Simultaneously with reading my fiction book, Burn Me Deadly, I'm also reading a non-fiction book, Alaska's Women Pilots: Contemporary Portraits, by Jenifer Fratzke. Utah State University Press, 2004.
It's pretty interesting, all about the pioneering women in the 70s and 80s who broke into the all-male field of aviation. These women did it in Alaska, of course women around the country and indeed around the world (well, the Western aka civilized portions of it) were doign it to.
The women interviewed for this book are:
Tamar Bailey, Noralie Jennings-Voigt, Ellie Jones-Elg, Sanna Green, Caroline Lachmann-Spivak, Darlene Dubay, Val Aron Jokla, and the author herself who reveals information about her own career as a pilot, Jenifer Fratzke.
Once I finish this, I'll be writing a review of it for my webzine, Winged Victory: Women in Aviation.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
#3 Burn Me Deadly, by Alex Bledsoe (fiction) continued
Finished two more chapters today. I'm really enjoying this. I confess I skipped ahead to the end (I always do when reading mystery novels, I dont have the patience to wait to find out whodunit) and it's got a good ending, too.
Unfortunately I don't have time to read it all in one day, too many projects going on. Not the least is that I've started a new nonficton book, dealing with women's aviation. I have to do this because I have to get to the next one on my list, which is a book I have to review, quickly, for my webzine, Winged Victory: Women in Aviation.
I'm way behind on my reading and other stuff, for various and sundry reasons into which I will not go. Let's just say the best laid plans of mice, men, and women, gang aft agley...
Unfortunately I don't have time to read it all in one day, too many projects going on. Not the least is that I've started a new nonficton book, dealing with women's aviation. I have to do this because I have to get to the next one on my list, which is a book I have to review, quickly, for my webzine, Winged Victory: Women in Aviation.
I'm way behind on my reading and other stuff, for various and sundry reasons into which I will not go. Let's just say the best laid plans of mice, men, and women, gang aft agley...
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
#3 Burn Me Deadly, by Alex Bledsoe (fiction)
#3. Burn Me Deadly. Alex Bledsoe. Tor. 2009
I received an advance copy of this book, for review in The Thunder Child science fiction and fantasy webzine.
I hadn't read the first book in the Eddie LaCrosse "freelance sword jockey" series, The Sword-Edge Blonde - though its reviewed by TTC at http://thethunderchild.com/Reviews/Amy/SwordEdgedBlonde.html.
I'm enjoying this second installment in the series, although it does take some getting used to the fact that all the charactesr talk like modern-day people, rather than the more usual "poetic" style typically used for sword & sorcery.
Burn Me Deadly is, or at least has started out as, a pastiche of Kiss Me Deadly, the film noir movie starring Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer, which, unfortunately, was not a success, but of course now is thought to be a classic! Too late for Meeker's film career!
Anyway, in the movie, a young Cloris Leachman runs out into the street, and Mike Hammer stops and picks her up. Soon, however, the baddies find them. Cloris' character is kidnapped again, and Mike is knocked unconscious. When he recovers it's to find Cloris' body, tortured and dead.
That's how Burn Me Deadly starts, too. And considering the "burn marks" on the girl's arms, not part of the later torture she's subjected to, one's thinking that the "thing in the suitcase" or the "mcguffin" is going to be some kind of nuclear power, in a sword-and-sorcery way, of course.
Here's the first two paragraphs:
The review for this book will be appearing at The Thunder Child shortly.
And here are a few clips from the movie, Kiss Me Deadly. If you haven't heard of it...Mike Hammer is looking for the torturer of a girl, and he finds a suitcase, that, when opened...glows...the original ending was deleted from the movie, but is now in the restored versions...and there's a pic of that too, below. Plus you can read about the restoration of the DVD here:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2356kiss.html
I received an advance copy of this book, for review in The Thunder Child science fiction and fantasy webzine.
I hadn't read the first book in the Eddie LaCrosse "freelance sword jockey" series, The Sword-Edge Blonde - though its reviewed by TTC at http://thethunderchild.com/Reviews/Amy/SwordEdgedBlonde.html.
I'm enjoying this second installment in the series, although it does take some getting used to the fact that all the charactesr talk like modern-day people, rather than the more usual "poetic" style typically used for sword & sorcery.
