This is a list of the books I read during the calendar year 2010, in the order in which I completed them. Some of them were started during 2009, or possibly even earlier. This post covers the list through my notes for April 2010, meaning books finished in January-April 2010, and books started in January-April 2010, which were completed in the calendar year 2010. This excludes books begun in 2010, but which were completed in 2011.
As you will see, there are novels, histories, biographies, and books on an assortment of topics. There are sixteen books in this list covering four months of literary activity. I have made no attempt to sort or group these books in any particular fashion.
Michael Cox. The Meaning of Night. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2006. 703 pages. ISBN 978-0-393-33034.2. Read 22 September 2009-27 January 2010.
Michael Jecks. The Malice of Unnatural Death. Great Britain: Headline, 2006. xiv + 399 pages.
Henning Mankell. Faceless Killers. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003. 280 pages. Read 15-18 January 2010.
Sean Williams. Cenotaxis. Austin, TX: MonkeyBrain Books, 2007. 111 pages. Read 15-21 January 2010.
Jay Lake. Escapement. New York: Tor Books, 2008. 384 pages. Read 29 January-12 February 2010.
Stephen Jones. The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead. New York: Metro Books, 2009. ix + 518 pages. Read 12 February-4 March 2010.
David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen. The World Turned Upside Down. New York: Baen Books, 2004. 743 pages. Read 17-27 February 2010.
Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946. New York: Library of America, 1995, 2001. xxiii + 874 pages. Read 20 February-14 April 2010.
N. A. M. Rodger. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 445 pages. Index. Read 5 March-24 April 2010.
Matthew Hughes. Majestrum. San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007. 247 pages. Read 9-16 March 2010.
Robert Asprey. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: Basic Books, 2000. xxi + 580 pages. ISBN 0-465-04879-x. $37.50. Read 17 March-8 August 2010.
Robert L. Casey. Journey to the High Southwest: A Traveler's Guide to Santa Fe and the Four Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Eighth edition. Guilford, CT: Insider's Guide, 2007. xix + 561 pages. Index. Read 13 April-30 September 2010.
Halka Chronic. Roadside Geology of Arizona. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1983. xix + 321 pages. ISBN 978-0-87842-147-3. $18.00. Glossary. Index. Read 16 April-25 May 2010.
Bernice Brode. Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa 1943-1945. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997. 165 pages. Glossary. Glossary of Names. Index of Names. About the Author. Read 17 April-8 May 2010.
David Weber. By Heresies Distressed. 2009. 492 pages. Characters. Glossary. Read 22 April-5 May 2010.
Jo Nesbo. Nemesis. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Harper, 2008. 474 pages. Read 22 April-31 July 2010.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label horror fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Current Reading
As you can see, I have a few books working now, and I finished a few in January and earlier this month. The most recent start was on the Library of American paperback Reporting World War II. This book was originally published in two hardcover volumes in 1995, and the current version is excerpted from that material. Over 800 pages, with all sorts of scholarly impedimenta, and including pieces by Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer, and so on. I bought this book in 2007 at the Borders remainder store in the outlet mall in Castle Rock. That store is gone now, and there are many vacant storefronts in the mall. We went up there on Friday to shop for sheets, but the Wamsutta outlet store is gone, too.
A few years ago, on one of my trips to North Carolina, Dave Drake gave me a copy of The World Turned Upside Down. This anthology of science fiction stories was edited by Dave, along with Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen. Anyone into science fiction will recognize such stories as "A Pail of Air," "The Menace from Earth," "St. Dragon and the George," "The Cold Equations," and "Who Goes There?" Great stuff, and there have been, so far, a few stories I'd never read before. I'm loving this stuff!
The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead (2009, originally published in 1993 as The Mammoth Book of Zombies) is edited by Stephen Jones, and it contains some fine old classic horror stories by Lovecraft, Lumley, Poe, Manly Wade Wellman, and Karl Edward Wagner, as well as more recent stories. The most intriguing title belongs, of course, to the last story in the collection, "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks," by Joe R. Lansdale. I read "A Warning to the Curious," by M. R. James, today, and it's interesting to contemplate how effective a story first published in 1925 can be.
A few years ago, on one of my trips to North Carolina, Dave Drake gave me a copy of The World Turned Upside Down. This anthology of science fiction stories was edited by Dave, along with Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen. Anyone into science fiction will recognize such stories as "A Pail of Air," "The Menace from Earth," "St. Dragon and the George," "The Cold Equations," and "Who Goes There?" Great stuff, and there have been, so far, a few stories I'd never read before. I'm loving this stuff!
