(1979) I know I'm supposed to dislike the movie but y'all, I remember going to see it (at the drive-in, kids, remind me to tell you about drive-ins sometime) and you can't tell me it wasn't awesome because man I was there. The book is not objectively good -- it has *footnotes* for crying out loud, and the prose about Ilia's pheremone powers is cringey -- but so what? I can't hear old-man-me's objections over the cheers of my inner 11-year-old.

(1790) Ear-read during a long drive, this is Radcliffe's second novel and packed full of Gothic tropes: an exotic location (Sicily! Land of hot-blooded lovers!); a large sprawling mansion with decaying disused maybe-haunted rooms where mysterious lights appear; secret passages, family scandals, star-crossed love, and lots of fainting and almost-fainting and bursting into tears. It's a lot of muchness, but it was a welcome traveling companion

(1974) "The Daughters of Hell"

Two young reporters exploring a local crypt accidentally activate an old curse and awaken a woman executed for witchcraft generations ago, who still hungers for revenge and thirsts for blood. John Sinclair investigates.

A Shipwreck'd Mariner who was cast on Shore upon the fertile Isle of Cyprus, Friendless and Alone, lost himself in the agreeable Gardens of Duke Bellfond, a Ruling Statesman in that Province; where giving a melancholly Relation of his Fate, he was almost instantly entertain'd by the Master Gardiner.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

(2005) I ear-read this on audiobook during a long drive. It's Stephanie Plum, you know what you're getting and that's what we got. Narrator Lorelei King does a fine job.

(2022) I ear-read this on audiobook during a long drive. The story is a hoot, and Fiona Shaw is a terrific narrator.

(1731) It's a story of faithlessness and devotion that inspired two brilliant operas, either of them better than the book. Without music I expected to loathe both principals: her for her deception, him for his blind devotion. But both are more complex: Manon is an ambitious woman who seeks to rise by means available to her and Des Grieux is an unreliable narrator who may be a greater liar than Manon. Mixed feelings but more engaging than expected.

(1961) A freak accident traps a lunar tour bus under fifteen meters of moondust, resulting in a disaster-and-rescue story that somebody should have enmovied fifty years ago. The pace is rapid, suspense is maintained, and if the character development takes a back seat to the engineering -- well jeez, that's just the kind of book this is and I liked it much.

#ClassicLSFBC

(2017) I "read" this for #ReadYouKindle , but it doesn't really work well on Kindle: it's a coffee-table book for people who love library catalogs, and the content mostly consists in images of treasures from the Library of Congress, with corresponding catalog cards. The text is dry, and most interesting to readers who probably know the story already, but the text isn't the point here. In print I expect it's gorgeous, and I want a copy of my own

The last few months have been slow reading months thanks to IRL busy-ness, and I expect it to peak next month, as I retire from my current job, move to another state, and prepare to start a new job next month. But what the heck: yes I'll make a #BookSpinBingo card.

Thanks for hosting @TheAromaofBooks !

My father, during his residence at Blefescu, became enamoured of a nun; her name was Adeline Beleiglia, she favoured him, and I am the issue of the amour (at least, it has hitherto been so reported).

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

(1730) This is a sort of sequel to Gulliver's Travels, ostensibly a travel memoir by Gulliver's son John, actually by the French historian and critic Pierre Desfontaines, who had translated GT into French in 1727. As an imaginary travelogue it's not bad: we visit a land ruled by women and others where people age rapidly or backwards; interesting enough, but as a sequel it feels like it misses the point, lacking GT's imagination and satirical bite

Here is my #ReadYourKindle list for October, collected more or less at random from my very large unread Kindle library

Thanks for hosting @CBee !

(1987/2021) A few years ago, German publisher Cassiopeia Press published a bunch of reprints from the urban-fantasy Heftroman series "Professor Zamorra", only changing all the characters' names because of (IIUC) copyright laws. I picked up a lot of them on Amazon because they were frequently free. This episode is the second half of an elaborate adventure featuring time-travel, crystal magic, demons and dragons. It's fun but busy.

#ReadYourKindle

(2017) Author Orr (UL-Lafayette) read some 500 books published 1690-1720, and reports that Restoration readers read a wider variety of texts than you might think, and with different purposes and expectations than 21st century readers. This was a rewarding read for me: Orr's discussions of the economics of early-18th-C. publishing, and of contemporary literary tastes, provide valuable context for my own reading from the era.

