Thursday, July 09, 2009
When I Was Eight
by John Jaech
This is another of those family publications that you'll never get to read unless you come over to my house and pull it off my shelf. (And maybe not even then, if my sister-in-law lays claim to it.) What Uncle John has done, in his spare time, is to pull news headlines from 1937 and intersperse them with his own comments and recollections. It yields an interesting peak into community and family history. It almost makes me want to peruse back issues of The Chicago Tribune from the mid-seventies and start work on my own book.
LibraryThing link
This is another of those family publications that you'll never get to read unless you come over to my house and pull it off my shelf. (And maybe not even then, if my sister-in-law lays claim to it.) What Uncle John has done, in his spare time, is to pull news headlines from 1937 and intersperse them with his own comments and recollections. It yields an interesting peak into community and family history. It almost makes me want to peruse back issues of The Chicago Tribune from the mid-seventies and start work on my own book.
LibraryThing link
Labels: OnMyShelf
Monday, July 06, 2009
Millard Fillmore
by Robert J. Scarry
Who would have expected a book about Millard Fillmore to have an agenda? I mean, you can expect a book about Lincoln or FDR to take sides in a controversy. But A bio of Millard Fillmore? How could there even be a controversy about him? Isn't it common knowledge that he's one of those dull one-termers who merely kept the presidential chair warm until Lincoln got elected? Well, that's the stereotype that Mr. Scarry hoped to dispel with his book. Rather than a weak, ineffectual leader, Mr. Scarry makes the case for Fillmore as a principaled man who made the hard choices to put aside his own popularity and preferences on slavery to preserve the Union and obey the Constitution. While his accomplishments were overshadowed by the Civil War, Mr. Scarry maintains that Fillmore truly made an impact on the course of American history. For me, the book revealed a generational shift in American politics. Millard Fillmore appeared to be at the tail of the the Clay-Calhoun-Webster generation, who were willing to maintain the nation's slave-free compromise for the greater "good". After 1850 that system crumbled as younger politicians started pushing for their ideals. All in all, Mr. Scarry did a good job of presenting Fillmore's life and times. His writing is a bit uneven at times--the flow of Fillmore's story is now and then broken up with paragraphs of simple facts. But really, that's the only complaint I have with the book.
Do check it out.
LibraryThing link
Who would have expected a book about Millard Fillmore to have an agenda? I mean, you can expect a book about Lincoln or FDR to take sides in a controversy. But A bio of Millard Fillmore? How could there even be a controversy about him? Isn't it common knowledge that he's one of those dull one-termers who merely kept the presidential chair warm until Lincoln got elected? Well, that's the stereotype that Mr. Scarry hoped to dispel with his book. Rather than a weak, ineffectual leader, Mr. Scarry makes the case for Fillmore as a principaled man who made the hard choices to put aside his own popularity and preferences on slavery to preserve the Union and obey the Constitution. While his accomplishments were overshadowed by the Civil War, Mr. Scarry maintains that Fillmore truly made an impact on the course of American history. For me, the book revealed a generational shift in American politics. Millard Fillmore appeared to be at the tail of the the Clay-Calhoun-Webster generation, who were willing to maintain the nation's slave-free compromise for the greater "good". After 1850 that system crumbled as younger politicians started pushing for their ideals. All in all, Mr. Scarry did a good job of presenting Fillmore's life and times. His writing is a bit uneven at times--the flow of Fillmore's story is now and then broken up with paragraphs of simple facts. But really, that's the only complaint I have with the book.
Do check it out.
LibraryThing link
Labels: CheckItOut
Thursday, May 28, 2009
A Blazing World
by Jess Nevins
Hey, I have the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, so I had to go and read Jess Nevins' companion volume, right? I mean, LOEG II has even more obscure references than it's predecessor, so it's almost a necessity. Like Mr. Nevins' first book, this one has all the notes you'd need to explain the lush detail of LOEG. It also features interviews with LOEG creators Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.
Again, it's good for the waiting room.
LibraryThing link
Hey, I have the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, so I had to go and read Jess Nevins' companion volume, right? I mean, LOEG II has even more obscure references than it's predecessor, so it's almost a necessity. Like Mr. Nevins' first book, this one has all the notes you'd need to explain the lush detail of LOEG. It also features interviews with LOEG creators Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.
Again, it's good for the waiting room.
LibraryThing link
Labels: JessNevins, WaitingRoomMaterial
Monday, May 18, 2009
Heroes and Monsters
by Jess Nevins
This is a read once kind of book--"The Unofficial Companion to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." If you've read LOEG, you know that is is packed full of characters from and references to other works of fiction. Mr. Nevins has gone through and made notes about them all. Since I'm not quite as well read as him, I loved paging through the book and finding out about the references I didn't catch. But now that I'm done, well, I doubt if I'll read it again. I mean, occasionally you get a reference book that's entertaining to read despite the information it contains--like The Joys of Yiddish or Phil Farrand's Nitpicker guides--but Heroes and Monsters ain't one of them. Sorry, Jess.
It's wunnerful waiting room material!
LibraryThing link
This is a read once kind of book--"The Unofficial Companion to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." If you've read LOEG, you know that is is packed full of characters from and references to other works of fiction. Mr. Nevins has gone through and made notes about them all. Since I'm not quite as well read as him, I loved paging through the book and finding out about the references I didn't catch. But now that I'm done, well, I doubt if I'll read it again. I mean, occasionally you get a reference book that's entertaining to read despite the information it contains--like The Joys of Yiddish or Phil Farrand's Nitpicker guides--but Heroes and Monsters ain't one of them. Sorry, Jess.
It's wunnerful waiting room material!
