Showing posts with label recommended reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recommended reading. Show all posts

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Holiday Entertainment Recommendations

Any Lovecraft fans here? If so, you really want to hear the Cthulhu Mythos Christmas albums, A VERY SCARY SOLSTICE and AN EVEN SCARIER SOLSTICE. They contain Lovecraftian filks to the tunes of classic carols and popular holiday songs. My favorite selections are "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen," "Away in a Madhouse," "Harley Got Devoured by the Undead," and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth." Songbooks are available, too. The producers, the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, also offer other goodies such as audio dramas and vintage-style films:

H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society

Thanks to the wonders of home video, I can watch my favorite Christmas movies at will, unlike in my childhood when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and we could catch old films only if they happened to be rerun on television. I'm an avid fan of A CHRISTMAS CAROL in its many variations. My top favorite film adaptations are the Patrick Stewart and George C. Scott versions. The Mr. Magoo cartoon is surprisingly good, within the limits of its short length, and it includes some lovely songs. The Disney animated rendition in which Mickey Mouse plays Bob Cratchit unwisely fails to incorporate much of the dialogue from the original, but it's fun to watch anyway just to see Uncle Scrooge in the role he was named for. The excellent AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL, starring Henry Winkler (yes, the Fonz), isn't a straight retelling but, rather, a re-imagining set in small-town America in the early twentieth century. In the "better than you'd expect" category is a made-for-TV movie I've watched many times, A DIVA'S CHRISTMAS CAROL; a black, female singing star plays the Scrooge role. That one clearly takes place in an alternate world where Dickens' novel doesn't exist, because nobody bats an eye at a rich woman called Ebony whose manager is Bob Cratchit, with a terminally ill son named Tim. One classic I watch every December is LADY AND THE TRAMP. Although not labeled a Christmas movie, it starts and ends at that time of year.

Then there are the holiday episodes of TV series. In the MASH Christmas episode I like best, children from a Korean orphanage share Christmas dinner with the MASH crew. Because their supplies for the feast didn't make it to them, the men and women pool their personal goodies to make a treat for the kids. The cool, upper-class, acerbic Major Charles Winchester contributes only a small can of smoked oysters, although everybody knows he received a mysterious package from home. It turns out that the package contains expensive specialty chocolates that he donates anonymously to the orphanage, in accordance with his family's tradition. The second plot line involves the senior doctors struggling to prolong the life of a fatally wounded soldier past midnight so his children won't have to think of Christmas as the day their father died. Of the numerous TOUCHED BY AN ANGELS Christmas episodes, my favorite is the one in which Monica reminisces about her encounter with Mark Twain on the Christmas when his daughter had just died (the latest of several grievous losses he'd suffered). One thing I like about this program is that, unlike some of the episodes, it doesn't present the mere apparition of an angel as enough to comfort or convert the human character. Twain's initial reaction to meeting Monica is essentially, "All right, God exists, and I still don't want anything to do with Him." Another element I especially like is that the episode features one of my favorite carols, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," which we don't seem to hear so much nowadays. An outstanding animated program, especially if you have kids to watch it with, is ARTHUR'S PERFECT CHRISTMAS. The title character has an ideal image of how the holiday season should unfold; of course, everything goes wrong but turns out right in the end. The show also touches on Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the possibility of inventing one's own holiday traditions as an alternative to the hype and stress. As for stand-alone Christmas specials, I have a particular fondness for "Shrek the Halls," in which the grumpy ogre, who's never celebrated anything before, tries to create the perfect holiday for Fiona and the babies by following the instructions in CHRISTMAS FOR VILLAGE IDIOTS. Very funny even (or maybe especially) for adults!

Books: A CHRISTMAS CAROL, of course. And I love THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER, by Barbara Robinson. It's narrated by an elementary-school-aged girl whose mother gets reluctantly stuck with the church Nativity play. The town hooligans, the Herdman children, swoop in and take over the pageant, with results that are deeply moving yet not sappily sentimental. There's a film based on the novel, with a screenplay written by the author herself. Connie Willis's holiday stories, lavishly showcasing her incisive wit, are indispensable for SF and fantasy fans. She has recently released A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS, an expansion of her earlier Christmas story collection. My favorite pieces are two novellas that weren't in the old edition. Thousands of radio re-playings of multiple covers of "White Christmas," augmented by the stubborn insistence of a prototypical Bridezilla that she MUST have snow for her Christmas Eve wedding, spawn a worldwide blizzard in "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know." Snow even falls in locations that have never seen it before in recorded history. You can read this work online:

Just Like the Ones We Used to Know

You really should get the book, though. My other favorite novella in it, "All Seated on the Ground," features the narrator's experience on a committee tasked with a first contact project. The alien visitors don't behave hostilely, but they don't speak or otherwise give any indication of their purpose in coming to Earth. Until they're taken to a mall, where they hear Christmas carols—and respond to the line "All seated on the ground" by suiting their actions to the words. Only the narrator, with the help of a high-school chorus director, notices this reaction and manages to decipher its meaning. Hilarious, but as in all Willis's work, the humor arises from character and situation, not one-liners. A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS includes an introduction by the author plus an afterword listing her personal holiday movie recommendations.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Recommended Reading for 14 Year Old Girl

Recommended Reading for 14 Year Old Girl
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

I was asked by an old friend to recommend science fiction books for a 14 year old girl -- the child of a friend of theirs I had never met.