(1726) Defoe discusses Satan, his history and ways, using a mishmash of what we would think of today as very separate genres: Biblical commentary, literary criticism, doggerel verse, pop history, and folklore. He takes the Devil very seriously, and (as somebody who doesn't), it can sometimes be a bit much. I still found it interesting especially for its theological criticism of Milton, and for its perspective on 18th century diabolical folklore

(1728) Fielding's first play is a comedy and just the sort of thing you expect from the period: romantic rivalry complicated by disguises, forgeries, misunderstandings, and money, all of it soaked in witticisms and wordplay. It's fun, and coaxed several chuckles from me, but I will also probably have forgotten everything about it by the end of the week.

I doubt not but the title of this book will amuse some of my reading friends a little at first; they will make a pause, perhaps, as they do at a witch‘s prayer, and be some time resolving whether they had best look into it or no, lest they should really raise the Devil by reading his story.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

... And here's my #BookSpinBingo card for September. Happy reading everybody!

@TheAromaofBooks

Here's my four #ReadYourKindle picks for September. Now I can finish my bingo card ...

@CBee

(1966) "The Sixth Epoch"

The Terrans begin their push into the Andromeda Galaxy proper for a showdown with the "Masters of the Island." But first, introductions: Rhodan's new flagship the CREST III is the biggest ever and many words are devoted to its specifications. More interesting is Perry's new ally: the "cosmic engineer" Kalak, who runs a mobile space shipyard. It's kind of first-episodey but the payoff should be good

Here's my #BookSpin and #DoubleSpin books for September: two of my favorite things, classic SF and running stories.

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

And here's a more-or-less random selection of unread books on my Kindle, for the August #ReadYourKindle picks

Thanks @CBee !

And here's my #BookSpin #DoubleSpin #BookSpinBingo list for September

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

I finished my August #BookSpin and #DoubleSpin reads but came up short on #BookSpinBingo

Eh, better luck next month.

Thanks for hosting @TheAromaofBooks !

(1949) This was a first read for me, though it's been on my TBR list forever. I'm content to have waited so long because I'm pretty sure its lack of plot and character development and its long expository pages would not have appealed to Younger Me. But Now Me dug it, less as a novel than as an extended meditation on relationships among individuals, civilization, and the planet. Very dated in spots but for what it is it's also surprisingly engaging

(2016) Here's a mostly-excellent collection of apocalyptic and postapocalyptic stories featuring protagonists with disabilities. Standouts for me are Stephanie Gunn's "To take into the air my quiet breath," about sisters with cystic fibrosis who survive a global plague; and John Chu's "Selected afterimages of the fading," about an apocalypse in which inattention causes the world to fade. I also quite liked Janet Edwards's "I will remember you."

(1966) "The Ghost of the Machine"

Meanwhile, back in the Shotgun System, Reginald Bull and a small fleet watch the transmitter that Perry used to reach Andromeda. Recent events point to an impending Maahk invasion, so Bull recruits engineers to develop a transmitter lock to keep the Maahks out. But something does not want them to succeed. It's a fun race-against-time story and introduces an interesting character I hope they don't waste

(1987) The first ST:TNG tie-in novel is a novelization of the pilot episode. It's been a long long time since I watched "Encounter at Farpoint," and this seemed to match my hazy memory pretty well, except that the tone of the ending was quite different. Still, even with the difference it felt more like an episode of the show than like a pastiche, so Gerrold gets a passing grade from me.

(2009) Fifth in the Inspector Gamache/The Pines series of cozy mysteries, and an audiobook for a long drive. Very mixed feelings about this: I loved so much of it from its deliberate pace, its exploration of the ways human beings hurt those we love, and its mining of character good and bad. I was very unsatisfied with the resolution, which feels premature: the plot feels like it needs at least one more round of revelations, and also with (spoiler)

(1966) "On the Mission of his Life"

The Masters of the Island have withdrawn their forces from the Andro-Beta cluster, but what do they plan next? The Terrans discover that Twonosers and Maahks are rallying in Andro-Alpha, but for what target? Andro-Beta? Maybe even the Milky Way Galaxy? The Terrans need information, and their Maahk ally Grek-1 volunteers for a dangerous undercover fact-finding mission to Andro-Alpha.

(1966) "The Lord of the Androids"

Andro-Beta is under attack by swarms of planet-destroying energy spheres. Last episode, the Terrans identified planet Modul as the command center for the attacks; in this one they meet Modul's commander Baar Lun, who is a tool of the Masters of the Island but a very reluctant one, and might become a Terran ally if only he can be reached ....

No surprises here, but it delivers the action and peril you expect.

(1976) Three stories from Moorcock's "End of Time" series, set in a distant post-scarcity future whose practically-immortal inhabitants spend their days in luxury. In the first, a character longs to feel the ancient sensation of guilt; second, a squad of starship troopers appears just as dueling is being revived; in the third, a time traveler arrives from an era of extreme austerity. These are clever, tightly-crafted stories and I liked them much.

