Mr. Burke's Reading List

The Casual Vacancy , by J. K. Rowling, 2012 Had The Casual Vacancy been written by anyone other than J. K. Rowling, I probably would've given up on it a long time ago. Instead I kept coming back to it, and my "enjoyment" might have suffered because of it. First off, it its neither Harry Potter nor Hogwarts, but I knew that going in. It's not a kids' book either. The language and situations are quite adult, even when it's handling the situations of teens in school from both sides of the tracks. My biggest problem with the book was that I felt like I'd stumbled into a soap opera with a huge cast of characters, making it difficult to remember who was who and what they were involved in. (Can't tell the players without a scorecard, and all that.) I found it confusing to focus on what make be important because I really didn't know where the story was once I got past Barry Fairbrother passing away, leaving an open seat on the parish council, the ter...

I is for Innocent , by Sue Grafton, 1992 Grafton's intrepid private detective has a new job and a new office (after events in the previous book). Kinsey Milhone takes on a new case after the passing of an older P.I., Morley Shine, who Kinsey had a connection to -- he was once the partner of the man who trained her. The case: David Barney had been acquitted of the murder of his wife, and now was being sued in civil court to prevent him from inheriting all her wealth. Morely had done quite a bit of the legwork, but there was information missing and subpoenas not yet delivered. Kinsey has to sort through the unorganized documents before the case makes it to court. In what could be a callback to the first book in the series, A is for Alibi , where a woman who had already served her time hired Kinsey to clear her name, the title makes you pause to wonder: is David Barney actually innocent? Did someone else kill Isabelle? Kinsey has not been hired by Barney, but she has to check ou...

H is for Homicide , by Sue Grafton, 1991 I first discovered Sue Grafton 's Alphabet series back in the late 90s when I had picked up a few on tape for my daily commute from NYC to Parsippany. (I'd heard about them earlier, probably in a magazine.) I listened to a handful of abridged editions, in a mixed-up order. A few years back, I decided that I was going to catch up with the series, reading a couple each summer. Sorry, but I'd get bored with any series if I went through 15 or 20 books straight. However, as luck and laziness would have it, I haven't made any blog entries for these books since I started the re-read. Bad timing, I guess. (There is an entry for B is for Burglar from 2009, but that is actually copied from my old paper reading log from many years earlier. That was the first book of the series I'd actually read.) H is for Homicide brings private investigator Kinsey Milhone into a new role. She finds herself doing undercover work, without any ...

I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend , by Martin Short, 2014 Martin Short, the comic, the actor, the funnyman, started from humble beginnings. I knew of him from Second City TV , which was syndicated back when I was in high school, so I knew he was a little older than I was. I didn't realize how much older than me he is. The other, more significant thing I hadn't realized is just who was in the circle of performers he started with, people not associated with SCTV (or that I associated with them). He was friends with Paul Shaffer , for example, long before Paul was part of Letterman's Late Night or Late Show and before his days at Saturday Night Live . (I also didn't know that Shaffer was part of SNL -- he played piano for Bill Murray 's lounge singer, for example.) Short didn't just know Gilda Radner , but dated her in the days before Gene Wilder and Nancy Dolman . I knew that Short and Dolman had been married a long time, but I didn't r...

4 Ingredient Cookbook: 150 Quick & Easy Timesaving Recipes , by Bonnie Scott, 2014 This entry is a bit of a cheat, but the recipes are not. Normally, cookbooks are reference material and not something you read cover to cover. However, I did go through the entire book (or almost the whole thing) because I liked the concept of the book as it appeals to my nature as an amateur cook with very little patience for lots of ingredients. Seriously, keep it simple for me. If it comes out plain, then I'll figure it out and work from there (maybe). The idea of the book is that meals can be created with just four ingredients, plus salt, pepper and water (which aren't included because you probably have these in your house anyway). I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but I'm a teacher and it's summertime. I will revisit each section Real Soon Now. In fact, it's almost time to revisit another blog side-project I started a few years ago: Summer Creations in Food...

1633 , by David Weber and Eric Flint, 2014 The second in the Ring of Fire series, 1633 offers a lot of promise with its gleaming cover comprised of a knight on horseback backed by a naval vessel, ready for war. It delivers on the action, but it doesn't (quite) on that image. However, it does give you an idea where this is going. After the events in the first book, the Powers Than Be in Europe have stopped blaming deviltry and witchcraft and accept the fact that Grantville is here and that a new entity, the United States, now exists in Germany. They have brought weapons and technology from the future. They also brought back history textbooks. (And other library books with more information than your average high school history text might actually have.) Having the knowledge of a possible future changes the course of "present" events. France and Spain, seeing that the results of a pointless, prolonged conflict, skip the Franco-Spanish War of 1635-59 and turn their ...

