futurista

I picked up this book thinking it would be short and funny. But beyond the bathtub incident, I didn't really find myself chuckling much at all. It was kind of off-putting that the writer of the diary kept recounting his jokes and witty comments and then telling the reader of the diary that these jokes and witticisms made all their friends laugh. It's not funny if you have to tell the reader it's funny. Then again, this is in keeping with the character's personality of a constant need for validation whether it be from his job or from having his name listed in the newspaper as being in attendance at a fancy party. And god forbid anyone laugh AT him rather than WITH him. In the end, I find the British past time of putting on airs to be dull and pedestrian. Perhaps that's why I didn't enjoy the book. This is a "cult classic" I could have done without.

I wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did. I get the feeling that it has something to do with the YA romance feel of the book description and the cover making it look more like a time travel textbook than a time travel page-turner. However, I thought I'd give it a try since the book club was reading it and because it had such high ratings.

... And I liked it very much. But what makes it good?
*Time travel abilities in this novel rely on genetics. Therefore, there aren't a large number of people able to muck about in time.
*It's obvious that the author felt at home in the time period to which her characters traveled in the past (after all, the author is a history professor). Her writing made me wish I could visit a World's Fair.
*The antagonist of the story is trying to take over the world by infiltrating his own new religion into the past. Religion is the perfect vehicle for such a task.
*History gets re-written but there's a time bubble that allows people wearing a time travel medallion to be aware of the various versions of history that have existed before history was re-written.
*Every time I thought that the rules of time travel in the book had been broken, I found that they absolutely had not and every loose end had been tied up without me having to just suspend belief and go on.
*The book is YA without going over the line into sparkling vampires.
*Both of the main characters' romantic interests are sweet and likeable (yes, you've got to add 2 romantic interests in to divide the readership into factions rooting for one or the other ... I think I'm going to have to root for Kiernan).
*Dad asks daughter after seeing her recorded videochats with her love interest whether they ever had anything substantial to talk about. Ha. How simple relationships are as a teen when it's acceptable to have nothing in common but life itself.

I stayed up well past my normal bedtime, reading by Kindle-light, under the covers, eyes flying in a frenzy from word to word. And then the book was over and I was frantically looking for a sequel only to find nothing. There's going to be a novella out in the summer of 2013 and the 2nd book in the series out by the end of 2013. However, I'm already feeling impatient. The novella is supposed to tell the story of the history that the main character forgot when she wasn't wearing her medallion and wasn't protected from forgetting everything that was changed in time. My interest is definitely piqued.

Reading [b:The Colors of Space|472228|The Colors of Space|Marion Zimmer Bradley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331253069s/472228.jpg|1579006] made me immediately want to read something else by Marion Zimmer Bradley. In reading about her, I found myself intrigued by her "Darkover" series of which I kept finding mention. In researching it, it turns out to be an ever-expanding tree of books, stories, and fan fiction such that I couldn't figure out what to read first. If you read the books in the order that she wrote them, you'd not be reading them chronologically because she wrote prequels here or branched off on storyline tangents there. While some books of tangent series withing the series are available on Kindle, others are only available as brittle used paperbacks.

So what is the series about? Hmm ... well ... it seems to take place on a planet called Darkover. There are apparently immigrants there from earth as well as 2 types of natives of the planet. One variety of natives are human while the others, the "trailmen", are evolutionarily still living in the trees. There also seems to be some people on the planet that have developed long- and short-distance telepathy.

The series sucked me in with it's futuristic human civilization living on another planet, its Jeckyll/Hyde character, its impending plague, its mountain-climbing adventure, and its tree-dwelling almost-human native population. We have our hero (as a Mr. Hyde-type) leading a mountaineering expedition to convince the trailmen to help our hero's alter ego create a vaccine for a plague that decimates the human population every 48 years but for which the trailmen are immune.

Despite fantasy not really being my genre of choice, I found the book enjoyable. The telepathy part was understated enough not to seem silly. The evolutionarily-behind trailmen were intriguing. And the adventure parts of the novel were interesting. While there wasn't really any one character or storyline that I feel the need to revisit, I am left wondering more about the planet of Darkover in general. And you have to admit that "the Darkover series" sounds like something that would be intriguing just because she's named the planet well.

