Michael’s Comments (group member since Nov 02, 2015)

Michael’s comments from the Return of the Rogue Readers group.

Oh man....

So, I'm still on my first trip through the series, and I just started the last-ish part, book 6.

I'd heard a lot about this series every now and again, but I was put off by King's fame as a horror writer, and then I actually tried to listen to it a year or two ago, and got bored with the first few chapters of desert, and put it down.

Then Jordan convinced me to give it another shot, and I haven't been able to put it down since I started in November...

My take on Roland from The Gunslinger is that he has a very limited imagination, but has an iron will, an unwavering sense of justice and righteousness in his pursuit of the tower...
He gets much more rounded out in the later books, but in Book 1 he is so single-minded in his pursuit of The Man in Black and The Tower, that his mind doesn't seem to have space for much else. I still haven't been able to tell if it is unwillingness, or inability, to do something that deters him from his quest. To call him simple is to sell him far short of what he is. He's driven by an unopposable force to fulfill his quest, for good or ill.

But I think King laid a pretty good base for his later work. Even in the rough outlines of Roland's persona that is shown to us, we can already sense his the long-suffering in his destiny to reach The Tower, with the haunting memories of his life's tragedies wrapped even more tightly around him then his gun belt.
He is clearly what's on the cover: gunslinger, death-dealer, leadslinger, killing personified.

The cool thing is, it gets better as you go through the series. King gets really creative to get around some of the things he did in Book 1, the story gets much more SciFi/Western/Post-Apoc with his explanation of what the world that Moved On is like...

Me either.

I've found a few e-reader versions, but my library doesn't even have a paper copy of the English translation.

I read this book!

Well, listened to it...

And I really liked it, especially after the sun-shiny Disney ending to Upton's Jungle, this one ended like a tragic morality tale is meant to end, all bloody and depressing.

Amy, I had no idea Mr. Wilde had such a terrible end until I heard something about a snobby art thing at an English prison on the radio, and they mentioned this book....

So to jump topics real quick...
Turns out Oscar's final work was a letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the Marquess of Queensberry (of the Queensberry rules of boxing), titled"De Profundis", Latin: "from the depths"

He wrote it a page-a-day at a time, as the warden wouldn't allow him to have more than a single sheet at a time, for some Victorian weirdo reason, and now famous people perform it (all 6 and a bit hours of it) in the prison in which he wrote it. For art.

Anyway, I think the book was somewhat autobiographical, and I think Oscar was projecting portions of himself, or parts of his personality into all of the main characters.

His vanity, and romantic dalliances are best reflected in Dorian, his artistic expression of love and feeling are shown through Basil, and his contempt for the modern (for his time) moral stiffness and subjugation are spoken by Lord Henry.

So, maybe a bit of a confession, a bit of a protest, and a bit fantasy, all rolled into a romantic, elegant, creepy little novel.

Overall, I think it was pretty good novel for an Irish poet and playwright.

I finally finished it. Work and life and hurricanes interrupted.

Honestly, the last 25% of the book ruined the rest for me.

I was expecting / hoping for a true tragedy, with Jurgis dying to the machine the Bosses had trapped him in.

Instead it ends with this weird Communist manifesto propaganda speech thing, with a bright shining future of elected communists, elected by the subjugated masses...

The end felt a lot like John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged, but on the other side of the philosophical coin. I wonder if Rand stole the idea from Sinclair...

All around, 7/10, depressing deaths, significant social commentary, interesting look into early 20th century America, effective descriptions of terrible working and living conditions, a writing style I don't care for, all wrapped up with a feel-good ending.

I'm still listening to this book, and I think that if it wasn't for this group, I would have put it down for good by now...

I identified strongly with Jurgis in the beginning, wanting a better life for his family, believing he could be the sole provider, that if he worked harder, he would earn more, that his effort and skill would be recognized and rewarded...

And I had to put the book down for a few days when Antonas drowned in the street, just a chapter after Ona died in an attic just a chapter after learning that she was being raped to keep her job, just a chapter after... I think I could follow that theme to the start of the book...

