This Week at the Library (20- 28 October)

Enjoyable week at the library, although I didn't make progress in The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World as I'd intended. I wound up playing three games of Civilization III instead. I continued in my efforts to catch up on Trek relaunch books, starting the excellent The Good that Men Do, which repaired the various faults of Enterprise's finale and set the now not-dead Trip Tucker on a promising story arc.  I also picked up one of DS9's numbered books, Fallen Heroes, which is the darkest Trek book I'd ever read aside from the Millennium Trilogy. (The Millennium Trilogy destroyed the universe. Can't get darker than that.)

I followed up on a recommendation from one of my first instructors and read True Grit, a western from the 1960s about a young girl who hired a US Marshal to help her chase down her father's killer. Enjoyable story, but I enjoy the movie over the book, which is...flat.

I also returned to a classic in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds  in which Martians invade Victorian England.  I enjoy Wells' style: War of the Worlds was my personal favorite this week.

Selected Quotations:
"By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain."  (The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells)

"What is your intention, Rooster? You think one on four is a dogfall?"
"I aim to kill you in one minute, Ned, or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker's convenience. Which will you have?"
"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
"...fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" (True Grit)

"How many men have you shot in your career as a Marshall, Rooster?"
"Well...shot, or killed?"
"Ohh, let us restrict it to KILLED so that we may have a more manageable figure!" (True Grit)

Next Week:

• Warpath, David Mack.
• The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World
• The Devil's Punchbowl, Greg Iles
• It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis. (Seemed appropriate given the likely election incomes next Tuesday.)
• 20,000 Leauges Under the Sea,  Jules Verne.