Amph What book are you reading right now?

@Kenneth Morgan, I've read a bunch of Martin Caidin's non-fiction. I'd recommend Samurai (co-written with Japanese ace pilot Saburo Sakai), Fork-tailed Devil (history of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning), Flying Forts (history of the Boeing B-17), and Thunderbolt! (co-written with P-47 ace pilot Bob Johnson).

 

Soon as the libraries re-open, I'll look into it.

 

Batman and Superman - World's Finest: The Silver Age, Volume One.

I need to convey how absolutely bonkers these 1950s comics are, and luckily I can do it with a mere two panels from the first story.



Yes, the first thing basically any reader attuned to our modern ideas about these characters would notice is that Batman, a man who is driven to a never-ending war against crime by witnessing his parents' murder before his eyes, who uses the form of a bat to inspire terror in his enemies, who is so committed to the eternal struggle that even back around the time of this comic he didn't take time off when he was turned into a toddler, decides "Eh, I need some R&R; time to take a break from this whole 'war on crime' thing and catch a cruise while Dick goes to Utica for a week." This is like the fourth panel in the entire comic if you count the opening full-page splash. To say Edmond Hamilton's take on the character is idiosyncratic would be putting it mildly.

Anyway Batman goes on a goddamn cruise. He could easily afford a private yacht, but maybe Bruce Wayne just wants the satisfaction of knowing he could easily catch a norovirus or something. He's a man of the people, our billionaire playboy.

Who fights crime while dressed as a Bat.

BATMAN IS TAKING TIME OFF. I cannot get over this. I cannot. I'm pretty sure even my beloved Adam West Batman didn't take any time off. Go on dates with Russian diplomats who are secretly Catwoman? Sure. But time off?

Anyway it turns out my favorite reporter, Clark Kent, who looks suspiciously like Superman but the latter doesn't wear glasses, don't be ridiculous, is also taking this cruise. Unlike billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent could afford a private room. But, alas, the ship was overbooked (I guess that was a thing in the 1950s?)! He's going to be sharing his room after all!

You know where this is going.



Again, for the record - both of these guys are on vacation. And yet they're extremely worried the other might discover their secret identity. Do they wear their alter egos' costumes to bed, or something?

No, they just change into them in the dark when crisis strikes. Because they assume - okay, I'm not making this up - they each assume that the room will remain dark enough during a fire that the other won't notice they're in costume until they leave the room. Naturally this doesn't work. These are two of the then-canonically smartest men in the world, folks. They then both nonchalantly realize "Welp, guess this guy is Superman/Batman, whatever" and they team up on the spot.

This thing. This ****ing thing is the springboard for the entire volume of comics, an ongoing relationship between two of the biggest characters in pop culture history that has spawned endless comic books, cartoons, movies, toylines, decades of debate about whether or not these characters "should" get along, that solid DCAU episode where Bruce Wayne visits Metropolis, this is where it all begins. Two guys changing in the same room on a cruise ship.

Rant aside, this is a very well put together collection of peak "we really don't know if any of this is still going to be relevant in five years" 1950s comic writing. A time where the very future of superheroes was in quite a bit of doubt because everyone had moved on to other genres - and apparently this decisive shrug of total indifference was the answer. But it's a fun shrug.

Just, y'know, you have to get passed the whole cruise ship thing.

 

Containment .

its about a colony on Venus coupla hundred years in the future , there's a lot of techy problem solving a bit like The Martian, and there's some mystery about the history of the place.

 

Master and Apprentice by Claudia Grey

 

The Crimean War: A History, by Orlando Figes. Figes finds the Crimean War to be a largely forgotten conflict, reduced to the Charge of the Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale when it’s remembered at all. But he covers it as a significant conflict, the culmination of a long series of tensions, breaking the long general peace after Waterloo, and creating significant realignment in domestic society and international politics for its participants after it was over, as laid out in a great concluding chapter. Figes does a great job of explaining the conflict and highlighting the underappreciated role of religion in stoking it: Islamic nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, Catholic and Protestant anti-Orthodoxy, and Russia’s vision of itself as protector of the Orthodox under Ottoman rule. He spends a lot of time on the causes of the war, ably chronicles its course, and gives a great evaluation of its effects at the end. It’s a well-written history, and Figes is so all over the map criticizing the mistakes that were made on every side that he comes off fairly impartial.

 

Finished The Diamond Age. This was interesting enough to finish, and there are brilliant things in it, but good grief I want to tie writers to chairs and ask them wtf are they doing making books longer that is really needed. The story of the protagonist Nell is great. We meet her at age 4 in a world where there are not really nations anymore but various tribes in a world of plenty, though there are still slums and ghettos. Nell receives a stolen hi-tech book that educates her through a fantasy story with her as the star. Of equal interest is a VR actress who spends a large amount of her time connected to Nell's book and becomes a surrogate mother. I think perhaps if Stephenson had cut the sides stories in half this would have been far more enjoyable.