The industrial food processing didn't surprise me, that kinda stuff still happens, to a certain extent.

The treatment of the migrant workers didn't shock me too much, you can see its modern version in the strawberry fields around here in the winter, except now they can be threatened with deportation for speaking out...

I'm scared to listen to the end of this book. Jurgis just broke his arm, and is begging through January. I feel like he's going to end up frozen to death in the alley outside his family's tenement... Or committing suicide.
Ugh.

Jordan, this is actually my first Stephen King book. It has me hooked so far...

It's been a struggle to put it down for The Jungle.

Downloading now.
Looks like The gunslinger will have to wait...

That was a really tough choice...
And I've added the others to my To-Do list...

I'm sorry everybody!
June has been an insanely busy month for me.

I actually finished reading this book just as it came to be my turn to recommend one, so my choice was a bit self-serving.

I enjoyed this book. This was my second time through it, the first time it was assigned reading back in the carefree days of college, and what struck me most was the different effect the book had on me now vs. 10 years ago.

A few points in this books defense:
It was published in 1961, so the prose sounds dated and the topic is well worn, the subjects are nearly cliched, and the heavy use of Latin feels anachronistic. I had the same issues reading Issac Asimov's early works this past winter, and it was a struggle to look past some of the things that seem silly or worn out to us, 50 years later.

When this book was published, nuclear war was in the forefront of the mind, the Catholic Church was still using Latin during church,. the cold war was rather hot, the Cuban missile crisis was about to happen, humanity had not yet reached the moon. It was a really dark time. This is the period that the whole theme of the Fallout series is based on.

What I liked is that this nearly reads as a historical novel.
It is a retelling of the European dark ages after the fall of the Roman empire in Fiat Homo, then the aged church bumping into the renaissance in Fiat Lux, and finally what the future could be in Fiat Voluntas Tua, with the wide spread secular atheism of a global society.

I read (Let There Be Man) and saw Brother Francis as the larger story writ small. He tries and tries and tries, to do what he thinks he should in his simple way. The prideful step on him, and in the end the barbaric end him.

'Let There Be Light' is a story of pride.
From the struggles between the monks in the generator lab, to the struggle of the Thons against the what they perceive as an out-dated institution, their injured pride when some monks show off, and the hubris of politicians, and the deals they make to grow their power. The theme of pride grows from the internal struggle of Br. Francis, to the external struggle of man over his fellows.

Then in 'Thy will be done' we see man has over extended his dominion as his pride has grown. He lays claim to the power of life and death, over the moon, and even tries to say he owns the stars, and in the end "Lucifer is Fallen", the brightest star fades into darkness.
This part hit me the hardest. I felt a very uncomfortable sense of urgency, suspense, horror, and empathy during the whole thing. I think that was intentional, and I wonder if it doesn't portray some of what it must have felt like to be alive in the 50's and 60's. The part with the mother and her child cut me deep this time around, compared to before I was a father. Oooof.


So, after I read the first few reviews, and got unreasonably upset, I re-evaluated my opinion of the book. (Unreasonable in that I had no reason to be upset, and that I was just bent from people having different tastes in books. It was a good call to self-reflect. And to reevaluate the book from a more objective view.)

I'm Catholic, and so I enjoyed seeing the Church represented mostly positively, instead of being aped as it so often is in more mainstream literature, like the Maesters in Game of Thrones, or vilified like the Church of the Seven and their Septons in the same series.

I also enjoy history, so that sorta scratched that itch. I've only read a few, but historical novels are pleasant to me.

And I like SciFi, and this hit that point as well, hitting some of the same post-apocalypse themes as the Fallout video games series and Asimov's Foundation books.

I'm sorry if you didn't like it, and I hope you enjoyed some parts of it.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960, and won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel.

Full disclosure, I ripped that almost verbatim from Wikipedia.

