The Reading Corner.

[Zoid]

"Fossile Hunters" by Björn Hagberg and Martin Widman. A gripping tale about the rise of swedish paleontology

[Buster's Uncle]

Black Star Rising by Fredrick Pohl.

[Buster's Uncle]

Dickess by Madison Dale Bruffy.

Started it almost a week ago.  This has got to be the limpest excuse for a book I've struggled through in a very long time - and I waded through that French-translated anthology a couple books back.  Real amateur hour; I don't believe in the milieu, the characters, the plot - anything about it.  It plods, it bores, and it's neither stimulating nor fun.

[Geo]

Started with Heart of the Comet by Brin and Benford.
But I'm going to try to hold it for my vacation.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's an excellent yarn right there.

[Unorthodox]

Summer Knight The next in the Dresden Files.

While the series started out as a supernatural Sherlock Holmes, it has since morphed into much more of a cross between the X Files and the old radio drama of The Shadow.  The previous books in the series pretty much only serving as backstory on how Dresden rounds up his set of tools, this is the first book where he starts to become confident and the one driving the action rather than reacting to things happening to him.  It's a welcome shift.   

[Geo]

That's an excellent yarn right there.

Let's see if I need it over Norwegian vistas. 

[Unorthodox]

Halloween customs, spells, and recipes by Silver Ravenwolf


Yes. I bought a spellbook.

Not a whole lot here I really needed.  Bought for a couple reasons. 

1. New specialty store we stumbled on.  I try to support these kinds of stores when I can, and didn't need any magic candles (though the first store to have one particular variety I'd been looking for, and it was properly seeded even, so might go back if I decide on that route), but they can get me some blanks.  Since the other store flaked out on me there, that's good news. 

2.  A complete how-to on making rather detailed voodoo dolls out of corn husks.

Most the spells and rituals in here are standard Wiccan fare modified to make use of a pumpkin.  But, there was one on making magic dust for voodoo rites.  I don't think it's showy enough for my intended veve, but might mix some just to be sure.   

[Buster's Uncle]

Since I last posted here:

The Sundered by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels.  -A post-Undiscovered Country Captain Sulu novel that demonstrates no feel for Captain Sulu, First Officer Chekov, or really, little for Star Trek in general; however the flashbacks about the other aliens are pretty good, if not nearly enough to rescue the piece.


Murasaki by  Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress and Frederik Pohl, edited by Robert Silverberg.  A 1992 "shared universe" hard science fiction novel in six parts, and not bad at all.


-I'll start a new one tonight, and try to remember to post about it while it's current...

[Lord Avalon]

Sometimes I start books, then put them down for a while to read something else, eventually getting back to them.  E.g., Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, by HG Bissinger; The Sam Gunn Omnibus, by Ben Bova; Patton: A Genius for War, by Carlo D'Este.

[Green1]

Halloween customs, spells, and recipes by Silver Ravenwolf


Yes. I bought a spellbook.

Not a whole lot here I really needed.  Bought for a couple reasons. 

1. New specialty store we stumbled on.  I try to support these kinds of stores when I can, and didn't need any magic candles (though the first store to have one particular variety I'd been looking for, and it was properly seeded even, so might go back if I decide on that route), but they can get me some blanks.  Since the other store flaked out on me there, that's good news. 

2.  A complete how-to on making rather detailed voodoo dolls out of corn husks.

Most the spells and rituals in here are standard Wiccan fare modified to make use of a pumpkin.  But, there was one on making magic dust for voodoo rites.  I don't think it's showy enough for my intended veve, but might mix some just to be sure.   

Uggh...

Llewellen books. I think on some of the fluffier ones you can just copy/paste and just change the name and you have the same book. They put out dozens of those things out back in the day.

But hey, I once owned a copy of Raymond Buckland's "Big Blue Book" of Wicca back when it was a fad and all the kids dressed in black with cool pentagrams in New Orleans circa late 900- early 00s. Even owned a book on ceremonial magick. Talk about out there.

Anyways... past all the BS of Wicca, I have never understood the whole "goddess" focus of Wicca. If I remember correctly, the Wiccans were supposed to have a male god, too. But, methinks these folks were more into radical feminism and using Wicca for the cool rituals and attire. Nothing worse than a born again Wiccan is what I say, even though they are rare breeds nowadays (thankfully).

I say if you want a goddess, read The Principia Discordia. Eris is much cooler and can beat up the Wiccan goddess in a catfight. Roze approves:

http://principiadiscordia.com/

Edit:

@UNORTHODOX...

Voodoo is a tourist funded big bussiness in New Orleans. I doubt anyone practices it. In fact, no one practices it except those who make money off of tourists saying they practice it. The religion died many decades after Marie Laveau and with intermarriage of the blacks and Cajun and better education. But, if you want gris-gris and voodoo dolls and how to make them, I would suggest looking at some of these bead shop websites and look at a few. they do not seem too hard to make.

I one time worked in one of these shops. Surprisingly, the guy that makes them is a Episcopalian Christian. He told me he had no issues making them. He called them "post-it notes" to your god.

[Geo]

Murasaki by  Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress and Frederik Pohl, edited by Robert Silverberg.  A 1992 "shared universe" hard science fiction novel in six parts, and not bad at all.

Must remember.

[Buster's Uncle]

I wonder whether you should remember this:

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

Taking the bull by the horns -I've noticed that my enjoyment of Card's always-excellent work has been decidedly hurt since I found out he went all Miller after the thing happened in New York 12 years ago- I picked up a novel by him that I knew was about the American political Left and Right having a civil war.  I started it late last night and finished it, bumping 400 pages, a few hours ago.

...I could write all day about all the crap the man is wrong about in the book, about the ridiculous false premises throughout and a million things in the story that I don't believe for a second, but the fact remains that I kept reading, because it's good anyway.  This would make a fantastic Tom Clancy-ish movie, the sort of thing that stars Ben Afleck and Samuel L. Jackson.  It's got strong elements of buddy adventure, political thriller, and plenty of sequences that would make strong movie chase scenes, yet work as prose.  Lots of snappy, often funny, dialogue, too. 

Card still pisses me off, not least for a hypocritical afterword from a man too smart to be such a hypocrite and not know it, but gosh, when he's good, he's the best.  Recommended if you think you can stomach the politics - he clearly bent over backwards to try to be fair, and just as clearly doesn't know how badly he failed.  But still, I already finished it, because it worked so well as a story that my need to throw the book across the room in discust lost out to my need to turn the page and read more 355 times in a row.

[Geo]

I wonder whether you should remember this:

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

Taking the bull by the horns -I've noticed that my enjoyment of Card's always-excellent work has been decidedly hurt since I found out he went all Miller after the thing happened in New York 12 years ago- I picked up a novel by him that I knew was about the American political Left and Right having a civil war.  I started it late last night and finished it, bumping 400 pages, a few hours ago.

While a novel about a broken-up USA has merits of its own, its probably not SciFi enough for me. 

[Buster's Uncle]

The rebels are using mechs - no kiddin'.

But yes, not very science-fictiony, and no one less conservative than me, let alone less American, will understand the book at all.  It's still really good. Caveat emptor.

-Also, you'll miss us when we're gone...