30 Books in Ten Months
Oct. 27th, 2010 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dewlineThese are some of the books that particularly caught my attention so far this year. Some of these have long been out of print, some just in print. All of them matter to me in some way.
1) The Canadian Press Stylebook.
Well, if I'm going to be writing seriously in a non-fiction context...
2. Torch of Freedom by David Weber and Eric Flint. More Honorverse stuff, dealing with the Maya Sector plotline machinations. Assassinations of the bloodier varieties, accounting games to hide personal spacefleet construction in plain sight, spy vs. spy vs. spy stuff throughout. Should be loads of fun.
3. The BLDG BLOG Book by Geoff Manaugh. I'll likely roam back and forth through this one over the course of the year, as it seems designed to encourage non-linear reading, much like its namesake.
4. Mechanika by Doug Chiang. Some of you will have heard of this guy as a member of the design team for the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
5. Paris Underground: the Maps, Stations and Design of the Métro by Mark Ovenden. After Transit Maps of the World - same author - a year or two ago, I've been keeping an eye out for this sort of thing. Some cool visual stuff here.
6. 2300: Nyotekundu Sourcebook by J. Andrew Keith, Timothy B. Brown and Lester W. Smith. A role-playing game sourcebook about a mining station orbiting a planet in the Wolf 359 system. "Nyotekundu" is kiSwahili for "red star"...exactly what Wolf 359 is.
7. Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs. Includes some updates and expansion of several dozen of the more interesting entries from its namesake blog.
Looks to be a year of books on maps, doesn't it?
8. A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul. Yes, it's a re-read. Worth the time, too.
(Note: Having seen him speak live earlier in October of this year makes me all the more impressed with this book.)
9. The Happy Highwayman by Leslie Charteris. Nine stories of the Saint.
Yes, I'm still slowly working my way through the Saintly canon.
10. Star Trek: Unspoken Truth by Margaret Wander Bonanno. This one focuses on Saavik in the wake of ST VI.
11. ST Online: The Needs of the Many by Michael A. Martin. Fills in the backstory of the STO version of the Trek universe as seen through the eyes of Jake Sisko, journalist/historian.
12. 2300 AD: Colonial Atlas - the backstory of the colonies of humanity from the 2300 AD role-playing game.
13. The Saint Plays With Fire(AKA Prelude for War)
14. The Saint Steps In
Both by Leslie Charteris. The first of these is set in 1938, dealing with another front-man for weapons dealers looking to make a mint off of arming both the UK and a group of Hitlerite-wannabes called "the Sons of France" looking to set up a Vichy-style shop to preclude Hitler even feeling a need to invade in the first place. His having already staved off World War II at the cost of one friend's life some eight years earlier, with the inevitable barely a year away, I wonder at the Saint's frame of mind at that particular point in his life.
The second was published in 1942, during the days when Simon Templar was working loosely with US intelligence within the US itself. Something to do with a new manufacturing technique being targeted for supression by business people looking to hold onto their market shares once the war ends.
I keep wondering if anyone's ever tried to put together a Saint chronology along the lines of those argued about re: Sherlock Holmes over the decades by his fandom's assorted factions.
Anyone?
15. The Art of Iron Man - more art gallery than book, as much of these sorts of volumes are. But seeing as the Labyrinth, a comics/arts bookstore based in Toronto, was doing one of their annual visits to Algonquin College a month or so ago, and the price of C$33 was right for the moment, I figured "Why not?"
16. Re:Think Re:Design Re:Construct by Mark Wasserman. More deep thinking on graphic design here. Also, lots of commercial design eye candy to kick-start the brain.
17. Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't - and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Dan Gardner.
Gardner's one of the saner columnists on the Ottawa Citizen payroll these days. I'd recommend this for at least a library borrowing at some point.
18. I Am Not a Cop! by Richard Belzer with Michael Black. Yes, that Belzer. It's two years old, and there was some novelty value to at least borrowing a library copy for a day or two. Not bad for a beginner with the audacity to put himself into the book as the first-person narrator of a crime drama.
19. Capital Lives:: Profiles of 32 Leading Ottawa Personalities by Valerie Knowles. This one gets filed under mandatory research for my spacingottawa.ca projects, especially the latest one on street names and the histories behind them.
20. Mission of Honor by David Weber. "Honor Harrington Vol. XII", I suppose. The Mesan Alignment finally pulls the trigger on Operation Oyster Bay, but that's not the only Big Change here...
21. Union Station by Joe Fiorito. Fiorito's one of the Toronto Star's columnists. Mostly, his stuff ends up in the "Greater Toronto" section of the paper, the "city news" stuff. He catches the little stories that so often remind you that there are real costs and benefits to people's lives, not just our bank accounts. If we happen to have bank accounts in the first place.
Strongly recommended.
