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54. Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus I had to keep going with Thongor.  Partly, it's because of my obsessive completist tendencies (why I tried and failed to adher to a non-trilogy or series policy in the first place) but also because the later Thongors did get much more enjoyable.  I particularly liked the pirate scenes in the last book and this one seemed to be all about pirates.  It's the last Thongor book that Lin Carter wrote and this time the pirate city of Tarakus (which weirdly is right in the middle of Thongor's kingdom and they just let it ride all this time) has aligned itself with another escaped wizard who has harnessed another powerful magical/technological weapon from the eldritch past.  The weapon is a ray that makes everybody murderously insane.

Lots of adventure and super-coincidental reunions as usual.  There is a kick-ass princess in this one, who is a love interest but is constantly demonstrating to the dude how badass she actually is, so that was fun.

I note a significant slowdown from my torrid pace in the second half of this year.  This is entirely due to a guy at my daughter's daycare giving me a free copy of Assassin's Creed: Origins a videogame that almost succeeded in taking over my entire life.  This 50 books is no joke.  Distractions can come from anywhere.  Stay vigilant!
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 3:48 PM No comments: 
53. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome This was a huge childhood favourite of mine but I couldn't actually remember much about its content or even if I read it myself or if my dad had read it to me.  It's the story of a family on vacation in the lake country somewhere in England.  There are two brothers and two sisters (and a new baby sister who doesn't get to go on the adventures yet), their mum and nurse. The father is somewhere around the world on a ship.

The story is basically of their summer sailing on the lake, in particular a week they spend camping on an island in the lake and the adventures they generate from it.  Really not much happens.  It's really about them working their sail boat, setting up camp, pretending to be pirates, spying on the man on the lone houseboat, meeting some rival pirates their age, navigating the waters and going fishing.  Somehow it is all very absorbing and fantastic.  There is a small subplot of a robbery of the houseboat, but it's not really central to the story.

I wonder if this book would appeal to children of today.  Kids gets such intense dosages of fantasy both visually and content wise with all the tv shows and books out there, that Swallows and Amazons may just seem to pedestrian.  I think it is an important book to read so I hope that they would still enjoy it.  It teaches so much about independence. The oldest boy is maybe 12 I think.  They sail by themselves and stay camping for several nights.  They do check in back at home to get supplies, but I just can't imagine this kind of independence today.  We stayed at Georgian Bay with my aunt a couple of summers ago and we took some of the kids out in her canoe and it was like the biggest deal. The parents don't let their kids out of their sight.  Really sad.

Another sadder thing was that this book was written in 1929 and many of the plucky kids in this story would probably have been off to use their skills and independence in World War II not so far down the road.
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 6:16 PM No comments: 
52. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch Got this page turner from meezly who I think got it from a colleague at work.  I knew I was going to devour it quickly because she read it quite quickly and I could see the large type and short paragraphs.

I am warning you now this review will have spoilers.  This book is best read not knowing anything.  So I will tell you straight out that it is a page-turning, enjoyable thriller with a really cool sci-fi premise, though it is ultimately about human relations.  That all being said, it is also very much a mainstream book and so is written in a way that I do not enjoy.  Way too much emoting about everything and constant references to class-conscious material goods (like describing the countertops and type of wine in a kitchen that will all feel so dated in a decade).  Also, the main character has to be kind of wimpy and make not the smartest decisions.  People seem to dig this style, but I can only handle a few of them a year.

So here's the story.  Jason Dessen is a happily married physics professor with a 15-year old son.  Coming back from celebratory drinks with his more successful colleague, he is suddenly accosted by a masked man who takes him to an abandoned warehouse and shoots him up with drugs.  He wakes up in a super fancy lab being applauded by a welcoming committee.   They know his name and treat him with deference and respect, but there is also tons of security and armed guards in the lab.  He escapes and makes his way back to his home, but it's all changed and there is no wife and son.  Really honestly you should stop reading this and just go read the book because the premise is really quite cool.

