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The Last Book In The Universe

Philbrick, Rodman
In a gritty future world several decades after a planetary earthquake a boy named Spaz tries to survive.

Read:

1/2009

The Young Man And The Sea

Philbrick, Rodman
Skiff takes his skiff out to sea to harpoon a big tuna so he can get his alcoholic dad's boat repaired.

Read:

12/2012

Third Strike

Philbrick, Rodman
With co-author William G. Tapply. J.W. Jackson and Brady Coyne investigate ferry strike violence and the murder of Brady's client.

Read:

8/2010

The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders

Pickard, Nancy
Food and murder. This is great!! This one is based on the characters and a story created by Virginia Rich. Mrs. Rich created the Eugenia Potter series but passed away before writing this book.

Read:

3/1999

Leaving Time

Picoult, Jodi
Too many dead elephants.

Read:

7/2017

The Afterlife Diet

Pinkwater, Daniel
A rather confusing cast of characters, mostly fat, try to lose weight, or not, in heaven and here on earth. I found the hot dog description interesting, I might try tomatoes on a dog. Oh, did I mention the vampire parakeets?

Words I Had To Look Up:

Ophidiophobe (pg. 48) -- Fear of snakes.
Kakophaphiophobia ( pg. 80) -- Kakorraphiaphobia is the fear of failure. Typo?
Chalyatchkie stick (pg. 87) -- No definiton found.
Emmis about the whole geschichte (pg. 95) -- Can't find definion for "emmis", but the rest is about the whole story/history.
Fraktur characters (pg. 153) -- A typeface from the 16th century with a broken or fractured appearance.
Transmigrational (pg. 181) -- To pass from one body to another at death, soul-wise.
Prepossessing (pg. 191) -- Creating a favorable impression.
Gemutlich (pg. 208) -- German, pleasant.
Shmendrick (pg. 214) -- A spelling variation, it is Yiddish for a stupid person.
Pneumatic blonde (pg. 147) -- Well, Anna Nicole Smith was one.
Objet trouvé (pg. 224) -- In French, a found object.
Chent (pg. 240) -- Silly me, it is a mispronounciation of chant!

Read:

9/2008

Little Fuzzy

Piper, H. Beam
I've read this before, and semi-recently, too, but it's not on the list so I downloaded the Project Gutenberg e-book edition and read that. Great story!

Read:

7/2022

Murder In The Gunroom

Piper, H. Beam
A mystery story by an author I thought just did science fiction.
A gun hobbyist is shot while cleaning his new pistol. Is it an accident, or is it...MURDER??
I read the Project Gutenberg e-book edition.
If you are not familiar with General Semantics you can look it up, it is mentioned five times in the story.

Quote:

"My colored boy, Buck" -- Well, that's not offensive!

Quote:

"like Bill Nye's Puritans' -- Not THAT Bill Nye, this one was an American humorist, Edgar Wilson "Bill" Nye.

Quote:

"and a Woolworth store with a red front that made it look like some painted hussy who had wandered into a Quaker Meeting. " -- Paints a picture in my mind!

Quote:

"The women seemed to have erected a temporary tri-partite Entente-more-or-less-Cordiale. " -- The sisters don't get along...

Quote:

"pull a Russ Columbo on himself." -- A famous musician that was shot accidently by his friend.

Quote:

" Skinner was working on the rifle with an insufflator." -- A squeeze bulb to blow air, I guess.

Quote:

"What started the hostilities this time?" Rand asked, going up the stairway with her. "Oh, Geraldine lost Nelda's place-marker out of the Kinsey Report, or something." She shrugged."

Quote:

"a monstrous ululation " -- The act of ululating; a long, loud, wavering cry or howl.

Read:

7/2022

Space Viking

Piper, H. Beam
Read the Project Gutenberg edition. A guy seeks revenge on the psycho who killed the guy's new wife. Searches the universe for him!

Quote:

How would you like to be my girl on Marduk?" Myrna thought that over carefully. "I'd like to, but I couldn't. You see, I'm going to have to be Queen, some day." -- Myrna was maybe my favorite character.

