The Friday Fragments feature lists of what I’ve read over the past week. They are not meant to be a recommendation list. If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive list, you can look on my website.
Kwahe’e Reads in Bed
This isn’t a book review column. It’s just a list with, maybe, a few opinions tossed in.
This week, by purest coincidence, identity seems to be a recurring theme.
Enjoy!
Recently Completed:
The Adventures of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg. I really enjoyed this because Bragg anchors his discussion in solid example, not linguistic theory. Recommended!
Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich. Audiobook. Vinnie is kidnapped. His staff reluctantly decides to go to the rescue.
Necromancer by Gordon R. Dickson. I read this years and years ago. Revisits very well. Oh… For those of you unfamiliar with Dickson’s work, there are no zombies involved.
The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. Although set in the same world as the Percy Jackson books, this sequel introduces some neat new characters while expanding on the “Great Prophecy.” I enjoyed.
In Progress:
Tactics of Mistake by Gordon R. Dickson. Somehow I missed this one. I’m quite enjoying.
Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan. Audiobook. Percy was missing in The Lost Hero. Now we know where he was. So far, so good… I only wish the reader was better.
Also:
I’m designing a new “chapter” for my on-going RPG, so I’ve been diving into my gaming manuals. I prefer GURPS, third edition.
What are you reading?
September 26, 2014 at 7:03 am |
Hmmm… Must revisit Necromancer. I encountered a serious WTH!?!?? at the end, and haven’t touched it again. Having read the rest of the Childe Cycle, I now know what was going on, but I’m not sure if it was me not paying attention or if some of the critical info simply wasn’t there.
I just stuck my nose into Shinn’s Royal Airs. Looks like it’s going to be as much fun as Troubled Waters or Fortune and Fate.
September 29, 2014 at 9:52 am |
The version of NEUROMANCER that I read most recently was in an compilation volume that contained prologues and aftermath…
Not sure if this made matters more or less clear.
September 30, 2014 at 6:19 am
Hopefully I’ll remember the original well enough to see what’s changed. It’s been…. errmm… 45 years 🙂
September 26, 2014 at 1:52 pm |
Gordon R. Dickson was actually one of the first SF authors I really got into. Tactics of Mistake is probably the one I like the best. Back when I was 13 or 14, I tried to see if I could figure out how to use auto-hypnosis myself (It didn’t work).
I read Lord Demon last week, and loved it. I also picked up a copy of Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. It’s a good read. I have copies of the sequels waiting in the queue. I’m interested in seeing how it develops.
September 29, 2014 at 9:53 am |
Ah… Three very different books. I found something to like in each one, but OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET is a favorite.
September 27, 2014 at 7:27 am |
I had a major GURPS collection from high school through college, probably most of a decade actually. Then we came on hard times and had to sell it to Half-Price Books. Cleveland, Ohio, is not a major bastion of GURPS and they vanished before I was able to repurchase them. Sad days, I most especially miss the Discworld RolePlaying Game and GURPS Discworld Also. I am now slowly rebuilding my collection. Currently reading the GURPS Deadlands (for 3rd ed, rev) and GURPS Horror (PDF) for background on a story idea I have been fiddling with. And A Clash of Kings (audio). And I have been reading Down These Strange Streets (ed. George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois) one story at a time for a few weeks now. I have put down Retief In the Ruins by Keith Laumer for now, I can’t read too much Retief without trying to catalog the expression designation to see if there is a pattern.
September 29, 2014 at 9:54 am |
Varied and interesting list! There are pros and cons to game books as sources for a writer, since they’re already secondary sources. I like the ones that include bibliographies so I can read deeper when needed.
September 30, 2014 at 5:34 am
That is actually what I like best about GURPS. The “genre books” (Fantasy, Horror, Old West, Mecha, Space, Supers, Cliffhangers, Cyberpunk) always have a bibliography at the end. Which is helpful for me, because I have limited trust in internet sources (Wiki’s for sure), and a regional library system to pull the books too obscure for my suburban library branch.
On an related note, the “World Books” are pretty comprehensive lists of “this has been done before” to help direct a game (and give you plenty of disasters to drop on your players heads). Those would be the conversion games like Deadlands, the Whitewolf Trio (Mage, Vampire, Werewolf), and Traveller, as well as “play in the novels” like Lensman, Wild Cards, and Discworld. Transhuman is interesting, but I never got into it enough to buy one, just browsed them at the game store/Half-Price and had to admit I wasn’t interested enough to give up the other book I just picked up. And now I am rambling…