How to Make Your First App , by Ben Philabaum, 2014 This was an unusual ebook in terms of its content. While the idea of making my own app for my iPad intrigues me, this book is missing one little detail that may seem crucial to completion of this task: how to make an app! Now before you cry foul, or con, or bait and switch, let me tell you that it does give you everything you need if you want to have an app to sell and make a few extra bucks -- and by a few, I mean a few, not a few million or possibly not a few thousand. At least, not with your first app. There is more to creating, publishing and successfully marketing an app than just writing some code. In fact, the code might be the least important part because you can pay someone else to write it for you . Again, this isn't a cop out. Think about it. The creators/owners of many businesses don't actually make their own product. They just come up with the idea, get it made, and then market it. Better marketing will i...

BAM! How to Write an Ebook and Upload to Kindle , by Jamie Hill, 2014 This ebook was basically a book to read between books. Something quick and possibly interesting before I decide where I want to go next. If where you want to go in making ebooks on Kindle, then this might be the book for you. On the one hand, Jamie Hill has five titles available, so something is going right. On the other hand, I downloaded it for free, so maybe so, maybe not. On the gripping hand, I'm talking about it, so there is that. The book is more than just instructions for uploading. It's about picking a topic, one that others might be looking for, creating an outline, sticking to a schedule and doing your research. Instruction on how to format your Word file so it translates into kindle's format are there, too. Covers are tricky -- so don't make your own. There are websites to go to where you can get one done cheaply enough. Overall, some good information, much of which can crossover t...

The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend , by David Gemmell, 1994 This book is labeled The long-awaited sequel to Legend , but it is, in fact, a prequel. First Chronicles is not the first book in the series. It isn't even the second. However, if you picked up this book, there is little you would miss or would have to wonder about. In other words, you could read this before Legend , if you wanted to read them chronologically, but I wouldn't. In fact, prior to this, I read The King Beyond the Gate , which was a sequel (or follow-up) to Legend . I was impressed by it enough that I loaned it to my brother and told him to read it now. I wanted someone to talk to about the book. He finally did -- and then turned around and bought the other three book in the series at that time. So I got to read his copies of Legend , and after rereading King , Quest for Lost Heroes , which is farther in the future, and finally Waylander , which is a the earliest in the timeline for all of thes...

Doctor Who: Engines of War , by George Mann, 2014 The Time Lord who rejected the name "The Doctor" nonetheless picks it up again, mostly because readers need to call him something. Likewise, so do the rest of the Time Lords on Gallifrey, including Rassillon, the Daleks, and, of course, his latest companion. Taking place in the middle of the Great Time War, the Doctor is part of an attack fleet that's ambushed by Daleks. He crash lands on the planet Moldox, infested not only with Daleks, but with Skaro Degradations with new weapons. The Temporal Cannon removes the target from history, though gaps seem to remain. Even though a soldier never existed, his cot is still there, even if you can't remember whose cot it was. (Problems like this occurred with the crack in the universe in the first Matt Smith series.) The Doctor and "Cinder", whose family was killed by Daleks when she was a child, head off to Gallifrey where the Council decides to kill the Dale...

How to Be a Zombie , by Serena Valentino, 2010 After years of vampires and werewolves hogging the moonlight, zombies have finally found their place in the sun (which the creatures of the night avoid anyway). This book, published in 2010, is a How-To guide for the recently deceased/recently risen on how to be the best zombie possible. It's written like a series of click-bait articles you might find online, but this is something different. For one thing, the reader isn't assaulted by pop-up advertising. For another, Serena Valentino knows a lot about the different types of zombies that have appeared in popular culture, and it shows. The book is a bit of a balancing act. For one part, it's written for the undead to adapt to their new life and gives tips on how to fit into society. This part is actually well-researched for something that isn't real. (Or is it?) The other part is for zombie fans who want to cosplay zombies, but these could also be geared toward frien...

