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!
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Senior citizen Daphne makes a plan to make friends to re-integrate herself into society, as it were. She doesn't have any friends, having lead a seemingly "interesting" life. As in, she can pick locks, knows how to open a safe without the combination, and knows about guns. Also, how to deal with punks.
Quote:
She Googled "hookup," which, it transpired, was all about sex. Daphne hadn't had sex for over fifteen years, and wasn't sure it all still worked.
Quote:
The building appeared to be suffering from both rising damp and dry rot. One would have thought that these two afflictions might meet in the middle and cancel each other out, but apparently not.
Quote:
She appeared to have jumped out of the frying pan of sexism and into the fire of ageism. The final frontier of isms.
Quote:
He said "luxury apartments" in the tone that most people would use to say "rat-infested slum."
Quote:
dauphinoise potatoes. -- There is them potatoes again!!
Quote:
"whteveur," said art, in a cod fench accent. -- I have NO idea what "cod fench" means!
I am writing this even though I have not finished the book. I was reading along this evening and it occurred to me that all of a sudden I liked this book very much. The first have was kind of OK, I had been thinking, but right about the half-way mark I had this revelation. So, we shall see how it goes...
Later: Yes, this book is fabulous! Gave me a lot to think about.
Quote:
"Here, do it harder," said Iona, leaning forward across the table and giving him a hefty thump with a closed fist, which she found rather more enjoyable than she should have done, given the circumstances.
Quote:
"It was an earwig," said Piers. "Eric."
Quote:
When, Iona wondered, had people started reaching out, instead of merely calling?
Quote:
Harry picked up his pillow, held it in front of him, and, with surprising amount of force, plunged his fist into it several times. "Take that, you arrogant, annoying bastard," he said.
Quote:
"Who'd have thought I'd end up basing my life choices on an eccentric lesbian?"
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.
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.
Julie acknowledges she has a potty mouth, which I could have done without, but I liked the book rather much. I felt ashamed of myself for judging Julia Child (and others) so superficially on looks and, in Julia's case, her raucous laughter. I hereby acknowledge that I am an ass, and I know it.