I used to love short stories. A collection of Asimov or Clarke or Bradbury short stories? I was a happy camper, as a kid. But something happened along the way. Suddenly, I just had no desire to read short stories at all. I don’t know why. Maybe it was that I wanted a longer commitment with the book I was reading, something that was going to keep with me past 30 or so pages. Or if I were going to invest my emotions as a reader with characters, I wanted them to stay with me for hundreds of pages.

Perhaps that’s one reason I loved the Night’s Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Published in three books in the UK (nine in the US), each of the books (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist & The Naked God) is more than 1,000 pages long. Now that’s a commitment! Of course, I’m a pretty fast reader, so that’s another reason a 1,000 page plus book goes over well with me. It’s going to last a bit longer.

Hamilton’s trilogy is rich with characters and really is a page turner. And unlike Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga Of Seven Suns series (seven novels, I’ve done the first five), you don’t feel like it’s stuffed with filler. I do like Anderson’s writing, but each novel seems to barely progress things.

But suddenly, I’m back in the groove with short stories. I’ve had this copy of Counting Up, Counting Down — alternative reality short stories by Harry Turtledove — on the “to read” bookshelf for ages. For whatever reason, I finally dusted it off this week and started in. I knocked off the first story and found I really enjoyed it, that didn’t mind that it was going to come to an end so quickly. It may have been brief, but I enjoyed it — as the other ones I’m reading. It’s nice to rediscover the joys of short stories.

The latest meme going around is what magazines do you read. Barry

tagged me. This is a subject I can’t answer quickly. What magazines I read
now leads into my long and involved history with magazines since I was a child,
including lugging magazines across two different continents and the importance
of plastic bins. You want to know what I read now? You have to read the entire
story.

I think the first magazine I remember reading regularly was
Jack & Jill. Looking
for this post, I see it is still publishing. Wow. It was a gift from my paternal
grandmother, who I rarely saw, since she hailed from South Carolina — 3,000
miles from where I grew up in Southern California.

The magazines were great. As a kid, you live for mail. Who doesn’t live for
getting something fun in the mail? But you know kids, we generally don’t write.
Well, I didn’t. And if you don’t write, you don’t get letters. So getting a
magazine once a month was exciting!

Being a fast reader, Jack & Jill wasn’t enough. I also consumed lots of
Science Digest that my mother got each month. This prepared me with all types of
knowledge that for a short period of time made me the smartest kid in school.
That lasted until the inevitable move from my primary school to junior high,
where the other smartest kids from all the other primary schools flowed in,
moving me down the list. It sort of continued on like that through college. So
sad.

By around fifth grade, Jack & Jill had been left behind. I’d moved on to
books, as my desire to consume anything written grew insatiable. I also found
science fiction, and with that, Starlog Magazine:

There are two of them above, the very first one along with the famous (in my
mind) number
seven issue, from when Star Wars was about to come out. Let’s zoom in on that
baby:

Hey, I’m sorry for the flash wiping out part of the cover. Been sort of busy
at the moment, so I shot a few pics in a hurry. But I’m zooming in to highlight
a minor side point in my magazine saga. Do you see what we were stuck with as
sci-fi fans before Star Wars, as listed on the cover? Robby The Flipping Robot.
Endless rehashing of Star Trek episodes written by David Gerrold or DC Fontana.
For a kid, until Star Wars, sci-fi was locked in a time warp of B-movies, Star
Trek, the incredibly boring 2001: A Space Odyssey as the "best" sci-fi movie out
there (shut up — you know it was boring. You know it and are just too wussy to
admit it!). Then we got Star Wars, and the world began revolving once more.

Somehow, I was convince that Starlogs were going to become hugely valuable
when I was older. Maybe this is because the back of each magazine listed how to
order back issues — some of which were no longer available (my first was issue
seven, and I bought the missing ones then stayed current going forward).

