Amph What book are you reading right now?

The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley. The first Zorro story, from 1915. It's a very action-packed little book, with a great deal of galloping horses and clashing blades. Nothing deep or challenging, but lots of fun. And most of the story beats, as well as some of the dialog, should be very familiar to fans of the old movies.

 

Star Wars: Most Wanted

I forgot I had preordered it. I hope it doesn't disappoint.

 

Someone over in Lit wasn't a happy person about something in it..

 

Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070, by Robin Fleming. Fleming's history of Early Medieval Britain is pretty interesting, laying out the many changes Britain went through over the centuries, from the decline in the Roman Empire's last centuries to the almost total collapse of civilization once the Empire pulled out, the migration of Germanic settlers, and the slow recovery of towns and the economy, development of religious communities and medieval lordships, and unification into a single kingdom over time. Fleming makes some interesting conclusions, such as refuting the narrative of organized Saxon, Angle, and Jute tribes conquering territory; rather, the evidence suggests that scattered settlers from all over northern Europe settled on small scales across England, and generations later, as regional identities developed, people told these origin stories to themselves. Fleming focuses more on social history than political history, following economic developments and the general course of the experience of living in Britain rather than on kings and kingdoms as told by scanty written history. This would be fine if she preened less about doing it. Combined with Fleming's barely-restrained hostility toward anybody with power (I don't think I've seen the word "exploit" so many times in one book), there's a bit more authorial personality in the book than I want or trust, but it's a good read with some interesting points to make.

 

*whistles innocently*

I forgot I preordered it and when I got the email, I was angry at myself. It'll go to someone who will appreciate it more when I'm done with it. So far, it was just one scene, but I have no faith in anything Disney puts out anymore.

I almost started hitting my head against the wall in the doctor's office.

@heels1785 that you continue to love reading of it tells me how much it's your passion

 

Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn

 

The Greatest Benefit to Mankind by Roy Porter. It's the history of medicine and quite a read. Really fascinating if you want to see just how slow and unsteady progress was until the 19th century.

 

A user in Lit wasn't happy about something in a book. You don't say.

 

Well, at least you were in the right place if you were injured hitting your head against the wall.

 

@Rogue1-and-a-half - he was poking "fun" at me for kind of stomping in the forum, *****ing about it, then being huffy

It was a podiatrist, so no


I'm surprising myself by reading another NEU canon book: Leia: Princess of Alderaan
I'm about 1/4 through already and it's good

 

Reread Ed Brubaker's Winter Soldier series. I really love the first seven issues (so Marvel spyjinks with the Red Ghost and his semi-intelligent, gatling gun toting, Russian screaming gorillas, Nick Fury Sr. doing some seriously great spy stuff and rippling with a great Cold War vibe).

Unfortunately, it tumbles hard as the remaining Zephyr sleeper agent (the second gen Winter Soldiers) Leonid makes his utterly ridiculous play with Black Widow. From issues 8 onward, it all falls apart and leavers you wondering why Brubaker even bothered. Stupidly, Marvel sat on giving Ed a Winter Soldier series too long and this was the result of that.

I vaguely remember many Bucky-Natasha fans being super pissed about the ending. I just shrugged as I was so annoyed Brubaker was leaving Marvel, it did not quite hit me how unsuccessful the latter part of this run turned out to be. I like that Captain America Civil War borrowed some ideas from this series, and now I can fully appreciate why Markus and McFeeley did zilch with the second-gen Winter Soldiers. If they tried, I think they could have trumped Brubaker's run easily though. Still, for classic 1960s Marvel spy stuff, the first 7 issues are on point. The rest of it, you can keep as it shows Brubaker was over writing superhero comics, and wanted out so very badly. Hence a rather silly story that resets Natasha and Bucky for the next team to muck up.

Butch Juice's art also ebbed and flowed, sometimes it was excellent, other times it looked muddy and sloppy as heck. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but I was surprised. One of my favorite issues is the story of Leonid's awakening which was amazing art and color-wise. It's a shame that the character went the route he did because that awakening issue was so damn good.

