Books

[Kathy Li]

Snort. Patrick Stewart was playing sexy bald evil captain in I, Claudius; and I believe the RSC has cast him as Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra three different times. Always a captain. He can try with films like Geoffrey to play something else, but his talent is for playing captains.

However, I can recognize Petherbridge even in one line cameos like that, because I was completely infatuated with his Lord Peter Wimsey. He's also Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby (won a Tony for that), and he gets to be the King of France in the Olivier King Lear video. (That last one really surprised me when I discovered it, because I'd watched that previous to seeing the Wimseys, and all I remember was that when I was 16, I'd just melted when France did his whole sweeping Cordelia away bit:

Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.

And when I did find out it was Petherbridge, I just thought, "Oh. Well that explains why I melted..."

I got to take his walking tour ("Theatrical London") the last time I went to London. He's a hoot and a half and the sweetest guy; very nice to his fans. He was really happy that I knew he was the original Guildenstern in R&G Are Dead, and not just in awe of him because he was in the current Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical (The Woman in White). I got his autograph at the stage door, and he asked me what I thought, and I said, "Loved it! But it's not exactly high art..." which made him laugh.

It's sad to me that he's not as well known as Ian McKellen, since they were jointly the head of the Actors Company at the National when that was formed as an experiment, and at the time they were more or less equals. I'd really hoped that Petherbridge would get cast as Dumbledore. Ah, well, c'est la vie.

And to ramble back onto topic... am I the only one here who reads plays? I don't read them like I used to (there was a time in my teens when I read as many plays as novels in a year), but I'll still go out of my way to get my hands on whatever the latest Stoppard is (Rock'n'Roll if you were curious).

AlidaArt: Yay! Another Heyer fan!! You're gonna love the rest of 'em. They're all pretty dang good.

Also, I loved the Amazing Kavalier & Clay! (but then, I'm an oldtime comics geek, so I could actully see the artwork he was describing). That reminds me. I have the latest Chabon sitting on my shelf (The Yiddish Policeman's Union) I've not yet devoured. So behind.

[vashmata]

Well, I'm reading "Guardian of the Balance" by Irene Radford. It's about the "real story of Merlin and Arthur". Until getting about halfway through, besides the words "The Merlin", I completely forgot it was about Arthur. It's centralized on the daughter of the Merlin (just a title) that is childhood friends with a boy named Curryl (Arthur-no one ever uses Arthur, though), an orphan. Excalibur only comes 2/3 of the story through, and isn't very important. It also talks about an older religion than Christianity that uses magic.

And I've finally started reading my first Pratchett book (unless you call "The Unadulterated Cat" a true novel), at the same time as "Guardian of the Balance". I've started with "Equal Rites", but I also read some of "Mort".

And I also want to read Elvenborn", the third in a series I've talked about before.

[meteorite]

Originally posted by AlidaART:
I'm also reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for an English class on Pulitzer Prize winners. So far so good, but we'll see how I feel in a couple weeks.

Alida, if you are reading Pulitzer Prize winners and you enjoy history, I highly recommend The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. It is the story of the 4 days of the battle of Gettysburg, and was subsequently made into the movie (4 hours!!) Gettysburg. Shaara does a bang-up job making you feel for both the Blue and Gray characters. I felt whole new levels of sympathy for Longstreet, stuck between his men and his commanders but trying to do the best he could; truly a portrayal of middle management's problems!

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Originally posted by vashmata:
Well, I'm reading "Guardian of the Balance" by Irene Radford. It's about the "real story of Merlin and Arthur".

I thought you were about to say "Guardians of Ga'Hoole", which is Ael's latest kick. It's a series of books about owls -- that's about all I've figured out so far, since I'm not sure I actually want to dive in. :-)

My favorite Merlin series, on the other hand, is Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy -- The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment, plus The Wicked Day, which tells the story of Mordred from Mordred's point of view. It manages to match nicely the reported events of Arthur's final battle, while still making Mordred a very sympathetic character -- perhaps Arthur's equal in kingship, if not in battle.