Hey, I am older now! And look, they
still sell those
back issues. Issue seven goes for $35. Issue one goes for $50. I have like 100
of these magazines. I should be rolling in it. Problem is, when I finally
checked eBay a few years ago, what was selling there was nowhere near these
prices.

Here’s number 11, sold for $7.

Here’s number 8, going now and no bids above the $2 starting point yet.

But back to being a kid. I started collecting these, along with a few other
sci-fi mags. I think I kept with them all through high school. When I went to
college, all those magazines when with me. Then they went from my college
apartment, to my second residence, to another apartment in college — and
another — then to several more as I kept moving when I was out of college and
working in Orange County.

A few years out of college, another magazine revelation happened. I’d been
reading things like Spy and Atlantic Monthly as well as PC Magazine. But then
Wired came out. Wow. I gobbled it up. My future, made cool, right in a magazine.
I couldn’t describe it to other people, but the tech writer of the newspaper I
worked for had a nice comparison. Vanity Fair for nerds.

As with Starlog, I figured Wired was going to be something else important to
save. At this point, I hadn’t realized Starlog was worthless. The gene for
collecting useless things in my family, which I’d inherited, strongly had me
convinced. So from issue three onward, I saved them all.

As with Starlog, I moved them around. In fact, I moved both them and Starlog
and some other magazines from Southern California to London. Then I moved them
from London to Wiltshire. Then I moved them again between villages in Wiltshire.

As the magazine collection grew, storage became an issue. We didn’t have much
space in our old house, so my "non-active" magazines had to go into the attic.
The attic was yet and damp. That meant they needed some type of good storage
container.

I have a billion storage containers at this point, because I tried all types
for storing the magazines as well as lots of other stuff we kept in the attic.
I finally found the perfect ones — roomy enough to hold two lots of magazines
side-by-side and with a lid that rested completely on top, not allowing water to
leak through (as opposed to those bids that flip open on the top. Water can make
it into the gap in the middle. This is important stuff, people!).

Let’s see those Wireds:

Just a quick peek. Someday, I’ll make time for a big special Wired Magazine
project I have in mind. I’ll get out all the really cool covers, like these:

I mentioned Wired and Starlog aren’t the only magazines I’ve collected. I
have some one-off grabs, such as these:

That’s my special one-off magazines that I collect bin, as opposed to the
multiple bins for Starlogs or Wireds (am I getting anal enough for you yet?).
Under the TV Guide Star Trek anniversary edition, by the way, is the Sport
Illustrated special edition for the Orange County Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
winning the World Series. How great was that?!!!

Now aside from collecting magazines, I actually read the darn things. I have
quite a number of them. Like many people, the bathroom is a popular reading
location:

Yeah, I hear some of you going oooohhh, he didn’t just say that. Sure, like
you and everyone else doesn’t do the same. At least I admit it. And if you come
over, you’ll be pleased to have lots to read. I am also aware this might further
devalue my already worthless collection of magazines. Oh well.

As for what I read (the original question), you see some of them above. I
especially appreciate Stuff, which is convinced I need to have mostly-naked
woman on the cover. I don’t. The gadgets are sexy enough.

My current list:

• Stuff
• Personal Computer World
• What Video & Widescreen TV
• What Satellite & Digital TV
• Which (like Consumer Reports for the UK)
• Wired

I also buy magazines of interest on a one-off basis — say a Nintendo games
magazine, or one on laptops and so on. You especially have to understand. I live
in like the magazine capital of the world. Or so someone once told me. Britain
has magazines for practically every subject. And they’re everywhere. One of my
favorite shops is Forbidden Planet, in London. Go there, and you don’t just get
Starlog. You get magazines devoted to shows. Even shows no longer running. Pick
your Star Trek series — there will be a magazine for it. Heck, pick your sci-fi
series, it will have one.

