The Fairy Godmother's Tale (Marks)

The Fairy Godmother's Tale
Robert B. Marks (2025)

(Unlike most of my other posts, this post is a review. I received an ARC from Library Thing in exchange for an honest review. The review is posted there, but is also included on this page. For those who stumble upon this page, generally my posts are not review, but rather some notes to help me remember the things I've read.)

A young woman finds that she can grant wishes, causes a catastrophe, becomes a penitent, and starts a journey that stumbles through several fairy tales. Then she becomes the wife of a soldier and marches back and forth a lot before a final showdown with an adverserial wish granter.

The story opens ten years after The Peace of Westphalia. I know this because it's mentioned several times. Not being a student of history, I put the book aside to learn that the peace marked the end of the Thirty Years War, so the year must be 1658.

There's an island in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Germany that has managed to erase itself from maps and live on their own during the war. Elisa, no last name, is the daughter of a bookbinder, who realizes that she can see other people's deepest wishes. Then she realizes that these wishes have strings that she can mentally pull to grant them. She's unsure about using this power because she doesn't know if it's from God or the devil, and she's afraid that she might be declared a witch. After consulting with a priest, she grants a wish, and it turns out well. So she decides to grants the wishes of everyone on the island at once. It sets off a revolution where the royal family is put to death as well as her own family and friends. She manages to the escape as the island is engulfed in flames.

After making it to Germany, the first person she meets is the Wandering Jew, whereupon Elisa resolves to become a penitent. I know this because it's mentioned dozens and dozens of times, as she will constantly repeat it to people who already know, including the reader. After this comes a long retelling of Cinder-Ella. Elisa helps Ella's dream come true with the help of Ella's father and extended family but few actual wishes. Elisa also disovers that there is another wish granter around when that unknown person sends birds after Ella's step-family to poke their eyes out.

Ella then leaves, because she still a penitent, and stumbles through several more Grimm fairy tales, some briefly like Little Red Riding Hood, and a few that might be more obscure. During this time, France invades the Rhineland. An Internet search told me that this happened in 1687 during the Nine Years War, which is a discrepancy that does not get addressed until much later in the book. It does get addressed, but at the moment, I almost put the book down because it seemed to shatter what realism it was setting up.

Elisa finally finds out that as a wish granter, she is immortal but she hadn't noticed because she'd encountered other immortals, and she'd lost track of the seasons passing. She only finds out when she visits Ella who is now an old woman. Elisa finally meets Clever Gretel, the other wish granter who can grant her own wishes and who toys with Elisa until finally stabbing her, declaring, "I hate to tell you this, but this whole penitent thing has gotten really boring."

I couldn't agree more. It had been for a while. But that's when the book changes to very long march back and forth with the Bavarian army with her new husband during the Seven Years War. It's so different, it could be a separate book of its own. As it was, this diversion was much too long for this story.

I'd give this book three stars. If I could give half stars, I might consider 3.5. The final confrotation, which was given only a few pages, was anticlimactic. The ending wraps up the story plots a neat, but not overly satifying, way.

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I thought a bit about how I was going to write this. Originally, I thought I was being too harsh, but I kept reading the book, and my feelings didn't improve. If anything, this book slowed my reading momentum and I found myself playing games and scrolling social media more on the subway, even if I only had a few stops to go. It didn't win me over, which is a shame because I was hoping to leave a great review for the first book I reviewed for Library Thing.

Note that my book, A Bucket Full of Moonlight appeared on Library Thing last year. Out of 25 copies given out, I got 3 or 4 reviews. One of them from someone who obviously hadn't read the book or posted a review for a different book "by mistake." This book was a PDF file. I don't know if it was the final published edition because there were several grammatical errors that hadn't been corrected yet. A Table of Contents might've been nice, too, just so I knew how much farther to the end of each chapter.

