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

^^I'm guessing you'd totally love it, Cobie!

I also predict that they are going to be super-huge in general whenever the Boneshaker movie comes out.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for right now! World building, high adventure, cool characters and a general original / quirkiness.

I was looking in my basement..and came across my copy of "Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint." I had forgotten how much fun it was to read Danny Dunn!

I am missing like one or two of these books. I loved them as a kid. Collected a lot of them several years ago...need to finish them up. Time to start reading them to my son as well.

Currently reading The Divine Comedy again. I tend to indulge in it around Halloween. There's a discipline to reading something so intense and complex. You almost have to study it as opposed to simply reading it. But the visual imagery is so rewarding that it's well worth the effort.

I've found that listening to it being read aloud while following along with notes about each canto (which are almost essential as Dante used many popular references and people in the poem) is a highly enjoyable and clarifying way to make your way through Dante's journey. Canto, afterall, means "song" or "singing", so hearing it performed brings life to the words.

The Divine Comedy! It's not just for school reading!

For those interested, Barnes & Noble just posted a list of 9 American science fiction books from the 1950s. Here's the link:

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/...ed-_-bn_review-_-121019_BR01_BNREVIEW-_-

I got less than a paragraph in and couldn't keep the work "pedantic" from pounding in my head.

Anyone care to give a brother a run down on which nine they are suggesting?

^ Sorry, I didn't take the time to read the whole thing either.

It's basically an article on this two-volume set from the Library of America.

Included books are:

Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants

Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human

Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow

Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man

Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star

Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

James Blish, A Case of Conscience

Algis Budrys, Who?

Fritz Leiber, The Big Time

Thanks! Much easier to google and see what to add to my reading list.

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1944): Life? Or Theatre?

I was prowling for art books on Saturday at the library and stumbled on it totally by accident. I had never heard of Salomon before, which is embarrassing.

It's almost a graphic novel, consisting of almost 800 gouache paintings, many with accompanying text or just dynamic text all by itself.

The story is semi-autobiographical, with both realistic and fantastic visual imagery in it. It's a style of fine art that eventually migrated to commercial art, so much of it still looks contemporary today.

Like a lot of artists I admire, Salomon was obsessed with giving her work the qualities of music (much of the accompanying text is from songs of the same period, or modern Classical works). She had a real talent for doing so.

I am absolutely mesmerized by this story. Salomon was an upper-class German Jew, so her life ended tragically and much too soon, in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. But the determination embodied in this work, given the circumstances she created it under, is amazing. (Don't think that all of it's grimness and pain, either. There are moments of romance and elation in there, and delight in both the urban and natural world.)

Read it! Read it! (Or at least search out some of the pages on the net.)

Kevin Hearne: Iron Druid series. Not as good as Butcher, but still fun.

Recently finished The Woman in White, which has pretty much confirmed my impression of the awesomeness of Wilkie Collins.

Just started re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo.

I find I really don't have the time/energy to read books (or comics) much anymore, which is really depressing because I used to be an avid reader.

But I did just manage to finish one and start another recently which I greatly enjoyed/am enjoying.

The one I just finished was actually a manga comic that I read online. I don't think I've ever read a manga before so the style was all new to me.

It was called Spiral by Junji Ito.

Another site was listing the scariest books they'd ever read for Halloween and this one came up a couple of times so I thought I'd check it out. Now The Ruins is still the scariest/most disturbing book I've ever read but this manga was definitely supremely creepy with some horrific imagery that I'm still trying to erase from my mind (the snail people and their fates... <shudder>).

But more than anything, it was an awesomely clever idea that was told in such a way that I really felt like I was reading a comics/manga master at work. Junji Ito has some extremely twisted ideas but he is very, very talented in how he expresses them.

To give a basic rundown of the plot - a small Japanese town starts experiencing weird/horrific 'Spiral'-related events which just build and build as the book goes on (there are about 20 issues, at about 30 pages each, making up the full story).

Before reading this you will not have realised how often the Spiral shape shows up in nature and design. And after reading this you will never be able to look at those shapes the same way again.

Here's a link to the comic if anyone wants to read it themself -

http://read.mangashare.com/Uzumaki/chapter-001/page001.html

The other book that I've just started reading is The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle. Now I am someone who is completely UNinterested in competitive cycling and until recently probably hadn't turned more than two thoughts to Lance Armstrong - but the whole recent news circus around his doping allegations and the idea that this 'celebrity saint' figure was actually a scheming, cunning fraud really intrigued me.

So I've recently read a bunch of really insightful, engaging news articles about the Cult of Lance and the whole messianic persona that he and the UCI created that then became too big for the sport to lose, and now I'm reading the inside story as told by someone who was right there on the inside during it all.

And let me just say that this is a really engaging and interesting book! Very easy to read and really eye-opening about what goes on in this sport. It definitely explains the mind-set that would lead someone to start taking performance-enhancing drugs, without at all trying to excuse it. But what it's really about, and what I find most fascinating, is power; and the desperate lengths some go to to get it. Lance comes across as a bullying control freak who behaves appallingly at times and was undoubtedly a key figure in this drugs network, but at the same time, I understand how much was on the line for him and why he told the lies he did, until the lies eventually got so big that he thought he had no choice but to keep telling them. Not that I'm excusing him. He ruined lives and cost people their careers and IMO definitely deserves a harsher penalty than losing a few of his multi-million dollar sponsors.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a passing interest in this story, definitely not just cycling fans.