You know how you go to a Borders or Barnes & Noble or some specialty shop and
there have that big rack of specialty magazines? Every village in Britain has
the same giant rack in the local "newsagent," which is like a combination liquor
store/newspaper stand. Heaps of magazines on all subjects being sold is
commonplace. In our local newsagent, I can get magazines for train lovers (there
are several), airplane lovers (again, several), even those who just love tanks.
Tanks. Not military stuff in general. Tanks.

For kids, it’s fabulous. Our boys used to get a magazine devoted to
Thunderbirds, a different one each Saturday. Now the oldest gets
The Beano, which I can only describe as
a sort of nice Mad Magazine. And there’s Bob The Builder magazine, or Pokemon
magazine, or …. you name it.

Back to my list. I put it in rough order of my favorites. Gadget stuff.
Computer stuff. TV stuff. Wired last? Well, Wired is like work. After reading
about tech stuff all day, it’s hard to think yeah, I want to read about this for
leisure. Plus, the magazine is less fun than it used to be. There’s still the
occasional good story, of course. There often that fantastic story. But there’s
a lot of hmmmm, too. Plus, the endless stories that jump and jump and jump to
the back of the magazine. It’s crazy. Full feeds versus partial feeds? Yeah,
that’s going to get resolved when the jump or not to jump debate still goes on.

I’ve had more magazines over time. Even the few I’ve had build up. Storage
has always been an issue. I used to use those paper magazine holders you’d get
at Ikea. But then I’d run out of space, so I was constantly moving magazines
out, storing them in various places — especially the tech magazines, not
wanting to lose some review I might need at a future date.

These were habits of growing up without the web, of course. These days, lots
of this content is online. Still, habits persist. I don’t want to toss the
magazines out. If I do, I still want to flip through them and rip out key
articles I might need.

Currently, I keep a bunch for easy reference in wooden holders (that you also
get at Ikea and elsewhere), like this:

I’m behind on my filing, as you can see. When these are filled, I rotate out
older issues and shove them behind my desk, where no one can see (you know, like
the many people who often come into my office at home):

Eventually, I take a bunch of these to the local hospital. Why? Because I’ve
had to sit at that hospital for various reasons over the years, and I hope
there’s something for people to read other than Heat (a gossip rag) or (I kid
you not) magazines from 1985. I figure some tech magazines, even if somewhat
old, will still be a glimmer of hope to others like me.

I’m supposed to tag more people. Well, I’ve been off the feeds for two weeks,
so I’m not sure who has been tagged already. So c’mon folks, you don’t need to
be tagged. Just speak up about what you read!

It’s the Fourth of July tomorrow, and yes — I celebrate it despite being in Britain. In fact, we’ll have our annual party tomorrow with neighbors and friends coming over. But before that tradition, I’m in the midst of another one, reading various books about the 4th of July and America to the kids.

Sam The Minuteman is one they always enjoy. By Nathaniel Benchley, it tells the story of a boy getting carried along with the battles at Lexington and Concord. I especially like this book because it has a counterpart, George The Drummer Boy. That has the viewpoint of a boy who is a drummer with the British Army.

Red, White and Blue: The Story Of The American Flag has lots of nice pictures and stories of the flag over time, including the Betsy Ross story, along with a qualification that no one knows if it’s true that she made the first one.

The Star-Spangled Banner is more for smaller kids, say around five. Again, lots of nice pictures and interesting facts interspersed with the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. OK, so Betsy Ross is declared a fact rather than qualified. Aside from that, the facts look pretty good.

My Red White & Blue is a musical board book really meant for kids around three or four, but my five year old still loved it tonight. It plays the Star Spangled Banner when you push a button, has lots of nice pictures and is an easy read.

Johnny Appleseed is a nice tale of John Chapman, the Johnny Appleseed who wandered America in the 1800s planting apple trees. OK, so it doesn’t explain the business aspects that I never knew about until checking out this Wikipedia entry. But it does have lots of nice pictures, an easy story to read and has him wearing a tin pan for a hat

O, Say Can You See is a great book for an expat Americans trying to educate their children about American traditions and symbols. Richly illustrated, lots of facts, lots of qualifications about what we know and don’t know about the first flag, how the White House came to be, monuments like the Statue Of Liberty, how the US national bird was almost the wild turkey (non-alcoholic variety) and more.

