New Scaratings

The Life and Exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel or A Gay Adventurer by "John Blakeney".

Fictional "biography" of Sir Percy Blakeney, written by Baroness Orczy's son in 1938. I stumbled across an etext while web surfing. http://www.blakeneymanor.com/books/gay/g.html

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"We don't do comprehensive well." Lamar Alexander.

Sharper than a Serpents Tooth by Simon R. Green

A Dark Matter by Peter Straub.

Did Straub write "Ghost Story"?

he wrote the novel..not the screenplay, however

Thanks.

I'll check the library later this week.

Yes. Ghost Story is an excellent, excellent book. I'm about to re-read it soon. A Dark Matter is not up to the same level, but it's been interesting, so far. Definitely not a horror thriller in the sense of a Stephen King novel, so it would likely disappoint many. Nevertheless, my favorite thing about Straub is his ability to create both unique characters and atmospheres, and not so much the "what happens," so I've enjoyed it. Am about 70% of the way through it.

Finished A Dark Matter off tonight. It's really hard for me to decide how to explain my view on it, as it currently stands anyway.

First, if you are a fan of horror, and your idea of horror is predicated on gore or thrilling occurrences, I'm pretty sure you'd be upset if you paid a dollar for this book -- I don't mean that to disparage that way of looking at horror; I know that's what it is for many horror readers/watchers, though, so need to get it out of the way up front. That said, I'd give it 4 stars out of 5 for, I think, accomplishing what it intended to do. Perhaps it was marketed somewhat poorly, or perhaps some of the incredibly bad reviews I've read came from people who just expect Straub to automatically be horror and/or akin to King. Either way, the reviews seem to come in the variety of 4 - 5 stars, or "1 star and I wish I could give it 0".

I don't consider it substantially different in scope from Ghost Story, but far less actually happens in the book. It's more a voyage of a few character's mental voyage through ostensibly the same events. It really seems to steer more into a literary experiment in perspective and abstraction than it functions as a proper novel.

All in all, I'd recommend it as a fictional read, but if you're looking for something superficially scary, or if absent of that you expect the philosophical payoff to be groundbreaking, I'd avoid it.

Shadowrise by Tad Williams

"San Francisco BEAT: Talking with the Beat Poets", by David Meltzer.

Found it on-line while supervising the WV Writing Assessment. Vaguely interesting, especially the interview with Ferlinghetti. The Gary Snyder section of the book was unavailable on-line.

"Snyder Illinois Snyder Illinois Snyder Illinois. . ."

Oops, wrong thread. There was a Showdown question tonight about which beat poet shared his name with an industrial city in Illinois. Wish I'd seen TIEFLY's post earlier.

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"We don't do comprehensive well." Lamar Alexander.

Gary, Illinois. A great city.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

EGADS!!!

If I had played last night, I could have helped my team...if I had a team.

I used to love Turtledove. I still love the idea of Turtledove; I just wish someone had forced an editor on him at some point...

For alternative history, my guilty pleasure is the Ring of Fire series written/edited by Eric Flint.

I just finished up the last of the five Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro novels by Dennis Lehane. I'd had the first, A Drink Before the War, on the "to be read" shelf for a good two years. When I finally picked it up, I immediately went out and bought Darkness, Take My Hand. Halfway through that, I bought the next three (Sacred, Gone, Baby, Gone & Prayers For Rain). Described as "new noir," it's definitely trash fiction, but it's great trash fiction. I highly recommend the series.

Walter, Canis Inflatus

i'm trying to teach myself a little latin and if reading children's books helps..so be it

I like the Lehane stuff, also.

I thought I had read everything Turtledove ever wrote...

... until.....


.... a scifiles question where the answer was some book that sold like 1,000 copies that I had never heard of. Naturally, we missed it as I said, "Well # so and so isn't even by him !"

Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan.

I voted for the guy to take over Rahm Emanuel's seat in our special election primary last year so I figured it's about time to read his book. More entertaining than Samuelson.

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"We don't do comprehensive well." Lamar Alexander.

Finished Shadowrise. On to "The Stuff of Though" by Steven Pinker.

I finally succumbed to the e-reader (Nook in my case) and am taking advantage of the free Google books (high end OCR scans of non-copyrighted old books. They have a few garbled characters and weird breaks but are very readable) to catch up on some missing classics in my reading. I'm about 2/3 of the way through Barnaby Rudge right now. It's actually a bit slier in humorous tone than most of Dickens' stuff.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

I <3 my E-Reader (Kindle 2). The one thing I appreciate more than anything is the ability to read it in the sunlight.

The thousands upon thousands of free books out there helps, too.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

I'll start this one tonight. I think my English professor must be spinning in his grave.

Finishing off The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

I'm worse yet. I succumbed to Librivox.org a couple years ago to download free audiobook mp3 files to listen to when I get tired of the BBC World Service trying to put me to sleep. I'm still too cheap to buy an e-reader.

The latest was An International Episode by Henry James. A handbook for snarkiness -- I wish I could talk like a Henry James character when I get my ass kicked at trivia.

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"We don't do comprehensive well." Lamar Alexander.