My Two Blessings

  It's book week 17 in our 52 books quest and this week is all about the world of Larry Niven. He celebrates his 84th birthday on the 30th.  He's written over 400 stories since he published his first book in 1964, alone and in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes, and Gregory Benford.  I discovered Niven back in the 70's and enjoyed reading His Ringworld series, along with many of his other books, including The Mote in God's Eye.  He is currently working with Jerry Pournelle on Burning Mountain, the sequel to Burning City and Burning Tower. “They do not use lasers, they do not use radio, they do not use hyperwave. What are they using for communication? Telepathy? Written messages? Big mirrors?"  "Parrots," Louis suggested. He got up to join them at the door to the control room. "Huge parrots, specially bred for their oversized lungs. They're too big to fly. They just sit on hilltops and scream at each other.”  ~Larry Niven, Ringworld...

  Happy Sunday. It's week 16 in our 52 books quest and it's all about the re words this week: Renew, rebirth,  recharge, restore, resurrection, rejoice, renaissance, and of course, read and reread.   I'm 12 chapters in on Middlemarch and it's a slow read as the writing takes some getting used to but enjoying it.   Also about a 6th of the way in on Sanderson's The Way of Kings  which is so very different from Wheel of Time but has a whole slew of characters I'm getting used to and enjoying it so far. Both are chunky books so going to take me a while.  “Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known a...

  Welcome back, ya'll. Look at that, I got my hands on the second Star Trek/Green Lantern crossover story "Stranger Worlds", set after the events of the first story. Here are my thoughts on this fantastical sci-fi crossover of incredible insanity. Having gotten the graphic novel and read it all, Stranger Worlds is really dang good for a follow-up to the first story, which involved the crew of the Enterprise partnering with The Lanterns to fight the enemy who destroyed their world. Now, they have to deal with Sinestro and Khan. Lemme tell you, this comic is dang good from start to finish. If any of you read the first story, you'd love it all.  The writing's beyond fantastic, absolutely amazing, and the visuals are so breathtaking past the point where you can't stop reading this comic and want to read it all. Well, I read it all, that's how so good this comic book is and graphic novels are a great collection of comics to help read an entire series or story a...

  Greetings, fellow humans. I have returned with a crossover where no one in Star Trek has ever gone before, it is one of cosmic proportions, one of the green type. Its the Spectrum War, the first ever STAR TREK/GREEN LANTERN IDW/DC crossover event. Just like with the Batman/TMNT graphic novels, I got this at my local comic shop and read this. Its amazing, I tell you. This crossover absolutely rocks and it works in nearly every way!!! The crew of the Enterprise, its allies and enemies and the Lanterns all play off of each other very well, the writing is just beautiful and the artwork is fine comic quality. Heck, if Paramount and Warner wanted to collaborate on a crossover film, this comic should be turned into a movie. The first ever comic book sci-fi crossover movie, a DC/Star Trek crossover film should happen at some point since some Star Trek actors have appeared in comic book movies. For example, 2009 Star Trek's Chris Pine appears in the 2017 Wonder Woman as Steve Trevor. As f...

  Artist Georgiana Chitac: "ABSENCE It's book week 15 in our 52 Books Quest and the theme this week is Rebellion.  I finished four books this week and I think my books are in rebellion because none of them ended on a happy note.  They all left me with a sense of loss and wishing better things for the characters.  Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, narrated by Klara, a robot.  She is an artificial friend, is made stronger by the sun and very observant. She is picked to be the companion to Josie, an ailing child, and goes to live with her and the mom. Klara sees the Sun as some sort of God and comes to believe that if she manages to destroy a "Cootings" machine (I think it's an asphalt paver) which spreads dark foggy pollution and blocks the sun, the Sun will save Josie's life.  Filtered through the eyes of Robot it doesn't  seem like an emotional story, but more philosophical. The humans around her aren't sure of some of the things she does, but...