A Happy Fourth Of July to my fellow Americans, wherever you may be celebrating tomorrow!

I just finished reading Category Five by Philip S. Donlay, where a big monster hurricane is bearing down on the Eastern United States. It’s a fairly decent airport novel, plenty to keep you entertained while waiting for your flight to depart. It also got me thinking about some other monster storm and weather novels I’ve read.

Let me take more about Category Five first, which from what I can tell was written well before last year’s killer hurricanes. Big bad Hurricane Helena looks to be a new breed of storm emerging out of climatic change. You’ve got a weather researcher who’s monitoring it, her former lover Donovan Nash who’s got a hidden past and the bright idea of perhaps stopping the storm in its tracks by nuking it. Yes, it’s right out of the “just add water” school of instant thriller/action novel. You won’t be dazzled by amazing plot turns. But it’s an easy and fairly entertaining page turner.

Mother of Storms is in an entirely other class. I read this years ago. It’s written by one of my favorite authors John Barnes, who wrote the fantastic A Million Open Doors, one of my favorite SF novels. He’s one of the few that has approached the reverence I hold for Heinlein, though some of Barnes’s novels definitely are weak. Avoid Patton’s Spaceship, Washington’s Dirigible and Caesar’s Bicycle. Wikipedia has a page about him. He doesn’t have a web site but does have an Amazon hosted blog here.

Anyway, Mother of Storms sees a runaway greenhouse effect hit the earth after a nuclear explosion releases huge amounts of methane in to the air. Giant hurricanes result and places like Hawaii, well, you don’t want to be there. All of this is set in the future. As I said, it’s been years, so I don’t remember all the various plot points. There are a couple of more detailed reviews you can read here and here. It was definitely one of those books I didn’t want to put down and the rare one I’ll probably go back and reread some day.

A Planet for the President is a political satire novel where the current US president is convinced that life would be a whole lot better if maybe everyone but Americans were wiped out. He doesn’t arrive at this idea immediately but gets pushed there as global warming and ecological disasters becomes more pronounced.

I read the book about three months before Hurricane Katrina hit. It was written in 2004. One part of the novel has a hurricane hitting New Orleans and killing thousands of people. It’s not that the author was particular prescient. Planners have feared that New Orleans couldn’t withstand a major hurricane for years. That kind of made a mockery of President Bush’s early statements that no one knew the levees wouldn’t hold. A fairly unknown British satirist managed to know this but the federal authorities weren’t up to speed?

Anyway, if you’re pro-Bush, give the novel a miss. He’s the poorly disguised Fletcher J. Fletcher. Then again, liberals get plenty of send up in the novel as well. There’s a very nice long review of the book over here at Wikipedia. In Britain? Here, you can order it from the Conservatives online book store, which seemed kind of odd to me. Then again, these are the New Conservatives.

Finally, after the New Year, I finished Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. There’s no storm activity in this novel. I toss it in simply because global warming is a factor in all the books above. Crichton basically debunks the notion as part of the thriller he tells, or at least debunks the notion that we can predict with certainty much of anything. You’ll encounter lots of charts of temperature activity showing things aren’t necessarily getting warmer.

I admit it. I’ve been a global warming believer to some degree. I’ll put it like this. While the jury may be out, it doesn’t seem absurd to think we should try to pollute the planet as little as possible, whether than means pumping out carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, junk, you name it. I’m not naive. We’re going to have an impact; we are going to pollute, and the planet is going to be changed in response to human activity. But we ought to be able to minimize that.

But Crichton’s book will get you thinking, and just when you want to dismiss it all as a work of fiction, he throws a ton of footnotes at you from the back. Then again, others might debunk those, as this review does.

