In this latest installment in the endlessly entertaining series, Precious Ramotswe faces problems both personal and professional.
The first is the potential demise of an old friend, her tiny white van. Recently, it has developed a rather troubling knock, but she dare not consult the estimable Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for fear he may condemn the vehicle. Meanwhile, her talented assistant Mma Makutsi is plagued by the reappearance of her nemesis, Violet Sephotho, who has taken a job at the Double Comfort Furniture store whose proprietor is none other than Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi’s fiancĂ©. Finally, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency has been hired to explain the unexpected losing streak of a local football club, the Kalahari Swoopers. But with Mma Ramotswe on the case, it seems certain that everything will be resolved satisfactorily
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Just tone it down, folks. Write with an air of civility. Don’t give unsolicited advice, which is worth the money I didn’t pay for it. Try to be clearer in making your points, please.
This is a place where you can express your views of the novel, Universes, or the novelette, 2084. Please read a substantial amount before contributing here, telling how much you have read. Please be careful to avoid "spoilers" that give away too much about the story. You can write up to 10,000 characters, or about 1,200 words. Literary controversy is fine, but please keep the discussion polite and intelligent.
And no, thanks all the same, but I did not, and would not, ask for the evaluations of a group of other strivers. What are their qualifications? I didn’t ask my Aunt Harriet either. I didn’t discuss the work with friends, wanting no ill-informed, unqualified advice that might skew my labours.
...
I believe it is an excellent book, and this opinion, my own, in the end is the one that matters to me, as should be the case with every serious writer.
Though puffins endured elsewhere in their historic range—the North Atlantic coasts of Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Britain—by the 1960s the puffin was all but forgotten in Maine.
...
“After 100 years of absence and nine years of working toward this goal,” Kress wrote in the [1981] island logbook that evening, “puffins are again nesting at Eastern Egg Rock—a Fourth of July celebration I’ll never forget.”
Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. The Department of Special Circumstances - the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section - has sent him off to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. But in seeking the secret of the lost sun, Byr risks losing himself. There is only one way to break the silence of millennia: steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. And in accepting this mission, Byr will be swept into a vast conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace... or to the brink of annihilation.
the proof of concept for an all new feature film trilogy. Azureus is the story of a young man who after escaping death and enduring a life changing journey - matures into a heroic freedom fighter.
Azureus Rising is an epic tale of self discovery, obligation and love against all odds.
is good fun, but constantly veering from violent melodrama to parody and back, the movie eventually becomes too much of a macaroni-pizza-pasta-spaghetti-chambara dish, too much at the same time to be anything in particular.
Laughton seems to understand Moreau perfectly, and he plays him as a competent, sensible, clear-thinking man who just happens to have spent his life doing what the rest of the world would consider appalling and unspeakable things for absolutely no practical purpose. It’s an unsettling characterization, and it elevates Island of Lost Souls to a plateau that it might not otherwise have reached.
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them. (by Arnold Lobel)
Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty years old, she’s a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children. When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis changes her life —and her relationship with her family and the world— forever.
Lisa Genova’s debut novel, Still Alice, is both frightening and poignant. ... It isn’t a happy book, but in Genova’s capable hands it is a beautiful, often hopeful, one.
Saga of the Skolian Empire, by Catherine Asaro
The Night’s Dawn Trilogy, by Peter F. Hamilton
The Ender’s Game Series, by Orson Scott Card
The Dune Novels, by Frank Herbert (and progeny)
The Time Quartet, by Madeline L’Engle
Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks. I picked up Excession the other day. I still need Inversions and Matter.
Galactic Center Saga, by Gregory Benford. I've read the first 4 of this 6-book series, but just never made it back around to finishing. I have the last 2 books, but now I'm wondering if I'll need to re-read the others or if I'll be able to jump back into it.
Takeshi Kovacs Series, by Richard Morgan. I don't have any of this trilogy yet -though I could've sworn I had Altered Carbon around here somewhere- so I'll just have to see how this goes.
