So What Are you Reading?: Generations
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Currently reading three books at a time right now: Foundation, Spells for Forgiving, and Pillars of Earth. The last is a long read. The first is a quick read like the Dubliners that I finished last week. The one in the middle I need to finish for book club before the end of the month. I'm about a third of the way through it. It's like reading a Hallmark movie. I bought a Titans book to read that was on sale that I'll eventually get to this year. It's the last of the series, but it was discounted and had good reviews at Good Reads. Nice thing about the older Star Trek novels is that they're short. For some reason book publishers seems to want 400+ page books, but honestly, I sometimes want a quick 200-300 page book to read. I also like short story collections.
Last day of another month! The following are books that I read in their entirety or finished reading in March:
Novels:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds The High Country by John Jackson Miller
Comics:
Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach by Brian Azzarello, J. G. Jones, Lee Bermejo
Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair by Len Wein, Jae Lee, John Higgins
Rorshach by Tom King, Jorge Fornes
Star Trek: Day of Blood by Christopher Cantwell, Ramon Rosanas, Angel Unzueta
Superman: The Dailies 1941-1942 by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, et al.
Superman Archives Volume 4 by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, et al.
Superman: The Action Comics Archives Volume 3 by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, et al.
(Originally uncredited Superman artists whose work likely appears in these volumes: Wayne Boring, Paul Cassidy, Jack Burnley, Ed Dobrotka, Leo Nowak, Fred Ray, John Sikela.)
Also am currently reading:
A Feast for Crows (George R. R. Martin)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Superman: The World’s Finest Comics Archives Volume 1
Superman: The Sunday Classics 1939-1943
— David Young
Novels:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds The High Country by John Jackson Miller
Comics:
Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach by Brian Azzarello, J. G. Jones, Lee Bermejo
Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair by Len Wein, Jae Lee, John Higgins
Rorshach by Tom King, Jorge Fornes
Star Trek: Day of Blood by Christopher Cantwell, Ramon Rosanas, Angel Unzueta
Superman: The Dailies 1941-1942 by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, et al.
Superman Archives Volume 4 by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, et al.
Superman: The Action Comics Archives Volume 3 by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, et al.
(Originally uncredited Superman artists whose work likely appears in these volumes: Wayne Boring, Paul Cassidy, Jack Burnley, Ed Dobrotka, Leo Nowak, Fred Ray, John Sikela.)
Also am currently reading:
A Feast for Crows (George R. R. Martin)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Superman: The World’s Finest Comics Archives Volume 1
Superman: The Sunday Classics 1939-1943
— David Young
Finally managed to crack David Mack's latest opus, Firewall, on Easter. I think I'll re-read Ben-Hur next (sometime during "Liturgical Easter," I read some classic work of religious fiction, whether it's Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim's Progress, The Divine Comedy [which really is riotously funny, particularly in parts of "Inferno"], The Chronicles of Narnia, or some Madeleine L'Engle, or maybe Joseph Heller's religious-but-completely irreverent God Knows).
A couple notes partway through A Time to Kill:
1. The musician Junior Mance is mentioned as someone Geordi recommended to Will. YouTube did not exist when the book was published, but now that it does, I grabbed a few of the top results for my Watch Later list. If anyone, including the author, wants to share a favorite piece or performance of Mance's, please do so.
2. This sentence in one of the Qo'noS chapters tickled my fancy, and I wanted to include it here in appreciation of the wordcraft. "He could be welcomed into the mess hall of any warship in the imperial fleet and join the grizzled veterans as they guzzled tankards of warnog, gorged themselves on jawfuls of gagh, and passed the hours filling the ship with roaring battle-songs."
1. The musician Junior Mance is mentioned as someone Geordi recommended to Will. YouTube did not exist when the book was published, but now that it does, I grabbed a few of the top results for my Watch Later list. If anyone, including the author, wants to share a favorite piece or performance of Mance's, please do so.
2. This sentence in one of the Qo'noS chapters tickled my fancy, and I wanted to include it here in appreciation of the wordcraft. "He could be welcomed into the mess hall of any warship in the imperial fleet and join the grizzled veterans as they guzzled tankards of warnog, gorged themselves on jawfuls of gagh, and passed the hours filling the ship with roaring battle-songs."
What Bible are you using that credits Hebrews that way? No one's seriously believed that Paul was the author since the 3rd century CE.
There are a number of apocryphal epistles, including a third Corinthians. Most of the non-canonical epistles (like the two Clements) are part of what's known as "The Apostolic Fathers Collection." The difference seems to be that the New Testament epistles are by people who knew Jesus (Peter, John, James) or claimed to have had a vision of him after the crucifixion (Paul), while the Apostolic Fathers (Clement) are people didn't know him or have a vision. A different process, and we could have had more canonical epistles.Was the revelation that there were too many epistles?
KJV.
And we're hardly unfamiliar with pseudonymous authorship around here; even before the "Autobiography" series, we had a few ST novels attributed to "L. A. GRAF," which was later revealed to be an acronym for "Let's All Get Rich And Famous."