So, will I read more? Well, the problem is both ebook availability and knowing where in the world to go from here. While this particular book is the first book that author wrote that is set on the Darkover planet, it is chronologically the 3rd in this particular tangent series within the series. I could start with Book 1 in this tangent series, [b:The Bloody Sun|740506|The Bloody Sun (Darkover)|Marion Zimmer Bradley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1228709298s/740506.jpg|1191601] (the 3rd book she actually wrote), but it's not available on Kindle and Book 2 of this tangent series within the series, ([b:The Heritage of Hastur|472778|The Heritage of Hastur (Darkover Series)|Marion Zimmer Bradley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1175044337s/472778.jpg|461050]), is only available on Kindle packaged with another book. Or ... I could start with [b:Darkover Landfall|673158|Darkover Landfall (Darkover, #1)|Marion Zimmer Bradley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1212103566s/673158.jpg|2265576] which is chronologically the first book of the entire series. But, alas, it's not available on Kindle either. So I really don't know where to go from here if I want to start reading the series since none of the obvious starting places are really available. However, the book that the author wrote immediately after writing this one ([b:The Sword of Aldones|740511|The Sword of Aldones (Darkover, #20)|Marion Zimmer Bradley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1228796025s/740511.jpg|1849189]) is available on Kindle. Although I can't say that it looks terribly interesting. Meh. We'll see. I'm not sucked in enough that I can't quit while I'm ahead, but I am still curious.

Hmm ... someone's purchased the rights to turn the series into a television series. That may be easier in the long run that running down all the tangents of the book series.

A favorite from childhood: one of the few books that I read multiple times.

Here's the thing. I don't like bodice-ripping (or buckskin-ripping) romances. I tend to read all the steamy scenes as, "she kissed his blah blah blah and blahed his blah blah blah." As such, I'm obviously the wrong audience for this book since the first half of the book has far too much "quivering" (x3), "shaking" (x48), and "shivering" (x14) for my tastes.

So why did I read it? It was chosen as our book of the month for our time travel book club. Since the time travel in the novel takes the main character, Maggie, to colonial America to live among the Powhatans, I was very interested in reading it. However, it was just not my cup of tea.

Had the first half of the book been more like the last half of the book, I think I would have liked it better. In the first half of the book, the focal point is the romance between Maggie and a Powhatan warrior named Winn. However, the Maggie of the first half of the book has quite an explosive personality. She bristles, thrashes, and rages at everything. Of course, she's not used to the rules of conduct of women in a Powhatan village and does not relish being the "slave" and "property" of Winn. I can understand the sentiment, but it's one thing to be dropped into the 1960s and bristle at such social mores and quite another thing to be dropped into the 1622s and expect to be able to behave as an equal to the men around you. Many of the misadventures that Maggie has in the first half of the book are a result of her quick temper. However, there are too many times when she explodes as a result of practically nothing. Maybe some men like that? Anyhow, it makes for an interesting character, but I think her temper is a little too extreme to be realistic. At least I'd like to think so.

The last half of the book seems like almost a different book entirely. There is an interesting storyline as the Powhatans plot against the English and visa versa, various people get kidnapped, the romance is toned down from a 10 to a 5, and Maggie's temper has been tamed. Whereas I would give the first half of the book 2 stars, the second half gets 4 stars.

I have to say, though, that my favorite line in the book is a typo. Well, at least I hope it's a typo: "Maggie watched as Winn said something tense to the man and waved his question off, shaking his head, while pushing a bowel of food into the man’s hands as if to distract him." I know I'd be distracted by a bowel of food being shoved into my hands!

I do think that certain readers would really love this book. If I did enjoy an erotic romance to go along with my colonial literary fiction, I might have given the book 4 or 5 stars. The book is well-written (minus the bowel incident and a few other typos), well-researched, and chock full of history. Plus, Winn is a drool-worthy character that fan girls would certainly love to put on the same pedestal as all their other lust-worthy book men. I was imagining a male version of Pocahontas from the movie "The New World" (played by Q'orianka Kilcher). Perhaps her brother Kainoa would fit the role. And of course, Wes Studi has to be Opechancanough as he is in "The New World". However, for me, this book is just a 3-star book by no fault of the author.