I've already picked out a book of short stories to read on my kindle, so I can keep my daily progress going while I read a hardcover that I started a month ago but put aside for this book.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

A Peppermint Mocha to Die For (Valentine)

A Peppermint Mocha to Die For
Wynn Valentine (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a free ebook I download prior to Christmas but didn't get a chance to read until the new year had already begun. It was short, a novella really, with 65 pages.

Note that Good Reads and Amazon list the full title as "A Peppermint Mocha to Die For: Because Nothing Says 'Happy Holidays' Like a Murder Investigation" even though the latter half does NOT appear on the cover. It does say "A Haunted Inheritance Mystery".

The book opens with Sol hanging Christmas decorations following the very specifc instruction of her aunt while her uncle looks on. Her aunt and uncle are both ghosts.

Right here I figured that I stumbled onto the Christmas episode of a sitcom that I don't watch regularly.

The ghosts can apparently leave the house if they choose to, and other people can see them and know about them. I'm guessing that there are more ghosts to be found in town.

A mystery arises when Sol finds an old recipe card with a protection symbol on it belonging to her great aunt Edna. Aunt Prudence doesn't want to talk about it. It was a long time ago. Better to let some things lie.

But the "house" wants Sol to continue because Edna is in the house. She just isn't appearing like the other two.

There's a mystery, which really isn't a mystery, with a resolution that doesn't feel entirely satisfying. The ghosts know what happened. The older folks in town remember that Christmas party but no one wants to talk about it, until Sol finds the one woman from the original group of friends who is still alive. She finally opens up for no reason other than she's old now.

I had no interest in the characters. The story kept my interest but only because I was waited for something to happen. The writing didn't wow me but it didn't distract me either.

The book includes the recipe for the famous Mocha. I didn't try to make it.

This book doesn't check off any boxes on my Challenge checklist. I don't recall the lycanthropy being a curse. I already read a Christmas book. The title has 24 letters, unless I use the extended title frod Good Reads. (Then it would have a lot more than 25 letters!)

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

Christmas, Pursued by a Bear (2020)

Christmas, Pursued by a Bear
Ryann Fletcher (2020)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a free ebook I download prior to Christmas but didn't get a chance to read until the new year had already begun.

For starters, Christmas is almost an afterthought in the book. It's there, and it's celebrated, but basically, it's cold and icy. Second, the main character, Andie, get pursued by a bear romantically, and she does a little pursuing on her own even if she's embarrassed by it. Third, the Bear in question is a werebear.

Side note: the phrase "pursued by a bear" refers to the off stage death of Antigonus in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale". There is no offstage death here.

In this universe, werebears, as well as werewolves, werelions, etc, would be a genetic anomaly and not something passed by scratching and clawing. Also, the weres seem to have some control over when the "shift" and if they shift at an less optimum time, it could affect their overall health for a while.

Speaking of "shifts", Fletcher, the author, uses the word a lot early on as a way to distract the reader into thinking the characters are, for example, refering to working at a coffee shop.

Andie is a photgrapher who sneaks into a restricted area of a wildlife preserved to get a shot that could win a competition and give her career a boost (and bring in some needed money). She briefly encounters a bear, runs off, and loses her camera in the dark. There shouldn't be any bears on this reserve or in the Midwest. She goes to her tent, expecting to find it in the morning. She meets Cat, whose illegal campsite Andie is using. Cat tells her she must've been seeing things because there aren't any bears in this area. By the morning, Cat is gone but the Park Ranger is there and makes her leave without looking for the camera.

Andie, being poor, doesn't know what she'll do and might have to cancel jobs. Then her camera shows up on her doorstep, minus the memory card.

Andie and Cat meet up again and seem to like each other. Honestly, I didn't see any chemistry between the two of them. And, of course, Cat can't let Andie know that she's a Bear. Or that her friends are also Bears. This would definitely put a crimp in any relationship.

Around this time, the big, bad, evil corporation is introduced. They're planning on developing part of the reserve for tourists. Of course, by the time they're done with their secret plans, there won't be much of a reserve left. Obviously, they can't develop it if there are protected bears on the reserve. That said, there are legal methods for removing bears and transporting them elsewhere. But that takes time and delays development. So they send poachers.

