My 2005 in Books, Part The Last
Jan. 22nd, 2006 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI had meant to finish my What I Read in 2005 list long before now, but you know how things go. So here it is.
In this, the final edition, we have: Terry Pratchett, John Ringo and David Weber (both together and apart), Edmond Rostand, JK Rowling, Rafael Sabatini, and Clifford Stoll.
LOTS of reading, perhaps some spoilers.
Pratchett, Terry: Thud!, Carpe Jugulem, Guards! Guards!, Jingo, Men at Arms, Moving Pictures, Witches Abroad. Thud! is the latest Pratchett DiscWorld book, and I liked it. It is a bit of a departure from previous DW books in that it is much heavier and serious. As a rule, DW books are pretty light and fun, this one, though it does have light and fun moments, is considerably more serious. The others are re-reads, it's been absolute ages since I'd read Moving Pictures, it was really hard to find for a long time, I ended up ordering it from England online. Carpe Jugulem is a Witches book as is Witches Abroad, good for the Nanny Ogg/Granny Weatherwax fans out there. Guards! Guards! is the introduction of both the Night Watch and Corporal Carrot, the 6' dwarf, to Ankk-Morpork. It's possible that the Watch were already present in the first three books, but it's been so long since I've read them that I really don't remember. Jingo I enjoyed: it put the Watch in a very unusual situation (particularly Nobby) and was very different as DW books go. Men At Arms is another Watch book, this time concerning the theft of a "gonne" from the Assassin's Guild's museum.
Strata is the fore-runner of the DW series: it's a true science fiction story that is really Terry's take on Niven's Ring World, only instead of the world being a ring, it's a disc. It revolves around a woman who supervises the construction of planets who ends up on an expedition to Disc World. This is not an easy book to find, you're probably going to end up on Half.com or Amazon. The cover art kinda sucks IMO, but it's also an older book.
Good Omens was co-authored with Neil Gaiman and is one of the funniest books about the apocalypse that you're likely to find. Turns out that not only are agents of God and Satan active on earth, they're actually pretty good friends. When word comes down to start the apocalypse, they realize that they actually kind of like it here. It was recently re-issued with a new cover and I believe some essays by the authors, I haven't seen the new edition yet.
The Bromeliad Trilogy is a collection of three books (Truckers, Diggers, Wings) that could be classed as juvenile or teen fiction. Regardless, they're a fun read. There's a race of small creatures called Nomes (not gnomes) whom we don't normally see because they live at a much faster rate than we do, so we appear pretty slow to them. One group lives in a field and live as hunters/gatherers and live pretty short lives with violent ends. Their hunter/leader convinces them to leave one day by hiding in the back of a delivery truck that takes them to its store, in said store is large group of Nomes, neither group knowing that the other group existed. There's only one problem: the store is closing and will soon be demolished.
Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky. These two books are sort of juvenile/teen DW books. They revolve around a young girl who is becoming a witch and her link with a clan of Pictsies called the Nac Mac Feegles, who are sort of pixie crosses between Highlanders and woaded Picts. I thought the first one was outrageously funny, the second one was fine but not as humerous, it had a much more serious overtone. They cross into normal DW territory with the appearances of Death and Granny Weatherwax. If you're a DW fan, you REALLY need to find these two books!
Ringo, John Cally's War, The Hero, Watch on the Rhine. Ringo has a series of books known collectively as the Posleen War. These three books fall outside of the main series but continue said series. In Cally's War, we see the daughter of the hero of the main series, said daughter being presumed dead, continuing the good fight as an assassin, taking out high-ranked invaders and their supporters along with her grandfather, also believed dead. The Hero, a Posleen spin-off co-authored with Michael Williamson, is an unusual book, a Special Ops squad is sent on a stealth mission to a planet to retrieve an alien artifact of utterly unknown properties. The team sniper, never a bedrock of sanity, decides he could make a tremendous amount of money for the artifact and kills everyone in the squad. Except for one: the elf. The elfs are a race known as the Darheel, empathic, but incapable of killing: they go insane and die from the death agonies of their victims. So it's homicidal psychotic against empathic pacifist. Interesting challenge, interesting resolution.
Watch on the Rhine is a continuation of the Posleen Invasion series, only this one is set in Europe, mainly Germany, instead of America. The Earth (roughly contemporary in time and technology) receive advance warning of the Posleen and gear up for war, each country on its own, but having received alien technology. The Germans take this very seriously. Among the various technological enhancements the aliens who warn us provide is rejuvenation, both physical and mental. The German Chancellor does what is in the best interest of preserving the German race: he reactivates the SS and arms them with what are effectively proto-Bolo tanks. Co-authored with Tom Kratman, this book promises to be the first of several to explore what happened on the rest of the Earth during the invasion. I quite liked it and thought it did a very good job of examining what repercussions of World War II that Germany still suffers.
