Good Reads - Discussion of Books, Literature, Reading, etc.

[abarbarian]

On 5/29/2021 at 4:03 PM, zlim said:

The books include the recipes so you can see exactly what is in the food and bake/cook it if you wish.

The Raspberry Danish mystery has 29 recipes.

 

No one dies eating the food. That isn't the method used to kill someone.

 

I am surprised my sister has never found these sort of books.

 

Do you try out all the recipes ?

[abarbarian]

Just finished these two good reads.

 

Ashes to Dust - Yrsa Sigurdardottir

 

The Gallows Bird  - Lackberg Camilla

 

An this very entertaining short story,

 

The Widows Cafe: A Short Story  -  Lackberg Camilla

 

Beware of speciality coffees

 

[Bookmem]

On 5/29/2021 at 10:03 AM, zlim said:

The books include the recipes so you can see exactly what is in the food and bake/cook it if you wish.

The Raspberry Danish mystery has 29 recipes.

 

No one dies eating the food. That isn't the method used to kill someone.

Zlim:  Have you read any Jenny Starling mysteries.

[zlim]

Quote

Have you read any

Jenny Starling mysteries.

No.

 

Looks like she publishes under 2 names, Joyce Cato and Faith Martin. I'll have to see if any of the county libraries carry them. All our libraries share books so the pot is so much larger when you request a book. It is shipped to my local branch and I get an email to come and pick it up.

 

https://www.goodreads.com/series/250718-jenny-starling

 

I'm currently reading The Semi-Sweet Hereafter (Overdrive, free thru my library) on my 10" android tablet.

And I've requested:

Broken Ice (not a food mystery but his first book, Gone to Dust,  was fantastic)

Shucked Apart (book #9 in the Maine Clambake series)

Pumpkin Spice Peril (book #12 in cupcake mysteries series) - in today but I discovered they now close for lunch. I think the staff is down to 1 person rather than the usual 2.

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by zlim

[Bookmem]

19 hours ago, zlim said:

No.

 

Looks like she publishes under 2 names, Joyce Cato and Faith Martin. I'll have to see if any of the county libraries carry them. All our libraries share books so the pot is so much larger when you request a book. It is shipped to my local branch and I get an email to come and pick it up.

 

https://www.goodreads.com/series/250718-jenny-starling

 

I'm currently reading The Semi-Sweet Hereafter (Overdrive, free thru my library) on my 10" android tablet.

And I've requested:

Broken Ice (not a food mystery but his first book, Gone to Dust,  was fantastic)

Shucked Apart (book #9 in the Maine Clambake series)

Pumpkin Spice Peril (book #12 in cupcake mysteries series) - in today but I discovered they now close for lunch. I think the staff is down to 1 person rather than the usual 2.

 

Faith Martin is a prolific author.  The Jenny Starling series is just one of many she's written.

[abarbarian]

Just finished this most excellent read.

 

The Rose Code

 

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1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

 

Another super read,

 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

 

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The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

 

 

A true life story that I found most entertaining, the title says it all.

 

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein

 

An as this is a techy site and I am a sci-fi fan i found this little gem filled in several pleasant hours.

 

The Artificial Kid by Bruce Sterling

 

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 Full of great ideas and potential. This book seemed pretty advanced for its time and also was keyed in to some concepts that have become reality - his prescient focus on use of drones to capture people's lives is amazing (think of reality TV's Keeping up with the Kardashians and "Real Housewives").

 

Considering the book was written 30 years ago it seems as though the author had second sight

 

 

[abarbarian]

A most excellent read.

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

 

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So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one...Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari - as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named - is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their heads touching, their limbs tangled. One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand. Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways in which we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us.

 

An as we are a techy site this is a must read.

 

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

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Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?

 

[sunrat]

Khaled Hosseini - I thought that name looked familiar, read "The Kite Runner" many years ago. Certainly an excellent read. Movie was not nearly as good.

[abarbarian]

8 hours ago, sunrat said:

Khaled Hosseini - I thought that name looked familiar, read "The Kite Runner" many years ago. Certainly an excellent read. Movie was not nearly as good.

 

Read the book which as you say was a good read. Never saw the movie.

[abarbarian]

Version Zero by David Yoon
 

Quote

 

With time on his hands and inside knowledge about the biggest tech companies, Max and his longtime friend—and sometime crush—Akiko, decide to get even by…essentially, rebooting the internet. After all, in order to fix things, sometimes you have to break them.

 

 

 

Interesting plot.

 

The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker

 

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"Rudy Rucker warms the cockles of my heart ... I think of him as the Scarlet Pimpernel of science fiction." - Philip Jose Farmer

 

A very entertaining read.

 

[DarkSerge]

I've been reading William Shakespeare's Star Wars saga. Someone wrote the entire main 9 episodes of the Star Wars films into Shakespeare format as if they were all plays, even with stage direction and a few illustrations of what they'd look like on stage - like cutouts of tie fighters on sticks being moved around on stage. Some characters even have special ways of speaking, such as Yoda speaks in haiku.