The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead (2009, originally published in 1993 as The Mammoth Book of Zombies) is edited by Stephen Jones, and it contains some fine old classic horror stories by Lovecraft, Lumley, Poe, Manly Wade Wellman, and Karl Edward Wagner, as well as more recent stories. The most intriguing title belongs, of course, to the last story in the collection, "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks," by Joe R. Lansdale. I read "A Warning to the Curious," by M. R. James, today, and it's interesting to contemplate how effective a story first published in 1925 can be.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Knight's Reading List XVII: May 2008
Reading List:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium.
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881.
Drake, David. Balefires.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave.
Non-Fiction:
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881. 1970. xvi + 503 pages. Index.
Pierre Berton may have been Canada’s best popular historian. He wrote books on the war of 1812, the arctic, World War I, and much more. This is the first of a two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Ah, there were men in Canada in those days! And Berton’s stock in trade is portraits and accounts of individual adventures, weaving them into the narrative of how Canada came to undertake the building a railroad that it didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but had to have if it were to be more than a semi-official province of the United States. In this volume, most of the efforts to build the railway are frustrated, but a lot of money and gravel are poured into the muskeg bogs west of Fort William and Port Arthur. Most Americans are far too ignorant of Canada, and they don’t even know how little they know. Pierre Berton can help to correct that deplorable situation.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005. 380 pages. Glossary. Index.
There are four basic parts to this book: how to select a digital camera; how to set your camera for the best results; how to store and print or display your output; and how to improve your pictures once they’re in the computer. The author provides lots of examples, making this the most colorful Dummies book I have seen. Like many of the Dummies series, this is an excellent starting point for someone who want to get a little more out of a digital camera.
Fiction:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium. New York: Warner Books, 2002. 290 pages.
The Duke of Uranium is a YA book. That’s “young adult,” and you can always spot that genre by the use of a 16- or 17-year-old hero (or heroine) to undertake adventures most thrillers leave to men and women in their thirties. This one is fast-paced and well-developed. There isn’t a lot to the characters, but Jak Jinnaka, our hero, is quick and resourceful. This book reminded me of some of the Heinlein YA books I read in my youth. Barnes does a good job of world-building, too, with a well-realized corporatist state providing a good background for the teenage hijinks.
Drake, David. Balefires. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2007. 303 pages.
If you wanted a collection of two dozen short stories, any one of which could lay icy fingers along your spine or get you to look over your shoulder at every noise down the hall, this might well be that book. David Drake wrote these stories between 1967 and 2005, but the vast majority were first published in the 1970s. They were first published in a variety of magazines and collections, some slick and famous like Omni, some almost private ventures like Whispers.
I’ll tell you this, there are some stories in here I first read more than thirty years ago, and when I re-read them I still got that fine creepy feeling you get from a good horror story, like walking into a mass of cobwebs in a dark cave. “The Barrow Troll” is a lovely story set in medieval northern Europe, dark and portentous, which leave you wondering if it is a tale of madness or of the supernatural. “The Hunting Ground,” set in Durham, North Carolina, a town I, too, lived in during the early 1970s, is a story about particularly sinister invaders from outer space.
The variety of settings is an added element of these stories. Vettius and Dama find monsters in the distant provinces of the Roman Empire. “Something Had to Be Done,” “Firefight” and “The Dancer in the Flames” have their sources in wartime Vietnam. If you like the kind of stories that take you back to the days when you and your friends sat around a campfire trying to scare yourselves silly, you would really enjoy Balefires.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. New York William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1970. 495 pages. Author’s Note. Acknowedgements.
The Crystal Cave is the first book of a trilogy of novels set on the Arthurian legend, told from the viewpoint of Merlin, Arthur’s famous magician and counselor. The following books are The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). There is a fourth book using the same setting, but using Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister as focus and narrator, The Wicked Day (1996). So it up to The Crystal Cave to set the scene, introduce the characters, and put the plot into motion. This Mary Stewart, heretofore an author of romantic mysteries like The Moon-Spinners (1963), does very well indeed.
I suppose the most important thing to say about The Crystal Cave is that Mary Stewart provides us an adult take on the Arthurian legend. This isn’t a fantasy for children, but an exploration of the emotions and actions of two men, Arthur and Merlin, both illegitimate, who come to have powers for which neither has been very well prepared. It is, in many ways, their common illegitimacy that binds Merlin to Arthur, and which gives him his empathy for Arthur’s struggles. While Arthur doesn’t appear in person, as it were, until the later books, in The Crystal Cave Merlin’s relationship with Arthur begins with the arrangements for Arthur’s conception.
It is a very exciting scene, full of storm clouds and ancient stone walls battered by the violent sea, in which Merlin conducts Uther Pendragon to the side of Ugraine, a married woman whose husband is conveniently away, and watches over Arthur’s conception. In fact, Merlin’s motivation is not that of a mere pander, but based on his foreknowledge of Arthur’s ability to unite Britain against the Saxon invaders. This is a Bildungsroman, an historical novel, and a work of forceful and believable magic, all at once. Most of all, this is a fine novel of human emotions and feelings.
