Tag Archives: Simon Hawke

The Cleopatra Crisis by Simon Hawke – an enjoyable reread

The Cleopatra Crisis (Time Wars, #11)The Cleopatra Crisis by Simon Hawke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are some wonderful paradoxical expositions in this I’d forgotten, and more than a bit of Hawke’s take of events of 2000 years ago. Okay, creative license with Cleopatra, but it is fantasy/science fiction!

Published 27 years ago, I could be reading one short passage from today’s media: “Since he became Emperor, Caesar has become more and more the autocrat. It is not in the tradition of Rome’s institutions. Only what can anyone do? He has the support of the people.” Change “Emperor” and “Rome” to something else, and “the people” to “a minority of the people”, and…nah…unfair to Caesar…

One left in the series. Sigh.

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The Lilliput Legion by Simon Hawke

The Lilliput Legion (Time Wars, #9)The Lilliput Legion by Simon Hawke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve been crunching a lot of numbers the past few weeks and have reader’s block, which is problematic because I owe feedback to an author whose book I downloaded a couple of months ago and I’m only a quarter through it! So…I turn to standbys when that affliction surfaces.

Hawke’s books are such, though I’ve only read the last 4 books of this series once through. Been a while since I’d read this. Enjoyable distraction even if this one seemed rushed and sparse on literary overlap. I keyed something this time that is one of the few things I do remember from the first time (able to recognize correct answer when shown, and all): a character says “When one routinely deals in light years, one doesn’t sweat the occasional ten minutes.”

Hawke (yes, originally a pen name but he made legal) did such a great job writing pseudo-scientific explanations for his time travel theme but didn’t make the units agree?! Still, block nearly broken (not done crunching those numbers…)

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Books that have stuck with me

 

Eight years ago, there was a Facebook thing going around about 15 Books in 15 Minutes – write down within 15 minutes 15 books that have stuck with you. I saw it pass through my Memories and started thinking (I didn’t look at what I wrote back then…perhaps I’ll visit after I write this and see…) about what books I would choose, 2017 version. But I’m not playing the time limit, nor, apparently, the 15 limit. Here are books that have stuck with me – mostly fiction, and some background as to why. The first five are in preference order, the rest are sort of fungible…and this has been a chore to format…Wordpress seems to have a hard time with a lot of images, links and whatever… Continue reading

My 2014 Reading List – Final Quarter

Goodreads goal for 2014:   100 books

I nailed the goal on November 17th and ended up with a total of 113 on the 31st.

Recap: The way I’ve been recounting my book readings the past couple of years means overly long posts (100+ books with comments?). For 2014, I’ve decided to break up the year into quarters. Here’s my first three month summary of the 23 books I read,  my second quarter list numbering 31books, and my summer reading list (32 books).  Below I list 27 more for the last three months of the year.

For the fourth quarter:

  • 18 nonfiction
  • 9 fiction … 2:1…atypical for a final quarter
  • I’ve rated 6 more as five-star (you-really-should-read-this) on Goodreads.
  • I gave 0 books a one-star rating (not-only-no-but-really-no)…again with the generosity; at least two were close.
  • As before, I’ve linked all of my Goodreads reviews (even if only one line) to each title in case anyone is interested in what I thought beyond the commentary below. The review page links back to the Goodreads main page for the book.

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