[abarbarian]

On 6/28/2021 at 8:32 PM, DarkSerge said:

I've been reading William Shakespeare's Star Wars saga. Someone wrote the entire main 9 episodes of the Star Wars films into Shakespeare format as if they were all plays, even with stage direction and a few illustrations of what they'd look like on stage - like cutouts of tie fighters on sticks being moved around on stage. Some characters even have special ways of speaking, such as Yoda speaks in haiku.

 

That is just so so wacked out I wonder what they were taking and for how long

[abarbarian]

This is a very interesting and curious list.

 

The Most Translated Books From Every Country in the World

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Without reading translated books, we’re only seeing a tiny sliver of the literature the world has to offer. Authors are writing incredible books in a variety of languages around the world, but only a small percentage make their way to English translations.

 

There are some surprising results or at least I thought so.

 

Canada: Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

United States of America: The Way to Happiness by L. Ron Hubbard

 

Austria: Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Felix Salten

 

Ireland: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

 

South Africa: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

 

Singapore: The Saint in New York by Leslie Charteris

 

Sri Lanka: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

 

Funnily enough I have read all the above apart from The Way to Happiness.

 

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

6 hours ago, abarbarian said:

United States of America: The Way to Happiness by L. Ron Hubbard

 

That single statement completely demonstrates The Decline and Fall of the United States of America Empire.

[abarbarian]

On 9/10/2021 at 4:57 PM, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

That single statement completely demonstrates The Decline and Fall of the United States of America Empire.

 

Gore Vidals view of the world from thirty years ago  could pretty much represent todays world

 

 

[sunrat]

2 hours ago, abarbarian said:

 

Gore Vidals view of the world from thirty years ago  could pretty much represent todays world

 

George Orwell wasn't that far off the predictive mark, especially since Nineteen Eighty-Four came out in 1949. And Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Must read both of those again soon.

[abarbarian]

I read the Dune series of books when they came out and though that they were a great read.

 

Dune Foresaw—and Influenced—Half a Century of Global Conflict

 

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In the decades since Herbert published Dune, in 1965, the book’s ecological, psychological, and spiritual themes have tended to get the credit for its breakout success beyond a hardcore sci-fi audience. In his own public commentary on the book, Herbert focused above all on its environmental messages, and he later became a kind of ecological guru, turning his home in Washington state, which he called Xanadu, into a DIY renewable energy experiment.

 

The above article is fascinating. It seems that hackers are Dune fans too.

 

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In 2014, cybersecurity threat intelligence firm iSight Partners discovered a group of Russian-speaking hackers carrying out what appeared to be a widespread espionage campaign focused on Eastern Europe. In their malware, the hackers had included strings of text to identify victims: arrakis02, BasharoftheSardaukars, SalusaSecundus2, epsiloneridani0. All references to Dune. Drew Robinson, an iSight analyst who worked on reverse-engi­neering the malware, remembers thinking, “Whoever these hackers were, it seems like they’re Frank Herbert fans.”

 

I knew in my bones that reading science fiction was the right thing to do when I was growing up.

[abarbarian]

Philip K Dick: the writer who witnessed the future  2nd March 2022

 

"Philip K Dick, who died 40 years ago today at the age of 53. In a remarkably prolific 30-year period of work, Dick authored 44 novels and countless short stories, adaptations of which went on to redefine science fiction on screen – in particular Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), which was based on Dick's story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), which took his 1966 short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale as its source material. More recently Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) has been turned into a hit Amazon series.

The man behind the visionary worlds

Dick was not simply an effective writer of strange fictions, but an unusual person in his own right. Burdened by deteriorating mental health, visions, and what he alleged were all manner of paranormal experiences – many of which were woven into his expansive oeuvre – Dick had a troubled and fragmented relationship with reality. In the 1970s, the author began to experience two parallel timelines of his own life, his thoughts invaded in 1974 by what he told interviewer Charles Platt was a "transcendentally rational mind", something he had many names for, but chiefly VALIS; an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. It became the subject of one of his late semi-autobiographical works, the 1981 novel VALIS, published not long before his death."

 

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

P.K.D. is long-time fav of mine along with one of his friends whom he mentored... Tim Powers.

[sunrat]

Just looked at my bookshelf. "The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch" and "The Crack In Space" sit there waiting to be read (again?).

Happy birthday in heaven P.K.D.!

[abarbarian]

18 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

P.K.D. is long-time fav of mine along with one of his friends whom he mentored... Tim Powers.

 

That Tim Powers looks pretty interesting. Just scooped a few of his titles as I have not heard of him before.

 

Dinner at Deviant's Palace

 

He has some interesting titles.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

If you can, try to read Powers in the order he wrote/published. It's so much better that way. I've read everything the man ever wrote. He's outstanding!

