Mr. Burke's Reading List

Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best of Tor.com Non-Fiction , Bridget McGovern and Chris Lough, ed. (2018) Even though I'm on the mailing list for Tor.com , probably since the first time I downloaded a copy of 1632 or something else, I rarely check out their website unless I see links to specific articles posted elsewhere on social media. One such link brought me to this ebook. I didn't know what to expect from the title. Well, that's not exactly true. I know what I expected: non-fiction with a name like "rocket fuel" meant that this should've been a lot of stuff about space and planets and stuff like that. That's not what it was. That's not to say what I got was bad, just unexpected. Even though this is a work of non-fiction, many of the essays deal with fiction, from the perspective of fandom, or just deep analysis of some facet of the work. I enjoyed some more than others, and some I might've enjoyed more had they been about half the size...

Clean Room , My review was erased. I'm not re-writing it now. I'll get back to it. (sigh)

Eternals , by Neil Gaiman (2007) Placeholder for review. I had two days left on my ComicXology subscription, and I search on Neil Gaiman . I struck pay dirt with Eternals . I didn't really know a lot about the Eternals from Marvel lore, only that they've been around a long time. If I remember an old What If--? correctly, they were created by the Sentinels, which also created Inhumans. Or something like that. It's a damn shame that I didn't have Neil Gaiman's name listed as a hashtag, before now. That is something that needs to be rectified in 2019.

ROM , 2016-2017 About a month ago, I saw a link to download from free digital comics. Found a few that I might read and clicked. When I tried to open them, my iPad brought me to the App Store and the ComicXology app, which I would need to read the comics. Upon opening that, I found that I ha a free week of unlimited comic reading. (Exactly a week, not a minute more.) The immediate questions were: what do I want to read, and where do I begin? Many comics have continual story lines that don't seem to have a definite beginning, and some of them never end -- or at least wouldn't within a week. You can't even assume a story starts with issue #1 these days. In the list of suggestions, I spotted ROM . I read every issue of the original run of ROM: Spaceknight, although I might have missed crossovers when he appeared in other comics. I didn't buy a lot back then. I knew that he was brought back because of a "Free Comic Book Day" comic which amounted to a f...

Pedro & Me: Friendship, Loss & What I Learned , by Judd Winick (2000) This edition contains a foreword written in 2008, and was published in 2009. For all my recent complaints about graphic novels, I finally found out that was actually what it was supposed to be, and it's been in a "to be read" pile for years now. Pedro & Me came to me from the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library, most likely through a nearby science fiction convention. (That would've been the recently departed Lunacon . Sigh.) Pedro is Pedro Zemora, who along with Judd Winick (the "Me" of the title) and others, was a part of The Real World: San Francisco in 1994. I didn't watch it, and I had no interest in the series or the ones before it. Frankly, I couldn't tell you the difference between the Real World and, say, Big Brother . But Pedro's story is worth reading. Judd is a cartoonist from Long Island. He applied for the Real World, and when MTV call...

Space Team , by Barry Hutchison (2016) The full title of the book is Space Team: Screwing Up the Galaxy so you don't have to! , and I believe I got the capitalization and punctuation correct. An editor might've suggested different. This book was downloaded as a freebie. If I remember correctly, it was probably one of those "first book in the series is free" deals, to get you to read one and buy the rest. Nothing wrong with that, so long as the books are good. Wellllllll .... So how many books are in this series? I just checked, and it seems, as of this writing, that there are 13 of them. In three years. If they're making money, more power to him. Maybe it's a model to try out for my own writing. Okay, so the story starts off like some is trying too hard to be Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchet or just, you know, funny. It isn't too clever, but it's what's there, so let's so with it. Cal Carver is a criminal, and he's in prison, b...

The Alienist , by Caleb Carr (1994) Like many, I saw the series, The Alienist on television, and then decided to find a copy of the novel. Like many, I decided to get it from the library, so there was a wait. Still, I managed to read it earlier in the year (before summer vacation), but I didn't get around to writing it up until the year was almost out. So I don't remember everything about it. That's the main reason I try to write these things in a timely manner. Having seen the show, I put faces to many of the characters in advance, which is usually helpful (except in those instances where someone is woefully miscast). The story tells the tale of a serial killer in 19th century New York City, during Teddy Roosevelt's tenure as Police Commissioner. He charges Dr. Lazlo Kreizler with solving a set of grisly murders involving a disaffected portion of the underclass of society. Namely, poor immigrant boys that dress up like girls for the benefit of "gentle...