Andie sneaks into the reserve again and is sitting in a tree when she's discovered by a pair of poachers. They make her toss her camera down. A new bear appears and they attack it, but Cat shifts off-schedule and scares off the poachers. Along the way, Cat "accidentally" smashes Andie's expensive camera. She apologizes afterward.

This really should've been the deal-breaker. Cat is trying to "protect" her clan by preventing any pictures of bears because it will attract poachers from all over. Even though there are already poachers here. Additionally, she knows that Andie is poor and relies on that camera for work. And Cat isn't rolling in the dough either, so it isn't like she can replace it.

And to top it off, the poachers have cameras in the trees. There is already video of the bears. It is known that they exist.

The corporation is finally "defeated" with bad publicity. The reserve is safe and the shops the corporation bought up won't have their rent jacked up. The one thing that I found amusing was that all the characters signed non-disclosure agreements at the end for a lot of money so that they aren't poor any more. For now.

The book was okay. It wasn't the "Christmas spirit" book I look for in December. (Yes, I read it in January.) I didn't fully read the preview, but I read enough to know that Syndicorp is back and that doesn't really interest me. Everything that needed a resolution had one. Would I consider circling back to this series? Probably not. I have a lot in the TBR pile. If something else with bears strikes a memory, then maybe.

This book doesn't check off any boxes on my Challenge checklist. I don't recall the lycanthropy being a curse. I already read a Christmas book. The title has only 23 letters. I have no idea how old she was in 2020.

There are two square presents on the cover, so I could count that, even though they aren't actually drawn to be squares. (There are variant covers apparently.)

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not-So-Fabulous Life (Russell)

Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not-So-Fabulous Life
Rachel Renée Russell (2009)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was one of a bunch of books that I took from a little book library. I plan to return them all for another kid to enjoy. Some of the references might be dated, but the experiences are likely the same. Unfortunately, I have misplaced the bunch I have, other than the first book, somewhere in my house.

I started this sometime in 2024, and I remember I was reading it on the train, and then I put it on the side and forgot about it. Odds are that I had a book club book to read. I didn't mind reading this on the train even though it was a little difficult to balance on top of my backpack while I had a coffee in one hand.

Nikki Maxwell is the new girl in a new school. Her dad is an exterminator who has a van with a large insect on top of it, but her mom drives her to school ... usually. Her locker is right new to the popular and mean girl, Mackenizie Hollister, who believes she's the best at everything and thinks that she deserves everything.

Nikki goes to the office to sign up for the art contest but freaks out because MacKenzie is already there, so she says she's just there to sign up for the Library Club (because there's a sign-up sheet sitting there). In the library, she meets her new friends, Chloe and Zoey. The three of them sit an an unpopular table far from the popular girls. Still, she's noticed by school photographer Brandon Roberts, who seems to like her more than Nikki can possibly believe. "Obviously", he'd be more interested in girls like MacKenzie, who definitely wants to get Brandon's attention.

Antics ensue and are recorded on journal pages. The book is even lined like a journal would be, and "Nikki" doodles in it because she is an artist.

Nikki gains popularity because she can draw temporary tattoos on students in exchange for book donations but it starts to take over her life.

Other trials and tribulations of middle school occur.

I don't know if I would've read something like this in 7th grade -- not true, I definitely would not have, for 7th grade reasons of my own -- but it was a cute book to read now. And, yes, I will read YA if only because it's a market and it might be a market that I eventually have to try. If nothing else, I like seeing how other writers write tweens and early teens.

I don't know if I'll read all of the ones that I took from the library (assuming I find where I put them), but I reserved the ebook of the second one from the library, so I'll read two of them, at least.

The following is from a website for the book:

New school.
New mean girl.
New crush.
New diary so I can spill about all of it…

I put a lot of really personal stuff in this diary along with my sketches and doodles.

But, mostly it’s about how TRAUMATIC it was transferring to my new private middle school, Westchester Country Day.