I plan to begin the WWW series by Robert Sawyer. I have the first book in this trilogy, but the 2nd is only now out in hardback.
Binx Bolling is a small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a "search" for something more important, something that will measure and mark and hold his life forever against the passage of time. And one fateful Mardi Gras week, he finds it in a way, and with a woman, he would never have expected....
The Moviegoer deserves its status as a modern classic because Percy does not spare “modernity.” Nearly fifty years after the publication of this book, the names of the movies and movie stars have changed, but Binx Bolling’s spiritual despair is all too familiar.
Nothing is stated; everything is implied. The reader gets fragments of meaning and occasional glimpses of deep-rooted causes. Yet so expertly are these fragments fitted together and these glimpses sustained that Binx and Kate grow steadily in character throughout the book.
A cultural outsider with the determination, intuition and insight to move within several artistic and industrial circles simultaneously, Lye's films opened up space for an art of documentary and, alternately, the possibility of an accessible avant-garde. By inventing new ways of making films without a camera, expert knowledge or extensive equipment, he initiated a field of artisanal, self-sufficient screen practice that continues to grow and thrive. Importantly, his innovative modernist films reveal that experimental cinema can be a fun, ecstatic and pleasurable experience, self-rendering a cinema of limited means that is no less valuable.
Happiness was important for Lye – he was essentially a happy person, and he worried that personal and international problems prevented others from sharing his attitude. When he developed his political/philosophical concept of 'Individual Happiness Now' in 1941 at the height of the war, he was hopeful that he could share 'the best in human experience' with others.
Straddling a small corner of Spain and France in a land that is marked on no maps except their own, the Basques are a puzzling contradiction-they are Europe's oldest nation without ever having been a country. No one has ever been able to determine their origins, and even the Basques' language, Euskera-the most ancient in Europe-is related to none other on earth. For centuries, their influence has been felt in nearly every realm, from religion to sports to commerce. Even today, the Basques are enjoying what may be the most important cultural renaissance in their long existence.
Mark Kurlansky's passion for the Basque people and his exuberant eye for detail shine throughout this fascinating book. Like Cod, The Basque History of the World blends human stories with economic, political, literary, and culinary history into a rich and heroic tale.
Heartless: The Story of the Tinman from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.
The Dupayne, a small private museum in London devoted to the interwar years 1919-1939, is in turmoil. The trustees -the three children of the museum founder, old Max Dupayne- are bitterly at odds over whether it should be closed. Then one of them is brutally murdered, and what seemed to be no more than a family dispute erupts into horror. For even as Commander Dalgliesh and his team investigate the first killing, a second corpse is discovered. Clearly, someone in the Dupayne is prepared to kill and kill again.
The case is fraught with danger and complications from the outset, not least because of the range of possible suspects -and victims. And still more sinister, the murders appear to echo the notorious crimes of the past featured in one of the musem's most popular galleries, the Murder Room.
For Dalgliesh, P.D. James's formidable detective, the search for the murderer poses an unexpected complication. After years of bachelorhood, he has embarked on a promising new relationship with Emma Lavenham -first introduced in Death in Holy Orders- which is at a critical stage. Yet his struggle to solve the Dupayne murders faces him with a frustrating dilemma: each new development distances him further from commitment to the woman he loves.
Kinky Friedman is living proof that you can be a Texan, a New Yorker, a Jewish country and western singer and an amateur detective at the same time. But when New York City gets a little too full of murder and mayhem to suit him, Kinky heads for the fresh air of the Lone Star State - filtered of course, through his ever-present cigar. But something is rotten in the state of Texas too, and Kerrville's justice of the peace asks the Kinkster for his help. Four old ladies have died in the past few months, and though there's no apparent link, Judge Pat Knox is sure there's a connection. Before the case ends, Kinky will meet up with a rose growing survivalist, a swarm of angry bees, a swarm of eight year old buckaroos at his father's ranch and summer camp and, if he's not careful he may just meet up with his own untimely end.
what's best about "Armadillos" is Friedman's own struggle to make sense of the world around him, an effort that is sometimes boisterous and buffoonish, sometimes poignant and endearing. He's a cross between Holden Caulfield and Woody Allen, a Southern-fried Jew with an identity crisis as big as Texas and a heart to match.
