User Profile

BobQuasit

BobQuasit@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years ago

I'm an old reader who loved older books even as a child. And my memory is unusually good. So my head is filled with thousands of books: older science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, YA fiction, children's fiction, humor, classics...I made a lot of book recommendations over on Reddit as BobQuasit over the years, since there weren't many people speaking up for older books. I'm hoping to find some place to be able to recommend books again!

Update 2024/10/03: I've created a Fediverse book recommendations group via Guppe. You can access it at @BookRecommendations@a.gup.pe . Please check it out and follow the group!

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reviewed The three investigators in The mystery of the flaming footprints by M. V. Carey (The Three investigators mystery series ;)

M. V. Carey: The three investigators in The mystery of the flaming footprints (Hardcover, 1984, Random House)

When an eccentric local artist disappears suddenly, the three investigators look into the matter.

Review of 'The three investigators in The mystery of the flaming footprints' on 'Goodreads'

This is a relatively late and inferior entry in the Three Investigators series. The series was created by Robert Arthur, a woefully neglected author who did a great deal of work with Alfred Hitchcock; Arthur wrote the first nine and the eleventh book in the series. Unfortunately M.V. Carey was no Robert Arthur!

I recently read the book to my son. We've read many of the books in the series together. In this one, there were several ways in which the book simply didn't work. Oh, Carey included the usual iconic elements of the series; Jupiter Jones' family, and the hidden Headquarters (a trailer buried under a pile of junk), and Pete, and Bob. But there are several false notes.

One that was particularly annoying was the use of Jupiter's name. Arthur usually referred to him as "Jupiter" or "Jupiter Jones". Once in a while his fellow Investigators, Pete or …

reviewed Blade Runner by Stan Lee (Marvel Illustrated Books)

Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin, Jim Salicrup: Blade Runner (Paperback, 1982, Marvel Comics Group)

Review of 'Blade Runner' on 'Goodreads'

It's amazing how Marvel was able to take brilliant source material like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner and produce such a remarkably lame illustrated "novel". The art, the writing...just astonishingly bad. Do yourself a favor and go to the originals, not this churned-out piece of garbage.

reviewed Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card: Shadows in Flight (2012, Tor)

Review of 'Shadows in flight' on 'Goodreads'

I don't like Orson Scott Card. There was a time when he was a gifted writer, but that was decades ago. And I'm rather glad of that, I must admit, because his homophobia and religious bigotry offend me.

But Shadows In Flight isn't as bad as most of his recent books have been. Yes, it has the usual "genius" children talking to each other in "shocking" ways; Card seems to find them irresistible. There's even some of Card's trademark child-on-child violence, which makes me wonder just how badly screwed up his head is. But for once he doesn't take it too far.

This is no Ender's Game or Songmaster. It isn't even A Planet Called Treason. But it's readable and not annoying, which is a big improvement over Card's other work this millennium.

reviewed The horse-tamer by Walter Farley (Black Stallion (12))

Walter Farley: The horse-tamer (2007, Yearling)

A late-eighteenth-century carriage maker turns professional horse-tamer, and deals with many vicious or badly trained …

Review of 'The horse-tamer' on 'Goodreads'

First, a note: I will never try to use my Nook to write a book review again. I had written quite a long review - not easy on the Nook's touch-screen, which is not well-laid-out and lacks a number of conveniences which are standard on other Android devices - only to make the slightest mis-touch and lose EVERYTHING. That's incredibly annoying.

That said, The Horse Tamer is part of Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, and it's both charming and memorable. Bracketed by short passages featuring Alec, Henry, and the Black, it's actually a historical novel; Henry's story of his older brother, who tamed horses in the days when horses were the standard mode of transportation. Henry himself plays a small but substantial part in the tale.

Unlike most entries in the series, it's not a racing story. But the story of "problem" horses and how to help them is quite …

Jerome Klapka Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (2021, Independently Published)

Review of 'Three Men in a Boat Jerome Klapka Jerome (Illustrated)' on 'Goodreads'

Three young Englishmen decide to spend a fortnight boating on the Thames for their health.