 

Tim Powers Bibliography

 

My favorite, and first encounter with his writings, is a book called  The Drawing of the Dark. It's still my fav after reading all his other output. I've read "Drawing..." at least three times since I first read it '79. Great little book. You'd like it, I'm pretty sure.

 

 

You can find most of his output in eBook format HERE.

[abarbarian]

On 3/26/2022 at 6:05 PM, V.T. Eric Layton said:

You can find most of his output in eBook format HERE.

 

Ah ha the fabulous lost city of Z. Took the tourist trip there some time ago from a link posted here.

 

The Skies Discrowned is next on my reading list. I'll let you know what I think.

[abarbarian]

Well I have had quite a few long waits for patients lately so have managed spend quite a few hours reading. Followed Eric's recommendation and started reading through Tim Powers books. So far they have all been jolly good reads,

 

The Skies Discrowned (1976)

• Powers, Timothy (1976). The Skies Discrowned. Toronto: Laser Books. ISBN 0373720289.
• Revised as: Powers, Tim (1986). Forsake the Sky. New York: Tom Doherty Associates. ISBN 0812549732.

An Epitaph in Rust (1976) An excellent story, most enjoyable.

Also published as Epitaph in Rust. The publisher's cover blurb describes a tale that "follows young Thomas from his escape from a rural monastery into the wilds of a future Los Angeles. There he joins a theater company where the play is definitely not the thing – revolution is – and he finds himself in the middle of it. The mayor has been blown up and his android guards are determined to end insurrection. But the theater company has other ideas..."

The Drawing of the Dark (1979)

The siege of Vienna was actually a struggle between Muslim and Christian magicians over the spiritual center of the West, which happens to be a small inn and brewery in Vienna. The "dark" is a beer that has been brewing for centuries, which the Fisher King will eventually drink.

The Anubis Gates (1983)

Philip K. Dick Award winner, 1983;^[9] Locus Fantasy Award nominee, 1984;^[10] BSFA nominee, 1985^[11]

A time travel story set mostly in 1810, featuring a brainwashed Lord Byron, magic, Egyptian gods and a werewolf.

Dinner at Deviant's Palace (1985) Another excellent read.

Philip K. Dick Award winner, and Nebula Award nominee, 1985^[11]

Unusually for Powers, this is set in the future, in a postatomic America in which an extraterrestrial psychic vampire is slowly taking over.

In 2001 the group Cradle of Filth released a song entitled "Dinner at Deviant's Palace" that was simply the Lord's Prayer backmasked.

On Stranger Tides (1987) Another excellent read.

Locus Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards nominee, 1988^[12]

Set in the 18th century Caribbean; with pirates (many of them real characters, primarily Blackbeard, as well as a fictional protagonist named Jack), voodoo, zombies, Juan Ponce de León, and a strangely quantum-mechanical Fountain of Youth. Disney incorporated elements of the novel into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.^[13]

The Stress of Her Regard (1989) Decent story but too much attention to background. It was like reading a tourist guide to the area in places.

Locus Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards nominee, 1990^[14] and winner of the 1990 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.

Concerning the dealings of the Romantic poets – Byron and Shelley are major characters – with vampire-like beings from Greek mythology, François Villon being also mentioned as minor character. Reprinted in 2008 with Tachyon Publications.

 

                                                                                                                 

Three Days to Never (2006)  Just started this, the story is intriguing.

Locus Fantasy Award nominee, 2007^[20]

        

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I LOVE Tim Powers, but as I may have mentioned already, _The Drawing of the Dark_ was my first and favorite Tim Powers story. I've actually read it three times over the last 40 years. That's unusual for me. I don't re-read books too often.

[crp]

On 4/22/2022 at 1:33 AM, abarbarian said:

Well I have had quite a few long waits for patients lately so have managed spend quite a few hours reading. Followed Eric's recommendation and started reading through Tim Powers books. So far they have all been jolly good reads,

 

The Drawing of the Dark (1979)

The siege of Vienna was actually a struggle between Muslim and Christian magicians over the spiritual center of the West, which happens to be a small inn and brewery in Vienna. The "dark" is a beer that has been brewing for centuries, which the Fisher King will eventually drink.

ok, this one got my attention.  How violent is it?

[crp]

I have restarted The Thrawn Trilogy.

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Enjoy. I gave up on serialized books years ago.

[crp]

28 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

Enjoy. I gave up on serialized books years ago.

hmmm, good serialized books ....

Well, The Thrawn Trilogy  (Zahn)

Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)

not sure if it counts, Nicholas Nickleby  (Dickens)

Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn [ though HF is so much better ] (Twain)

Trader Tales  (Nathan Lowell)

 

can't think of anything else.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I wasn't talking about the older "trilogies" and such. I've read all that. I was talking about modern publishers' pushing authors to serialize and endlessly spoon feed their reader fan base for eternity all in the interest of JACKING UP THAT BOTTOM LINE for the greedy publishers.