So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
- Start date
Last night I started Lumberjanes: A Terrible Plan, written by Noelle Stevenson & Shannon Watters with art by Caroly Nowak, Brittney Williams, Aimee Fleek, Faith Erin Hicks, Rebecca Tobin, Felicia Choo, and T. Zysk. There are so many artists because the first issue has the characters all telling "scary" stories, and each story is illustrated by a different artist.
Just finished up Kindred by Octavia Butler and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Currently reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and listening to Bobiverse #4: Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor
Currently reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and listening to Bobiverse #4: Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor
Those books are about the Bajorans right? Or also about the Cardassians?
They take place during the Occupation and have both Bajorans and Cardassians as major characters.
THE WANTED by Robert Crais
Private eye Elvis Cole is hired by a woman to find out where her teenage son got a forty grand Rolex, and soon finds himself racing a couple of sociopathic hitmen.
It’s a fast, mostly tense read, very enjoyable, and nice to be reacquainted with Cole and Joe Pike. In fact Pike doesnt appear until a third of the way in, and I had been beginning to think he wasn’t going to feature.
You can really tell that Crais, unlike, say, Michael Connelly, who turned to fiction from being a crime reporter, started as a TV staff writer, because you’ll get a line of dialogue from a character, then a line of description or action taken by that person in a new one line paragraph, then aother line from the same person in a new paragraph…. Because that’s the way scripts are laid out. Never really noticed that before in his books, but it’s there.
This does kind of lead to a higher page count with a lower word count, and the pacing stumbles a bit in the last quarter as we suddenly get a couple of padded but entertaining in and of themselves Tarantinoesque flashbacks to flesh out the hitmen, which really halt the dive towards the climax to do something that should have been done earlier. Speaking of the hitmen, they seem to be coded as vaguely queer, echoing Wint and Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever, but at least one of them also hints at an interest in underage girls, making me wonder if Crais is trying to conflate queerness with paedophilia…. Or whether he just couldn’t quite decide which way they should swing but wanted them to seem sufficiently evil, as if the tortures and murders didn’t tell us that. Hm.
Anyway, for the most part, thrills, tension, two good leads, and proper MacGuffin handled just the way they traditionally should be. But that disappointing niggling coding too.
Private eye Elvis Cole is hired by a woman to find out where her teenage son got a forty grand Rolex, and soon finds himself racing a couple of sociopathic hitmen.
It’s a fast, mostly tense read, very enjoyable, and nice to be reacquainted with Cole and Joe Pike. In fact Pike doesnt appear until a third of the way in, and I had been beginning to think he wasn’t going to feature.
You can really tell that Crais, unlike, say, Michael Connelly, who turned to fiction from being a crime reporter, started as a TV staff writer, because you’ll get a line of dialogue from a character, then a line of description or action taken by that person in a new one line paragraph, then aother line from the same person in a new paragraph…. Because that’s the way scripts are laid out. Never really noticed that before in his books, but it’s there.
This does kind of lead to a higher page count with a lower word count, and the pacing stumbles a bit in the last quarter as we suddenly get a couple of padded but entertaining in and of themselves Tarantinoesque flashbacks to flesh out the hitmen, which really halt the dive towards the climax to do something that should have been done earlier. Speaking of the hitmen, they seem to be coded as vaguely queer, echoing Wint and Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever, but at least one of them also hints at an interest in underage girls, making me wonder if Crais is trying to conflate queerness with paedophilia…. Or whether he just couldn’t quite decide which way they should swing but wanted them to seem sufficiently evil, as if the tortures and murders didn’t tell us that. Hm.
Anyway, for the most part, thrills, tension, two good leads, and proper MacGuffin handled just the way they traditionally should be. But that disappointing niggling coding too.
New episode of the Positively Trek Book Club is up:
Positively Trek 45: Book Club: TNG: Warped by Mike McMahan
Warped was definitely an interesting experience. Fun as a parody, a bit over the top at times, but I got into a good groove reading it and quite enjoyed it by the end. Interesting to see the early versions of some things that have shown up in Lower Decks, too!
Currently reading Deep Space Nine #11: Devil in the Sky by Greg Cox and John Gregory Betancourt.
