5/31/2023 0 Comments Reynolds revelation space![]() ![]() Next, the book jumps back to 2540, where most of the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity are frozen for the journey to Yellowstone (in the Epsilon Eridani system) in order to find Sylveste. As a violent dust storm threatens to temporarily shut down the excavation, Sylveste discovers new evidence that the entire Amarantin race achieved a much higher level of technological sophistication than was previously known, before they were wiped out in a single mysterious cataclysm. ![]() Dan Sylveste, an xenoarchaeologist, leader of the colony, and wealthy scion of a prominent scientific family, leads a team excavating the remains of the Amarantin, a long-dead, 900,000-year-old civilization that once existed on Resurgam. The book opens in the year 2551 on Resurgam, a planet considered a backwater on the edge of colonized human space. This plot device is characteristic of many of Reynolds's works. Revelation Space starts off with three seemingly unrelated narrative strands that eventually meet-and merge-as the novel progresses. ![]()
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5/31/2023 0 Comments Straight man richard russo review![]() In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character-he is a born anarchist-and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans. ![]() William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank.Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. ![]() ![]() ![]() There are other ways in which this graphic novel improves upon the original text. Thanks to some judicious edits and slight restructuring (and the blessing of Ian Fleming’s estate), this adaptation is superior to the original book in just about every respect. ![]() It mars the clever plotting and makes it an unpleasant story to read, which is why it’s a story that I’ve never felt the need to revisit. Quite simply, there’s a good bit of old fashioned racism in the original text, complete with African American characters speaking phonetically-written broken English and descriptions of some characters with “inhuman” features. However, the fact remains that there are some ugly aspects to the novel that have not only aged poorly, but it’s almost impossible to imagine them having gone over quite smoothly back when the book was released. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a terrific tale that takes Bond out of his element, puts returning characters in mortal danger, and inspired one of my favorite installments of the film franchise. And of all of Fleming’s books, the one with the most warts is most likely Live and Let Die. ![]() That fandom includes the original novels by Ian Fleming, warts and all. ![]() 5/31/2023 0 Comments The gashlycrumb tinies book![]() ![]() His sombre black and white cross-hatched ink drawings fit the grim subject matter like a glove. The impact of “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” is enhanced through Edward Gorey’s signature economy of means with both the words and the pictures. “The Tinies” would appeal to imagination which welcomes dark humor and thrives on contact with impactful storytelling. ![]() “Like no other alphabet book that we own” was the verdict, with the whole absurdity of its subject matter for an alphabet picture book declared as amusing. But my cheeky 13 year-old teenager, who thinks of his mother’s tastes as utterly uncool, has appreciated the originality of “The Tinies” in an instant. I wouldn’t have read it to a three year-old learning to read. ![]() ![]() Each youngster is shown in a moment of suffering ranging from all sorts of discomforts (like falling out of a sleigh or having drunk too much gin) to totally dreadful ends (like drowning in a lake, being struck with an axe or perishing from fits). “The Tinies” of Edward Gorey, however, are young children who find themselves in far from secure and comfortable predicaments. We almost always associate this learning with comfortably secure, encouraging settings. “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” defies convention of the alphabet book genre, that of inspiring young children (usually learning to read) to explore letters that make up words that in turn make up stories. “The Bee-Man of Orn” one man’s quest to find his destiny, by Frank Stockton, illustrated by P.J. ![]() |