Currently Reading:
A Billion Days of Earth, by Doris Piserchia
Continuing my exploration of what exactly defines a "Frederik Pohl Selection", I am starting a new one. I think I just ordered the last two that I needed for my collection: Hiero's Journey and The Female Man. I ordered these from Abe Books, since Rudy's Used Books was currently out of their very large online stock.
Visit my new pageabout Bantam Books and design...
Summer is fading fast (4+ weeks till school starts), and a number of books I started are being displaced by new ones I find, so I amy make comments on what I have sampled, finished or not.
A revised reading list, but please, |
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I am on summer vacation from May 30 ’Äì August 19, and along with my freelance
work and caricature gigs, I get to relax with books, comics and magazines like
when I was a kid. I'll post my books and thoughts here throughout the summer...
May 22-25 Memorial Day weekend... the true start of summer. I started my Summer Reading List with a Bantam moldy-oldy, Ian Watson's first novel, The Embedding, from 1973. I couldn't pass up the dramatic Paul Lehr cover in Half Price Books. It was a fun read, full of cool '70s speculative fiction concepts. Googling over to the internet, I learned that Ian Watson wrote the AI back-story with Stanley Kubrick, which Steven Spielberg completed for the screen. Embedding was a good first-contact story, complete with brain transplants and psychadelic drugs from the Amazon basin... though (in my mnd) it didn't live up to the publisher's comparison to the works of the three literary giants whose names were dropped in the cover blurb (click the images to enlarge). Still, a pretty cool book for 75 cents, from Bantam's hey-day of slick art direction combining classic illustration and sans serif typography. It could have been a perfect beach book if it had 300 extra pages, but at just over 200 it was relaxing three-day weekend indeed.
May 25 A neat profile on Cornel West (Cornel West, Blues Philosopher, by Jeff Sharlet) in the latest issue of Rolling Stone spurred me to order West's book, Race Matters. After working on the Martin Luther King Jr for Armchair Theologians, it just feels like I need to read something of substance along with genre stuff. I orderd the book shamelessly, through Amazon.com for 1 penny, postage is $3.99. I was surprised the book is not in our county or our high school library. When it arrives I'll post my thoughts here.
June 11 I recently saw a list of books that people say they have read and actually haven't, and amazingly, Brave New World wasn't on it ’Äì The Bible, War and Peace were, even 1984, but not Brave New World. Which is strange, because my preconceptions, based on what other people say, was not what I expected. "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness..." proclaims the protagonist named the Savage at the end of this strange novel about world control. Aldous Huxley posits a world where the citizens have none of the above, thanks to the World Controllers. The citizens are all for each other, there is no love or emotion beyond base physical desires, and the most important things are consumption so the factories keep producing. The most famous parts concern the creation of citizens in factories (test-tube babies) pre-destined to a caste system. The book is a lot to think about, but kind of disjointed at times. At least now I can say I read Brave New World.
June 24 Cornel West's book Race Matters was published in 1993, and it discusses such themes as Bush, S'rs token nomination of Clarence Thomas and the Afrikan-American leadership's silent response as 'racial' reasoning. He further explains that until all Americans start adopting 'moral' reasoning, we will have this lack of serious discussions of race. He also discusses how media and consumption cloud issues of values for all Americans, but especially Afrikan-Americans of poverty. Consumption... that was a major theme used by the World Controllers in Brave New World to control the population in that hypothetical world... coincidence? I don't think so. Race Matters was written way before the hostoric presidential race that elected Barack Obama, and he many times discusses needing prophetic leaders of color. Maybe we are there; the jury is still out on that decision, West states in his May 2009 Rolling Stone interview. This is a quick read, yet clear in its thought, and all Americans should read it, especially high school students. West wrote a companion book many years later, Democracy Matters, and continues many of his themes of race discussion and openness; based on West's inspiring tone and vision in Race Matters, I will be seeking that book out soon.
June 28 Frank Herbert wrote the classic Dune series. I have read Dune, and Hellstrom's Hive is no Dune. The cover claims it was "inspired" by David L. Wolper's award-winning film, The Hellstrom Chronicle (a brief search on the internet didn't find much info about the movie). The verso page states the book was serialized in Galaxy Magazine, and the book reads with no chapter breaks, but there are 4 distinctive switches from main character focus that were probably the installment breaks. The novel is about a 'hive" or cult of people that have been genetically altering themselves into different classes of insect-humans: deones, breeders, leaders, drone mothers, etc. They have been doing this since the 18th century, and there is a crisis brewing: some want to swarm. The book is full of ideas about that "fad ecology" as one spy puts it, and probably some sentiment that led Herbert to live on an environmentally friendly farm in the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, some un-named corporate espionage Agency is sending spies in to try to uncover their secrets for corporate gain. Interesting, but the ending is a little unfinished... almost as if Herbert were going to write "Hive Messiah" or "Children of Hive" or "Chapterhouse: Hive"... thankfully, he got busy with that Dune thing.
July 1 This was only $2.99 in Borders, so I picked it up. There are some interesting selection: some realistic fiction, some fantasy, and some underground comics from tried and tue creators. There's a new Wonder Wart-Hog by Gilbert Shelton and a new comic by Robert Crumb, started in 1992 and abandoned after 4 pages, then completed in 1994. The Lynda Barry piece is very interesting, it's about artistic creativity.