By chance, not by choice, two books on politics recently rose to the top of my reading list. Both were thought-provoking and I recommend them.

In The Price of Civilization, Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist with 40 years' work around the world, asserts that America's economic decline stems from a moral crisis:"the decline of civic virtue among American's political and economic elite." He explores the problem and offers a pathway to regain prosperity.

Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope was written two years into his Senate tenure and two years before he became President. It's interesting to see the clear-eyed, feet-on-the-ground "hope"fulness in his worldview, which is something I dearly search for in would-be political leaders. There were many times while I was reading that I thought of Republican friends and noted that they would like what Obama was saying. This is quite a counterpoint to the Obama-caricature that so many of us are basing our opinions on.

My next book: Ardent Spirits by Reynolds Price.

Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero by Larry Tye

This thick, 409-page book traces the history of You Know Who from his development in Siegel and Shuster's imaginations to the icon he is today. Along the way, it profiles many of the writers, artists, editors, entrepreneurs, and actors who contributed to the Superman legend over the decades.

Some interesting revelations:
--Most sources paint Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster as victims screwed over by DC's greed, and, while DC bought the rights to Superman dirt cheap (for $130!), Tye evenhandedly suggests they were at least partly responsible for their fate. Siegel was singlemindedly obsessed with getting what he felt was due him and was such an irritant, Jack Liebowitz (DC co-owner) labeled him an ingrate. Shuster followed Siegel's lead, allowing the latter to make decisions for both of them. Siegel and Shuster, however, were paid quite well until they sued National in 1947. They even got bylines, a rarity for comics creators in those days.
--Liebowitz and his partner, Harry Donnenfeld, were hardly angels. They had ties to the mob and basically screwed National's founder, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, out of his company by first becoming his partners and then forcing his company into bankruptcy so he had no choice but to sell out to them.
--Almost all of Superman's early creators came from working class or immigrant Jewish backgrounds, and their experiences played a major role in shaping the development and world view of the character.
--Siegel's father died as a result of a robbery when Siegel was 17. The experience of losing his father was mirrored in several other early creators and shaped the destruction of Krypton/death of Jor-El motif.
--Siegel's second wife, Joanne, modeled for Lois Lane. Later, she lied about her age on her marriage certificate. Her new date of birth would have made her 12 at the time of the modeling!
--Siegel wrote a story in 1943 which predicted the eventual creation of kryptonite, although DC shelved the script at the time because they didn't want Superman to have a weakness.
--Several hallmarks of the legend (such as Superman flying instead of being able to leap 1/8 of a mile) were developed first on radio instead of in the comics.

There are many other fascinating revelations. Highly recommended.

Donenfeld wasn't just "mob-connected"...he was an outright mobster. He had deep ties to Frank Costello and Tamany Hall.

Distribution of news print has traditionally been a mob-fronted business. So the entire comic book industry had mob ties in the early day (on a publishing level). That remained that way all the way until at last the 70's.

He Who, if you liked that book, you'd probably enjoy Gerard Jones' "Men of Tomorrow", although it sounds like they both cover a lot of the same ground.

Thanks for the recommendation, Fanfie.

Yeah, I should have given same rec. Jones book is a fantastic source.

It's a topic I really love and have studied intensely.

Just snagged it for my kindle, thanks HWW.
I added Fanfie's rec to my wishlist, so if i like this book i'll pick up Men of Tomorrow next

I hope you enjoy it, Virie. I finished it a few days ago, and it remained a fascinating read from beginning to end.

From a writer's perspective, it's very interesting how Tye and his agent pitched the book to the publisher. Their pitch is revealed in the back of the book. (I won't give away spoilers. )

I'm almost finished reading "Dead Island", a zombie book based on a video game. Fairly disappointing really. Soon as I am finished I'll be starting the book HWW recommended

I've been plowing through John Burdett's Bangkok series - Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, The Godfather of Kathmandu and Vulture Peak (only one left: Bangkok Haunts).

This is a marvelous detective series set in Thailand, featuring Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the son of an American G.I. and a Bangkok hooker. He's a detective with the Bangkok police and, since he's half farang, is given the cases involving foreigners. He works for a delightfully devious and corrupt Colonel Vikram and is assisted by the generally outrageous Lek, who is in the process of becoming female.

The plots tend to be similar: a prostitute or a foreigner is gruesomely murdered, and it's always complicated with people in high places, both domestic and foreign.

What is particularly fascinating is the running commentary from Sonchai as he contemplates the effect that globalism is having on his country, the ethics of running a whorehouse with his mother, Thailand's sex trade, drug consumption and trafficking and Buddhist philosophy. His life is complicated not only by being half foreign but also an "arhat", an altruistic and uncorruptible soul.

I picked up "Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero" by Larry Tye from the library. It is a fascinating read! Thanks for the recommendation!

I also was persuaded by some friends of mine to read "The Hunger Games," which was quite good as well.