 All right, I'm gonna do something a little bit different this time I'm gonna cover a variety of books books that I've been reading recently a Books that I've not talked about yet books that I won't be covering in detail because they're not science fiction or because I'm not interested and Also some new acquisitions. Okay, let's start with the non-science fiction I Am the cheese by Robert Cormier. I am familiar with this book because of the movie It's it's a good book. It's a very dark and tragic book and the the movie is dark as well, but not quite as dark I recommend that you see the movie first Knowing what's going to happen in a movie spoils the movie But a good book is not spoiled by knowing what happened in the movie and it's it's a little bit different from the movie, too it's about a young man who's taking a long bike ride across New England to see his father and he He begins going through the various memories of his life. It's very non-linear and through the course of these memories you you can piece together of what's actually happening and You discover that you really don't understand what you've been seeing all along very good book very good movie the pixelated Pyrrhus This is a fantasy medieval fantasy clearly by El Sprague de camp and his wife Catherine Cook de camp El Sprague de camp is one of the biggest and most well-respected names in the science fiction so When I saw it on the shelf I knew it was going to be good and it was very entertaining very funny And the being de camp it's very well written through the medieval language is very Professionally written and very believable and each chapter It reads like an episodic Series and it turns out it was a series it was serialized in magazines And this was book two of the adventures of this guy named Thorolff Thorolff finds Yvette naked hiding behind a bush She was a princess from a nearby kingdom and it says a thoroughf took Yvette to see dr. Bardi an ancient Slightly senile I after mage to magically disguise her as a dark and dumpy female Unfortunately Bardi neglected to mention that Yvette should avoid alcohol And that only covers chapter one. Okay Godless by Peter Houtman, I don't remember how or why I found this It's a book for young readers It's an okay book. It's not very long. I would half recommend it you can You can go find a copy if you want to based on the description. It's about a An unusual kid in a small town who's tired of the The local church group that his parents make him go to so he invents his own religion And he and the other kids in the community start worshiping the water tower You can pick it up if you want to And Now to What I've been reading this month. I've been doing a lot of rereading I reread city By Clifford D. Simac when I did the review before I didn't have a copy I'd had a copy years ago, and I remembered it so well and so fondly that I did a review of it This edition has a new Epilogue written especially for the book by Simac he says in his intro he wrote a brief introduction to the epilogue and what she says he didn't want to write the epilogue He didn't think it needed it, but He wrote it especially for this collection because it was put together in memory of a fellow author And he thought it was a nice thing to do. Anyway, I Brought that up because I also a couple of months ago. I read another simac book called ring around the Sun It's not a great book It's a good example of Simac's writing though And I wanted to mention it because of that fact people who've never read simac before may come away from a simac book feeling unsatisfied and That's really part of simac's style He tends to end his books and his even his short stories in what you might feel like is the middle of the story He doesn't provide you with the traditional Story points that you expect like where you expect to have a Protagonist to get the girl or to have a confrontation with the villain. He doesn't give you those He'll introduce a Story condition or a new character or a new Point of conflict and then he'll move on to something else because he got something else to talk about This book is a good example of that. It's okay You can look up a description of it if you like to on Wikipedia It that's up to you I've been rereading these a science fiction hall of fame books that I talked about last time this volume 3 In particular I reread The saliva tree by Brian W. Aldous It's a it's called a novella here the saliva tree is a book length Science fiction story about an alien invasion that happens in rural England I Read it many many years ago. I guess when I was a child and I remembered it being being good It's a well-respected story. It's obviously won awards But I remembered it wrong. It's not good. In fact, it's very bad. I Struggled to get through it The Aldous was trying to write in the style of hg Wells The the story takes place in the turn of the last century in the time that hg Wells stories would have taken place in fact hg Wells is in the story and it's just dumb and I found the behavior of the human characters in the story to be completely unbelievable It was just bad But the saliva tree is very well known and well respected and easy to find a copy and read it if you want to Metamorphosis by Kafka I I picked up this new Translation just a couple of months ago I first read this when I was in sixth grade did a book report on it It's not a long book you might not even consider it a novel but The first sentence of the book here, I'll read it to you it'll tell you What to what what the book is about when Greg or Sam so woke one morning from troubled dreams He found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect If you're not if you've not heard about Kafka's metamorphosis, this would be a good first Kafka book to read most of Kafka's work is political most of it is about to Innocent men caught up in the system Particularly the communist system. This is not This is this is an individual story. In fact, the the woman who did the translation She compares it to the death of a salesman. It's really not about a man turning into a giant insect. It's about This man's family who depend on him for financial support how they fail To deal with and support him in the face of a sudden catastrophic disability So, yeah, there you go. I reread interstellar pig by William Slater I've said before that William Slater is one of my favorite authors. He writes for