And as I was driving into work this morning, KUSC was broadcasting the Andante Cantabile movement of a string quartet long attributed to Haydn, but now considered to be of uncertain origin (the first two quartets of the Opus 3 set are currently believed to be the work of Roman Hofstetter.)
Just finished Firewall, and moving on to my annual read of a classic work of religious fiction during Liturgical Easter. This year, re-reading Lew Wallace's greatest hit, the doorstop known as Ben-Hur.
Hmm. Are CLB, KRAD, and GC now the only major ST authors without a PIC novel?
Hmm. Are CLB, KRAD, and GC now the only major ST authors without a PIC novel?
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Well, that hurts......
Sorry; oversight corrected.
I read Ben-Hur for the first time a couple of years ago (probably in one of my fits of reading "books that used to be popular"). Firstly, I realised that I'd never seen the film and, secondly, that I prefer Lloyd C Douglas' "The Robe" and "The Big Fisherman" (and I haven't seen those films either).
For me, Ben-Hur is a novel that could have done with a stern edit - a great adventure story that's made tedious by the rambling.
LW's descriptive passages do tend to make ADF's most verbose and detailed descriptive passages seem downright terse.
I've never read the book, but the 1950's film Ben-Hur is one of the best I've ever seen, and I highly recommend it.
A Time to Heal was a much more fulfilling read this time around. There's still a bit too much death and suffering on and above Tezwa to make it one I will return to often. I understand and respect that A Time to Heal is not meant to be a pleasurable story on the whole, so I will just say good job.
I'm just two chapters and an epilogue from finishing A Time for War, A Time for Peace. KRAD's love of the Trek universe and gift for writing characters and dialogue shine through this tale.
A Time to Heal was a much more fulfilling read this time around. There's still a bit too much death and suffering on and above Tezwa to make it one I will return to often. I understand and respect that A Time to Heal is not meant to be a pleasurable story on the whole, so I will just say good job.
I'm just two chapters and an epilogue from finishing A Time for War, A Time for Peace. KRAD's love of the Trek universe and gift for writing characters and dialogue shine through this tale.
I don't even remember much of it (even after looking it up in Memory Beta), but it can't possibly be any more of a downer than Last Best Hope.
Aw, thanks!
Now something on the order of about 10-15% into Ben-Hur: I might break 100 pages this evening.
Ben-Hur is a doorstop of a novel, weighing in at over 600 pages (in the unabridged B&N edition I have), divided into eight books, each subdivided into chapters, none of them titled. It's subtitled, "A Tale of the Christ," although most of it is about the titular character, Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in the Roman Empire, whose adventures are set in motion by the betrayal of a childhood friend.
But the entirety of Book I is a retelling of the Christmas Story, starting out with three men meeting up in the desert: Balthasar, from Egypt, Melchior, from India, and Gaspar, from Greece.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew doesn't say anything about how many "wise men from the east" there were, or where they were from, or their names or social standings, or even how long after the birth they arrived. All it says is that they brought gifts that (as George Carlin lampshaded in his "Interview with Jesus") seem completely impractical for a baby, yet filled with with symbolic meaning (as explained in the Christmas carol, "We Three Kings"): gold, franincense, and myrrh, symbolizing (respectively) the three roles of Jesus: king, high priest, and sacrificial victim. While Wallace does not describe the Magi as kings (rather, as learned and inspired social outcasts), and he probably did not invent the idea that they were three men traveling without entourage (and arriving only days after the birth, rather than a few years later, the consensus of modern scholars), nor (in all likelihood) their names, Ben-Hur undoubtedly did much to popularize the notion that Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar arrived, alone, only days after the shepherds had come and gone.
We don't get introduced to the titular protagonist until Book II.
Ben-Hur is a doorstop of a novel, weighing in at over 600 pages (in the unabridged B&N edition I have), divided into eight books, each subdivided into chapters, none of them titled. It's subtitled, "A Tale of the Christ," although most of it is about the titular character, Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in the Roman Empire, whose adventures are set in motion by the betrayal of a childhood friend.
But the entirety of Book I is a retelling of the Christmas Story, starting out with three men meeting up in the desert: Balthasar, from Egypt, Melchior, from India, and Gaspar, from Greece.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew doesn't say anything about how many "wise men from the east" there were, or where they were from, or their names or social standings, or even how long after the birth they arrived. All it says is that they brought gifts that (as George Carlin lampshaded in his "Interview with Jesus") seem completely impractical for a baby, yet filled with with symbolic meaning (as explained in the Christmas carol, "We Three Kings"): gold, franincense, and myrrh, symbolizing (respectively) the three roles of Jesus: king, high priest, and sacrificial victim. While Wallace does not describe the Magi as kings (rather, as learned and inspired social outcasts), and he probably did not invent the idea that they were three men traveling without entourage (and arriving only days after the birth, rather than a few years later, the consensus of modern scholars), nor (in all likelihood) their names, Ben-Hur undoubtedly did much to popularize the notion that Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar arrived, alone, only days after the shepherds had come and gone.
We don't get introduced to the titular protagonist until Book II.
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Aren't Egypt and Greece both west of Bethlehem, though?
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