Actually, I am going to stop there as that should give you enough of an idea as to whether this kind of book is for you or not.  I ended up enjoying it, though with the reservations mentioned above as well as one major logical flaw which I will put down below for the record (again, major spoiler!)

[If he could go to any world from the box, why didn't he just go to a world that already had the quantum technology and explain to them what happened and get them to fix it?]
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 10:54 PM No comments: 
51. Memory by Donald E. Westlake This book set up expectations that I was worried were not going to be fulfilled but then when they weren't, Westlake had taken it into such an unexpected direction that I found profound and though not narratively satisfying, totally enriching.

It starts off right away with a dude in bed with another man's wife and the husband barging in.  The husband swings a chair at the dude and then the dude is in a hospital bed.  Once again, I am glad that I had zero knowledge other than the front cover (which is literally the action that takes place not just in the first page but the second paragraph, so definitely no spoilers).  Somehow the blow has damaged the memory of the protagonist, Paul Cole.  He has a kind of amnesia where he can't remember who he was but also has trouble continuing to remember new things.  We learn from the cop who found him that he was an actor with a touring stage play.  The tour paid his wages and went on without him (the show must go on). The cop has a strong moral position on fidelity and rousts Cole out of town. Cole has barely any money after the hospital bill, can't remember who he was beyond the ID in his wallet and has only some instinct urging him to go to New York, which has the address on his driver's license. He takes a bus as far as he can afford and ends up in some small, poor town called Jeffords.  Here it becomes a question of survival for this guy, who has a few dollars and no memory.

I will stop at the storyline here, except to say that it begins with a lot of classic elements of Westlake's early works.  It takes place in the early 60s.  There is an expertly depicted small town.  Some menacing characters, including a very low-level loan shark at a tannery and a very nasty police detective.  Because of these elements (well crafted as usual with Westlake, god he is good), I thought we were going in one place.  That place being a crime thriller with the dude's memory as the suspense.  It doesn't go there, but instead explores in a pretty interesting way ideas of identity as well as subtly critiquing the cosmpolitan smugness towards what we know today as flyover states.  It's pretty sad and dark but also so interesting and compelling (and as always written so straightforwardly) that you keep turning the pages. It was copywrite 2010 but I wonder when Westlake actually wrote it.  The theme and sophistication made me think that it was indeed one of his later books.

This isn't the book that Hard Case Crime sells you on the cover and blurb, but it is a pretty damn good book.
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 9:34 PM No comments: 
50. The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White Blam, did it.  I am quite happy to have made 50 but not feeling like cheering or resting on my laurels.  The challenge is to keep this up year after year and not flake out and build up a huge debt like I did for the last 4 years.  Also, this was perhaps not the best choice for my 50th book.  I have to admit that I read it almost entirely out of duty and not pleasure.  It was like the toughest part of a marathon.  You just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

It is ostensibly (at least according to the breathless editors, who seem to dotheth protest too much) the true ending to White's classic The Once and Future King that got partially incorporated into the 4 books series that was actually published but mostly blocked due to wartime shortages and editorial decisions.  It was a decent coda, but most of it was the king as an old man going back to the animal societies he visited as a boy when first starting under Merylyn's tutelage.  Then the animals all argue with Merlyn about various types of statehood and how man compares to other species. If you were looking for a political science debate, this would be a fun one to read.  If you are looking for a conclusion to The Once and Future King, this felt like a lot of repetition.  When it does get to the real narrative ending, it is satisfying but it's only about 30 pages.

I was expecting a story that was really about Merlyn, as he is one of the most interesting characters in the Once and Future King. He is going backwards in time, which would be quite difficult to tell in a book.  I suspect the title was created by the editors and not T.H. White himself for exactly the reason that it would encourage sales.  I lay the blame of my dissatisfaction with this book entirely at the feet of the publishers.
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 3:50 PM No comments: 


Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 9:11 PM No comments: 
48. The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson I loved Spider World (though it never really ended properly) and have found Colin Wilson's other works intriguing but sometimes a bit too philosophical.  I suspected that of this book but this cover is absolutely irresistible.  I picked it up at Pulp Fiction books in Vancouver, but I can't remember at which store now that it has become a mini and much deserved empire out there.

