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[Solitaire1]

Ultra Lounge: The Lexicon of Easy Listening by Dylan Jones

It is a book that focuses on Easy Listening music and covers the many artists who fall into the genre, including Herb Alpert, Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters, Esquivel and Swing Out Sister, and also the different types of Easy Listening music such as Muzak, Exotica, and Space-Age Pop. Much of the book consists of reprints of pre-existing articles on the artists from other sources, and also features sections that contain album covers of various Easy Listening artists, including some who might not be thought of as Easy Listening but have dipped their toes into Easy Listening like The Beach Boys, The B-52's, and Glen Campbell.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by issybird

One of my pet peeves. I wish they’d leave children’s books alone. And I’m not even talking about certain dicey references and terms that need to be eliminated or left to wither, but just general terms and situations invoking an earlier time. What, after all, is wrong with that? Charming and instructional, in my opinion!

No wonder kids have no sense of history….

I remember picking up a newer edition of a children's book originally published in the days of Walkman cassette players and realizing that the publisher had updated the Walkman cassette player to a CD Walkman

[Tarana]

Just finished When The Eagle Hunts by Simon Scarrow. Book 3 of the Eagles series, this was another excellent story involving 2 Roman soldiers who are part of the effort for Rome to control Briton.

I also finished The Hugo Stories Vol 5 by Mike Resnick. Just like the rest of this series of Hugo nominated and winning stories, some are hit or miss, some excellent. Most are not very science fictiony, set in the offworld of Kirinyaga, which is intended as a utopia returning to the pre-technology days of future Kenya. Book 3 of this series is the only one I can really recommend based on what I enjoyed.

Moving onto Well-Schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George, book 3 in the Inspector Lynley series.

[fantasyfan]

"Soothsayer" by Mike Resnick is the first book in a trilogy and an excellent start it is.

It is structured around interrelationships between three significant characters. First is Mouse—seen initially as a Rogue-like trickster who has skills and abilities that make her much more dangerous than she appears. Second is Penelope Bailey. Penelope is apparently a frightened little girl sought after by very dangerous bounty hunters who wish to sell her to unscrupulous customers (including Governments} who want to use her special abilities for their own ends. Finally there is the strange figure of the Iceman. His relationships with the other two provide a main focus of the novel. While the characterisation of these three is not particularly subtle, it does develop believably as the novel proceeds and effectively helps focus the primary conflicts in the book.

The novel is structured through five different books. Each linked to a significant character and set in a different locale: hence the richness of atmosphere and the variety of exotic and interesting characters. Certainly there is an element of the Space Opera about this novel though it is far more sophisticated than one usually presumes such novels to be. This is because there is also an element of "noir" throughout. This element of darkness strengthens as the plot develops and the relationships become more intense.

The principal conflict focuses on the problem that occurs when a human being has a gift that makes him or her both extremely desirable and simultaneously dangerous. Does any individual or society have the right to command such individuals against their personal wishes and thus hijack their chances of finding happiness? Do those with such gifts even have any right to that solace?

This novel provides no easy answers and that is one of its attractions.

I have just finished re-reading this great space opera with its wonderful and ambiguous finale. I enjoyed it so much that I added the extra star. I now will proceed to the rest of the trilogy.

[isarl]

I've been enjoying the Culture series by Iain M. Banks recently. I started with The Player of Games and now I'm partway through Consider Phlebas.

Not so recently, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness was fantastic and reminded me why I love her stories. I need to read more of her.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Paddington Takes The Test. The last unread one in my TBR pile.

Which was also fun.

Next up: A freebie recently mentioned on a bargain thread: Finnian's Fiddle by Chandler Groover.

Good so far.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by nana77

Now reading "Supermind" by A.E. van Voght (1977).

van Voght writing style is fabulous - imho.

"The Age of the Pussyfoot" by Frederik Pohl (1971).
One thing I like from the previous editions on books is that them contains intros that has been wrote by those times, so that brings a glimpse or an idea in that context timeline. In there there was an aspect about how using satire has slightly changed, where previously it was meant while proposing solutions, to an use of it whitout any means into the next years.
Pohl was in his middle phase, between satire's writings to adventure's ones: not a pallid nonsense irony.

Originally Posted by nana77

(it seems that it took less time, by those years, to release a translation... - I'd might be wrong)

The first translated book (in Italy) is from 1996..
Bought it because it was depict as the sequel from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", within a postface by Philip K. Dick.
Bought it despite the weirdness of the plot, and found it marvelous, can understand why it's rated as a masterpiece.

[drofgnal]

I finally finished the Norah Roberts trilogy, Chronicles of the One. The first two books were pretty good. Book three got a bit sappy, which I should have expected from a romance writer.

I'm on to Ellen Marie Wiseman's new novel, The Lies They Told Us.

In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.

She always seems to write books on subjects at the right time. Like The Orphan Collector, a story of the 1919 flu pandemic which came out during the CoVID outbreak.

Next in the cue: Dan Brown's new book, The Secret of Secrets, then comes Ken Follet with a story centered around Stonehenge.