So What Are you Reading?: Generations
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Giving The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins a go.
Latest episode of Literary Treks is up! Literary Treks 305: The Nacene Scenes, in which Bruce and I cover Voyager: String Theory, Book 3: Evolution by Heather Jarman.
Currently reading The Original Series: Agents of Influence by Dayton Ward. Loving it so far!
Currently reading The Original Series: Agents of Influence by Dayton Ward. Loving it so far!
The Way to the Stars: This gets a strong recommendation from me. The characters are all relatable, and I am a big fan of the way McCormack addressed things from all the preceding chapters in the final chapter.
Dead Endless: I am halfway through, and like the spore network itself, it is a little on the strange side. I am concerning myself more with the characters, AU though they be, than with the plot of the Discovery being stranded.
Out of curiosity, is it common knowledge what a tardigrade is, or did a lot of forum members also learn what type of animal that is from the show Discovery? They never came up in my schooling or media exposure during the 1990's.
Dead Endless: I am halfway through, and like the spore network itself, it is a little on the strange side. I am concerning myself more with the characters, AU though they be, than with the plot of the Discovery being stranded.
Out of curiosity, is it common knowledge what a tardigrade is, or did a lot of forum members also learn what type of animal that is from the show Discovery? They never came up in my schooling or media exposure during the 1990's.
I was aware of them before DSC, though not as far back as the '90s. They've been kind of a trendy thing in pop culture for a while now, which is no doubt why DSC used them. Tardigrade-based aliens also showed up in Netflix's Voltron reboot 8 months before Discovery premiered.
I started The Unsettling Stars by Alan Dean Foster.
Yeah, they were popping up everywhere for awhile. I remember Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) running into some giant space tardigrades a few years back.
The thing that tardigrades got so much attention for was the fact that they were so hardy they could even theoretically survive in space (basically by going into a desiccated sort of hibernation they could revive from later). So it's no surprise that we got a slew of spacegoing tardigrade-based creatures in various SF works in subsequent years. There was this guy who'd made a tardigrade-based video game and sued Discovery for ripping him off, but there was no greater similarity there than between the other two uses of the "space tardigrade" trope mentioned above, or the further examples that probably exist beyond my personal knowledge.
Started on The Everything Box by Richard Kadrey.
(Copy of post that I just put up on my Facebook page and on GoodReads that I thought some here might be interested in reading, too.)
I once again stayed up way too late another night last night to finish reading whatever present book I’ve been reading, in this case Roger Moore as James Bond: Roger Moore’s Own Account of Filming “Live and Let Die’” (1973).
I really enjoyed this book, which is a day by day diary style account by Moore from his first days of shooting the movie to his last, and all of the many things that go into the making of a major motion picture like a James Bond movie and the many people involved in its making.
The first half of the book or more follows Moore’s shooting on location in Louisiana (mostly boat chases through the bayous and scenes in New Orleans) and Jamaica (where, among other scenes, the infamous Kananga crocodile farm scenes were shot). Then, just in time for Christmas, the first unit returned to England to begin several weeks of shooting at Pinewood Studios (for most of the movie’s interior scenes). Finally, for Moore and David Hedison (who plays American CIA agent Felix Leiter), several days of shooting on location in New York City, including scenes in some of the poorest and crime ridden neighborhoods of Harlem.
Moore agreed to record a daily account of all of this at the time so that this book could be released just before the movie as a promotional tie in. He details his encounters with fellow cast mates (like leading lady/“Bond girl” Jane Seymour and Bond villain Yaphet Kotto (“Mr. Big”)), Bond films producer Harry Saltzman, and director Guy Hamilton.
Even more interesting at times are Moore’s accounts of the head craft services person on location, George Crawford’s attempts to keep hundreds of film people fed each day and on schedule (including once even he accidentally *delayed* shooting for several hours when he accidentally took the car with Jane Seymour’s make up in it to go looking for food supplies, and another story of how, reluctantly, he had to turn over the chicken he was preparing for the film unit’s lunches when a refrigerator holding the raw chicken for a scene with the crocodiles got left off over night and the “crocodile bait” chicken went rancid; apparently even crocodiles won’t eat spoiled chicken).
Moore also details the many days that the weather wouldn’t cooperate, as well as his own various duties off screen such as interviews with various press reporters (the most common question being, “How will your James Bond be different from Sean Connery’s?”), still photography sessions, and promotional appearances.
Being a diary taken at the actual time of shooting, this book also goes into much more detail of Moore’s daily interactions with his wife at the time, Louisa Mattioli (which he was married to from 1969 to 1996), his children, and the personal friends and acquaintances he would spend his off hours with than Moore’s much later written memoirs do when he reflects in them back to this period of time filming his first James Bond film.
