Member: jseger9000
CollectionsYour library (2,735), Currently reading (1), Read but unowned (11), All collections (2,746)
Reviews172 reviews
TagsHorror (711), Science Fiction (679), Fantasy (362), 1st in series (314), Leisure (183), Thriller (155), Western (153), Pulp (119), Novelization (94), Mystery (84) — see all tags
Cloudstag cloud, author cloud, tag mirror
Recommendations161 recommendations
About meI'm currently reading: | I've recently finished:
| 
Books first, since this is a book site after all: I love scary stories and have a real soft spot for first time authors. I buy way too many books to reasonably read (especially since I consider myself a slow reader). I only read one book at a time. Otherwise I feel like I'm short-changing the author.
I like to carry my books with me everywhere I go (and I'm a cheap bastard), so I prefer good old mass market paperbacks. I will pick up trade paperbacks if that is all that is available, but avoid hardbacks.
I am perhaps a little too verbose in my reviews. I write like I talk. Can't help it.
In order to support my obscene book buying habit, I maintained a seasonal position at Barnes & Noble. I don't do it any longer. Took too much time. But I kinda miss it. Please put books away if you aren't going to buy them!
Other stuff: Born and raised in California, but cheap real estate brought me to the suburban hell that is The Woodlands, TX (a few miles outside of Houston).
I'm kind of a boring person and at times think I could be happy as a hermit. I'm a left-leaning atheist, which makes me a pariah whenever politics or religion come up in public here in Dubya's home state.
Like everybody else, I enjoy books, movies and music (books most of all). In all three I've noticed that I can enjoy Great Works and crap. But I always have some sort of justification for the crap I enjoy.
As for movies, I love horror movies (especially John Carpenter's stuff) and anything by Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg or Sergio Leone. I'm also a big fan of Godzilla or any of the other Toho giant monster movies. For me it just doesn't get better than a man in a rubber suit knocking over buildings, unless it's two men in rubber suits fighting and knocking over buildings. Yeah, baby! That's the good stuff!
I won't bore you with my fav music.
Create your own visitor map!
About my libraryA book with no rating means I haven't read it or it's been so long that I should re-read it. That's most of my books!
I try to feed my head with decent literature, but a quick scan of my library shows that really I'm a horror junky who loves a generous dose of hard sci-fi and some historical fiction on the side. My latest addiction is pulpy, schlocky westerns.
I really enjoy American lit from the first half of the twentieth century. Steinbeck is my very favorite author, but I also love Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I've tried some Faulkner and Sinclair Lewis and some others, but so far no one else has moved me the way those big three have.
My true love is horror stories. I think it stems from my interest in folk tales and urban legends. I really go for stories of the supernatural invading everyday life. I don't like endless series about weepy, erotic vampires in black lace. I like my horror stories to have strong characters. They seem to make the supernatural hi-jinks easier to swallow. My favorite writers are Stephen King (except the Dark Tower books. I tend to skip those), Peter Straub and Bentley Little.
I read a lot of fantasy as a kid, but I think I grew out of it once I discovered Arthur C. Clarke and hard sci-fi. I've tried picking up some fantasy since then, but it just doesn't have the magic it once did. (Except maybe for Michael Moorcock...) I do still like reading stuff from the pulp days. Fritz Leiber goes sadly unrecognized as a fantasy grand master. Love Robert E. Howard's stuff. He seems to be the antithesis of what fantasy is nowadays.
I love sci-fi in the 2001 mold. Near future stories set within the solar system about encounters with aliens or alien artifacts. Usually very technical descriptions of life in space with pretty flat characters. Steven Baxter is my favorite current writer. I also love Isaac Asimov and as mentioned Arthur C. Clarke.
Shogun introduced me to the wonder of historical fiction. I especially have a soft spot for ancient Greece and Rome. Some of my favorites are Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, Colleen McCullough's The Song of Troy and Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa books.
I've only listed books here if I currently own them myself. (My better half has a slew of Dean Koontz books for instance, but I don't consider them 'mine' so they aren't listed.)