  Hello, superhero fans of justice, welcome back. Its time for more Batman as we delve further into the Christopher Nolan trilogy with the 2008's hit superhero movie sequel to 2005's Batman Begins known as THE DARK KNIGHT. That's right, we finally saw it and, wow, I can see why so many people love the life out of this film. Hats off to Mr. Nolan and his team and to the late Heath Ledger for all their hard work. THE DARK KNIGHT sees Batman going up against The Joker (played by Ledger) as he concocts a plan to corrupt and terrorize Gotham, which sees initially noble District Attorney Harvey Dent eventually become the villain Two-Face thanks to Joker's machinations.  And by the end of the film, while Joker and Two-Face are defeated, The Joker's plan to ruin and corrupt Gotham succeeded. And on top of that, while Batman continues to be a hero, he decides to let Harvey Dent take the credit for his heroics while the Dark Knight himself becomes a fugitive of justice with  ...

  Greetings to all of the true believers out there, we're diving further into the Spider-verse again with another Spider-Man movie. But this time, we're not in the live action realm, its the animation realm...WITH SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE! Released by Sony and Marvel in late 2018 with the screenplay handled by Phil Lord, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE focuses on the journey and struggle of Miles Morales (played by Shameik Moore) when he gets bit by a spider and has to navigate the ropes of becoming Spider-Man while teaming up with an alternate universe Peter Parker Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen and other Spider people to stop the corrupt Kingpin's plans before the multiverse collapses due to Kingpin's machinations. You could say this is where the multiverse craze started, thanks to the success of Into The Spider-Verse, as we're getting a Flash movie about the multiverse and the MCU has been delving into the multiverse in certain projects set in the aftermath of Infinity W...

  Welcome back, true believers. We're diving into the Spider-Man multiverse again with the sequel to 2012's The Amazing Spider Man, The Amazing Spider Man 2. Released in 2014 with Andrew Garfield in the role, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 didn't do as well as the executives expected. The situation was so bad, plans for a third film were scrapped and Andrew would never appear again for a good seven years until 2021's SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. So, what's the story of the second and (for now) final entry in this Spider-Man duology? The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens up sometime after the first film with Peter swinging through New York City as Spider-Man when he hears that a police chase after a criminal with a truck is in progress. He heads to the scene and confronts the villain who is Aleksei Sytsevich, a Russian bad guy who will become The Rhino in the future. During the chase, Spider-Man winds up saving the life of an Oscorp employee named Max Dillon, who is a big fan of the ...

  It's book week 14 in our 52 books quest and this week is all about classic children's mysteries. As always I have to be a little different and currently have Willo Davis Roberts science fiction story, The Girl with the Silver Eyes waiting in the wings.   I’m currently in the middle of three books:  My I by title is James Rollins thriller, Ice Hunt .  My books about books read is A.J. Hackwith’s Library of the Unwritten , and my e by author Louise Erdrich’s Native American Mystery The Round House . This month is National Poetry Month so I hope to fit in some poetry reading along the way and share my favorite poets.  

  I had never heard of The Bone Shard Daughter until I was pointed in the direction of the book vlogger Merphy Napier.   In the midst of watching her videos, learned that her number one book for 2021 was The Bone Shard Daughter and her review intrigued me enough to get the book.   From the opening line - Father told me I'm broken - I was drawn into the world of Lin, the emperor's daughter,  Jovis, a smuggler, Phalue, the governor's daughter, her girlfriend Ranami, and a mysterious Sand with no memory.  Bone shards play a center role in the islands.   At the age of eight, children are gathered in the square of each village during the Tithing Festival to have a shard of bone removed from their skull.  Not all the children survive and parents used any means to smuggle their children away to safety.  The bone shards are used by the emperor to create and power constructs.  Magical creatures, made of different animal parts and used to sp...

  In 2020, after decades of trial and error, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie finally released and was a massive success to a point where it rejuvenated Sonic's popularity as an icon and paved the way for a sequel that is now coming out. And to celebrate, IDW Publishing, which has the Sonic license, is FINALLY doing a comic tying into the Sonic Cinematic Universe and serving as a prequel to the second movie. That's right, we finally got an IDW Sonic comic set in the movie universe between the first and second films, which means we get to see humans in IDW. Plus, there's five stories. One features the main hero, the others feature Knuckles, Tails, Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub's character) and Movie Robotnik respectively. The last one happened to be "spearheaded" by actor Jim Carrey himself, you can tell IDW was working with the people at Paramount to make sure they get the Movie Sonic universe right. I'll tell you now, the writing and the visuals is really good. ID...