Pyramids

Added to listOwnedwith 124 books.

Pyramids
The Complete Short Stories: Volume One 1944-1953
The Martian Chronicles
Sourcery
Wyrd Sisters
Freaky Deaky
L.A. Confidential
Carry On, Jeeves

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Carry On, Jeeves is a collection of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves shorts. It includes the four from My Man, Jeeves, so it can stand-in as a starting point to the series if following publication order. I started with The Code of the Woosters, so my expectations were set by that that book. The shorts lack the room for situations to snowball as they did in Code, but they are still funny and charming.

My favorite stories are the last three:

  • Fixing it for Freddie has a sweetness to it in addition to Wodehouse's humor;
  • Clustering Round Young Bingo reminds me of Code: Bertie is called upon for his burglary skills and even Aunt Dahlia makes an appearance. There's also backstory on how Anatole comes to cook for her in Code;
  • Bertie Changes His Mind is the only Jeeves story narrated from his perspective. There's mischievous fun in seeing Jeeves move behind the scenes.

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3 months ago

The Martian Chronicles

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Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a collection of simple yet thought-provoking stories all set in one retrofuturistic timeline where Earth colonizes Mars. The stories are light on the sci-fi; obstacles like travel to Mars and habitation and availability of resources once there are waved away by setting Mars up like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, with a breathable atmosphere and potable water.

Instead of wrangling technical hurdles The Martian Chronicles' stories resembles Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in its exploration of themes like oppression, the role of technology, and man's tendency to destroy itself.

Bradbury seems to take a dim view:

Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good. Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth.

On Bradbury's writing style: it is clear and clean, and the occasional sense of whimsy with how serious events are written about deadpan and matter of factly. The near extinction of indigenous Martians, astronauts killing each other, Earth's destruction—so it goes.

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3 months ago