David Woodger

I was looking at Hugo Award winners and saw that this was a recent winner and not only that but the second one in the trilogy also won the following year (2017). Well, this one was very engaging. A fascinating world with a dangerous geologic history, full of earthquakes and long periods of harsh living conditions. In this world you have a class of people who, for whatever unknown reason, are born with powers to psychically harness or alter the powers of the earth, whether that is quelling earthquakes or freezing areas around them, etc. Known as orogenes, they are both revered and reviled (mostly the latter). They are not the only strange thing or people in this world. But you should discover it for yourself. I've already bought the second book.

It may be classified as YA (Young Adult) but it rarely feels like that as you're reading. I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy so much that I quickly bought books 2 and 3. It just takes me a while to get around to every book I want to read. Am I right? Anyway, this book continues the saga of the young magician Nathaniel (who seems to be getting a little too caught up in the trappings of power), the djinni he calls upon to serve him, Bartimaeus (as wise-cracking as ever), and young Kitty Jones who's part of a small resistance movement against the disdainful, untrustworthy magicians that run the government. And there's some other conspiracy afoot which gets more and more dangerous. It's really interesting to follow the trajectories of Nathaniel and Kitty. But Bartimaeus has been around for centuries, so I doubt he's going to change (which is a good thing).

So I did something I never thought I'd do: I joined a book club. It's a science book club, but for one reason or another the first book chosen is science fiction with some “hard sci-fi” within it. This book was very popular in China and a 2015 Hugo Award winner. It's starts off interestingly enough with characters dealing with the Cultural Revolution of the late 60s, a tumultuous time in Chinese history. And then it jumps to the present and our protagonist is a nanotechnology developer named Wang. As I read along, I knew that at its heart, this was a first-contact story, so I was interested to get to when that actually happened. But my interest began to fade for several reasons:

> One-dimensional characters – Wang, himself, is a bit of a cipher. And the flamboyant cop “Da Shi” was a laughable cliché.
> Wang spends several chapters immersed in an online video game called Three Body that spans eons and is supremely boring.
> Character motivations were either unbelievable, undiscernable, or too Chinese for me to grasp.
> It's not an exciting story. Very little seems to actually happen. And, through no fault of the translation, this book reads like an outline, written by a high school physics geek – dry, amateurish, and dull.
> And it ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly – it's the first of a trilogy, but that doesn't excuse this ending.
> Near the end of the book, I had to skim a bit, something I rarely do. That's never a good sign.

This wins a Hugo?!

Jack Durkin is the current caretaker of Lorne Field. From age 21 until his first-born son can take over at age 21, his contracted job is to “weed” the field every day. But he's not really pulling up weeds. They may look like weeds but they're Aukowies and if left alone will grow fast and in about 8 days would grow into a 9-foot-long fanged beast that would eat everything and everyone. And there's a giant field of them. The Durkin family has been doing this for 300 years but these days there are few people who believe the weeds are anything but simple weeds.

You can see where this is heading can't you? That's part of the problem. No real surprises. Another issue is that none of the characters are all that likable. Nevertheless, I zipped through the story in just a few days. Story could've really used some surprises, though.

I confess that this books cool cover was the first thing that drew me in. Then seeing that it was highly rated among thousands of Amazon users... And then finding out that the sequel was also highly rated... And of course the cool premise. Namely that there are four Londons that our protagonist, Kell, can navigate between. These Londons are all capitals of different countries with different monarchs. Grey London has very little magic and is ruled by George III. Red London (which Kell calls home) is the seat of the Maresh empire and is flush with magic. White London is ruled by the psychotic Dane siblings, Athos and Astrid, and is losing magic fast. And Black London, which no one talks about and has been largely cut off since magic went wild there. Trouble starts when Kell comes into possession of a dangerous magical artefact from Black London. Story moves briskly and I has to read the final hundred pages all at once.

Couldn't resist snapping up this debut print collection of five horror stories written and illustrated by Emily Carroll. The stories are creepy and fun and usually have a surprising twist. The illustrations are inventive and the use of color is impressive. I've since learned that the author has developed a following from her website, emcarroll.com, and I'm going to need to revisit that.

The true story of a Syrian-American man, Abdulrahman Zeitoun (“zay-toon”) and his family and their experiences during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans during August/September 2003. Not really a book I would've chosen on my own to read but my wife gifted it to me and I was intrigued. I read it fairly quickly too. It was a fascinating portrait of a man and a natural disaster and the strange paths his life takes during this time. But if you look further into the turns Zeitoun's life takes after the events in the book, you'll find that things were far from a happy ending for this family.

Don't look at these links if you decide to read the book yourself. Only check them out afterward.

theAdvocate.com
nola.com
NYTimes.com

The third book featuring people who can teleport, this one centers on Davy & Millie's high school-age daughter, Cent, who suddenly discovers she's inherited the ability from her parents. Jumper and Reflex are the first two books. It's light escapism with teleporting skills (my favorite superpower) so this was a fun vacation-time read. Just found out there's a sequel to this one, too, called Exo. Neat.

