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Old 01-28-2011, 10:35 PM   #8026
ATDrake
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Originally Posted by birdbrainbb View Post
I really hated The Veiled Detective, no lie. Much better is Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes (obvious mashup is obvious) and Whitechapel Horror (again, obvious).
I'm looking forward to reading those, but they're not in the library yet. I'm pretty sure they'll be getting them, though, since these Holmes mashups are proving pretty popular (2+ copies of each title, and about a dozen people on hold for every one, though I suspect that they may all be the same people).

Finished David Stuart Davies' The Veiled Detective. It wasn't actually bad, as far as writing technique goes, but the story it purported to tell just didn't do anything new or interesting or retroactively insightful or even what-drugs-were-you-taking amusing to the canon.

Actually, it reminded me rather strongly of a particular fanfic I once read, which basically reiterated in summary form the events and major plot points of a TV miniseries, only altering this near-verbatim recitation to insert a torrid love affair between two of the leads (and not the two who were the official romance) which apparently took place during the commercial breaks and didn't even have any decent sex scenes to leaven the boredom.

Even though I had nothing against the basic idea and had gone specifically looking for stuff in that setting because I'd enjoyed the miniseries so much, I just couldn't see the point, the way it was executed. Much the same feeling with The Veiled Detective.

Frankly, if you happen to want to read an "everything you thought you knew was wrong" story about Holmes which involves
Spoiler:
Moriarty being the secret influence behind Holmes becoming Holmes and Watson and Mycroft teaming up in cahoots with him in order to lead Holmes astray and in the end breaking him free of the baneful influence at Reichenbach Falls
, Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Per-Cent Solution is by far better thought out and vastly more entertaining. There's supposed to be a decent movie based upon it, too.

I did go and re-read A Study in Scarlet from the very nice Barnes & Noble Classics annotated edition as a follow-up. Oddly topical, considering that right here in Canada there's currently a Mormon spinoff sect polygamy case which is controversial because they've been suing our government over importing underaged girls to marry their Elders or whatever.

And I also finished The Stalwart Companions, H. Paul Jeffers' much more entertaining Teddy Roosevelt/Holmes team-up, which sets a young pre-Watson Holmes with a young pre-politics Roosevelt to thwarting a plot against the President in New York City.

The story part was fairly straight-forward action-adventure without all that much detective-work and nothing all that special, but entertainingly written.

But what makes this worth the price of admission are the included historical and canonical allusions and extensive author's notes in the back justifying all the details (it's another one of those "no lie, swear to god we found an undiscovered manuscript carefully tucked away in a box/by the way, Sherlock Holmes was really real" pastiches) with plenty of references to Holmesiana (especially well-known Sherlock scholar Baring-Gould) weaving into what appears to be actual US political history (the Holmes/Roosevelt dual timeline was an especially nice touch).

Recommended if you like Holmes/historical figure team-ups, though not as highly as the Houdini one I read earlier.

Orbit continues their habit of bizarre what-drugs-were-you-on text errors for the e-book editions. While The Stalwart Companions is overall pretty good and has only a few missing quote marks and a couple of typos, The Veiled Detective suffers from an again ironic error where the first-person narration parts of "Watson"'s journal have the spaces after the first-person pronoun "I"s consistently and inexplicably removed for the first few paragraphs of each such section.

Ifelt like Ishould have been reading it on an Ipad.

Last edited by ATDrake; 01-28-2011 at 10:53 PM. Reason: Any complaint about text errors will itself contain a text error.
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Old 01-28-2011, 11:00 PM   #8027
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I was skeptical of all the hype about Old Filth, but I'd really liked Gardam's The Queen of the Tambourine, so dropped an Audible credit on it. Really amazing story - can't wait to read the sequel The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Audio narration is top notch!
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Old 01-29-2011, 11:03 AM   #8028
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Finished Tantras. Now on to Waterdeep. The last in the original Forgotten Realms: Avatar Trilogy.
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Old 01-29-2011, 12:37 PM   #8029
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I'm reading Kazuo Ishiguro's latest book of short stories, called Noctures. It's fantastic!