July 19 (so far) This is Ray Bradbury's latest collection of short stories from January of this year. They are advertised as all new, never before published. The best so far include a story about evicting a pet shop owner and a radio show character who comes alive. There is a new Martian story, which I am saving for the last story in the book. Short, melancholy, and increasingly introspective on old-age, Breadbury is still my favorite author of all time.
July 19 I read the first two chapters of Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction. In this book Rodney Clapp ( a Christian theologian) discusses why the religious right's recent attempt to define America as a Christian Nation is a thoroughly bad idea. He wrestles with the ideas of what it means to be a Christian and an American through the lens of country music (more than 60% of the FM stations in the United States are country stations) and specifically the country music of Johnny Cash. An interesting book and premise that I expect to finish after school starts.
June 1 If Robert B. Parker is such a "Grand Master of American Mystery", how come he thinks Nero Wolfe's stalwart assistant is named Archie "Goodman"? This young adult novel is the first (and hopefully the last) story about Boston Private-eye Spenser as a 14-year-old. in this flashback style story, we learn about his dad and uncles, who raised him to be tough and smart. We also learn Spenser is his last name, not his first. The young flat-foot has two fistfights and kills one abusive parent as he protects a "friend who is a girl", and he accepts a case to protect a Mexican boy from the local bullies. He also cooks, thinks about finding "the one" and only girl worth his love, and reads Rex Stout, Charles Dickens and Thomas Mallory. Message to Mr. Parker: I know this is a book for teens, but, please, use a different protagonist, or forget the awkward flashback chapters where grown-up Spenser and Susan banter about the joys of alcohol and sex.
May 23-June 1 When the economy forced this magazine to go to a bi-monthly schedule, I was dubious, but I have to admit I like the larger sized issues. One novella, five novelets and three short stories including the aptly-named, early John Varley Classic Reprint, "Retrograde Summer", make this the perfect kick-off for this teacher's summer reading list! Best stories: "Adaptogenia" by Wayne Wightman and "Paradiso Lost" by Albert E. Cowdry. I laughed out loud at "Sooner or Later or Never Never", by Gary Jennings, the second classic repring from the early 70s in this issue. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
June 13 I read The Thousand-Headed Man by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent) in the summer before I was in 8th grade, probably in one afternoon in June. It was the second Doc I ever read. This time (I read it twice that summer, while waiting for others to show up in the mail) I skimmed through it, doodling in rollerball as I went through the first few chapters. It is still in my mind one of the best of the 180-plus Doc Savage Novels. Anyway, here are the doodles from The Thousand-Headed Man; click on a thumbnail to view in a separate window:
I am also reading Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent in between my more serious reading. Great stuff for the sky-chair in the backyard on a hot summer afternoon, these are scripts written for 15-minute radio adventures in 1934. Lester Dent was the creator of Doc Savage, and the primary author of the monthly magazine adventures. Crisp, hard-boiled dialogue like the Shadow radio adventures, they were broadcast in limited areas, mostly California, and were never recorded, so all that exist are Dent's scripts.
July 5 Star Rider by Doris Piserchia is a fun romp through the galaxy in mankind's distant future. Characters have learned to Jink, kind of like Robert Heinlein's "grok", and they can travel about the galaxy in D2 (a state where they have no 3rd dimension and can travel at hyper-light speeds).
July 12 Commune 200 A.D., by Mack Reynolds, is probably (as far as I can tell) the first Frederik Pohl Selection that Bantam published. Reynolds was a socialist and most of his stories centered around political and economic and societal trends and how they might evolve an appear in the year 2000. Commune was written in 1973, published in January 1974, and herei s an excerpt from the book: "We continue to think of our society as a democratic one, in which we cherish our freedoms... They continue to play the game, to pay lip service to democracy so we will be appeased, but the real clout is held by the economic division. Who controls industry... controls the economy. And in spite of whoever we vote in as President, Senators, Representatives..." Technologically, his characters have a pocket device that is for communication and keeping track of their credit and sounds suspiciously like a smart phone, and there is a worldwide network of information on their TV-phones.
July 19 Tetrasomy Two, by Oscar Rossiter, was a strange first person narrative a psychology resident in a state mental hospital who discovers a very curious patient who appears to be totally unresponsive. When the very peculiar Dr. Boyd discovers that the patient, with the blatantly Freudian name of Ernest Peckham has never had a bedsore after being catatonic for 25 years, has eye-blink intervals of exactly 43 seconds and every stool he passes weighs 184 grams, Dr. Boyd decides to investigate deeper. The back cover says "a combination of Woody Allen and Michael Crichton" and they weren't far off. Woody Allen was still creating comedies like Sleeper and Love and War, and Michael Crichton's claims to fame were probably limited to The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. A good read, a bit dated, but Dr. Boyd's narration steadily reveals his deteriorating psychosis that keeps the book moving. Oscar Rossiter is the pen-name of Vernon Skeels, who died in November, 2007. Tetrasomy was his only novel.