The Mind Parasites is written as a non-fiction fiction (there must be a word for this).  It is made up long excerpts from a scientist's journal, with some other excerpts and footnotes added here and there to fill out points or bring an added perspective.  In effect, because it is mostly one long excerpt by Professor Gilbert Austin, it becomes basically a story with Austin as its narrator.  He has made a fantastic discovery on an archeological dig in Turkey, a massive structure built under the earth that is evidence of civilizations long before previously thought.  It is explicitly Lovecraftian and the professor posits that Lovecraft's fiction was actually recountings of true visions he was having.  However, it's all a feint, because in his exploration of these ruins, he discovers something else inside his own mind: faint hints of some parasitical species.  He further discovers that these species have been in humanity's mind for the last 200 years and worse are responsible for our inability to evolve past stupid, warring behaviours.

It's kind of a pulp action book where most of the exciting action, at least in the first half, takes place in Austin's mind as he explores deeper while trying not to alert the parasites to his awareness of them.  He recruits other like-minded scientists and the war begins.  It gets pretty ambitious and crazy and is preposterous and a lot of fun.  It's very appealing to think of all the shit going down today and the stupidity and greed of the elites in the world and how it all could be attributable to a parasite that is feeding off our life energy but keeps us stunted enough that we won't discover their existence.  The only thing that I didn't really jibe with was the idea that somehow up until the end of the 18th century, our great thinkers were unfettered and positive and then somehow everything got shitty because we realized there was no God.  That is the parallel that Wilson makes.  He seems really down on 19th century western culture, but I don't know enough about that history to really be critical.
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 4:23 PM No comments: 
47. Corentyne Thunder by Edgar Mittelholzer 
46. Thongor at the End of Time by Lin Carter So this now is the fourth Thongor book I've read and the last of the set I found at Chainon.  I've now read 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the 6 in total, not counting Young Thongor that came out in 2012 .  The series had been a bit of a slog for me but I am pleased to say that Thongor Against the Gods was actually quite a lot of fun.  There was barely any exposition of past events this time and a much tighter storyline and cast of characters.

Thongor is now king, married to beautiful Sumia with a strapping son named Thar.  One of the magicians we thought he had killed from Thongor and the City of Magicians had of course survived and was now secretly plotting to get his revenge. At the beginning of the book, Thongor is killed quite suddenly and soon after the queen secludes herself from all her loyalists and sets up this fat, decadent merchant to be in power.  Of course the magician is behind it all and we get two cool storylines: Thongor in the land of the dead and his son and trusted lieutenant on the run with a bunch of pirates.  I particularily enjoyed the pirate storyline.  It was the kind of fantasy setting, that while not original at all, was rich on colourful characters and maritime camarederie.  The return to the city of pirates was a great moment, with the captain striding through the streets of revellers to his favourite tavern.

I realized as I was reading this that it wasn't just the cliched fantasy tropes that were distancing me from really getting deep into the narrative.  It's also that Carter uses so many adjectives!  I realize that it requires quite a lot of parsing down for my mind to grasp the actual narrative meaning of his sentences and that tires me out and makes my thoughts wander.  Here is a prime example:

Over all the thronged and crowded streets with their jostling, drunken, quarrelsome horde, over all the smokey inns and ale houses, above the narrow roofs and peaked gables, brooded the dark citadel that crowned the crest of the cliffs and thrust squat towers against the storm-dark skies where few stars flashed.

I literally had to re-read this sentence three times before I realized it was trying to tell me that there was a dark citadel brooding over the pirate town.  I appreciate the colourfulness of the descriptions, but he goes way too far.  I also learned that Carter is a very skilled writer and that this style choice is deliberate.  At the end of this book, there is a short essay where he explains the historical sources that inspired Thongor and the world of Lemuria and it is extremely well-written, clear and direct, but not simplistic.

I'm glad I made it this far and while reading the last book I was telling myself I would be done after this one, but I think I will now keep my eye open for the last in the series Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus.
Posted by OlmanFeelyus at 10:27 PM No comments: