Posts by linger
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Angels opening seals and pouring blood upon the surface of the earth
... and there's a mental image for your book club!
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[Piers Anthony's] Xanth series is a little better,
at least, in small doses. I found Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series a more satisfying read, because there he's trying to map out his personal philosophy, rather than labouring to put a bad pun in every paragraph as in Xanth. It's still uneven, though. My favourites were the first (__Riding a Pale Horse__) and last (__And Eternity__) -- but Being a Green Mother and__For Love of Evil__, in particular, are patchy, and if you're ploughing through all seven, there's quite a lot of unnecessary repetition of the plotlines, especially from those two books. It's like he sold the publisher on the idea that there should be one book for each of the seven main characters, and then was contractually obligated to churn out all seven to fit that structure ... but couldn't quite convince himself of the necessity.
But, hey, if you want fantasy series for that difficult age group, how about Patricia Wrightson's Wirrin arc (which begins with The Nargun and the Stars, and makes prominent use of characters from Aboriginal mythology)?
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Now, y'see, me, I mind dogs running around loose and dropping rubbish indiscriminately on the ground...
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(The first was Robert Heinlein's Number of the Beast.)
Testify!
Craig:Is that the one where the hero jumps in a time machine and gives a whole new slant to the already vile acronym MILF (don't ask),
No, though it's part of the same series.
That happens in Time Enough for Love, which was an earlier sequel to Methuselah's Children. (Heinlein revisited that episode in worse detail in To Sail Beyond the Sunset -- but to get to that book, you'd first have to get through Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls: A Comedy of Manners. And if you found Number hard to swallow, then, well, things didn't improve.)or transplants his brain into his conveniently dead nubile secretary's body and spends quite a lot of time rubbing her nipples and trying to get knocked up with his own sperm (really, don't ask)
No, that's I Will Fear No Evil.
Which started well, with an interesting premise, then got taken over by the usual bunch of Heinlein-proxy characters exhibiting behaviour frankly unbelievable even within a fantasy world.I much preferred Job -- and still can't forgive Heinlein for cynically reworking that book's subtitle to help sell The Cat..., which sure as hell wasn't a "comedy" of anything, let alone "manners". A private joke, maybe, but not a comedy.)
or... Seriously, the sixties have a lot to answer for, including apparently destroying Robert Heinlein into a bar room bore.
Number of the Beast is the one where Heinlein sets up a (literal) plot device whereby his characters can move between alternative worlds, which it soon becomes apparent are fictions. Shortly thereafter, it's the one where he most explicitly becomes an utter wanker -- playing with his own plots and characters for no other reason than that he can. My personal hurl point was reached when he had one of the characters complain that they were "up against an Author", i.e. Heinlein.
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generalise, trivialise and stereotype fils provincial reporters
as opposed to generalise, trivialise and stereotype senior editor
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So (as we already knew, right?) it's about maintaining a strong Maori Party brand, regardless of the outcome.
They actually have little need to form part of the new government (especially if their members end up holding the key to a majority on any issue on which National & Labour disagree); it helps increase their particular support base if they can keep themselves as a recognisable third side "for Maori" rather than for "govt" or "opposition". -
assuming a seven-seat Maori Party overhang
Or, more exactly, an overhang resulting from the Maori Party winning seven electorates -- which is not the same thing. Such a result would probably require an extra two MPs at most (unless you think there is going to be systematic vote splitting, with no Maori electorate voters giving the Maori Party their party vote -- which would be an incredibly brave prediction).
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Then they'll sit back and wait to make a killing during the evacuation after the next earthquake.
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That would be Two in the Bush (which covers NZ, Australia and, uh, Malaysia I think).
He did describe some things as being different from England.
Most notably, the "6 o'clock swill", which gets a typically embellished Durrell description.
About the one thing he was ecstatically positive about was the "Kakaporium" at Mt Bruce; he'd basically given up any hope of seeing one at that point. -
...every old lady who said "oooh, what lovely hair, who does he get that from?"...
I bet you struggled not to reply "The milkman".