The Great Passage , by Shiwon Miura (2011) This was another of the books that Amazon allowed to download that time when they had 12 world books available for free. The story was a little confusing at first. In the beginning, we are introduced to Kohei Araki, who as a boy was fascinated with words and loved the dictionary. Next thing we know, he's close to retirement after having worked on dictionaries for Gembu Books for thirty-seven years. Although we begin with him, it isn't his story. Araki needs to find a replacement who can continue his work, and bring his dream project, The Great Passage , to publication. Thanks to Nishioka, one of the few employees in the dictionary department of Gembu, Araki finds Mitsuya Majime, an odd fellow who works in the sales department. After an interview, they discover that they are kindred spirits in the love of and fascination with words, and how to define them precisely. Majime is introverted and awkward, which makes it diffic...

The Black Tides of Heave , by Jy Yang (2017) The Black Tides of Heaven was a free ebook from the Tor.com Book of the Month Club. It amounts to one of two twin novellas, which establish the world of the Tensorate series, by Jy Yang. I was drawn to it because it seemed different, and, yes, because it was free. Likewise, as part of a "book club", I thought it might lead to a discussion, either now or when I see some like-minded friends at a up-coming convention. That's not likely to happen at this point. While I'm glad I read it, I had a problem immersing myself into the fantasy world being created. On the very first page, we encounter the word "slackcraft" as something not to be used by the Great Abbot Sung to climb the 800 steps of the Great High Palace. I let this slip by in the first instance, not knowing whether that was some kind of magical incantation or transport. Later uses of the term "craft" also left me wondering if they w...

P is for Peril , by Sue Grafton (2001) The sixteenth installment of the Kinsey Milhone series finds Kinsey mixed up in two mysteries, as the background 'B' story takes up a good portion of the book. The main mystery involves a missing persons case. Dr. Dowan Purcell disappeared nine weeks earlier and hasn't been located yet. His first wife is started to get worried now because he had gone missing once before but eventually returned. Kinsey briefly ponders if he'd faked his own death, as happened in an earlier case of hers. But Fiona, the first wife, believes that he may still be alive because his passport is missing, along with a bit of money. Add in possible trouble at home with wife number two, Crystal, and mounting evidence of medical billing fraud, and it doesn't look good. While all this is going on, Kinsey is once again looking for a new office. She's been renting space from Lonnie Kingman, but they are relocating. She finds a space at a re...

A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea , by Masaji Ishikawa (2000) Earlier this year, Amazon ran a promotion for twelve (specific) free ebooks from writers around the world. A River in Darkness was one of them, and the first one I indulged in. It tells the life story of Masaji Ishikawa, first growing up in post-war Japan being half-Korean. Life was difficult enough until the Koreans brought over during the war are promised a better way of like in the newly-created country of North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Il-sung. The promises didn't work out, as one might have expected. What follows are the hardships for his family as he grows into manhood, and then for his own family. North Korea was not a happy place to be, but don't dare say that. Everything is poorly run by the government, but you participate the way the government tells you, even if it means all the crops will fail. But hard work isn't rewarded. Just expected. The book open...

Lost to Time: Unforgettable Stories That History Forgot ,Martin W. Sandler (2010) I found a list, in my own handwriting, labelled "Books to Read". I don't know when I made this list, or why, or what the source of these particular books might have been. I only know that it had to have been in 2010 or later, judging from the first book. I was never a big History fan, but that hasn't stopped me from being interested in certain particular stories or time period, and making up for my lack of knowledge. Maybe I'm correcting my own past here. Anyway, I reserved this from the library (Dewey Decimal 904 S), and it arrived fairly quickly. I didn't get very far into it before it had to go back. As it hadn't really gripped me, I didn't renew it. Of the ones I read, the first one about Ziryab was the most interesting. I knew nothing about the man, never heard of him, and yet he accomplished so much. But I get the feeling that if I traveled to Spain, I...

Superman: Shadows Linger Superman: Krypton Returns Astro City: Through Open Doors Batman/Superman: Volume 6 Universe's Finest Walking through the library, I came to the shelves with all the graphic novels and manga. Sure, I checked if they had the next volume of One Piece (they didn't). But they also had regular graphic novels from DC and Marvel. I picked up the four books listed above. Something to read while floating in the pool in an inner tube. First off, none of these books originated as a graphic novel. They are all reprints from the comics, which causes some odd breaks in the narrative and empty pages with filler art. That, in itself, wouldn't be so bad, if the collections made any sense. Most of these do not. Of the ones mentioned above, Shadows Linger was five consecutive issues of Superman and is composed of two separate stories, the second of which is "Shadows Linger". Both were good reads. It was interesting to see Lana Lang's ev...

