The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Christie)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie (1920)

(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 will admit that I was looking for a couple of quick, short books to read to pad out my blog by the end of the year. An anthology of Agatha Christie books showed up online, and I thought this would be perfect. A couple of reasons: one, I just read a couple of mysteries by Sue Grafton; and two, I'd read the first book before. (Note: the image above is generic, not from the download.)

Okay, so it's been a long time since high school, and the only things I remembered about the book were Poirot, Hastings and "it wasn't strychnine, was it?" Also, back then, I didn't understand the title -- it didn't make any sense to me because I didn't know in advance that "Styles" refered to Styles Court, the estate were the murder takes place.

I knew I was in trouble when the book was front-loaded with characters whom I knew I'd never keep straight. I had trouble with the last Grafton book because of all the players. It was slow going, particularly since without a daily commute, I was reading primarily in the evening. When I didn't fall asleep, I was drowsy enough that I wasn't remembering what was going on. I think I missed part of the ending (about the third chapter from the end) which left me a little confused. At the same time, I didn't want to go back because I wanted to finish before midnight. That wouldn't happen if I kept going back.

So the question is, will I read more Christie? It is something that I should've done long ago as my wife not only has read them all but has a set of her books. (These actually my be in a relative's basement, but they still exist.) Something to think about.

As mentioned above, this was an ebook.

2020 Year in Review

My 2020 End-of-the-Year Review

It's not unusual that very little of what I read this year was published this year. What is unusual is that one of those things was actually written by me. Yay, me!

The year should have a total of 30 posts, including this 2019 Review, this entry, and, I'm hoping, one more book before the year is over.

Of the books read, most were fiction, but there was more nonfiction than usual. Some of the nonfiction came from free downloads with interesting titles or topics, like Celts or the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program (which I remember little of now). The rest were math books, biographies and self-help/inspirational. Plus a pub quiz book.

Fiction is a mixed bag. There are at least two books I didn't finish, but there were other books I gave up on that I didn't bother to list. In the latter case, it was either because I was asked for a review and didn't wish to be mean publicly, or I gave up before I even hit 10% of it. There's also the Best of Tor.com 2016 which I made a dent in, but the book is huge, and I wanted to read other things.

Speaking of Tor, their free ebook of the month club has given me lots to read, not that I've read a lot of it. But the timing of The Haunting of Tram Car 015 coinciding with my just finishing A Dead Djinn in Cairo was too good to pass up. That rated its own entry.

There were two Oz books (one was manga), and two Kinsey Milhone mysteries (one better than the other). And aside from the Tor book, there were a couple of anthologies (including my own): If We Had Known, and Unidentified Funny Objects. I have books 1, 2, 3 and 8 in that latter series. Book 9 will probably kickstarter in the spring, and I'll fill in some gaps. (And maybe submit something.)

Ebooks accounted for 18 of the 28 book entries. Of those, only two were library books, and most of the rest were free downloads. I think only UFO 1 and If cost money. Both of those would be among the best things I read this year. I finally read Redshirts, but I was a little disappointed, but that could be all the buildup I've gotten since it's release. I don't know what I expected of it.

On the nonfiction side, putting the math and games aside, A Sick Life and Out of the Silence were interesting reads, while The Highly Sensitive Person might give me something to think about.

Ozma of Oz (Baum)

Ozma of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (1907)

(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've read The Wizard of Oz as an ebook in the past few years. I read The Land of Oz as a paperback many, many years ago, and then again more recently as a rather interesting set of graphic novels. Next up in the series is Ozma of Oz. The fact that I was looking for short reads to pad out the year is not exactly coincidental.

Many years ago, I saw the movie Return to Oz when it was first released (at Radio City Music Hall, no less). I recognized a lot of the characters from "Land", except that it had Dorothy, and not Tip. Also, it had different villains, namely the Nome King (an underground rock creature of sorts, not a gnome) and the Wheelers (creatures with wheels for hands and feet, and long arms, too.)

This book starts with Dorothy and Uncle Ben on the boat going to Australia. Dorothy gets washed overboard in a storm and clings to a chicken coop for safety. In the morning, she finds a hen has also survived. The hen's name is Bill, and Dorothy calls her "Billina" instead. She discovers this because the hen is able to talk because they are close a a fairy land. Except that Oz doesn't border any oceans. Instead they wash up on the land of Ev, where their adventure begins.

Ozma and the rest of the gang from Land of Oz (except Pumpkinhead) show up in the second part of the book. They rescue Dorothy, and then take her with them to rescue the royal family of Ev from the Nome King, who has turned them into knickknacks in his palace. The King gives every member of the party (including each soldier) a chance to rescue the royal family -- and each other. If they fail to find anyone, then the searcher will also be turned into a knickknack in the palace.

If I remember the movie, Dorothy discovered the secret to finding the rest of the party. Here, it's Billina who is the King's undoing.

Celts: A Captivating Guide to Ancient Celtic History and Mythology (Captivating History)

Celts: A Captivating Guide to Ancient Celtic History and Mythology, Including Their Battles Against the Roman Republic in the Gallic Wars , by Captivating History (2019)

(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.)

Downloaded this freebie earlier in the year. It was an interesting read on my phone, but I put it aside for some reason or other. I picked it up to finish mostly because it was short and half-finished, and I wanted another entry before the year was done.

According to a webpage, Captivating History has nearly 200 books out about different cultures or people. Any number of them are free at a given time. This was interesting to read, and I wouldn't be opposed to downloading another if the subject matter appealed to me.

There is interesting stuff about the Celts, and I may go into more detail if I edit this entry later -- mostly so I can have that information closer at hand.

At one point in the first millenium B.C., (the book uses BCE, I, like one of the sources in the bibliography, do not), Celtic tribes populated most of Europe, north of Italy and Greece, and through Gaul and Iberia. And they were feared by the Greeks and Romans

Unfortunately, they didn't have a written language, so most of what we know of them comes from the Greeks and Romans. Some of this is, of course, biased. And the best you can say is that it gives us a snapshot into their culture.

Some takeaways: they were warrirors, but they were also farmers. They were raiders, but also traders. They were taller than the Romans and Greeks and fiercer. They had chieftans, but would follow another if the chieftan was defeated or fell from grace or whatever. They were loud in battle to show their fierceness.

S is for Silence (Grafton)

S is for Silence, by Sue Grafton (2005)

(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.)

After R is for Ricochet was a little disappointing, I decided I wanted to read another one before closing out the year. S is for Silence is another cold case for Kinsey Milhone. It's set in 1987 but she is looking into a mystery from the thirty four years earlier (1953).

Violet Sullivan, big on the violet theme with the color of her clothes and the smell of her perfume, left her house on the night of the Fourth of July, 1953, leaving her young daughter home with a babysitter. She was never seen again. Some thought she'd been murdered by her abusive husband, Foley. Others thought she'd fled her abusive husband. Either way, there had been no sign of her, dead or alive, since. Her daughter, Daisy, hires Kinsey's to find some answers. Kinsey is hesitant but agrees to look around for five days and report back, and let her decide if there is any reason to continue. Four slashed tires tell her that she's getting close to something and uncovering things that people want kept buried.

The book is a bit different in that it has dual narratives from 1953 and 1987. It's a little jarring at times. The narratives are not parallel. The flashbacks are usually centered on one person, and take place the weekend Violet disappeared. A couple events are retold from the opposite perspective. Nearly all center around Violet or involve her tangentially.

There are too many characters to get into, particularly since there are people back then who aren't around now. And honestly, since I didn't read straight through, I kind of lost track of who was who or how they were connected to the others either through family or work. Most of the guys are connected to Violet in some way because she chased after and slept with many of them.

Take all flashbacks with a grain of salt because of unreliable narrators. The only point of view we don't get is Violet's, which would be cheating if we knew. And nobody really knew her anyway. The rest of the flashbacks aren't told as flashbacks to Kinsey. They're outside of her story line.

I was surprised that there would be a new cold case so soon after a different one. One could imagine that writing in 2005 about 1987 about a 1953 disappearance that emerging technologies could track down some who tried to disappear and didn't want to be found. It was reasonable that Violet could be either dead or alive.