I'm truly glad to be finished with this series, especially with the last book having a war and terrorism theme. Put that together with mind control powers and it's just not my cup of tea. Plus, we never did get to meet the new settlers (other than the ones introduced in the prequel) which is what I was hoping for all along. I honestly should have stopped with the prequel.

Washington's Providence, is really something special.  In this case, you really can judge a book from its cover. The author says that one of his students drew the cover for him. Doesn't it look like an authentic painting of George Washington that you've somehow managed to never see before?

I recently found a science fiction magazine that was soliciting more humorous science fiction submissions.  And, thinking back, I have to say that I’ve not really read a whole lot of humorous science fiction beyond the rare Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But this book definitely fits that category in its own way... without going too far over the top. t has its serious moments and is well-researched.  However, it’s the humor that wins you over.  The first time you encounter this humor is in the opening line:

"One thing about the past:  I'll never get used to the smell."

Thus begins a wonderful rollicking time travel adventure in which we find our hero, John Curry, attending an opera in Prague conducted by Mozart.  While in Prague, he sees the Orloj in non-working order.  I'd never heard of this magnificent clock. Legend has it, the city blinded the clockmaker so that he could not make a clock equal to or greater than this one for another city. In retribution, the clockmaker damaged the clock such that it no longer worked. The Orloj contains 3 main components: a time-telling component with "The Walk of the Apostles" as an hourly show and the figure of death striking the time, an astronomical dial, and calendar.


While in Prague, John encounters not only Mozart but the historically renowned lover, Casanova.  Before reading this book, I had no idea that Casanova had written a futuristic novel called Icosameron which predicts television, poison gas, and self-powered cars among other inventions far beyond his time.  How fitting that LaFata decides to give Casanova his very own time traveling groupies who could perhaps plant these images of the future in his mind.


At the heart of this novel, however, is John's and his college friend Mark's quest to ensure that George Washington lives long enough to one day become the first president of the United States of America.  John and Mark are a fun and nerdy duo whose shooting skills were learned while playing Duck Hunt and who invoke the spirit of television mobsters to drum up a little artificial courage.  John says that being together in the past is

"just like old times, the two of us, riding our horses -- only this time they're real and not part of some roleplaying game."

The takeaway here seems to be that video game skills are useful for something after all, especially when you find yourself in the middle of the French Indian War.

I hope I've not given away too much of the fun this book has to offer.  But it was one of the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalists in the General Fiction Category, and it's well-deserving.  If you're not convinced yet to read it, at least take the time to watch the book trailer which was created and narrated by the author:

http://youtu.be/IbjqS1T8HkQ

If you're anything like me, you'll find yourself reading John Curry's voice in the voice of the author from the book trailer.  I almost felt as if I had an audiobook going in my head.

I look forward to the next book in the series and seeing what other historical characters come alive on LaFata's pages.  You'd be surprised how many time travel novels fail to actually include much history or bring their characters to life as well as LaFata has.  Having read scores of novels in the genre, I'm finding actual history in a time travel novel to be more of an anomaly than the norm.. I truly hope this novel gets the publicity it needs. I'd like to hope that its humor, history, and the fact that it's well-written will take it far.

This was a great series. The ending was definitely unexpected, but perfect. The third book of the series features an apocalyptic world riddled with an ancient plague. I did find myself turning the pages in the 3rd episode, but not with nearly as much compulsion. Also, I didn't find the villain to be all that believable, but he certainly was gruesome enough. Another minor qualm I have with the 3rd book was all the Aussie-isms that the American characters used (tins, poppa, the shops, laneway, pulled a face, air con). Of course, knowing which phrases are absent in an English-speaking population is often more difficult than knowing which phrases are unique to that same population.

All in all, I highly recommend this book to those who like tales of adventure, plague, and apocalypse.

I'm not sure exactly where this book came from, but I found it in my Kindle labeled as having come from the author. It was also listed as time travel novel. I find that a little odd since there is absolutely no time travel in this book whatsoever. Instead, it is a fantasy novel concerned with people that have magical abilities. Really, this is not the normal sort of book I like to read, but I thought I would give it a chance. However, it still wasn't my cup of tea. Mainly, it was a story of a woman trying to rescue her child from evil people who wanted to do her child harm. And as such, it was a little boring. Oh no. My child has been taken from me. I must find her. Oh, look, everyone suddenly has magical powers. Sorry, I was not really impressed. I think the book kinda lost me when the only person that could save the day was dead. *eyeroll*. I have to say that I didn't find any typos. So I guess it has that going for it. But I have to admit hoping the book would end soon through most of my read despite the introduction of fairies, druids, mermaids, and leprechauns ... which could have been interesting. The book was lacking in something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

This book hides itself well as more of a sociology-type book than economics book. I figured it must be interesting if everyone and their dog had read it, and it was. I've actually used information from this book in conversation on at least 2 occasions since reading this. I don't think I'll ever think of gangs, standardized tests, or swimming pools in the backyard of a toddler's home the same way again. I do so enjoy statistics and sociology, so this was right up my alley. I was a little sad, though, that the audiobook crapped out on me just when I was getting to the most interesting part. It just stopped and wouldn't go any further despite re-downloading it. Oh well. I was just 30 minutes or so from the end, so I probably didn't miss too much.

I love when I find little novella gems like this one. With a book that’s only about 100 pages long, I worry that I’m giving away the entire story by telling the basic plot, so I’ll have to be careful. The setting is a future when we’ve encountered another intelligent race in the universe, and they’ve shared some (but not all) of their space travel secrets with us. It’s that one little secret that the Lhari refuse to share with us (and one small lie) that allows them to have the monopoly on warp-speed space travel. Our hero, Bart, is flung headlong, unwillingly, and without choice into an adventure whose main goal is to uncover the secrets and lies of the Lhari. Along the way, he finds an 8th color and a more civilized race than he originally expected.

I feel as if I’m leaving out so much about what I love in this book by trying to tiptoe around some of the major plot points: the disguises, the relationships, and the social hierarchy between the races. But one interesting point that I won’t leave out is that the Lhari are color-blind in the sense that everything that they see is monochromatic. This means that they cannot see the beauty of space in the brilliancy of color that humans can. Identification of bodies in outer space can never be made by color without the use of a spectrometer. And what a pity. There’s one scene in this book that I love in which Bart is watching the beautiful colors of space pass by and lamenting that his Lhari friend cannot appreciate it with him. It brought to mind the beautiful scenes of warp-speed space travel from the television series Stargate Universe.

A search for an item which is an 8th color that Bart has never seen before plays a large part of the plot of the book. For what it's worth, my earliest memory is wondering why the world wasn't as brilliant as I'd expected and asking myself: "Where are all the other colors?" I don't know where I got the idea we didn't have enough colors in the world, but I still do sometimes wish there were more ... or that our eyes were able to see more of the color spectrum such as ultraviolet like some birds & insects can. i09 has an interesting article about hypothetical colors and impossible colors. Apparently, though, some humans with aphakia can see ultraviolet light. But I'd not want to have to have cataract surgery to aquire such an ability. And I would doubt that a normal human would be able to see an 8th color without the genetic disposition of tolerating brighter light than normal as Bart has. But it doesn’t seem that the 8th color is ultraviolet or he would have certainly encountered it on earth before.

I’ve written so many words for such a short book, but I felt that I had to. I only wish that the author had other books that looked interesting to me (she tends to write fantasy instead of sci-fi, and I tend to like sci-fi far more than fantasy). However, I keep encountering mention of the “Darkover” series and am curious enough to have downloaded the first novella of the series ([b:The Planet Savers|11447834|The Planet Savers|Marion Zimmer Bradley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327993179s/11447834.jpg|16339736]) since it was free. I fear that it may be a gateway drug to a different genre. We shall see.

Anyway, do yourself a favor and get a free e-copy of this book to keep around to read when you’re in the mood for a sci-fi space-travel novella.

The second episode is every bit as good as the first. It boasts pre-historic creatures, hidden treasure, vomit, running, caves, and spiders the size of Rottweilers. It's adventure turned horror in a Lost World setting. And the last episode is supposed to be an apocalyptic world setting, so I'm game to keep reading. Methinks I'm going to be using this author to satisfy my adventure-style popcorn-read needs in the future.

Typical quotes:

"The scream exploded out of the jungle again - closer this time - and Megan cringed. Something was being torn apart literally a few dozen feet away. 'What the f*** is that?'. Carla looked up and pulled a face. 'I don't know, but it sounds like it's having a bad day.'"

and

"I'm about to become a milkshake, he thought morbidly."

Mmm.. just another day in a tropical paradise.

I downloaded this audiobook from my library not so much because I wanted to hear about the life of Louisa May Alcott as much as I wanted to hear what it was like to grow up surrounded by people like Nathaniel Hawthorne,
William Ellery Channing and [a:Henry James|159|Henry James|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1202237907p2/159.jpg]. Probably 80% of the book was devoted to her friends, families, and homes rather than about her life.

Apparently, Louisa developed a lifetime crush on Emerson. Who wouldn't? The next door neighbor in [b:Little Women|1934|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1309282614s/1934.jpg|3244642], Laurie, is partially based on him and partially based on a young man that Louisa met during her European travels. Her European travels were also fodder for Henry James' [b:Daisy Miller|16207|Daisy Miller|Henry James|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1166720105s/16207.jpg|3274683] (which I recently read and didn't really care for).

The author of this biography really had it in for Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott. Louisa based her most popular novel, [b:Little Women|1934|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1309282614s/1934.jpg|3244642], on her own family, and the father is mostly absent, fighting in the civil war. When I read [a:Geraldine Brooks|211268|Geraldine Brooks|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1303284528p2/211268.jpg]' telling of the father's tale in [b:March|13529|March|Geraldine Brooks|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327935441s/13529.jpg|2643796], I came away feeling a little sorry for pathetic Bronson Alcott. But Susan Cheever paints him as a silly dreamer who couldn't provide for his family and who lived off of dreams and Emerson's inheritance. She seems to have no respect for him whatsoever. Then again, I found it odd that the family was willing to live off of apples and bread rather than get a job that was "beneath them". They wanted to teach, write, or lecture, but they'd rather live in utter destitution that do anything else.

As I child, I was utterly fascinated with the character of Jo in Little Women because she was me in so many ways. I wrote constantly, got permission to publish impromptu newspapers at school with a friend of mine, and got my classmates to act in silly plays that my friend and I had written. It's interesting to see that Louisa May Alcott did much of the same as a child, and I have to wonder if I would have kept it up like Louisa did into adulthood with more encouragement and less to do with my time in a more organic world with less distractions to draw me away.

Oh, and did I mention that she saw [a:Charles Dickens|239579|Charles Dickens|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1357465042p2/239579.jpg] speaking on his lecture circuit?

Anyhow, interesting biography, but it could have been better.

In this episode of Chaos Walking, there's far less walking because everyone's being subjugated. But to what end? Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy? What's the point of the war that's raging? It seems to be some combination of fear and testosterone that's got it going. But isn't that most wars? So, in 5 months time, the new settlers will arrive on the planet to find that the planet they're arriving on is at war. Great fun.

It seems that the main problem all along on this planet has been is that the women's thoughts can't be heard while the men's can't. But then there's a cure that allows men to hide their thoughts. So why in the world would you take the cure away and still seek to separate everyone out and set up a militia to keep the people under subjugation unless you're just a psychopath?

Even the "good" characters in this series are idiots. "I'll do anything if you keep Viola safe," Todd keeps saying. And this apparently includes tagging the native population like cattle and treating them like slaves. It always amazes me to see that people can be bought in this way to do horrible things. The bargain becomes that you or someone you love stay alive if you do something awful to someone else. You see so much of this in the history of the world that you wonder what you'd do in the same situation, especially if there's no way to play the hero because the world's against you. But I suppose that those who refused to do such things are often forgotten because they're simply eliminated.

Ugh. Why did I buy the complete series? I should have known by now that most series get progressively worse. Perhaps I dislike this installment of the series because the characters infuriate me and I don't understand them. I can never understand the scheming madmen of the world who defy logic with their actions. Once again, I don't think that my disdain comes as a result of the author's poor writing but from my dislike of the characters in the book. Yes, Viola is still a beaming beacon of virtue, but everyone else is a fairly poor representation of humanity. It sort of makes you wish they'd wipe each other out and get done with it and that all the new settlers would crash to their deaths so that they'd not repeat the same stupid mistakes, leaving the native population to the planet that belongs to them.

I want to dislike this series, but the author had me immediately reaching for the 3rd novel in the series as soon as I finished the last word of novel #2. Blast him. Argh! I think I'd like to rename book #1 as Running, book #2 as Imprisonment, and book #3 as War. Not my normal idea of a fun read, but ... yeah. Only 8 more hours to go in the series (says my Kindle)!

I'll just read the first free episode of this series, I said. He'll not make me read the second book, I said. How wrong I was. Greig (such a sneaky writer) left me hanging at the end of the first episode with an all-consuming need to know what was on the other side of the wall. I felt like Pete in "O Brother, Where Art Thou", screaming in desperation after the sirens consume him with their song. Had I only had $3.03 left in my bank account, I would have had to use it to find out what was on the other side of the rose-covered jungle wall. It's true.

This book has the perfect mixture of elements to make it intriguing. A scientist finds a lost tribe in the jungle, brings home a specimen of a toothed bird to the USA, and unleashes a horrible plague. A team is tasked to go into the jungle to try to find a cure. Mixed in with all of this is romance, jealousy, a hieroglyphic language, deadly plants and animals, a mysterious wall from which many have not returned, and a golden statue. I get the feeling I'm going to need to immediately read the last episode as much as I needed to read the second episode.

Well done.

Heart of Darkness is a famous classic that is referenced every time I turn around. And, as such, I supposed I should read it just to get the in-jokes. But I'm not terribly impressed. I'm convinced that Conrad must have been paid by the comma since he puts them in so willy nilly. I'm also surprised at all the mis-used words that sound similar to the correct word that should be used without actually being the correct word for the situation. But people dare not edit the classics, do they? I guess they're afraid of being haunted by rabid fans. Heck, I'm likely to get hunted by rabid fans just for insinuating that a classic has such flaws ... and for not liking it. God forbid that I not like your favorite book. You'll likely want to put my head on a pike for such a thing, won't you? But you won't because I've used your little in-joke and that should save me for now.

One thing that I find interesting is that the reviews I've seen for this book rarely offer a synopsis of the book. So I shall offer you a synopsis: A steamboat captain accepts a job to go deep into the heart of darkest Africa and is primed with stories of men going into the wild and never returning. He also anticipates meeting a charismatic man of great words whom everyone treats as a god (even turning into a tranny for him). However, the captain is convinced that he won't be impressed by this local god whose power lies within his guns and placing heads on pikes. Ah crap. I just gave away everything except that the local god dies while saying "the horror!" and that the captain tells the god's sweetheart that her name was his dying words instead. Aw. How nice of him.

The All-Knowing Sage Wikipedia says that this book is a "thematic exploration of the savagery-versus-civilization relationship, and of the colonialism and the racism that make imperialism possible." I'm a big fan of stories that explore the savagery-versus-civilization relationship, but this particular story doesn't really do much for me on that front beyond showing the savagery of a white man to put heads on pikes. But, otherwise, I didn't really see that the natives were painted in a light any better than the white man. There didn't seem to be a blatant juxtaposition between the two. I guess that the point is that the book is supposed to expose the white man as being a savage and not just a dandy planting a flag somewhere.

I think, though, that I see this more of a tale of the danger of going ga-ga over charismatic local gods and blindly following them lest you turn yourself into a soulless mime.

Anyhow, I was glad this book was short. And I'll get all those heads-on-pike references now ... thank god Kurtz.