Last year, I have an interest in Dime Novels and checked out the Brooklyn Public Library catalog where there were two entries. One of them was 8 Dime Novels , which I reviewed last year, after having read only one novel and the introductory essay. A few months ago, I got an email about the other book. I expected it to say that the Hold had expired, as it had been about a year. No. Just the opposite. The book was ready and waiting to be picked up at the local branch. I couldn't read it, but for good reasons, which I believe I confirmed with two of the librarians when I returned the book. Despite the cover on it, there was no copyright information suggestion that these were reprints, or when this book had been assembled. From the look of the pages, I had a strong suspicion, which the librarians agreed with, that I was looking at the original dime novels , which had been bound together at some point. These books had individual copyright dates around the time of the Civil War --...

1634: The Baltic War , David Weber and Eric Flint (2008) This was a welcome and wonderful conclusion to 1633 . The thing you might notice is the colon in the title. The 1632 universe had taken off by this point. There are multiple books set in the year 1634 and they happen concurrently, but not as oddly as, say, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons . If you are starting this series, and this universe, I recommend that you read this book immediately after 1632 and 1633 before branching out. One of the complaints I had about 1633 was its cover depicting a warship on its cover, but the warship wasn't ready to go by the end of that book. In this book, Admiral Simpson finally launches his ironclads and sails off to the Baltic to win Denmark for Sweden. In the meantime, the Grantville delegation in the Tower of London needs to be rescued, along with Oliver Cromwell. But the natives of the time period have not been idle as winter set in. They had started to emulat...

On the Decay of the Art of Lying , Mark Twain (1882) You can't go wrong reading Twain, essentially if it's just a short essay. People lie, but there is an art to it, and Twain noticed that the Art of it was dying. In short, lying is polite. Lying is fine when the truth would serve no good purpose, only ill. But imagine it written in a more witty style. Recommended.

The Middle Ages: A History From Beginning to End , 2016 I don't remember where I heard about this book or why I downloaded it a few months ago, but it was a quick read. The book is part of an Hourly History series. I don't know if that means that the book was meant to be read in an hour or that there was an hour-long program on, say, the History Channel. In whichever case, about 1000 years of history are crammed into one book. It was split into three segments and had some interesting highlights, but not much that I can remember two months later. I guess that shows you why I really need to keep this blog up-to-date. TL;DR: It was interesting. Didn't hate it. Better than reading the material on wikipedia. Overall, I forgot most of it already.

Vampire Academy , Richelle Mead, 2007, Graphic Novel Frostbite , Richelle Mead, 2008, Graphic Novel This review is about two graphic novels . The entry for the novel, Vampire Academy can be found here . First off, I read the Vampire Academy graphic novel months ago, and could have sworn that I had an entry for it, but I don't see one. The school I'm currently assigned to has the graphic novels for the first two books in the series in their library. I figured that I'd "reread" the first book, just to familiarize myself with the characters and the story line. I'm glad I did. I needed to get used to the images of the characters. Rose in the comic looks nothing like the cover of the first novel, but that's okay because it's a different artist. The other thing that struck me, and which wasn't really a surprise, was how much of the book had to be left out to make it into a comic. I was still able to follow along for two reasons: one, t...

Grimm's Fairy Tales , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (unknown) The ebook has a publication date of 2012 online. The book itself has a date of 1922, which I assume is for the illustrations. Wikipedia puts publication at 1812. Over the past few years, I have read a few books that were updated takes on fairy tales : either continuations or retellings from a different point of view, with or without "modern sensibilities". Going through some of these made me realize that I've never read the original fairy tales, even though I've had hard-cover copies of them. I don't remember when I downloaded this book, probably a couple of years ago. Like with most fairy tale books, though, I can only read so many before I need to move on to something else and get back to it. Basically, I started this sometime last year, reading a tale or two on short train rides or when I was between books. Most of familiar with the sanitized or "Disney-fied" versions of t...

A Brave and Startling Truth , Maya Angelou (1995) I saw this in the school library, a slim volume of poetry, and I needed something to read while I was on hallway duty. I am not going to critique Maya Angelou , but I will comment. First off, this wasn't a collection, it is a single poem, which she read at the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. It is about the people of this planet coming together, united. To talk about my usual poetry complaints: they aren't here. This is free verse that is pleasant and pleasurable to read. The line breaks make sense. The page breaks (which would be stanza breaks) make sense. Also, I love the imagery and word choice. Just to pick a couple of lines out: When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And the faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean Minstrel shows are offensive. The characters have faces blackened with soot (or makeup), and the players scrub them clean afterward. "Sooted with scorn" carrie...

