Apr 14, 2010

Very Quick Hugo Update

I've read a few more novels on my Hugo list over there on the sideboard. Here's the quick down and dirty because I don't feel like typing very much today.  And it's almost cocktail time. :)

The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Eh. I didn't hate it, but it certainly didn't feel like sci-fi to me. It reads more like a pulp detective story. Sure, it was set in an alternate history reality where a Jewish home state was created in Alaska, but it didn't grab me at all. 

Rainbow's End - I liked this one a lot.  Very sci-fi, as opposed to the last book I read, and I was right in the mood for it so I blew threw it.  In it, the world is moving closer to that point of singularity where technology is aiding and, in some cases, controlling human life.  Vinge brings the reader into this world using a man who is recovering from Alzheimer's Disease and adapting to a technological world.  Very cool stuff.

Starship Troopers - Short and brilliant.  Just the way I dig my sci-fi.  Although this one, like The Forever War, read just as much as a war adventure.  Read this by the pool in a few hours yesterday.  Very different and much better than the movie (which I actually liked).  Can't believe it took me this long to read this one.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Reading is sci-fundamental.

13 comments:

sybil law said...

By the pool?
Oh yeah - you're down south.
I am so jealous! Hope you're having fun!

Heff said...

I'll bet you're almost "Baconized" by now....

Verdant Earl said...

Sybil - lots of fun!

Heff - I need a bit more seasoning...

Barlinnie said...

I still cannae get the thought of bacon and Bourbon out of my head. I keep looking for it over here, but alas.. feck all.

Candy's daily Dandy said...

I'm not into Sci Fi but I am reading a great one about the Isabella Gardner Museum Heist here in Boston. Riveting shit I tell you.
It's all I can do to put it down so I can catch an episode of Glee.

Verdant Earl said...

Jimmy - All you need is a bottle of bourbon and some bacon fat to make it on your own. Easy peasy.

http://nymag.com/restaurants/recipes/inseason/45776/

Candy - Glee is on my to-watch list. I've seen one episode and it was pretty good.

Kevin Spencer said...

Ha, another reminder that I really need to get off my arse and actually read a book.

savannah said...

bless your heart, sugar! knowing that y'all are in charleston when i read "hugo update" my mind when to a whole other place! xoxoxo

(btw, totally agree re chabon's book!)

Verdant Earl said...

Kevin - Actually, on your arse is the best place to read a book. ;)

Savannah - Ha! We took Gia's sister to a restaurant called The Wreck of the Richard and Charlene. It was the name of a trawler that was wrecked on that spot during Hugo in '89. Now it's a seafood joint. Sad story, but great food. And by the by, we planned on taking a day trip to Savannah today, but we all got lazy and worthless. Maybe in a day or two...we'll see which way the drunken winds take us.

badgerdaddy said...

Re: Starship Troopers the movie... one of the least appreciated and most brilliant, IMO, movies of our time. Technically wonderful, and with a rock-solid anti-war message that will ring true forever... All delivered in a positively Brechtian mechanism where the viewer is completely emotionally detached from the movie so the message can be absorbed and understood in explanation by action.

I've been drinking. Does it show?

Verdant Earl said...

badger - A little bit. Me too. The novel, by the way, was not exactly anti-war.

Slyde said...

didnt i just see you in an R2D2 costume somewhere?

livesbythewoods said...

Starship Troopers - excellent book, excellent film, both very different.

I've been downloading and reading loads of sci-fi short stories via Stanza on my phone, mostly by (Gordon) Randall Garrett lately. Really like his stuff. Check him out if you haven't already done so, and I am (as usual) way behind the curve.

Also recently re-read HG Wells' Tales of Space and Time, which are excellent too.

I started reading "A Voyage to Arcturus" by David Lindsay but boy oh boy it's heavy going. It's my emergency 'nothing else to read' book as a result.