Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you READING?

Well, I finished Supergods, and while I think it's a TREMENDOUS book, it left me more ambivalent about Grant Morrison than ever. But maybe that's the way it should be. Things are never simple with Morrison, literally and figuratively.

The book is at its best in the middle, covering Morrison's beloved Silver Age through the Widescreen era (Authority et al) at the end of the 90s.

The early chapters, covering the Golden Age and the anti-comics panic, seem to rush by, as by the author's own admission, this is well-trod territory.

The later chapters, starting with Morrison's unhappy dance with Marvel at the beginning of the new millenium and ending with Morrison taking over Action Comics, feel somehow compromised, as if Morrison was biting his tongue particularly hard so as not to offend the people involved with the corporation that he currently works for. I just don't buy that he unquestioningly approves of what might be called The Second Dark Age.

Still, there's a lot to recommend this book, as the story of Morrison the working-class hero whose dreams all come true, as a decidedly different kind of self-help book, and as an view-from-the-inside look at pop culture and its synergy with society.

I still believe that Morrison is better at TALKING ABOUT comics than WRITING comics, so I'd certainly be in favor of follow-ups to this book. This could be the start of a whole new branch to his career.

That really was a fantastic article, wasnt it? One of those moments where I felt assured there really are a *few* truly smart people out there thinking ahead and making a difference.

I read it each month. Most months have at least a few good articles (or even pages with interesting facts) and great photographs.

Yeah, Cobie. It's funny that the radicalism of forty or fifty years ago (plant/animal diversity and the acknowledgment that widescale meat production isn't really an efficient way to nourish the globe) is finally being normalized by mainstream mags like NG.

In other news, I've been rereading a volume of Anton Chekhov's early works on my bus rides home. Even though the translation feels spotty and rough in places, it's still great stuff. Seasons have such force in these stories that they're almost characters in and of themselves. Great winter reading, always.

Sherlock Holmes fans should check out The House of Silk , which is a pretty good contemporary attempt to write a Holmes novel.

There's a few bits that are a bit too "let's try to work in this element of the Holmes mythology", but overall it's really enjoyable.

Manuals on home building for CAD program I bought. It's slow, but you work a little while and suddenly, boom, the instructions make sense. Still, its' like it was written in dutch and badly translated to Swahili, and that was translated to english.

So awhile back I bought Ben Bova's Mars Trilogy on sale on audiobook, and have been going through the first book this week. I think I read part of it before back in the 90s when it came out, but my memory of it is kind of hazy, and I may just be mixing it up with Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars, which I definitely read about the same period.

Anyway, as much as "Mars exploration" literature intrigues me, I've actually found parts of this risibly bad, with several bits of it literally making me laugh out loud at how cheesy some of the dialogue is. It's got that basic problem of trying so hard to be realistic that much of it actually comes off as pretty silly.

The basic plot of an international team of scientists exploring Mars would be far more interesting if the scientists didn't come off as incredible stereotypes of the cultures they were supposed to represent. It's cool to see some of the anachronistic plot bits, such as the mission being lead by those great superpowers of the future: the U.S., Japan, and the Soviet Union.

^^So, I finished reading all three (thus far) Ben Bova Mars books, and the sequels were a little bit better than the original, but still not that great. I may eventually get around to picking up other books in his "Grand Tour" series about the exploration of the solar system, but more because the premise fascinates me than because I think the stories are all that great.

I'm still working my way through "Supergods", which has been excellent, but I'm stalling out on the latest chapter because it's all about Flex Mentallo, which I haven't read yet. The Flex deluxe hardcover comes out soon, and I'm loathe to spoil it, but I don't want to skip too much ahead in Supergods as he really seems to be in flow regarding his "magic" phase.

Latest read: Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. Which pretty much confirmed the fact that I don't really like Arthur C. Clarke's stuff.

I've only read 2001, which was quite good. I read it before seeing the movie, so I honestly have no idea how people are supposed to understand the last quarter of that film without it.

I've never actually read 2001, but I've always found the movie to be incredibly overrated. Maybe that would change if I read the book.

I have never seen the movie. I do remember liking the book, which I read in high school. I also rememebr reading Childhood's End, which I remember not liking much at all. I remember I didn't like the ending, although I don't remember it. I used to love Clarke's short stories, though. Much better than his books, IMHO.

Indeed! If not more ...

I have read the three sequels, 2010, 2061, and 3001, and enjoyed them. The 2010 movie doesn't do the book justice.

Just finished The Bride Wore Black Leather by Simon R. Green, and am re-reading Dead Beat by Butcher. I've just gotten the Side Jobs book but haven't started it yet.

Slow night on shift tonight so I finished up the "Lesser Key of Solomon"

Still working on Steven Kings "Mile 81"

Swamplandia... actually, I haven't started yet, but it's the new pick for my book club...

Let me know what you think of Swamplandia. I've had the audiobook in my Wishlist for awhile. It sounds interesting.

I just reread a collection of children's poems by Walter De La Mare. He's been a favorite of mine since I was a kid myself.

After that, I reread Mary Barile's Cookbooks Worth Collecting. It was a gift from a pal who knew about my love affair with cooking ephemera, though real collectors would be horrified at seeing what I do to their beloved paper products. [points to sig line, which really needs an update, soon] A lot of encapsulated history of cooking and food in the U.S. from the 17th Century to the Present day. (Well, the present day that immediately preceded everyone and their Grandma being on the internet. )

Now I'm rereading Willa Cather's Death Comes For The Archbishop. I don't know what else to say in support of this novel. Except it's WILLA freakin' CATHER and yes you should read it! Now! It's not as well known as some of her other work, but it rocks!

Willa Cather is magnificent!

Recent reads include The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, often listed as the first detective novel in English. This book totally deserves all the praise it has received. I really enjoyed it.

Also, Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall, a zombie novel about a family that discovers a zombie baby after the outbreak in 1968. Deciding to hide the baby, they are surprised when he actually starts to grow and develops into a bright, friendly young man. The novel definitely has a lot of interesting ideas, but I can't help but feel that it's going to do to zombies what whoever-ruined-vampires-my-making-them-sympathetic-characters-instead-of-evil-inhuman-monsters did to vampires.

I'm giving Northern Lights (the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy) another go.

I couldn't get into it when I first tried to read it a number of years ago. But this time I'm really enjoying it. The author's imagination and creativity fairly leaps off the page.

I just hope I can stay into it when Uni starts up again this week and all the Law reading hits me.

Just finished it... ultimately unsatisfying... halfway through the novel, the narrative shifts from first-person to third-person, and it continues to alternate for the remainder of the book... while the third-person chapters zip along nicely, the first-person chapters are repetitive and plodding, leading to an unexpected and unnecessary violent encounter for one of the lead characters... it wasn't until the last fifty pages that I felt invested in the story... and by that point, it was too late... shame given the premise...

Well, that'll be another book I can delete from my Wishlist! Thanks, Sharky!