Posts Tagged ‘Books & Literature’
What Are You Listening Too?
Thursday, May 8th, 2008Most of the people who come to The Other Blog love music but hate commercial radio. I can sympathies with that. While many of you may notice I discover a lot of my favorite artists on NPR shows like All Songs Considered, NPR Song of the Day, or Excursions a show on my local NPR station WYSO, there is plenty more good stuff to be listened to either by turning on your radio or listening to podcasts or live streams from the stations themselves.
Here is my list of the best NPR you can listen to on your computer.
· Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me hosted by Peter Sagal. A news quiz is always fun, but there isn’t a better one in my opinion that this one. With games like Who’s Carl This Time?, Bluff The Listener, and Not My Job which is played with a celebrity. This weeks Not My Job was played with Stephen King. (more…)
Farewell To Another Pop Culture Icon
Thursday, April 17th, 2008[ad]
Though most of you don’t know the Edward Lorenz from Victor Lazlo he is just as much a figure in many of our modern movies and fiction. Edward Lorenz is now the late father of Chaos Theory, which is also better known to most of the world as the butterfly effect. it is hard to say how the 90 year olds death will spiral out into our world, but his life has changed many of us more than we know.
My first exposure to chaos theory came from the same source as many of had too, Jurassic Park. I remember getting the novel at Walden books when I was 16 and devouring it in a single sitting. I quickly found Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder through an insightful teacher’s pushing and nudging. Although the story came out a decade before Lorenz name the theory the principal is there. In a lesser way you could say I even experienced it before Jurassic Park, though in a very different way, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Since then for me I have come to see Chaos Theory and The Butterfly Effect in a great many places. You can see it almost every Alternate History series from Eric Flint’s 1632 to most of Harry Turtledove’s work, especially in the Crosstime Series.
My personal favorite single book giving credit to the Butterfly Effect is S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador, in which which Alexander lived to a ripe old age and the World timeline played out very differently. My Favorite Series dealing with the subject is a toss up between Harry Harrison’s Hammer and Anvil in which the Vikings fair a lot better against England and the Church from the beginning. The other favorite here is Robert j Sawyers, Neanderthal Parallax in which a world where the Neanderthal survive and the humans don’t, discovers our world where it is just the opposite. This trilogy is so much more than just Chaos theory and one I whole heartedly even recommend to people say they don’t like science fiction.
The world has lost a brilliant thinker and pop culture has lost a behind the scenes icon. So in his honor pick up a book and read a little for fun to see where that little activity might take you. Please share what your life would have been without this lovely little theory that states small things over time produce big changes. For the record at the end of October I will have another little thing to spin my life in unforeseen directions.
My Vampire Weekend
Sunday, March 9th, 2008[ad]After my first taste of the band Vampire Weekend, I bloody well don’t need a second one. There is more angst in their music than any ten vintage grunge bands combined could have come up with. On top of that there sound is like an over produced 1950’s Bobby Darin record. What is the use of pure digital sound when what you are listening to is pure crap?
I tried to clear my mind of Vampire Weekend with some quiet reading of another vampiric nature. I am rereading Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series before I read her latest in the Series, The Outlaw Demon Wails. For those unfamiliar with the series the first thing that drew me to it was the bad puns used for the titles, such as Dead Witch Walking, and Fist Full of Charms. The setting is modern day Cincinnati, assuming we really lived where vampires, witches, werewolves, pixies, and elves really live side by side with us.
The back story difference begins with an early genetic food modification tomatoes which kills a high percentage of the human population. It is quickly realized that a large number of people survive and it comes out that they aren’t exactly human, thus beginning forty plus years of learning to live in the public. Flash forward to modern times you have Rachel Morgan, a white witch, tired of her job as a supernatural cop. Sick of the lack of respect she gets from her superiors and coworkers, she strikes out on her own with the Pixie Jenks and her soon to become BFF Ivy, the vampire. With a host of problems from her old bosses and people she has just pissed off over the years the trio runs a fairly complicated PI service for the supernatural crowd.
The series has it all. I know what some of you are thinking, a book. Yes, before the internet, television and even movies there were books and it would do a lot of you good to read one once in a while. Yes I know that sounds preachy but damn it, I am an author and know I have to sell roughly 8900 paperback copies to clear my my $5k advance, so shut up and buy one, and help support us poor slobs. Okay it is a book, I know what your next question is, “are there sports in it”? Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles. Okay now your question has got to be is this a kissing book? Yeah there is some of the that too, and if we are lucky we will get to see a more than a taste of our bisexual Ivy in The Outlaw Demon Wails.
