[Eliza D]

The membrane kept the atmosphere from leaking out the bottom?

And you say the book isn't worth it.  Why?

[rtpoe]

I'm not sure about the membrane. That's one of the problems with the novel; it was poorly edited, if at all. There are clear glitches in the narrative:

(1) On one page Tananareve is roughly picked up and thrown into a holding tank. One the very next page, she's with the other group on the other side of a diamond wall. Two drafts of the 'landing party is broken in two' event, perhaps?
(2) There are two different descriptions of the treatment of one person's serious injury which immediately follow each other. Said treatment describes *the* injury in two different ways and it is treated by two different people. Either the first person shoved the metal rod back into the guy for the next person to take out again, or this is two different drafts of the same event.
(3) At one point the captain leaves the bridge and a page or less latter leaves the bridge again. Did he get lost? Or is this two different drafts?
(4) Near the end of one chapter an offhand comment is made that communications from Earth stopped 100 years ago for no apparent reason. Yet a few chapters later we are treated to a page of discussion of the latest communication from Earth as if it were a routine event. So this *published version* hasen't even decided if the Earth has gone missing or not?
(5) It was previously established that ship has been in motion for approximately 80 years. How then can they have lost contact 100 years ago? Is one supposed to take the time since last contact to be *Earth* time?! For what possible reason? Have the authors even decided, at this early stage of story development, how far Glory is from Earth and how long it would take to get there?
 - Scott R Crittenden, Amazon reviewer

And the ending.... "Unsatisfying" is being polite. There's no build up to a cliffhanger, nor any sense of resolution to even one of the plot threads. Just a "To Be Continued" blurb.

I really did toss it across the room in disgust when I finished it. I've never treated a library book like that before.

There are better ways to spend your time. Cleaning your toilet is one....

[Eliza D]

Oh.

Well, now.  That's different!   

Thanks for the heads up!

I'm glad that Cris apparently has a better proofreader than Niven! 

[rtpoe]

Antigone by Sophocles

The third in his trilogy of plays about Oedipus (or at least the third of the three that survive).

OK, I admit I haven't read it since high school. But recent news stories have pretty much recapitulated the story.

We all know how Oedipus unintentionally killed his father and married his mother. The trilogy expands on that legend. Oedipus and Jocasta had a couple of kids. After Oedipus goes into exile at the end of Oedipus the King, he leaves his sons Polyneices and Eteocles to share the rule of Thebes. During Oedipus at Colonus, Eteocles decides he doesn't want to share, and he kicks Polyneices out. Needless to say, Polyneices raises an army (the "Seven Against Thebes") and comes back to take Thebes for himself. The two brothers kill each other in the battle, leaving Uncle Creon to rule.

At the beginning of Antigone, we find that Creon has decreed that while Eteocles should have a full state funeral for his defending Thebes, Polyneices the Traitor is to be left outside, "unwept, unsepulchered, a treasure to feast on for birds looking out for a dainty meal." He also decrees the death penalty for anyone who tries to bury him.

This doesn't set well with Antigone, who insists that burying the dead far more important than any earthly law, one of the "unwavering, unwritten customs of the gods … not some trifle of now or yesterday, but for all eternity."

Sophocles also touched on the theme in his play Ajax, where another good man turns terrorist. Agamemnon the King refuses to allow Ajax to be buried; Odysseus insisted that maintaining a hatred after death was pointless and unfair.

AGAMEMNON: You will make us appear cowards this day.
ODYSSEUS: Not so, but just men in the sight of all the Greeks.
AGAMEMNON: So you would have me allow the burying of the dead?
ODYSSEUS: Yes; for I too shall come to that need.

[rtpoe]

Here is Where by Andrew Carroll

Carroll travels across the US. visiting places of no small historical import that have somehow been overlooked in our desire to memorialize and landmark things. He covers literally dozens of footnote places in history, like the home of Dr. Loring Miner in Sublette, Kansas - the local doctor who in early 1918 realized that the cases of flu he was dealing with were unlike anything that he - or anyone else - had ever seen. That was the initial outbreak of the Spanish Flu epidemic, which killed tens of millions worldwide.

Or the Heights Arts Theater in Cleveland, where on November 14, 1959, police confiscated the reels of the movie Les Amants and arrested the owner Nico Jacobellis on the charge of "possessing and exhibiting an obscene film". The resulting case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Jacobellis' favor. Justice Potter Stewart agreed with the majority:

"It is possible to read the Court's opinion in Roth v. United States and Alberts v. California, 354 U.S. 476, in a variety of ways. In saying this, I imply no criticism of the Court, which, in those cases, was faced with the task of trying to define what may be indefinable. I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court's decisions since Roth and Alberts, that, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0378_0184_ZS.html

His essays are generally short, and he comes across as a smart friend telling you about the cool places he's been to, and the people he met there. He takes care to get the assistance of local historians and property owners, since in pretty much every case they have important stories to tell.

