February 2015 Reading List

Here's what I was reading in February.

Remember Gary Hart? He was the campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1987. He looked to have a lock on the nomination, but then a photo of Hart with model Donna Rice sitting in his lap surfaced and all hell broke loose. Matt Bai contends that prior to this, most political reporting was more concerned with a politician's policy statements but that since then political reporting is more concerned with a politician's personal life and 'optics'.

In my opinion, Hamilton is one of the best current hard sci fi authors. If you like big complicated stories set in a fantastic future, check out his Commonwealth series.

Not a prequel to "The Game of Thrones". This was the best selling novel in the US in 1922. It concerns an English chap who keeps trying to do the right thing, but is constantly misunderstood. He eventually gets wounded in WWI, loses his wife, almost loses his mind, but is reunited with the lost love of his life.

Published in 2014. Although the cover is pretty gory, the story is not King's usual supernatural tale but one of a retired police detective. He's had a successful career but but can't get over the murderer that got away. A guy, called Mr. Mercedes by the press, had some years before, mowed down a bunch of people standing in line at a job fare. He was driving a stolen Mercedes.

Robert Galbraith, in case you don't know, is J. K. Rawlings. Here she starts a new series about as different from Harry Potter as you could imagine. Cormoran Strike is a down-on-his-luck private detective in London who's hired to determine who killed a beautiful model. The problem is that her death had already been ruled a suicide. No magic but lots of adult words.

In 2068, civilization has survived global warming, but just barely. A cop in Australia is given the assignment to protect the premier's father. In a world of extreme over population, the premier has done an illegal thing. He's had his father rejuvenated.

This is the 12th an dlst in a series of novels about British detective Charlie Resnick.  I'd read several of the books and liked them and this was a fitting end to the series. Charlie, close to retirement, is asked to help close a cold case. It's about as cold a case as they come, concerning the 1980s murder of a woman involved with the coal strikes in England at that time.

When I was a kid, Superman was my favorite comic. My daughter, who tends the graphic novel section at the library where she works, brought these home for me. The "All-Star" series of comics allows an author to tackle a story without the usual constraints of continuity. In this 12-issue series, Superman get a fatal does of solar radiation trying to rescue a mission that was sabotaged by Lex Luthor. This series has everything I remember about Superman. And the artwork is fantastic.