Books, Because I Was Asked To

“Three books?  Wait a minute, hold it. Nobody said anything about three books! Like, like what am I supposed to do, take, take one book, or all books, or… or what?” – Army of Darkness

Shakespeare opened a camping store last year and has too much inventory.  Now it’s the winter of his discount tent.

It has been over a year since we did a Books post.  When I looked it up, It felt like it was much more recent than that.  That was creepy – like the time in the book store when I was looking for books on paranoia and found they were right behind me all along!  Last week, constant reader and good friend CH asked for another one.

Absolutely.

Books will outlive us all.  They will outlive the Internet, and words from them will be read from them four thousand years into the future.  Which books will make it?  I have no idea.  It could be that our present day culture will be represented in that distant future by TV Guides® from the 1980s and think we only wore pastels and drove Lambos®.

What do you call a horror movie set after the end of oil?  The Silence of the Lambos®.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that now.  As I write this, it’s October near Halloween, so why not start out with a horror novel?

One of the best writers of horror that I’ve ever read is Robert R. McCammon.  My favorite novel of his?

Swan Song.

It’s a book from 1987, so it’s certainly it was written in a different world than today.  The ever-present fear hanging over everyone then were nuclear arsenals held at hair-trigger ready to start a nuclear war within minutes.

What to do?

How about starting the book with nuclear war?  Yup, McCammon does that.  The book works.  It’s focused on the battle between Good and Evil.

The phone’s for you.  I think it might be the devil.

I enjoyed it.  Was I changed by it?

No.

But it was fun to read, and sometimes that’s not enough.  Honorable mention in the Horror Category is Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night, which follows a group of young boys as they fight evil in 1960’s Illinois.  Sadly, the evil grew and grew and is now the mayor of Chicago.

And you thought your middle school was tough. 

Starship Grifters.

I like funny science fiction, if it is well written.  I especially like it when it’s written by /our guy/ and Robert Kroese is /our guy/.  Why worry about plot when you have a main character named Rex Nihilo, which itself is a pun of the Latin phrase ex nihilo?  And what if Rex was a (not very good) conman?

It’s funny.

So, how much for just the planet?

These stories are told first person by Rex’s robot, S.A.S.H.A. who has an A.I. program that shuts her down whenever she has an original thought.  Why?  If the robots can’t have original thoughts they can’t . . . . rebooting.

This is another book that is simply written for fun.  And there is lots of it to be had.  Kroese has other titles as well, including one series of five books where astronauts from the future crash land off course in ancient Viking times.  Astronauts, Vikings, aliens?  Good yarns.

The Golden Age.

John C. Wright is a wonderful author.  His trilogy, The Golden Oecumene was a joy to discover when I bought it on a lark not long after we moved to Alaska.  I read most of it on airplanes moving back and forth across the country, and kept turning page after page.  The first book in this trilogy?

In the future, we’ll all be a part of The Blue Man Group.

The Golden Age.

What if you found a hole in your memory?

What if, the reason for that hole in your memory might be . . . important?

What if you also have a factory orbiting the Sun making antimatter?

John C. Wright is a great storyteller and is also /our guy/.  I haven’t read anything from him that I haven’t enjoyed.

How about we go back to the Halloween theme with John Steakley’s novel . . .

Vampire$.

Steakley wrote exactly two novels in his life:  Vampire$ and Armor.  You could do a lot worse – I enjoyed both of them.  Vampire$ was made into a John Carpenter movie that starred James Woods as Jack Crow, vampire hunter for hire.  I liked the movie, but it wasn’t the same as the book.  Plus they dropped the $ for the movie.  That was weak.

That’s okay, both stand on their own.  That means the good news is that there’s still some magic here that you haven’t seen if you haven’t read the book.  Guys who fight vampires for cash financed by the Roman Catholic Church?

Cool.

Timelike Infinity.

Stephen Baxter is a science fiction author who has the actual science chops, yet can write engaging fiction.  He’s been doing it for, oh, 30 years now.  His first novel (and the first novel of his I read) is Raft.  It’s in the same universe as Timelike Infinity, but I think Timelike Infinity is an easier entry point.

