#6Degrees — Daisy Jones and The Six to…

 

This month we are starting with the book  Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’ve never heard of this book nor this author, but that doesn’t surprise me. A lot of the starting points are at complete odds with what I typically read.

 

I’m actually writing this little blurb before even looking at the cover or any blurbs so that it won’t influence what I write here. An author that uses their middle name has always struck me as pretentious. Unless your name is John Smith or Jane Jones,  MOST authors don’t need to include their middle name.  *insert time travel* And now I’ve perused the wiki and read some of the associated links.  I’ve got nothing to say, which is more than enough I think.

 

 

 

 

 

Another author who I can’t say anything good about is Thoreau and his book Walden & Civil Disobedience.  I would gladly have drowned Thoreau IN Walden pond and I believe it would have been a Crime that nobody would have Punished me for.  I’m guessing you’re smart enough to see where this is going?

 

 

 

 

 

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky!!! Who would have thunk it? A book so good it made it onto Bookstooge’s 100 Book List. C-R-I-M-E is a 5 letter word. Once you subtract time for good behavior though, you might get away with just two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT is a book with a two letter title. IT did NOT get time taken off for good behavior.  In fact, IT was such a naughty book that Stephen King had to punish it by making it almost 1600 pages (449,000 words). I don’t think IT is getting parole any time soon!

 

 

 

 

 

The word “parole” makes me think of Prisons and inside of Prisons are Prisoners. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is what springs to mind with that word association! This was the last good book in the series as far as I was concerned.  It all went downhill after this.

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of going downhill, David Eddings and his formulaic writing REALLY went dowhill. The first time I really realized it was when I read The Redemption of Althalus. I grew up on Eddings in the 90’s so to make this realization hurt even while being part of the inevitable growing up process.

 

 

 

 

 

And that is how you get from a girl named Daisy Jones to a man named Althalus. Goodness, I should give myself an Honorary Degree in Gender Studies for this post! Dr. Bookstooge has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Of course, Dr. Lord Bookstooge is a bit of a mouthful and a little awkward. Hmmm, I’ll have to give this honorary degree thing a bit more thought.

If you’d like to participate in the #6degrees series of posts, head over to #6Degrees Meme to find out the starting point for each month. They’re not always punctual, so sometimes you have to wait until a week into the month.

 

 

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#6Degrees – Sanditon to…

This month we start with Jane Austen’s unfinished manuscript, Sanditon.

 

 

I read Sanditon back in ’13 when I read Austen’s Minor Works. Honestly, I don’t remember a thing about it. Not a clue what it was about. It obviously didn’t make much of an impression on me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A book that did make quite an impression on me was Hard Magic. I know this because I shelled out quite a bit of money to get some special edition versions which I’ll be show-casing in one of my book hauls later this month. Totally worth the money and almost worth the aggravation. You’ll get the full story in the book haul. Hard Magic is noir’ish and while I hate Noir, I liked this trilogy.

 

 

 

 

Another noir’ish series I liked was Cook’s Garrett, PI novels. The first one, Sweet Silver Blues was just a lot of fun. I’m pretty sure these books were offered by the SFBC in the 90’s as omnibus editions but I never bought them because even back then I knew noir’ish stuff wasn’t my thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another SFBC only offering was the Republic Commando omnibuses by Karen Traviss. I enjoyed them immensely, right up to the point where Traviss let her hatred of everything the Jedi stood for take over the story telling. Man, she eviscerated the very idea of the Jedi Order. If you read any of her other books, that won’t come as a surprise to you.  HATRED is hard to read.

 

 

 

 

 

Adrian Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, LOVES bugs and his love shines through most of his books. The Empire in Black and Gold is the first of his 10 book Shadows of the Apt series and from the first page you get that Tchaikovsky and bugs get along like pigs and mud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a fan of science fiction, when I think of bugs, there is one classic book that springs to mind. Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers! I read this in college and this was the cover and it has stuck in my head for the last 2 decades. It doesn’t get much more “buggy” than this book.

 

 

 

 

 

And that is how you get from Jane Austen to Giant Alien Space Bugs, hahahahaa. If you’d like to participate in the #6degrees series of posts, head over to #6Degrees Meme to find out the starting point for each month. They’re not always punctual, so sometimes you have to wait until a week into the month.

 

 

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#6 Degrees – Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland To…

Everyone is Connected to Bookstooge by a maximum of 6 Degrees! 