Black Cat, Volumes 1-4 Kentaro Yabuki (2006) Unlike the last series I read, there are more than 4 volumes of Black Cat . It's an ongoing series, but only the first four were available for me to read. The series was release in 2001, with the English versions arriving in 2006. The series follows the exploits of Train Heartnet, once an assassin for an organization called "Chronos", who now makes a living as a "sweeper" or bounty hunter. Train has a tatoo of the Roman numeral XIII, which is as much a reference to bad luck as the name "Black Cat" itself. The name "Chronos" would indicate time, and the fact that he is number 13 is a little odd, but definitely keeping with his character. He's also an expert marksman, having as much luck as skill with his pistol. He can hit other people's bullets mid-flight. The organization he worked for, and those who know of it, believe that the Black Cat has been dead for the past two years. ...

Life's Little Instruction Book, Vol III H. Jackson Browne, Jr. (1995) I probably picked up this little gift-book edition sometime in the late 1990s and it's been sitting on a shelf or in a box ever since. You could classify it as self-help or inspirational or something like that, but it's a list of 500+ things that you could or should do to make your life, or the lives of those around you, better. This is the kind of thing you could probably find on a list on the Web somewhere. Even in 1995, this could probably be found on a "listserv" or a place like "cathouse.org". (I have no idea if that site still exists, and I'm not checking.) Most of these instructions are short, pithy one-liners, reminders of advice that your parents or grandparents might've told you. There are things that they told you that you should do, but you didn't know why, so maybe you don't. But then you realize, what if you did? Would things be better? Sugg...

Azumanga Daioh, Volumes 1-4 Kiyohiko Azuma (2000-2004) I had a recent assignment in the Library of the school to which I'm currently assigned. I spent part of that day organizing the manga shelves. Part of the reason for this was to scope out something new to read. Oddly, despite all the volumes, the choices where slim. I wanted something where the first volume wasn't missing nor were there any early gaps in the sequence in case I got interested and the story dragged out for multiple books. Of the ones that qualified, quite a few were romance books, which I wasn't interested in. And one seemed to be about chess, which was a maybe. But I saw the four volumes of Azumanga Daioh , so I took the first one. It wasn't objectionable, so I borrowed the other three as well. First off, I'm not the target audience. Secondly, I understand that there's animation of the series (doesn't surprise me), and if it were available on some platform I currently subscr...

Thank you for visiting my blog. This blog is a list of my recently read books. It's actually meant for me to keep track of the things I've read with a few notes about what the book was about or the characters involved. That's how it started. I don't mean for it to be a "book review" site, although it will sometimes read like that. I try to avoid spoiling ending or anything in case someone stumbles onto this page by accident. Once I remind myself what a book was about, I should remember the ending. And if I don't, well, then it wasn't worth remembering. Comments are welcome, as are suggestions based on other things I've read. Fact checking is welcome, as well, as I type from memory. For the purpose of this blog, while I desire accuracy, it is not mandatory. However, corrections can be made if I'm way off on something. -- Christopher Burke

O is for Outlaw Sue Grafton (1999) Up until now, we've only had glimpses into the earlier life lived by Kinsey Milhone before she became a detective, and we've even discovered, as she did, that what we knew wasn't totally true. We know she'd been orphaned, and raised by her aunt. We know that she'd been a cop, and married twice. We thought we knew that she had no other living relatives, until they suddenly showed up and we learned more about them. Now we get to learn more about her ex-husband from her short-lived first marriage. First off, his name is Michael Macgruder, aka Mickey, and secondly, well, we learn about his past more than his present. He doesn't get to say much in the here and now. Kinsey doesn't have a case this time. She's on her own. In fact, she'll even be a suspect before it's over. The novel opens with Kinsey getting a call from someone who has a box of her old possessions, report cards, yearbooks and the like. The...

One of the problems I always have with lists of the "best" books of any given year is that I rarely get to read books in the year that they are published. I guess I rely so much on word of mouth for new things, and if they are popular, I won't see a copy of it. Secondary problem, I'm at a point where I have way too many books, so I don't purchase too many. I might get a new book as a gift, or if I'm getting it signed by the author, which hasn't happened for a new release since I worked in midtown Manhattan. My reading time could be summed up as follows: before bed, on the subway (not buses), and lying around in the pool. (Yes, in the pool, so my choices are limited -- no ebooks, obviously.) Looking at this blog, there were 20 entries from 2017. One of those had two books, and another mentioned 30 volumes of manga read over a 12-month period. Assuming half of those were read in 2017, that's 35 books, which isn't bad. Add to that a few more book...