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  1. #3436
    Ultimate Member Deathstroke's Avatar
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    You can check out my review of the Jack Carr thriller In The Blood via this Mystery Scene magazine link.

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    Beth Hart - Fire On The Floor CD Review

    Beth Hart February 23rd, 2017 Boston, MA Concert Review

    "I can't complain. I got to be Jim Morrison for the first half of my life, and Ward Cleaver for the second half." - Warren Zevon.

  2. #3437

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    Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller. A prequel for Star Wars Rebels where Kanan and Hera meet 5 years before the start of that show.

  3. #3438
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    Interestingly, I'd never read the actual novel "Frankenstein" before. Well I have now, and I can tell you all that hype is about the Karloff movie version...not the book. It was by turns boring, and then embarrassing. Despite such a subject, she managed all of the boring of the worst of British writers of a certain era along with none of the charm and technical prowess of the best such writers. One example, she has her protagonist constantly literally fainting when confronted by...pretty much anything that doesn't go his way. Not a great way to build an relatable protagonist. Not try and fail, simply faint first, and fail for not trying. That was his nominal protagonist the good doctor. His creature was a bit more tolerable since at least he ACTED. True, in uniformly horrible fashion, so he too couldn't be a character to hang your hat on. In essence, the closest he ever comes to that is the narrator, some random Englishman sailing around because many, many pages of boring reasons for the presence of a framing device to be at that particular spot at that time. And that's it, a long bit of intro with that, then many pages in, the actual story starts and you don't see Mr. Framing device again till the very end, when he to bravely prefers not to act. Bit of a theme there. I won't speculate if she was trying to say something to someone who was there that fabled night.

    Sad. I suppose the hype came as much from the story around the story, and the fact that it was Mary Shelly and not her husband doing the writing, plus the much more riveting film versions of the story, that made it popular.
    Last edited by achilles; 08-10-2022 at 10:20 AM.

  4. #3439
    Ultimate Member Deathstroke's Avatar
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    You can check out my review of the Christopher Reich thriller Once A Thief via this Mystery Scene magazine link.

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    Beth Hart - Fire On The Floor CD Review

    Beth Hart February 23rd, 2017 Boston, MA Concert Review

    "I can't complain. I got to be Jim Morrison for the first half of my life, and Ward Cleaver for the second half." - Warren Zevon.

  5. #3440
    Mighty Member Zauriel's Avatar
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    Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime is quite an entertaining book to read. I enjoyed especially the chapter on John McCain and Sarah Palin

  6. #3441
    Ultimate Member Malvolio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by achilles View Post
    Interestingly, I'd never read the actual novel "Frankenstein" before. Well I have now, and I can tell you all that hype is about the Karloff movie version...not the book. It was by turns boring, and then embarrassing. Despite such a subject, she managed all of the boring of the worst of British writers of a certain era along with none of the charm and technical prowess of the best such writers. One example, she has her protagonist constantly literally fainting when confronted by...pretty much anything that doesn't go his way. Not a great way to build an relatable protagonist. Not try and fail, simply faint first, and fail for not trying. That was his nominal protagonist the good doctor. His creature was a bit more tolerable since at least he ACTED. True, in uniformly horrible fashion, so he too couldn't be a character to hang your hat on. In essence, the closest he ever comes to that is the narrator, some random Englishman sailing around because many, many pages of boring reasons for the presence of a framing device to be at that particular spot at that time. And that's it, a long bit of intro with that, then many pages in, the actual story starts and you don't see Mr. Framing device again till the very end, when he to bravely prefers not to act. Bit of a theme there. I won't speculate if she was trying to say something to someone who was there that fabled night.

    Sad. I suppose the hype came as much from the story around the story, and the fact that it was Mary Shelly and not her husband doing the writing, plus the much more riveting film versions of the story, that made it popular.
    While the title of the novel refers to the Doctor, the true protagonist of the story is the Monster, who is much more articulate than the Boris Karloff version. And yes, neither the Doctor nor the Monster comes off as particularly heroic. Shelly was saying something quite pessimistic about the human condition.
    Watching television is not an activity.