Cheney gets mentioned, but either he's busy or Kinsey is away. The retired guys Dolan and Oliphant also rate a mention early on. They would love this kind of case, but they aren't available, which is fine. The book didn't need to two of them arguing and babysitting each other. A consult with them might've been nice.

Again, for all the talk of family, there was none about Kinsey's family. It seems as if she dropped that thread, as surely as she reduced the "12 to 15 workings cases" Kinsey has at any one time to answering mail and paying bills. Just an occasional mention of filing a report, answering a call with a little more specificity or something would help.

That said, I enjoyed the book and finished it in just a few days. There will probably be a break before I borrow the next one.

It occurred to me, at this point, all the books are new to me. I stopped listening to books on tape by 2001, and probably sometime before that. It was a commuting thing. I never got past the middle of the alphabet, and they were usually in random order.

Another Dozen "Dozen" Game Books (Reed)

Another Dozen "Dozen" Game Books, Philip J. Reed (2020)

Below is a list of gaming supplements I've read through over the past few months. Mostly short, which is why there's a bunch of them, and mostly part of the A Dozen... line by Phil Reed, which is why there are about a dozen of them. Some of these might be rereads. I've added more description because this is as good a place as any to make some sort of catalogue so I can locate a supplement when I remember some unusual item that I could use in a game or a story.

The image above came from the last one I read. I noted the Elmore signature. I can't say that I'm overly familiar with Larry Elmore's work, but he did the art used on some of the cards in the old Guardians CCG from FPG, Inc.

A Dozen Strange Encounters (14 pages) some doomsday scenarios and planar gates A Dozen Dungeon Hazards (7 pages, 2004) Open Game Content (OGC) for Ronin Arts: Fogs, Fungi, Molds & Slimes (12 examples) My "favorite: was my accidentally misreading "Necromantic Frog" But the Harmonic Mushrooms could fit into a story very easily. I remember oozes/slimes just damaging ("consuming") bodies, but never taking them over. Not good from roleplay, I guess. A Dozen Planar Gates and Storms (8 pages, 2005) OGC. Ronin Arts: Fogs, Fungi, Molds & Slimes (12 examples) Interesting ways of how to get there, but not what you'll find there, which is a book of its own. Good ideas. The "storms" are things like the tornado in the "Wizard of Oz" or (not mentioned) "The Final Countdown". The gates are always gate-shaped like the Guardian (Star Trek), or Stargates, or Pylons (Land of the Lost). Six Planar Gates (5 pages, 2005) Companion to the previous one. This one had more tradition gateways, although one was a carriage reminiscent of the Cóiste Bodhar, the Death Coach featured in Irish legend, not to mention Darby O'Gill and the Little People. The difference is that this one travels all the planes and will take you where you actually want to go. A Dozen City Encounters (14 pages, 2020) Some ideas to use when the party is staying in town. Some of them might make good story prompts. There's a pied piper type who tells stories as a way of getting info out of kids. A half-giant leather worker who lives outside of town who will happily chat, and could be persuaded to make things. A couple other NPCs that I should make a list of. A summer festival (which might attract thieves) and an ominous fog. A Dozen Adventurous Rivals (14 pages, 2020) Other recurring characters the heroes might meet, whether experienced or novice. Many races and classes are covered, along with what notable treasure they might be carrying. The heroes shouldn't be fighting them directly, for the most part. 13 Starship Cargoes (12 pages, 2005) A baker's dozen, if you will. This supplement has d20 game mechanics, which are basically a foreign language to me, but I know enough that I can compare things to each other, and get a general sense. This is useful because my friend keeps encouraging me to write Dieselpunk, or whichever *punk that covers 1930s era spaceships that should have some plausibility to them. Thus my mind goes to cargo haulers and space cops. Of particular interest, the Voracious Monstrous Mantis and the Magnetic Slime, as well as the general description of the Mecha suits, which are more Aliens than Robotech. The last two pages are printable maps for cargo holds, which make me think about looking for the rest of the ship. A Dozen Documents and Papers (7 pages, 2004) The legalise is reduced in size, taking only a fraction of the last page. This was a freebie extra for backing many of Reed's current projects. Some ideas might spring to mind, but mostly it was just an interesting read. Would I use any of this were I to create a story? I don't know. Includes d20 rules. Also included is a page and a half about Smithfield's Chocolate House, with information about real-world historical parallels. This was originally printed on his website, but after nearly two decades, who knows if it's still there. (No, I didn't feel the need to check.) A Dozen Unusual Articles of Clothing (5 pages, 2004) Contains some examples of mundane clothing, but not the usual mundane clothing, and then some fine or enchanted versions. There's a list of garment colors by class, meaning upper or lower, along with clergy or wizard. The Dark Cowl of the Necromancer could spur a story by itself. Also, I learned about things like lirapipes (liripipe, when I searched online), gorgets, chaperons, great coats (okay, I knew about these), supertunics, houppelandes, tippets, and pelisses. Imaginary creatures mentioned include Tangtals (magical cats which could be skinned) and Thundershrikes (magical birds with colorful feathers). This is a little more than 4 pages, with the open-gaming license taking up most of the fifth page. A Dozen Unusual Bracers and Guantlets (6 pages, 2006) What was likely the last of the "Dozen" series, until Phil Reed revived it last year (at least according to the intro page). Entries include BONENEEDLE GAUNTLETS (mitten-style with venomus teeth from a large spidery thing), BRACERS OF THE THIEF (handy item I could've used in a story, maybe in edits), CEREMONIAL GAUNTLETS OF THE DRAGON (valuable, but useless items, like a dragon puppet for followers of cults, with penalities to Dex), CLERIC’S GAUNTLETS OF HOLY MIGHT (holy mittens that lock a weapon in place, but no modifier?), FISTS OF THE BLOOD WIGHT (unholy mittens, basically the hands and claws of a blood wight, which bleed unceasingly, though from no detectable source [my phrasing]), GAUNTLETS OF THE ANGELIC CHOIR (shiny, feathery, extra protection but heavy so Dex penalty, do they have Luck in them?), GAUNTLETS OF THE GRAVE (clamshell design for holding polearms, dex penalty, they have arcance runes and an aura or death or fear, and usually worn by skeletons and undead soldiers ... but they're fur-lined), GAUNTLETS OF THE OOZE CHAMPION (ooze mittens that will fuse with the wearer's arms but could be removed with hot water, part of a set that gives command over oozes), HARD, SPIKED BRACERS (made by dwarves for a human, they're what they say on the tin, good in close combat for wounding and disarming), SEPULCHRAL FINGER GAUNTLETS (a sepulchral guardian, an unusual type of construct created from the remains of dead humanoids that are encased in iron, with spikes, dwarven masterwork), SKULL BRACERS (nothing special, but well-made, used by rogues), SPELLCASTER’S BRACERS (like a magician's trick, they can pull something out one's sleeve, such as a material component). This is actually 5 pages, with the open-gaming license taking up the last page. A Dozen Unusual Materials (5 pages, 2004) Entries include ARCANE STONE (rare black stone from deep beneath the ocean used in jewelry and arrow heads, faintly naturally enchanted), BLACKWORK SILK (A powerful, uncommon silk woven from the web of an enchanted giant spider, blackwork has the strength of steel and the lightness of the finest natural silk), BONE OF THE UNDEAD (a powerful necromantic tool, could be useful in that Potions story I'm trying to write), DARKEST OBSIDIAN (black, volcanic glass, used artistically only), DRAGONNEL'S HIDE (the dragonnel, a foul beast that may be related to the abomination of a dragon and pteranodon, an evil creature with a massive wingspan and long, serpentine body -- sounds, familiar, I think I read this before. Oh, well.), HORROR CRYSTAL (sliver of a dead crystalline horror – an unnatural evil humanoid that’s made of crystal and glass, used artistically -- or is it?), GOLEM METAL (enchanted metals of a destroyed iron golem can, molten down and reforged into weapons or armor), GREEN (Emerald) MITHRAL (variation of the usual stuff), MOONRED HEART (a type of tree that grows deep beneath the surface world, a masterwork that will wither if brought to the surface), SCREAMING GOLD (when immersed in water, useful for alarms or diversions), SPIDER'S CARAPACE (hard deep black shell of a rare, underground spider used by drow for armor or wizard's for spell book covers), TROLL'S IRON (greenish metal from deep underground, below where dwarves dwell-- I wonder if those trolls would be tinier). The more I read, the more I realized that I'd seen this one before, even if I hadn't read the one before it. (The files are sorted alphabetically.) It must've been in the last list.f This is actually 4 pages, with the open-gaming license taking up the last page. All Fall Down (4 pages, 2004) An independent storytelling game with random elements (dice and voting), plus counters. A little on the mark with talk of disease and depression in these days of Covid.

