Book Blog – Page 49 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 18, 2021

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Review)

ecently I rode a bike the length and back of the Van Fleet Trail in Florida, sixty total miles of arrow-straight trail through thick Florida swamps. In the end, I barely made it, coasting over the finish line to collapse in a crumpled heap on a bench. Berlin Alexanderplatz was kinda like that. The novel is told in the whimsical, wandering form of Ulysses, a tale of an ex-con (Franz Biberkopf), released back onto the streets of Berlin in 1928. He makes a go at being honest, really tries by selling newspapers, shoelaces, and joining the Merchant’s Union. However, like […]

July 25, 2021

Guide to Signals & Interlockings (Review)

‘ll admit that I was desperate for this book to come out. Locked down in the pandemic, without groups of model railroaders to converse with (possibly in the casual debrief after a session) I was building my own Tuscarora Branch Line and desperate to find out how Interlocking Towers worked (these are the towers you used to see all along railroad lines that would allow the operator to set signals and turnouts, often via very crazy series of push-pull rods along trackside). But how the logic of the system worked, how it would lock out and why, none of this […]

August 8, 2021

The Arrest (Review)

his is one of these books where I wish I was in some college class reading it, so I could understand the meaning better. There is a hint of what I think this is really about. But I’m not sure. So, in The Arrest, main character Sandy Duplessis (see, what’s with that name? It’s almost “duplicitous”, right?) has limped home to his sister’s organic farm in Maine after the world fell apart. The Arrest, from the title, is not an act of civil custody as it is the complete break down of every machine in the world. Now, with the […]

August 29, 2021

I, Robot (Review)

here are three Laws of Robotics that all robots must follow: First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. This makes sense – you don’t want robots to kill, yet you don’t want robots to damage themselves (unless to prevent their […]

September 5, 2021

Hell’s Gate (Review)

ill Schutt, an author and Zoologist, has created a very Indiana Jonesy hero with his Captain R. J. MacCready, a special operative in World War Two who is sent in when special forces have failed. If you like your action mysterious, hot and kinda on the weird side, you’ll love his writing. His Hell’s Gate was one I picked up on disk to listen on a long vacation drive. I enjoyed it but my wife drifted off to look at passing scenery. That’s kinda how it always plays with Crichton-esh books. Anyway, this one has an interesting concept. Two German […]

September 12, 2021

Out Stealing Horses (Review)

his was another of the CD’s we listened to on our summer vacation drive (a CD can make the miles go by but I fear they will go the way of VHS soon enough). The wife picked this one out. So we listened. The story told starts at what should be the end – Trond Sander is an older man, ready to live out the remains of his life in contemporary times out in the Norwegian boonies. But then he encounters a man who grew up with him when he was a child, back when the Nazis invaded during World […]

September 19, 2021

Legacy of War (Review)

‘ve been a fan of the African functionalist Wilbur Smith for decades. He writes wonderful books about the continent, both in the modern day and the ancient past. And one of his loose series is about the Courtney family that finds itself settling in Africa after World War One and building their dynasty, accumulating rotters and villains along the way. Legacy of War is no different (a little more about that in my conclusion). This book opens just after World War Two. Saffron Courtney has been Mata Haring all about Europe during the war, doing those crazy resistance things and […]

September 26, 2021

Ark Royal (Review)

lucked out on this one – was in a used bookstore in Norfolk and came across a block of Ark Royal books, five of the first six, missing the initial copy. Looked like a good series – and self-published too, it seemed – so I bought them. Well, my sister bought them for me, a nice gesture. But I read them. The first book of the Ark Royal series takes place, I dunno, 200 years in the future? Man has reached the stars via tramlines but nations (and navies) still exist. And Ark Royal, an outdated English carrier seventy years […]

October 3, 2021

The Collapsing Empire (Review)

oor Cardenia, She’s just a nobody living on Hub, the imperial world that controls a network of forty-eight planets connected by the flow, a physics anomaly that allows space ships to travel (slowly) between worlds. Everything is fine and she likes her life. But then the heir to the throne dies in a car racing accident and the current Emperox succumbs to old age. And suddenly, unprepared and maybe a bit unwilling, she it suddenly thrust into the role of the new Emperox. It is a lot to take in for her (as the ruler of an empire for which […]

October 10, 2021

The Nelson Touch: Ark Royal II (Review)

he Ark Royal series appears to have widespread appeal – at least from what I can tell. Author Christopher Nuttall churned out a bunch of them (seventeen as of 2021). And I can see why they are popular – because they are good. Once again, the titular ship of the series, introduced HERE, is called to duty again. As the only armored ship in the Earth fleets (the rest were only lightly armored death cans), it once more must rise like a phoenix and set sail in finest Star Blazers fashion. This time the idea is a deep penetration raid on […]