Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you READING?

Two books by R.S. Belcher, Nightwise and Six-Gun Tarot, consumed all of my free time this past weekend - and it was time well spent, a while since I've been lost in a good book.

Nightwise is an urban fantasy with a protaganist described by the author as a sort-of Harry Dresden. However, Laytham Ballard is a rougher character, harder and colder. He's become a legendary wizard through skill, but also through disregard for other people. Now he's on the trail of a rather more depraved wizard, a Serbian guilty of war atrocities.

What interested me in the story - apart from the unfolding of the hunt for the Serbian - is Ballard's character. He's a bastard, but older now, he's become more reflective on what he's done to achieve his status and he tries to do more good than harm. The author also added a few nice tricks to make this a contemporary fantasy, such as a Twittermancer, an Akashic Hacker and a Wall Street money manager. The idea that money is really magic (all illusion!) was pretty interesting, although a side story. Also, no elves, which was refreshing.

The Six-Gun Tarot is a supernatural western, set in 1869 Nevada, in a town named Golgotha. The town, for reason which I won't spoil, attracts a variety of people with supernatural powers: a Sheriff who can't be killed, his deputy, half-breed (human/coyote), a banker's wife who is secretly a Daughter of Lilith, a mayor guarding Morman treasures, an angel who questions God's plan, the malcontent Lucifer and a young boy, escaping murder charges, who possesses a mystical jade eye. Then there's the monstrous thing under the mountain, a force which God Himself could not destroy - but which the people of Golgotha must face.

The development of the characters is well-paced; they're a bit stereotypical but nonetheless interesting. Some of the battles with the forces of evil went on a bit long for my taste, with repetitive attacks and repetitive gore. However, there were enough twists in the story to keep the action moving and one of the character's secret past was a big surprise to me (although there was a glaring hint, in hindsight).

This is the first in what I expect will be a series of Golgotha stories (there's a second volume, The Shotgun Arcana). Although the good guys obviously won this round, there were enough mysteries left lurking in volume 1 to incite me to read the next book.

Astro City: Life in the Big City for about the 50th time.

I just reread that too!

No doubt the boring Engineer in my but I flip through trying to find inconsistencies like a line saying "we were on 10th street) and sure enough, two stories past there will be art showing them on 10th st.

I wish there were an ap I could explore the neighborhoods.

That would be very cool!

Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" again. My favorite novel (and Broadway play, which my wife and I have seen a bunch of times).

It's great if you've seen the musical, it's great if you haven't. It might be better if you haven't then you don't know where it's going to go. The tale is timeless in its exploration of the simple question, "What would you do if society has broken down and you could only live by what you yourself thought was 'right?"" (that's my takeaway)

I loved the book but not the musical (movie version). Fortunately this is the reading thread so I'm not being negative.

I just love that you loved the book!! Every iteration is a lesser version, like a copy of a copy. (although the stage play can be pretty awesome depending on who's in the show)

Finished "Cities of the Red Night" by Burroughs. WSB is probably my favourite author, but his stuff is certainly challenging as he doesn't hold back on content or structure. The book starts with two separate linear storylines, then slowly merges them, forgoes chronological order and eventually creates several realities, that conflict and converge, leaving the resolution up to the reader. Heady stuff.

I recently read Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. An out and out pot-boiler, for sure, but it was damn entertaining. Somewhere along Under the Dome and certainly by 11/22/63, King found his mojo again.

I recently read Persepolis 2 after reading Persepolis for school in the spring. It's an autobiographical graphic novel about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and I thought it was really incredible. It's black and white and just... wow.

I also read another graphic novel, American Born Chinese, for the same class and really enjoyed it.

Lastly, I read my first manga novel, Naruto, at the behest of a 13 year old girl (long story) and found it interesting. I don't think it's for me, though, because I found the female character incredibly shallow and terrible. (Although, I feel weirdly invested and curious about what happens next, so we'll see!)

Next up: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr for book club!

I would recommend that you keep reading as the series gets better right until the "time skip". The characters become better developed and the word-building is really well done.

Re-read CJ Cherryh's 40,000 In Gehenna this week. We had a lot of downtime at work, so it took me about 2.5 days.

A colony is set up as a bulwark against a rival trans-planetary government. The colony is deliberately abandoned by a power called Union, in order to bog down the Alliance in trying to deal with subsequent fallout. The transplanted humans and a native, sentient, quasi-reptillian species called the Calibans evolve working relationships. As the former colony degrades and splits, it evolves into two factions which take the co-existent relationship two different ways. Then there's a conflict, with two Alliance researchers inadvertently pitted against one another as they study it.


You either like Cherryh or you don't. The world-building and character sketches are what's most interesting here. The battle itself is almost in there as an afterthought. But I still enjoy this book. As with any older sci-fi, not every advance we take for granted now could be worked into the story 3-4 decades ago. But Cherryh's style is "loose" enough so that you can sort of mentally pencil them in yourself without hurting anything.

"Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams, and Rumours" by Zoe Howe"

To my knowledge, this is the first book to focus on Nicks rather than on Fleetwood Mac as a whole. Not that the never-ending Mac saga doesn't get plenty of pages. The question about Nicks has always been, is she a self-absorbed space cadet or a flawed but talented person who cares deeply about other people? Howe's conclusion leans towards the latter, but this is no hagiography -- the author maintains a slight detachment from her subject, wittily puncturing the stranger-than-fiction bubble whenever necessary. An absolute must-read for Nicks fans, and I think it may even win her some converts.

I'm sort of picking at three different books at once right now. I think it's a bad habit borne of sitting at the computer with a dozen tabs open at once. Damn you, 21st Century! [shakes fist]

Studs Terkel's Hard Times, which interviews both famous and obscure Americans about their experiences during The Great Depression

The Collected Short Stories of Willa Cather. Her most famous is probably "Paul's Case," which I remember reading in an anthology that I kyped from my roommate in college. Short stories were always my go-to entertainment for trips to the Laundromat. Thank Dog, in those days, there weren't TVs competing for the customer's attention.

The earlier stories have a stilted, warmed-over Jamesian feel to them, but as time progressed, her style became more individualistic and the characters more interesting.

Also, I have a terrific giant paperback of Joan Miro's art that I scored late last year for three (!!!) bucks at the thrift shop. Miro is sometimes lumped in with the Surrealists, but I always feel like he should have had a genre all to himself. His bizarre combos of line, shapes and colors have a feel that's toy-like and menacing at the same time. Even the small pictures feel like a god's-eye view of a huge, chaotic carnival or musical, because they have such an amazing sense of motion. They're not for peaceful contemplation, because they make the eye move constantly.

Find Her, The Virgin in the Ice, The Brief History of the Dead, The Sixth Extinction and The Relic Master but I'm not inspired to finish any of them. Thinking of picking up something of Stephen King's to kickstart my reading again.

I got about half/two-thirds of the way through Go Set A Watchman recently but never found the time/motivation to finish. I still want to finish All the Light We Cannot See but have not picked it up in a few months. My book club is reading The Boys in the Boat but I suspect I won't have time to get to it. It's too bad because I'm the one that suggested it; I wanted to read it! I just need to find time. (Where's Time Teller Lad when you need him?)

So I settled on The Fold by Peter Clines. Sort of a sci-fi/horror/mystery.

"The folks in Mike Erikson's small New England town would say he's just your average, everyday guy. And that's exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he's chosen isn’t much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he’s content with his quiet and peaceful existence.

That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to “fold” dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind’s dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn’t quite what it seems—and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there’s only one answer that makes sense. And if he’s right, it may only be a matter of time before the project destroys…everything."

Just finished Stephen Baxter's Proxima (having read a few of his others, I found this to be quite similar. It was decent enough though. I'm now reading a history of Hammer films. It has piccies, so shouldn't take too long.

These days? A great many LP liner notes and tax preparation forms.

Finished Cline's The Fold two days ago and it was actually a pretty decent book. I like the character of Mike and the way Cline had of establishing how his eidetic memory worked. I enjoyed the book enough to pick up a previous one of the author's, 14, as it seems to tie into the ending of The Fold. Already well into enjoying that one too.

Read another amazing Willa Cather novel, A Lost Lady that was incredibly deep and moving, full of nuanced characters and commentary on the Midwest at the transition of when it was settled and the turn of the century. Cather is in a class all by herself when it comes to multi-layered characters who feel natural and not overly complex; it's likely due to her prose which feels so rich yet purposeful. She's really emerged as one of my favorite authors.

Also caught up on the last few months National Geographic which I always enjoy. One of the recent issues had a terrific long article on feminism in Saudia Arabia, which is a continuation of other great feminism in the Middle East articles. Nat Geo continues to be one of the best magazines around.

Up next: at long last I intend to reread War and Peace, about 15 years after the first time. I had to clean out my briefcase to fit it in, considering it's the size of a football.

Finally got around to reading Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham (1954) and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935).

So depressing. Nothing has really changed in the United States of America for at least the past eighty years.

I'm going through and reading books written/published the year I was born. Currently it's Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. Or better known by the movie that was adapted from it, Soylent Green. Great novel so far (I just started it last night), great visual descriptions and not yet coming across as dated.

That's a fun idea. 58 was a great year for sci-fi movies, not sure about books. Wiki-ing

Oh! "Things Fall Apart," by Achebe, a favorite from Peace Corps days only now becoming "vogue" amongst the High School African Studies crowd here, thou. Only other one I recognize on the fiction list is "Exodus."

Sci-Fi, these are the only ones I found on a list for my year
25. _Non-Stop_ by Brian Aldiss [1958]
26. _A Case of Conscience_ by James Blish [1958]
27. _Have Space-Suit Will Travel_ by Robert A. Heinlein [1958]

Maybe I'll give them a try this summer. Great idea!

59 rocked!

28. _Time Out of Joint_ by Philip K. Dick [1959]
29. _Alas, Babylon_ by Pat Frank [1959]
30. _A Canticle for Leibowitz_ by Walter M. Miller [1959]
31. _The Sirens of Titan_ by Kurt Vonnegut [1959]

Too late for me to be a late baby? About 6 months late?