I have not quite decided what to read next.

 

I got seriously confused and thought this was a biography of Neil Diamond.

 

Ok so, now The Assassin's Blade by Sarah Maas. This is a prequel collection of 5 novellas. Reviews are good but those that negative note that they are YA, though one person told me once they found out the author was 16 when she wrote the first book it gave her a greater understanding. Each of these 5 stories features a different mission. The first actual book starts with the lead as a prisoner after having been betrayed by her master so I assume perhaps this collection will end or at least hint at said betrayal.

 

The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes Thoughts
I don't think this has spoilers but I don't know what people consider spoilers these days so...

Spoiler

I never read the Hunger Games books. Just seen the first two movies. I really liked this book. It is a book that brought together the elements I liked about the first two Hunger Games movies told in third person POV which I prefer and find easy to read and get into. It wasn’t so much about being in the games and seeing kids kill each other (not that is all the trilogy is about but the games played big part and I just wasn’t into it). I was never interested in that aspect of this story. It was about how the “games” came to be what they are. How a whole city was managed and manipulated into supporting the games. How easy and effective propaganda is. How easy it is to manipulate people. It is a book of self-reflection for the readers and movie watchers who loved the Hunger Games just like the people in the Capitol did in the trilogy because they got caught up in it.

It is a character study of the villain. How you don’t need a dramatic reason or cause for someone to become evil and do evil. You just have to be selfish, status chasing and power hungry with no moral foundation. Finding yourself turn into a monster with every small choice you made in life adding up because you justified and deluded yourself into thinking all those choices were right. That you had no choice. Just like in real life. For MOST of us, those small choices might not turn you into a tyrant but they might have led into you ruining your life or hurting someone you loved or adding into the injustices of life and the systems that keep it in place. Great book. I would recommend it.

Sejanus and Lucy deserved better.

I enjoyed part one and two better. Part three was a little slow with too much songs (I don’t enjoy reading songs or poems or verses) but it wasn’t bad and I see why that was the setting. The last chapter and epilogue brought it home though. I didn’t expect that. That escalated quickly. Yet, it didn’t feel out of nowhere. It was in keeping with the boy we spend the last 500 pages with. Boy was he cold though. Just like a snow (lol).

Also, this franchise finally has its Umbridge. Dr. Gaul is such an evil sadistic….ugh. [spoiler/]

 

Batman: Hush. Jeph Loeb has been a big chunk of my Batman comics-reading experience. And this is pretty much in line with what I’ve seen from him. A big complicated secret-villain-identity mystery, encounters with as many supporting characters as he can possibly throw in but which tend not to plumb the characters very deep, Batman struggling with a romance that threatens his edge. It’s fun, and it gets some mileage out of the fact that Loeb is playing with the ongoing, not doing Year One backstories, so there’s less establishing elements and more getting to play with the status quo. There’s some interesting exploration of Batman and a few other figures, but I wish the story had slowed down for a bit to explore some of them more deeply rather than cramming in everybody plus Krypto for nonstop action. Its biggest weakness has to be that the mysterious villain reveal is underwhelming. Not only is is pretty predictable, but it comes with a laughably thin motivation, like Loeb had all this planned out like clockwork but only at the end realized he had to include a why. Still, it’s a fun romp, and Jim Lee’s art is pretty excellent, if within the bounds of superhero convention (endlessly rippling muscles, contorted ass shots).

 

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated but I’m about 300 pages into Towers of Midnight. My plan is to hopefully finish the series by next weekend

 

The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes

About 300 pages in...so far so good

 

What Happens Next
by Claire Swinarski

 

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A Corey

I was a bit wary of this after not really caring for Daniel's solo work last month but I'm loving this so far. Lots of likeable characters already.

 

A Memory of Light

 

Finished Assassin's Blade. So these are kind of assassin-ish. It is a YA series and one can tell so, but it was good enough that I am off to the first originally published book, Throne of Glass.

 

You may have already noticed but there's a chapter in there that's literally as long as other books. So, um, plan accordingly.

 

You've heard of the Neverending Story? Well, there's the Neverending Chapter.

 

Don't be ridiculous, Die unendliche Geschichte is roughly 112,000 words long, whereas "The Last Battle" from A Memory of Light is merely 81,200 words long.

But yeah, I like to warn people because I was listening to the audiobook and kept waiting for an opportunity to pause. And waiting. And waiting.

 

Just starting Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton.

 

Are you still waiting?

 

Hunger Games

 

Some say I wait to this very day.

Not me though.