  7. #3442
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    Quote Originally Posted by Malvolio View Post
    While the title of the novel refers to the Doctor, the true protagonist of the story is the Monster, who is much more articulate than the Boris Karloff version. And yes, neither the Doctor nor the Monster comes off as particularly heroic. Shelly was saying something quite pessimistic about the human condition.
    My problem is that she did so in what I judge to be an in-artful way. Apart from having no one be sympathetic in the novel, she also simply didn't understand men if her examples were her honest attempt at writing male characters rather than an attempt at something a bit more. But nothing more ever materializes; it is pretty much what it seems, a simple monster story that had to wait for others to correct it and punch it up before becoming what we'd think is a great horror story.

    One could I suppose hold out that she's trying to simply say that humanity is screwed because we're all far too proud, and for too little reason, as both the doctor and his monster show at times throughout. Both miss multiple chances to stop the story from becoming the mini-tragedy it seems simply out of pride. That said, she doesn't seem to say much else, save that all men simply faint at the slightest stress. Weird one, but in part in keeping with how other authors closer to her timeline than we are today have done with considerably greater skill; look at Conan Doyle. He occasionally uses similar language in his stories, but he does so rarely, only in the most extreme cases.
    Last edited by achilles; 08-11-2022 at 04:35 AM.

  8. #3443
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    I've only ever managed to get halfway through FRANKENSTEIN. This seems to be because it gets to a point where I really like the story and then it takes a turn away from that and I lose interest. One day maybe I will finish it.

    If you've never seen the movie GOTHIC (1986), directed by Ken Russell, that's a good one to watch. It's about the time in Switzerland when Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Julian Sands) and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Natasha Richardon) were all gathered at Byron's villa and they told horror stories to each other--Mary's being the Frankenstein story.

    Given the world she lived in, I can see why Mary would view people as weak. In the early 1800s there were a lot of people falling down in faints, getting sick and dying. It that's the world you live in, you're bound to see tragedy lurking around every corner. Most of the Romantics didn't live a long life--they died by sickness or accident.

  9. #3444
    Uncanny Member MajorHoy's Avatar
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    Started reading



    Murder Costs Money: The Complete Black Mask Cases of Rex Sackler
    by D.L. Champion
    (© 2020 Steeger Properties LLC / Published by Black Mask)

  10. #3445
    DC/Collected Editions Mod The Darknight Detective's Avatar
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    New books: the groundbreaking play A Raisin in the Sun (1959) by Lorraine Hansberry...



    ... and on the Kindle: Corruption of Blood (1994), the seventh Butch Karp-Marlene Ciampi novel.

    A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!

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  11. #3446
    DC/Collected Editions Mod The Darknight Detective's Avatar
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    Tomorrow I start rereading Truman (1992) by the late, great David McCullough.

    A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!

    Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010

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  12. #3447
    Uncanny Member MajorHoy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Darknight Detective View Post
    Tomorrow I start rereading Truman (1992) by the late, great David McCullough.

    That book always makes me think of my Dad.

  13. #3448
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    Quote Originally Posted by MajorHoy View Post
    Started reading



    Murder Costs Money: The Complete Black Mask Cases of Rex Sackler
    by D.L. Champion
    (© 2020 Steeger Properties LLC / Published by Black Mask)
    Good stuff!

    I've been rereading Niven and Pournell's The Mote in God's Eye, which still holds up pretty well. You do have to head canon a few things, like assuming humanity became as suspicious of computers as it did genetic augmentation. Plus nevermind that reality overtook and utterly buggered the story's history. Still, not bad at all.

    I'm also going at Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity in bits and snatches. That one's a slog, so I'm only about 1/4 in, but it's very interesting, and it's got something to piss off just about everybody.
    Last edited by DrNewGod; 08-15-2022 at 02:20 PM.

  14. #3449
    Uncanny Member MajorHoy's Avatar
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    Started reading



    The Complete Cases of Cass Blue, Volume 1
    by John Lawrence
    (© 2014 Altus Press) <Dime Detective Library>
    Last edited by MajorHoy; 08-22-2022 at 08:10 AM.

  15. #3450

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    Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner.

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