GroupsAtheism and humanism, Atheist Fiction, Atheists review books, Banned Books, BBC Radio 3 Listeners, Bestsellers over the Years, Book Fiend, Book reviewers, Bookshelf of the Damned, Brights —show all groups, Combiners!, Fans of Robert R. McCammon, Happy Heathens, Hardboiled / Noir Crime Fiction, Historical Fiction, Horror, Horror Book Club, King's Dear Constant Readers, Name that Book, Pro and Con, Progressive & Liberal!, Pulp Fiction, Review Discussions, Reviews reviewed, Science Fiction Fans, Science!, Skeptic's book club, Social Democrats & Democratic Socialists, Stephen King Addicts, The Globe, The Green Dragon, The Horror Film: History, Reference, and Beyond, The Literati, The Weird Tradition, Thing(amabrarian)s That Go Bump in the Night, This Is Halloween..., True Crime, Weird Fiction, Westerns
Favorite authorsIsaac Asimov, Stephen Baxter, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert E. Howard, John Irving, Garrison Keillor, Stephen King, Bentley Little, Colleen McCullough, Michael Moorcock, Jean Shepherd, John Steinbeck, Peter Straub, Amy Tan, Tennessee Williams (Shared favorites)
VenuesFavorites
Favorite bookstoresBarnes & Noble Booksellers - The Woodlands, Half Price Books - North Oaks
Also onAmazon, Facebook, IMDB, LiveJournal, MySpace
Membership
LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway
Real nameJames Seger
LocationThe Woodlands, Texas
Emailjseger9000
comcast.net
Account typepublic, lifetime
URLs
http://www.librarything.com/profile/jseger9000 (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jseger9000 (library)
Member sinceMay 11, 2007
Currently readingDragons of Autumn Twilight (Dragonlance Chronicles, Book 1) by Margaret Weis
Leave a comment
Sign up or sign in to leave a comment.
not sure if you'll check the topic thread about true crime and horror where you asked about Leopold and Loeb books. Here is what I posted there:
#16 jseger9000
Though this is not an entire book on the Leopold and Leob case, [Attorney for the Damned] by [[Arthur Weinberg]] is a book that has parts of the transcipts and final summations before the juries that Clarence Darrow's made in his defence trials. Darrow was the lawyer representing Leopold and Loeb and in this book is Darrow's plea against capital punishment for these two and to convict on insanity. I am not sure but something tells me this is one of the earliest, if not the first, insanity plea. Anyway, I read it a long time ago but remember it as a very interesting book.
posted by magnumpigg at 12:03 pm (EST) on Nov 8, 2011
I agree on AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE - it would have been much better suited to a multi-volume format. There is a lot of ground to cover, to say the least! Saw BLUE SUNSHINE so long ago I barely remember it, but it still gets positive reviews. This has all got me primed to go on a Something Weird Video kick. I'll be doing my annual watching of their MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY next week, and I just saw THE HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND, but I need to compare new titles on the SWV website to what's currently available on Netflix.
posted by KentonSem at 12:47 pm (EST) on Oct 24, 2011
Quartzite
posted by quartzite at 5:10 pm (EST) on Sep 23, 2011
Quartzite
posted by quartzite at 5:10 pm (EST) on Sep 23, 2011
bob
posted by bjbookman at 9:39 am (EST) on Aug 5, 2011
It's on your profile, under Homepage. Scroll up a bit from here to see it.
posted by jimroberts at 2:14 pm (EST) on Jul 30, 2011
posted by jimroberts at 9:46 am (EST) on Jul 30, 2011
posted by kswolff at 9:50 am (EST) on Jun 24, 2011
posted by timdt at 9:34 am (EST) on Jun 3, 2011
posted by timdt at 2:58 pm (EST) on May 25, 2011
Regarding Sibby Dark's race, I didn't really care one way or the other at all, it was just the inconsistencies about it that bothered me. There was a line less than halfway into the book where Dark describes her "milky white skin," which totally threw me when I watched the videos. Then when he reads the paternity test results at the end, her race is listed clearly as "Caucasian." Oh well, not a big deal, it was just odd that such a basic element would be inconsistent between the text and the videos.
I did indeed have to register, which was annoying, but I figured, hey, I bought the book, gotta watch the videos too. The site is odd because it's as though they were trying to create a mini-Facebook kind of Level 26-related social network, with member profiles, discussion forums, etc. I just wanted to see the darn videos, not participate in a community. But having said all that, at least watch a few videos because seeing Sqweegel in action the first time he encounters Sibby really brought home how freakish this guy is. And I agree -- it's a weird/terrible choice for a name.
Be curious to hear your reaction if you ever get around to watching some of the videos.
