Mr. Burke's Reading List

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 est

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

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 U

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 s

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

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 (1

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

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

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 e

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

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 th

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 la

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 cas

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,

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

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 , 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,

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 j

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 annoyi

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

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 honest

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

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

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 ,

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 , 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 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 guessin

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

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 abo

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,