Some months ago I listened to a half a dozen podcasts from the folks at BookRiot and after hearing them suggest this book three times, I added it to my maybe-list. And then I decided, what-the-hell, and snapped it up since it promised to be something weird and different. Well it sucked me right in. It was weird, different, creepy, suspenseful and awesome. People are seeing something outside that makes them either suicidal or homicidal and suicidal. And these things escalate until people are covering their windows and becoming shut-ins subsisting on hordes of canned food. If people dare to venture outside, they blindfold themselves. One young mother decides to venture 20 miles down a river with two four-year-old twins, all of them blindfolded. This story is told in simple language and sticks with you. I kinda loved it.

I began the year with Daniel O'Malley's debut, The Rook, and loved it, so when this sequel came out it was snapped up fast. It was actually high on my son's To Be Read list and he read it first (in 4 days!). The world of the Checquy Files is weird, cool, exciting and funny. In this story, there's a fragile alliance beginning between the Checquy (a British secret service of the supernatural) and the Belgian “Grafters”, experts in super-advanced physiological modifications. And then there's a shadowy group, the Antagonists, that want to shatter this new alliance. Such a fun read! One of my favorite new authors.

This one's over 20 years old, but I finally decided to give this one a go. The story of a young royal bastard who eventually is groomed into becoming an assassin for King Shrewd, his grandfather. Pretty quickly, I discovered that Robin Hobb is an eloquent writer and she takes her time with the story. The characters are interesting which is good because there's not a lot of action per se. In fact, of the assassin's arts, young Fitz, our hero, mainly focuses on poisoning. So this sword-and-sorcery book has almost non-existent “sword.” Still, it was captivating enough to read it all the way through. Don't think I'll continue, though.

This is the second tale of Egil (big dude, carries hammers to crush little dudes) and Nix (sneaky thief who dabbles in magical artifacts). They get caught up in some shenanigans with a local crime guild and wreak havoc. Just the right thing to read when I wanted something light and sword-and-sorcery-ish to wade through.

While browsing online, I came across this book and whatever site happens to mention it, has good things to say about it. So, in the mood to try a sword-and-sorcery tale based on ancient Persian culture and legends, I gave this one a shot. Here's a bit from the flap copy:

In 8th century Baghdad, a stranger pleads with the vizier to safeguard the bejeweled tablet he carries, but he is murdered before he can explain. Charged with solving the puzzle, the scholar Dabir soon realizes that the tablet may unlock secrets hidden within the lost city of Ubar, the Atlantis of the sands. When the tablet is stolen from his care, Dabir and Captain Asim are sent after it, and into a life and death chase through the ancient Middle East.

The story is narrated by Captain Asim, a likable warrior in the house the vizier, Jaffar. I almost lost interest somewhere in the first third of the story but pressed on regardless and was soon hooked anew. It's a well-written tale infused with the culture of ancient Persia. I enjoyed the writing, the story and the well-drawn characters. You could tell that the author had done a lot of research into this time period and it paid off.

Pretty sure I saw this one mentioned in the NYT Book Review and I snapped it up. Then, not even remembering the details of the review and not bothering to read the jacket copy (it's in hardcover), I set to reading this tale. It's a wild, outlandish, modern odyssey of a story with our hero Ben deciding to take a walk since he has some hours to kill before a business meeting. He's checked into some bucolic hotel and walks out the back towards the woods. When he stumbles across what seems to be the aftermath of a murder by people who don't seem quite human, he makes a run for it and becomes epically lost. Things get stranger from there. The story is propulsive, horrific, fun and just a cool excursion. I read the book (it's short) in just under 5 days – which is quick for me. Good ending too.

Hey. So anyway, after I read the book, I then read the jacket flap and was glad I'd waited. It was a helluva lot more fun going into this story completely in the dark from the get-go. I hate when the copy gives too much away. But that's me.

Hey! A fun book (with pictures) about octopuses! And octopuses is the correct plural form since the root word is from Greek, not Latin. The author spends a lot of time at the New England Aquarium and gets to know several Giant Pacific octopuses. She also learns to scuba dive so she can observe them in the wild as well. At barely 250 pages, this is a great introduction to a fascinating animal. Among other things I learned that octopuses taste with their skin; most of their neurons are not in the brains, but in their arms; they are very strong – one sucker might lift 30 pounds, and that they would be crazy-expensive pets.

Another in a long line of books I've been reading aloud (in this case to my daughter). We've enjoyed the story and got a number of chuckles out of it. Our hero, Egg, has to deal with pirates, imprisonment, battles at sea, siblings who are much less than perfect, and jealousy. He comes out all right. We've enjoyed this trilogy.

For a little while I was listening to some GetBooked podcasts from BookRiot. They seemed to keep recommending this one. They had also recommended The Rook which I read last January and which was excellent. But this one was not as strong. The story concerned a disparate crew of a space tug whose job was to create worm-hole tunnels through space. The crew was a mix of humans and few other sentient species along with an AI. Easy to read, but my main problem with it was the meandering, non-propulsive plot. Not exactly a page-turner, more a sci-fi piece concerning some interpersonal (and interspecies) relationships aboard a spaceship. It was interesting enough to finish, but I confess to some skimming in the final quarter.

