From My Bookshelf
February 9, 2010 in Articles
Some interesting books…
Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMasters Bujold is two books…Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Its set in the Miles Vorkosigan space opera universe. A number of her MV books I’ve reread three times. One of her books made me laugh out loud and cry in the same book.
St. Valentine’s Night by Father Andrew Greeley is one of his romance novels about love and the Irish in Chicago. Its not neccessarily the most memorable. Greeley taught me a lot about love and humanity.
Wolftime by Lars Walker is delightfully demented as it describes the human condition. Good and evil warring with the background of comedy. Odin has come to post-Lutheran Minnesota to face off against a dissapointed English lit professor who cannot lie. Very funny.
Blood and Judgement also by Walker is stranger, probably less well done, and much harder to understand with grimmer topics.
Infectress by Tom Cool, Commander in the USN…which makes him ‘Commander Cool’! A bioterrorist in the near future and a man’s loyal AI duel over the fate of the man. Cool has an interesting bit where he has two halves of the AI arguing with each other as to whether the spiritual realm exists. He also posits an interesting reason for pain…after the AI is first turned on, its a total sophist…err, solipsist. Its only after being tortured for some time that it admits reality exists outside of itself. A ‘cool’ read.
The Moon is Always Full by David Hunter is a set of short, true, Southern cop stories. Yes, the South is sometimes violent and crazy. But while it can be depressing in too large a dose, a small bit can be quite amusing.
Vigilant by James Alan Gardner. He also wrote ‘Expendable’. He has some seriously wild ideas, and some deep thought about forgiveness. In his universe, there is no interstellar war because the godlike League forbids it. If you intend to, or have murdered by act or ommission, knowingly, you die as soon as you hit interstellar space…no exceptions. But you can send someone off to likely death. And it helps the locals back home to know that the people sent off to die are ugly. So if you’re born with a facial birthmark, you don’t get the easy surgical repair. Instead, you get drafted into the Expendables as they call them selves. He’s very good.
Count Scar by Robert A. Bouchard is a medieval fantasy about an old soldier given a castle for his retirement and he’s put in the midst of a religious war. The opposing side has the doctrine of Perfected aka once God accepts you, you don’t sin any more. For those of you, who’ve met a Christian for longer than ten minutes, you’re no doubt laughing by now. One benefit of this doctrine is that it breeds arrogance, and arrogance makes for more powerful magicians.
Its an unexpected book in a lot of ways.
Jannissaries by Jerry Pournelle has a group of American mercs given a ride to an alien planet populated with different groups of humans so they can grow drugs for the aliens. Its a conquer the locals, scheme against the aliens military SF with a lot of drawings in it as well. I’ve read it a number of times. Its one of the military SF that ends with a large battle which gets drawn out on a map. This is a common thing in a number of military SF.
Cradle of Saturn by James P. Hogan offers a startlingly different take on human history and the formation of the solar system. Its also a blistering slam against the Bishops of Big Science, and thats the first half. The second half is the predicted disaster.
All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot is not the first book in the series. They are the tales of a Yorkshire vet working in the 40′s and 50′s. In one book, he discusses the first time he used pennicillin. They are terrifically funny as he narrates the various hardships like sticking one hand up a cow’s butt while laying on slick stone at midnight without a shirt on in freezing weather with good humor.
M. J. Young said on February 10, 2010
I read the first of the Herriot books–All Creatures Great and Small. The next two, All Things Bright and Beautiful and All Things Wise and Wonderful, are lying around my wife’s bookshelf somewhere, but I want to read the second before the third and I’ve more recently seen the third. Good stories, though. My wife was very much into them before the BBC made a television series (which aired later on PBS and then with the rise of cable on A&E), and my introduction was mostly her talking about the stories and then seeing them produced on television. The television productions are extremely well done and very true to the books, except that Peter Davison does not look anything like Tristan Farnham, and although Ziegfried’s manner and character are wonderfully captured by that consummate character actor Robert Hardy, I’m not certain that he looks the part either.
Thanks for sharing this.
–M. J. Young
Tadeusz said on February 12, 2010
The Empty Crown is the first three books in the not finished ’12 Treasures of Chandrekar?????’. It starts with The Sword of Maiden’s Tears which is more pedestrian and duller and depressing than The Cup of Morning Stars and the next one. Its gets pretty wild and weird. I don’t know if there were ever any more books in this series.
You have a Paladin who traded for his memories, a Rennaissance Faire girl with manic-depressive disorder who has a very nice steel suit of armor with a steel blade…in a land of elves allergic to iron, elves who are more like medieval nobles, a dragon that might have made me burst out laughing when I met him.
In the later books you travel up the Iron Road toward Faerie and along the road are many faerie tales.
Its hard to do justice to this. Suffice it to say that I’ve reread the latter books many times.
The Fox by Sherwood Smith is….I don’t know. I read the first chapter or two and didn’t get that interested. Its the second in a series.
Witness of (or in) the Stars by EW Bullinger answers the Riddle of the Spyhinx which he claims is ‘Where does the Zodiac start?’ (So you can read it.) He makes the arguement that a ancient humans had the story of Sin and Redemption written in the Zodiac, and that our Grecian understanding of such is a decayed understanding.
It gets a bit tedious as he repeats himself three times, but he claims the Zodiac does this. Perhaps so, or perhaps there are intricacies he is not teasing out of the variations.
I read most of it. I am not qualified to judge his arguement.
Blood and Judgement is in part also about time travel, or time jumps, or something. Perhaps when you get around to reading it, you can explain this confusing book to me.
Flat rate care package coming your way.
M. J. Young said on February 12, 2010
Oh–why thank you. I’ll look for it. I was wondering what I was going to read next.
–M. J. Young
M. J. Young said on February 18, 2010
Books arrived today; I perused them briefly when I passed through my bedroom between long errands. Thank you very much.
–M. J. Young
Eric said on February 18, 2010
Cool. Jannissaries did not make it, and perhaps others. Jannissaries was hiding under the table. I think I may have tried to send it last time, and did not succeed then either. Perhaps its secretly a metamorphosized Ring of Power that is not ready to betray its master yet?
M. J. Young said on February 18, 2010
Perhaps indeed it is awaiting the right time.
I was thinking of mailing a few books back to you, but my Teddy London books are all autographed copies, and most of the others I’ve really enjoyed you sent me anyway (but for the Harry Potter books, and I’d be surprised if you haven’t read those, and almost as surprised if I can find a full set, despite the fact that we have duplicates of nearly all of them, given the number of people to whom my wife has been lending them).
Maybe I’ll pick up a couple of Teddy Londons for you when I see C. J. at the next Ubercon; that, though, will be November, so I make no promises concerning my memory. I have trouble keeping track of things I put off from yesterday to today.
–M. J. Young
Eric said on February 18, 2010
You will not be surprised. I have read the Harry Potter novels. I haven’t read the Teddy London ones. Tell him I can write a review if he likes, and no worries about the memory if you forget.
Eric said on February 18, 2010
There are intricacies Bullinger does tease out in the tripartite repeating of the Zodiac, but the sameness seemed to dominate to me. It might be just me.
Nuwan said on February 7, 2012
EXACTLY what I imiagned your bookshelves to look like! Overflowing with amazing books, all of which I want to read!