Best,
Andrew
posted by bibliorex at 12:11 am (EST) on May 18, 2011
posted by RabidPete at 10:56 pm (EST) on Feb 11, 2011
posted by RabidPete at 9:57 pm (EST) on Feb 10, 2011
posted by edgeworth at 10:06 pm (EST) on Jan 26, 2011
I was a young man, just back from Vietnam when I read Macroscope, Cities in Flight, and Stand on Zanzibar. I thought they were all three excellent at the time (remember Star Trek was new on the small screen) and seemed more mature productions than the SF I had been reading earlier in my life, a lot of Heinlein juveniles, Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke. I liked the idea of Macroscope (so did the Ancients, apparently, if Stargate SG1 is to be believed). Cities in Flight was the first SF series I had read under one cover, and frankly, not knowing it was a series until the third book, I was mystified between the totally unrelated events of the first two books. Stand on Zanzibar is a forgotten mystery to me now, but I do remember it made a very distinct impression on me at the time I read it. The human population bomb was just beginning to be a topic of discussion in the seventies and this book seemed very prescient.
In my estimation SF went off the rails with the next two books I read, one by Robert Silverburg about a society in which everyone was hooked up to virtual reality machines and spent most of their time virtually engaged in the most despicable behaviors. Oh, and there was a lot of drug use just to get people through the day. I don't like books that portray most humans as slobs wishing and dreaming their lives away. After that I tried to read Stranger in a Strange Land. H's jaundiced view of religion and the unrelenting cynicism (or was it authoritarianism, or both) of the book really turned me off. It was filled with very disagreeable persons. H might not have liked the hippie culture, but then he should have spent some time nosing into why there was a hippie culture. Finally, I read Rendezvous with Rama which was okay, mostly because it was 250 or so pages of nothing happening. Shortly after, I read The Pickwick Papers and it was all over but the shouting. I had discovered real writing, real storytelling, and a joi d'vivre missing from SF. I realized that SF was in a way becoming a caricature of itself (IMHO). I realized also, I was growing up and my tastes and interests were changing and SF was not really headed anywhere I wanted to go. Why should I read such downers as dystopias, and worlds dying, when I could read uplifting stuff, or at least stuff that had relevence to people's lives. I tried again about ten years later with the Foundation Trilogies, but they were like pulling fingernails to read. I followed that up by what I think of as a pointless exercise in what-if by Harry Harrison called West of Eden. After that I think I read a PPAnthony book about interstellar spaceflight powered by solar winds. It featured a kind of catch-22 figure named Crazy Eddie, but that's all I remember about it. My conclusion was twofold. Entertainment was a perfectly ordinary target for the author to shoot for, but entertainment is not the be all and end all of the reading experience to me. I want something more and Crazy Eddie just wasn't cutting it for me. The other conclusion was that I could not afford time-wise nor monetarily to play the hit and miss game between something entertaining and something teeth grindingly bad which seemed to be the situation at that time (eighties-early nineties) in SF. I had, by that time read many of "The Classics", had developed a real taste for some authors (if you want a psychological thriller there's none better than Jack London's The Sea Wolf, for instance). I had also tried my hand at fantasy by then, I read LotR and a pair of trilogies about a guy with leprosy who saved some other world between stints as a carny or something. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, I think. I must be the only person alive who does not adore LotR and reread it every New Years or something. I realized most fantasy were massive tomes of so-so writing relating improbable adventures for the sake of writing massive tomes. I get more fast-paced entertainment when I want it from one Preston/Child thriller than anything else, so when I really want to take a break and read a mindless entertainment (as opposed to a mind-numbing entertainment) I reach for them. I'm afraid my love of the classics has put me off of SF, probably forever, especially given that most SF has turned dystopian, a genre I truly despise, or lost in the gigglywigs of speculation on all fronts, including fronts that are pointless to speculate about. The South didn't win the Civil War, the Nazi's didn't win the Battle of Britain, if a minute, laboratory constructed black hole swallows all existence and spits it out the other side, there's precious little we can do about it. Maybe the solution is to pull the plug, but that would ruin a perfectly good story, and besides it's a good opportunity for a hundred page data dump on why pulling the plug won't solve the problem.