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac. Probably Rostand's best known play, and a great movie starring Jose Ferrar, such a popular play that it has been turned into fifteen or more tv shows or movies from 1911 to 2005! If that's not longevity, I don't know what is! Rostand was born in 1868 and died in the flu pandemic of 1918. I really enjoy Cyrano, it rates up there with Dumas' Three Muskateers. Some day I'd love to have enough fluency in French to read the originals, not translations. This was downloaded from Project Guttenberg and read on my Palm Pilot.
Rowling, JK Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I wanted to re-read Goblet before the movie came out as a refresher. It was fun, but I was perhaps more disappointed in the movie having re-read the book. Half-Blood Prince is, of course, the latest Potter novel. Good stuff, raising lots of questions about where Snape's loyalties really lie. The next, and final(?) book will be quite interesting….
Sabatini, Rafael Captain Blood. I didn't realize that Sabatini was a 20th century writer, he died in 1950! (born in 1875) This is the novel that became the movie starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone. Flynn is Dr. Peter Blood, who provides medical assistance to some men who are on the losing side of a rebellion. Potentially sentenced to hang, he ends up in exile in Jamaica, eventually becoming a pirate and the scourge of lots of nations that I cannot remember. Fun stuff! There were actually three Blood novels, Captain Blood (1921) was followed by Capt. Blood Returns ('31) and The Fortunes of Capt. Blood (1936). Sabatini is also the author of Scaramouche (1921), of which there is a second book called Scaramouche the Kingmaker ('31). Again, I downloaded Captain Blood from Project Guttenberg and read it on my Palm Pilot.
Stoll, Clifford The Cuckoo's Egg. Clifford Stoll was a graduate student in astronomy at Berkeley when his funding ran out, he was shuffled into a computer position where his job was to find a $0.26 discrepancy between two accounting systems. He eventually uncovered an East German spy ring funded by the KGB that was using computer networks to break into military installations. This was in the early 80's. The World Wide Web did not exist at that time, but the internet did. Very good read. Cliff is apparently quite a goof ball and sounds like a pretty cool guy. He has two other books, Silicon Snake Oil and High-Tech Heretic which are also good reads and present some very good arguments AGAINST having computers in schools.
Weber, David Against All Odds, Crown of Slaves, Shadow of Saganami. Crown and Shadow are novels set in the Honorverse (Honor Harrington Universe) that build on events regarding the Manticore/Havenite war, but bringing up younger officers. Let's face it, Honor cannot be promoted any further, she can't become Queen of Manticore, she can't become Protector of Grayson. So Weber's writing himself an expansion line that he can pursue to continue developing the Honorverse without dead-ending him with Honor Harrington, I shall make no comments about Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan.
Against All Odds is the latest Honor Harrington book and it includes a CD with text, ebook, and html versions of everything Weber has written as published by Baen. In the preceding paragraph I've written how Weber had a problem promoting Honor. Well, he doesn't promote her per se, but he craftily continues Honor's story and life and the Manticore/Havenite war. It is a nasty book, some very bad things happen in it. We're not talking as bad as Paul Tankersly being killed in the duel, or Honor becoming a POW, but it's an excellent demonstration as to how bad an interstellar war can be between two large nations. But also some good things happen, so overall perhaps there is karmic balance. I am always eager for more Honor, and I'm looking forward to the next!
This book draws upon events in Crown of Slaves, I would consider it important to read that first. Crown is an excellent read regardless and features lots of good action with a certain former spy. I'm told it also builds on Shadow of Saganami, but I don't remember the connection. Maybe over the summer I'll re-read all three.
Bolo! I read in the ebook edition from the CD included with Against All Odds. It's a collection of short stories based upon Keith Laumer's Bolo series about the most advanced battle tanks imaginable. I can't do justice to describing how advanced and nasty a Bolo is, and they have a brigade of them! Thus, I refer you to a very good entry in Wikipedia for more information. These are very good stories and take the stories of the Dinochrome Brigade into an interstellar war of extinction and out the other side.
Weber, David & Ringo, John The March Upcountry series: March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars, We Few. A (currently) four book series in which the tertiary heir to the Terran Empire is sent off on a flag-waving diplomatic mission to get him out of the way as a potential rebellion is in the works and his loyalty is suspect by his mother, the Empress. Only things don't go too well on their journey and a Space Marine who has been mind-controlled blows up their ship, with the prince and a company of marines barely able to get away and make planetfall on the world they are orbiting. The first three books detail their journey to get across the planet to the shuttle port, which is, of course, in enemy hands. The fourth book details their return to Earth and contending with the stealth coup that has overthrown his mother. It's a very good "growth" story, also sort of a buddy pic if it were a movie. I quite liked it, I'm curious if they're planning #5.
