Same here on the Robert Parker books and TV show. I definitely will check out that series, too.
Literature What are you currently reading?
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Chryssie
Internet Junkie
I just finished "The New Wilderness" by Diane Cook. I am still processing this dystopian story. It is about survival, relationships, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. It's pretty "deep." In a world ravaged by pollution and climate change, a University professor and his family take part in an experiment to send people into The Wilderness State which is protected by the government and off-limits to the general population. Agnes, their young daughter is dying from the polluted air in the City which is their reason for going. Can people learn to survive in primitive conditions and leave the wilderness unaltered? A group of 20 are taken into the wilderness and are to lead a nomadic life, never stopping long in one location in order to preserve the wilderness. They are monitored by Rangers who make sure they follow all the rules. This is somewhat like Station 11 but focuses more on the relationships among the characters, especially Agnes and her mother, Bea.
The Steve Guttenberg book is good. It is about his acting career and taking care of his elderly father when he is very ill. I have read a lot of celeb books since I moved here. They are usually more interesting than I thought.
I am now 5 books into the series and loving them (it was a don't feel like sleeping night last night so a good 5 hours of reading instead).
Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com
still reading them and am now to where the second author takes over from Robert Parker - definitely still great and interesting, not quite the same tho'
Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com
Chryssie
Internet Junkie
Just finished "The Kraken Project" by Douglas Preston which was published in 2014. Everyone knows HAL from the movie 2001 and the War Games computer and even older, Colossus: the Forbin Project. All about AI gone mad. Meet Dorothy a NASA developed AI program designed for a journey to Titan, the moon of Saturn. In the final test of the program and the vehicle, something goes terribly wrong and a devasting explosion destroys the facility and kills several scientists. Somehow the program which is autonomous and learns by her mistakes, escapes into the vastness of the internet. There is a lot of technical computer stuff and some really wild improbable scenarios but it is sci-fi. Dorothy is stuck in survival mode and she doesn't understand humans at all and she is being pursued by the government and a crazy Wall Street mogul who wants to capture and use her to control the stock market. Maybe she should just destroy the whole human race.
This was a good thriller and I read it really fast. Though the book is 10 years old, it is pretty contemporary with all the recent talk about AI.
This was a good thriller and I read it really fast. Though the book is 10 years old, it is pretty contemporary with all the recent talk about AI.
finished all the Cole & Hitch that are currently available, just one left and should have it in a few days - I am really going to miss them when it is done - one of them quoted Thoreau and so I decided I probably should read Walden, which I started this morning...
I discovered that Appaloosa is a movie from 2008 with Ed Harris and there is no where I can stream it but is available at a nearby used DVD store for just $5.99 so am going to go and buy it and then will likely return it. It also appears that Spencer for Hire is based on Parker's Spencer books and I do remember seeing bits of the series, years ago, but now it is very expensive to try to watch.
Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com
I discovered that Appaloosa is a movie from 2008 with Ed Harris and there is no where I can stream it but is available at a nearby used DVD store for just $5.99 so am going to go and buy it and then will likely return it. It also appears that Spencer for Hire is based on Parker's Spencer books and I do remember seeing bits of the series, years ago, but now it is very expensive to try to watch.
Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com
@Emma JC I vaguely remember "Spencer for Hire", but since that show wasn't sci-fi or fantasy, I wasn't interested in it, although my family usually had it on. I also vaguely remember an episode of that old Walt Disney Sunday night show that was about Appaloosa horses (or maybe one horse), but it was WWAAAAYYYYY before 2008.
Lou
Forum Legend
Lou
Forum Legend
Penric and the Bandit, Book 13 of the Penric and Desdemona series just came out.
Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite Speculative Fiction authors. She is mostly retired now but almost every year she writes another novella in this series.
They are published in e-book form and are available from Amazon for just a few bucks. Or if you are willing to wait most of them eventually get printed and are available at libraries. Libraries also sometimes have the ebooks and audiobooks, You can also find most of the audiobooks at Hoopla. I also love the audiobooks and the narrator is very talented.
I can't wait and I always buy them. I justify it as that they give me about 5 hours of entertainment so they are a better deal than a movie. I read the newest one on the same day as I bought it. As usual I just loved this new one.
Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite Speculative Fiction authors. She is mostly retired now but almost every year she writes another novella in this series.
They are published in e-book form and are available from Amazon for just a few bucks. Or if you are willing to wait most of them eventually get printed and are available at libraries. Libraries also sometimes have the ebooks and audiobooks, You can also find most of the audiobooks at Hoopla. I also love the audiobooks and the narrator is very talented.