(2020) Mixed feelings. Gross-out horror doesn't appeal to me like it used to, and the bleak bleakness sometimes felt like misery porn. But I do still love an atmospheric supernatural thriller, and for me Triana delivers the creepy. I'd read another.

(1729) It's a novella about a young Christian gentleman who (checks notes) goes to a synagogue to check out the women, forcibly removes a young woman's head covering for a look at her face, harasses her until she agrees to a rendezvous with him, agrees to marry her only when she insists on it and even then only secretly because he knows his family won't approve -- and is the real victim when everything blows up.

Amatory fiction is weird.

(2019) Kin Stewart is a time cop who gets stranded in the 1990s and, against protocols, settles down to make a life for himself. Almost twenty years later his employer "rescues" him, returning him to the 22d century where he has an entirely separate life. It's a more interior book than my usual preference, focused more on Kin's emotional state than on plot, which for me makes it drag in spots. But it wraps up nicely.

So here's my August #BookSpinBingo card. Now I just have to read some of them ....

The #readYourKindle fates have found every Star Trek novel in my list this month. Perhaps they're trying to tell me something?

Thanks @CBee !

#BookSpin and #DoubleSpin for August: a little splatterpunk, a little classic postapocalypse. August could be a good month.

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

Here's my list for August #BookSpin #DoubleSpin #BookSpinBingo

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

Well, July was another busy month and I only finished one of my #ReadYourKindle picks. August looks maybe even busier, but I'm joining in anyway. Here's my list of roughly-random unread Kindle books for August.

#Cbee

(1966) The Masters of the Island have abandoned the Andro-Beta cluster -- apparently to turn it into a deathtrap. One of the suns in the interstellar transmitter goes nova, and then a swarm of glowing spheres appears from deep space, systematically destroying every planet in Andro-Beta. The Terrans devise a plan to discover the swarm's command center in order to stop it. It's fun, and ends with a cliffhanger.

This was my #BookSpin read for July.

(1950) I don't know how many times I've read thi but the last time was about thirty years ago. I found the revisit delightful, with some surprises: I remember thinking "The Evitable Conflict" was a talky, weak way to end -- but this time it struck me as a spooky premonition of current conversations around AI and machine learning. At almost 75 years old, some creakiness is inevitable, so I'm pleased at how well it holds up for me.

#ClassicLSFBC

(1968) When files go missing from the British embassy in Bonn, Alan Turner arrives to sort out what happened while the diplomatic personnel wish he would just keep it quiet. The thief is quickly identified, but his motives and location remain a mystery. This is *so* LeCarré: espionage novel as psychological thriller, pensive, deeply cynical, gorgeously written. Also: the resolution has chilling parallels to our current historical moment.

(1977) Originally serialized in Blue Book magazine in 1937, this is less a novel than a collection of 6 short adventures featuring Chester's Tarzan-ish character Kioga the Snow-Hawk in the lost world Nato'wa, a sort of Native American homeland above the Arctic circle. Like Tarzan, there's excellent adventure here but it's difficult to read uncritically today, with its language of "civilized" and "savage" and valorization of whiteness.

(2006) It's a horror novel of the kind I call "magic psycho," where no supernatural element is obviously intended, but the monster is a psychopath for whom the usual laws of common sense and physics are relaxed without explanation, as if being crazy were a superpower. I dislike magic psycho books, so am not a reliable judge of whether this is a good one. YMMV.

This was a #ReadYourKindle book for July.

(1994) Unpopular opinion, but it didn't work for me: too slow, too bloated, too many subplots that go nowhere. It's a legal drama following the legal maneuvers of an unpleasant old bigot and his lawyer grandson who represents him, as they await his execution for a terrorist bombing. It's an extended meditation on Southern history and on the death penalty.Grisham is against it. So am I and for similar reasons, but I just found the book exhausting

The decision to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

(1955) in need of a job, Ted Benteley pledges his fealty to the Quizmaster, the most powerful man on the planet. Right afterward, he learns that his new employer is the *former* Quizmaster and his first task is deposing the new one. But that makes the plot sound straightforward when really it's a surreal mix of speculative civics, game theory, telepathy, body switching, drugs, and a lost philosopher in space. It's an exuberant mess, and I dug it.

(1966) "Distress Calls From the Void"

The Terrans' work to establish a base in Andro-Beta is interrupted by a psychic cry of pain, so strong that it overwhelms the telepaths. It turns out the distress signals come from a planet in intergalactic space, whose surface is covered by a massive bioplasma under attack by robotic enemies. It's an interlude to the current story arc that revisits an old one ("The Posbis") and I'm here for it.