In this, the final edition, we have: Terry Pratchett, John Ringo and David Weber (both together and apart), Edmond Rostand, JK Rowling, Rafael Sabatini, and Clifford Stoll.
LOTS of reading, perhaps some spoilers.
Pratchett, Terry: Thud!, Carpe Jugulem, Guards! Guards!, Jingo, Men at Arms, Moving Pictures, Witches Abroad. Thud! is the latest Pratchett DiscWorld book, and I liked it. It is a bit of a departure from previous DW books in that it is much heavier and serious. As a rule, DW books are pretty light and fun, this one, though it does have light and fun moments, is considerably more serious. The others are re-reads, it's been absolute ages since I'd read Moving Pictures, it was really hard to find for a long time, I ended up ordering it from England online. Carpe Jugulem is a Witches book as is Witches Abroad, good for the Nanny Ogg/Granny Weatherwax fans out there. Guards! Guards! is the introduction of both the Night Watch and Corporal Carrot, the 6' dwarf, to Ankk-Morpork. It's possible that the Watch were already present in the first three books, but it's been so long since I've read them that I really don't remember. Jingo I enjoyed: it put the Watch in a very unusual situation (particularly Nobby) and was very different as DW books go. Men At Arms is another Watch book, this time concerning the theft of a "gonne" from the Assassin's Guild's museum.
Strata is the fore-runner of the DW series: it's a true science fiction story that is really Terry's take on Niven's Ring World, only instead of the world being a ring, it's a disc. It revolves around a woman who supervises the construction of planets who ends up on an expedition to Disc World. This is not an easy book to find, you're probably going to end up on Half.com or Amazon. The cover art kinda sucks IMO, but it's also an older book.
Good Omens was co-authored with Neil Gaiman and is one of the funniest books about the apocalypse that you're likely to find. Turns out that not only are agents of God and Satan active on earth, they're actually pretty good friends. When word comes down to start the apocalypse, they realize that they actually kind of like it here. It was recently re-issued with a new cover and I believe some essays by the authors, I haven't seen the new edition yet.
The Bromeliad Trilogy is a collection of three books (Truckers, Diggers, Wings) that could be classed as juvenile or teen fiction. Regardless, they're a fun read. There's a race of small creatures called Nomes (not gnomes) whom we don't normally see because they live at a much faster rate than we do, so we appear pretty slow to them. One group lives in a field and live as hunters/gatherers and live pretty short lives with violent ends. Their hunter/leader convinces them to leave one day by hiding in the back of a delivery truck that takes them to its store, in said store is large group of Nomes, neither group knowing that the other group existed. There's only one problem: the store is closing and will soon be demolished.
Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky. These two books are sort of juvenile/teen DW books. They revolve around a young girl who is becoming a witch and her link with a clan of Pictsies called the Nac Mac Feegles, who are sort of pixie crosses between Highlanders and woaded Picts. I thought the first one was outrageously funny, the second one was fine but not as humerous, it had a much more serious overtone. They cross into normal DW territory with the appearances of Death and Granny Weatherwax. If you're a DW fan, you REALLY need to find these two books!
Ringo, John Cally's War, The Hero, Watch on the Rhine. Ringo has a series of books known collectively as the Posleen War. These three books fall outside of the main series but continue said series. In Cally's War, we see the daughter of the hero of the main series, said daughter being presumed dead, continuing the good fight as an assassin, taking out high-ranked invaders and their supporters along with her grandfather, also believed dead. The Hero, a Posleen spin-off co-authored with Michael Williamson, is an unusual book, a Special Ops squad is sent on a stealth mission to a planet to retrieve an alien artifact of utterly unknown properties. The team sniper, never a bedrock of sanity, decides he could make a tremendous amount of money for the artifact and kills everyone in the squad. Except for one: the elf. The elfs are a race known as the Darheel, empathic, but incapable of killing: they go insane and die from the death agonies of their victims. So it's homicidal psychotic against empathic pacifist. Interesting challenge, interesting resolution.
Watch on the Rhine is a continuation of the Posleen Invasion series, only this one is set in Europe, mainly Germany, instead of America. The Earth (roughly contemporary in time and technology) receive advance warning of the Posleen and gear up for war, each country on its own, but having received alien technology. The Germans take this very seriously. Among the various technological enhancements the aliens who warn us provide is rejuvenation, both physical and mental. The German Chancellor does what is in the best interest of preserving the German race: he reactivates the SS and arms them with what are effectively proto-Bolo tanks. Co-authored with Tom Kratman, this book promises to be the first of several to explore what happened on the rest of the Earth during the invasion. I quite liked it and thought it did a very good job of examining what repercussions of World War II that Germany still suffers.
