Read today the novella Typhon Pact The struggle within
started TNG Indistinguishable from magic
started TNG Indistinguishable from magic
So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
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Are there plans to review more of the TNG relaunch novels next year, such as the Typhon Pact series and the Cold Equations trilogy?
I decided to go to what I feel is a good jumping on point for post-series material, with the DS9 Avatar duology by S.D. Perry. I've own everything with post-series TNG, DS9 and VOY. I've only read bits and chunks over the years. This will be a fun reading experience.
I just finished re-reading Uhura's Song, and I'm now starting Aaron Glantz's Homewreckers. I'd seen a poster advertising it during my fall (i.e., postponed spring) vacation, in a notable independent bookstore in San Francisco (the one on Van Ness, right by Max's Opera Cafe).
JR Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart both of which I rate as very good.
Now going to read X-Men Days of Future Past (prose novel) before moving on to the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy.
Now going to read X-Men Days of Future Past (prose novel) before moving on to the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy.
I forgot to mention I finished Interphase Part 1 by @Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, the last novella in the first paperback Star Trek: SCE omnibus.
This one's a fun sequel to the TOS episode The Tholian Web. Duffy's anxiety over being in command was a nice bit character development for him, as was Gold's interest in the Defiant.
I've now started Part 2, which is the first story in the second SCE paperback omnibus.
Before that I had also started an e-book version of The Art of Moana by Jessica Julius and Maggie Malone, but I'm not sure if I'm going to finish, since about half way through my tablet suddenly stopped loading any of the images. It's kind of hard to enjoy an art of... book, when you can't see the art.
This one's a fun sequel to the TOS episode The Tholian Web. Duffy's anxiety over being in command was a nice bit character development for him, as was Gold's interest in the Defiant.
I've now started Part 2, which is the first story in the second SCE paperback omnibus.
Before that I had also started an e-book version of The Art of Moana by Jessica Julius and Maggie Malone, but I'm not sure if I'm going to finish, since about half way through my tablet suddenly stopped loading any of the images. It's kind of hard to enjoy an art of... book, when you can't see the art.
Typhon Pact -Plagues of Night
Still in Glantz's Homewreckers. The sorts of things that were done to cause, and then profit from, the mortgage crisis would not be believable in a work of fiction; as it stands, this is one of those books one can read only in small doses.
Wearing the Cape: Repercussions by Marion G Harmon.
I found the original pages option for the e-book of The Art of Moana, which is actually viewable on my tablet, so I'm back working on that. I actually like this a lot better since it has all of the extra graphics, and layout form the paper book, which are the removed in the default "flowing text" version.
Yeah, I was really surprised when I found the button to switch to the original pages, and suddenly all of the extra graphics and colored backgrounds were there, and the art was in spread our and more arranged differently. In the "flowing text" version it was just a blank background with one or two images in the middle of the page with some text.
If you want to see what I mean, you can tell the difference with the preview pages under the cover on the Amazon page and the "look inside" pages.
If you want to see what I mean, you can tell the difference with the preview pages under the cover on the Amazon page and the "look inside" pages.
After my last post I started the digital version of The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part One, written by Michael Dante DiMartino, with art by Irene Koh, colors by Vivian Ng, and letters by Nate Piekos of Blambot. This is the first comic set after the end of the TV series.
The Coldest December, an anthology of short stories relating to the Halifax Explosion.
On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia's harbor. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions en route to Europe, caught fire and, shortly after 9 o'clock local time, the cargo exploded, laying waste to the city and surrounding communities, killing (officially) two thousand and injuring nearly 10,000 more, in what's judged to be the largest manmade explosion to that time. To mark the centennary of this event, Quarter Castle Publishing commissioned an anthology of eleven short stories from Nova Scotian authors.
There's some interesting material here. "Silenced Memories" is a slight mind-bender about a man suffering from PTSD stemming from the explosion. "The Whispers of Words" is about a man in his eighties who discovers some artifacts of his long-dead father's which reveal a family history in Halifax he never knew. "The Ring" is the only overtly supernatural story, featuring a present-day widow who keeps dreaming of a woman who survived the explosion. "Neighbours," though obvious where it's heading, is a nice tale of confronting anti-German prejudices during World War I. And Annemarie Hartnett's "Big Ramblin' Mike" may be the best of the bunch, a compelling tale of a retired boxer who, despite losing his wife and children in the explosion, opens up his stove shop to strangers for shelter.