If there's one drawback, it's that there are no photographs. Carroll talks about taking a lot of pictures; couldn't the publishers have included some?

On the website for the book - http://hereiswhere.org/ - he notes that the book is part of a larger project to get these places properly marked for history and the edification of the citizenry. The list of "Events" has a few places where he has managed to get some markers placed.

[number3fac]

I've got "Brave New World" on my bookshelf.  It's been years since I read it, and have been pondering going back to it.  Then I found the "Better Book Titles" blog, which posits revised names for literary works.  Here's the take on that book:

[Zealot]

"Path of the Warrior" by Gav Thorpe I just finished.It was a Warhammer:40,000 novel,but not as good as Dan Abnett's work.I'm now on Dan's book,"Titanicus",which features giant robots like in "Pacific Rim".

[rtpoe]

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

A detailed history of how our nuclear arsenal has been commanded and controlled over the decades. And how the Air Force, Pentagon, fought to get control of the nukes from the President...

There's also a lengthy and detailed recounting of the explosion of a Titan II missile - with an actual "on alert" warhead - in Damascus, AR in 1980, wrapped around a history of attempts to make nuclear warheads safe (in that they will only explode when you want them to).

A lot of reviewers are considering it "scary" to see just how close we have come to disaster on more than one occasion. I'm not so easily frightened by past "what ifs". I'm more worried that Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and all the other nuclear wannabees might not be even aware of our past mistakes, and thus unable to learn from them...

[pedonbio]

I've got "Brave New World" on my bookshelf.  It's been years since I read it, and have been pondering going back to it.  Then I found the "Better Book Titles" blog, which posits revised names for literary works.  Here's the take on that book:

Uh, you do realize that the little thumbnail is unreadable, and won't enlarge?

[MaxiMoundsSexyBigTitsAndSexyBigAss]

Stephen King's 'The Shining' sequel, 'Doctor **82**.'  Still reading it.

[tdotter]

Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
I own the book,the movie and the soundtrack.I thought this book is much better than the overrated Catcher in the Rye and the S.E Hinton "youth gone wild" books.
This is a case where I think the movie is just as good as the book.Although I would have to say the book is a little better because it conveys Alex's isolation after he is released from prison a little better than the movie.However,I would recommend watching the movie before reading the book because the movie does an obviously better job of conveying how much music was important to the main character Alex than the book.It amazes me how many stories about youth don't include anything about music and how much it means to them.In many ways the kind of music that you listen to at that age is the only identity that you have.Fuckin Metal for me!
The only problem I have with the book is some of the slang used by the characters.Most of it you will know what it means but other slang words will take a few times reading it to get what it means.Other than that,it's a great book and movie as I'm sure most of you on here already know.

[number3fac]

Uh, you do realize that the little thumbnail is unreadable, and won't enlarge?

Right-click on it, select "open in new tab".  It'll be full-size there.  This works for a lot of "embedded" (I think that's the term) images in Forum posts.

[rtpoe]

The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World
by Greg King and Sue Woolmans

So, World War I (The War to End All Wars....) began when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot (along with his wife, Countess Sophie Chotek).

But what sort of people were they? What was the deal with the "morgantic" marriage? Why did they go to Sarajevo, and who was in charge of the security arrangements? What happened to their children?

The Romanovs of Russia get the spotlight, but this tragic family story is little known. The brutal snubbing of Sophie at court functions and other appearances (If they wanted to attend the opera, they couldn't sit together - he got a luxury box seat, she had to sit down in the regular seats), how their two sons spent time in concentration camps...

King and Woolmans spent a lot of time with their descendants, listening to old family tales, and reading what little family correspondence remains. A fascinating look at some overlooked people in history.

[gOOber]

 

[homevintner]

These, plus dozens of other since my last post in this thread.

The Fireflies of Port Stanley by Marc Jones. Alternate history of the Falkland war.
Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc by Patrick O'Donnell
Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston by James Hornfischer
Battle of Dogger Bank: The First Dreadnought Engagement by Tobias Philbin
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo By Tom Reiss. The story of General Dumas, father of Alex.
Over the Wine Dark Sea by Harry Turtledove
Dome City Blues By Jeff Edwards
A Devil of a Whipping: the Battle of Cowpens By Lawrence E. Babits
Give Me a Fast Ship: The Continental Navy and America's Revolution at Sea by Tim McGrath
Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of The U.S. Navy by Ian W Toll. The Constitution and her sisters.
The Belisarius series by Erik Flint an David Drake
The  Weird West series by Mike Resnick. Doc Holiday meets steampunk
The Crimson Worlds series by Jay Allen. Just waiting for the last one.
Caught up on the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson
Also waiting for the next offering of The Lost Fleet universe from Jack Campbell.

 I might go back and dig up some more titles.