Burn Me Deadly is, or at least has started out as, a pastiche of Kiss Me Deadly, the film noir movie starring Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer, which, unfortunately, was not a success, but of course now is thought to be a classic! Too late for Meeker's film career!
Anyway, in the movie, a young Cloris Leachman runs out into the street, and Mike Hammer stops and picks her up. Soon, however, the baddies find them. Cloris' character is kidnapped again, and Mike is knocked unconscious. When he recovers it's to find Cloris' body, tortured and dead.
That's how Burn Me Deadly starts, too. And considering the "burn marks" on the girl's arms, not part of the later torture she's subjected to, one's thinking that the "thing in the suitcase" or the "mcguffin" is going to be some kind of nuclear power, in a sword-and-sorcery way, of course.
Here's the first two paragraphs:
The blonde dashed out of the darkness and into the moonlight, right in front of me.
My horse, Lola, tried to bolt in surprise. I yanked on the reins and drew her up short. She reared and nearly threw me, but I held on and turned her away so she wouldn't trample the woman. We spun for a moment like a trick rider in a show, kicking up dust on the dry, deserted road. Then she fund her footing; I pulled the reins tight andmanaged to regain control.
The review for this book will be appearing at The Thunder Child shortly.
And here are a few clips from the movie, Kiss Me Deadly. If you haven't heard of it...Mike Hammer is looking for the torturer of a girl, and he finds a suitcase, that, when opened...glows...the original ending was deleted from the movie, but is now in the restored versions...and there's a pic of that too, below. Plus you can read about the restoration of the DVD here:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2356kiss.html
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
2. The Incredible Submersible Alvin Discovers a Strange Deep-Sea World
2. The Incredible Submersible Alvin Discovers a Strange Deep-Sea World, Brad Matsen. Incredible Deep Sea Adventures. Enslow Publishers, Inc. 2003.
Technically, the sword & sorcery book Burn Me Deadly by Alex Bledso should be #2 on my list of all books I've read since August 30, 2009, but I started reading that yesterday, and it took only 20 minutes to finish this book on Alvin today, so since I was done with it, I decided to input it as #2.
I've long been fascinated by the underwater world - so it's a pity that I get seasick even stepping onto a boat moored at a dock, and hate the smell and taste of fish, and have ear problems which means I can't go scuba diving...ah, a litany of woe. Well, that's why I have to read books about it.
And I like reading kids books, because they typically break down information to make it as easy as possible to understand. Although I'm a polymath wannabe, I dont' really understand the concepts or principals of technical stuff, but grasping the history of it is easy, and that's what I specialize in!
Anyway, this book didn't really go into any depth about the history of the Alvin submersible, just talked about a typical dive down to a black smoker (which accumulate at the site of hydrothermal vents, and which were first found in 1977.)
The pilot on the trip this books about is the first woman pilot of the Alvin, Cindy Lee Van Dover.
So I'll be doing some more research on her in the months to come.
She's written three books:
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/dsv/dover.html
Technically, the sword & sorcery book Burn Me Deadly by Alex Bledso should be #2 on my list of all books I've read since August 30, 2009, but I started reading that yesterday, and it took only 20 minutes to finish this book on Alvin today, so since I was done with it, I decided to input it as #2.
I've long been fascinated by the underwater world - so it's a pity that I get seasick even stepping onto a boat moored at a dock, and hate the smell and taste of fish, and have ear problems which means I can't go scuba diving...ah, a litany of woe. Well, that's why I have to read books about it.
And I like reading kids books, because they typically break down information to make it as easy as possible to understand. Although I'm a polymath wannabe, I dont' really understand the concepts or principals of technical stuff, but grasping the history of it is easy, and that's what I specialize in!
Anyway, this book didn't really go into any depth about the history of the Alvin submersible, just talked about a typical dive down to a black smoker (which accumulate at the site of hydrothermal vents, and which were first found in 1977.)
The pilot on the trip this books about is the first woman pilot of the Alvin, Cindy Lee Van Dover.
So I'll be doing some more research on her in the months to come.
She's written three books:
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/dsv/dover.html
1. The Man Who Made Lists, finished
#1 in my "books I've read from August 30,2009 onward" list.
