“Don’t cry. You can cry when you’re dead.”
Or is it:
“There’s always an armory.”
Either works, in context. Continue reading So, what IS the traditional Tesladyne mantra?
Category: Books
Book of the Week: A Civil Campaign.
I’m kind of unsure whether I should make Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign the Book of the Week. I mean, yes, it’s bloody brilliant. The Vorkosigan series generally is, and Bujold has a remarkable capacity for precipitating out genuine hilarity from the most unpromising of sources. I just don’t know whether or not it’s the best gateway to the entire Vorkosigan series. Of course, most people here don’t really need to be told to buy this book, do they? You already know. You probably already have.
Ach, well, maybe somebody will see this post someday in a Google search.
And thus, we say adieu to The Hunt For Red October. Continue reading Book of the Week: A Civil Campaign.
HBO negotiating to bring Watchmen to small screen.
It makes sense. I guess.
Fresh off critical favorite The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof is in talks for a potential Watchmen TV series for HBO. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the project is in the early development stages. An official deal is not yet in place. Representatives for HBO and producer Warner Bros. Television declined comment.
Continue reading HBO negotiating to bring Watchmen to small screen.
Book of the Week: The Hunt For Red October.
I got turned on to Tom Clancy novels by a buddy in college. The Hunt For Red October was maybe the first one I read, because of the movie (which is, of course, excellent, and not least because it boasts a remarkably good cast). It was about then, I think, that I started coming to the (at the time) uncomfortable realization that maybe Ronald Reagan wasn’t an amiable dunce after all. …Much followed, from that.
And so, adieu to Hard Magic. Continue reading Book of the Week: The Hunt For Red October.
Book of the Week: Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles.
I chewed through Lartry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles this week, starting obviously with Hard Magic. I’m making this one the BotW despite the fact that my favorite scene happened in Warbound; it’s a good trilogy generally. Definitely worth a read, if you like Depression-era magic dieselpunk pulp. Bizarrely, there are people who don’t.
And so, adieu to The Alamo.
Infamous Dracula ‘translation’ Powers of Darkness now translated *from* Icelandic.
The short version: when Bram Stoker’s Dracula got translated into Icelandic, back in 1901, the translator took it upon himself to add a lot of… stuff to it. Secret societies, serial killings, Norse mythology, and the title became ‘Powers of Darkness.’ Those of you who picked up The Dracula Dossier will know that Ken Hite used all of this to good effect when he converted Dracula into an long-duration British intelligence operation, but even at the time Powers of Darkness was still an Icelandic text. Well, now they’ve translated it into English.
And, hey, it’s on Kindle. Because this is what Kindle is for: getting obscure books more or less on electronic demand. I love the future.
Book of the Week: The Alamo.
This is my week for getting back to books that I inexplicably put down and didn’t pick up again. In this case: John Myers Myers’ The Alamo (I don’t need to explain to you what the book is about, right?). I wonder how Mr. Myers felt about the fact that — despite the fact that he was primarily a writer of history, with a focus on the American West — he’s remembered today primarily for Silverlock. Then again, it’s not like he didn’t write Silverlock, now is it?
And so, adieu to Sweet Silver Blues.
Crud, I’m starting to run out of MHI books.
I’m halfway through Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners, and after this it’s eARC time. I probably should have waited another month to get back into this series, because I suspect that I’m not going to be inclined to wait until August for Monster Hunter Siege. Ach, well, this is how we learn.
Book of the Week: Sweet Silver Blues.
Sweet Silver Blues is Glen Cook’s first book in his Garrett, PI series. It’s basically hard-boiled detective fiction set in a fantasy medieval city, only not in a gimmicky way because it takes seriously the detective portion of it and the doesn’t use the fantasy portion of it to cheat on the plot. The series also has the nice quality of allowing the setting to keep evolving; the world is significantly different at the end of the latest book than it was at the beginning of the first. Check it out.
And so, adieu to The Berlin Project.
Happy World Dracula Day!
Via Ken Hite. It’s the 120th anniversary of the first printing of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is one of those books that more or less shaped the development of its particular genre without ever actually quite meaning to. Obviously, the vampire legend existed before Stoker; for that matter, the vampire novel existed before Stoker. But there was something peculiar about his book that made it linger in the cultural consensus.
Possibly it’s because Dracula is fairly easy to bring to film? (Ironic, that.) It — unlike most of the previous entries in the vampire fiction genre — has a reasonably comprehensive blot, and imagery that doesn’t require a heavy special effects budget. I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason to explain why Dracula went to Hollywood, and then never looked back; but I’d certainly argue it over a beer.