By this point, I have a separate directory on my hard drive, filled with Phil Reed files, so there will definitely be more to come ...

R is for Ricochet (Grafton)

R is for Ricochet, by Sue Grafton (2004)

(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 took a break from old anthologies and freebie downloads to revisit something more familiar. I haven't read an Alphabet book in over a year, so I was due. That said, this was a free download from the library, but it was a loan of a book that would've cost money to download from somewhere else.

It's still the 80s, around 1987, because "I Want Your Sex" is a new song on the radio. (There were other references earlier on, but that was one of the last ones, and it stuck with me.) She didn't use her portable typewriter at all, but there was ample use of payphones. Not a cellphone in sight. There were some big clunky computers and floppy disks but the action is taking place nearly 20 years before publication, which was about 14 years ago.

I don't know what the "Ricochet" of the title is supposed to refer to, except that Kinsey is just bouncing around a lot in this one.

Not that this is a review, but this wasn't one of the better ones. I still enjoyed it, but it was a bit light with several subplots working. Plus there was a note in the acknowlegdements that there was another subplot that was dropped.

For one thing, there's no case. Kinsey is hired by a rich guy, Nord Lafferty, to escort his spoiled, wayward daughter Reba home from the womens prison she's spent the last couple of years at for stealing from her employer. She's also supposed to watch over her for a few days while she gets settled in. (For one thing, Reba's driver's license has expired while in jail.)

Within three chapters, we have our subplots. Vera, from California Fidelity, and whose wedding Kinsey attended after being swept up in events from another adventure, which wasn't exactly a case, calls Kinsey and invites her to a gathering she's having. It doesn't take much to figure out that Vera is trying to set her up. She goes, there's so little chemistry that we don't even get much of a description of the guy or even a line of dialogue, and she heads out. Two things happen: one, we don't really hear from Vera for the rest of the book; two, Kinsey runs into Lt. Cheney Philips. The two have previously et, and kinsey might've been romantically interested but Cheney had run off and married some woman he hardly knew. Kinsey has sworn off married men after things didn't work out with Jonah. (And they didn't work out for Jonah, either, apparently.) Also, Dietz is in the wind, and she's okay with that. They had an unusual relationship.

Cheney ends up looking for Kinsey (and this might be my memory already fading, but he might've been the reason Vera really invited Kinsey, because Cheney lives next door). He has two things on his mind: first, the feds are looking into Beck, the guy who Reba stole from and they want to get her involved; second, he split from his wife and he wants to get involved with Kinsey. Kinsey's all for the latter, not fond of the former.

She finds herself playing friend and mother hen to Reba, watching her and trying to gauge whether she'd turn on Beck who she's obviously in love with, even though he's married. Unfortunately, some new guy at the FBI trying to make a name for himself tips Reba off to the investigation be showing her pictures of Beck leaving a motel with her best friend Onni, who is *not* Beck's wife.

Reba starts spiraling and doing what's she's going to do. Kinsey follows along to try to keep her from violating parole or destroying the feds case. At this point, she's pretty much along for the ride. About the only detective work to happen after this was tracking down a stripper in Reno who did time with Reba.

Oddly, Grafton, through Milhone, makes a comment herself that sometimes you're just a bit player along for the ride. I almost feel like Henry's family had more to do than Kinsey did. Unlike the Cheney romance, Henry's love triangle could've been removed from the book entirely. Or replaced with another story. Henry is set in his ways, and his family is going to be his family.

Speaking of family, the other branch of Kinsey's family (on the mother's side, so I can't call them Milhones) doesn't make an appearance or even rate a mention. She didn't think about them at all, despite all the family issues going on in this book.

This was a quick read for me. Practically a speed read. My last entry was only 20 days ago. I don't think I decided that quickly to download this book. In fact, I think I downloaded a freebie that I read three chapters of and told the guy that it wasn't for me. I didn't leave any reviews because no reason to be mean. He'd asked, I told him. He was grateful that I tried it out, and quite pleasant. Another thing, I haven't gotten a notice that the loan was going to expire soon, so it was probably two weeks to read, with all this other stuff I have going on.

A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015 (Clark)

A Dead Dinn in Cairo, by P. Djeli Clark (2016)
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djeli Clark (2019)

(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.)

First off, these are both novellas. The two of them together merit a separate entry as a single unit. The second book was released as part of Tor.Com's book of the month club almost impossibly coincidentally right after I read the original novella. Out of nowhere, I decided to look at my iBooks app instead of the Kindle app, then I opened Some of the Best of Tor.Com 2016, which I presumably downloaded close to four years ago. (It was likely released in early 2017.) And I started reading that novella even though I had skipped over an earlier novella in the collection because of the length. (I'll get back to it.) By the time I realized my mistake, I was committed to the story.

That book will get an entry when (and if) I finish it.

"Djinn" tells the story of Fatma el-Sha’arawi, special investigator with the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, who has to solve the mystery surrounded a large dead djinn. (I just looked up the department name to make sure I got it right.) She dresses "exotically" in English clothes, rather than standard Egyptian wear. Her partner for the case is Inspector Aasim Sharif, police liason with the Ministry.

The story is set in an alternate Cairo, 1912, some decades after the walls connecting realities was punctured and djinn and other supernatural creatures were able to come through. The other creatures include things that call themselves Angels but aren't really Angels. And there's something called The Rising that seem about to happen, but would be a good idea to prevent.

"Tram Car" is set in the same universe, but is not a sequel.It takes place a few months after the previous story, with a backdrop on a women's suffrage movement. Fatma gets mentioned early on, but doesn't get involved with this case. The Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities has to deal with a haunted tram car. Alternate Cairo has a very complex system of semi-intelligent tram cars running about the city, thanks to the presence of supernatural djinn. However, one of the cars appears to be haunting and attacked a mechanic and a female passenger. Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef are assigned to check it out. They soon learn that it's something that hasn't been catalogued before. Hamed is the department veteran, while Onsi is the new guy, who has his own unusual background and talents. Hamed tolerates most of that.

Their plan to exorcise the creature involves hiring a djinn, who don't work cheaply. The minister of transportation declines to pay for it and then informs them of the change in the law that requires MAESE needs to bear the cost. This sends Hamed and Onsi looking for alternatives as that would take a huge chunk out of their budget and leave them behind a desk for months. (The djinn haven't introduced air conditioning.)

Twists and turns lead to the discovery of what this creature is, where it came from, and how it got there -- and who is responsible for it getting there. Then there's the matter of getting rid of it, which leads to some interesting undercover work.

Both were interesting reads which immerse you into the setting. Of the two, I prefer the second, so they get better as you go.

A Sick Life (Watkins)

A Sick Life: TLC 'n Me: Stories from On and Off the Stage, by Tionne Watkins (2017)

(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.)

The title "A Sick Life" is has a double meaning in that it is "sick" (slang) the life that being a part of a successful singing trio leads to, while at the same time acknowledging the struggles that Tionne Watkins (I assume Tionne is pronounced like Dionne) had with a crippling disease that she didn't have a diagnosis for her until she was an adult. She has a rare form of sickle-cell and had been told that she would live until adulthood, nor would she ever have children. She proved the doctors wrong.

