the_daily_alice

A friend posted this on her blog, so I am trying to help!

There was a book I read when I was about twelve years old (1993-ish?) It was about four little girls who were sort of the misfits of their ballet class. It may have been a series. Not sure. The plot of the book includes the girls trying to find a man for their instructor via the personal ads. They go to a newspaper where they speak to the editor of the personal ads who has a beehive hairdo and wears cat-eye glasses with a beaded chain. One of the girls has chestnut brown hair and is a tomboy. One is chubby and always has candy.

Other than this, I can’t remember anything. Not the title. Definitely not the author. I’ve tried Google and Amazon and the library card catalogs.

Invincible by Jack Campbell

The second book in the Beyond the Frontier series (first reviewed here).  Still with The Lost Fleet emblazoned on the cover, even though it had ceased to be lost by the fifth book of the first series.  However, you learn to live with marketing departments.  And their covers -- this one has a jab at the accuracy of the pictures on the covers of the whole series. 

But that, of course, is not the point of the story which is exploration of space and high grade military SF. 

Spoilers ahead for the earlier books.  (I do not recommend tackling it first.  Like most good series, all the later ones will spoil the earlier ones.)

( Read more... )

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I just finished rewatching Battlestar Galactica and now am in the mood for some military science fiction. Can anyone recommend any good military scifi novels? Generally, I prefer a female protagonist but I wouldn't mind anything else as long as the plot is strong. Help, please?

( The books you love are not you. Hating a book you love is not a comment about you. Unless you love 'Twilight.' Then you suck. )

Previous Saturday Book Discussions.

I seem to recall picking this up from among Sid Fleischman's books at the library, but it may have just been in the F's. It was about a family who lived on a paddleboat, and some bandits try to take over their boat at one point and the family defends it. But the family is a little odd, and Addams Family-ish, so they have a peculiar defensive style, like they're amused by the attempted takeover. I seem to recall the mother lighting and firing cannons. The jacket cover that I remember was mustard-colored, and the family as drawn was tall and spindly, and a little ghastly - the way I remember other Sid Fleischman books to look. I've looked over his bibliography and none of the titles ring a bell, nor does looking for the book jacket, because the ones I've seen all seem to have been updated, so that isn't helping.

Edit: Found! Sid Fleischman's Humbug Mountain  Thanks, greatly!  Can't wait to get a copy again, and introduce my niece to it.  Thanks

Hello

I read these books in the early 1990s and have been trying to track them down for about 10 years now. I can remember embarrassingly little about them - but I think there was a trilogy. The main character was a monk who was sent off on various missions and quests. He had some magic skills and only one hand (he had a silver hook). I do remember one scene where he was in a row boat on a lake with another character. Also, there was a long climb up a cliff face.

I know, is it possible for me to be any more vague, but this has been annoying me for years.

Thanks for your help!

A vampire story that sucks the blood out of weak-ass YA novels, and will also make you deeply uncomfortable.

Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little black girl with traumatic amnesia and near-fatal wounds. But Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood, the lost child of an ancient species of near-immortals who live in dark symbiosis with humanity. Genetically modified to be able to walk in daylight, Shori now becomes the target of a vast plot to destroy her and her kind. And in the final apocalyptic battle, her survival will depend on whether all humans are bigots-or all bigots are human.

( Only Octavia Butler could get away with this, and I'm still not sure what she was thinking. )

Verdict: Octavia Butler iswas :( brilliant and I have yet to be disappointed by her, and I loved this modern, highly intelligent take on vampires done in her signature style, which incidentally also happens to be a brilliant subversion of the YA & PNR vampire shit that has been afflicting shelves these past few years, though I don't think Butler intended it. I wish I could shove Octavia Butler into the hands of everyone who coos over the writing in a YA novel. But, this is also a book with some huge freakin' squicks for which it makes no apologies, so be warned.

And boy am I sucking at my Mount TBR challenge. This is only the second book I've picked off of it this year.

Also by Octavia Butler: My reviews of Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.

---

My complete list of book reviews.

Alexia Tarabotti is soulless, meaning she has the ability to drain someone of their paranormal abilities with just one touch. When she’s attacked at a party by a starving vampire, Alexia realizes that something is not quite in the supernatural community. In Soulless: The Manga Volume 1, the first book in the Parasol Protectorate series is adapted into manga format, showing Gail Carriger’s alternate Victorian London, a world filled with vampires, werewolves, steampunk technology, and silly hats, in an all new light.

Adapting an existing property into a comic format can be tricky. At best, the adaptation can give us a new view of an already beloved story. At worst, the result can come off like a poorly condensed novel with some inconsequential pictures thrown in here and there to cash in on the graphic novel trend. The manga version of Soulless, fortunately, falls into the first category. What makes it shine the most is the artwork, done by REM. Although a few of Alexia’s outfits are unrealistically revealing for the time period, REM otherwise does a great job of capturing the feel of the series. The character designs, although not always how I pictured them, are well done, and a nice amount of attention is spent on the detail of the backgrounds and outfits. REM also has a knack for capturing the facial expressions of the character, making it easier for the audience to understand how they feel.

Soulless: The Manga: Vol 1 is 224 pages long, where the novel is 373. You’d expect this to result in a lot of ridiculous cuts and changes to the story, but it’s actually an incredibly faithful adaptation. Some readers may be disappointed to see certain characters who are less central to the story be pushed aside, but I was okay with how much screen time everyone was given. I found, just after reading the fifth and final book of the Parasol Protectorate Series, that it was actually quite satisfying to see where characters like Alexia, Connall, Akeldama, Lyall, Ivy and Biffy began. One thing that bothered me a bit with the Soulless novel was how large a role the romance played. Although this hasn’t changed in the manga version, I found that I was actually okay with it this time around, perhaps because I was better prepared for the romantic focus.

The first volume of the Soulless Manga is one of the best graphic novel adaptations that I’ve come across in a while. I felt that the manga-style artwork was really lovely and fit the story well. I was also impressed at how faithful the story was to it’s source material. I am planning on continuing to read the Soulless Manga. The second volume is set to be published in November.

Rating: four and a half stars
Length: 224 pages
Source: Readfield Community Library
Other books I've read by this author: This is my first

Next I will be reviewing Fair Game by Patricia Briggs

xposted to temporaryworlds,bookish, and goodreads

http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2012_05.php#019015

The English translator of the superb HHhH writes about the indirect road he took to becoming a translator of a language he was resistant to learn.

While it is undoubtedly an advantage to spend time in the country of your “source” language (France, in my case), living there full-time can have a deleterious effect on your “target” language (English), because French expressions and ways of phrasing can come to sound natural when they are, in fact, slightly strange in English.