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thewayneIn 2005 it looks like I read 47 books for recreation, more accurately, I finished 47 books. There are several that were started and put aside for various reasons, those are not on this list. I'll be organizing this set mainly by author as I prefer to read series rather than one-shot books. This list also includes e-books, either downloaded from Project Guttenberg and reformatted for my Palm Pilot or released on CD collections like Baen Books does for David Weber and others.
Alston, Aaron: Doc Sidhe and Sidhe-Devil. Take contemporary Earth, also take an alternate Earth where large amounts of Celtic/Sidhe mythology are real. Firearms are made out of hardened brass alloys rather than iron, magic works, etc. The character Doc Sidhe is, in some ways, sort of a cross between Doc Savage, Buckaroo Banzai, and Legolas. He's a scientist, he can do magic, and he's quite a fighter. He's also an Elf, Sidhe, or whatever. It's been a little while since I read it. In the first book, someone is killing everyone who has crossed over between our Earth and the Sidhe Earth in an attempt to wreak nasty magic. They make the mistake of abducting the girlfriend of a Tae Kwon Do prize fighter who accidentally gets sucked to Sidhe Earth through a magic circle and gets picked up by Doc's friends. The second book sees terrorist bombings start in the Sidhe Earth, and it's up to Doc and his friends to stop it. I enjoyed them both, I'm pretty sure they're both out of print as it took me a fair amount of scrounging to find them.
Asimov, Isaac: I, Robot. Also Harlan Ellison's screenplay to I, Robot. Bookman's had beaucoup copies of Ellison's screenplay when I was in Phoenix before Christmas, as I was in need of reading material I picked up both the Asimov originals and the Ellison treatment. It has been a very long time since I read the original stories, and they were lots of fun to read again, though they were somewhat dated. I then read the Ellison treatment. Ellison started writing it before Asimov's death, apparently they were very good friends, and Asimov wrote that he wrote intellectually and Ellison wrote emotionally and that he really liked Ellison's treatment. It was thrown around the studios for a while, and eventually Ellison's temper ensured that it would not be made. So instead, we get Will Smith's version with nothing more than names and lip service to Asimov's classic short stories. (I have not seen last year's movie and have no immediate plans to see it). Well, I have to say, Ellison did an amazing job of his screenplay! He took four stories and wove them around a common core and did so masterfully. This would have made a terrific movie that would have made a lot of money, but since it wouldn't have had action sequences, it probably wouldn't have been a blockbuster. Still, if you liked Asimov's originals, I'd highly recommend getting Ellison's screenplay.
Buckley, Christopher: Little Green Men. Chris Buckley is the son of William F. and served as a speech writer for George H.W. Bush. He graduated from Yale, was a member of Skull & Bones, was an editor for Forbes magazine, and is a very erudite and interesting fiction writer. I bought one of his earlier books, Thank You For Smoking, and loved it tremendously (and highly recommend it). In Little Green Men, you have a man who runs one of the top-rated Sunday AM political talk shows who is abducted by aliens. Twice. Thus he begins a crusade to force the government to open up its files on aliens and abductions, etc. Except it turns out that everything regarding UFOs was a Cold War hoax carried on to this day to convince the Ruskies that we had alien technology that they didn't. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it's light fiction, it's very clever, and lots of fun. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for his other books.
Duncan, Dave: Impossible Odds, Jaguar Knights, Lord of the Fire Lands, Paragon Lost, Sir Stalwart, Sky of Swords, The Gilded Chain. This is a group called The King's Blades, and these titles are not in order. I don't call it a series as there is only a vague chronology, it skips broad chunks of time as needed. I believe Gilded Chain is one of the first. And you don't have to read them in order, though Sir Stalwart is the start of a trilogy (The King's Dagger) that focuses on two characters, so that's a series that you probably ought to read in proper order. Broadly speaking, this series is set in a vaguely European setting in pre-gunpowder days. It's vaguely Musketeerish, the King's Blades are a group of swordsmen who are the best in the land, they are trained from youth in various bladed weapons and eventually bound through sorcery to the King or someone whom he thinks should have a Bound Blade. Being Bound increases the Blade's already prodigious skill and produces the ultimate body guard. They cannot be anything except absolutely loyal and dedicated to preserving their Ward's life, even to the point of dying to keep their Ward safe.
As a rule, I'm not much of a fan of sword & sorcery fiction, but I loved Duncan's series. The magic is not normally of the "flash-bang" school, sorcery requires an octogram that combines eight basic forms of elements in different proportions to produce the desired effect, such as Binding A Blade, in which the person who receives the Blade plunges the Blade's sword through the Blade's heart: if the oaths spoken were true, the Blade survives and is then bound. So even though the series has magic, I like the way it is done, and it doesn't (for me) detract from the stories. They're more political with lots of sword fighting and intrigue than your traditional heroic fantasy literature.