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2008
Well, it's a small world. Oneof Peter Roget's suitors was named Jane Griffin...who would later become Jane Franklin, the wife of the polar explorer John Franklin, who disappeared in 1845. For the next decade or so Lady Jane, as she would become known, worked tirelessly to get more polar expeditions sent to find out what had happened to him. (Lady Franklin sponsored four expeditions to find her husband (in 1850, 1851, 1852 and finally in 1857) and, by means of a sizeable reward for information about him, instigated many more. Ultimately evidence was found by Francis McClintock in 1859 that Sir John had died twelve years previously in 1847. )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Franklin
Then there were the few months Roget spent as a "prisoner of Napoleon," in May 1803. When hostilities between France and England began anew, Napoleon ordered the rounding up of all Englishmen in France above the age of 16. Roget was there at the time, taking two young brothers on a Grand Tour of Europe - they were learning French, Latin, and so on, as the wealthy of that age did - and had to work to get a French passport (as his father came from Switzerland.)
"I classify, therefore I am."
Paracosm = the defining characteristics of a paracosm are that the child sustain interest in it over a considerable period of time-typically between the ages of 8 and 12, and that he or she has an intense emotional investment in its contents. By providing a stable reference point, paracosms can help children cope with stressful situations such as loneliness and emotional abuse. As children, man famous artists and writers - including W. H. Aiuden, the Bronte sisters, and Friedrich Niezsche - developed a psaracosm, which in its pure form, features a variety of imnaginary people and places. (For the Bronte sisters, it was the land of Gondal.)
"As it is by language alone that we are rendered capable of general reasoning, one of the most valuable branches of logic is that wich relates to the use of words."
One of the eight reasons for the slow progress of human knowledge is "the imperfections of language, both as an instrument of thought and a medium of communication."
"It was a Roget family given that Peter was supposed to be living his life not for himself but for others." [Actually, that's a given for most women during this time period, and for most women, period. They are born to take care of their parents, or their brothers, or other people's children... and of course for their own, whose wants, needs and desires must take precedence over anything they might want...
Author Joshua Kendall also deals with the mental illnesses of Roget's mother and sister, but doesn't really mention that these mental illnesses may have had real medical causes, or just the causes of being a woman in the 18th century with no control over their lives, although there were certainly a handful of women in this time period who were able to to great things, usually because they were wealthy enough where they didn't actually have to be "married off" to someone else.
Abbe Gabriel Girard: speech was the central force that held society together. Clear thinking depended on the ability to express oneself clearly.
As I read through this book I thought of my reading of Julie's blog a few days ago (the Julie of Julie & Julia, about spending a year cooking from Julia Child's recipe book). In the blog entry, she pointed out that in her book she used a lot of four-letter words, because she thought they gave "richness to the language" - I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that.
Well, while I enjoyed the movie, at that moment I decided not to read the book,because I have no interest in writers who can't express themselves without vulgarities. Today, you can't walk down the street without hearing teenagers talking to each other with every other word a 4-letter one, and it's so sad...their grasp of English is bad enough without them relying on the crutch of swear words.
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2008
Well, it's a small world. Oneof Peter Roget's suitors was named Jane Griffin...who would later become Jane Franklin, the wife of the polar explorer John Franklin, who disappeared in 1845. For the next decade or so Lady Jane, as she would become known, worked tirelessly to get more polar expeditions sent to find out what had happened to him. (Lady Franklin sponsored four expeditions to find her husband (in 1850, 1851, 1852 and finally in 1857) and, by means of a sizeable reward for information about him, instigated many more. Ultimately evidence was found by Francis McClintock in 1859 that Sir John had died twelve years previously in 1847. )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Franklin
Then there were the few months Roget spent as a "prisoner of Napoleon," in May 1803. When hostilities between France and England began anew, Napoleon ordered the rounding up of all Englishmen in France above the age of 16. Roget was there at the time, taking two young brothers on a Grand Tour of Europe - they were learning French, Latin, and so on, as the wealthy of that age did - and had to work to get a French passport (as his father came from Switzerland.)
"I classify, therefore I am."
Paracosm = the defining characteristics of a paracosm are that the child sustain interest in it over a considerable period of time-typically between the ages of 8 and 12, and that he or she has an intense emotional investment in its contents. By providing a stable reference point, paracosms can help children cope with stressful situations such as loneliness and emotional abuse. As children, man famous artists and writers - including W. H. Aiuden, the Bronte sisters, and Friedrich Niezsche - developed a psaracosm, which in its pure form, features a variety of imnaginary people and places. (For the Bronte sisters, it was the land of Gondal.)
