Finished Super Powereds Year 4 by Drew Hayes last night (61 hrs on audible). I cannot adequately express my love for this series. I’m in my late 40’s and have read thousands of books in life and have re-read many of them many times. Never has a series utterly hooked me and obsessed me like this. It had me near tears of joy over how awesome some of the scenes toward the end were as various characters got their final climactic moments.
Started Corpies by Drew Hayes today. Its a spinoff of the above series featuring a minor character from the series. Its only one book though (super sad face) and then the universe is over unless Hayes returns to it someday.
Whatever I read next is bound to be a disappointment.
I finished “The Wrong Side of Goodbye” yesterday. While I found one character over the top bizarre—the laid off & transferred police officer—and some parts of the book were slow paced, it was overall an enjoyable read.
I cried towards the end as it was a very touching ending. I’ll have to read more MC, maybe starting at the beginning.
Barring a busy night at work I’ll finish Corpies by Drew Hayes tonight. Assuming my library still has it available for digital checkout I’ll start listening to Neuromancer by William Gibson. Despite its massive importance to the sci fi genre I’ve never actually read or listened to this and am looking forward to it. Hopefully it doesn’t turn out to be an utter disappointment like Childhood’s End (Arthur C Clarke) and The Lathe Of Heaven (Ursala Le Guin) were to me. I experienced both for the first time in the last year because of how awesome they were supposed to be and came away bored by both. Interesting concepts in them but flawed deliveries due to lackluster dialogue and characters you couldn’t care less about.
Like I said earlier, its a good read. Just make sure you look up the chronological reading order of the Boschverse somewhere and do the Lincoln Lawyer books as well. As I recall Mickey Haller (the protagonist of the Lincoln Lawyer) is in the book you just read so thus already know he’s Bosch’s half brother via Bosch’s father whom Bosch never actually met as a child. It starts out as a cool easter egg that fans of the Bosch series will quickly pick up on in the Lincoln Lawyer books but eventually Bosch and Haller meet and figure out they have the same father and gradually grow a connection to the point that they begin to constantly co-star in each other’s books.
And if your really going to do the Bosch verse you also have to read The Poet and Blood Work. Neither feature Bosch at all but the Poet features another character’s first appearance who becomes prominent in the Bosch verse for many books. The lead character in Blood Work will show up in a later Bosch book that won’t make a lot of sense without having read Blood Work.
Re-reading “Rebecca” because it’s our next book club pick. Interesting that my daughter and I both have the same reaction to the lead male; i.e., he creeps us out. Also reading through the Sherlock Holmes stories in the latest MX Publishing anthology of new Sherlock Holmes fiction. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes canon is my usual go-to reading, and I always give a plug for the 1980s version (from the series Granada TV did in the 80s and early 90s) of “The Blue Carbuncle” as fun Christmas time viewing. We watch it every year.
So my attempted listen of Neuromancer only lasted about 30 seconds. Even though it didn’t say so on my libarary’s site the only copy they have for digital download is in German. Why my library would have a german copy and not an english one is baffling.
So instead I’m listening to 14 by Peter Clines. Story seems to be mystery horror thriller about an apartment building that is haunted or something. Not far enough along to be sure about what exactly is going on.
I read Infinite Jest this summer. I don’t mean to brag, but come on. I read every ridiculously long sentence, every endnote, every endnote’s footnote. I Googled every neologism. I feel like there should be a prize beyond my own smug sense of self-satisfaction.
Actual reading (not listening) . . . . . I subscribed to Marvel Unlimited about two years ago. Last year some time I decided to depart on a decade long of everything X-men from the beginning. MU allows you to read by year so I literally did read everything X-men up til about 1997 which is about when the X-men really began to drag. I also knew though I eventually wanted to do a from the beginning read of Spidey. And I knew that I wanted to do a modern read of everything Marvel starting with the event era beginning with House of M. So I decided to back up and start over with Spidey but I’m only up to 1966. Be a while before I read anything non comic.
Finished listening to 14 by Peter Clines last week and am now listening to its quasi sequel The Fold. Quasi because while both are set in the same world they don’t feature any of the same characters.
14 turned out to be about an apartment building that was sort of a conduit to an alternate dimension of Lovecraft type of monsters. Lovecraft is actually referenced as its postulated in the book he was aware of this dimension and based his stories off of it.
The Fold is about a science team who has developed a way to fold space time to allow instant transport between locations. Not done with it yet but its obvious from having read 14 that its somehow tapping into the same Lovecraft type dimension. 14 isn’t necessary to read this book but having read it some things are more obvious.
Then “The Incendiary” which is the true story of John the Painter who was this loser Scottish Dirtbag in the 1700’s who ended up getting hanged for trying to burn down the British Shipyards during the American Revolutionary War in order to help the American cause.
It is a more interesting look at how the Scots were treated at the time than anything… but it is short and well written so I would recommend it.
Now I am on to “Prophet of Bones” which is kind of a dumb alt history novel of a modern day scientist finding really old bones in world where they think that the world is only 6000 years old.
Debating what to listen to next as I’ll finish my audio book sometime tomorrow at work.
Do I dive into book 5 of the Malazan series by Steven Erikson or something easier? The Malazan series has some great storytelling and concept buts its very tough read / listen as it absolutely requires you pay full attention at all times. And the books are very long. I try to do a bunch of easier listens between each book just to let my mind relax. Right now I’m leaning toward more shorter books I have on audible to continue clearing out my backlog of books I’ve bought and have yet to get to.
I’m taking a break from mystery/suspense in favor of early American history, halfway through with America’s First Ladies, published by the White House Historic Association.
It’s amazing the hardships these women endured that would break just about anyone. For instance, there is an organization called Compassionate Friends that offers support for those bereaved of a child.
Yet in the 18th Century & 19th Centuries, death of sometimes multiple children in one families was nothing unexpected. Illnesses that ended the lives of a few, like tb (most likely the 8th FLOTUS, Hannah Van Buren), & pneumonia (#21 Ellen Arthur) are not as frequent in the U S (tb), with pneumonia more treatable.
These women didn’t strictly manage households & entertain at the White House, but had various talents & experience from outside jobs pre marriage, from working in a bank to teaching.
Another interesting one for those interested in criminal justice in the colonies is by Deborah Navas, “Murdered by his Wife”. It’s about Bathsheba Spooner, the first woman to be hung in Worcester, MA.
It’s an interesting account of how trials were conducted & how her father’s being a Loyalist may have influenced the verdict. Also provided a look at why an adulteress pregnant with another’s baby would have had option zero in the colonies as divorce was forbidden & such a woman publicly flogged.
Just finished “In Order to Live”, Yeonmi Park’s account of her childhood in North Korea, her escape, with her mother, to South Korea. A lot of it is very sad, the trafficking in young girls who escape by way of China is pretty horrific.
One thing I found interesting - prior to the great famine in the early '90s, most of the people who escaped to South Korea and were admitted were male, with education and skills, so the processing was fairly easy. Since then, there has been an increase in North Koreans who are women and children, those with lower education and few or no job skills, costing South Korea more time and money to integrate them, so SK is making it much harder for this newer group of refugees.