But there's also a lot of sameyness. The stories, even the stories framed in a future after the explosion, generally follow the same template: person living their life blissfully, explosion occurs, person suffers a loss because of it (loss of vision, loss of children or partner, loss of home). I could imagine stories told from the perspective of Canadian soldiers on the Western Front who learn about the explosion and react with concern for their loved ones. The anthology lacks in stories that deal with the aftermath beyond the first night, such as the severe winter weather, and also lacks stories about the native and black communities around Halifax which, if memory serves, were affected by the explosion.
In general, there's a superficiality to the stories. No story evokes a sense of another time and place, reading some of the stories you'd think that December 6th was a pleasant summer day, and nothing really feels like it's describing life and events of a century ago. The book would have benefitted from a map of Halifax and environs; from reading this book, I couldn't tell you a thing about the city. I kept thinking of Stan Lee's ethos that "every issue is someone's first issue"; editorial notes kept forming in my head: "Explain this. Expand on this. Paint a picture." These stories assume readers are already familiar with the city and the events and do little to help the reader. If this were the first place you encountered the events of the Halifax Explosion, you'd come away from the book knowing very little about it.
Fundamentally, The Coldest December is an anthology by local authors, on a local matter, written to be read by local readers. That's disappointing, because this book could have been quite a bit more.
On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia's harbor. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions en route to Europe, caught fire and, shortly after 9 o'clock local time, the cargo exploded, laying waste to the city and surrounding communities, killing (officially) two thousand and injuring nearly 10,000 more, in what's judged to be the largest manmade explosion to that time. To mark the centennary of this event, Quarter Castle Publishing commissioned an anthology of eleven short stories from Nova Scotian authors.
There's some interesting material here. "Silenced Memories" is a slight mind-bender about a man suffering from PTSD stemming from the explosion. "The Whispers of Words" is about a man in his eighties who discovers some artifacts of his long-dead father's which reveal a family history in Halifax he never knew. "The Ring" is the only overtly supernatural story, featuring a present-day widow who keeps dreaming of a woman who survived the explosion. "Neighbours," though obvious where it's heading, is a nice tale of confronting anti-German prejudices during World War I. And Annemarie Hartnett's "Big Ramblin' Mike" may be the best of the bunch, a compelling tale of a retired boxer who, despite losing his wife and children in the explosion, opens up his stove shop to strangers for shelter.
But there's also a lot of sameyness. The stories, even the stories framed in a future after the explosion, generally follow the same template: person living their life blissfully, explosion occurs, person suffers a loss because of it (loss of vision, loss of children or partner, loss of home). I could imagine stories told from the perspective of Canadian soldiers on the Western Front who learn about the explosion and react with concern for their loved ones. The anthology lacks in stories that deal with the aftermath beyond the first night, such as the severe winter weather, and also lacks stories about the native and black communities around Halifax which, if memory serves, were affected by the explosion.
In general, there's a superficiality to the stories. No story evokes a sense of another time and place, reading some of the stories you'd think that December 6th was a pleasant summer day, and nothing really feels like it's describing life and events of a century ago. The book would have benefitted from a map of Halifax and environs; from reading this book, I couldn't tell you a thing about the city. I kept thinking of Stan Lee's ethos that "every issue is someone's first issue"; editorial notes kept forming in my head: "Explain this. Expand on this. Paint a picture." These stories assume readers are already familiar with the city and the events and do little to help the reader. If this were the first place you encountered the events of the Halifax Explosion, you'd come away from the book knowing very little about it.
Fundamentally, The Coldest December is an anthology by local authors, on a local matter, written to be read by local readers. That's disappointing, because this book could have been quite a bit more.
Last night I started reading Harley Quinn Vol 1: Hot in the City written by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, with art in #0 by a whole collection of artists I really don't feel like listing, and by Chad Hardin for the rest of the issues, colors by Alex Sinclair and letters by John J. Hill.
FOUR WHITE HORSES AND A BRASS BAND: True Confessions from the World of Medicine Shows, Pitchmen, Chumps, Suckers, Fixers, and Shills by Violet McNeal.
Originally published in 1947, it's the memoir of a young woman who ran away from the farm to find excitement as part of a traveling medicine show. Fascinating stuff, wittily told. (McNeal has a snarky sense of humor that feels very modern.)
Originally published in 1947, it's the memoir of a young woman who ran away from the farm to find excitement as part of a traveling medicine show. Fascinating stuff, wittily told. (McNeal has a snarky sense of humor that feels very modern.)
About halfway through Homewreckers now.
Just finished the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy. Very good.
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