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac. Probably Rostand's best known play, and a great movie starring Jose Ferrar, such a popular play that it has been turned into fifteen or more tv shows or movies from 1911 to 2005! If that's not longevity, I don't know what is! Rostand was born in 1868 and died in the flu pandemic of 1918. I really enjoy Cyrano, it rates up there with Dumas' Three Muskateers. Some day I'd love to have enough fluency in French to read the originals, not translations. This was downloaded from Project Guttenberg and read on my Palm Pilot.
Rowling, JK Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I wanted to re-read Goblet before the movie came out as a refresher. It was fun, but I was perhaps more disappointed in the movie having re-read the book. Half-Blood Prince is, of course, the latest Potter novel. Good stuff, raising lots of questions about where Snape's loyalties really lie. The next, and final(?) book will be quite interesting….
Sabatini, Rafael Captain Blood. I didn't realize that Sabatini was a 20th century writer, he died in 1950! (born in 1875) This is the novel that became the movie starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone. Flynn is Dr. Peter Blood, who provides medical assistance to some men who are on the losing side of a rebellion. Potentially sentenced to hang, he ends up in exile in Jamaica, eventually becoming a pirate and the scourge of lots of nations that I cannot remember. Fun stuff! There were actually three Blood novels, Captain Blood (1921) was followed by Capt. Blood Returns ('31) and The Fortunes of Capt. Blood (1936). Sabatini is also the author of Scaramouche (1921), of which there is a second book called Scaramouche the Kingmaker ('31). Again, I downloaded Captain Blood from Project Guttenberg and read it on my Palm Pilot.
Stoll, Clifford The Cuckoo's Egg. Clifford Stoll was a graduate student in astronomy at Berkeley when his funding ran out, he was shuffled into a computer position where his job was to find a $0.26 discrepancy between two accounting systems. He eventually uncovered an East German spy ring funded by the KGB that was using computer networks to break into military installations. This was in the early 80's. The World Wide Web did not exist at that time, but the internet did. Very good read. Cliff is apparently quite a goof ball and sounds like a pretty cool guy. He has two other books, Silicon Snake Oil and High-Tech Heretic which are also good reads and present some very good arguments AGAINST having computers in schools.
Weber, David Against All Odds, Crown of Slaves, Shadow of Saganami. Crown and Shadow are novels set in the Honorverse (Honor Harrington Universe) that build on events regarding the Manticore/Havenite war, but bringing up younger officers. Let's face it, Honor cannot be promoted any further, she can't become Queen of Manticore, she can't become Protector of Grayson. So Weber's writing himself an expansion line that he can pursue to continue developing the Honorverse without dead-ending him with Honor Harrington, I shall make no comments about Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan.
Against All Odds is the latest Honor Harrington book and it includes a CD with text, ebook, and html versions of everything Weber has written as published by Baen. In the preceding paragraph I've written how Weber had a problem promoting Honor. Well, he doesn't promote her per se, but he craftily continues Honor's story and life and the Manticore/Havenite war. It is a nasty book, some very bad things happen in it. We're not talking as bad as Paul Tankersly being killed in the duel, or Honor becoming a POW, but it's an excellent demonstration as to how bad an interstellar war can be between two large nations. But also some good things happen, so overall perhaps there is karmic balance. I am always eager for more Honor, and I'm looking forward to the next!
This book draws upon events in Crown of Slaves, I would consider it important to read that first. Crown is an excellent read regardless and features lots of good action with a certain former spy. I'm told it also builds on Shadow of Saganami, but I don't remember the connection. Maybe over the summer I'll re-read all three.
Bolo! I read in the ebook edition from the CD included with Against All Odds. It's a collection of short stories based upon Keith Laumer's Bolo series about the most advanced battle tanks imaginable. I can't do justice to describing how advanced and nasty a Bolo is, and they have a brigade of them! Thus, I refer you to a very good entry in Wikipedia for more information. These are very good stories and take the stories of the Dinochrome Brigade into an interstellar war of extinction and out the other side.
Weber, David & Ringo, John The March Upcountry series: March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars, We Few. A (currently) four book series in which the tertiary heir to the Terran Empire is sent off on a flag-waving diplomatic mission to get him out of the way as a potential rebellion is in the works and his loyalty is suspect by his mother, the Empress. Only things don't go too well on their journey and a Space Marine who has been mind-controlled blows up their ship, with the prince and a company of marines barely able to get away and make planetfall on the world they are orbiting. The first three books detail their journey to get across the planet to the shuttle port, which is, of course, in enemy hands. The fourth book details their return to Earth and contending with the stealth coup that has overthrown his mother. It's a very good "growth" story, also sort of a buddy pic if it were a movie. I quite liked it, I'm curious if they're planning #5.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 12:45 am (UTC)OTOH, I might be chagrined to find out the numbers are lower than I expect of myself!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 12:49 am (UTC)