On The Book Piles V - March 2017

Since story writing is on hiatus until some energy recovery has been occurred, it's time to have a focus on books. This time, the book piles have a few new entries, and a few that have been there forever and several days...

'The Illustrated And Complete Brigadier Gerard' by Arthur Conan Doyle

Now, having made it several stories into the Brigadier Gerard collection, it is obvious that these are classically great stories. Conan Doyle seems to have sunk everything into this, including a lot of his passion for historical tales and sly humour. Recommended, and not the satire of France that I was unfairly expecting. Very good, so far.

'Journey To The West' (Volume 2) by Wu Cheng'en

Now also begun, volume two is more of the same, in this grandly epic story of ancient China. The translation is funny, and the pacing good, but the overarching story is thousands of pages long over four volumes. These books may outlast me! However, you really need to know about that irascible Monkey, one of the great characters in stories.

'The Voyage Of The Beagle' by Charles Darwin

This, along with Herodotus, Jung, and the Freud below, are likely to remain on these book piles forever. 'Voyage' is an extremely dry chronicle of the legendary voyage on which Darwin began to take his notes on naturalism and his experiences, and form some of the ideas which would overthrow how we think about the world and Nature. Sadly, I'm struggling to get into it, but whenever I do it is interesting. It's just so dry that you can smell the tumbleweeds when you open the volume.

'Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious' by Sigmund Freud

An awesomely well written book, and one that dribbles on in spurts due to my compulsive reading of fiction. The translation is great, and Freud had a once in a generation mind. This has to be dug into or I'll go nutty. Bring in the complexes, it's time to dig in!

'Ishmael' (Star Trek) by Barbara Hambly

A new entry, and it's one of my favourite Star Trek novels, which is ironic as a large portion of it is spent with an amnesiac Spock washed up in historical America, in the continuity of an entirely different television series. I never would have guessed that it was a crossover! Only last year did I realise that the whole setting was that of a sixties show called 'Here Come The Brides', which starred Star Trek actor Mark Lenard. It's very well done, but has been shamefully put on the backburner by...

'Dragon' (Dirk Pitt) by Clive Cussler

It's a Cussler, which is embarrassing. The exposition is painful, and nothing is left unsaid. No cliche is left unturned, and yet it somehow works, which is infuriating. Being read because it's one half of the surrounding bracket for a Cussler I wanted to re-read: 'Sahara'. Please, keep this one under your hat.

'The Complete Father Brown' by GK Chesterton

Finally, from deep in the box of unread, or partially unread, books, comes the complete 'Father Brown' which was halfway read many years ago and then put down due to exhaustion. It's a very thick tome! However, the stories were excellent to date, and the time is right to pick it up again in the off minutes. More to come.

Also malingering on the piles: 'Histories' by Herodotus, and 'Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious' by Jung. The piles are high at the moment. I may disappear behind them...

O.