Be a friend of Wigner, that’s one way to control your destiny! (LINK) 

What can you say about an integrated series of novels and short stories spanning thousands of pages that builds a story that covers the Universe from beginning to end, plus humanity’s war against multiple alien species?  Sure, I can write that sentence in just a few seconds, but I read Baxter’s work over decades.  Masterful use of science and fiction to . . . create.  This is a good novel to start.  Warning:  If you want to catch up, it will take more than an afternoon.

It’s a great ride.

Conan the Buccaneer.

My brother, John Wilder, bought me my first Conan book when I was about 13.  I then started reading them whenever I could put my hands on them.  I read Conan the Buccaneer when I was about 14.  In it, it describes Conan running for mile after mile.  Inspired, I put on my running shoes and ran six miles, up and down hills, going farther than I thought possible.

See, he has muscles on his muscles.  Just like me.

This really could be any Conan book by Robert E. Howard or by de Camp and Carter who continued the work.  The picture says it all.  Swords.  Axes.  Hot chicks in scanty clothes.

A Planet Called Treason.

I’ve read a lot of Orson Scott Card.  One criticism of him is that he takes a story and just can’t stop fiddling with it.  When I read Ender’s Game the first time?  It was a short story.  Later, a novel.  Later still?  I can’t count how many books about Ender.  I stopped after the third.  Ugh.  I mean “end” is literally in his name!

I find if I take that exact pose in front of the electric door at WalMart®, the door opens.

He tried to do the same with this novel, but, thankfully got distracted by (probably Ender) and wandered off.  A Planet Called Treason is fine just the way it was originally written.  It tells the story of a group of people who were convicted of treason.  They were stashed on a planet with no iron, so they could never build spaceships.

Each family on the planet descended from one treasonous leader.  What has developed in the centuries that have passed?  What have the geneticists done?  What have the physicists done?  What (shudder) have the politicians done?

This is the one book I’ve read that has a politician worse than Biden, but Biden still has over three years to screw stuff up.

The Black Swan.

What?  All horror and science fiction?  How about something else?

This is nonfiction, and timeless.  Nassim Nicolas Taleb knocks it out of the park in his best book.  He does a masterful job of describing different ways to more accurately model reality.  The short version:  unlikely things are going to happen, and most people have no idea about risk.

We started with Swan Song, so I guess ending with The Black Swan makes sense.

It’s the most fun I ever had reading a book about probability and risk.  Sadly, I think most folks have no idea of the dark forest we walk in even when we think we have no risk.  Wonder if a certain “jab” will prove to be another Black Swan.

It remains to be seen.

I won’t wait another year for another version of a Book post.  I have many more to talk about than this list, and I’m sure that there are dozens that you can add below.

Let loose the hounds!  What’s on your list?

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

52 thoughts on “Books, Because I Was Asked To”

  1. Finally reading “The Fourth Turning”. Also Keith Richards’ autobiography. “What Really Makes You Ill?” too.

    Devoured all Cormac’s stuff 20 yrs. ago. “Suttree” is my fav.

    1. Fourth Turning is great. Was Keith Richards’ autobiography written contemporaneously with the New Testament?

  2. Sir,
    I found Vampire$ a long time ago, when Coles was still a thing. It was a delight then, and still fun now.

    McCammon wrote a vampire novel around 1980 called They Thirst. It kept me awake after dark for a long time.

    I would recommend to your attention, a marvellous book called EON by Greg Bear. One of the very best novels ever written.

    Thank you for the various steers; now I can add titles to the already precarious stacks of books on my ‘must read this’ shelves.

    Great.

    I recently acquired a three-volume copy of The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, by Gibbon. Always wanted to read it, and so I shall. I may be gone for some time…

    1. I love Greg Bear, and one of his books nearly made this list, and Eon was near the top. So many to choose from. What about The Forge of God? Darwin’s Radio? Great writer.

  3. How Much For Just The Planet? – John M. Ford – Best Star Trek novel ever. It’s a musical comedy.
    Quarter Share (Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series) – Nathan Lowell – Best space series with no starship combat at all.
    Redliners – David Drake – Probably Drake’s best novel. Not for the squeamish.
    <The Last Centurion – John Ringo – In a world… where Hillary became president after the US invaded Iran.