young readers But again, he's some of written some of the best fiction I've ever read all of the Slater books I've read though have been from the 1970s and 80s I had not read any of his more recent stuff. He died a few years ago, but he continued to write up until the late 2000s and I While reading about him. I saw that he had written a sequel to Interstellar pig called parasite pig This book I Have a lot to say about it I have a mixed review about it. It's it's good and It's definitely William Slater, but over the decades he he changed The prologue to the book There's half a page here and half a page there's one a one page prologue After I read that prologue The thing that happened in this prologue. I did not expect I Did not expect at all what happened just in that one page So once I read that there was no way I was putting this down and then just Just within the first couple of chapters He did another couple of things that I never expected things that in all the decades I've been reading science fiction things that I've never seen anyone else do before The rest of the book I have a lot to say about though and I'll get to it I'll get to it later Nebula winners 13. I don't know if I showed this book last time, but I did mention The screw fly solution by raccoon a Sheldon I Found my copy of it. It was in this book not in the one that I thought it was not in this one Not not in this one, but in this one Nebula awards collections are something you should always check out They're the best of the best They come out every year. I don't I haven't bought one in recent years. I tend to buy ones from the 70s and 80s But these collections are always good And this I've been rereading this vintage anthology of science fantasy edited by Christopher surf I'm I've written I've reread most of it at this point I'm reading rereading a story by Clifford Simac by the way called shadow show It's not a great story, but interesting idea and There's a story in here by By by Martin Gardner the no-sided professor Any of you who are familiar with the name Martin Gardner will know that he is a mathematician who made his name writing math and geometry puzzles for the magazines like fantasy and science fiction and Asimov and and some others and Usually contained within a brief funny story and he's written a short fiction of his own He's always worth worth reading and always very funny. Now. Here we go. I read this earlier this year Princess of Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs the first of his Mars books and his first novel ever all my years of Reading science fiction decades of reading science fiction. I had never read Edgar Rice Burroughs I had never read this book. It was amazing The first page I was hooked the first page I was hooked Yeah, I'll definitely talk about this one later I've been rereading holding wonder by Zena Henderson when I reviewed this before I didn't have a copy So I went online and and and got a copy. I've talked before about how her stories tend to be very dark And The books in this story are no exception Her short stories are the best the shorter her stories are the better. They are in my opinion the first story In this book is called The indelible kind It is actually a very long story and it's one of her stories about the people The the witch mountain people that I mentioned before and it's not very good. It's too long It rambles it loses focus and that's what she does when she when she writes the long Stories my favorite story in this book. However, it's called the closest school It's it's very short. It's only a few pages and it's the best and it's also not dark at all It's it's very positive and actually quite beautiful. I I may devote a whole episode just to that story Because it's very relevant to to today oddly enough I'll get to these in a second this the highest frontier by Joan slanzuski One of my first This has had the the library treatment is covering up her name Let me see if I can show you her name so you can get it there It is so you can get the proper spelling of her name One of my earliest reviews I Reviewed the wall around Eden by Joan slanzuski and I said that everything that she writes is worth reading And I believe that Until I picked up this book. This is her most recent book by the way. I read 11 chapters and I was never interested the whole time You know a full 11 chapters in and as far as I could tell nothing had happened So that's too bad. I may give it another chance at someday in the future right now I think I'll trade it in now these I picked these up just today. I Biked down to The bookstore where I get to use books and picked these up. This is something I've never heard of Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds and Apparently, it's exactly what it says it's written by mainly Wade Wellman and And Wade Wellman who I guess was his son What year was this? I didn't even look This was published in 1975 Good Lord, I thought it was gonna be the 1930s Wow 1975 Well, I'll give it a read. I'll let you know how it goes Jack Vance service of the Wank Servants of the Wank Exotic adventure This is a Planet of Adventure book number two. I don't have book number one So I'm gonna wait until I get book number one. I have three and four But I'll wait until I get book one the Genesis machine with James P. Hogan I've read James P. Hogan before he's one of those authors. That's a mile a minute Once you start his books, you can't put him down. I'll see what this one is like I should cover more James P. Hogan in the future. Okay, that's it I Am gonna do another 30 second review I'll do it in a few days When I picked these up at the bookstore today, I had a I had a bigger stack of books So I didn't have enough cash with me So I told the I told the guy to put the other stack of books aside and I picked them up later This guy. He's an old-school science fiction dude Long white beard a wandering eye You can tell that back in the 70s He must have been the hardest of hardcore Trekkies. He's one of those guys, but I told him I only I didn't have much cash So I had a bigger stack of books. So I told him to put the other half of the books aside And so he set him down On the counter behind this register. I said do you want to put my name on those? He said nope Nobody else is gonna want those so So there you go. I'll pick up the rest of those books next time and We'll cover more stuff later. Bye