I loved these books and am saddened that he is done with the Blades series and is working on other things now. Highly recommended, and very available in used stores.
Alston, Aaron: Doc Sidhe and Sidhe-Devil. Take contemporary Earth, also take an alternate Earth where large amounts of Celtic/Sidhe mythology are real. Firearms are made out of hardened brass alloys rather than iron, magic works, etc. The character Doc Sidhe is, in some ways, sort of a cross between Doc Savage, Buckaroo Banzai, and Legolas. He's a scientist, he can do magic, and he's quite a fighter. He's also an Elf, Sidhe, or whatever. It's been a little while since I read it. In the first book, someone is killing everyone who has crossed over between our Earth and the Sidhe Earth in an attempt to wreak nasty magic. They make the mistake of abducting the girlfriend of a Tae Kwon Do prize fighter who accidentally gets sucked to Sidhe Earth through a magic circle and gets picked up by Doc's friends. The second book sees terrorist bombings start in the Sidhe Earth, and it's up to Doc and his friends to stop it. I enjoyed them both, I'm pretty sure they're both out of print as it took me a fair amount of scrounging to find them.
Asimov, Isaac: I, Robot. Also Harlan Ellison's screenplay to I, Robot. Bookman's had beaucoup copies of Ellison's screenplay when I was in Phoenix before Christmas, as I was in need of reading material I picked up both the Asimov originals and the Ellison treatment. It has been a very long time since I read the original stories, and they were lots of fun to read again, though they were somewhat dated. I then read the Ellison treatment. Ellison started writing it before Asimov's death, apparently they were very good friends, and Asimov wrote that he wrote intellectually and Ellison wrote emotionally and that he really liked Ellison's treatment. It was thrown around the studios for a while, and eventually Ellison's temper ensured that it would not be made. So instead, we get Will Smith's version with nothing more than names and lip service to Asimov's classic short stories. (I have not seen last year's movie and have no immediate plans to see it). Well, I have to say, Ellison did an amazing job of his screenplay! He took four stories and wove them around a common core and did so masterfully. This would have made a terrific movie that would have made a lot of money, but since it wouldn't have had action sequences, it probably wouldn't have been a blockbuster. Still, if you liked Asimov's originals, I'd highly recommend getting Ellison's screenplay.
Buckley, Christopher: Little Green Men. Chris Buckley is the son of William F. and served as a speech writer for George H.W. Bush. He graduated from Yale, was a member of Skull & Bones, was an editor for Forbes magazine, and is a very erudite and interesting fiction writer. I bought one of his earlier books, Thank You For Smoking, and loved it tremendously (and highly recommend it). In Little Green Men, you have a man who runs one of the top-rated Sunday AM political talk shows who is abducted by aliens. Twice. Thus he begins a crusade to force the government to open up its files on aliens and abductions, etc. Except it turns out that everything regarding UFOs was a Cold War hoax carried on to this day to convince the Ruskies that we had alien technology that they didn't. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it's light fiction, it's very clever, and lots of fun. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for his other books.
Duncan, Dave: Impossible Odds, Jaguar Knights, Lord of the Fire Lands, Paragon Lost, Sir Stalwart, Sky of Swords, The Gilded Chain. This is a group called The King's Blades, and these titles are not in order. I don't call it a series as there is only a vague chronology, it skips broad chunks of time as needed. I believe Gilded Chain is one of the first. And you don't have to read them in order, though Sir Stalwart is the start of a trilogy (The King's Dagger) that focuses on two characters, so that's a series that you probably ought to read in proper order. Broadly speaking, this series is set in a vaguely European setting in pre-gunpowder days. It's vaguely Musketeerish, the King's Blades are a group of swordsmen who are the best in the land, they are trained from youth in various bladed weapons and eventually bound through sorcery to the King or someone whom he thinks should have a Bound Blade. Being Bound increases the Blade's already prodigious skill and produces the ultimate body guard. They cannot be anything except absolutely loyal and dedicated to preserving their Ward's life, even to the point of dying to keep their Ward safe.
As a rule, I'm not much of a fan of sword & sorcery fiction, but I loved Duncan's series. The magic is not normally of the "flash-bang" school, sorcery requires an octogram that combines eight basic forms of elements in different proportions to produce the desired effect, such as Binding A Blade, in which the person who receives the Blade plunges the Blade's sword through the Blade's heart: if the oaths spoken were true, the Blade survives and is then bound. So even though the series has magic, I like the way it is done, and it doesn't (for me) detract from the stories. They're more political with lots of sword fighting and intrigue than your traditional heroic fantasy literature.
I loved these books and am saddened that he is done with the Blades series and is working on other things now. Highly recommended, and very available in used stores.