I have no idea what her favorite reading, TV or movies are, just that she recently got into science fiction.  I've no clue what got her interested!

Talk about a scatter-shot list!  Whee, I don't know where to start!

One clue is that she was interested in borrowing from the library - but she lives nowhere near me, and I've no clue what sort of library she has access to.  Or even what her reading proficiency level might be.

I don't know what restrictions her parents would want, either!

I don't know if she has library access to ebooks -- here, my library lends ebooks.  Some libraries provide books via the app KOBO in all the app stores.

So I am basically stumped on this request -- and will just toss out some suggestions using Amazon.

Once you locate a book on Amazon, you can usually find it on iTunes or B&N, KOBO or wherever you prefer to do business.

So top of my list these days, for series currently being published and reprinted:

Gini Koch's ALIEN series.
https://www.amazon.com/Gini-Koch/e/B004HH6J6G/

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner Series (all of C. J. Cherryh's books, actually).
https://www.amazon.com/Foreigner-Series-18-Book/dp/B01LYSTAUL/

For pure action, space adventure with emphasis on science and sociology (with and without Aliens, mostly no sex or romance):

All of Jack McDevitt's novels
https://www.amazon.com/Jack-McDevitt/e/B000APWBG6/

All of Taylor Anderson's DESTROYERMEN series.
https://www.amazon.com/Destroyermen-12-Book-Series/dp/B01N0OASDN/

All of Jack Campbell's LOST FLEET series, and the spinoff series.
 https://www.amazon.com/Jack-Campbell/e/B001H6W4PU/

All of Mike Shephard's Kris Longknife series (young woman changes the galaxy)
https://www.amazon.com/Kris-Longknife-Mutineer-Book-ebook/dp/B001JTPXW6/

To fill in Historical Understanding of the Science Fiction Field:

The best place to get these backlist gems of times gone by
http://wildsidepress.com/  where you can get any ebook format, but on Amazon you can handily get the Kindle editions and paper edition if you prefer.  This is my current publisher, now publishing my new titles.

But here are some Amazon page links -- buy anything on these pages and it is likely Amazon will lead you to the rest especially if you buy any of my novels because my fans read from this collection, so all the good books turn up in "Customers who bought this also bought .."

Wrinkle In Time
https://www.amazon.com/Wrinkle-Time-Quintet-Books-1-5-ebook/dp/B00E71907M/

All of Andre Norton's novels, but particularly Star Rangers
https://www.amazon.com/Andre-Norton-MEGAPACK-Classic-Stories-ebook/dp/B007NLCJBC/

All of E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman Series
https://www.amazon.com/E-Doc-Smith-MEGAPACK-Classic-ebook/dp/B014LH4ZR6/

You can download the MEGAPACK for various authors for about $0.99.

For more non-Romance, general science fiction, well thought out and presented, read David Brin's books, David Gerrold's books,  Alan Dean Foster's books, and all the Robert J. Sawyer books, especially WWW trilogy.

For women of galactic consequence, the Honor Harrington series (like the Kris Longknife series) has taken the science fiction world by storm.
https://www.amazon.com/Basilisk-Station-Honor-Harrington-Book-ebook/dp/B00ARPJBS0/

And of course, Robert A. Heinlein and Marion Zimmer Bradley, all titles.

That is a lifetime's worth of reading!

But wait!  There's more!

Here is my Amazon page with almost all my extant titled:

https://www.amazon.com/Jacqueline-Lichtenberg/e/B000APV900/

Scroll down to see various editions of all titles (several year's worth of reading).

For young women, I would recommend my first novel, House of Zeor.
https://www.amazon.com/House-Zeor-Sime-Gen-Book-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004N3AZJG/

For a Doctor Novel approach to science fiction, my first Award Winner, Unto Zeor, Forever, praised by Robert A. Heinlein by asking if I were in fact a physician!  And this novel was credited with being the first Science Fiction Romance published in Hardcover by a mainstream publisher.
https://www.amazon.com/Unto-Zeor-Forever-Sime-Gen-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004MPRYEY/

For young teenage protagonists on adventure that changes their world:
https://www.amazon.com/Mahogany-Trinrose-Sime-Gen-4-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004PYDS9M/

But for Science Fiction Romance, my Romantic Times Award Winner, Dushau, would be the place to start. |But it is available (new) only in Kindle. The paperbacks have deteriorated, or are expensive collector's items.
https://www.amazon.com/Dushau-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B002OSXNM8/

For Vampire-Science-Fiction Romance:
https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

For space-adventure-romance
https://www.amazon.com/Dreamspy-Tales-Luren-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00BFGG1RO/

And this is hardly a complete list of top recommendations.

The field is broad, deep, and rich.  Unfortunately, most public libraries do not have these novels or provide access to them, though my books were notorious as the most stolen from libraries across the country.  I know this because my readers have said so, and because many of my fans are librarians who have noticed this phenomenon.

I know that, as soon as I post this, I will think of dozens more authors to recommend!

The nice thing about Amazon is that once you buy or download for free any of the books by any of these writers, you will be led to others of comparable content.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com