The book covers the birth of her daughter, Chase, her marriage and divorce, the crazy life and sudden death of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and discovering, on top of everything else, the presence of a brain tumor. All against the backdrop of her music career with TLC.

The final chapters of the book deal with doing The Apprentice where she clashed with a couple of the people, and didn't care for Donald Trump (she had spoken highly of his hotels earlier in the book). She raised money for sickle research, and managed to get herself off the show. After that, it's the final album for TLC and the adoption of her son Chance, and living life.

Hardcover book, read on subways and in school. Approx 230 pages. Not sure where the book came from -- it was likely a giveaway from a talk show that Tionne Watkins appeared on, either to promote the book or to promote awareness afterward. At some point, it came into my possession.

The Supervillain Field Manual (Wilson)

The Supervillain Field Manual: How to Conquer (Super) Friends and Incinerate People, by King Oblivion, PhD, as told to Matt D. Wilson (2013)
Illustrated by Adam Wallenta

(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 will be short because I wrote this up and it dissovled in the digital round file.

Every now and then, I check what's free on Amazon, and this appeared. It looked interesting, and it was. I thought it might be a graphic novel. It was not. It's a humor book, and it was sufficiently amusing.

The first thing I noticed was the reviews, starting with one by Stan Lee and moving on to other comic industry professionals. This told me something worth reading was coming. (You have to watch out for free things.)

The second thing I disovered, as was mentioned many times throughout the text that this was a sequel. This was a little odd. Usually the first book in a series is the free one. It could have been just a matter of timing.

The conceit of the book is that King Oblivion is sharing his wisdom and telling the reader how to succeed as a supervillain. And he knows if you are understanding him because (as he reminds you constantly) he is reading your mind. The text covers announcing yourself, winning, losing, making alliances, dissolving alliances (sometimes with acid), acquiring power and wealth, keeping power and wealth, weilding power and spending wealth, and preparing for destruction. There's a lot of killing everyone involved.

Worth reading, even if it was sometimes repetitive. Some of the jokes fall flat, but Wison does turn some funny phrases. And if you're planning on being a supervillain, it isn't a bad guide book to have.

I labeled this "How To" just because. Maybe it's fictional, but it's not you're usual fiction.

Unidentified Funny Objects, Volume 1 (Shvartsman, ed.)

Unidentified Funny Objects, Volume 1, by Alex Shvartsman, ed (2012)

(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.)

Okay, maybe this is a little bit of a review because I'm not really going to make notes about the stories.

UFO is an annual humore anthology. Number 8 was "Kickstarter-ed" earlier this year. I participated (and submitted a story unsuccessfully) and as an add-on, I bought Volumes 1, 2 and 3.

The first volume contains nearly 30 stories of fantasy, sci-fi, and "real life" (in a somewhat warped way). The stories are not necessarily UFO or alien in nature. That's just a cool title.

The humor ranged from mildly amusing to irreverently hysterical to what the hell did I just read? There were a couple I couldn't remember by the time I finished them -- particularly if I was reading them at bedtime and they knocked me out.

That's not a big criticism though. It's reflective of the nature of humor. No two stories are alike, so there's bound be some that you won't find funny. They may not be the same ones that I didn't find funny. And it's probably the reason that I read it from cover to cover without a break. Many times, I put anthologies down for a while after a few stories.

Fantastic Voyage (Asimov)

Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov (1966)

(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.)

Note: the book is a novelization of a science-fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The novel was printed first, but Asimov didn't create the story behind it. He just made some "smart writing" out of it.

As the pandemic was just gearing up and teachers were required to report to school, even as the children were not, I found myself in an Englsih/Language Arts classroom. The teacher had left some books "to be taken". Yes, they were meant for kids, but I left all the ones that kids would read. I don't believe that Fantastic Voyage would have been taken by anyone other than an adult of similar age to my own. A hardcover book, it still has the label from the school library shelves.

I've never seen the movie, though I remember parts of it on TV when I was younger -- my older brothers might've been watching it, and clips might've appeared on shows about movies and special effects. I remember picking up a copy of the paperback a long time ago as well. Probably in high school. I didn't get very far into it. Perhaps had I seen the movie, I might've done better.

The same is true now: I would've gotten through it faster had I seen the movie and been more familiar with the story. As it was, the first few pages were a little tedious introducing the characters mostly through dialogue. After that, it sailed pretty well. The pun wasn't intended, but what they hell, I'll own it.

The story is set in a backdrop of the Cold War, but no enemy is mentioned. Just "them" or "the other side". A defecting scientist is attacked en route to a secret base and suffers a brain clot. It's inoperable and he's going to die if something drastic isn't done. The problem is that not only does no one know his secret, but they don't know if the "other side" knows it.

Pioneering research has been done in miniaturization, with a semi-reasonable explanation for where the extra mass goes. Now the limit is being pushed to shrink a team to the size of a bacteria, but it can only be sustained for an hour. After that, it will undo itself automatically. The team has that one hour to save Bendes' life and make their way to safety.

Actually, it's fairly routine, and the mission could be completed in under ten minutes without complications. But, of course, there are complications. Those complications could be accidents, or they could be the work of a saboteur working for the "other side".

The team consists of Capt. Owens who controls the sub; Dr. Michaels, who is mentioned as a pilot but is basically the navigator; Dr. Peter Duval, who is going to operate on the blood clot with a laser; Miss Cora Peterson, Duval's assistant; and agent Charles Grant, a soldier who is put in charge of the mission

Michaels scanned as much of the circulatory system as time allowed, and he navigates the sub through its journey. Miss Peterson -- I went back to double-check this -- is only a year out of graduate school with her Masters degree, so she isn't a "doctor" or anything, but she is Duval's assistant, and he won't procede without her.

Grant is put in charge to make final decisions after getting input from all concerned because any one of the crew -- even Grant himself, but he knows he's okay -- could be working for the "other side" to make the mission a failure, so that the patient dies. There are many times when the doctors think they fail have failed and should call to extracted, but Grant doesn't abort a mission until he sure that every avenue for sucess has been tried. Grant also serves as the non-scientist (like many of the readers) who has things explained to him.

At 180 pages, it was a quick read. It gave a brief tour of the circulatory system without being bogged down in technical terms. There was a sample chapter of Forward the Foundation which I didn't bother reading. (I listened to Prelude to Foundation and remember little of it.)

This was my "pool read", the book I took to read in the pool in the yard, not worried if it got wet.

A New Look at Arithmetic (Adler)

A New Look at Arithmetic, by Irving Adler (1964)

(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 another math book removed from the libary of William E. Grady High School, which would have been disposed of by the Math Dept had I not rescued it. (Said rescue will likely end when scifi conventions start again, at which point, I will attempt to "pass it on.")

It has diagrams by Ruth Adler. When I taught at Grady, the Math Coach was named Jill Adler. Had I read this book sooner, I might've inquired if she were related. You never know.

I found this book amusing to begin with because it was geared to folks who needed to learn the "new math" of the 60s, as opposed to the new math of the past decade. The one reason that I was aware that there was new math in the 60s was because of a Tom Lehrer song.

In any case, the first chapter goes into great detail about sets. What's funny is that I remember learning about sets in early years of grade school, but they sort of fell of the radar after a while. And when I began teaching, students weren't too sure about what a set was. They only knew Venn diagrams from English classes where there would compare and contrast texts.

There isn't much to see about this book because I've covered a lot of the same material with the prior math books. If I could say one thing, it's that I found myself skimming and skipping ahead not because it was becoming confusing and unreadable but because it was very familiar material and tended to plod on longer than I needed.

If I had to say something else, the negative would be the confusing things about naming sets after numbers (or vice versa?) and then summing 2 + 3 to get 5, when the examples until then should give you 3. The positive would be seeing the method for finding square roots by hand that I had to do way back when. Obviously, this got very tedious for more than 3 significant digits.

I acutally have a couple more math books, but I have regular books that need to be read, in print and ebook formats, including one I don't mind taking into the pool with me. Those are next.