 

 

 

 

This month we start with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A wonderful book for young and old. A classic that I believe will stand the test of time like Shakespeare and Dickens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As wonderful as the above book was, a re-imagining entitled The Looking Glass Wars was just as bad. I wasn’t familiar with the term YA back in ’08, but this was most definitely YA in all its infamous glory. For some reason, those creatures on the cover remind me of some of the droids from Star Wars, especially those featured in the Clone War era books

 

 

 

 

One of the better books in that series was Shatterpoint, starring Mace Windu as the main character. Or course, saying it was one of the better books is damning it with faint praise indeed. Mace Windu is the only Jedi that I know of who has a purple lightsaber. Purple is a very unique…color. I’m sure you know where I’m going with this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know what else is purple? PROSE! Bad prose at that. The Scorpion was book that had some potential but it was filled with more purple prose than a Forgotten Realms trilogy. Being based on a Collectible Card Game, I had hopes it would turn out better. Sometimes games just need to stay games. And games have rules, even Calvinball.

 

 

 

 

 

And who can play Calvinball better than anyone else? Why the creators, Calvin and Hobbes of course! This comic was executed perfectly and the artist, Bill Watterson chose to end the comic before it ran into the ground. A wise man and wise men have fears.

 

 

 

 

Wise men with fears also don’t go about publicly lying to their audience.  Because a wise man knows that a fan lied to is easily turned into a lifelong enemy, who holds enmity deep within his heart. A man with enmity in his heart is capable of almost anything, even gutting a lying sack of excrement author with a dull spoon. Thank goodness Patrick Rothfuss didn’t do something so insane with his first book, The Name of the Wind.

 

 

 

And there you go, a journey from a delightfully wonderful little girl to a lying sack of excrement that dares to claim it is a man. Ha, I just love these little journeys. They give me all the feelz!

 

If you’d like to participate in the #6degrees series of posts, head over to #6Degrees Meme to find out the starting point for each month. They’re not always punctual, so sometimes you have to wait until a week into the month.

 

 

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#6 Degrees – Three Women To…

I’ve decided that since I plan on doing this #6Degrees series of posts on a semi-regular basis that I should have an image that warns you all. I’m as much a visual person when it comes to online stuff, so a picture gets associated with a person or a particular line of posts just as easily for me as reading the title.  I plan on using the above image as my stock photo for this series from now on. So It Is Written, So It Shall Be!

If you’d like to participate in the #6degrees series of posts, head over to #6Degrees Meme to find out the starting point for each month.

 

 

This month’s chain begins with Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. I made the mistake of reading what this non-fiction book was about and that colored my choice of covers. The other 2 readily available covers were bland, blase pieces of pablum with some colored circles on the cover. NOT representative at all of what was inside. This tells the story of 3 women and their very broken sex lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blood Mirror is the first book that sprang to mind when I thought about broken sex lives in the realm of books I read. The author explores a little known sexual disorder with one of the main female characters.  I found it handled as best as could be, but honestly, could have done without it altogether. I can handle decapitations, disembowelings, maimings, burnings, etc, but gross biological things about women? Not so much.

 

 

 

 

Another book with “mirror” in the title is Mirror of Opposition.  This was one of the first books where I dealt with an Indie author. I paid him about $10 for 2 of his books and generously gave them both 3 stars, I think.  Today, I’d be much harsher in my critique.

 

 

 

 

 

And yet ANOTHER mirror book is The Mirror of Worlds.  This was book 8 in a 9 book fantasy series by David Drake. Just about the only books by him that I liked. He deliberately wrote tropish’ly and I liked it.  Not a series that is going to stick around for the ages though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And apparently I’m stuck on the Mirror theme here. I just can’t avoid it. The False Mirror is a SF book about humanity in the far future. As one of the few races that is warlike, Humanity is trained and treated like an attack dog. But never trusted.

 

 

 

 

 

A mirror shows us a reflection of something. A snapshot of a moment in time.  Such a book was the Kinta Years.  Autobiography of Janice Giles showed a time much different than the one we live in now.

 

 

 

 

 

And thus the circle is complete. From 3 broken women, through the realms of fantasy, to a young girl growing up around 1900.  Strange the paths I wander as I do these posts 🙂

 

 

 

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#6degrees – A Gentleman in Moscow To…

This month’s #6 Degrees of Separation chain kicks off with A Gentleman in Moscow.

 

I have not read this book, nor to be honest, even heard of it. I don’t know a thing about it. I’m guessing it is some sappy piece of crap about a bloke who is feeling lost with his life and goes to Moscow and gets drunk, has numerous affairs and suddenly his life has meaning. Or more likely, he’s french and has already done all that before and realizes his life has no meaning and kills himself. My goodness, glad I never read THAT book 😉

 

 

 

 

The word “Moscow” makes me think Russia, like I hope it would all good educated people of the world. A jolly good Russian book is Oblomov.  Happy go lucky, full of spirit and pluck, Oblomov is everything you’d expect from a Russian novelist.

