It’s About Making Babies!

The topic this week is rolling on Booking Through Thursday. Specifically, a compelling non-series sequence of books.

Perhaps my habits might be considered ‘meta rolling’. I tend to reread series in clumps.

I just came off a Tamora Pierce revisit, with Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen. I think it was the puzzle solving that took me to Patricia Briggs’ Moon Called and Blood Bound - both really good paranormal / underworld adventure. I don’t go in for the classic horror stuff, but I found Briggs’ stories of Mercedes ‘Mercy’ Thompson, VW mechanic, walker, and neighbor to the local alpha werewolf very good. I also like what Kelley Armstrong has done with her ladies of the underworld and werewolf interwoven stories.

Susan R. Matthews writes a dark story. Her new ‘Warring States’ continues the conflicted tales of the Ragnorak cruiser-killer Jurisdiction space ship, and her Secured Medical officer Andrej Koscuisko. And the strong Jils Ivers character continued the ‘competent central woman’ theme.

I just re-read David Weber’s Honor Harrington, from On Basilisk Station through Ashes of Victory (I couldn’t find my copy of War of Honor until this afternoon.)

Mike Shepherd’s Kris Longknife: Audacious was it’s usual reluctant-hero excellent story telling. As was Kris Longknife: Reluctant, Kris Longknife: Mutineer and Kris Longknife: Deserter. Except maybe Shepherd might have gone on a bit longer than necessary with the ‘booby bombs’.

Then followed Kristine Smith’s first two, Code of Conduct and Rules of Survival. The connection here was the edgy mayhem and battle backgrounds.

Now I am on Robert Frezza’s silly space operas McLendon’s Syndrome and V.M.R. (Vampire Master Race theory - space aliens decided humanity is too stupid to actually travel space, colonize worlds, and hold elections. They figure vampires are a hidden master race actually guiding humans.) The reluctant, inept hero of these stories is guided by the elusive, competent Scandanavian vampire (it is a venereal disease here, with only 3% of the populations susceptible, including our hero), Catarina Lindquist.

Maybe next I will drop back to Weber, and hit some ancillary stories - including Crown of Slaves and Shadow of Saganomi - really good reads, and continue a competent heroine theme.

And then there are a couple of soul-warming delights - Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Balance of Trade and Conflict of Honors. Balance of Trade is a young man coming of age between sophisticated cultures in conflict over trade, where Conflict of Honors finds a young woman hounded by circumstance and bad luck to find refuge - and unlooked for comfort and welcome. As many books as promise a glimpse of fulfillment, of joy and acceptance, these two stay near the top of my stack.

And then it may be time for Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksennarian (Sheep Farmer’s Daughter, Divided Allegiance, Oath of Gold) again, for a deeper sense of growth, loss, and restoration.

Enjoy the season!

So there I was, browsing through my Bloglines feeds, and New Jovian Thunderbolt goes on about how he is ‘late’ with the 5 Planes meme. So he lists his five favorite planes. Cool. I went looking for the 5 planes meme, and found Captain of a Crew of One had also written about the five planes meme. Only neither gentleman linked back to whoever originated the exercise.

Biplane Evermore

I can’t help it. The one plane that stands out as having more to do with shaping my life is .. the song by the Irish Rovers. I liked a lot of their earlier music - Whiskey on a Sunday, Bare Legged Joe, Goodbye Mrs. Durkin. I find that novelty songs hold much more value for me than classical music, and that I listen to rock and country - for the novelty cross overs. Like Dexy and the Midnight Runners and Come On, Eileen.

Boeing 707

The Boeing passenger liners are the symbol, for me, of commercial aviation. The 707 and 727 are phenomenal workhorses. Each were produced in prodigious numbers without acquiring a reputation for failure. I imagine the 707 especially had the advantage of all the lessons learned in building scads of war planes, and later Strategic Defense Command assets.

The F-4 Fighter

I served a year and a half on the USS Saratoga CV-60, back about 1978. Part of my duty assignment as Electronics Technician was the UHF radio room on the 0-10 level, about 6 decks above the flight deck. I loved watching the F-4’s launch. They bolt the plane onto the catapult, raise the deck exhaust shields behind the planes, and the engine turned up. Watching the flame in the in-fuselage engine grow, the venturi flare out, and .. gone. Amazing.

Vought A-7 Corsair II

This US Navy war plane was magic to me, growing up in the 1950’s and ’60’s. I loved the profile, the proportions - the pictures, the models. And it worked really well as a hand-thrown balsa glider, about 5 inch long as I recall. Ah, the days of Ambroid glue, butyrate dope, a couple sheets of balsa and an Exacto knife. In college a friend taught me to use a wire brad for a nose weight to balance the plane, and get the wings moved closer to scale position. We found that reversing the nail and gluing it in place let the plane stick in the ceiling or doors. Funny how no one got hurt ..

E-2C Hawkeye

Again with the subjective delight. I like the looks of the plane, with its great radome (radar dome) suspended above the plane. This one even beats out the majestic B-52 Bomber for me, for sheer cachet. The early electronic monitoring post in the air placed the detectors and operators ‘on the scene’ to collect and interpret remote information - and enable the rest of the Navy to do its normal, excellent job.