And I second the recommendation for The Killer Angels. It's an amazing book, and the movie was a very faithful adaptation -- they even got permission to film on the battlefield itself, which was fairly unusual. I'd suggest watching the movie first, so you can have the setting and voices in your head as you read.

[Emi]

Hey Kathy! Now you got me wanting to read Shoeless Joe!! I didn't know that Salinger was the original character. That's pretty cool. I like his style of writing. It's too bad that he won't sell the rights to The Catcher in the Rye for a movie, that would be really neat to see played out. I read plays for school, does that count?!?? I enjoy some of them.... like, we're reading "A Death of A Salesman" by Arthur Miller, and it seems interesting so far. Not really sure if I'm going to enjoy it... On my spare time I usually read scripts online from movies that have elements I might want to add in my script.

[seabiscuit1009]

Originally posted by Garrett Fitzgerald:
My favorite Merlin series, on the other hand, is Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy -- The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment, plus The Wicked Day, which tells the story of Mordred from Mordred's point of view. It manages to match nicely the reported events of Arthur's final battle, while still making Mordred a very sympathetic character -- perhaps Arthur's equal in kingship, if not in battle.

I remember that series! I think I read it freshman year, and loved it. Definitely one of the better Merlin stories out there, and the only one that really sticks out in my mind (and I've read a lot of Merlin/Arthur stories.)

Right now I'm re-reading one of my favorite books ever, called Sophie's World. It was originally written in Norweigian, and is a history of Western philosophy in the form of a novel. *shrugs* I'm a philosophy dork, and it's basically the sparknotes version of the history of philosophy (well, it's a bit longer than a sparknotes history would be...) Anyway, I find it fascinating; if you're seriously into philosophy, check it out-it's not a book for those who don't like to think a lot while reading though.

[Kathy Li]

I am now two-thirds of the way through Killer Angels, and I figure I'm also the very last Firefly fan ever to have gotten around to reading it. It's really good. I'm now curious about picking up Shaara's Broken Ground. Anybody have any info on what it's about? I know I could google, but I'm feeling lazy. Haven't had this much fun history reading since I ran through a half dozen MCullough books (and if anybody's interested in the upcoming HBO series, I'd recommend picking up John Adams).

Oh, and I found Scalzi's The Last Colony at the public library and raced right through. Wah, there's no more to the series! Have, nonetheless, picked up a copy of Android's Dream, now, whose title alone tickles the heck outta me (Philip K. Dick, anyone?). I also gotta make a very small mention that Scalzi's tuckerizations are cracking me up. The one of George R.R. Martin in particular was absolutely hilarious, given that Martin's WildCards character was "The Great and Powerful Turtle."

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

My favorite history reading is right around the Revolutionary War period, since I'm a 1776 junkie. :-) My favorite book so far in that period was Founding Brothers, by Joseph Ellis. It tells how the interpersonal relations between the various founders (and he includes Abigail Adams as an equal there, although she's omitted from the title and cover pictures...) affected the early history of the country. I also enjoyed Ellis' His Excellency: George Washington.

I really liked McCullough's 1776 -- I didn't realize how chaotic that year had actually been until McCullough laid it out and showed how narrowly and how often we avoided disaster. His John Adams was also enjoyable, but didn't stick in my mind as vividly.

And on a mostly-unrelated note, I'm halfway through the Temeraire series. Borders had books 1, 2, and 4, so I'm stuck for the moment. :-) *checks Wikipedia* Sweet Mother of Abraham Lincoln! Peter Jackson has on option on the series???? I probably heard about this at the time, but before reading them, it wouldn't really have registered beyond "Oh, that's nice..."

[Kathy Li]

Yup. Peter Jackson. BTW, dunno if you knew, but His Majesty's Dragon began as locked LJ entries. Naomi Novik's LJ has been hopping ever since.

Nice to know McCullough's 1776 is worth it. It's been a while since I read him (the last one hit was the Brooklyn Bridge one).

Oh, and I need to get the new Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain big time.