I finished Wintertide this morning (M. Sullivan). Wow. I can't wait for the final volume in this series. I warmly recommend it (The Riyria Revelations) both to fans of fantasy and to those who aren't yet fans of fantasy....
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Old 01-29-2011, 01:21 PM   #8030
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Just finished "Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse" edited by John Joseph Adams. Most of the stories were pretty good, but I did end up skipping a couple.

Currently re-reading "A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin. I checked his website for an update on the next book, but the last update is 3 years old. Maybe if I read them REALLY slow, news for the next Ice and Fire novel will be announced.
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Old 01-29-2011, 02:46 PM   #8031
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake View Post
...Frankly, if you happen to want to read an "everything you thought you knew was wrong" story about Holmes which involves
Spoiler:
Moriarty being the secret influence behind Holmes becoming Holmes and Watson and Mycroft teaming up in cahoots with him in order to lead Holmes astray and in the end breaking him free of the baneful influence at Reichenbach Falls
, Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Per-Cent Solution is by far better thought out and vastly more entertaining. There's supposed to be a decent movie based upon it, too.
As someone who read all four Holmes novels and all of the Holmes short stories that Sir SCD wrote, I concur wholeheartedly with your assessment of The Seven Per-Cent Solution. Not only did that inventive re-imagining turn the entire Homes legacy on it's head, but it did so in a way only Holmes' fans could truly appreciate, and that's quite a feat! Both the book and the movie are excellent.
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Old 01-29-2011, 03:19 PM   #8032
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Just finished The Confession by John Grisham. Well written but I got the impression he was more interested in airing his political agenda than telling a good story.

Now on to Mr Paradise by Elmore Leonard
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Old 01-30-2011, 04:35 AM   #8033
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I'm shortly to finish The Road; other than it's writing style - it's been a good read and one that I am pleased to say the film follows quite closely.

Now a choice, both downloads from our dear Patricia's Library -

Either "Journey to the Interior of the Earth", or "The Lost World".....

Decision time coming up ....
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Old 01-30-2011, 05:55 AM   #8034
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This:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Lyric.../dp/0307265196

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer.....what a wonderful book! Full of old-time images along with the lyrics and biography info. It transports one to another time.

Besides being one of the most prolific songwriters he also founded Capital Records:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mercer
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Old 01-30-2011, 06:15 AM   #8035
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This:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Lyric.../dp/0307265196

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer.....what a wonderful book! Full of old-time images along with the lyrics and biography info. It transports one to another time.

Besides being one of the most prolific songwriters he also founded Capital Records:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mercer
another example of paper version being less expensive ....
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Old 01-30-2011, 06:29 AM   #8036
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another example of paper version being less expensive ....
And this book is a "coffee table book" about 12 x 12 with wonderful pictures -- it would be blasphemous to not have it in paper (or at least displayable on a large color monitor. ).

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Old 01-30-2011, 09:21 AM   #8037
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Just finished reading Glen Krish's new novel Where Darkness Dwells. Great read - I think it's set to be released in Feb some time. Look out for it.

I've still got Usher's Passing on my bedside table which I'll start getting stuck into and I'm also starting A Room With A View for this month's book club.

Regards
Caleb
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Old 01-30-2011, 10:34 AM   #8038
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Finished The Guns Of August last night. Worthy of all the praise heaped upon it. I particularly appreciated the author's careful choice of word and phrase to get the description of a person just right. Also finished De Bello Lemures a few days ago, that was enjoyable enough to get me to seek out more by the same author.

Starting Where Men Win Glory for my non-fiction, and 20th Century Ghosts for fiction. I've read other books by Krakauer (Under The Banner Of Heaven was quite good), and the first story in Joe Hill's collection pulled me right in, so these two look like a good match for me.
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Old 01-30-2011, 12:55 PM   #8039
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Just put down The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. Absolutely superb as you would expect. I think Black Dahlia edges it slightly but both wonderful books.

Next up is Horns by Joe Hill.
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Old 01-30-2011, 12:57 PM   #8040
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Mary Roach's "Spook" - a journalistic approach to aspects of the (possible) afterlife. Can't say as I'm in love with it, but I wanted to try something of hers, and this is the area that most appealed to me.
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