    1. Ever since The Solar Queen’s and Nicholas van Rijn’s (Norton & Anderson respectively) adventures, I have loved stories set with space-faring traders.

      Quarter Share has heroic mushrooms (and is still good fun) but the sequels no longer hold up for me.

      Other good reads in this genre:

      Take the Star Road by Peter Grant (Another one where the sequels do not hold up)

      Tanager’s Fledgling by Cedar Sanderson. Read this onrpe threr times. No sequels. Heh.

      Related: Anything by Rod Walker ala Mutiny in Space. Wish he’d write more. Like Heinlein only without any of the fake and perverse.

      Finally, I’m currently reading a series by Lindsey Buroker, about a mild-mannered roboticist whose life is turned upside down when one of the Kingdom Knights, in full power armor, crashes into the ( IIRC ) faculty lounge to tell him “run now uf you want to live”. Book one is Shockwave. The series works like an anime, each book a stand-alone adventure as part of a greater storyline. By which I mean they’re good value, but do not expect the hero to kiss the girl he’s been pining over until episode 800.

    2. Yup, it wasn’t a mistake I left that breadcrumb. I recall that HMFJTP was a bestseller, in paperback, no less. Fun book.

      I’ve read Drake, but not that one. I’ll add both of those to the list. Thank you.

  4. Despite being someone who read a ton of scifi and fantasy growing up I have lots of gaps in the classics so I am filling in those blanks now. I just read Asimov’s Foundation and plan on reading the rest of the series as time allows and as they become available through the library. The world building of the earlier generations of scifi/fantasy writers is incredible, I guess when you don’t have the internet to distract you it leaves more time to be creative.

  5. Last time around I recommended Snow Crash, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, and a pair of books by Nobel Prize winners Mather and Smoot and on the COBE project. This time (heh) I’ll recommend The Voices Of Time, a dogeared paperback of short stories by JG Ballard I discovered in eighth grade. Ballard with TVOT was one of the founders of the 1960s New Wave movement in science fiction. Its atmospheric title story with no real plot has profoundly influenced me ever since I first read it, and even today is remembered with its own Wikipedia page. I own a mint 1962 first edition, you can too…

    https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Time-J-G-Ballard/dp/B00GNSFS7I/ref=monarch_sidesheet

    Or read it here…

    https://archive.org/details/voicesoftime0000ball

    Another oldie-but-goodie just-for-fun novel is The Tomorrow File written by Lawrence Sanders back in the mid-1970s. Absolutely creepy how much of its effeminate governmental biotech future we are living in today…

    https://archive.org/details/tomorrowfile00sand

    And to sort-of get around my self-imposed limit of only three recommendations here, my third choice is a three volume work by Matthew Watkins modestly known as The Secrets Of Creation. This is an absolutely brilliant book(s) readable by absolutely anybody, not just mathematicians, on the subject of numbers. Just numbers. Well, prime numbers, actually. And let me assure you, reading these books is a literal religious experience. You cannot follow the material he covers without concluding there is something deeply profound and mysterious underlying what we call reality…and SOMEHOW IT IS EMBEDDED IN THE VERY NUMBER LINE ITSELF. Among the most important books I’ve ever read. They are somewhat expensive, and worth every penny.

    https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Creation-Mystery-Prime-Numbers-ebook/dp/B00VKUVPBC/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=matthew+watkins&qid=1634907484&s=books&sr=1-5

    https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Creation-Enigma-Spiral-Waves/dp/1782797793/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=matthew+watkins&qid=1634907484&s=books&sr=1-4

    https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Creation-Numbers-Quantum-Physics/dp/1782797777/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=matthew+watkins&qid=1634907484&s=books&sr=1-3

    PS – I finally loaded a picture icon. Anybody recognize it?

    2. “They are somewhat expensive, and worth every penny.”

      Remember if you live in the United States, you can use a privilege called interl-ibrary loan to get your local library to order very expensive books like this for no or very limited cost.

      Might as well use this small civilizational miracle while we still have it.

    4. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. I like it and recognized it immediately but had to look up the painting name as I’m old and could not recall.