"As it is by language alone that we are rendered capable of general reasoning, one of the most valuable branches of logic is that wich relates to the use of words."
One of the eight reasons for the slow progress of human knowledge is "the imperfections of language, both as an instrument of thought and a medium of communication."
"It was a Roget family given that Peter was supposed to be living his life not for himself but for others." [Actually, that's a given for most women during this time period, and for most women, period. They are born to take care of their parents, or their brothers, or other people's children... and of course for their own, whose wants, needs and desires must take precedence over anything they might want...
Author Joshua Kendall also deals with the mental illnesses of Roget's mother and sister, but doesn't really mention that these mental illnesses may have had real medical causes, or just the causes of being a woman in the 18th century with no control over their lives, although there were certainly a handful of women in this time period who were able to to great things, usually because they were wealthy enough where they didn't actually have to be "married off" to someone else.
Abbe Gabriel Girard: speech was the central force that held society together. Clear thinking depended on the ability to express oneself clearly.
As I read through this book I thought of my reading of Julie's blog a few days ago (the Julie of Julie & Julia, about spending a year cooking from Julia Child's recipe book). In the blog entry, she pointed out that in her book she used a lot of four-letter words, because she thought they gave "richness to the language" - I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that.
Well, while I enjoyed the movie, at that moment I decided not to read the book,because I have no interest in writers who can't express themselves without vulgarities. Today, you can't walk down the street without hearing teenagers talking to each other with every other word a 4-letter one, and it's so sad...their grasp of English is bad enough without them relying on the crutch of swear words.
Monday, August 31, 2009
1. The Man Who Made Lists, Day 2
#1 in my "books I've read from August 30,2009 onward" list.
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2008
I'm about halfway through. Without any distractions, I'm usually able to finish a book of this size (288 pages) in a day, but I've got many irons in the fire and so am able to only get through about 50 pages or so...
The author starts by talking about Roget's mother (who raised the boy after his father died when he was only 2) and that got me thinking about the plight of women in general. Back in the 1700s...well since the beginning of time and up until the 1960s or so, in the West, and still going on in the East, women had it pretty rough. Dependent on men - either their husbands or their sons, or their fathers or brothers - for the money with which to live, is it any wonder that they had emotional difficulties, hypochondria, chattered on and on as the stereotypes would have it? If you're dependent on your very existence on others, if you never have anything you can call your own, if there's never any chance your circumstances can improve except by what others do for you, what do you expect?
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2008
I'm about halfway through. Without any distractions, I'm usually able to finish a book of this size (288 pages) in a day, but I've got many irons in the fire and so am able to only get through about 50 pages or so...
The author starts by talking about Roget's mother (who raised the boy after his father died when he was only 2) and that got me thinking about the plight of women in general. Back in the 1700s...well since the beginning of time and up until the 1960s or so, in the West, and still going on in the East, women had it pretty rough. Dependent on men - either their husbands or their sons, or their fathers or brothers - for the money with which to live, is it any wonder that they had emotional difficulties, hypochondria, chattered on and on as the stereotypes would have it? If you're dependent on your very existence on others, if you never have anything you can call your own, if there's never any chance your circumstances can improve except by what others do for you, what do you expect?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Man Who Made Lists
#1 in my "books I've read from August 30,2009 onward" list.
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2008
I've read a book similar to this in the past. Since I foolishly didn't write down the title I can't tell it to you right now, but it was about the creation of the Oxford Dictionary, I believe. A criminally insane killer helped put that together from Broadmoor.
Roget wasn't insane, of course, just obsessive-compulsive (rather like me, as a matter of fact), but many people in his family were mentally ill...and what must it be like to spend your life always wondering if you would go insane?
Anyway, just read the first two chapters so far. It's intersting reading. Fascinating to learn how people interested in education and knowledge went about compiling and sharing their knowledge with others.
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2008
I've read a book similar to this in the past. Since I foolishly didn't write down the title I can't tell it to you right now, but it was about the creation of the Oxford Dictionary, I believe. A criminally insane killer helped put that together from Broadmoor.
Roget wasn't insane, of course, just obsessive-compulsive (rather like me, as a matter of fact), but many people in his family were mentally ill...and what must it be like to spend your life always wondering if you would go insane?
Anyway, just read the first two chapters so far. It's intersting reading. Fascinating to learn how people interested in education and knowledge went about compiling and sharing their knowledge with others.
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