Wolf's Empire: Gladiator (Christian and Buchanan)

Wolf's Empire: Gladiator, by Claudia Christian and Morgan Grant Buchanan (2016)

(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.)

In the spring of 2019, I attended a science-fiction convention, Heliosphere NY. The announcement for 2020 stated that Claudia Christian of Babylon 5 fame was going to be one of the two Author Guests of Honor the following year. I was unaware that she cowrote a book, but I immediately signed up for 2020 and put the book on reserve at the library.

Fast forward a bunch of months, and the library deletes the request and says it doesn't have the book. A few months after that, Christian and Buchanan cancel because of a "scheduling conflict". Shortly after that, the con goes online because of the pandemic, and the library finds the book and sends it to my local branch.

And then the libraries closed, so I had plenty of time to read the hefty tome. I needed it. Especially because I put it down a few times.

The quick review, even though this isn't really a review, is that it's way too long. And I knew it would be a saga from the colon in the title.

The story is set in a future where the Roman Empire never fell. Instead, it grew and took over the galaxy, which got divided into the seven houses, like the seven hills of Rome, with each house still having a presence on Earth. Throughout all that time, it's still a patriarchal society, although women can pursue many occupations and be fighters and gladiators.

Accala Viridius is a noblewoman who becomes a gladiator, training with a semi-intelligent boomeranging super-discus, which also appears to be one of a kind, because nobody else uses one despite how amazingly useful it is. Her mother and brother are killed when the planet they were on was bombed by another house. Now she wants revenge against that house. Her father just wants her to not bring shame to the family. She tries to enter the Imperial Games where she confront and even kill her enemies. Her father prevents this from happening. In the end, the Sertorian house, which bombed that far-away planet and murdered her family, wants her to join their side. After some convincing from her uncle, a high muckety-muck in House Wolf, she becomes a mock-Hawk. As the action unfolds, you would think it was a Hawk's Empire, not the Wolf's. And that is what that house aspires to.

The Imperial Games, which are supposed to settle any civil war, are set to take place on that same planet Accala's family perished on. There's a long trip with training and proving herself, and then a gruelling race. The race makes absolutely no sense.

Each house sports a team with 8 players for the entire gladitoral combat. But first there's a gruelling trek across the hostile planet with combat between the houses. One wouldn't expect all the combatants to survive the trip to the arena in the first place. In fact, many don't, but more survive that you might expect. Granted, the Sertorian team is cheating through the use of ambrosia to make them superhuman, and it's still difficult.

Not even halfway through the book and you're screaming to get to the arena already, or just blow the whole thing up. Okay, so the latter happens.

If I have another problem with the basic story it'd be this: in many tales, the protagonist loses everything but then rises to become a hero in spite of it. In others, the hero has to lose everything before they can truly become great. This is the latter, where so much is lost, you have to stop and wonder -- "Wouldn't a real hero have been able to prevent some of this? Any of this?"

Many characters lose everything near and dear to them, friends, relatives, limbs, their lives ... but some of them get better. It gets to the point where they could literally be taken apart and put back together again. But are they still human?

I couldn't wait to get to the end of this, and I don't feel any need to run out and get the next book. Since the library didn't list another book, that would be another strike against it.

Note: over 500 pages.

Land of Oz - Manga (Baum)

Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by David Hutchison (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.)

The first time I read the story of The Land of Oz was the Marvel Treasury of Oz treasury edition comic. It followed the joint DC/Marvel edition of The Wizard of Oz, which told the sotry of the movie, not the original novel.

At some point after that, I'm sure I read the book itself. I know we had a copy in the house. Oddly, despite having a copy of The Wizard of Oz on our bookcase, I never read it. Not until I bought my first Palm Pilot and it was one of the books included. (At the time, people made fun of me for reading on something that small.) And there was the Disney movie Return to Oz with Dorothy, instead of the main character Tip, which covered a lot of the same material and featured quite a few of the same characters.

This version of The Land of Oz is similar to, but inferior to my memory of, the Marvel edition. There's really nothing "manga" about it. The Scarecrow is drawn oddly, and the Tin Woodsman is definitely a manga-type image, but other than that, nothing.

Worse, even though the pages read from the back, the individual pages are read left to right, as usual. And then there are the "splash" pages. the ones that cross two pages in an actual printed book. In these cases, you swipe to go to the next page on the left to see an image that you know should be on the right. This was confusing. Of course, splash pages of this type would be confusing in ebook form regardless.

I'm not summarizing the story because I do that to remember things. There's nothing here I'm likely to forget.

There were 8 or 9 issues and I read them quickly over a few nights. I didn't look to see if Ozma of Oz was available as a comic. I'd probably prefer to read that as a novel first.

In A Flash: 2020 (Burke)

In A Flash: 2020, by Christopher J. Burke (2020)

(Not a review. More of a blatant plug.)

Still, it counts as a book read because I read the galleys cover to cover, looking for problems.

20 flash fiction stories -- disclaimer, some appeared, in slightly different form, in the eSpec Books blog when they won monthly Flash Fiction contests.

The stories range from fantasy to science fiction to "realism", which is a catch-all, really. The Realism section gives you horror, noir, and pirates. (Not at the same time.)

$1.99 for the ebook. The paperback is forthcoming.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Flash-2020-Christopher-J-Burke-ebook/dp/B08CWQTYBR

Cogwash (Kobren)

Cogwash, by Max Kobren (2018)

(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.)

(Okay, maybe there's a hint of review, because there isn't really much reason to remember much about this novella.)

A free download, from where I don't remember. It might've been reddit, and the person might've asked for a review, so I downloaded it. And then I read it because it was short and I just finished something else.

Anyway, unlike the overwritten self-published books I read recently, this one is a bit underwritten. It could use more details, and, again, an editor. There are, for example, dialogue sequences that need work. You aren't always sure who is talking. One person does something and the other says something in the same paragraph. Or both talk in one paragraph.

There's a prologue that really only sets up the first chapter, and the first chapter is really just a prologue for the rest of the book. We advanced enough to have robots. Then everything collapsed. So we still have robots and hover vehicles, but it's like the Old West out there, which gangs running the towns.

The big "reveal" isn't foreshadowed so much as telegraphed way in advance. However, the characters in the book don't see it because they think the guy is dead. No one could have survived being dumped in bandit territory like that. Which, come to think of it, it wasn't really explained how he could survive. The only shocking thing is that the other character from Chapter 1 doesn't make another appearance.

Terminology nit: I get that he wants to evoke the Old West (even though it's the future, after some bad times), but "hover coach" and "hover horse" get old fast. And anyone living in those times would just call them a "coach" or a "horse", particularly since the non-hover variety are nowhere to be seen. Moreover, you'd think someone might say "car" or "bike" (or "cycle").

Similarly, when every gun is a "plasma thrower", there really isn't much need to keep saying "plasma thrower". Also, the slug from this gun (is it a handgun? a rifle?) can temporarily take down a robot but when the doctor takes one in the shoulder, he's fine. He's had worse than that. Not that there are any other doctors around who can patch him up.

For all that, I didn't hate this book, and unlike the previous book of this caliber, I stayed with this one to the end. With work, it could be a book for middle graders. (He might have to remove the one more particularly grusome attack, but that's just me, and probably change the reason for the first sherrif's departure.) Middle schoolers might also appreciate the cipher in the text that seems to be there for no reason other than to have a cipher in the text. It was obviously not a date (because no dates are given) but the next most obvious cipher didn't make much sense. Except that it was the most obvious thing (which gets explained painfully) and there was a reason for it in the story, although no reason why robots would be babbling it over and over.

(Note: it's so obvious a code that I translated the final message in the back of the book in my head without using a pencil. I just read it. Maybe a little slower than I would read this paragraph, but it wasn't rocket science.)

I added the "Steampunk" tag, but it really isn't. It's robots in the new Old West, but otherwise, not really steampunk-y at all.

This was a quick one-day read. Nothing serious.

Life (Yao)

Life, by Lu Yao, translated by Chloe Estep (1982)

(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 another book that I downloaded during Amazon's World Book Day promotion. I picked it mostly because it was near the top of the list and it was short. Yes, I wanted to squeeze a few more books in.