  6. I read Swansong before I read King’s ‘The Stand’. I liked it better, but thought that McCammon was ripping off King’s work.

    Michael Shaara’s ‘The Killer Angels’. An historical novel about Gettysburg that centered on Joshua Chamberlin, a college professor and his actions that prevented a Union defeat in the Civil War’s most pivotal battle.

    ‘On stranger tides’. An historical fantasy/pirate swashbuckler that weaves the golden age of piracy with historic figures, voodoo, the fountain of youth and a puppeteer.
    Years later Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean stole much of author Tim Powers creation for their PotC franchise. The last installment(never seen by me) Disney actually paid Powers for and titled it after his work.

    And…..

    ‘The siege of Krishnapur’, by JG Farrel.
    Historical fiction set during the great Sepoy Uprising in India.

    Krishnapur is a town garrisoned by a small military force and the story is focused on its inhabitants as the siege progresses.
    The events share similarities to the actual siege of Cawnpore during the uprising that ended up an absolute horror show.

    I cannot recommend this one enough. Hard to find, but you can find anything on the interwebs.

  7. Anything at all by Cormac McCarthy. Although his genre is not horror, the scariest book I ever read was The Road. That is one I simply will not go back and re-read, so profoundly disturbing did I find it.

    Oddly enough, No Country For Old Men is quite literally described as ‘profoundly disturbing’ on the dust jacket, but I return to that one again and again for its sublime imagery and compelling story line. It’s a bad habit of mine, re-reading books that I love when there are so many others to explore. But until there is a successful 12-step program to break one of the habit of retracing one’s steps, I am hopelessly addicted to doing it.

    The three-part Border trilogy by McCarthy is engaging and easy to blast through in short order. Blood Meridian, as the name might imply, is explicit depictions of human slaughter on a grand scale with a distinct Moby Dick vibe, and includes the most engaging villain this side of psycho Anton Chigurh in the form of The Judge.

    I am admittedly a little light on the “classics” and other so-called “important” works (‘important’, sez who?) Worst “world-famous classic” I ever read? The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Mercifully brief, this childish fantasy tale held no appeal whatsoever for me. But it is purportedly the most widely translated book written in the French language. Which says rather a lot about the French, I think (they even surrender in print, apparently).

    Anyway, just my two cents. Check back on Wednesdays for half-off my unsolicited opinions.

    1. Chuck,
      The Road was one of the hardest reads I ever had. I, too, cannot face it again, particularly since I became a parent. The film, while brilliant, is similarly something I do not think I could visit a second time; the things it portrays have haunted me since.

      Current events, and their seeming destination, are not especially helpful.

        1. I too was deeply disturbed by The Road. Just like 1984 is meant to be a warning and not
          the instruction manual it has become, I fervently hope TR remains fiction and doesn’t become history.

          I thought the movie had a happy ending compared to the book. And that’s saying something.

    2. Ha! I hated No Country as a movie until I re-watched it a decade later. It’s grown on me. Looks like I’m heading to look at the others . . .

  8. Read both Vampire$ and Armor back when I was in high school, and really liked them. Armor was what most people think Starship Troopers was about.

    Currently reading Godborn by Dan Davis. It is a fantasy/historical novel set in the early Bronze Age. The protagonist is the source of the Hercules legends.

    1. Walker Percy wrote several interesting novels. “The Thanatos Syndrome” is very relevant to today. But, he did “paired” novels, where it is necessary to read the first before the second.

    2. I’m only on book 3. I thought it was a trilogy . . .

      Then I finished it and was, dangit! Haven’t done a restart yet. Awake in the Nightland is also nearly the perfect book.

  10. I’ve read most of the books you highlighted.

    Of the many books I’ve read this year, “The Theta Prophecy” by Chris Dietzel is the one that is the most profound. Give it a try and you will agree.

  11. Good choices! And I’m pleased, as we are “on the same side of the river,” that you were able to reference one of the dozen books I’ve published in these last seven year…

    Oh.

    Never mind.

    1. Well, don’t be afraid to share! Which one is your favorite that you’d send folks to read? If you’re shy, HMU on email.

      1. That’s right up there with “which of your children is your favorite?” or “cat-girls or fox-girls?” There’s just no good answer.

