tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5 2008-11-18T02:50:43Z Welcome to the books section of my blog! If you want to see what else I have here go to my main page here. Movable Type Pro 4.21-en tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2466 2008-10-23T07:04:19Z 2008-11-18T02:50:43Z

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, by Fourth in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. This one was kind of "eh" for me. Not that the previous three are great literature or anything, they're just fun easy reads. This one however, came off really preachy. I think what worked before was that it was mostly about these kids who just wanted to be normal kids. That seemed to take a backseat to "The Message" this time. It ended up being a let's jump on the environmental/global warming band-wagon thing. Not that the environment isn't important, it is. But it completely took over the book and in a very heavy handed way. It felt more like propaganda than a book one would read for enjoyment.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2460 2008-10-02T14:37:09Z 2008-11-18T03:25:45Z

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, by Fourth in the Vampire Files series by P.N. Elrod... This'll be short I think since these are fun plot-driven books that so far haven't had a lot else going on. Which is ok, a person needs that now and then. Jack ends up befriending an artist and then investigating when the artist's friend/almost love interest shows up dead. Said artist's wife having died of a suspicious suicide a while back making him the main suspect in the current murder. ]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2458 2008-09-26T23:40:28Z 2008-09-27T00:08:57Z

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, by Well, that was an incredibly strange book. I first saw it a few months ago and thought it sounded interesting, but didn't get around to reading it right away. A few weeks ago I started seeing trailers for the movie adaptation and figured I should get around to reading the book. And assuming the movie is anything past mediocre it's going to be one of the very few exceptions to my normal "the book is always better" rule. The author, Jose Saramago, is apparently a Nobel laureate, and he and his books are popular and critically acclaimed and all that. Which seems odd to me, I think it desperately needs a ruthless copy-editor. One of the Amazon reviews said that they thought the lack of punctuation and run-on sentences and complete confusion of the writing was to keep the reader as confused as the characters. Which would be a good point, except that that seems to be the way the guy writes everything. So it wasn't a choice for effect. Beyond the writing style (which can be dealt with even if it's incredibly annoying) the characters were weird and their actions just didn't make sense. Why would everyone stop using names? If you can't see to describe someone the most logical way to identify them is by their name. But instead everyone just wanders around and thinks names are useless for some reason. They all seem to slide entirely too easily into behaving like animals. I realize that newly blinded people wouldn't be able to take care of themselves as easily as someone who has been blind for a longer amount of time, but none of them even try! They all just give up. And wouldn't it make sense to recruit actual blind people to help out? They can't "catch" whatever is blinding people so when it seems like it'll be a containable event, why not have blind people there to explain how to do things? To share their experiences? I lost patience with "the doctor's wife" pretty early on. She gets more and more upset by the way everyone is living, and yet does nothing to help the situation. She's in the perfect position to help a ton of people and she does nothing. Because she's afraid she'll have to lead everyone around all the time? That's just silly! Blind people don't need to be led everywhere. Help them figure out how to take care of themselves, how to help themselves. The whole thing just came off as very condescending and pretentious.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2457 2008-09-23T02:32:44Z 2008-11-18T03:10:31Z

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, by Fifth dead tree Star Trek SCE book, collects ebooks #17-#19... It's an SCE book that isn't a re-read. Yay! This one was really fun. There's a common story that threads around the three ebooks with the normal main characters, the three books themselves are about Scotty and the beginnings of the SCE. The first one is set before ST:TOS, Scotty is on his way to join the Enterprise for the first time and ends up helping out with a problem at an outpost in the Neutral Zone. Second is after a first season episode of TOS. The SCE gets sent to help clean up after Kirk et al find a planet being ruled by a computer (The Return of the Archons). This one was the most interesting to me I think. It's such an interesting idea, at the end of the episode everything seems solved and it's all going to be ok. But in reality what happens to those people once the Enterprise leaves? Their entire society and way of life has been turned upside down, so who cleans up the mess? Turns out the SCE does that. I remember having a conversation on a Farscape message board a while back that was similar (what happens to that woman after Crichton leaves in "I, ET"?) and I find it a really fascinating thing to contemplate. I really think it goes back to high school and "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead", that idea that these people all have lives that continue after they exit stage left. Anyway! The third one happens at some point after the second season TOS episode "By Any Other Name," since it involves the same aliens and Scotty reminisces about the experience. ]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2452 2008-09-15T05:36:17Z 2008-11-18T02:41:46Z