Life takes place in a peasant village in China, and in a nearby city. Everyone has their place dictated to them, and moving up is no easy task. The rules can be manipulated, but doing so has its consequences.

Many people follow old ways, and tradition is strong even in the ones who don't. But change is coming. Then again, it isn't there just yet.

The story centers around Gao Jialin, who is educated, but didn't place into university, so he went back to his village and became a teacher. Unfortunately, he gets displaced from this job by Gao Minglou, a village leader, in favor of the leader's son. (I was a little confused here if there was a relation between these two Gaos, because Gao Minglou seems to be some relative to the other muckety-muck, Liu Liben, aside from the fact that their families are connected through marriage.)

Jialin winds up doing the work of a peasant, so much so that he works his hands raw from overdoing it with the tools.

He also falls in love with Qiaozhen, the second eldest child of Liu Liben, who was never sent to school. The oldest daughter, Qiaoying, is also uneducated and married to Gao Minglou's son. The youngest daughter, Qiaoling, went to school. The similarity in names sometimes confused me with the oldest and youngest, as they aren't mentioned as much.

Although Liu Liben didn't educate his oldest daughters, he still wants better for them than the life of a peasant's wife. He is important in town, and he can marry them, he believes, to the sons of better off families. However, Qiaozhen shows no interest in any suitors or matchmakers. She's in love with Jailin. To many, it looks unseemly. To others, it's modern love.

When threats and schemes don't seem to work to discourage this relationship, a new solution is arrived at. Basically, in modern corporate parlance, they kick the problem upstairs. That is, get rid of the unwanted person by giving them a promotion and sending them elsewhere.

Jialin gets a job as writing reports in the city, and he becomes very good at it. He has less time for Qiaozhen, and she starts to seem more simple to him. At the same time, he meets Huang Yaping again. He knows her from school, and she works at the radio station. She is datng Zhang Kenan, another old friend from school, but she doesn't love him. She falls in love with Jialin, and tells him so. She convinces him that they should each break up with their other love interest, so they can be together, and then move to a bigger city together.

But Life has a way at laughing at the plans of ordinary mortals, as politics and petty revenge rear their heads.

It was an intereting read, although it took longer than I expected because I only read it at meals. Before bedtime, I tended to drift off, no matter how long I kept at it. (So, not engrossing.)

InQUIZitive, Volume I & II (Dhar)

InQUIZitive - The Pub and Trivia Quiz Game Book: Omnibus Volume I & II, by Sumit Dhar (2013)

(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.)

A few of these popped up, and who doesn't like trivia? (No, seriously, if you're not a trivia fan, you are way too serious.)

I'll count this as one book because there was no delineation between the two volumes. Altogether, there were 40 quizzes of five questions each. I've never attended a "pub quiz", so I do not know the format of those.

These quizzes were generally a paragraph of background information leading to a question. Sometimes the answer was obvious from hints in the text. Other times, that was only true if you'd heard of the answer in the first place. (There was a company I guessed from the translation of two words, but I never heard of the company.)

The annoying things: first, there are questions where it is not obvious that the answer is someone or something that is fictional. Second, the answers repeat the entire questions over again, often just to add three or four words. Third, there were at least five questions (which would be an entire quiz) which were repeated word for word in later quizzes. Finally, there are a couple of "India-specific" quizzes, meaning that you need to have more than just a passing knowledge of India to answer them.

Some of the quizzes I pondered a while so I could work out the answer, or at least a good guess. Others, I just breezed to the answers because I figured I'd never get it (and most of the time, it turned out that I wouldn't have gotten it had I waited, either).

Other than that, it was a quick read before falling asleep or during breakfast.

Moving on to something else, and then I'll pick up the next book in the series.

Dark Space

Dark Space: Humanity is Defeated, by Jasper T. Scott (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.)

Back in college, I might've said, "Wow, I wish I could write like this." Now that I'm much older, I read this and think, "Dame! I'm glad I don't write like this."

It's not good.

The cover says "over 200,000 copies sold". Well, I downloaded mine for free (legally), and it makes me wonder how many of those 200,000 copies were free downloads. This popped up in BookBub, or some mailing list. I've downloaded too many free ebooks that weren't very good, so I checked on the reviews. There were over 5000 ratings of them and mostly 4 and 5 star. I guess those can be purchased, or found through mailing lists. The actual reviews are less pleasant.

The book opens with Ethan in the middle of a space fight. Not much of a picture is painted, and what little information that is given is sprinkled with technobabble, but not the usual technobabble. It's brand new technobabble. Now, normally, I wouldn't repeat myself so much, but this book does, and quite often. It seriously needs an editor.

The prologue reads like Battlestar: Galactica fanfic, right down to using "frek" instead of "frak". The first paragraph should've served as a warning at how bad it would be, but before the first page ended, I was reading about the "continuous stream of pulse lasers". I know what was meant, and normally I could forgive that phrasing, but I was already on notice. And, frankly, any of another half dozen words or so wouldn't have made me bat an eye. Maybe I'm splitting hairs about "continuous stream of pulse lasers", but it's indicative of the rest of the writing.

After the prologue battle with the ISS fighters is completed, Chapter 1 starts "Two Days Earlier". Never a good sign. Worse, Ethan isn't even a fighter pilot yet. Just a cargo pilot who is an ex-con, and the lady with him isn't the Gina he was worried about in the prologue.

Okay, so how did he get from here to there in two days. Yes, I stayed with this (unlike a recent book) to see where it was going. I didn't want to give up on two out of three books at 10%.

I made to almost 50% before I was satisfied that it wasn't going anywhere that was worth the ride.

Ethan owes a loan shark money for his ship. Selling his ship won't even pay of the debt. So he decides to join the ISS where the crook can't touch him, but he gets abducted before that can happen. Next, Ethan is forced to impersonate a dead ISS soldier who the bad guy had killed, so he can carry out some hare-brained mission. He had a special holo disguise and a vocal disguise to match. But he blunders through things in ways that anyone would immediately see that something was wrong. Particularly if they touched him and pierced the holo disguise.

Was there a story there. Possibly. Not worth going through.

DO NOT BUY THE SIX BOOK SERIES. Some people think if there's six books, it must be a good series. Nope.

Out of the Silence: After the Crash (Strauch)

Out of the Silence: After the Crash, by Eduardo Strauch Urioste with Mireya Soriano, translated by Jennie Erikson (2017)

(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 download from Amazon for it's World Book Day. And, yes, I chose this one to read first because it was the shortest, and I wanted something quick to read electronically. (I have a printed book I'm in the middle of, but I'd rather read it outside, if the weather would cooperate.)

The prologue is Eduardo Strauch Urioste recalling when someone had found his lost wallet and passport that he had lost many years ago, and decided it was time to open up and tell his story. The story of a plane crash he survived. As I started reading it, I suddenly thought to myself -- Wait! It's not that plane crash, is it?

Yes, it was. I remember the incident, but honestly didn't know any of the names involved. I was young at the time, and I haven't seen the movies.

It's the story of a rugby team flying from Uruguay to a match in Chile that crashed in a cordillera in the Andes, the Valley of Tears. I didn't even know what the word cordillera meant.

They weren't immediately rescued. In fact, they were up there for months, long after the food ran out. I wasn't sure that I wanted to read this, but I did. I know that they resorted to eating the bodies to stay alive. Thankfully, this was not something that was dwelt on. (I heard from others that they dwelt on it too much in the film -- and I know that South Park used it as a plot device in an early episode.)

The conditions they had to live through, and the support they gave each other, were astonishing.

The rescue comes about halfway through the book, followed by many pages of photos. After that, there's some info about life afterward, but not much. Strauch spends chapters recalling the ordeal thematically, which was a good choice. And the final portion of the book relates his return visits to site with other survivors, and other people including the man who found his jacket, with his wallet and passport. The concluding chapter is by Eduardo's wife.

The Tyranny of Shadows (Currey)

The Tyranny of Shadows, Timothy S. Currey (2017)

(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.)