And, how a lot of the CCP (Cool, Cute & Popular) kids were really SNOBBY and made my life TOTALLY miserable. People like, oh, I don’t know, maybe…

MACKENZIE HOLLISTER!!

And, it just so happened that I got stuck with a locker right next to hers. I could NOT believe I had such CRAPPY luck. I knew right then and there it was going to be a VERY, VERY long school year. ☹️


If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

The Full Moon Coffee Shop: A Novel (Mochizuki)

The Full Moon Coffee Shop: A Novel
Mai Mochizuki
Translated by Jesse Kirkwood (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Pandemic Book Club book. Both the ebook nore the audiobook had months-long waits at all three libraries, so I finally requested the hardcover. I had that in two days. It's a quick read. It's not a novella -- it was over 200 pages. The book was published in Japan, where it is set, and was translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood.

The story is broken up into three parts with an epilogue that ties it all together.

There's a coffee shop that only appears when the moon is full, and it doesn't have a fixed location. It appears to people who may be lost and need some directions. And it's run by cats with names like Mercury, Mars, and Uranus (who can appear human). It's not an actual shop, but a cart that has tables and chairs set up in front of it. If you sit at one of their tables, you can't order anything. They will bring you what you need. And they will read your star chart stating which planets are in whatever house, and what that might mean when applied to your life.

In the first part of the book, a romance screenwriter is now writing story lines for side characters in romance videogames, the kind that can conclude happily but leave the player wishing for the better character, so they keep playing. She gets a call from a producer about a script she sent. The other woman wants to meet her in person. The producer doesn't realize that the writer doesn't live in that neighborhood any more because she's downsized a bit.

The lunch meeting doesn't go well. The producer tells the writer that the network wouldn't go for it. It seems like the stuff that used to be done and doesn't reflect today's trends. The writer is shocked that the producer came all that way to deliver bad news, so she doesn't advocate for herself. The producer notices this.

The writer then finds herself in the company of the cats and learns more about herself. She makes a decision and decides to focus on making the best script for the videogame she possibly can.

In the second chapter, the producer is having a crisis. She wanted to see the writer because she remembers her as a substitute teacher from when she was a child. But the meeting went so poorly that she never had a chance to tell her. The producer has a couple of problems. One is love-related, and the other is affair-related. She has to fire an actress who had an affair with a married man because the public would be outraged and wouldn't accept her in the kind of roles that she plays.

By the time the day is over, the producer is drinking with the cats and set her straight on a thing or two.

In the third part, the fired actress gets her stars read and we find that everyone seems to be connected, going back to the same school. The substitute used to walk a group of kids to school, and all of them are important to the story and the cats. They remember every day passing the house of an old man who used to have his window open and would play piano. One day, he wasn't playing. The substitute teacher was worried and checked on him. He'd collapsed in his home. The kids got help for him.

As one might guess, things start to work out for all the people to whom the Coffee Shop appeared to. And in the epilogue -- IF YOU FOUND MY PAGE BY RANDOM CHANCE AND HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK, THERE IS A SPOILER COMING AFTER THE DASHES ---

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And in the epilogue, we find out that the old man was a symphony conductor who wasn't satisfied with his life. One night, he met the cats at the Full Moon Coffee Shop. After that, he quit conducting to focus on being the best piano player that he could be. He loved playing music for the children who walked past his house every day. And he remembered the kindness that they gave him. And as a reward, he asked the cats to look after the children and the teacher who helped him.

A touching ending that tied the book together more than I thought it would be.

I enjoyed this. This was the third hardcover book of the year, and it was only the middle of January! (Yes, I'm behind with my reviews!)

Next up, a YA book that I found a bunch of books in the series before misplacing all but the first somewhere in my house.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

Auto-Phobia (Spiegelman)

Auto-Phobia
Art Spiegelman (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was found in a Little Free Library in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Bainbridge Street near Howard Ave. I haven't decided whether I should return it there or to the next one I see while walking. (It depends on which neighborhood I walk into next once the weather warms up, I suppose.)

