Picked up any good reads at the bookstore?

[marechal]

Just finished Inverted World by Christopher Priest, who also wrote The Prestige (and who just recently died).

Excellent read. A city that has for centuries been moved on tracks for inexplicable reasons. The "why" is revealed at a perfect pace. Great ending.

[mids]

That's a great book.

[flatandy]

Oh, that sounds interesting. I've moved on from a lot of SF-ish stuff I used to like because a lot of SF-ish stuff was got too much praise because genre fans are less critical. And because sometimes it moves from SF into fantasy. I don't need monsters, and I don't need people able to do spells and things. I read something by Jeff Vandermeer recently, and something by NK Jemisin, both of whom seem highly rated, that didn't work for me. The Vandermeer was horribly written, lots of flowery language hiding a lack of content. The Jemisin was just a bit too smug and too weird-monster-y.

But sometimes it strikes just right. I'm sure I mentioned how much I enjoyed China Mieville's The City And The City, which is one of the most interesting books I've read in years. And "city on tracks" sounds like it might fit into that sort of group.

[flatandy]

Thinking of books with City in the title, I am a few pages from finishing "City on Fire" by Don Winslow. No idea how I acquired it. I don't normally go for mob genre thrillers, but it's well written New England 80s Italian-vs-Irish mob dust up.

[voice]

Started Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham one of the authors of the excellent Expance series, good build up setting up the city it's set in, then sadly he's introduced magic, though I'm giving it a few more chapters. Wizards and warlocks can f**k off, and any book with a dragon is is essentially a firelighter.

He's a good writer though.

[marechal]

A lot of SF writers aren't very good. Priest is a very good writer, although that is the only book I've read by him.

I don't like fantasy either. (Radix, which I mentioned earlier, had "monsters" but they were mutated humans and that book was so creatively off-the-charts that I wouldn't have minded.)

Another good city book - City by Clifford Simak. Interesting tale set far in the future where no humans are left on earth. The main “doers” on earth are service robots and dogs, which long ago were genetically modified with the ability to speak and who philosophize on whether humans really existed or were just mythical beings.

[mids]

I like fantasy. Fairies and that. For modern hard SF/space opera, Charlie Stross is very good. I haven't read everything he's written but the Saturn's Children series is brilliant. Also Becky Chambers, again space opera style.

[voice]

Iain Banks wrote a good city book, can't remember the title now though.

[mids]

Banks or M Banks? I haven't read any of his M SF stuff but have read quite a bit of his non-SF stuff.

[perrykneeham]

If you try that Dickens bloke, you'll get two for one.

[mids]

No Mean City. Weedgies.

[voice]

M Banks

[flatandy]

I liked both Banks and M Banks but not ready anything by, er, either of them for 25 years, possibly more.

[moggyonspeed]

I've just finished JFK – The Conspiracy and Truth Behind the Assassination by Col. John Hughes-Wilson (retd., ex-British Military Intelligence).

There is nothing particularly new here, though he does set the scene well as to why Kennedy had so many enemies, who they were and why a united conspiracy against him was on the cards. Also, the results of the GSR test (or paraffin test) conducted on Oswald's body, to wit that he hadn't used any firearm on the day, are themselves quite compelling.

[perrykneeham]

I wonder if the paraffin test is less effective with long-barreled weapons? Your hands are much further away from any powder resin. Also, he might have been wearing gloves.

[moggyonspeed]

Thing is, a comprehensive GSR swab test should examine both sides of a shooter's upper anatomy - not just their dominant side. This should include the forehead, the temples, the face (each cheek being swabbed separately), the digits, wrists and lower arms.

All negative in Oswald's case - and he supposedly fired a) the rifle that killed Kennedy, and b) the pistol that killed Officer Tippit. Interestingly, none of the witnesses to the latter shooting recall the killer wearing gloves.

[marechal]

Pretty likely Oswald was a patsy.

11-22-63 by Stephen King is on my reading list. Insanely good reviews of it.

[perrykneeham]

It's a bit academic really. They, and anyone that could give a definitive answer, are all dead. Like Ripperology.

[flatandy]

I've long since thought that the JFK Conspiracy stuff was a convenient thing for people who want to believe in conspiracies but don't want to go fully down the pyramids and aliens and lizards route just yet. There's a few things here and there, but nothing joined up. Enough to hang a bit of a conspiracy on, though.

It's very nice that you can say that the Mob and the Teamsters and the Cubans and the FBI and LBJ and the Klan were all pissed off by JFK, but it's much harder to pin down exactly which of them did it, and who concealed the info, and how nothing ever got out, or which groups were joined up, or, really, anything.

The other thing is that JFK gets great hagiography by dying too early to have f**k*d up lots of things - he wasn't bad by Presidential standards but he was not nearly as glittering as it's made out to be. But because of the glittering rep, it's very nice to have a conspiracy death to add to the myth.

Much more likely, as Occam says, that Oswald did it.

[marechal]

There may be some documents still around if they haven't been long since burned.

What has been made public:
www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release2023