If Ed ever decided to write a cold war spy novel, I'd read it immediately. He understands that era and genre like few comic writers do, and he comes up with some seriously thorough and excellent material, I think that's why reading this whole series now feels a bit lackluster because you can tell he was fed up with that gig despite there being some excellent ideas here. Oh well.

 

I love all history, but medieval British history and American history are my two big obsessions. It’s just such compelling stuff.

 

George Lucas a Life by Brian Jones .

this was only published last year so it's pretty much up to date , I've read most of the other biogs so I knew most of it , but I didn't know : how long he and Linda Ronstadt had been together , or that he put up the budget for Tucker and Red Tails .

 

Actually, I neglected to mention that Michael Lark drew some of the issues of that Winter Soldier series too (including Leonid's awakening).

 

Ooohh! That sounds interesting

 

Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb. I feel like these books are more about political intrigue than assassination, they are a very good page turning read.

 

TOLKIENPALOOZA SUMMER TOUR continues with The Children of Húrin, which I hadn't read before (verdict: better than the versions in The Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales, still not a huge fan of Tolkien's less polished stuff. It's really goddamn hard for me to care about anyone in this detached prose style. Luckily everything about Túrin Turambar is metal as **** so that helps, or maybe I'm just a sucker for angsty guys with black blades that thirst for blood. Possibly both.) and The Silmarillion, which I have read, and is fine. It's fine. Morgoth is fine. Silmarils are fine. Akallabeths? Fine.

Okay, look, this is a weird complaint and an exceedingly hot take, but the stuff Christopher Tolkien edited doesn't seem to be as full of joy as the stuff Tolkien was alive to publish himself. The Hobbit is an obvious example, but even in The Lord of the Rings you can tell he's really enjoying his work (just look at how goddamn pointlessly esoteric parts of those appendices actually got). The other stuff feels forced. Not like in a bad way, but more in that he wasn't completely sure how to get the details right, and it wasn't coming out right. Perhaps he might have gotten it right someday! But he didn't. And now we're stuck with everyone saying "ye" like a yutz. I dunno. Maybe it's kind of a beautiful irony that all these supposed scraps of lost lore are themselves scraps of contradictory/complementary notes which, like myths, we will never be able to discern the correct form of, because that correct form doesn't actually exist. Maybe by ceding ultimate authority to his estate we have fallen into the same reactionary traps which captured Tolkien's storycraft. Maybe we have been conditioned by Tolkien himself to endlessly search for the coveted Appendix A of the Legendarium which will once and for all settle the matter of the proper order of things and establish a sound line of succession. Maybe the line died ranging in the North, and things that should not have been lost became lost forever.

Maybe that was actually okay and we just didn't realize it at the time.

 

I agree about the prose style, but if each chapter in the SIlmarillion was written like Lord of the Rings, it would have been its own 300+ book. I can see C Tolkien not wanting to invent too much from his father's notes, especially when he regretted the little invention he did do in The Silmarillion, which notes he discovered a few years later disproved (Gil-Galad is the son of Orodreth, the son of Angrod, the son of Finarfin... not Orodreth as Finarfin's brother, not Gil-Galad as Fingon's son... and I heard a lot of the Ruin of Doriath was guesswork connecting plot points which weren't all consistent). In the end, the worldbuilding is so good that it leaves readers to fill in the blanks with their own imagination and become more invested in it, even if it makes it a little difficult for the casual reader to enjoy.

 

That's the thing, though; yeah he shouldn't invent too much from the notes, but it all suggests to me the notes never actually cohered into something Tolkien considered presentable. That's probably a less controversial position these days what with the revision-emphasizing view of The History of Middle-Earth and the fact that weird scraps still get unearthed from his archives, but like... man, this austere world-of-ice history textbook feeling just doesn't do it for me, even on rereads, and I don't view any amount of worldbuilding as compensating for the disappointment. My heart yearns for books that do not exist.