I think what happened was that my tastes matured, began determining my world view, and mitigating against that which I thought was mostly pointless. I tried a couple of years ago to get back into SF with the SF group reads and by following the SF group on LT. I read about six books of SF at that time and feel that only The Day of the Triffids was not a waste of time. Yeah, I know who Gully Foyle is now, but it wasn't really worth it to me to find out. I somehow feel that Macroscope, Stand on Zanzibar, and especially Cities in Flight would stand the test of time, but I'm afraid to find out.
posted by geneg at 3:59 pm (EST) on Jan 16, 2011
posted by MichaelKeyWest at 5:23 am (EST) on Dec 9, 2010
posted by Aerrin99 at 3:57 pm (EST) on Nov 17, 2010
posted by Aerrin99 at 8:17 am (EST) on Nov 17, 2010
posted by Ape at 4:13 pm (EST) on Oct 29, 2010
Thank you very much for the note about Halloweenland and the Orangefield series! I will correct my review to reflect the contents of Horrorween (crediting you, of course) -- and yeah, that's a pretty bad title. Sorry about including the spoilers in the review, but, well, I felt I had to. Thanks for updating the Orangefield series page as well. I was basing that piece of my review largely on that page and Sarrantonio's page on Fantastic Fiction.
Let me include the last two paragraphs of the review because they don't include any spoilers:
My copy of Halloweenland also contains a copy of the novella “The Baby,” which is substantively identical to the first third of the novel, save that the ending chapter of “The Baby” was changed for the novel. While it’s nice to have a copy of “The Baby,” only the final few pages of it differ from what you’ve just read in Halloweenland, so there’s not all that much value added. For what it’s worth, I prefer the ending of “The Baby” to what happened in Halloweenland.
I give Halloweenland 3 stars out of 5. I wanted to like it more than the actual book warranted, but will probably still pick up Sarrantonio’s other Orangefield books when I see them.
Oh and BTW, this is actually one of the reviews I'll be including this month on my blog, where I'm doing one horror/Halloween-themed review every day. Because I decided to do this at the very end of September, many of the reviews are for horror graphic novels because those were quicker to re-read on short notice.
http://bibliorex.wordpress.com/
In any case, thanks again for the info!
Andrew
posted by bibliorex at 8:26 pm (EST) on Oct 19, 2010
John Russo did write two entirely different books with the title Return of the living dead. The 1978 one was a serious horror novel about the recurrence of the plague. The 1985 was a novelization of the Horror comedy Film. Whats worse both versions I have have a cover of a partially fleshed skull against a black background.
Regards Peter
posted by Eisler at 7:21 pm (EST) on Oct 10, 2010
I have read where stores prefer to sell trade paperbacks because they make more money than mass market books.
What is sad is I remember how pissed off I was when I bought all the Edgar Rice Burroughs Ace paperbacks for 35 or 40 cents and Ballantine wanted 50 cents for the ones Ace didn't published.
nice talking to you James,
bob
posted by bjbookman at 9:49 am (EST) on Sep 23, 2010
Thanks for the link. I don't know if I will cancel or not. I have always wonder why Zebra or Pinnacle hasn't started a horror club. I use to belong to delirum horror book club. Then they dropped the paperback and want to offer hardbacks. sixty bucks is just to much to spend, so I cancel.
I know it's not great literature, but horror sure is fun to read. Only books in horror at the chains are cute vampires and stephen king. Just one more thing to piss me off.
take care
bob
posted by bjbookman at 10:48 am (EST) on Sep 22, 2010
I notice you added 'blood artist' and 'audrey door' to your collection. I was expecting a Richard Laymon from the horror book club. I read where leisure will be going to ebooks and maybe print book for club members. Do you have any information about our book club?
thanks, bob
posted by bjbookman at 8:27 am (EST) on Sep 22, 2010
The latest copies from Leisure that I just added are e-books purchased from Amazon. I have a Kindle, so the experience was not that bad other than they are charging just as much as if I was getting a physical book. I had been checking Amazon every other day, and to my knowledge, they just went up for sale today. These are the books that club members should have received in late August, and should have been on sale at bookstores in early September. My understanding is that the last books that Leisure mailed to their club members were the August's releases. There will be no more until they make another official announcement.
I heard that there are some talks where Leisure is trying to find another distributor for their books. If successful, they would adopt and handle mailing for club members. There is tons of speculation though, so it is hard to know what is official and what is not.
All that I know is that for now, we are basically on your own for purchasing the books from Amazon.
posted by Huge_Horror_Fan at 3:16 pm (EST) on Sep 16, 2010
posted by DChurch71 at 3:46 pm (EST) on Aug 4, 2010
posted by readafew at 11:08 pm (EST) on Jul 21, 2010
Have a great time on vacation.
