14May2010
Another brief book catch up post
Posted by Dirk under: books.
Bernard Cornwell – Gallows Thief: Wrote the very popular Sharpe series (which were also made into several movies), Cornwell writes fun historical adventure books. In this one a down on his luck gentleman in London takes a job to prove that a painter really did kill a nobleman. I enjoyed it.
Bernard Cornwell – Agincourt: A book about the famous battle of Agincourt (Some dude named Shakespeare wrote a play that involved it too) told from the perspective of an English archer. Cornwell is good at creating villains that get me rooting for them to die in some horrible way. Another fun book.
Bernard Cornwell – Redcoat: I was on a Cornwell kick. This one is about part of the Revolutionary War, told from the viewpoint of a British Redcoat. Another pretty enjoyable read.
Stephen Gould – Blind Waves: Set in a near future, after the polar ice melts (or something like that) and lots of flooding has happened along the coasts. Set along the coast of Texas and is about a lady that does salvage who finds something in a sunken ship that causes some bad people to come after her to keep her quiet. Decent read, kept me interested.
Naomi Novik: First three books in the Temeraire series. I mentioned these in a previous thread. An entertaining romp around the Napoleonic War era with a British Naval Officer turned Airman and his dragon. I am currently reading the 4th one.
Robert Silverberg – Hawksbill Station: And odd little book about political prisoners that get sent back in time, on a one way trip, to about a billion years in the past. Published in 1968.
Neal Asher – The Voyage of the Sable Keech: I really like Neal Asher’s books and I’m surprised he isn’t more popular in America. This is a sequel to his book Spatterjay, which I liked a lot. I don’t think this one was quite as good, but it was still enjoyable. I like the world he has created on Spatterjay.
John Christopher – The White Mountains: Another older book that I read about on some list of favorite books people read when they were younger. This is the first in a trilogy about a future in which Aliens have basically domesticated humans and three boys that try to revolt. It’s pretty thin and written for younger readers and didn’t engage me all the well, though I’d probably have liked it when I was a kid. Probably won’t pick up the rest of the trilogy unless I find em used someplace.
Laurie R. King – The Moor: Laurie R. King has written a series of novels based on the premise that an older and semi-retired Sherlock Holmes meets an intelligent young woman who basically replaces Watson. Eventually they get married. The books are told from the pov of the woman, Mary Russel, and though the books are probably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue I still have enjoyed all the books I have read in the series.
Richard L. Boyer – The Giant Rat of Sumatra: Another Sherlock Holmes story, this one is pretty much a straight up telling of a Holmes adventure. No smarty women coming between Holmes and Watson here, just some bad guys that need to be caught. Not bad.
Sam Keith (from the journals of Richard Proenneke) – One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey: In 1968 Richard Proenneke had himself flown into a remote lake in Alaska where he built himself a log cabin and lived through the winter. He pretty much retired there and lived in that cabin off and on for the rest of his life. This book is an account of his first year or so there, how he built his cabin and stuff like that. Not terribly exciting reading, but I dug it. Proenneke was a heck of a guy.
Sometimes I read non-fiction. Random non-fiction books grab my attention for some reason. In the case of this book, it was that cover photograph. Those dudes look pretty badass and that was enough for me to grab the book. Also, that area of the world is pretty interesting, as in the old Chinese curse of “May you live in interesting times.” type of interesting.
Man, some days, I really miss Deadwood. Fuck HBO for cancelling that show.
First book length reading on my new Kindle (also, I bought a Kindle recently 
). I think this is supposed to be Young Adult novel but I thought it worked just fine for a 44 year old dude. Basically the story of a young girl who finds out on her 14th birthday that she is a wee bit different than all the other kids out there. I won’t tell you how, exactly, she is different, cause that would be a spoiler.
Elmore Leonard is one of those authors that I almost can’t go wrong with. I haven’t read more than half a dozen of his books but they’ve all been pretty good. This one is too. Basically a western transplanted to Cuba. The main character is a cowpoke who just got out of jail for robbing banks (he was just trying to get the money he was owed though) who gets involved with a scheme to ship horses from America to Cuba and sell them for a handsome profit.
A schoolteacher with a secret life as “Allison Murrieta”, modern day outlaw. She robs from everybody, keeps some of it and gives some away to charities. But she gets involved with some bad dudes when she steals some diamonds and ends up with a very badass ex-gang member after her.
If you get a big tax refund check because you’ve got kids, don’t go around gloating about all the money you are getting back because there are plenty of people like me that have chosen not to have any kids but yet we still get to pay for your kid’s education and shit like that. And let me make this clear, I don’t mind paying for other people’s kid’s education. Not at all. I think it is very important. What pisses me off is when I am paying for it and the people who had the damn kids are not paying for it. That really frosts my goat.