If you can't say something nice, say something on your personal blog that no one will see.

This was a freebie on reddit in the freeEbooks directory, posted by the author asking for honest reviews. It came just as I was finishing Redshirts, so I thought I would give it a shot.

I lasted through 10% of the book, and only went that far because I wanted to give it a review, which I wasn't going to do after only 3%. Who knows? Maybe it got better after a bad start, but by 10%, I hadn't felt it started, and I was breezing through a lot of superfluous language while not really knowing what was going on, if anything actually was.

The main character is an assassin but he has problems approaching a nobody cook and getting him outside where he can kill him. He gets an assist from another (the woman on the cover). The two are supposed to be working together. Or something. At first, I wondered why it wasn't written first-person since the narrator is in the mind of the main character so much, but then the point of view switches to the second character. (Nothing wrong with this, but it was still too much in his head.)

For all their arguing, which doesn't really very much at all, except that they like to argue and that they both seem immature and amateurish, they use the orders from the cook they killed to gain access to the kitchen of their actual target. And then dispatch the "Prime Cook" (I'm not making that up) off-screen by oven-cooking a roast. This is pretty much mentioned in passing. Other times, it felt like I was being told about the story instead of being told the story.

I gave it to the start of the third chapter, and then I switched books on the kindle.

There might be a story in here, and a good editor might have helped to bring it out. It read like a second draft that needed a rewrite -- or at least a red pen through the excess words. I would hope that the author makes enough money to hire an editor, or a couple of English majors, to either help update this book, or help with his next one.

Howver, I see that this writer not only released a second book earlier this year, but he has a third book slated for release the day after this blog entry posts. The first two books have a total of 15 reviews. Mine is one of them.

Redshirts (Scalzi)

Redshirts, John Scalzi (2012)

(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 heard about this book when it came out, and those whom I trust with book recommendations found it to be hysterical, without telling me too much about it. I assumed it was going to be a Star Trek parody told from the view of the "red shirts", the folks who seem to get kidded off the most. (I say seem because people have done statistical analysis on episodes of Star Trek to see which color uniform has the highest death rate, and it apparently isn't red. But let's go with the raw numbes and the series that existed before the trope was named ...)

While I expected a little deconstruction and trope awareness, it went a little further to invoke "Star Trek" as a TV show, and then have the characters figure out that they were also on a TV show, and a bad one at that. And then they decide, using the tropes from the show, to do something about it. They had to use the show's trope lest actual physics take over and kill them all "off-screen".

The prologues started with an away team consisting of the senior officers and a couple of redshirts, pinned down on rock piles in a cave, with alien creatures tunneling beneath them. One crew member has already died, and the other is the point-of-view character, and also the son of an admiral (or whatever), who is a friend of Captain Abernathy. I thought that this was going to be his story about just how crazy everything is. But he doesn't make it out of the prologue, and I didn't bother scanning back for his name to write this. The senior officers lament his death, and I'm wondering how much of a bloodbath this is going to be.

Not much of one, as it turns out. And there's a reason that was just a prologue and not Chapter one.

The novel then starts at a space station with new crew members waiting to board the Intrepid: Ensigns Dahl, Duvall, Hanson, Hester, and Finn. The Intrepid is the flagship of the Universal Union, which is called the "Dub U" for short, which is better than "Double U", "U U", or the mathematical "U2" or "U-squared". (None of those are mentioned. I'm rambling.)

Things are odd and work in ways that they shouldn't, defying logic and physics, back conforming to established storytelling tropes, or, as it's come to be called, the "Narrative", which rules over all.

The Narrative is deadly to minor characters while saving the stars of the ship. People around them seem to die more often, while astrogator Anatoly Kerensky seems to suffer life-debilitating injuries every week, but manages to pull through, ready to go on another away mission within a week's time.

Though all this, the ensigns encounter Officer Jenkins, who has managed to stay off everyone's radar every since his wife passed away. He's the one who has figured out what's going on, and warns the newcomers. The problem is that they can't avoid their horrible fates. They can only foist it onto others for so long before the Narrative catches up with them and ends their story arc.

It wasn't what I expected, but I enjoyed what I got. Interesting to note is that the story ends about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the ebook, and is followed by three separate scenes, told in first-, second- and third-person, respectively, featuring minor 21st-century characters, showing how the story in the future affected them in the present. Saying more about them just leads to more spoilers than I've mentioned.

This wasn't Galaxy Quest level Star Trek, but it was up there.

Mathematical Puzzles and Pastimes (Bakst)

Mathematical Puzzles and Pastimes, Aaron Bakst (1954)

[No image -- just a blank gray cover]

Another old math book which was fun to read and which didn't give me a headache in the final chapters (although I might've done more skimming out of disinterest).

While the topics are universal, some of the references are out-dated, such as talk of these new computers and what they will be capable of doing.

Also a little old is the first chapter on "match stick" problems. Many people do these puzzles with toothpicks as they are easier to find these days that wooden matches. (We used to have some around the house as a kid because we needed them sometimes to light the stove -- but we weren't supposed to play with them. Not because we might live them and burn ourselves, but because they didn't want them lost, broken, or scattered underfoot! Plus, people smoked.)

Many of these stick problems were familiar from puzzle books of my youth, or maybe even Boys Life, but I can't say for sure. Some of the others were easy, once you know the basics of moving sticks to make bigger, smaller, or overlapping squares. (Plus, there are a few "trick" questions to get you to think outside the box.) After that, it's a bit repetitive: e.g., move six sticks to make five squares; use the same image and move six sticks to make seven squares. Some of these puzzles you may have accidentally solved during trial and error for earlier problems. And by the end of the chapter, it seems less like brain teasers and more like busywork.

The second chapter was the interesting one. It starts with Billiards geometry (bank shot) and segues into Container Problems. Then using principles for the former, it devises an algorithm for solving the latter, or showing that the problem is unsolvable. (Container problems are the ones were you have, for example, a 12-gallon, 9-gallon, and 5-gallon bucket and you need 7 gallons of water.)

After that, it's a couple of chapters about counting systems, which are basically about using other numbers as bases. The unusual one was bi-quinary, which refers to a counting system that uses two sets of five, instead of ten. Why would anyone do this? Well, the Romans did. If you disallow the use of IV for 4 and instead use IIII (and XXXX, etc), you have a bi-quinary system. 5 I = V, 2 V = X, 5 X = L, 2 L = C, etc.

The other "fun" chapter was the "GOESINTOS", which was about divisibility, and showing it mathematically, without getting so bogged down that my eyes spun. (The notation was not standard, and for this I was grateful. Too many subscripts and superscripts combined give me a headache.) The interesting thing here was the explanation why the Divisibility by 9 rule actually works -- why should adding all the numbers and getting a multiple of 9 prove that the number is a multiple of 9? And why doesn't it work for other numbers? (Actually, it does -- in other bases.)

I could go on, but no one wants that. And if they do, they can look for book reviews on my math blog. mrburkemath.blogspot.com.

Rediscover the Saints (Kelly)

Rediscover the Saints: Twenty-Five Questions That Will Change Your Life, Matthew Kelly (2019)

A gift I received one Sunday morning as I walked out of Church after Mass. I thought it to be a book about the lives of some of the saints. It is not.

It is a collection of inspirational missives from the author, reflecting on life, and invoking different saints. Each essay is a few pages long and ends with a short prayer/invocation.

I didn't even realize it at first because each entry because with the name of a saint (and because I didn't give the subtitle a second glance). But underneath there is a guiding question about the nature of our daily lives and our relationships with each other, our selves, and God.

Not my typical read, but I had no reason to discard it once I began. You can't go wrong reading a book like this once in a year, or even just once per year or so.

The Highly Sensitive Person (Aron)

The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D. (1996)

Subtitled How to Thrive When the World OverWhelms You
Additional material added in 2016.

I was given a copy of this book to read, not because I was the target audience, but so I could have a better understanding of them and to help me interact with them in a more beneficial manner.