I finished reading SM Stirling’s Dies The Fire last night. It’s the flip side of his Island in the Sea of Time series. In that series, Nantucket gets thrown back in time 3,000 years. In this book, we see how the world copes after Nantucket is ripped from it.

Nantucket actually has little to do with the story. Instead, the same force that threw Nantucket back in time also has caused electricity and explosives to no longer work the the current world. Anarchy, as you might expect, results.

The story focuses on two bands of survivors and largely revolves around Oregon. As is often the case with these types of books, the early part where people are learning to cope in the changed world is the best.

Overall, the book is pretty grating, however. Both the groups conveniently seem to find people who are skilled swordsmasters or who know all about crossbows and so on. It feels too forced to be that enjoyable, at least for me. As one reviewer over at Amazon put it:

Hey! We have no guns now! No problem! My cousin’s a sword maker!

“Hi. I’m a teen girl. Plus I’m a crack archer”

A sequel to the book is already out, and a third that I presume ends the series is coming. I’ll probably give them both a miss. As I wrote before, the last series he did simply got worse and worse, to the point that in the third book, I was skipping five or ten pages at a time, as they weren’t advancing the story or particularly enjoyable.

Stirling’s web site says he’s doing a book about what if Mars and Venus where inhabited. Now that, I’ll look forward to. As for this book, others definitely loved it. Here’s a positive review if you want another take.

Punched through Richard Morgan’s book Market Forces recently in two gos, partly because I read fast but mainly because I literally didn’t want to put it down. Thanks to my trusty itty bitty booklight, I kept reading into the wee hours of the morning while my wife dozed away.

It’s set in a slightly future world where there’s a giant gap between the rich and the poor, both within countries and between countries. The main character, Chris Faulkner, has just started for in the “conflict investment” division of a big UK firm called Shorn Associates. That division earns by helping manage guerrilla wars and/or propping up various governments, getting a cut for its investment in backing leaders.

While the story dwells on some of this, the heart of it really takes place on how corporate warfare has literally become that, executives killing each other to gain promotions. And the chief way they do this is through battling each other in their cars.

It’s extremely well told, with great characters, plenty of action and things to think about. Morgan’s still a relatively new SF author and welcomed to someone who loves SF and wants that fresh, great tale. I was thrilled when I found this one had hit the bookstores in paperback, when browsing not too long ago.

One of the best things about Morgan’s writing is how he sets up a complicated universe, then throws you into it, explaining the details not in a careful, orderly way but instead over the course of the book.

I always find this approach a combination of frustrating but thrilling. It’s frustrating, because I want to have it all spelled out for me. But it’s thrilling because the sense of discovering more helps keep the book moving. I’ve read other SF novels where they do the big spell out in the first twenty pages or so. They’re rarely as satisfying.

All of Morgan’s novels have been a hit with me, the two before this being Altered Carbon and Broken Angels. They both involve the same character who’s a futuristic mercenary/diplomat/troubleshooter of sorts. Writing this up, I did a search and found that character is back in Morgan’s fourth book, Woken Furies, that came out in paperback last September. How’d I miss that on the shelves!

Some long flights and airport waiting to and from Chicago last week gave me time to whip through The Neanderthal Parallax, a trilogy of books from one of my favorite SF authors, Robert J. Sawyer. It’s a great alternative history/universe romp.

Hominids kicks it off, with a Neanderthal suddenly appearing in the middle of a neutrino detection tank in Canada. Nope, not a spear waving, meat-cooking-over-fire stereotype. This is a Neanderthal scientist Ponter Boddit, who got kicked out of his alternative world and into ours due to a quantum computer experiment he and his partner were conducting.

In Ponter’s version of Earth, it was humans — homo sapiens (or homo sapiens sapiens apparently) — that died out. Ponter turns out to be surprised we could even have survived due to our smaller brains. Ponter’s world is also pretty utopian-like. There are less than half-a-billion people, due to zero population growth maintained through regular generations allowed to be born every 10 years. The result is lots of nature, low industrialization and no pollution. Crime is pretty much non-existent due to the “Companions” embedded in everyone’s arms that record all they do.

The society is also unique. Woman live separately from men except for during “Two Become One,” when men come into the women’s areas when they are all just past their periods and thus not fertile. Since they all live together — and are extremely sensitive to pheromones due to their greater sense of smell — the women all have synchronized menstrual cycles.

What about the remaining part of the month? In addition to having a different sex partner, each Neanderthal also has a same sex one. So Ponter has both a husband and a wife, if you will (they use different terms). His wife has a wife; his husband also has a wife.

We come off pretty strange. The biggest Neanderthal war involved a shocking 800 or so deaths. Ponter nearly goes into shock when reading about our wars. The smells of pollution hit him strong, and we seem pretty uncivilized and illogical. But then again, he’s deeply impressed that we’ve been to the moon. The Neanderthals have no space flight at all, an area they’ve simply not expanded into.

Most of the book deals with his growing relationship with a geneticist and comparing and contrasting Earths. Back in Ponter’s world, his partner goes on trial accused of murder. Their quantum computing facility was deep underground, so there is no companion recording to prove his innocence.

Humans is the sequel, the middle book of the trilogy. Ponter’s made it back home, and a bridge is opened up between the two worlds. He now begins an actual relationship with the geneticist, Mary Vaughan. She suffered a rape in the earlier book, and that develops out into an unexpected way as Ponter eventually finds and confronts her attacker. Relations between the two worlds also expand as more Neanderthals come over and begin interacting with scientists and politicians. Meanwhile on our side, the head of a US think tank begins leaving you worried about his real intentions.

Hybrids concludes the trilogy. Mary’s attacker is still around but changed in a variety of ways, physically and mentally. Ponter and Mary seek a way to have a baby, a challenge when he has 24 chromosomes and she 23. The issue of God, which runs throughout all the books, hits a crisis point. Mary’s a devout Catholic. Neanderthals have no belief in a god at all — and as it turns out, no “god organ” in the brain that reacts to magnetic effects that the book makes out to be why our type of human believe in greater powers. Should Mary’s child have this god organ or not? Meanwhile, the think tank guy proves he’s definitely no good, and much more happens and gets resolved.

Overall, it’s great reading, probably even more so if you’re a Canadian. Instead of everything taking place in the US, Sawyer, a Canadian author, has the action firmly in Canada.

Two other great books by Sawyer are Illegal Alien and Flashforward. In the first, Alpha Centaurians come to Earth — and then one ends up on trial accused of murdering a TV celebrity.

Flashforward remains my favorite. A science experiment “flashforwards” everyone in the world more than twenty years in the future — or at least they get glimpses of their future lives for a few minutes. How do you piece together moving forward with your life if you saw yourself with a different partner, as a rich famous person, committing a crime or ominously — nothing but blackness? Just outstanding.

I’m an absolute sucker for alternative history/universe stories. If you get hooked by the genre, a few other authors to check out:

Harry Turtledove: I love the Worldwar series (In the Balance, first book of four) that’s followed by the Colonization series (Second Contact, first book of three), where alien lizard people arrive in the middle of WW II. A concluding book to both of the series has finally come out, Homeward Bound (and see review here), but I hate hardbacks, so I haven’t read it yet. Also see A World of Difference, where Earth finds Mars to be inhabited. He’s also written many, many other books of alternative history.

Harry Harrison: Check out A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, where Victorians want to build a tunnel under the Atlantic to reach the still British colony of America. Ruled Britannia was good, where Shakespeare ends up in a plot to overthrow England’s Spanish rulers. Stars & Stripes Forever is the first of three great books that kicks off an alternative history where during the US Civil War, England accidentally attacks their allies, The South. The North rallies to the defense, and suddenly the war shifts to one between American and England.

