Mr. Burke's Reading List

ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1971 The sixth issue in my ANALOG PLUS 50 series. For anyone finding these reviews, my purpose is two-fold: enjoying some "classic" sci-fi, and looking for stories that I think could be adapted for TV broadcast since so much of what shows up on anthology shows is rough to awful. At some point, I'll stop numbering, but probably not until I do this for at least a year. If I do this for a year. The endo fo the month caught up with me before I finished (what with school ending and all). I shall finish it presently. But I'm posting a partial list. In this issue: This will be updated shortly. The Editorial: "Bargain Spacement", by John. W. Campbell. John watched the Apollo 14 splashdown on color TV and it was astonishing. The pictures were phenomenal because the capsule re-entered the atmosphere almost exactly where it was expected to be. And it comes down to the human factor. Apollo...

Amora: Stories by Natalia Borges (2015) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) The cover says "Natalia Borges Polesso, translated by Julia Sanches". This book was part of Amazon's World Book Day 2021 , when I downloaded 10 books. Like in previous years, it is likely that I won't read more than 2 or 3 of them. I still haven't read most of the previous books. This one is from Brazil and is described as An exquisite collection of stories exploring the complexity of love between women. I'm not the target audience for lesbian literature nor is it something that I would think to seek out. Maybe if a friend gave me a book and asked my opinion, that would be a different matter. Anyway, I didn't let the subject matter prevent me from cracking the electronic cover. I got about 30% of the way through the book. M...

Learning to Breathe by Robin Stephens (2021) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) A short collection of poetry that I found when the author's spouse posted a link on free ebook board. I don't read a lot of poetry, but I made it all the way through and I didn't hate it. That's saying something, I guess. I don't particularly care for free verse with no apparent meter or rhyme or reason. Okay, the poem's do have reasons for exisitng, but I couldn't always figure out the feeling or emotion behind them. And after reading the description on the Amazon page, I think I missed out on a bit.

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (2017) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) The one thing that absolutely kills me is that this is a first book. There's a lot that went into this. This book was recommonded at a recent virtual convention (I believe it was a panel at Balticaon) when someone asked about humorous books. I like humor. That said, this book is half humor and and half serious (and seriously dark, at times). The premise is amusing: that the monster-hunting parties of yore was akin to rock stars, and one of the greatest, Saga, has to "get the band back together". I wondered if this was going to be anything like Legend , and it was nothing like that. It went its own way. (I do notice that David Gemmel is listed on the Amazon page as an inspiration, along with the Hitchhikers Guide .) Twenty years have passe...

While cleaning up my hard drive, I found files where I kept track of the books I read for a given year. Someone had given me the idea (back in the 90s, I believe) to open a text file, and add the name of the book I'd read. What follows below looks like an "end of the year" post made to a bulletin board somewhere. If it's 2003, it's past my time on Usenet. Many of these may have appeared elsewhere in this blog, if not the entire post itself. I'll post these files one per month. 2003: The Year in Review I know this is a couple of weeks late, but what the hey, I'll post it anyway. Books read in 2003. Not many as I drove to work for most of the year, losing my prime reading time on the subway. (At bedtime, I'm usually too exhausted to get more than a handful of pages. Teaching will do that.) And getting 12 teaching credits took up a lot of time. (Textbooks are excluded from my list.) Anyway: The Lord of the Rings: The Two ...