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, by Second in the 1632 series by Eric Flint & David Weber... Seems I have been horribly neglectful of the books blog again, I'm writing this a good two months after reading the book. Very silly of me. So... this continues the stories of the people sent back in time to 1632, they're starting to have a serious impact on world happenings (or at least the going's on in Europe). There's a lot going on with history books being essentially smuggled out to other countries and what those other leaders do with the information. Say you're Richelieu, or King Charles I and you get this information telling you what's going to happen. What do you do? Do you get rid of the people who are supposedly going to be your downfall? Or change what made them want to get rid of you in the first place? Of course nothing will go according to the history books any more anyway because there's all kinds of change happening anyway. But can you learn from the mistakes you would have made in different circumstances? Try to change policies or stear things in a different direction? It matches well with the idea of predestination that was a big deal at the time. Calvin and all of that. Which is a really big idea for me to get my brain around anyway. I'm liking this series a lot, but it does have me going to Wikipedia frequently. My 1600's European history knowledge isn't very good!]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2448 2008-09-05T01:29:33Z 2008-09-27T00:27:28Z

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, by Second in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber... This is going to be quick and short since it's Honor and Weber and my love for both has already been established. This is the one where Honor goes to Grayson for the first time, we meet the Mayhews, and there's the whole confrontation with Masada. The thing that really struck me this time around was the religious extremism. And the complete obliviousness of certain political types to it. That logic just isn't something that will work to combat that level of conviction. I'm always amazed by authors that can get me completely emotionally involved in a story, especially when it's one I've read before. ]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2446 2008-08-28T15:14:30Z 2008-09-15T10:51:58Z

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, by Fourth dead tree Star Trek: SCE book. Has ebooks #13-16... This is one of my few re-reads so far that are since I started the book blog, it showed up originally here. I didn't write much about it at the time, and I don't think I will this time either. I'm now caught up to where I left off last time in the SCE series so the next one I read in it will be new.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2445 2008-08-28T04:42:06Z 2008-09-12T20:12:53Z

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, by Number three in the Retrieval Artist series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch... The first book is here, the second here. This one is a bit of a departure from the first two since it doesn't really involve aliens. There was a civil war on a colony planet more than a decade ago, and certain people ended up disappearing since they were under death sentences. The power structure on that planet has since changed and pardons have been issued and everyone can supposedly come out of hiding. Miles ends up retrieving one of those people and there are all kinds of consequences steming from that decision that go all the way back to the reason they disappeared in the first place. A number of people die and would they have if he hadn't retrieved that person? A lot of the core story ends up being about the lengths people will go to to get their desired result. Very much a "do the ends justify the means" kind of thing.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2444 2008-08-23T23:12:54Z 2008-09-12T19:49:50Z

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, by Third in the "Smoke &" series by Tanya Huff... Alrighty... since I've already talked about this series quite a bit before I'll skip rehashing all of that. So Tony realized in the last book that it'd be a good idea to actually work on the whole wizard thing so he has a bit more control of his abilities in this one. Still not great, but better than last time! Which is good since there's all kinds of nastiness being shoved through various gates that he has to take care of. There's also all kinds of business with Lee and the two of them finally relating to each other as people instead of PA and star. ]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2443 2008-08-21T05:16:41Z 2008-09-05T02:04:00Z

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, by Second in the "Smoke and" series by Tanya Huff... I'm thinking I might like these more if they were a completely seperate series and didn't have these little tantalizing bits of Henry in them. There's just enough there to make me notice how much he isn't there. Aside from my "I want more Henry" issues, I do like this series. I love the whole TV thing, behind the scenes stuff always fascinates me. I'm one of those people that wants commentaries on everything and loves behind the scenes featurettes on my DVDs. Yes, I work in TV, but it's TV news which is a completely different thing. The one thing that is the same though is the distribution of people. There's so many more behind the camera than in front, no matter what kind of TV it is. So... Tony is starting to figure out what the whole "being a wizard" thing means. And ends up having to "out" himself to a big bunch of his co-workers when they all get stuck in a very haunted house where they were shooting. It makes for an odd dynamic since he's low man on the totem pole, being a PA, but he's the one who has at least some idea of what's going on so he has to at least somewhat be in charge.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2441 2008-08-15T16:04:51Z 2008-08-16T00:05:01Z

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, by By Martin Caidin, this book was the basis for a TV movie and then the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man". This was an odd read, and it's become slightly more strange now that I've read a couple of the reviews that were left for it over on Amazon. All the reviews there were these glowing "best book ever" "amazing sci-fi" things, which was really not my experience at all. The story itself isn't bad and there's some mildly interesting cybernetics/bionics bits. Maybe at the time it was written (early 70's) it would have been more revolutionary as far as that particular subject goes. But the issues I had weren't really to do with the science at all. First issue is that it's incredibly sexist. Yes I'm sure part of that is because of when it was written, but I've read lots of sci-fi "classics" that were written decades ago that don't have that problem. The women all do that "damsel in distress/I just want the big strong man to love me" thing, which is just weird. And the guys do that "I'm going to make the decisions for your own good" thing. The characters in general, but the women in particular are very two-dimensional. Moving on from that, the attitudes after the main character gets hurt (which allows him to become the bionic man and all that) struck me as really off. Again, maybe it's because at the time it was written there weren't as many options for people with serious injuries. But even so, they seemed extreme. It was just assumed that of course he'll want to kill himself, who wouldn't? And then it took forever for the dude to start interacting with the world again. All the characters' baseline attitudes seemed very out of wack to me. If it were one or two of them, fine. But this was all of them. It would have been more realistic to have a range of attitudes and reactions. Also, it took quite a long time for anything to happen. Both in terms of time within the story and pages for the reader. I found myself thinking "get on with it already!" more than once! A lot of the science and explanations took a lot longer than seemed necessary, and rather dry on top of it. It just seemed overly elaborate for no real reason. There are a couple more books that were written (I think there's four total in the series) but I'm not at all sure I'll try any of them. Maybe I'll hunt up the next one and skim it to see if it gets any better before committing to the whole thing.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2440 2008-08-13T07:03:06Z 2008-08-15T01:50:28Z

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, by First in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber... It's a re-read! For some reason I was feeling like reading some Honor Harrington so here we are. I very much enjoy this series and I don't think I've done any re-reading of it before. A lot of the characters continue in later books in the series and it was really fun to see them back at the beginning again. How they all met, their first impressions of each other, the original Fearless... We already know that I love this series so this'll be short. This one is (rather obviously) the one where Honor gets sent to Basilisk Station and has to deal with all kinds of craziness there with a ship that's been practically gutted by a nutty weaponry theorist.]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2439 2008-08-08T18:05:31Z 2008-08-15T01:18:17Z

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, by First in the Alpha and Omega series by Patricia Briggs... This actually starts with a novella in the anthology "On the Prowl", but I didn't read that whole book, just the part that applies to this book so for my purposes I'm treating that as a Chapter 0 in this book. It's in the same universe as her Mercy Thompson series and builds off one of the plotlines from the first book, Moon Called, in that series. It has to do with what happened when Bran sent Charles to Chicago to deal with whatever had gone wrong with the pack there. This was one of those wonderful books that completely pulled me in and I just wanted to sit and read it and not do anything else! There's a number of really beautiful scenes that really grabbed me emotionally. The funeral part-way through (which is related to someone who dies in Moon Called) was one that made me completely lose it. There's also bits sprinkled through it that flesh out some of what was happening with certain characters in Moon Called, mostly Samuel. There's more about why he decided to go stay with Mercy. And a lot more about the history of Bran and Samuel which was really cool. I liked learning more about their past and how they became who they are. I really liked getting to know Charles more. He's such a secondary character in the Mercy series, and there's a lot to him! He has such an important role in Bran's pack, and it's a responsiblity he accepts, but it's a hard role to play. It holds him very separate from most everyone else. So, a bit of plot stuff... first we wrap up some loose ends from Moon Called. Then there's people being attacked in Bran's territory and it looks like a rogue but it might be something more dangerous, some kind of attack on Bran's authority. So Charles has to go check it out. There's also stuff to do with one of the other very old wolves in the pack and what happened to his mate a couple hundred years prior. I'm very much liking this author and I think I'm going to have to try one of her other series soon! ]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2438 2008-08-06T20:12:43Z 2008-08-09T00:50:25Z

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, by Second in the Southern Vamps/Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris... As is obvious from the dateline on the post, these are easy reading! There are a number of plotlines going in this one. First off, the cook of the bar where Sookie works is murdered, and then she gets sent to Dallas to use her special talents to help the vampires there figure out why one of their own has disappeared. The business in Dallas gets complicated by a group of anti-vampire fanatics. Which makes sense. In a world where vampires are a known thing, I would assume there would be people who would want to get rid of them. It really underlines the vulnerability of the vamps (at least this kind, where they're asleep during the day). If someone who wants to do you harm can figure out where you hide during the day, there's nothing you can do to protect yourself from them. We also get to learn just a bit more about some of the other supernatural creatures, the shapeshifters mostly. This falls near example 3 in the Romance Disclaimer]]> tag:books.sunidesus.net,2005://5.2437 2008-08-06T00:32:57Z 2008-08-06T02:48:58Z

I've talked about this a little bit before, but I figured I should have it all in one spot so I don't have to repeat myself every single time I read a book that has any kind of a "romance"...

grok. If people are talking about some cute new person at work or in a bar or wherever I have no idea who they're discussing. Once someone says something and then I look at whomever, then I'll maybe notice if they're cute/hot/whatever, it isn't something I notice on my own. On TV or in movies I tend to be attracted to personalities, to attitudes, and honestly to geeks. Charlie on Numb3rs, Reed on Criminal Minds, Michael on Prison Break, etc... now, yes a lot of them (*cough* Wentworth *cough*) are also hot/cute but they're actors so they mostly all are anyway, and that tends to be very secondary. Aside from the geeks there's also those characters that have some kind of strength, an attitude about them. These tend to be the non-human guys... Superman, Duncan MacLeod, Henry Fitzroy. I don't start thinking about any of them as attractive right off the bat, it's something they become. Reading sex scenes in excrutiating detail makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I don't want to know every little detail of who put what where. It is not hot, it does not turn me on. Similarly, I don't enjoy explicit sex scenes in movies and tv. It is more than enough for me to know it happened. If it simply must be there, keep it to a PG-13 level. Every now and then I end up in a position where the story of a book intrigues me enough to pick it up even though I know it's a "romance" book. Or someone recommends something and I start it without knowing exactly what kind of book it is. Books in general have to be spectacularly bad for me to not finish them. And since I keep track of what I read I then have to explain why I've read something that I didn't enjoy! So this is my solution, I'm going to list some examples or groups and then when I read things in the future I can just say "this falls under example 1" and leave it at that. If you click on the "romance" category you can see where I put which books. So! Example 1 - These are the ones that I understand the least, there tends to be very little plot, characters fall instantly in love and are driven completely to distraction by each others' bodies. The purpose of the book isn't to tell a story, it's to write about sex. There is no way to skim past the parts that make me squicky because that's most of the book. Example 2 - I think I would call this the "skimmable" category. There's an actual story and characters that can do things other than think about sex. However, sex still shows up a lot and when it is there it's quite graphic. Characters maybe don't fall in love quite as quickly as in Example 1, but still rather fast and inexplicable. These are books that I'll put up with if the story is good or interesting. I can skim past the stuff I don't like and just enjoy the actual plot of the book. Example 3 - These are approaching what I'd consider a "normal" book. Still romance-y, but leaning more towards relationships instead of just physical attraction. Characters actually learn a bit about each other before hopping into bed. Not books that I'll seek out, but I'm ok reading them if I come across them. Example 4 - And we've arrived at what I'd call a "normal" book that happens to have characters who have physical relationships. The focus of these is on the plot and characters, there's reasons for what they do beyond the physical. Sex scenes are kept to the afformentioned PG-13 level. We get enough details to know what happened, but it isn't explicit. I think that covers most of it, I may expand this or change it a bit as I continue, but it should serve its purpose of keeping me from repeating myself every time I read something outside of my normal reading areas. ]]>