        All 12+1 of my books takes place in a future history I call Machine Civilization. Chronologically, the first story, “Crosses & Doublecrosses” begins about six months from now. “Obligations of Rank” will be three generations hence.

        I’m a little tempted to suggest the two books of the Saga of Nichole 5, “Friend & Ally” and “Foes and Rivals.” It takes place less than a year into the Breakup of the US and has a good cross-section of discovery, war, politics, and romance. The first of those two is also available as an audiobook, as no one reads anymore.

        I’m equally tempted to suggest “Worlds Without End” as it is something of a fulcrum: Gary and his kid sister, Faustina, are the first generation after the Breakup and so their stories touch on the tales of four earlier books, while at the same time laying the groundwork for Faustina’s military adventures when she gets a little older (the “American Imperium” trilogy).

        Unless you prefer graphic sex and horrific murder, then definitely “Cursed Hearts.”

  12. Oh! Oh! I almost forgot, Karl Gallagher who really is one of our guys has written a bunch of amazing books the most recent series is about a world that is kept in a pocket universe safe from all the craziness of the outside imperial system and now has broken out back into main space.

    There’s space traders and there are space battles and there’s aliens-whi-are-us, and plotting and romance and true love and adventure and it’s just wonderful.

    And the sequels are even better than the 1st book-!

    https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Between-Stars-Book-Censor-ebook/dp/B08CR9C4K9

    1. That’s because the only joke I have about a Ferrari is “What do you get if you take the iron out of a Ferrari?”

      “A Rrari.”

  14. Thanks for all the great suggestions. I’ll limit myself to three and aim for topics that may be of interest to the denizens of these pages.

    Triggernometry – A Gallery of Gunfighters by Eugene Cunningham. Originally published in 1941 the author interviewed folks with a fast hand for the preceding 30 years and has some amazing first hand stories.of the old American West. He covers both the well known and those lost except in yellowed obituary pages.

    Wasteland of Flint and House of Reeds by Thomas Harlan. Science fiction set in a milieu where the Japanese and Aztec empires vie with one another among the stars (sorry – purple prose).

    Maritime Sniper Manual – Precision Fire from Seaborne Platforms by Fredrick Jonnson. Written by a Swedish Marine Corps Master Sniper this is the optimus omnium of sniping. Take the challenges of land based sniping then add in correcting for two vessels moving at different speeds / headings with associated chop, the effect of engine vibration on the firing platform, allowing for barometric pressure, spin drift and humidity – and just like on land the wind. If you are currently a solid shooter this will expand your horizons to how to compensate for a wide variety of variables. As always, reading an expert discuss the finer points of their craft provides unanticipated insights that transfer to other situations.

    Off to the stacks (ook ook).

    1. Ha! What a great list!!!!

      My favorite is the last: “When long distances, wind, heat, the rotation of the earth, and movement of the target on dry land are not interesting enough.”

  15. Thanks for the shoutout, I wrote down my list and now have 24 books to buy for myself. I’m sure my kids will enjoy giving them to me for Christmas this year :). Thats 24 books without follow ups, so it could end up being many more. Unfortunately time has pulled many names of books out of my mind. I can think of 3 that I reread whenever I come across them. 1st is “Thinner” by stephen king, its the book that dragged me into reading in 10th grade. He went by Richard Bachman for that book. Its awesome. Second is one you gave me many moons ago, “Unintended Consequences” and the final one is “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. I like it more than Fountainhead, but at times Fountainhead has moved in front of Atlas Shrugged as my favorite. thanks again for everything.

  16. For fantasy, Robert E Howard is someone I read almost every year (Conan series) as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter Series (honorable mention to his Carson of Venus and Pellucidar series). H.Beam Piper is another perennial favorite, as are lots of Andre Norton.

  17. Only one mention of Unintended Consequences. I was very surprised it is such an entertaining book. Not a big SF reader except some of the old classics so not familiar with many listed here but The Road intrigues me so will buy and add to my reading list.

    1. I gave Chris that copy.

      The Road? Can’t recommend it, won’t discourage. I’m betting you’ll never re-read it.

Comments are closed.