pretty small potatos.
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Warning: Season 2 starts pulling in every soap-opera cliche ever aired in the last 50 years. ** spoiler omitted **
Hehehe
Warning: Season 2 starts pulling in every soap-opera cliche ever aired in the last 50 years. ** spoiler omitted **Hehehe
** spoiler omitted **
Y'know what the thing about season 2 was? (Spoilered for the sake of goblins who don't read without misplacing their books and can't manage to watch more than 2 hours of television in a single sitting.)
As for season 3... Personally, I like to read ahead. With Downton Abbey, I can go to IMDB and read the episode synopses, because it airs months earlier in the UK, except for the Christmas special. So I knew the preeclampsia was coming, but the last 15 seconds of the Christmas episode had me saying "Wha' hoppen!?" Seriously, I woke up the next morning and felt all empty inside.
Books? I haven't started anything since I heard Fredrick Pohl died this weekend. :(
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(Spoilered for the sake of goblins who don't read without misplacing their books and can't manage to watch more than 2 hours of television in a single sitting.)
[Sets Diceton Abbey on fire]
Au secours! Au secours! Les lutins se révoltent!
An abbey, full of nuns - FULL. OF. NUNS. - and what does he do? Set fire to it. You see, this is what happens when you abolish serfdom.
What?
No nuns?
Oh, fine. Carry on. Have some turps.
I also notice that my effete, tea-drinking and dentist-shunning Elven steward is reading My Apprenticeship, by Gorky, for which he will be PUNISHED.