Reading anything?

[Cthulhu]

I'm reading Neuromancer by William Gibson.
I also bought some books on Amazon.

[Vik]

Finished "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut the other day, liked it a lot. Currently reading "The Definitive book on Body Language" which is very interesting.

[InformationGeek]

Currently reading The Unwritten by Mike Carey (who wrote Lucifer, the spinoff of sorts to Sandman).  The series is about Tom Taylor, the son of a famous author, who was the basis for the main character of a fantasy series more popular than Harry Potter.  One day at a convention, it is discovered that he may not be the real Tom Taylor and rumors go around about him being the main character of the series, Tommy, turned flesh.  However, there is much more to this then what it seems.  Excellent series that sold me on everything from the very first issue.  I highly recommend this to almost anyone here.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Ye-es.

Gary Corley's "The Pericles Commission"

We have all see this one before. As it'd be centuries before a public police force would be established, a private citizen is asked to investigate a murder, and see if he can find the murderer and the motivation for the murder. Of course, almost everyone, including his employer has a motive for the murder, so the only people the hero can trust are his own family and his girlfriend, who just happens to be the daughter of the murder victim.

I've seen them for ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, and even ancient Babylon, but this is the first one I've seen for ancient Greece.

What the author does right.

He keeps present ideas out of the ancient past, which is harder to do than it looks.

He includes alot of people who actually existed, so if you have any knowledge of ancient Greek history, you should have some idea of what is going one.

What the author does wrong.

He includes a second murder later on in the book, which is not well intergrated into the book, which makes everyone's motives, especially the murderer's motive, a bit murkier than they should be.

What is odd or maybe not.

From an era that is regarded as being one of the friendliest for gays, there are no homosexuals in the book.

Maybe there'll be in the next book, as the author is suppose to be wriing a sequel to this one.

Next time: And even more miscellaneous or short reviews of graphic novels read.

[Rev. Powell]

"Selected Tales of Edgar Allen Poe (Norton Critical Edition)" - I've read most of these, but this edition contains a few stories and pieces that aren't in my other Poe collection.  I also want to read the critical essays. 

[Mofo Rising]

As usual, I've got nine books I'm reading concurrently.

I'm just going to talk about three, because they kind of play off each other.

The first is The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which I was reading the last time I chimed in. The book purports to be a trek through American history from the point of view of the down-trodden and the under-represented. It is, in parts. But as the book progresses, it very clearly becomes a history of the United States through a pro-Socialist, pro-Communist agenda. I am in sympathy with the book's originally stated goal, but it is very clear that the author, Zinn, is committing the primary political sin of equating "the people" with his own agenda. Note: Every single political party believes that they represent "the people." This book is very poor history. The author cherry-picks the arguments the viewpoints that best suit his point of view. He very rarely ventures into actual research, instead relying on the thoughts of third-parties and, please help me, poems. There's a point in the book where he mentions the mid-20th century Communist revolution in China as a positive. Zinn, I know the history of China. Were you one of those teenagers wandering around public parks handing out Mao's Little Red Book? That did not end well.

(Listen to Zinn praise Eugene V. Debs, the one true hero I've managed to find in his book. Did I mention this book won the Eugene V. Debs Award?)

Second, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Human and Other Animals by John Gray. The gist of this book is that many of the beliefs we hold dear are outmoded. The sense of free will, of our own identity, of our belief that we are separate "special creatures" from the rest of life, is all attacked here. More properly, this book should have been called "Paper Tigers," as the author reduces all arguments into something he can easily refute.

It truly bugs me, because these are viewpoints I can sympathize with, but the books here are slapdash, easily argued against, just poor excuses for arguments.