Quote:

"You are quite the cynosure..." -- a person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration.

Read:

7/2022

Crocker

Dorothy Springer Clark meets the unorthodox and beautiful Crocker Bundy on his first day attending her high school. I rather like this book.

Read:

2/2016

Alternating Currents

I read this collection of stories before, but it does not seem to be in the database. Nothing distinguishes these stories to me. I noticed the publisher cheaped-out by running one story into another, no blank space between stories. I guess The Ghost Maker was the best story.

Read:

4/2009

Platinum Pohl - The Collected Best Stories

Thirty-odd stories, most of which I liked a lot, and most of which are not too long. I was surprised to learn he is still, at this writing, alive. A grand old man!

Quote:

One hundred and thirty-one men, women, and children simultaneously were converted into maltreated chunks of barbecued meat falling through the sky. their roster included the pilot, the copilot, the third pilot, and eight other members of the flight crew; plus, among the passengers, mothers, infants, honeymooning couples, nonhoneymooning but equally amorous couples who did not happen to be married to each other, a middle-aged grape picker returning home after a five-days-four-nights all-expense tour of Sin City (which he had found disappointing), a defrocked priest, a disbarred lawyer, and a congressman from Oregon who would never now achieve his dream of dismantling NASA and preventing the further waste of the taxpayer's funds on space, which he held to be empty and uninteresting.
Whoever they had been when whole, the pieces of barbecue all looked pretty much alike now. It did not matter. Not one of the passengers or crew had died unhappy, since they had all been touched by the comet. (Some Joys Under The Star, pg. 240.)

Words I Had To Look Up:

Winterhilfe (pg. 353) -- A Nazi Germany program to help poor Germans.

Read:

9/2009

Galaxy thirty years of innovative science fiction

This is a great book I picked up from the free books box at the library. It has some wonderfull stories. My favorite was "The model of a judge" by William Morrison.

Words I Had To Look Up:


meretricious --pg. 32.: like or relating to a prostitute; brassy: tastelessly showy; gilded: based on pretense; deceptively pleasing; Found at: wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

adiabatic--pg. 142: Changes in temperature caused by the expansion (cooling) or compression (warming) of a body of air as it rises or descends in the atmosphere, with no exchange of heat with the surrounding air.

spieltier--pg. 132: [“The Lady Who Sailed the Soul” by Cordwainer Smith] shapeshifting pet

Quote:

"Hitler had once said that the true victory of the Nazis would be to force its enemies, the United States in particular, to become like the Third Reich - i.e. a totalitarian society - in order to win. Hitler, then, expected to win even in losing. As I watched the American military-industrial complex grow after World War Two I kept remembering Hitler's analysis, and I kept thinking how right the son of a bitch was. We had beaten Germany, but both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were getting more and more like the Nazis with their huge police systems every day." -- Philip K. Dick, Notes on Oh to be a Blobel! (1979)

Read:

8/2005

SFWA Grand Masters Vol. 3

Stories by Lester Del Rey, Frederik Pohl, Damon Knight, A.E. Van Vogt, and jack Vance. I'd say my favorites were The Miracle Workers by Jack Vance, and Day Million by Frederick Pohl.

Read:

12/2006

The Perilous Gard

Kate Sutton is sent off to live in the odd fortress of Elvenwood Hall when her sister Alicia (the pretty one) innocently sends a critical letter to Queen Mary. Good story! A Weeded Copy.

Read:

4/2013

Lark

A high school girl is abducted and left to die in the woods. The story is told alternately by herself and two girls she knew. I really enjoyed reading this, but I wonder who the other girls in the trees were, and why Eve and Nyette (and Ian) went to the island. I guess I'll have to read it again! I read the Uncorrected Proof edition.

Words I Had To Look Up:

fauxhawk (pg. 44) -- A type of hairstyle, a fake mohawk.

Read:

2/2011

Gringos

Some guy in Mexico is looking for some other guy.

Read:

2/2005

Norwood

Some guy named Norwood goes to New York to recover seventy bucks some guy owes hiim.