This is meant to look like an actual art journal that Spiegelman kept to help combat writer's block back in 2007, and there are regular updates of whatever comes to mind. It's a little out there sometimes, but he carries on. Since he makes an R. Crumb reference, I'm guessing that Crumb is one of his inspirations. I honestly don't know much about Crumb except for a book I read many years back that I won at Lunacon. He was someone my older brothers probably read.

Anyway, Spiegelman's name rings a bell but I don't recognize his style in these pages, so I don't know where I might know the name from.

This was a short quick read. Yes, art books count as reading -- there are words on almost all the pages, and the pictures themselves tell stories if you follow them. Which I did.

And, yes, the book is going into my bag to go to another free library. Just not the one in front of the grammar school.

So this is one real, solid, paper book for the year. And I'm counting it as nonfiction because it's a journal, so even the "fiction" in it is editorialized to represent something. I don't think this book checks any boxes on my Reading Challenge list.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

Leo the Elf Saves Christmas (Doxon)

Leo the Elf Saves Christmas
Bradley Doxon (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was an online freebie, one of those books that was meant to put me in the mood for Christmas. Unfortunately, my Book Club meeting was arriving and I needed to read that book first. And then I really didn't want "Leo the Elf" to be the first book I read in the new year, so I put it aside half-read.

But I came back, so there's the story!

Leo is Santa's guardian, his top elf and defender of all things Christmas. He has a sword and a scepter that he usus to protect the realm, and it's a good thing that he does, too.

Leo is sent on a mission by Santa to increase Christmas spirit which seems to be lacking in recent years. While he's away, the lack of Christmas spirit is enough for the Sorrow King, long ago imprisoned in another dimension by Santa and the forest Elves (not the toy-making elves like Leo), manages to break from of his prison in his dark dimension. He then banishes Santa and his reindeer to that dimension while impersonating Santa himself. His Despair Minions take the place of the reindeer. He then has the elves work on a device that will suck up all the Christmas Spirit in the world so that, the fake Santa tells them, he can distribute it to the world.

Leo returns to the North Pole with a young human girl, Ava, who is filled with Christmas Spirit and who has the ability to wield Leo's scepter, making it shine bright. The two travel, with the help of the forest Elves, to the Realm of Darkness to rescue Santa. Then they must defeat the Sorrow Kind, destroy his machine, and return Christmas Spirit to the children of the world (which doesn't really happen).

My two problems with the narrative are that the Sorrow King succeeds early on, so his able to deliver garbage to the kids of the world and suck up their Christmas spirit. Kids will awaken on Christmas morning to the terrible presents that fake Santa left. This cannot be undone and yet it isn't explained to the children of the world what happened.

Second is the prologue. I'm not anti-prologue by any stretch of the imagination but this one seems added on to explain who the Sorrow King is and how he was banished hundreds of years ago.

The book is YA, so I don't question it much. Like with "The Year Without a Santa Claus", the elf goes into the world and visits a single town to check on Christmas spirit, but i guess that's enough to do reconnaissance.

Despite this, it was enjoyable. It was as goofy as I might've expected but not in a bad way. That said, I don't see myself reading the next book, except for my goal of reading more "second books" this year.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

Eggs in a Casket (Childs)

Eggs in a Casket
Laura Childs (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I was reading a YA book about an Elf saving Christmas and I decided that I didn't want that to be the first book I completed in 2025, so I put it aside. But what to read? Well, I recently got an email that an auidobook I had requested had become available at the library -- only to discover that I had listened to it a while back and the ebook was still not available. However, the next book in the series was. (I might've been waiting to read it so that I could read the previous installemnt instead of just listening.)

As a happy accidental bonus, this is the fifth book in the series, and on a Reading Challenge list I downloaded, reading the second or fifth book in a series (for the number 25) was one of the goals. Honestly, I'd thought about the goal of reading more "book 2" books this year since I start many series.