Along the way, I saw soe traits that could apply to me, when many others did not. Am I a sensitive person? I think so. Have people told me on occasional that I'm overly sensitive? Yes, but they're wrong! Okay, maybe not, but not as much as they think. (And I think this book would lend credence to my argument.)

But I definitely wouldn't categorize myself as a "highly sensitive" individual.

Nothing else really to say about the book, except that it's interesting reading. Also, if you think that you are HSP, you should pick up a copy of the book. Keep a pencil handy for highlighting and writing in margins.

The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program

The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: The History and Legacy of the USSR’s Efforts to Build the Atomic Bomb, Charles River Editors

Another freebie with an interesting title, so I downloaded it. Not a terrible read, but bored me a little, so I took over a month to read it, because I started playing with my phone during the morning commute instead of reading.

The book runs from the Germans in the 1930s through the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Russia got most of its knowledge through espionage, but that isn't to say that they didn't have scientists of their own working on nuclear weapons. It's just that they came late to the game.

Not much for me to say, except that I recognized some of the Soviet names from history (both reading and living it), while others were new to me.

The book had pages of links to references in the back, so you can check out its sources.

I couldn't tell from the Amazon page what year this was published. I'm guessing 2019.

Fun With Mathematics (Meyer)

Fun With Mathematics, Jerome S. Meyer (1952)

[IMAGE COMING]

Two “fun” things about this Fun with Mathematics book I rescued from my old school library are that it was checked out only twice - due dates in 1966 & 1975 - and that despite it being read, some pages were bound together. Bound, as in, they weren’t properly cut. I had to use scissors to separate some pages. (Someone, at some distant point in the past, attempted to tear them, but stopped.)

This actually was a "fun" book to read. It covered some of the fun things in mathematics, and it kept the conversation at about a high school level, even when it explored higher topics.

It started by talking about really big numbers and really small ones, and getting close approximations of numbers that aren't quite there.

How big the Romans multiply and divide using their numbers? Likely on an abacus, not in a column format. I don't know how true the explanation that a V for 5 is because your hand forms a V when you have all five fingers raised. Or that if you have one hand up and one pointed down below it, it will look like an X for all ten fingers.

Another thing that wasn't meant to be amusing, but was still interesting, was the explanation of log tables and how they were created. They were basically made to be accurate to three decimals places using approximations and the rules for logs and exponents. No one back in the old days could work all these values out. Ironically, we can work out a lot more 70 years later. (Hell, we could have done it even 30 or 40 years later!)

The fun stuff also covered Magic Squares (like seems to be a standard thing), but this went further to makes ones that only included 0, 1, 6, 8 and 9, so that we they were rotated 180 degrees, they were still magic squares. (One such square is pictured on the cover.) There were also some equations that could be reflected or rotated because of these numbers.

The odder things were the chapter on a "nomograph", which looked like a circular slide rule, and a chapter on making a slide rule out of regular rulers. (I used to have one a long time ago before I had any clue what to do with one.)

I skimmed over the "interesting problems", mostly because they seemed like the kind that I knew how to do, but I needed time to just sit there and work them out. I figured out how to make 20 out of just two 3s, so I'm good.

If We Had Known (McPhail, ed)

If We Had Known, Mike McPhail, ed (2017)

(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.)

First book of the year. (Okay, so I started it last year.) And look at the cool cover!

If We Had Known is a collection of cautionary tales of the future: what we might find out there, and what may happen to us right here. My fear going in was that it would be a collection of depressing stories, like those episodes of The Twilight Zone where that final twist just kills you. Thankfully, that isn't the case. They aren't all cheery, either, to be sure, but humanity doesn't get wiped out over and over from mistakes made because we didn't know.

The book starts off with an essay on having a necessary enemy, which turns into a fictional account before it's over, that goes through the space race and the Cold War, and pondering should we lie about an alien invasion coming, if only to get us off the planet? The greatest threat to humanity may be never leaving our planet's surface.

It's the next two stories that really get the book rolling: "The Steady Drone of Silence" by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and "The Last Man on Earth" by Jody Lynn Nye. The former is a military sci-fi rescue/recovery mission to uncover what went wrong, where we learn that science and the military may have different end goals for any discovery or new technology. If the latter, the cumulative effect of genetic manipulation over generations may eventually reach an evolutionary dead end. (Those shouldn't be spoilers -- they're really starting points.)

Note: Danielle Ackley-McPhail is the Publisher of eSpec Books, which published this anthology, and also the spouse of the editor. Neither of those facts were the reason her story is included. Jody Lynn Nye is listed elsewhere in this blog for co-writing The Death of Sleep.

Most of the stories deal with encounters with alien races or cultures when either we go out there, or they come to us (or our colonies).

The final entry, "The Third Heaven" by Robert Greenberger, was more of a character piece than a story, but I enjoyed it, and thought it ended the book well. It was mostly a conversation between the ship's AI and a religious scientist. During the long boring months in space transit, the main character starts questioning her religious beliefs and looks to the AI for guidance. It doesn't speak down or mock in any way, which I appreciated.

There is a follow-up book, with a similar looking cover, that I have to purchase before the month is out.

2019: The Year in Review

For a year without a Challenge checklist, I had a pretty eclectic year. Granted, I didn't read as much as I would have liked, and I lost a lot of my reading time this past summer due to ... reasons. Also, at least two crossword puzzle books factored in, as I needed a diversion every now and then.

There were over three dozen posts last year, almost all of them about completed books. Only two about books that I gave the old college try before abandoning them for not being good, enjoyable, or even well-written.

There were fiction books and nonfiction, sci-fi and foreign translations, graphic novels and self-help, math book and game books, long and short.

In the graphic novel category: I discovered the series Amulet at my last school, before discovering that each issue was published about a year or more apart -- and that the final issue had not been published yet. Indeed, at the time, it probably hadn't been written yet, as #8 was not that old. There were summer comic books, most of which were disjointed collections of monthly titles, which shared a theme, but not a coherent story line because too many parts were left out. (And different included titles had different side plots.)

The odd thing was that I made no entry for One Piece and haven't since 2017 when I listed the first 27 books. I know I'm somewhere in the 30s, possibly low 40s, so I need to find out which was the last book I read, so I can catch up and make another entry. Honestly, I don't remember if I read any last year. I would have had to have put them on hold at the library. (Note: that's actually not a bad way to check on it.)

I will plug Amazon only because I tend to use their images, but because of their annual "World Book Day" where I get to download a bunch of free translations, and then proceed to read one or two of them. This year, I read another Japanese book, Go (even though I should have gone to another part of the world), and a Dutch book, An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew. The amazing thing about the Dutch book was that it took place, for the most part, in the United States, in New York and Pennsylvania. Allene Tew was born in New York at the fringes of high society, rose up and eventually married actually royalty in Europe. She died in Holland, and the author worked backward from there -- no spoilers, as the story starts with her final days, far from the place where she was born. Had I had more time to go walking this year, I thought about a tour of places she'd lived (or were mentioned in the book) -- the Manhattan ones, at least. Fascinating book, and there were some copies of original society pages included.

In the fantasy category: last year's eSpec Books sale gave me a collection of Precinct books, by Keith R. A. DeCandido (I recently found out it's "de Candid o"), except for Mermaid Precinct, which I selected after winning a flash fiction contest. (Those are gone now.) I liken it to a fantasy Barney Miller with its cast of characters that originated in roleplaying games, but are three-dimensional.

Nonfiction, other than the translation, included essay books ("Writing Science Fiction", and "Breakfast on Mars" which is NOT science fiction) and self-help. Humble and Kind was a gift book with the lyrics to the Tim McGraw song (which he didn't write) along with a short essay introduction (which he did). Speak Thai was just a quickie free ebook, which I read as a curiosity -- it didn't achieve its goal. I don't need to break up with my phone -- in fact, I need to get a better phone -- but reducing screen time wouldn't be a bad idea. And, of course, there were two math books.

Finding a challenge for 2020 may be difficult. Many are boring, or just have dumb things added. I think I did okay last year. Plus, I have a whole lot TBR.