 

 

 

 

Ok, so while I might have been joking just a teeny bit about a Russian novelist writing an inspirational and happy character, this next selection makes even Pollyanna look like a sad sack of glumness. Gandhi. Now there was a man who knew how to party and have a good time! If anyone was going to Rock the Casbah, Gandhi was that man.  He wasn’t going to let The Man get him down.

 

 

 

Now, I live in the United States. Back in Gandhi’s day you couldn’t travel from the United States to India on airplanes because they didn’t exist. You had to sail, on a boat, like The Coronet.  Shockingly enough, this book was also non-fiction. Two non-fiction books in a row? Sounds like a conspiracy to me! (almost like those “facts” I made up about airplanes!)

 

 

 

 

 

A book filled with conspiracies is the Sound and the Furry.  Little alien teddy bears that think our literature is real and act out our books, all the while possessing greater intelligence than humanity? It takes every ounce of conspiratorial’ness that the main character has to sidetrack the Hoka from going on some galactic jihad, like in Dune.

 

 

 

 

When I think of jihads, I think of the Last Jihad. A political thriller about Saddam Hussein getting a hold of some nukes. It was a fun read even while not aging well.

 

 

 

 

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you go from an (imaginary french) gentleman to Saddam Hussein.  Talk about worlds apart! If you’d like to participate in the #6degrees series of posts, head over to #6Degrees Meme to find out the starting point for each month. They’re not always punctual, so sometimes you have to wait until a week into the month.

 

 

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ps,

on a side note, I can’t use the #6degree tag, it automatically just goes to 6degrees. Anyone have any ideas why that might be?

#6degrees – In Siege of Daylight to…

Wow, it’s been a while since I did one of those #6degree posts. I really need to setup a reminder or something so I do it more often as I enjoy writing these out.   This was a wildcard and we were to start with the book we ended our last chain with.

 

 

Last time I ended my chain with In Siege of Daylight. I was drawn to this book by the cover and the story inside did not disappoint (aside from the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger and the author never wrote any more I mean).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Valor. That book also had a beautiful cover but what was on the inside led me to DNF it instead of enjoying it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another book that I DNF’d was Blowback. The main character, Scott Harvath,  was just a jerk and I can’t stand main characters who aren’t cast in the Heroic Mold. I need my Heroes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, Erevis Cale IS a hero.  In Midnight’s Mask he helps prevent the world of Forgotten Realms from being destroyed. And he doesn’t whine about it or complain about how hard everything is for him, boohoo. No, he mans up and does his job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another book with “mask” in the cover is Death Masks, starring that darling of millions, Harry Dresden. I didn’t like Dresden from the get-go but I TRIED to like him because everybody else liked him. This was at a time in my life before I was the self-confident, swaggering man of mystery that I am today. I read up through Book 11 and even watched the rather pathetic, short lived, tv show/mini-series.

 

 

 

 

 

Another book that was turned into a mini-series was Childhood’s End.  The mini-series and book were different enough that it wasn’t like watching a clone, but the hopeless despair from the book shone through the mini-series like an evil, malevolent dark star.

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s a wrap! From In Siege of Daylight to Childhood’s End.

I’ve said it before, but doing this tag/meme/whatever is a lot of fun. I get to go through my old reviews and see things I haven’t even thought about for years, sometimes decades.  This Blogger chooses the book each month so feel free to bookmark that page.

 

 

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#6degrees – from How to be Both to…

Well, let’s see what rabbit trails we can go down this month!

 

 

I have never heard of this book or its author and I know exactly nothing about it. From the amazon page I gather it has won or placed in for a bunch of awards. Probably means it is a piece of trash.

 

 

 

 

A book that I read AND enjoyed which also won some awards was Connie Willis’ s To Say Nothing of the Dog. A good fun romp that wasn’t trying to “Send a Message”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A book that was trying to “Send a Message” was this one. House by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. Christian fiction trying not to be Christian fiction. Bordered on the horror and I didn’t really care for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A book that has a weird House on the cover is definitely The Road to Oz. A pumpkin head living in a pumpkin. Yep, definitely a children’s book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A book about a child that might appeal to children but definitely appeals to adults is the manga series Yotsuba&!. Ahhh, total cuteness overload. Too bad the manga-ka seems to have let the series slide into oblivion. Thankfully, there was never an overarching plot so we’re not left with a cliffhanger.

 

 

 

 

Finally, the ultimate cliffhanger is when a series isn’t completed, or doesn’t even makes it to Book Two. In Siege of Daylight was a great book that I read back in ’15 but while the author claimed he had the next 3 books all named and almost ready to go, I haven’t heard or seen a thing since. Too bad to, as I enjoyed it.

 

 

 

 

Thus ends our little journey from  How to be Both to In Siege of Daylight. 

 

 

 

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