New book haul

I usually wait until I actually receive the books from Curled Up, but I couldn't resist.  I've got a great set of books I'm looking forward to getting, so I thought I'd share.  It's one of the great benefits to reviewing for the site, along with the awesome editor (not that I'm sucking up or anything).



The first book is the Marvel Encyclopedia.  I was a comics fan for years, with a pretty good mix of DC and Marvel comics, mostly superhero but also others as well.  However, a few years ago I sold all of my comics because I was running out of space and I didn't want to keep adding to it.  Plus, the quality was going down and they were getting really expensive.  From what I understand, I'm glad I got out when I did.  Massive crossovers, continuity that would take an encyclopedia (ha!) to keep track of, it all just becomes too much.

However, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for those Marvel superheroes that I followed religiously, even when the story quality started to go downhill.  Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, the X-Men, they were all constant companions to me for years.  So I'm really looking forward to getting this book and catching up with them a little bit.

The second book is Bob Slaughter's Omaha Beach & Beyond: The Long March of Sergeant Bob Slaughter.  I love World War II memoirs (most recently Don Malarkey's Easy Company Soldier), and this one looks good too.  The book covers his life, but it sounds like it will be much like Malarkey's, where he gives some details about his life before the war but then concentrates on his training and then war experiences.  These men were true heroes, much like today's soldiers fighting overseas.  I can only imagine the hell these men went through, especially on D-Day itself.  These memoirs bring that just a bit closer to home, though obviously no mere words will ever bring it home totally.  The World War II generation is dying out as they continue to get older, so it's memoirs like this that we will have left.

The third book is Nancy Goldstone's The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily.  I've been a big fan of Goldstone's since I read the book she wrote with her husband, The Friar & the Cipher.  That review even got me an email from Lawrence Goldstone!  Then there was her first solo book (or at least the first that I read) called Four Queens.  So, even though I have never heard of Queen Joanna I, this is one of the rare history books where I'm getting it because of the author.  Usually, even if I'm getting it because of the author, it's a subject I'm interested in before actually getting the book.  I have faith that Goldstone will *make* me interested in Joanna.  I'm certainly willing to let her try.

Finally, a bit of fluff.  As some of you know, I'm a major CSI fan (the original Las Vegas version).  I've actually already read one of the book series, In Extremis by Ken Goddard.  That book had its moments but was ultimately let down by not using the characters very well.  This time, I'm getting Brass in Pocket by Jeff Mariotte.  This is a Brass story, one of my favourite characters, so Mariotte had better not let me down!  It has Riley in it, so it's definitely from last season, but no word on whether Grissom is in it or Langston.  Sounds like an interesting plot, though, so here's hoping the book itself holds up.

I still have one book from Curled Up that I have to read before all this, and I just started a Star Trek Titan book called Sythesis, by James Swallow.  Looking forward to that one too.  Lots of reviewing goodness coming up!