Upped to 3 stars because my teenage son liked it better than I did.

This fifth outing of the necromancer Johannes Cabal, along with his brother Horst, a vampire, is much of what I've come to expect from the series: wit, demons, murder, excitement, and fun. I love the dry wit that's littered throughout the text. And in this go-round, the plot got off to a slow-ish start, but it wasn't long before it really kicked into gear and I was grinning and quickly turning pages until the very end. I think I need to read more by this author.

This one's a favorite of my son's so he said I should read it. Set in a bleak near-future world, the only fun anyone seems to have is within a virtual reality world(s) called the OASIS. It's in the OASIS that high-schooler Wade Watts spends all his time, dreaming of finding three keys left behind by the recently departed creator of the OASIS, James Halliday. And Halliday was a kid in the 80s, so knowledge of pop-culture from the 80s is both important to the plot and a big part of the fun in this book. So, basically it a virtual-reality quest tale with some real-world danger attached. And a bit of romance. Should be a wicked cool movie that Spielberg makes out of it. I'm just glad I read the book first before the internet got all spoilery all over it. (Sometimes it's good to ignore the internet).

From the back cover description:

Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organization and this person wants her dead.

As Myfanwy battles to save herself, she encounters a person with four bodies, a woman who can enter her dreams, children transformed into deadly fighters, and an unimaginably vast conspiracy. Suspenseful and hilarious, The Rook is an outrageously inventive debut for readers who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime.

I'd heard that the BBC were producing a show based on this book. That got me interested and I was ready for something unusual as well. This book is set in the late 1800s during the Napoleonic wars. Magic is a real thing but no one has been practicing it in England for hundreds of years. Until Mr. Norrell enters the scene.
This book is just over a thousand pages set in tiny type (my paperback copy, anyway). The pace is leisurely but the subject is interesting and the style is old-fashioned. So I was drawn in pretty quickly in the first few hundred pages. But trying to read this at night with tired eyes, reading glasses, and small type often meant that I'd only get through about ten pages at a time. I started this book in March, got to page 750 and decided I needed a break. That break included reading about seven other books.
And then Netflix picked up the BBC show. I watched the first two episodes and thought the show was great fun. So that got me all interested again and I wanted to finish the book before getting to a point in the show that was beyond where I'd read to in the story. Those last 250 pages were read pretty quickly and, indeed, the pace quickened considerably as well. I was glad I perservered. I'm about halfway through the show now and ready to continue watching. I think they've done an excellent job with the casting so far and the pace of the show is brisk.

And now for something completely different. It's sortuva meta-book. Imagine a young college student named Jen finds a book in the library called Ship of Theseus by the mysterious, yet prolific author V.M. Straka. She sees that there are notes written in the margins and she writes a reply to one of them. Eric, a disgraced grad student, writes back and they continue doing so through multiple readings (and multiple-colored pens) throughout the book. In the margins they discuss the book, themselves, and the mysterious author and equally mysterious tranlator. The story concerns an amnesiac man (called S.) who gets shanghaied onto a strange ship with a very strange crew and sets off on a weird, dangerous journey. The book is stuffed with almost two dozen inserts ranging from postcards, to letters, to copies of telegrams and newspaper articles, etc. Ship of Theseus is made to look like a library book from the 50s. It's very cool. It's also very puzzling, ofttimes confusing, but pulls you in nonetheless. Probably would've taken me a lot longer to plow through it had I not read it while on vacation. And even though I was mystified by much of it, I was captivated by the twin stories and kept reading all the way through. Not all the book's questions are answered. I was glad I read it but would hesitate to blindly recommend it. This book was concieved by J.J. Abrams and written by Doug Dorst.

Took a break from the weird to get back to crime fiction. Doesn't get much lighter than a return to Jack Reacher, the 6-foot-5 ex-MP who ends up in trouble all the time. In a kidnapping screw-up, Reacher gets abducted along with a hot FBI agent named Holly Johnson. Bad guys get what they deserve. Hey, while I'm on the subject, does anyone out there know which book the new Jack Reacher movie (starring 5-foot-7 Tom Cruise) is based off of?

My son discovered this author not long ago and quickly became a fan. He pressed this on me and said I should read it too. It's the story of a small band of thieves hired to break out a valuable prisoner from an impregnable fortress. It's also a fantasy so there are some magical elements which manifest themselves in the people known as the Grisha. The Grisha have varied powers that fall into about seven different categories, mostly having to do with manipulation of elements. They've appeared in a prior trilogy set in the same world as this one (one I haven't read.) The band of thieves, six of them, are interesting, distinct characters, each with their own motivations. The plot is straightforward, linear, and easy to follow. It was an enjoyable story. It continues in the followup called Crooked Kingdom.