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2/2005

The Dog Of The South

Some guy goes to Belize via Mexico to retrieve his Ford Torino and maybe his wife.

Read:

2/2005

Playing With Trains

The former race car driver talks about his hobby of model railroading.

Read:

2/2005
20 books displayed
[Abadzis - Aiken] [Aiken - Allinghamc] [Alvarez - Angelou] [Anthony - Atkins] [Atkinson - Backman] [Baen Publishing Enterprises - Balliett] [Balliett - Barnard] [Barnard - Barr] [Barr - Barrows] [Barry - Bear] [Bear - Beaton] [Beaton - Beaton] [Beaton - Bester] [Bingle - Block] [Block - Block] [Block - Bosch] [Bosch - Brashares] [Breathed - Bryson] [Bryson - Bujold] [Bujold - Bujold] [Bujold - Card] [Card - Card] [Card - Caunitz] [Caunitz - Cheaney] [Chesterton - Clancy] [Clare - Coben] [Coben - Colfer] [Colfer - Collins] [Collins - Connelly] [Connelly - Conroy] [Constantine - Cooper] [Corbett - Cornwell] [Cornwell - Crais] [Crais - Crichton] [Crichton - Crusie] [Curry - Cussler] [Cussler - Davis] [Davis - Dilloway] [Dionne - Dorsey] [Dorsey - Dowell] [Dowell - Duncan] [Duncan - Elkins] [Elkins - Evanovich] [Evanovich - Fairstein] [Fairstein - Ferris] [Fforde - Flanagan] [Flanagan - Ford] [Forester - Francis] [Francis - Francis] [Francis - Francis] [Francis - Frey] [Frey - Gantos] [Gantos - Gibson] [Gibson - Gores] [Gores - Granger] [Granger - Greenberg] [Greenfield - Grimes] [Grimes - Grisham] [Grisham - Haddix] [Haddix - Hall] [Hall - Hallinan] [Halpern - Haugaard] [Hautman - Heinlein] [Heinlein - Heller] [Heller - Herbert] [Herman - Hess] [Hess - Hiaasen] [Hiaasen - Hobb] [Hobb - Hoose] [Hopkinson - Hudson] [Huff - Jacobs] [James - Jones] [Jones - Kaminsky] [Kaminsky - Kellog] [Kellog - King] [King - Kline] [Klise - Kowal] [Kowal - Lamott] [Lampman - Lawrence] [Lawrence - Lee] [Lee - Lescroart] [Lescroart - Liebster] [Lindsay - London] [Long - Lubar] [Luna - MacLachlan] [Maclean - Mandel] [Mankell - Martin] [Martin - Mass] [Mass - McBain] [McCaffrey - McCrumb] [McCrumb - Medwed] [Meier - Millard] [Miller - Moon] [Moon - Morrison] [Mortimer - Mysterious Press] [Nance - Nimmo] [Niven - Novik] [Novik - O'Brian] [O'Brian - Oliver] [Oppel - Paretsky] [Paretsky - Parker] [Parker - Parker] [Parker - Paterson] [Paterson - Paulsen] [Paulsen - Peck] [Peck - Phelan] [Philbrick - Posey] [Powell - Poyer] [Poyer - Pratchett] [Pratchett - Prineas] [Pronzini - Pullman] [Pullman - Quinn] [Quinn - Reeve] [Reeve - Ringo] [Ringo - Robinson] [Robinson - Rowling] [Rowling - Russo] [Rust - Scalzi] [Scalzi - Schmidt] [Schmidt - Scottoline] [Scottoline - Seranella] [Setterfield - Shusterman] [Shusterman - Smith] [Smith - Soto] [Sparks - Stark] [Stark - Stephenson] [Stephenson - Stroke] [Stroke - Strunk] [Sturgeon - Taylor] [Taylor - Townsend] [Tracy - Updale] [Urban - Van Name] [van Vogt - Walsh] [Walsh - Weber] [Weber - Wells] [Wells - Westlake] [Westlake - Westlake] [Westlake - Willis] [Willis - Wodehouse] [Wodehouse - Yep] [Yep - Zusak] 

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