LibraryThing link
Labels: JessNevins, WaitingRoomMaterial
Sunday, May 10, 2009
King Solomon's Mines
by H. Rider Haggard
This is the first of the Alan Quartermain novels, that adventure series from the late 1800s. As a ground breaking adventure novel, I suppose I should have liked it better. The problem is, I've read so many "lost world" tales in my day that King Solomon's Mines seemed a bit cliched. I do have to admit, though, that despite the racism and other 19th Century attitudes, the story has weathered pretty well. The novel is nowhere near as thick as some of its contemporaries that I've read.
Very pleasant waiting room material.
LibraryThing link
This is the first of the Alan Quartermain novels, that adventure series from the late 1800s. As a ground breaking adventure novel, I suppose I should have liked it better. The problem is, I've read so many "lost world" tales in my day that King Solomon's Mines seemed a bit cliched. I do have to admit, though, that despite the racism and other 19th Century attitudes, the story has weathered pretty well. The novel is nowhere near as thick as some of its contemporaries that I've read.
Very pleasant waiting room material.
LibraryThing link
Labels: WaitingRoomMaterial
Monday, May 04, 2009
The Snow Goose
by Paul Gallico
I'm not sure what to call this--a 20th century fable? It's a short tale of Philip Rhayader, a kind and artistic soul with a deformed body. In his twenties, he moves to the English seacoast to live in seclusion, away from the repulsive looks and attitudes of "normal" people. He spends his time painting, sailing his boat and caring for the birds that take up residence in his property. He finds peace in this lifestyle, but one day a young girl from the nearby village brings a injured snow goose to him. As she helps him care for the bird, a tenuous relationship develops. It's a short, quiet, emotional tale in which love and fear, beauty and ugliness mix together to give a brief peek into reality.
Check it out, it's short.
LibraryThing link
I'm not sure what to call this--a 20th century fable? It's a short tale of Philip Rhayader, a kind and artistic soul with a deformed body. In his twenties, he moves to the English seacoast to live in seclusion, away from the repulsive looks and attitudes of "normal" people. He spends his time painting, sailing his boat and caring for the birds that take up residence in his property. He finds peace in this lifestyle, but one day a young girl from the nearby village brings a injured snow goose to him. As she helps him care for the bird, a tenuous relationship develops. It's a short, quiet, emotional tale in which love and fear, beauty and ugliness mix together to give a brief peek into reality.
Check it out, it's short.
LibraryThing link
Labels: CheckItOut
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Cities in Flight
by James Blish
This sucker is actually four novels collected into a single volume. The collection starts with They Shall Have Stars. The year is 2013 and humanity is out among the solar system while, back on Earth, a quiet struggle is going on between the West and the Soviets. It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the two, however, as the Western governments seek to impose more and more control on their populace. Amidst this all is a scheme of Alaskan senator Bliss Wagoner, which is playing out in a lab on Earth and a gigantic construction project in the atmosphere of Jupiter. They Shall Have Stars was entertaining enough. The 1957 story seemed dated in many ways, but in others it seemed eerily prescient.
A Life for the Stars is the second tale in the collection, set centuries after the first. Humanity has discovered the gravitronpolarity generator, or "spindizzy" and over the years, first factories, then entire cities have used this gravity cancelling device to leave Earth and propel themselves through interstellar space. Chris deFord gets press ganged onto the departing city of Scranton and begins a new life among the stars.
Story #3, Earthman Come Home, is the first (and best) of the tales to have been written. It's the saga of the city of New York, an "okie" city travelling the stars and looking for work. Mayor John Amalfi and City Manager Mark Hazelton guide the city through a series of adventures culminating in a... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
The Triumph of Time closes out the volume. Mayor Amalfi comes out of retirement to face a final challenge, one that will have significance for the entire universe. It was the least satisfying of the four stories. Overall, the book is good, classic science fiction. The concept of space faring cities is intriguing, though it failed to truly grab hold of my imagination. But it was enough to carry me through dozens of lunch breaks, so I can't really complain.
It's good waiting room material, if you have a looooong wait.
LibraryThing link
This sucker is actually four novels collected into a single volume. The collection starts with They Shall Have Stars. The year is 2013 and humanity is out among the solar system while, back on Earth, a quiet struggle is going on between the West and the Soviets. It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the two, however, as the Western governments seek to impose more and more control on their populace. Amidst this all is a scheme of Alaskan senator Bliss Wagoner, which is playing out in a lab on Earth and a gigantic construction project in the atmosphere of Jupiter. They Shall Have Stars was entertaining enough. The 1957 story seemed dated in many ways, but in others it seemed eerily prescient.
A Life for the Stars is the second tale in the collection, set centuries after the first. Humanity has discovered the gravitronpolarity generator, or "spindizzy" and over the years, first factories, then entire cities have used this gravity cancelling device to leave Earth and propel themselves through interstellar space. Chris deFord gets press ganged onto the departing city of Scranton and begins a new life among the stars.
Story #3, Earthman Come Home, is the first (and best) of the tales to have been written. It's the saga of the city of New York, an "okie" city travelling the stars and looking for work. Mayor John Amalfi and City Manager Mark Hazelton guide the city through a series of adventures culminating in a... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
The Triumph of Time closes out the volume. Mayor Amalfi comes out of retirement to face a final challenge, one that will have significance for the entire universe. It was the least satisfying of the four stories. Overall, the book is good, classic science fiction. The concept of space faring cities is intriguing, though it failed to truly grab hold of my imagination. But it was enough to carry me through dozens of lunch breaks, so I can't really complain.
It's good waiting room material, if you have a looooong wait.
LibraryThing link
Labels: WaitingRoomMaterial