SM Stirling: Island in the Sea of Time throws Nantucket back 3,000 years, and it’s a lot of fun to watch how they adjust. Unfortunately, the rest of the series sadly goes downhill and it was almost a chore reading the last one in the trilogy. But Conquistador was great, where a window opens up between modern day California to an alternative version that’s never been settled by Europeans.

Eric Flint: 1632 has a chunk of West Virginia getting thrown back in time into Germany. Great reading. Unfortunately, then the following books 1633 and — wait for it — 1634: The Galileo Affair weren’t as good. In fact, 1634 was appalling, if only for the fact that Galileo himself barely appears or does much in it.

I’ve got a few more authors and books of alternative history as well. These were just the ones that came to mind quickly or that I could spot on my bookshelf. I might do a post on some other ones the next time I start moving books around.

One of tonight’s bedtime books was You Wouldn’t Want to Be an American Pioneer! This was another great find I came across on a trip back home recently. It’s both well illustrated and chock full of information on what it was like to cross the country back in the 1800s.

The kids especially like the part where the books tells them that if they drink river water with a funny taste, that’s probably just the buffalo pee! It’s also interesting to read about having to make decisions on whether to have oxen pull your wagon (picky eaters, slower walkers but can pull more weight and taste better if you eat them) versus mules (will eat anything, walk fast but not nice to eat, if you get to that point).

I love science fiction, especially deeply rich universes such as those
created by Peter Hamilton. But occasionally, you just want a little something
light. Nothing fills that spot better than a nice Star Trek novel. And I’ve got
a friend who keeps me well supplied with them (thanks JVC).

I just polished off the first two books in the String Theory series, and they
were pretty good, above average for the typical Star Trek novel.

The
first book,
Cohesion, sets up a story where Voyager has entered a strange area
of space where the normal laws of physics don’t seem to apply. The planet they
visit has a mythological tale that seems to be related to the strangeness of the
space around it, and
there’s a nice bit where B’Elanna and Seven Of Nine end up in a mini-Borg
collective.

The second book,
Fusion,
is much better. In it, Voyagers ends up finding an abandoned space station near
the planet. They encounter a Caretaker-like creature, and there’s a lot of not
knowing who to trust.

I thought the second book was the last one, but there’s a third in the series
that will close the plot. That book is called

Evolution, but it’s not out until Feb. 2006. I’m looking forward to getting
it, which is a pretty good sign the books did well by me. If you like Voyager,
you’ll probably enjoy them.

While the rest of the UK may be going along like normal, Thanksgiving is
coming up in our household and the Thanksgiving books are coming out for the
kids, our boys aged 6 and 4.

I picked up a great new one while back in California in October,

Thank You, Sarah. It tells the story about how activist Sarah Hale lobbied
multiple presidents to make Thanksgiving an official national holiday until
finally winning over President Abraham Lincoln.

The Story of Thanksgiving is a board book that my four year old is just
about outgrown. Still, it does a good job of entertaining them and talking about
the Mayflower voyage.

Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit! is another one that the boys are pretty much
grown out of, but it made it another year. It’s part of the nice Biscuit series
of books, a small yellow dog and the little girl who owns him. In this one, they
get ready for the arrival of the girl’s grandparents for Thanksgiving dinner.
It’s a flap book, with things that get revealed on each page when you lift the
big flap.

It’s a bittersweet one for me to read, because my in-laws used to come over
in just this way for dinner at our house here in the UK, and I was reading this
book back then. But my father-in-law died about three years ago, so while the
book still has both grandparents coming, very sadly, we do not. I wish it were
still like the book.

The First Thanksgiving is another tale of the Mayflower voyage and the
pilgrims first year in America. This one has a nice mix of pictures and good
information for the younger reader.

Finally,

Richard Scarry’s The First Thanksgiving of Low Leaf Worm is a great one.
Like the Biscuit book, it’s a flap book you’d think was meant for the
preschooler. But it’s actually got a lot of information, including a nice
illustrated timeline at the back, which works well for older kids and even me!