A classic of English humor; I'm quite dismayed that I hadn't discovered it before now! It's one of the funniest books I've read in a long time (and I've read many funny books). I found myself laughing out loud quite often, and couldn't resist reading sections of it to my wife - even though I know it's not the sort of thing she cares for.

It's astonishing that a book written 123 years ago should feel so modern. I hadn't realized that such dark humor had been invented back in 1889!

The occasional turns into more somber and lyrical prose are a bit jarring at first (they're quite reminiscent of The Wind In the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame​, which was published 19 years later), but you soon get used to them. And the …

reviewed Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella

W. P. Kinsella: Shoeless Joe (1999, Tandem Library)

Review of 'Shoeless Joe' on 'Goodreads'

I picked this up used at the library's permanent book sale for a buck.

Add it to the very short list of books which aren't as good as their movie adaptations. A lot of the speeches were improved by much pruning for the movie, and the plot was cleaned up a good bit, too.

The book is okay, and I can see that for some it might really "click". But to me it just doesn't quite work. The whole thing felt forced to me, a too-deliberate attempt to create a classic (not unlike The Polar Express, which was annoying as a book and loathsome as a movie). Peter S. Beagle is able to create a far more authentic magical feeling in his books; fans of Shoeless Joe might appreciate Beagle. They might like Jack Finney, too. Both are considerably more deft stylists than Kinsella.

And frankly, if I …

reviewed Final crisis by Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison, Grant Morrison: Final crisis (2009, DC Comics)

"What happens when evil wins? That's the devastating question Superman, Batman, the Justice League and …

Review of 'Final crisis' on 'Goodreads'

...what the hell was that?!?

I've enjoyed Grant Morrison's work in the past, but Final Crisis feels like an experiment gone wrong. It's incoherent and lacks even one memorable scene. Call me stupid (you won't be the first), but I couldn't make any real sense of it at all. Reading it felt like work, but there was no payoff. All it did was make me feel that the entire superhero genre is tired and outmoded.

Basically, Grant seemed to feel it necessary to try to amp up the tired old "heroes save the universe" plot into "HEROES save the MULTIVERSE!!!!!!", but ended up creating a confusing mess. Maybe it's time to stop trying to save the universe, and move towards a storyline a little less full of s---. Something that relates a bit more to the human condition.

I mean...it seems to me that Final Crisis is …

Gardner F. Fox: Crisis on multiple earths (2002, DC Comics)

Review of 'Crisis on multiple earths' on 'Goodreads'

If you've forgotten how incredibly awful comics were in the early-to-mid 1960s, this is the book for you! It's like a steaming turd, carefully gift-wrapped in shiny new paper so you'll open it not realizing just how painfully bad it really is.

Stupid minor characters who are so awful that it's actually hard to believe that anyone human actually made them up (like "The Fiddler", for example). No logic at all, no real stories in any sense of the word, just one pointless, stupid event after another. And the dialog...that painful, torturous dialog. Dick Cheney would love this book.

One thing that stuck in my mind was Dr. Fate trying magical atomic explosions on a colossal anti-matter creature. They didn't work, so Batman ran around it in a circle, Bat-punching it. Yes, many of the classic DC heroes are here, but they're warped out of all resemblance to the archetypes …

Daniel Domscheit-Berg: Inside WikiLeaks (2011)

Review of 'Inside WikiLeaks' on 'Goodreads'

A difficult book to judge. In large part, it seems to be one side of a battle over a broken relationship. Not knowing the other side, how am I to judge who's right? And why should I bother?

In this particular case, the dispute is between the book's co-author, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and famed Wikileaks director Julian Assange. I'll credit Domscheit-Berg and/or his co-author Tina Klopp (who I presume is a ghost writer), with showing some restraint; they paint Assange as an arrogant and irresponsible egomaniac, but you can see them trying hard not to seem too obviously one-sided.

As for the truth of the details, how the hell am I to know? It's believable that Assange is an asshole. On the other hand, that's just if you go by Domscheit-Berg's word. Frankly, there are a million stories like this out there: a working relationship gone sour. I've had a few …