Eggs in a Casket opens at a cemetery on a rainy day. The weather will actually play a part in the plot with this one. It's Memorial Cemetary's 150th anniversary, and Suzanne and Toni are delivering flowers when they accidentally come upon Lester Drummond's body in an open grave right after they were almost sideswiped by Missy Langston who was speeding away.

Missy is a suspect, especially after it's discovered that Drummond had been tasered multiple times and a taser is found in Missy's house. (This is the kind of town where many people don't bother to lock their doors.)

Sheriff Doogie has his hands full, but does a competent job as always, even if it has to follow each lead wherever it goes, and if that means arresting Missy, so be it. Unfortunately, he's in a car accident and in intensive care for the last part of the book, leaving it Suzanne to figure out who did it, where Missy is, and possibly save Dr. Sam's life along the way.

I'm enjoying this series. I don't know that I'll start any of Childs' other series or any other cozy mysteries (paranormal or not) for that matter either. But I've add "Childs" as a tag, and at some point, I'll go back and add it to the others. If I start a second series, then maybe I'll add a "Cackleberry" tag, too. We'll see.

Okay, back to the elf.


If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

2024 Year in Review

This is a summary of the books that I read in 2024. Most have been recorded as blog entries. Some entries are not published yet.

There were 28 books consisting of novels, collections and nonfiction listed in 27 entries. (One entry had "Two short novels".) Also, one book was audio only because the book never became available at any of three libraries. Additionally, I read my own book (but I didn't write it out), mostly because I was looking for typos, but also because I wanted to read it back after a while away from it. Looking back, I see that Signal Fires was actually a 2023 book that didn't get written up until 2024.

• The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (Carter)
• The Crown of Zeus (Norris)
• The Mimicking of Known Successes (Older)
• What Kind of Mother (Chapman)
• The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (Goodman)
• The Hidden Palace (Wecker)
• The Golem and the Jinni (Wecker)
• Remarkably Bright Creatures (Ven Pelt)
• The Adventures of Larry the Alien (McDonnell)
• Tequila Sheila and Other Tall Tales (Lucci)
• 52 Loaves (Alexanader)
• The Lexical Funk (Clausen)
• A House with Good Bones (Kingfisher)
• A Cry of Hounds (Ackley-McPhail, ed)
• In Defense of Witches (Chollet)
• Pinata: A Novel (Gout)
• DNF: The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera)
• The Skeleton in the Closet (Fox)
• Two Short Books: The Race & Big Bullet Monster Bomb
• Funny Shorts 5 (McDonnell)
• The Shadow Glass (Winning)
• Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus)
• Stake and Eggs (Childs)
• DNF: The Zoo of Intelligent Animals (Holdsworth)
• I'm Glad My Mom Died (McCurdy)
• Raising Caine (Gannon)

Of these, The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, What Kind of Mother, The Golem and the Jinni, A House with Good Bones, In Defense of Witches, Pinata: A Nove, The Saint of Bright Doors, The Shadow Glass, and Lessons in Chemistry were Pandemic Book Club books. I'm Glad My Mom Died and 52 Loaves were alternate choices which weren't picked but which I read it anyway.

52 Loaves, In Defence of Witches, and I'm Glad My Mom Died were nonfiction of different sorts, which were meh, bad, and interesting, respectively.

There were several horror books, which is not my usual wheelhouse, and a few cozy mysteries (one paranormal), which is becoming my wheelhouse.

Two books were labeled DNF, The Zoo of Intelligent Animals and THe Saint of Bright Doors, but I got fall enough into them that I listed them.

Stake and Eggs was audio only. The book isn't available. After nearly a year, I started the next book.

It looks like if I want to continue with the Caineverse, I'll have to buy the next book. I do have a gift card to use if it hasn't expired.

No Sue Grafton books this year. I didn't realize.

In the "It's a Book, but It's Not a Book' category: I read the Book of Genesis. Yes, I came up with this idea a few years ago as something else to read in between books, and something that I can read in church with I'm early for Mass. (And, yes, I get there early because otherwise, someone will be in my spot.) I've started Exodus.