It's roughly 330 pages, depending on edition.
It's on Audible, Amazon, and various other locations. I can't find it on Librivox.

And if anybody finds the NPR radio drama, please share, I'd like to listen to eventually.

Terry Pratchett had several stand alone Discworld books. Mort is fun stand-alone, so is Soul Music. And Going Postal.

I came across Good Omens somewhere in the middle of my read through of Terry's stuff, and it introduced me to Neil Gaiman, and led to American Gods, or Anansi Boys I think.

I thoroughly enjoyed Good Omens, and I'll probably revisit it later this year.

Holy Crap.

I have read the entire Disk world series, and most of Sir Terry's other works (currently working through his Long Earth colaboration with Stephen Baxter).

If you enjoyed the Color of Magic, read the Light Fantastic, and then please try Night Watch next.

Or, pop over here and pick one of 41 novels that have to do with the Discworld...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discwor...

Shoot, I just re-read this, using the BBC radio play.

I am a big fan of Douglas Adams, and I orginally found this book after reading the Hitchhikers series.

I enjoyed it, mainly for the wordplay and conversational tricks Adams likes to slip in and around. He seems to play with English, instead of build with it, and I really enjoy that.

The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is also fun. I sometimes confuse bits of it with American Gods...

I can't blame a robot butler, only my own social media ineptitude.

I've done some research (i.e. read some wikipedia) and it seems that all of the stories in both Jungle Books were first published as magazine articles, and then later compiled into the books. I think this explains something of the format and tone of the stories.

Also, most of these were published in the 1880s and 1890s, so I'm not surprised at the nonchalant racism, as Kipling was somewhat a member of the pre-eugenics school of thought.

The Audiobook I read included the Second Jungle Book, and was a similar format; short stories, mostly of Mowgli, all with some naturalistic morality tale woven in.
I especially enjoyed the story "Red dog". I found it to be an entertaining piece of action and adventure.

Of the 8 stories, 5 of them are about Mowgli, 2 are about unrelated people, and 1 about some anthro-animals.

I especially enjoyed the story "Red dog". I found it to be an entertaining piece of action and adventure.
If you're at all interested in how Mowgli's story concludes, I recommend reading the last story "The Spring Running". It describes the end of Mowgli's time in the jungle, and wraps things up pretty well.

I enjoyed it immensely.

I read it via an Audible audio book, so I didn't have to worry about pronunciation, plus the reader had a great British accent.

The old Disney version was a favorite of mine when I was young, and I have read other tales by Kipling in the past, so it was a little bittersweet to remove the shine from the cartoon, and also re-visit a classical author.

I think the naturalistic "law of the jungle" nobility of nature was over done, and became heavy handed toward the end.

I did enjoy the glimpse into the British colonialism in India and what that mindset looks like.

7.8/10

2 weeks sounds good.
Hopefully I can contribute to this one...

So, I couldn't find a decent source for an audio book, so I signed up for an Audible trial.
Couldn't stand the narrator's voice.
So I went down to my local library, finally signed up for a library card, after living here for almost 6 years... And found a copy at the next branch over.

I'm on page 5. It seems pretty good.

I'll get started on Stranger Tides as soon as I'm done with Foundation and Earth.

The photo is from 2015's annual training. We went to Louisiana and supported an Infantry Brigade. I took the photo on my site, which is on a flight line, in support of an unmanned aerial recon unit. It was hot, but it was pretty cool.

Well, you're pretty close, to be fair...

The reels look a lot like this

And I do use sticks and rocks and things as stakes, or cover, to keep people from walking on it.

And this is what it looks like, all pretty and stuff. I took this in August, while I was in Louisiana. https://goo.gl/photos/mwiC8Fx7Ewbt3RBc8

Jordan,

I find it strange that my purpose in the military is to bring internet to the wilderness, and then to be denied the use of it after doing so.

Such is life.

I think I voted in the actual poll too, I'll double check.

Oddly enough, I added all 3 to my to-do list, so thank you guys for the suggestions.