Positively Trek 45: Book Club: TNG: Warped by Mike McMahan
Warped was definitely an interesting experience. Fun as a parody, a bit over the top at times, but I got into a good groove reading it and quite enjoyed it by the end. Interesting to see the early versions of some things that have shown up in Lower Decks, too!
Currently reading Deep Space Nine #11: Devil in the Sky by Greg Cox and John Gregory Betancourt.
I read that 2 or 3 years ago and I really enjoyed it. The Enterprise makes a cameo but it was just a cameo, which I liked. I was concerned suddenly the Enterprise was going to come in to 'save the day' and that's not what I was looking for in this book. I liked that it was focused on the case and on Cogley.
TOS Ex Machina by Christopher Bennett. I'm loving it
17 – A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AMAZONS, Women Warriors In Myth And History, by Lyn Webster Wild.
I dunno if I should even count this, considering how little I got into it before skimming to the end.
Nah, there are immediate problems with it. First she says it’s not going to be this sort of book, but another sort of book, then mostly writes it as the sort she said she wouldn’t, suggesting she couldn’t decide or was unable to make her intention work. Then almost immediately she displays a total misunderstanding of Ancient Greek symbology and art. Which is a problem when that’s actually what you’re basing your thoughts on. Skimming to the end, after she’d spent the beginning telling us how everything anybody said about the Amazons was conjecture and just bloody-mindedness, she ends up coming the same obvious conclusion as literally everybody else [i.e. lots of different cultures had empowered women and the Greek name just stuck as a general descriptor], as if it was amazingly new.
She also uses ‘I’ too much in the factual bits instead or [or as well as, rather] in the personal experience bits, which is iffy.
I probably will go back to it at some point, but for whatever reason it’s not doing it for me right now. Maybe I was just not quite in the mood for how this turned out, or maybe I was just oddly annoyed that the only pop culture Amazon she mentioned was Xena instead of Wonder Woman, or maybe it’s just too slow a slog when I’m trying to reach a total of at least 24 entries by the end of the year and don’t want to spend another month on number 17, [and it’s only 191 pages, BTW], but…
This is the recreational reading log, and if I’m not enjoying it and relaxing then it isn’t recreation, especially in my current second go with covid, so I don’t have to go through it. Which leaves me with a bit of a problem; as I’ve been alternating male and female writers, and trying to vary the genre each time, do I now just go with a male writer. or find a female one, and if the latter it has to not be crime or an SF tie-in...
I dunno if I should even count this, considering how little I got into it before skimming to the end.
Nah, there are immediate problems with it. First she says it’s not going to be this sort of book, but another sort of book, then mostly writes it as the sort she said she wouldn’t, suggesting she couldn’t decide or was unable to make her intention work. Then almost immediately she displays a total misunderstanding of Ancient Greek symbology and art. Which is a problem when that’s actually what you’re basing your thoughts on. Skimming to the end, after she’d spent the beginning telling us how everything anybody said about the Amazons was conjecture and just bloody-mindedness, she ends up coming the same obvious conclusion as literally everybody else [i.e. lots of different cultures had empowered women and the Greek name just stuck as a general descriptor], as if it was amazingly new.
She also uses ‘I’ too much in the factual bits instead or [or as well as, rather] in the personal experience bits, which is iffy.
I probably will go back to it at some point, but for whatever reason it’s not doing it for me right now. Maybe I was just not quite in the mood for how this turned out, or maybe I was just oddly annoyed that the only pop culture Amazon she mentioned was Xena instead of Wonder Woman, or maybe it’s just too slow a slog when I’m trying to reach a total of at least 24 entries by the end of the year and don’t want to spend another month on number 17, [and it’s only 191 pages, BTW], but…
This is the recreational reading log, and if I’m not enjoying it and relaxing then it isn’t recreation, especially in my current second go with covid, so I don’t have to go through it. Which leaves me with a bit of a problem; as I’ve been alternating male and female writers, and trying to vary the genre each time, do I now just go with a male writer. or find a female one, and if the latter it has to not be crime or an SF tie-in...
Xena wasn't even an Amazon. Her sidekick Gabrielle was (by adoption).
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