22. The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon by W.O. Mitchell. An aging Scots Presbyterian in rural Alberta battles the Devil himself on the ice of the local curling rink. The stakes? His soul or victory in the national Brier.
This was the first Good Curling Story I ever read, back in the days when I first read of it as a script for a stage play in the high school library. In one of the last acts of Mitchell's well-received writing career, the writer re-adapted it into a prose novella.
If there's video of one of the performances of this story, I'd like a DVD of it to put next to Men With Brooms, please.
23. Canal Seasons by Clive Doucet. Doucet's one of the mayoral candidates of this year's civic elections here in Ottawa. He's also a poet and ecological/urban issues commentator, and this book was written by Doucet as poet.
24. Capture the Saint by Burl Barer. From 1997. A past beneficiary of the Saint's first campaign in New York reunites with him in Seattle decades later at the launch of a movie based on Templar's one foray into fiction-writing to persuade him into a battle with con artists and the "commerce" of child abusers. Mayhem and merriment ensue in equal measure, just as in the days when Leslie Charteris wrote every Saint story himself at the height of his own powers of prose.
As I mentioned in an earlier post here: Recommended.
25. 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rfmcdpei prompted the re-read with a question about Jovian ephemerae. I couldn't answer it with any certainty, but the curiosity got me pulling the book off the shelves again anyway.
26. Vector Brush Sourcebook by Emily Portnoi. Been collecting brush sets for Photoshop like crazy, so why not a book with CD full of royalty-free brushes for Illustrator, too? Plus advice on how to (better) make my own Illustrator brushes...
27. Unimark International - The Design of Business and the Business of Design by Jan Conradi. Not sure why this one stood out at the "What's New" rack at the library. Corporate identity programs and the people who build them, I guess.
28. More Memories of the Burgh, edited by Ethel Slyver Proulx. Excerpts from local weekly newspaper articles in the New Edinburgh district of Ottawa.
29. Ottawa Old and New by Lucien Brault. Published in 1946, it was considered the history of the city for its time.
30. Bowesville: A Place to Remember by Grace Johnson. Gloucester Historical Society, 1988. Tells the tale of the village south of Ottawa that got expropriated and demolished in 1951 to make way for the expansion of what's now Macdonald-Cartier International Airport.
To be continued...
1) The Canadian Press Stylebook.
Well, if I'm going to be writing seriously in a non-fiction context...
2. Torch of Freedom by David Weber and Eric Flint. More Honorverse stuff, dealing with the Maya Sector plotline machinations. Assassinations of the bloodier varieties, accounting games to hide personal spacefleet construction in plain sight, spy vs. spy vs. spy stuff throughout. Should be loads of fun.
3. The BLDG BLOG Book by Geoff Manaugh. I'll likely roam back and forth through this one over the course of the year, as it seems designed to encourage non-linear reading, much like its namesake.
4. Mechanika by Doug Chiang. Some of you will have heard of this guy as a member of the design team for the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
5. Paris Underground: the Maps, Stations and Design of the Métro by Mark Ovenden. After Transit Maps of the World - same author - a year or two ago, I've been keeping an eye out for this sort of thing. Some cool visual stuff here.
6. 2300: Nyotekundu Sourcebook by J. Andrew Keith, Timothy B. Brown and Lester W. Smith. A role-playing game sourcebook about a mining station orbiting a planet in the Wolf 359 system. "Nyotekundu" is kiSwahili for "red star"...exactly what Wolf 359 is.
7. Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs. Includes some updates and expansion of several dozen of the more interesting entries from its namesake blog.
Looks to be a year of books on maps, doesn't it?
8. A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul. Yes, it's a re-read. Worth the time, too.
(Note: Having seen him speak live earlier in October of this year makes me all the more impressed with this book.)
9. The Happy Highwayman by Leslie Charteris. Nine stories of the Saint.
Yes, I'm still slowly working my way through the Saintly canon.
10. Star Trek: Unspoken Truth by Margaret Wander Bonanno. This one focuses on Saavik in the wake of ST VI.
11. ST Online: The Needs of the Many by Michael A. Martin. Fills in the backstory of the STO version of the Trek universe as seen through the eyes of Jake Sisko, journalist/historian.
12. 2300 AD: Colonial Atlas - the backstory of the colonies of humanity from the 2300 AD role-playing game.
13. The Saint Plays With Fire(AKA Prelude for War)
14. The Saint Steps In
Both by Leslie Charteris. The first of these is set in 1938, dealing with another front-man for weapons dealers looking to make a mint off of arming both the UK and a group of Hitlerite-wannabes called "the Sons of France" looking to set up a Vichy-style shop to preclude Hitler even feeling a need to invade in the first place. His having already staved off World War II at the cost of one friend's life some eight years earlier, with the inevitable barely a year away, I wonder at the Saint's frame of mind at that particular point in his life.
