The Young Lady has been doing a lot of reading, but (like me, when I was a kid) tends to fall into small interest groups: reading the same series several times, etc. So we went to the library this weekend and went through a couple of shelves worth of books, with me looking at stuff and saying things like "Hey, this is about kids who travel through time, like The Magic Treehouse, want to try that?", etc.

The one suggestion I thought she'd reject immediately has really hooked her. I spotted several Tintin omnibus collections, three adventures per book. I pulled them out, talked about them, and she took out three. And has been reading them end-to-end since. You never know what will hook her!

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Baltimore has him. Philadelphia wants him. Good thing there's a Poe Militia standing by to defend his body!

(Alternate URL here because the NY Times never makes it easy.)

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Fred's Reading Report (Auguwst 200

This report can now be viewed here.

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Happy Birthday, Edgar Rice Burroughs!

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Be sure to check out Virginia Postrel's new blog, Deep Glamour: At the Intersection of Imagination and Desire.

In addition to being pretty easy on the eyes, this new blog offers up a fresh perspective on what many may normally consider a superficial topic. Call it a more focused application of the "substance of style."

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The official Cordwainer Smith site has a new look. "Smith's" daughter is also doing a blog. His Instrumentality of Mankind stories are among my favorites, stop on by and maybe you'll get hooked as well!

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'Don't you know what a tie-mate is, cully?' asked the seaman with tolerant scorn. The landsman shook his heavy head: there were already seventeen thousand things he did not know, and their number increased, daily. 'Well, you know what a pigtail is?' asked the seaman, showing his own, a massive queue that reached his buttocks, and speaking loud, as to a fool or a foreigner. The landsman nodded, looking a little more intelligent. 'Which it has to be unplaited, washed on account of the lice, combed, and plaited again for muster. And can you do it yourself, behind your back? Not in time for muster, mate. Not in time for Kingdom Come, neither. So you get a friend, like me and Billy Pitt, to do yours, you sitting on a cheese of wads at your ease, or maybe a bucket turned arsy-versy; and then you do his: for fair's fair, I say. And that is what we call tie-mates."

''I heard of that Billy Pitt of yours,' said the landsman, narrowing his eyes.

(Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore)

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My wife just called to tell me that NewDog (Mark 4.0) pulled a leather-bound copy of The History of the Peloponnesian War (by Thucydides) off the shelf and proceeded to chow down on the leather cover. It was not in its usual place, I was referring to it as I read Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War (his one-volume "popular" treatment of his four-volume opus).

"...the first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, to the embellishments of poets and orators." (David Hume)

With this, she has joined a very exclusive club. OldDog (Mark 2.0, readers may recall that OldDog, Mark 3.0 passed away last may) chewed up a omnibus edition of The Lord of the Rings when she was roughly the same age.

I know I can get another copy, heck, I can get it for free from Project Gutenberg. But I had this one for about twenty-five years. Ah, NewDog, you're trying my patience!

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Alexander Dumas, pere (The Three Muskateers, The Man in the Iron Mask) has a new novel out!

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A fascinating look at Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by that best-selling author Nicolaus Copernicus. Was it really the book nobody read?

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It's bad when you finish a book, put it down, and completely forget to update your book log for several days!

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"Jack," he [Stephen] cried, bursting into the cabin. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"Not at all, brother," said Captain Aubrey: he closed his book. "I was only reading a most uncomfortable piece in Galatians: damned, whatever you do, almost. I am afraid you have torn your stockings."

(Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen)

"There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure if another fails."

(Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co.; quoting Robert Browning's Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister, for all love!)

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"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."

"There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way round is merely very, very irritating."

"Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."

Advice from Aral Vorkosigan (Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign).

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FALSTAFF: Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride me, so; 'tis a point of friendship.

PRINCE HENRY: Nothing but a colossus can do thee that friendship. Say thy prayers, and farewell.

FALSTAFF: I would 'twere bed-time, Hal, and all well.

PRINCE HENRY: Why, thou owest God a death.

(Exit PRINCE HENRY)

FALSTAFF: 'Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No: or an arm? No: or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.

(William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, Act V)

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For the wallet, that is. It seems every time I pass by the bookstore, I notice a few more "must have" titles. From the end of July to early in September, here's what I either have picked up or will be picking up:

Poul Anderson: The Van Rijn Method (excerpt here).

Greg Bear: City at the End of Time (website for the author and the book here) (mention at Boing Boing here) (purchased).

Ben Bova: Mars Life (purchased).

Tobias Buckell: Sly Mongoose (purchased).

Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl: The Last Theorem (purchased).

Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 1970s (made up of Martian Time-Slip; Dr. Bloodmoney; Now Wait for Last Year; Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; A Scanner Darkly) (purchased).

David Drake and Eric Flint: Belisarius I: Thunder at Dawn (excerpt here).

Joe Haldeman: Marsbound (read in serial form).

Robert A. Heinlein: Between Planets (excerpt found here) (purchased).

Paul Kearney: The Ten Thousand (but wouldn't you'd rather read the original?).

George R. R. Martin: A Dance with Dragons (about time!!!).

Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner: Juggler of Worlds.

Jerry Pournelle: Exile and Glory (excerpt found here) (special ordered, then purchased).

John Ringo: The Last Centurion (excerpt here) (purchased and read as an eARC).

John Scalzi: Zoe's Tale (purchased).

Karl Schroeder: Pirate Sun (purchased).

Neal Stephenson: Anathem.

And I'm sure there will be more!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The horror! The horror! Band of Brothers, the Aubrey/Maturin Musical!

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Hmmm...

Fondness for small cups of intense coffee. CHECK.

Uses an iPod. CHECK.

Jots in a Moleskine. CHECK.

Do I pass the coolness test?

Nah.

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365 short works completed. I wonder what the count will be on December 31? more...

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Captain Aubrey was a being that confused superior force with superior reason, that was Captain Aubrey's affair: nothing would prevent Professor Graham from telling the truth, calmly and without raising his voice. Volume of sound was in no way related to volume of veracity. Captain Aubrey might speak violently, if he chose; it made no difference to the truth. If Captain Aubrey were to turn his cannon—the ultima ratio regum, and of other bullies—on Professor Graham, the truth would remain unaltered. No, said Professor Graham, now quite hoarse from bellowing, he did not suppose that he possessed a monopoly of wisdom—the remark he might observe in passing was wholly irrelevant and as illiberal as if Professor Graham had referred to Captain Aubrey's remarkable bulk or to his lack of education—but in this particular case an impartial observer comparing Professor Graham's not inconsiderable knowledge of Turkish history, language, literature, policy, and customs with the encyclopedic ignorance and presumption of those who contradicted him, might be tempted to think so.

(Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission)

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"What a ghoul you are, Stephen, upon my word."

(Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation)

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