Or as they'd say in Quenta Similarillion, verily did Ramza look upon the works as written, and he felt great sorrow, for they did not fill his heart with the joys of past readings. Therefore, logging in as he did to boards.theforce.net, he did cry loud his frustration, and wept. "Wherefore must the great minstrel have long since passed into the West beyond all sight of other men? Wherefore did Ilúvatar grant us this terrible blessing, and thus deny our hearts the sun of better writing?"

 

My heart yearns for more actual JRR Tolkien on his Silmarillion works too, but I have to say that I personally love re-reading the Silmarillion, I seem to do it every other year since I was 12, just because I really appreciate the worldbuilding and what we do have of the stories (especially the stories of Luthien and of Tuor, and I like the character studies of the fallen characters of Melkor/Feanor/Maeglin/Ar-Pharazon as well and the overall tragedy of Numenor... and letting my imagination fill in the potential of Dior/Nimloth and Earendil/Elwing/WarOfWrath, the two stories I yearn for the most after more details on Luthien/Beren and Tuor/Maeglin/Idril and Valar/Valinor). It's actually the Silmarillion that made me fall in love with worldbuilding in general as a writer, and gave me a great example to go by (thought I was creating my own languages/maps/histories/governments even before I ever read Tolkien, he just showed me how far you can go and that I wasn't alone in my weird creativity).

Which stories do you wish for the most, @Ramza ? It's odd that Turin seems the most fleshed-out character arc, after maybe Feanor/Melkor/Thingol, and definitely of the "heroes," but personally I've never been a huge fan of it.

Ha, I just thought of a funny comparison that works to your point. JRR Tolkien is like Avatar Aang, and Christopher Tolkien is Tenzin.

 

Funnily enough I could stand more Narn i Chîn Húrin, I think there's a lot of cool stuff in there and I could've easily sat through a book double or triple the length of The Children of Húrin if it meant more breathing room.

Hell, there's probably like an entire book or three in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad alone. Actually I might want that more, one imagines a Return of the King sort of setup where the movements, musterings, and internal politics of individual forces are laid out (you can't just tell me evil machinations of Maedhros' brothers kept the elves away, man, I want saucy details!), the battle happens in all its horror, and then we deal with the fallout.

But really I think I'd be happy with just about anything. I read a chapter of The Silmarillion and I find myself dwelling on how much more I probably would've liked it given breathing space, and the sort of incidental details (which might just mean trees and architecture) that make LotR feel so fleshed out and familiar. No one ever seems to be around long enough or internally fleshed out enough for me to get really attached. We're constantly told how sad it is that so-and-so slew such-and-such and verily did Fëanor weep to behold it and it's all very tragic, but I've never once had to be told how sad I am when Sam says "I'm back." But I bet I would need that if I'd known Sam for like a chapter, y'know?

 

@Ramza, I put this in the Middle Earth thread too, but I've been following along on this guy's almost chapter-by-chapter guide through the Silmarillion for casual fans, and it's been pretty entertaining (he's halfway through Beren/Luthien right now). You might enjoy it, I like the humorous retellings and the graphics he adds:
https://www.tor.com/series/the-silmarillion-primer/

 

Forever and a Day - Anthony Horowitz's new book that came out yesterday. My Mum preordered it for me a couple of months ago

 

@Ramza @Ghost Have either of you guys read the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth? It's in Morgoth's Ring, one of the myriad History of Middle Earth books. And it's legit my favorite Tolkien ever. I've always liked the style of the Silmarillion and I see a wealth of untapped potential in a lot of that stuff at the same time. I really liked Children of Hurin and I would absolutely loved for Tolkien to have produced book length versions of the stuff in the Silmarillion, but I'll take it as what it is. I'd even have liked a book length exploration of one story from the Second Age, the one about the husband and wife where he loves sailing and she loves forests. I mean, saying it like that it sounds completely inane, but I thought the writing was really, really sharp. I guess I'm saying that I had no issue connecting emotionally to the characters in the short sections of the Silmarillion or even to the characters in the fragments. I was incredibly moved by the Athrabeth's characters, granted one of them is Finrod from the Sil.