[Emi]

Kathy, I got Shoeless Joe and I have to say so far it's interesting. In the beginning it was hard for me to concentrate, but after a bunch of pages it starts to get interesting. Having J.D. Salinger as the kiddnapped author makes it a plus. Thanks for pointing that out!

[Kathy Li]

I'm glad you're enjoying Shoeless Joe, Emi. An old friend of mine prefers it to Field of Dreams. Kinsella wrote a lot of baseball stories.

I'm working my way through Linnea Sinclair again, now that I finished Scalzi's Android's Dream (which was absolutely terrific, but you already know that). Sinclair reminds me of McCaffrey and Sharon Shinn for some reason. I finally finished Gabriel's Ghost (probably my least fave of her books), and then tore my way through the rest of Down-Home Zombie Blues (which, despite the title isn't really about zombies. It's more of a space opera/bug hunt with a romance in the middle. Really enjoyed it, as it was something of a change of pace for her. And now I'm back to her first novel (a fantasy--her only one) called Wintertide.

The editing is driving me nuts. (The copyediting on Android's Dream also drove me nuts--I think I counted about half a dozen missing "to"s throughout the text). But given that it's small press, you kind of expect that (sigh). It's a lot rougher and less polished than her later SF books--it's taking forever to get off the ground, but it's really interesting, because it's the sort of thing that's usually a "trunk book" for an author--and you can see the buried seeds of Accidental Goddess everywhere.

I've also been dipping, every now and again, into the Connie Willis short story anthology, The Winds of Marble Arch (most of which I've already read in earlier anthologies). It's been almost six years since Passage, and no hint of a release date for All-Clear (or whatever it's going to be called), yet. Sigh. Oh, well, still better than the fourth Door book.

BTW, if you've never read Connie Willis, but would like a taster, Asimov's has a sample from her latest story online.

[Rubywolf]

I'm halfway through Shirley Jackson's short story collection, The Lottery. It's very exciting. It's also very modern, even though it was written a long time ago. I would call it timeless.

[Kathy Li]

I have been spending more hours than I ought to reading a techno-thriller/detective/horror series cowritten by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child: the Agent Pendergast series. I'm not sure I'd recommend it for you guys, since it can get awfully gore-and-guts strewn in places when the monsters pop out of the walls. And Still Life With Crows made even my hardened-by-too-many-CSI-episodes guts churn. But they're darn good reads (and don't let the fact that the first one got turned into a lousy movie put you off).

However. One of the really cool facets of the series is that Douglas Preston is an archeologist, and is very familiar with the Museum of Natural History in NYC. And they use it as a setting for a lot of their books. In fact, Preston and Child first met when Child was an editor at St. Martin's, and asked Preston to write a book about the museum.

It's called Dinosaurs in the Attic and I think most folks here would love it. It's old enough that I found it in the public library. It tells not only the history of the museum, but also the individual stories of the characters who made it what it was in the early days (although he skips over Margaret Meade--he prefers telling us the story of the guy who trained Margaret Meade), and their collecting expedition adventures, and the stories of some of the artefacts, as well as starting out the tour by taking a boring tiny brown beetle and why it's in the collection and how its history makes it something special and valuable.

It's fascinating stuff. Highly recommend it. Just be warned there are some strong images in it (and obscene stuff if you're fluent in Latin ) mostly because of the fact that a lot of what gets collected are biological specimens. So if finding out how skeletons get prepped is gonna squick you, you may wanna stay away. But if you're at all interested in anthropology, archeology, history, or comparative biology, it's a blast.

[knieve]

The Southern Vampire Novels by Charlaine Harris is a good series to read if you are into vampires and other mystical creatures.

[vashmata]

I finished reading Mort, Interesting Times, The Last Continent, Equal Rites, Witches Abroad and Wyrd Sisters, I started reading a bit of The Wee Free Men, and I'm 2/3 through Pyramids. All these books are by Terry Pratchett of course. (If there was a smiley good enough to describe how I feel while reading these hilarious books then I would put it - I think it is stronger than ectasy).