I can't wait and I always buy them. I justify it as that they give me about 5 hours of entertainment so they are a better deal than a movie. I read the newest one on the same day as I bought it. As usual I just loved this new one.
Lou
Forum Legend
I got the 1999 book, The Icarus Hunt. Not sure what to call it - it's not really a prequel.
Like the Icarus Plot is has a very convoluted mystery. However since I already read the first book that comes after Hunt, I already know the solution to two of the big mysteries, but not all of the mysteries. Not even the main mystery. I'm about 2/3 of the way thru the book and I think I'm exactly where a reader would be who hadn't read the next book.
When I'm done I will have to check out what the reviews say. but my guess right now is that this book is The Orient Express in space. Or maybe a homage to anything by Agatha Christie. This isn't too big a leap. I've read another series by this author and thought it a homage to Thirty-Nine Steps. Or maybe noir detectives in general.
Lou
Forum Legend
I've also started another cozy mystery series in audiobook format. And like the last one, the protagonist is a witch, a reluctant and amateur detectives, and its told in the first person. The two series also use the same narrator.
These are the Witch Way Librarian Mysteries. the main character is a librarian witch. Books help her solve crimes.
"....features a spellbinding heroine, a clever cat familiar, colorful locals-and of course, murder."
These are the Witch Way Librarian Mysteries. the main character is a librarian witch. Books help her solve crimes.
"....features a spellbinding heroine, a clever cat familiar, colorful locals-and of course, murder."
Thank you for this - I did not know about this movie and I have now added it to our list to watch, maybe tonight. I have been spelling Spenser wrongly so therefore did not bring this up when searching.
I gave up on reading Thoreau.... way to much detail and deepness, interesting but not enough to hold my attention.
How reading a Livy Hart book, Planes, Trains and All the Feels - decent so far.
Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com
I remember the TV series "Tucker's Witch". I liked it more than I usually like detective or mystery shows, since it had a fantasy aspect to it. That show didn't last very long, so I guess most people didn't share my tastes. I thought this show was better than most fantasy shows (such as "Bewitched", back in the '60s, starring Elizabeth Montgomery) because it wasn't quite so fantastic (no flying on brooms, vanishing and/or appearing, causing objects to appear, travelling through time, etc., as often happened in "Bewitched) For example, in "Tucker's Witch", the heroine once escaped from a compartment where she was bound and gagged by making light bulbs shatter and pop and letting her partner know she was nearby. She could also communicate with her cat/familiar telepathically.
Lou
Forum Legend
I found it on Tubi. its on some other channels as well. 1982.
I wonder how well it aged. Most of the time I find really old shows haven't age well.
EDIT:
watched a couple of minutes. Ted Danson (pre cheers) drives a circa 1980 Firebird T-Top into the parking garage. So far so good.
And while washing my car I finished listening to book 2 of the Witch Way Librarian Mysteries . I haven't stopped to analyze the mystery. But there were two murders and I was sure that they were committed by two different people right up until the end.
I'm now having second thoughts about mysteries being told in the first person. But they are fun and interesting so maybe that is enough.
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Chryssie
Internet Junkie
I finished book six in the Rockton series, "A Stanger in Town," and this one answered some of the questions that have been ongoing throughout the series. What caused the "hostiles" to become "feral" wild beings who attacked the other inhabitants of the forest? It was really good! Now on to the final book, then I will have to find the new series because I am really invested in these characters now!
Lou
Forum Legend
I got about half way thru the first episode and stopped. I felt it was derivative and un-orriginal. but to be really fair it may have not been either at the time. It's just that those ideas have been used (and are still being used) over and over again.
A couple solving crimes together. in this case one is a witch which is a good twist.
How many can you list in 60 seconds?
Bones, Castle, Moonlighting, Remington Steele.....
Magical crime solvers?
Supernatural, Grimm, Charmed, Medium, Listener, iZombie.
take both ideas and blend... you get Tucker's Witch. The surprising thing is that it hasn't been done again. Or maybe it has - and I forgot.
@Lou I found myself spending too much time watching TV- so when broadcasting went digital, I mostly just stopped watching, even though I could afford cable or could at least have gotten an antenna. (My TV is new enough that it can accept digital input; I'd just have to select it from the menu). So I've missed out on a lot of the shows you mentioned, even though I've heard of some of them and they sound interesting. Actually- on second thought, I have seen "Remington Steele", "Moonlighting", and a few episodes of "Grimm" and "Medium".