When it Will Be Silent (כשיהיה דומם) from Dan Sachar on Vimeo.
1. Red Planet Mars ('52)
2. It Came From Outer Space ('53)
3. Not of this earth ('57)
4. Kronos ('57)
5. X: The Unknown ('57)
6. Incredible Shrinking Man ('57)
7. Colossus of New York ('58)
8. The Mysterians ('59)
9. The 4D Man ('59)
10. Creation of the Humanoids ('62)
Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity.
Now Jeremy is on the run--from his mind, from his past, from himself--hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that propels him on a treacherous trek across a dark and dangerous America. From a fantasy theme park to the lair of a killer to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis, he follows a voice that is calling him to witness the stunning mystery at the heart of mortality.
Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li, the store's owner, hits Bosch hard, and he promises Li's family that he'll find the killer.
The world Bosch steps into next is unknown territory. He brings in a detective from the Asian Gang Unit for help with translation - not just of languages but also of the cultural norms and expectations that guided Li's life. He uncovers a link to a Hong Kong triad, a lethal and far-reaching crime ring that follows many immigrants to their new lives in the U.S.
And instantly his world explodes. The one good thing in Bosch's life, the person he holds most dear, is taken from him and Bosch travels to Hong Kong in an all-or-nothing bid to regain what he's lost. In a place known as Nine Dragons, as the city's Hungry Ghosts festival burns around him, Bosch puts aside everything he knows and risks everything he has in a desperate bid to outmatch the triad's ferocity.
A body has been found on the overlook near Mulholland Drive. The victim, identified as Dr. Stanley Kent, has two bullet holes in the back of his head from what looks like an execution-style shooting. LAPD detective Harry Bosch is called out to investigate. It is the case he has been waiting for, his first since being recruited to the city's Homicide Special squad.
As soon as Bosch begins retracing Dr. Kent's steps, contradictions emerge. While Kent doesn't seem to have had ties to organized crime, he did have access to dangerous radioactive substances from just about every hospital in Los Angeles County. What begins as a routine homicide investigation opens up before Bosch into something much larger, more dangerous - and much more urgent.
Breaking in a new rookie partner and chasing his first fresh case in years, Bosch is soon in conflict not just with the LAPD brass but also with FBI hotshots who are convinced that the case is too important for the likes of the LAPD. Harry's onetime lover Rachel Walling is among the federal agents frantically working the case, making Bosch's job all the more complicated. Guarding one slim advantage, he relentlessly follows his own instincts, hoping they are still true enough to solve the crime - and to save all of Los Angeles from a deadly hazard.
OUTLIERS from MONDIAL CREATIVE LABS on Vimeo.
more about the psychology of a murderer - about a man with a healthy, well-balanced life who's quietly compelled to kill - rather than an excuse to string together a bunch of the usual thriller theatrics. Mr. Brooks isn't a great movie, no, but it's intriguing enough to be worth seeing at least once.Slant Magazine gives it 1.5 stars and says,
Mr. Brooks is bad in countless fundamental ways—it's not thrilling, not incisive, not altogether coherent, and not particularly well shot—and yet there's nonetheless something cheesy-delicious about its lack of inhibition...
Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its catastrophic, worlds-destroying detonations is about to reach to Masaq' Orbital, home to the far-flung Culture's most adventurous and decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent and to reflect, if only for a moment, on what some call the Culture's own complicity in the terrible event.
Also journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star, the self-exiled celebrity Composer Ziller.
Ziller suspects Quilan has come to murder him, but the major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident. He is part of a conspiracy more ambitious than he can know -- a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he cannot remember it.
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