The Gun Counter

Kipling's Just So Stories - gotta get back in the swing of story telling for when the grandson starts talking

Weetabix wrote:Kipling's Just So Stories - gotta get back in the swing of story telling for when the grandson starts talking

Don't wait that long! I started reading Winnie the Pooh stories to my daughter when she was just a couple months old. That may explain why she was reading "Starship Troopers" at age 8.

Starship Troopers at age 8? Well done, SIR!
I've given my nephew Treasure Island, and a number of other adventure stories, as well as all sorts of stuff that doesn't require batteries or run on the computer, and I am despairing of the guy reading anything, and he's 12. Of course my brother isn't a reader, either, except maybe those news stand Beatles magazines I get him.

Weetabix, being able to tell the story rather than reading it pays dividends greater than what the Hildabeest got on her cattle futures trade. *


*And legal ones you won't be called before the Congress critters to explain why you were investing on their turf.

Windy Wilson wrote:Weetabix, being able to tell the story rather than reading it

I had a whole slew of made-up stories I told my kids when they were little. I need to have them help me remember those.

OK, I finished City of Bones, and Bosch retires at the end. I know there's something like a dozen more Harry Bosch books, where I guess he's either a PI or just freelance following up on old cases he never solved.

Are these books any good, or has Connelly just been playing out the string, cashing in on a loyal following that just buys the books because he keeps writing them?

Blood on the Stars series by Jay Allan. Humans expand out into the galaxy, form a great (empire?), which falls apart in apocalyptic fashion. Various surviving planets start forming new alliances and of course come into conflict. The story has a lot of tropes; it focuses on a warship captain who is the grandson of the 'savior of the confederation' and his ship's exploits. It is entertaining but not great.

Just finished book 7 of Jason Anspach and Nick Cole's 'Galaxy's Edge' series and Robert Kroese' "The Dream of the Iron Dragon". The latter is book one of a trilogy of high-tech humans stuck in Viking era Earth and needing to build a vehicle capable of reaching orbit (to save the human race as it happens)

Galaxy's Edge is a series about a human-run nearly galactic republic that is experiencing roman-level decadence ad corruption, and the Legion that saved the Republic hundreds of years before (and has constitutional power to 'reset' it if needed) versus spread of new enemies and internal ones (some of which sure resemble current situations here and now). Up to book 7, don't know how many more to go. It can be a little jarring to see phrases and terms that make you think "Star Wars" but so far it has been pretty enjoyable too.

Rich, you might want to check out the community contributed fanwork "Jenkinsverse". It's a HFY style of story, with humans being short, incredibly strong (Earth is a heavy gravity world compared to the rest of the occupied planets in the galaxy), and aggressive species. Which is a nice change of pace from the previously scariest species in the galaxy, which liked to eat "people".

They're first attempt to perform a harvesting on the deathworld known as earth? A Canadian hockey game.

I was feeling too happy and optimistic, so I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago.

Weetabix wrote:I was feeling too happy and optimistic, so I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago.

This is all you need to know:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

See how much time I saved you?

I already read that part, so I guess I'm done.