Tony
posted by silversurfer at 10:56 am (EST) on Jun 25, 2010
Hope all is good,
TONY
posted by silversurfer at 2:03 pm (EST) on Jun 22, 2010
posted by hoopmanjh at 12:56 pm (EST) on Mar 6, 2010
posted by GeekGoddess at 11:41 am (EST) on Feb 24, 2010
posted by Locke at 1:57 am (EST) on Feb 21, 2010
Well, sometimes I don't know what to think about a book. But when I order other titles by the same author while I'm reading then I guess I'm on the right track. When I read The Totem I ordered Testament and First Blood as well (just to see how it reads compared to the movie). And I did the same with The Blue Rose Trilogy by Peter Straub even though I had mixed feelings about Koko. It was somewhat hard to read but I certainly wanted more...
I'm almost a third into The Omen right now. Seltzer is definitely not as good a writer as Morrell or Straub but he do knows how to bring the story forward. Until now it more or less reads like the screenplay for the movie (which I like, by the way). That's okay! After Koko I want something that doesn't require that much effort...
Hope Summer of Night is in the mail today. I've heard so many good things about that novel and I've never read a book by Dan Simmons before.
posted by Locke at 2:42 am (EST) on Feb 6, 2010
posted by Locke at 11:00 am (EST) on Feb 5, 2010
http://www.librarything.com/topic/74651 Choose a book from someone else's library that you would be interested in reading.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/80387 Password - Choose a word from your book and give clues on what that word is and others guess.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/80086 Hangman - Guess the letters to make up the title of a book.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/75794 What does the last two books in common
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=74233 What are you reading now and other questions.
Looking forward to seeing you in one of my threads.
posted by callmejacx at 1:12 pm (EST) on Dec 31, 2009
What a great series, no?! I posted in your Sci-Fi thread about it, as well. It's always been a favorite, and I am in the midst of a re-read as we speak (on the final volume). Did you read the entire series, or did you keep with a certain group? I must admit, I haven't read it all. I grew up reading the Macross Saga, and then the Sentinels. I just couldn't get into the other 'sagas', probably because of how I felt about the Macross crew.
posted by deslni01 at 4:43 pm (EST) on Dec 2, 2009
posted by bluetyson at 9:54 am (EST) on Nov 17, 2009
posted by timdt at 6:56 pm (EST) on Oct 4, 2009
posted by erinbearlina at 10:02 pm (EST) on Oct 2, 2009
posted by NickCato at 11:01 pm (EST) on Sep 16, 2009
As to your comment about work crap leading to more reading crap--right there with you. I'm in the book business (Borders), and we are so up against it with our new corporate structure and [anti]philosophy that when I'm not at work I just want to read one thriller after another.
But it's better than drugs for the health, and a little more cost effective.
Talk to you in the group!
Becky
posted by BeckyJG at 11:29 am (EST) on Sep 15, 2009
posted by BeckyJG at 1:13 pm (EST) on Sep 13, 2009
Dropped by because I'm thinking of joining the 2010 Flavor of the Month group read, and you're the guy who posted the list.
Love your profile comments--I think we may be reading soulmates after a fashion, because I feel the same way about the Great Works/crap dichotomy, as well as the justification for the crap. Hey, it's all good in one way or another.
Anyway, hope to chat over at Constant Readers now and again.
Happy reading (and collecting!).
Becky
posted by BeckyJG at 1:03 pm (EST) on Sep 13, 2009
posted by cmtusa at 11:12 pm (EST) on Sep 3, 2009
http://christophertusa.com/
Thanks,
Chris
posted by cmtusa at 9:21 pm (EST) on Sep 3, 2009
posted by KentAllard1 at 3:18 am (EST) on Aug 25, 2009
posted by edgeworth at 1:51 am (EST) on Aug 23, 2009
Praise is always welcome, of course :) but I don't deserve all the credit, I wouldn't have done it without encouragement. I floated the idea for a group of this sort here in Go Review That Book and a few others made suggestions and gave the necessary encouragement. Until recently, after I'd been on LT for a while, I hadn't tried to write reviews, so I reckon I need some help and RR is where I get it.
posted by jimroberts at 4:40 pm (EST) on Aug 11, 2009
Hope you're having a great vacation!
countrylife
(For continuity) you said:
Hey, I'm on vacation and went to Sedona today. I saw a book very similar to the one you reviewed. It was called 'Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon'.
Not sure if you are really all that interested in a second book dealing with death at a national park, but it reminded me of your review.
posted by countrylife at 3:48 pm (EST) on Aug 11, 2009
(I usually only check this profile when I mirror a review from my LJ here -- sorry I haven't responded earlier!)
posted by Pulpfan at 1:56 am (EST) on Jul 4, 2009