I highly recommend this book for fans of the James Bond movies and/or of Roger Moore, as well as those who would find it interesting to see just how a big budget, stunts and location shooting heavy movie of the early 1970s was made. (For instance, it wasn’t until his fourteenth day of shooting that Moore got to speak any real lines of dialogue, the two weeks prior to that having been mostly used shooting the boat chase scenes. Also, the headaches of trying to schedule the “royal premiere” date in London which required coordinating it with whichever member of the royal family who would be available to attend, something that American films—and even most British ones, I would suppose—would not have to deal with, but that is simply expected to happen with the release of a new James Bond.)
As I said, highly recommended, if you can find a copy. As this book came out nearly fifty years ago (1973), it is of course by now out of print. I got my copy to read via interlibrary loan with my local public library system (Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library) borrowing a copy for me from Salem State University Library in Salem, Massachusetts. Used copies can probably still be found online of either the first printings or subsequent printings (some under alternate titles like Roger Moore’s James Bond Diaries and The 007 Diaries: Filming Live and Let Die).
I give this a four stars out of five on GoodReads (and would probably give it four and a half if GoodReads as allowed for half stars in their ratings).
I once again stayed up way too late another night last night to finish reading whatever present book I’ve been reading, in this case Roger Moore as James Bond: Roger Moore’s Own Account of Filming “Live and Let Die’” (1973).
I really enjoyed this book, which is a day by day diary style account by Moore from his first days of shooting the movie to his last, and all of the many things that go into the making of a major motion picture like a James Bond movie and the many people involved in its making.
The first half of the book or more follows Moore’s shooting on location in Louisiana (mostly boat chases through the bayous and scenes in New Orleans) and Jamaica (where, among other scenes, the infamous Kananga crocodile farm scenes were shot). Then, just in time for Christmas, the first unit returned to England to begin several weeks of shooting at Pinewood Studios (for most of the movie’s interior scenes). Finally, for Moore and David Hedison (who plays American CIA agent Felix Leiter), several days of shooting on location in New York City, including scenes in some of the poorest and crime ridden neighborhoods of Harlem.
Moore agreed to record a daily account of all of this at the time so that this book could be released just before the movie as a promotional tie in. He details his encounters with fellow cast mates (like leading lady/“Bond girl” Jane Seymour and Bond villain Yaphet Kotto (“Mr. Big”)), Bond films producer Harry Saltzman, and director Guy Hamilton.
Even more interesting at times are Moore’s accounts of the head craft services person on location, George Crawford’s attempts to keep hundreds of film people fed each day and on schedule (including once even he accidentally *delayed* shooting for several hours when he accidentally took the car with Jane Seymour’s make up in it to go looking for food supplies, and another story of how, reluctantly, he had to turn over the chicken he was preparing for the film unit’s lunches when a refrigerator holding the raw chicken for a scene with the crocodiles got left off over night and the “crocodile bait” chicken went rancid; apparently even crocodiles won’t eat spoiled chicken).
Moore also details the many days that the weather wouldn’t cooperate, as well as his own various duties off screen such as interviews with various press reporters (the most common question being, “How will your James Bond be different from Sean Connery’s?”), still photography sessions, and promotional appearances.
Being a diary taken at the actual time of shooting, this book also goes into much more detail of Moore’s daily interactions with his wife at the time, Louisa Mattioli (which he was married to from 1969 to 1996), his children, and the personal friends and acquaintances he would spend his off hours with than Moore’s much later written memoirs do when he reflects in them back to this period of time filming his first James Bond film.
I highly recommend this book for fans of the James Bond movies and/or of Roger Moore, as well as those who would find it interesting to see just how a big budget, stunts and location shooting heavy movie of the early 1970s was made. (For instance, it wasn’t until his fourteenth day of shooting that Moore got to speak any real lines of dialogue, the two weeks prior to that having been mostly used shooting the boat chase scenes. Also, the headaches of trying to schedule the “royal premiere” date in London which required coordinating it with whichever member of the royal family who would be available to attend, something that American films—and even most British ones, I would suppose—would not have to deal with, but that is simply expected to happen with the release of a new James Bond.)
As I said, highly recommended, if you can find a copy. As this book came out nearly fifty years ago (1973), it is of course by now out of print. I got my copy to read via interlibrary loan with my local public library system (Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library) borrowing a copy for me from Salem State University Library in Salem, Massachusetts. Used copies can probably still be found online of either the first printings or subsequent printings (some under alternate titles like Roger Moore’s James Bond Diaries and The 007 Diaries: Filming Live and Let Die).
I give this a four stars out of five on GoodReads (and would probably give it four and a half if GoodReads as allowed for half stars in their ratings).
Started on Demolition Winter (Space: Above and Beyond) by Peter Telep.
It's been a while since I've read it, so dug it out again to take a look.
It's been a while since I've read it, so dug it out again to take a look.
im finishing up TNG: The Devil's Heart by Carmen Carter. Up next is TNG: Grounded by David Bischoff. I've been making my way through the 90s TNG pocket books era.
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