The last is an anomaly, because I picked it up because it seemed such a weird historical artifact. Cannibals All! by George Fitzhugh is a defense of slavery written pre-Civil War by a man who did not only view the enslavement of Africans as alright, but thought most of humanity deserved to be enslaved. His viewpoint was that owning slaves was not only natural, but desirable. He attacks capitalism for being a form of slavery where the masters have no obligation to their workers, as opposed to that wonderful slice of life that was the Southern plantation. The attack on capitalism he elicits is probably the least offensive to me of these books. I think his criticisms are pretty valid today. Unfortunately, he gives himself a complete blind-eye to the horrors of antebellum slavery. It's hard to imagine a book more antithetical to most of the ideas the United States prides itself on.

I'll finish all these books, but they are tiresome to the extreme. There are kernels of ideas I agree with (slavery is not one of them), but these horrid attempts at explaining them are awful. Dear World, stop priding your dumb ideas and try to make a sad song better.

[AndyC]

Kind of drifting from one thing to another right now, trying to figure out what I feel like reading. Been re-reading a little Lovecraft, a little Poe.

Figured I would finally read the only Michael Slade thriller I haven't read so far, "Hangman." It was at the public library in town for a while, but when I went to sign it out, it wasn't there. Seems they've been culling titles that haven't been signed out for a while. It's a tiny library, and this book has been around for 11 or 12 years, so it makes sense. Of course, older books in the series are still there. I suspect that's because I signed them out a couple of years ago. Oh, the irony.

Noticed Dean Koontz has continued the Frankenstein series, and I'm tempted to check that out, but I didn't care much for the third book. Don't know if it's worth picking up the fourth and fifth.

[indianasmith]

As usual, I've got nine books I'm reading concurrently.

I'm just going to talk about three, because they kind of play off each other.

The first is The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which I was reading the last time I chimed in. The book purports to be a trek through American history from the point of view of the down-trodden and the under-represented. It is, in parts. But as the book progresses, it very clearly becomes a history of the United States through a pro-Socialist, pro-Communist agenda. I am in sympathy with the book's originally stated goal, but it is very clear that the author, Zinn, is committing the primary political sin of equating "the people" with his own agenda. Note: Every single political party believes that they represent "the people." This book is very poor history. The author cherry-picks the arguments the viewpoints that best suit his point of view. He very rarely ventures into actual research, instead relying on the thoughts of third-parties and, please help me, poems. There's a point in the book where he mentions the mid-20th century Communist revolution in China as a positive. Zinn, I know the history of China. Were you one of those teenagers wandering around public parks handing out Mao's Little Red Book? That did not end well.

(Listen to Zinn praise Eugene V. Debs, the one true hero I've managed to find in his book. Did I mention this book won the Eugene V. Debs Award?)

Second, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Human and Other Animals by John Gray. The gist of this book is that many of the beliefs we hold dear are outmoded. The sense of free will, of our own identity, of our belief that we are separate "special creatures" from the rest of life, is all attacked here. More properly, this book should have been called "Paper Tigers," as the author reduces all arguments into something he can easily refute.

It truly bugs me, because these are viewpoints I can sympathize with, but the books here are slapdash, easily argued against, just poor excuses for arguments.

The last is an anomaly, because I picked it up because it seemed such a weird historical artifact. Cannibals All! by George Fitzhugh is a defense of slavery written pre-Civil War by a man who did not only view the enslavement of Africans as alright, but thought most of humanity deserved to be enslaved. His viewpoint was that owning slaves was not only natural, but desirable. He attacks capitalism for being a form of slavery where the masters have no obligation to their workers, as opposed to that wonderful slice of life that was the Southern plantation. The attack on capitalism he elicits is probably the least offensive to me of these books. I think his criticisms are pretty valid today. Unfortunately, he gives himself a complete blind-eye to the horrors of antebellum slavery. It's hard to imagine a book more antithetical to most of the ideas the United States prides itself on.

I'll finish all these books, but they are tiresome to the extreme. There are kernels of ideas I agree with (slavery is not one of them), but these horrid attempts at explaining them are awful. Dear World, stop priding your dumb ideas and try to make a sad song better.