So with re-reading my own book (looking for typos, but reading), I read 30 books last year, literary, science fiction, fantasy, horror, religious, and nonfiction. Mostly novels but several collections.

The following magazines were mostly read in the pool. THere was a fourth book which I didn't finish. There's only one more story to be, plus the articles at the end. If there is one thing that I noticed, it's that they longer stories generally don't agree with me. I don't think I'll be selling any novellas to Clarkesworld any time soon. Then again, I haven't sold anything to Clarkesworld yet, but I think I could have a shot with shorter fiction.

• Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 171 (December 2020)
• Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 172 (January 2021)
• Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 173 (February 2021)

Those four are the only ones I have, but I do have other magazines to read, both in print and as ebooks. Plus, I made an entry to find old ebooks online.

Graphic Novels and Magna

• My Hero Academia Volumes 36-39 - I'm reading fewer because I'm up to date and waiting on new translations to be published, picked up by the library and made available -- and then wait my turn.
• Fangirl: the Manga, Vol 1-4 - recommended by the BPL, I had to wait for the series to complete. Based on a book. It was a comic more than Manga.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer, Vol 17 - a random volume found outside the library, nothing to make me want to read more of it.
• Power Girl: Power Trip - some random comics and then a series with a new "Terra".
• Superman '78 - Batman '66, it was not. It was a bit dull and there wasn't much to set it about from regular Superman except the images. But they included Braniac, so there's that.
• Superman in the Fifties - I love reprints of the old stories, except for when I don't. Contradictory, I know. Those stories are a bit quanit and a product of their time, so it's not unusual that I can't read the entire thing in one sitting. Also, they choose specific stories, so it isn't a continuous narrative like modern grahic novels try to be (but often fail because they can't condnese them -- they can only drop entire issues from the run).
• Shazam - I read it but I didn't write it up, apparently. I don't even remember the title of it. When I first looked at it, I thought there was some gag going on because Billy and Savanna looked like (non-blue) Smurfs. Nope, it was just the artist's interpretation of the material. Billy was even younger and looked to be about three heads tall like Charlie Brown. Sivanna was similarly short, but they made a joke about that when he was standing behind a podium. Literally behind it. Short. Since Luthor was president at the time, the writers made Savanna the Attorney General, but he was still crooked. It was interesting. Sivanna was more interesting in Power Girl though. (A villain slept with Sivanna to get what she wanted. Sivanna double-crossed her saying that he already got what he wanted and no longer cared what she wanted. And then I think killed her or made a good attempt at killing her.)

Miscellaneous

• More Gaming Books - I've read some, not as many as in 2023, but there is no write-up.
• A Firkin of eSpec Books - this is not posted yet. I've been reading more Kickstarter freebies. However, since I was going by size, I'm up to actual novels now unless more short stories are awarded.
• Novellas - I listened to a random novella, and then read it. "Pleasing the Queen" by Selina Coffey, 2015 was read July 2024.
• Some of the Best From Tor.Com 2016 Edition -- I'm not sure that I read anything from this book this year. I think I just noticed the draft and "saved" it so it would move up the list. Honestly, I download 4 or 5 books from them a year and don't read too many of them. I read a bunch a couple years ago. Some were okay. I don't think Tor dot com leans toward my interests in their current configuartion. I wouldn't mind selling to them but I don't think that'll happen. I don't write what they publish, and you have to know somoene to even get in the door.

Analog and Other Old Magazines

None this year. I should get back to that. It was fun. The problem is the downloading and carving up of the books. The PDFs are too big to mail. If I open the PDF in a browser, it will keep reseting to the top, losing my place. That means taking sections of the text and making 4 or 5 parts to submit to kindle. It's a pain.

And that's about it: 30 books (including my own book and 1 audio only book), 9 volumes of manga and 4 graphic novels, nearly 4 issues of Clarkesworld, and a smattering of short stories, novellas and gaming books.

Here's looking to 2025!