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium.
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881.
Drake, David. Balefires.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave.
Non-Fiction:
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881. 1970. xvi + 503 pages. Index.
Pierre Berton may have been Canada’s best popular historian. He wrote books on the war of 1812, the arctic, World War I, and much more. This is the first of a two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Ah, there were men in Canada in those days! And Berton’s stock in trade is portraits and accounts of individual adventures, weaving them into the narrative of how Canada came to undertake the building a railroad that it didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but had to have if it were to be more than a semi-official province of the United States. In this volume, most of the efforts to build the railway are frustrated, but a lot of money and gravel are poured into the muskeg bogs west of Fort William and Port Arthur. Most Americans are far too ignorant of Canada, and they don’t even know how little they know. Pierre Berton can help to correct that deplorable situation.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005. 380 pages. Glossary. Index.
There are four basic parts to this book: how to select a digital camera; how to set your camera for the best results; how to store and print or display your output; and how to improve your pictures once they’re in the computer. The author provides lots of examples, making this the most colorful Dummies book I have seen. Like many of the Dummies series, this is an excellent starting point for someone who want to get a little more out of a digital camera.
Fiction:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium. New York: Warner Books, 2002. 290 pages.
The Duke of Uranium is a YA book. That’s “young adult,” and you can always spot that genre by the use of a 16- or 17-year-old hero (or heroine) to undertake adventures most thrillers leave to men and women in their thirties. This one is fast-paced and well-developed. There isn’t a lot to the characters, but Jak Jinnaka, our hero, is quick and resourceful. This book reminded me of some of the Heinlein YA books I read in my youth. Barnes does a good job of world-building, too, with a well-realized corporatist state providing a good background for the teenage hijinks.
Drake, David. Balefires. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2007. 303 pages.
If you wanted a collection of two dozen short stories, any one of which could lay icy fingers along your spine or get you to look over your shoulder at every noise down the hall, this might well be that book. David Drake wrote these stories between 1967 and 2005, but the vast majority were first published in the 1970s. They were first published in a variety of magazines and collections, some slick and famous like Omni, some almost private ventures like Whispers.
I’ll tell you this, there are some stories in here I first read more than thirty years ago, and when I re-read them I still got that fine creepy feeling you get from a good horror story, like walking into a mass of cobwebs in a dark cave. “The Barrow Troll” is a lovely story set in medieval northern Europe, dark and portentous, which leave you wondering if it is a tale of madness or of the supernatural. “The Hunting Ground,” set in Durham, North Carolina, a town I, too, lived in during the early 1970s, is a story about particularly sinister invaders from outer space.
The variety of settings is an added element of these stories. Vettius and Dama find monsters in the distant provinces of the Roman Empire. “Something Had to Be Done,” “Firefight” and “The Dancer in the Flames” have their sources in wartime Vietnam. If you like the kind of stories that take you back to the days when you and your friends sat around a campfire trying to scare yourselves silly, you would really enjoy Balefires.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. New York William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1970. 495 pages. Author’s Note. Acknowedgements.
The Crystal Cave is the first book of a trilogy of novels set on the Arthurian legend, told from the viewpoint of Merlin, Arthur’s famous magician and counselor. The following books are The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). There is a fourth book using the same setting, but using Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister as focus and narrator, The Wicked Day (1996). So it up to The Crystal Cave to set the scene, introduce the characters, and put the plot into motion. This Mary Stewart, heretofore an author of romantic mysteries like The Moon-Spinners (1963), does very well indeed.
I suppose the most important thing to say about The Crystal Cave is that Mary Stewart provides us an adult take on the Arthurian legend. This isn’t a fantasy for children, but an exploration of the emotions and actions of two men, Arthur and Merlin, both illegitimate, who come to have powers for which neither has been very well prepared. It is, in many ways, their common illegitimacy that binds Merlin to Arthur, and which gives him his empathy for Arthur’s struggles. While Arthur doesn’t appear in person, as it were, until the later books, in The Crystal Cave Merlin’s relationship with Arthur begins with the arrangements for Arthur’s conception.
It is a very exciting scene, full of storm clouds and ancient stone walls battered by the violent sea, in which Merlin conducts Uther Pendragon to the side of Ugraine, a married woman whose husband is conveniently away, and watches over Arthur’s conception. In fact, Merlin’s motivation is not that of a mere pander, but based on his foreknowledge of Arthur’s ability to unite Britain against the Saxon invaders. This is a Bildungsroman, an historical novel, and a work of forceful and believable magic, all at once. Most of all, this is a fine novel of human emotions and feelings.
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