I've heard of Zinn, he is typical of the Marxist/leftist professors that crowded the halls of academia in the 1970's thru the 1990's - guys who stayed in college and got their advanced degrees so they could get deferments and avoid Vietnam, and spent their careers bashing the country that enabled them to live better than 90% of the world, while praising governments that routinely executed intellectuals like themselves.  Not that America is flawless, but academics like Zinn should have been deported en masse to the Soviet Union before they could corrupt an entire generation of American youth!

Fitzhugh was one of slavery's most eloquent defenders, but he was very typical of the antebellum Southern intellectual who was absolutely blind to the real horrors of the institution that was the foundation of Southern society.  His "Sociology of the South" was another soaring assertion of the "positive good" theory of slavery.  I wish I could go back in time and take him, John C. Calhoun, and a few others, dye their skins black, and sell them to a cotton plantation in Alabama for a year or so.  Let's see how they feel abou the "peculiar institution" then!!!!

[Vik]

[BoyScoutKevin]

Ye-es!

And still even more miscellaneous . . . [in graphic format form]

Darren Shan's "Cirque du Freak"

v.4. Vampire Mountain -- v.5. Trials of death -- v.6. The vampire prince -- v.7. Hunters of the dusk.

The best thing in these next four volumes are the villains.

Ted Dekker's "The Lost Books"

Finished the series. It takes a special author to move the same characters between different worlds. He's special, but not that special. He should have stuck with future day earth, where he does the better job, and skipped present day earth, where it just gets confusing.

Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone"

"The After Hours" -- "The Big Tall Wish" -- "Deaths-head Revisted" -- "The Midnight Sun" -- "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" -- "The Odyssey of Flight 33" -- "Walking Distance"

Stick with the ones you've seen, or see the episode before reading the graphic adaptation. You're get more out of the adaptation that way.

Matt Groening's "The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis"

The best thing is that it is filled with a ton of in-jokes. See how many you can recognize?

"A Long Time Ago . . ." v.3.

Issues 50-62 and Annual #2 in the comic book adaptation of the "Star Wars" series of films.

They seem to want to expand their readership beyond the "Star Wars" fanboys and fangirls as you get more romance and more science in these comics. There also seemss  to be an effort to individualize the heroes and humanize the villains.

To be coninued . . . But first, Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and et al.

[RD]

I'm reading Neuromancer by William Gibson.

   
I just cracked open Burning Chrome by gibson for the first time in nearly 10 years. I realized I had only a read about three of the shorts in it, and finished the rest. Date, but still fun stuff. Especially enjoyed Dogfight and the winter market.

[Psycho Circus]

Just starting this tonight:

[lester1/2jr]

The Russian Anarchists


It's okay but these anarchists are anti private property and also ignorant of economics.  At the same time, Russia was pretty bleak under the tsars plus the anarchists criticized Marx in some good ways. Alot of the book is just about inter organiziational disagreements and bomb throwing.

I think I prefer "Defending the Undefendable" and other modern far out libertarian stuff.

[Mofo Rising]

The Russian Anarchists


It's okay but these anarchists are anti private property and also ignorant of economics.  At the same time, Russia was pretty bleak under the tsars plus the anarchists criticized Marx in some good ways. Alot of the book is just about inter organiziational disagreements and bomb throwing.

I think I prefer "Defending the Undefendable" and other modern far out libertarian stuff.

I read that book. It struck me as historical retelling of the people involved during that time, rather than an exploration of the ideas they were expounding. Interesting, but very dry.

[InformationGeek]

100 Bullets by Brain Azzarello

I picked up the first volume at the library to read.  The artstyle is a bit different and strange for my taste.  Kind of reminds me of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Strikes Back for some reason.  On the other hand, the story is pretty good.  I won't say much to spoil it, but I think I could seriously find myself enjoying all of this.  I'll be picking up volume 2 soon enough to read.