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (Carter)

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Ally Carter (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Pandemic Book Club book. It came available from the library about 3 days after I finally bought a copy of it. As it was, I didn't finish it in time for the book club meeting, but that was pushed back a week, so I haven't missed it yet. I'll update with reactions.

The book deconstructs mystery writing when a writer and her "nemesis" are suddenly invited to an event for Christmas and flown to England without a clue where they are going. Maggie Chase is a successful writer who has a horrible life -- her ex-husband now lives in the house she paid for with her ex-best friend, and Christmastime is filled with nothing but bad memories. Worse, she can't stand Ethan Wyatt, the Leather Jacket Guy author who is a relative newcomer and a bit of a rival.

Working on my assumptions, this is practically made for a Hallmark Christmas movie. (Not surprisingly, the author has written at least one of those.) It's a rom-com and a mystery as the two of them come together, partly out of self-preservation, and partly because they unravel their interwined past and start to understand what was going on back then.

The trip brings them to the estate of a reclusive fan, Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death, author of 99 best-selling novels, with rumors about number 100. She's in her 80s now, but that still means that she'd been churning them out for quite a while. Maggie (not Marcie, now) is her biggest fan. Ethan acts like he doesn't know he she is but also turns out to be a fan, having read the books with his mother before she walked out on the family.

There's a cast of characters, like someone assembled in Clue or Murder by Death, mostly relatives of some sort, along with another writer, the butler, and a police inspectror.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

The Crown of Zeus (Norris)

The Crown of Zeus
Christine Norris (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a bonus book from a recent Kickstarter campaign. Note: my book, A Bucket Full of Moonlight was one of the books in the Kickstarter as was Norris's A Curse of Time and Vengeance.

I've read a lot of bonus stories. It was nice to read a full book for a change.

Since is was a special Kickstarter edition, I didn't get the pretty cover shown above. Also, I don't remember if my version mentioned the Library of Athena or that it was a series. (Maybe it wasn't back then?)

Megan and her dad move to England for his job. She hates the idea of leaving everything behind and having to start over and make new friends in a new school in a new country.

Then she winds up staying in a mansion, the Parthenon, that the company her father works for owns. It comes with a butler and maid as well as its own ghost stories. Megan hears about these stories at school. Next thing, she's having a sleepover with three classmates. The four girls want to hold a seance but end up going on an adventure that finds a secret library hidden beneath the mansion with steps leading down from behind a statue of Athena. Among the shelves, Megan finds a book titled The Crown of Zeus and the four girls are sucked inside of it.

Now they have to follow the clues and solve the puzzles to find the Crown of Zeus to get out of the book or they'll be stuck in there forever or killed trying.

The puzzles are familiar, and while there's no kraken released, Medusa needs to be beheaded and her head needs to turn another monster to stone. Nothing so esoteric that a teenage girl with an interest in Greek mythology can't figure out.

The four girls work together, save each others' lives and become best friends. And, spoiler, they get out with the crown. And then we learn more about Sir Gregory, the archeologist and student of magic.

The book was a little slow-paced but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. I'm not even the target demographic. I also proudly showed off to Christine Norris that I was reading her book when we were at an eSpec Books launch party at Philcon (Cherry Hill, NJ) last month.

So Good Reads is telling me that this is #1 in a series. Given the library in the basement, it seems natural that many more books could follow. Obviously, I'm going to have to check those out, too.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

My Hero Academia Volumes 38 and 39

My Hero Academia Volume 38 and 39, by Kōhei Horikoshi (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Not really a lot to say other than I enjoyed them. This blog entry is mostly so they'll be counted in the year-end total. The final battle is still being drawn out. As with a lot of manga, the more action there is, the more difficult it can get for me to tell what's going on. But some of those background scenes and cityscapes are just amazing.

The books (in English) have caught up to the show (in Japanese with subtitles). The show recently eclipsed the books, particularly with Ochaco Uraraka and Himiko Toga.

Next book will be reserved as soon as possible.