Yo Mama Jokes for Kids: Large collection of over 200 funniest Yo Mama jokes for Kids! I won't bother mentioning the author. Not fair? Probably not. Then again, I didn't have to list this book, either, but I'm trying to keep a list of the things I've read. Years ago, people used to post a lot of dumb stuff in usenet . (For all I know, they still do.) Everything now and then, someone would gather up material into a "canonical" list that went on for pages. It could be amusing ... or it could be extremely repetitive. This book is extremely repetitive. Once you get one joke on a topic, you don't need half a dozen more just like it. (By the way, some of the jokes are repeated verbatim a page later, so 200 jokes is an incorrect figure.) Worse, many of these jokes are old . "How old are they?" They're so old Joan Rivers told them about Elizabeth Taylor. They're so old that Cain told them to Abel because he wasn't self-aware. (The lat...

1632 (or The Ring of Fire) , by Eric Flint, 2000 In the year 2000, a freak occurrence, referred to as The Ring of Fire , sent the town of Grantsville, Virginia back through time and space, swapping places with a plot of land in central Germany in 1632, in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The small mining town quickly realizes the unlikeliness of a second cataclysm putting right what had been torn apart and sets out to acclimate to their way of life. And, of course, survive. Their weapons and technology give them a great advantage, but they no longer have the industry to produce that technology. Nor do the have the industry to produce the industry ... An alternate timeline is born as the United States of America is founded 144 years early (and on a different continent). History plays on around them. The book divides its time between brutal battles fought across Germany, building a new society and some overlong passages on just how well the Americans are getting along with thei...

Dirty Machines , by David Matthew Olson, 2014 Dirty Machines is a story that puts forward a lot of ideas and doesn't develop any of them, which is a shame because some of them could have been good. Starting from the beginning where the main character's name is omitted and references to it are jarring to say the least. (Seriously, it's "[Del]" or "[Del]'s" or similar and it wasn't until much later that I realized that it was supposed to be a reference to the "Delete" key.) Not that it matters what his name is because he'll change it when he goes into the future. The plot centers on the head of the world's only Time Travel company (which replaces the letter "T" with stylized crosses everywhere!) personally comes back a few decades to convince our nameless protagonist to journey into the future. Here's the hook: if he doesn't, history says he's about to die from a stray bullet while minding his own busine...

Shards of the Glass Slipper: Queen Cinder , by Roy A. Mauritsen, 2012 I was first drawn to this story by a series of paintings hanging in the Art Room at Lunacon (a long-running Northeastern science fiction convention, usually held in Rye, NY), each with its own vignette, giving a new twist on each of the fairy tale characters that were more in line with the original interpretations than the 20th-century incarnations. The artist was Roy A. Mauritsen, and his book uses these characters. His incarnations flow together very nicely with a few odd twists among them, most of which are enjoyable. (I have a couple of quibbles about how some of the characters, and their relationships to each other, but they work within the story.) I don't want to give anything away -- I'd rather let the characters reveal themselves as the story progresses, even if you think you know who's coming next, as you get caught up in the tales of those grim days after the Beanstalk War when Cinderella...

365 Things I Learned the Hard Way (So You Don't Have To) , by The Digital Writer (Jonathan Wondrusch), 2012 A free ebook on the writing business by a writer. Quick! What's he trying to sell me? Actually, he isn't selling me one thing -- he's selling me on a lifestyle, a workstyle, a way to make it all click, if that's what I want. And that should be what I want. The Digital Writer puts together and presents information in a usable way, heavy on the discipline, easy on the hard sell. He recommends ways to establish your presence, your brand , online in social media, and the ways to monetize it. Because if you aren't monetizing, then what are you doing? He also tells you when to pay for others to do the work for you -- specifically, hiring an editor and paying for good cover design. A good chunk of the book is dedicated to writing copy, which is a promising field to get into that pays well when jobs are available, as well as making ebooks starting with infor...

The God in the Clear Rock , by Lucian Randolph, 2011 I "purchased" The God in the Clear Rock as a free download after seeing it promoted on Reddit or, perhaps, some other site listing free ebooks. I'm glad I didn't waste any money on it, and I'm certainly not going to spend a dime on any of the sequels. Full disclosure: I didn't get far beyond Chapter 1, but had I kept trying, I'd still be reading this book weeks later. I'm stunned by how poorly it's written. This isn't a case of misspellings and glaring typos. The prose itself, the descriptions, the dialogues, the analogies used in the exposition need serious work. The writing is terrible. The dialogue is terrible. The odd metaphors describing actions and objects are more distracting than helpful. One of the dangers of self-publishing is that you try to do everything yourself and don't get good feedback. One piece of advice I've seen repeated is spend the money you need to on an...