I finished Al Franken’s Giant of the Senate a week or so ago. It was quite an entertaining read, but felt kinda… I dunno, sorta toothless at the end. He keeps himself on a very short leash, except when it comes to Ted Cruz and Trump. That might keep him in good standing in the institution so he can continue to do good work on behalf of his Minnesotan electorate, but jeez… if it weren’t for the book itself (and his promotional tour of the talk shows), one could be forgiven for forgetting he even exists on the political stage.
Now I’m reading City of Devils by Justin Robinson. Postwar noir in L.A. except the nation has been conquered by Universal-type monsters (werewolves, mummies, ghosts, Frankensteinesque “meat golems,” killer robots, even Joe Dante’s Gremlins) who then assimilate into our culture. All cops are werewolves, City Hall is staffed by mummies and zombies, and regular humans are definitely 2nd class citizens. By law, humans are protected from being eaten or “turned” during daylight hours, but after sunset… the monsters can get ya, with no recourse. Our hero is L.A.'s only human private eye, hired to find a missing city councilman (mummy) by the guy’s wife, a shapeshifting actress who spends most days at a movie studio acting in a flick called Love is a Many-Splendored Thing From Another World, directed by a robot named Gortran. The studio head (and mayor of Hollywood) is a tentacled Crawling Eye named Oculon.
By now you already know if you’re gonna like it or hate it.
I saw part of his appearance on Colbert the other day, and he seemed… broken. I mean, he’s always been on the dry and low-key side, but all I could see in his face was all the great, pointed, hilarious stuff he wouldn’t allow himself to say. I mean, it’s Al Freaking Franken sitting there next to Stephen Colbert, and there was no spark at all of the Franken wit. McCain would have been funnier. Barney Frank would have been feistier. Franken looked like he was operating under a heavy dose of cold medicine. It made me sad. All that wit is still in the book (albeit somewhat more defanged than I like), but on Colbert he seemed barely present.
i don’t know – he got in some good lines. he was quick on the quiz part, and he played the answers very well. i think he’s being low key until after 2018, and then he’s going to decide if he’s going to run or not. he SAYS he’s not running, but you just know he’s gotta be thinking about it.
A minor exchange in a different place has caused me to tell those of you who don’t already know that you possibly should read Tove Jansson’s Moomin books. To your children, if you have any.
There are few reasonably educated children in Europe who don’t know about them, but they seem to have struggled with the Atlantic.
Google is your friend here.
The books are not the cartoons.
I suspect I know why it didn’t go down too well in the US. As I recall, at the time lesbian feminists promoting multiculturalism weren’t exactly flavour of the month there.
I just finished Dark Orbit by Caroline Ives Gilman last night. It was kind of an interesting spin on first contact situations, but was tonally all over the place. It didn’t flow right, or couldn’t decide what it wanted to be or something. But enjoyable if you’re looking for something to pass some time.
The last couple of books I finished were Twelve Kings in Sharakhai and the sequel With Blood on the Sand. Really good fantasy, with a little bit of the flavor of the Black Company and a tiny bit of Fallen London without really being that much like either. I’m eagerly awaiting the next book, or more likely, books.
Then I started in on “The Sarah Zettel Collection” (Playing God, Reclamation, The Quiet Invasion, Fool’s War). I’ve read the latter probably three times and won’t hesitate to read it again once I get through the other three. I’m enjoying Playing God so far.
Also have read most of Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills while waiting for friends to show up to an eclipse party. It’s not exactly sophisticated stuff but I’m entertained by some of the Chirrut/Baze banter.
Currently: Another pass through Gibson’s Bigend trilogy
Snow Crash
Crichton’s Micro (even though it’s not entirely written by him)
Crichton’s *Dragon Teeth" (because summer time is Crichton time, apparently…)
Little known fact, Frederick Forsyth, who wrote Day of the Jackal and Dogs of War (both of which became movies), probably tried to finance a coup in Equatorial Guinea in 1973, which was caught by European Authorities before it started. A year later, he published Dogs of War which bears an amazing similarity to this coup attempt and even the people apprehended. That book, in turn, was much loved and used by mercenaries in Africa as inspiration…
Also reading:
I’d meant to get around to it. Now that a sequel is out, people have been raving, again, about just how good these books are.
Jumping in here – a bit late – I read the Three Body Problem and mostly enjoyed it except for a few things, which I will spoilerize:
First, there’s a huge chunk of exposition at the end explaining a big part of the novel. Don’t know if that’s a cultural difference or what, but I’ve always been told in writing class that exposition in sf is not good. Second, I thought some of the science was completely unbelievable.
I’ve just finished reading The Riddle of Foxwood Grange by Denis O. Smith, a well-done Sherlock Holmes mystery novel. Smith’s earlier shorter stories I’ve read were collected in The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, Volumes 1-3 and are really good; as if Conan Doyle Dr. Watson had come to life and was writing them again. Much better than any other pastiches I’ve read. There’s a Volume 4 too, but the best price I’ve seen on Amazon and eBay is $100. Eek.
Wow, read that long ago. I liked the first one a lot (and the movie), but not the other two so much. It’s really interesting to think back about it, and how computery things are today.
Now I’m reading “Plain Speaking An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman”, by Merle Miller.
I’m one of those folks who believe that if something happens and/or someone is born that has a positive effect on a greater part of, if not the whole of, the world, well, maybe lightning can strike twice. Or even thrice, or more than that, maybe.
History kind of shows that, doesn’t it?
(I also believe one can’t fully appreciate the positive without having experienced at least a little negative, ya know what I mean?)
I picked up Octavia Butler’s Dawn after years of wanting to read one of her books but never quite getting around to it. I picked a bad time to start reading it though. I had to force myself to put it down because otherwise I was going to be up all night reading it and I had work the next day. It’s going to be a lunch read for a few weeks.
It’s going to be a lunch read for a few weeks.