Lady Astronaut Novel #1. Meteorite wipes out Washington D.C., climate change, better get some off-Earth colonies started! Set in the 50s. I really liked it a lot, read the darn thing in one 24-hour period!
Second book in the Wings trilogy, odd story of the boy Peter, and later the man Peter, making an odd trip in an odd America.
Words I Had To Look Up:
matutinal (pg. 72) -- pertaining to or occurring in the morning. crepuscular (pg. 86) -- active mainly at dawn and dusk. mobcap (pg. 173) -- large high frilly cap with a full crown; formerly worn indoors by women. paucity (pb. 215) -- dearth: an insufficient quantity or number. plenitude (pb. 215) -- plenty: a full supply. pelisse (pg. 219) -- a sleeveless cape that is lined or trimmed with fur.
Quote:
...the area of which is defined by the equation S = π2 (R + r) (R - r) where R is the major radius of the torus and r is the minor radius of the torus, an equation that to this day makes me hot.
On a planet far far away, women are recruited for a special unit to defend their small country from belligerent neighbors. Gosh, wish the two appendixes had been listed in a table of contents so I could have USED them while reading!
Cork helps and old Indian friend find the son he has only seen in dreams, and solves a mystery, too. Pretty good stuff. Read the Readers Digest Condensed version.
A biography of Mike May, who, blinded at age three, had his sight partially restored in the 90s. An extremely interesting story! Ham radio, bicycling, laser record players, good-looking women, it's all there!
The author has cranked out a zillion of these 150 page books, and they are great little stories. And no sex, very little cussing, if any, but a bit of violence. In this one, "Pronto" Pike gets beat up and left for dead by vigilantes and falls in love with an Irish girl. I wonder why the bad guy who was detailed to kill him did not do it, though?
Quote:
..."He told me he never knew how sick he was until he was snowed in one winter with a Home medical Advisor, and read it cover to cover. If it hadn't been for that book, he might have lived a long life in bad health without knowing it." -- (pg. 14)
Elise starts off badly in sixth grade at middle school, but eventually things get better. An extremely charming story. Parts of it seemed very familiar, like I had read a galley edition, but I would have noted that before. Odd. So I enjoyed it very much. But I'd like to know what the deal is with Amanda. Maybe a sequel?
Ginny is now fifteen, which means the man she was wed to when she was ten years old is coming to take her to live with him on his farm. A tale of the settlement of the Oregon Territory.