The second was published in 1942, during the days when Simon Templar was working loosely with US intelligence within the US itself. Something to do with a new manufacturing technique being targeted for supression by business people looking to hold onto their market shares once the war ends.
I keep wondering if anyone's ever tried to put together a Saint chronology along the lines of those argued about re: Sherlock Holmes over the decades by his fandom's assorted factions.
Anyone?
15. The Art of Iron Man - more art gallery than book, as much of these sorts of volumes are. But seeing as the Labyrinth, a comics/arts bookstore based in Toronto, was doing one of their annual visits to Algonquin College a month or so ago, and the price of C$33 was right for the moment, I figured "Why not?"
16. Re:Think Re:Design Re:Construct by Mark Wasserman. More deep thinking on graphic design here. Also, lots of commercial design eye candy to kick-start the brain.
17. Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't - and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Dan Gardner.
Gardner's one of the saner columnists on the Ottawa Citizen payroll these days. I'd recommend this for at least a library borrowing at some point.
18. I Am Not a Cop! by Richard Belzer with Michael Black. Yes, that Belzer. It's two years old, and there was some novelty value to at least borrowing a library copy for a day or two. Not bad for a beginner with the audacity to put himself into the book as the first-person narrator of a crime drama.
19. Capital Lives:: Profiles of 32 Leading Ottawa Personalities by Valerie Knowles. This one gets filed under mandatory research for my spacingottawa.ca projects, especially the latest one on street names and the histories behind them.
20. Mission of Honor by David Weber. "Honor Harrington Vol. XII", I suppose. The Mesan Alignment finally pulls the trigger on Operation Oyster Bay, but that's not the only Big Change here...
21. Union Station by Joe Fiorito. Fiorito's one of the Toronto Star's columnists. Mostly, his stuff ends up in the "Greater Toronto" section of the paper, the "city news" stuff. He catches the little stories that so often remind you that there are real costs and benefits to people's lives, not just our bank accounts. If we happen to have bank accounts in the first place.
Strongly recommended.
22. The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon by W.O. Mitchell. An aging Scots Presbyterian in rural Alberta battles the Devil himself on the ice of the local curling rink. The stakes? His soul or victory in the national Brier.
This was the first Good Curling Story I ever read, back in the days when I first read of it as a script for a stage play in the high school library. In one of the last acts of Mitchell's well-received writing career, the writer re-adapted it into a prose novella.
If there's video of one of the performances of this story, I'd like a DVD of it to put next to Men With Brooms, please.
23. Canal Seasons by Clive Doucet. Doucet's one of the mayoral candidates of this year's civic elections here in Ottawa. He's also a poet and ecological/urban issues commentator, and this book was written by Doucet as poet.
24. Capture the Saint by Burl Barer. From 1997. A past beneficiary of the Saint's first campaign in New York reunites with him in Seattle decades later at the launch of a movie based on Templar's one foray into fiction-writing to persuade him into a battle with con artists and the "commerce" of child abusers. Mayhem and merriment ensue in equal measure, just as in the days when Leslie Charteris wrote every Saint story himself at the height of his own powers of prose.
As I mentioned in an earlier post here: Recommended.
25. 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke.
rfmcdpei prompted the re-read with a question about Jovian ephemerae. I couldn't answer it with any certainty, but the curiosity got me pulling the book off the shelves again anyway.26. Vector Brush Sourcebook by Emily Portnoi. Been collecting brush sets for Photoshop like crazy, so why not a book with CD full of royalty-free brushes for Illustrator, too? Plus advice on how to (better) make my own Illustrator brushes...
27. Unimark International - The Design of Business and the Business of Design by Jan Conradi. Not sure why this one stood out at the "What's New" rack at the library. Corporate identity programs and the people who build them, I guess.
28. More Memories of the Burgh, edited by Ethel Slyver Proulx. Excerpts from local weekly newspaper articles in the New Edinburgh district of Ottawa.
29. Ottawa Old and New by Lucien Brault. Published in 1946, it was considered the history of the city for its time.
30. Bowesville: A Place to Remember by Grace Johnson. Gloucester Historical Society, 1988. Tells the tale of the village south of Ottawa that got expropriated and demolished in 1951 to make way for the expansion of what's now Macdonald-Cartier International Airport.
To be continued...
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 02:12 am (UTC)I didn't get into ST Online: The Needs of the Many, honestly. Might have been the article/interview format tho.
Got both Honorverse novels, liked them a LOT. Hated the cliffhanger in MIssion of Honor. *lol*
no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 02:22 am (UTC)Yeah, that kind of cliff-hanger really gets on the nerves. Whether it's a novel or a movie. If you find yourself having to wait at least one year, possibly three, for the next installment of whatever it is you're reading...?
ERGH.
And yet, if I fulfill my ambitions, I'll likely end up as guilty of goring that particular ox for other people as anyone we're jointly complaining about right now.
How's that for a neck pain?
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 03:32 am (UTC)