I’ve been reading “The John Varley Reader,” a collection of his short stories spanning about 1970-2004, interspersed with autobiographical notes. The stories in my mind combine hard science fiction with New Wave elements. I really enjoyed a number of them, including “Air Raid,” the exciting time travel short story from which the so-so movie Millennium was made, and “PRESS ENTER 
,” a moving story about the internet written in 1985.
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One of the reasons why I was very careful when buying used books at the college bookstore.
With a kindle, you can get that senastion in spades.
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I actually kinda like the underlining, as long as there isn’t too much of it.
All too often I’m reading a book and thinking, this part is really important, or, this is a really nice line, I should remember it. But I seldom can be bothered to remember it.
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I ran across this a couple months too late:
Well Merry Christmas, as the saying goes. Guess I will have to go to bed for 24 hrs so I dont have to stop hating my fellow men. But that does not go for you, Ted. The best.
Pal Joey
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Lock in, by John Scalzi.
I liked it.
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Me too. My only beef: the new cop on his first day seemed altogether too competent.
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apparently he’s written a sequel? Any good?
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It’s not bad. If you like Scalzi, you will probably enjoy it.
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I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first.
I got confused between two characters, which is general problem with Scalzi’s characters – he doesn’t distinguish them sufficiently, IMO. I can’t visualize them. But his books are really interesting nevertheless.
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I recently finished reading Lethal White, the latest in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling). I got hooked on the video series back when I got Cinemax as a bonus to my cable package, but now that I no longer get it, I figured I should read the book instead of waiting for it to show up as a torrent.
I usually don’t go in for this genre of book – quasi romance mixed with murder mystery – but I’ve become attached enough to the characters so that I genuinely interested in finding out what happens to them. A modern day “Thin Man,” I guess. If you’re new to the series, it’s probably wise to start with the first book (“The Cuckoo’s Calling”) instead of diving into this one, which is the 4th in the series.
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Is the detective a functional alcoholic who cracks wise?
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Actually, no. He’s almost nothing like the William Powell character, except that he’s a private detective. Since it’s laid out from the very beginning, I’m not spoiling much divulging that he’s an ex-military amputee who is also the illegitimate son of an old rock star and one of his groupies. He’s assisted by a woman who starts out as a temporary secretary but evolves into more … and there’s a bit of sexual tension between the two. That’s why I described it as a quasi-romance, and some might be put off by the dynamic. That said, she’s smart and completely capable, and a strong leading character. Nevertheless, the series is named after him… “Cormoran Strike.”
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Pitty
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Trying once more to get through Gibson’s The Peripheral. There’s something about it that keeps rebuffing me. I can’t figure it out. Anyone else feel like this?
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Speaking of which, I just read The Thin Man fairly recently. Nick and Nora are a lot of fun, but even together they are no match for the Continental Op.
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Well Nick was at the end of his career in the book and was more worried about managing the money he married into and there were no other books for them. I believe it was Hammet’s last book as well.
The Continental Op was a shoot first and ask questions later guy and was very influenced by Hammet’s time as a Pinkerton. They were not nice guys.
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Disclosure: I’m a massive Gibson fan.
That said, it’s not uncommon for me to need to take two of three starts to his novels- the cadence and density of his prose can take me a minute to reacquaint myself with (if I haven’t read something of his is a bit).
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I believe I have read all of his books, some, multiple times. I especially like the Blue Ant series. This one just seems impenetrable. I am going to try the audiobook version of it and see if that makes any difference.
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FWIW: I’ve come to really enjoy The Peripheral. I found it absolutely worth whatever effort it takes.
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I had to do that with Neuromancer.
I love the first sentence, though (“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”), though I do wonder if it’s possible to tune a TV to a dead channel nowadays? Do young people understand this? Certainly analog TV noise is no longer a thing.
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