Mr. Burke's Reading List

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (2022) (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 book club choice, but it got 0 votes, which is surprising because I thought I'd voted for it. It was the first one available for the library. I read it, without the audiobook. I get the feeling that the audio might've been difficult to listen to, both storywise and the way it was told. Jennette appears to have OCD but she is diagnosed as Mormon. That attempt at humor as about on par with the tone of the book. Her mother dreamed of being a star and wanting that for her daughter. Jennette has older siblings, but she is the one that got pushed into acting. And she always did everything her mother wanted because she loved her mother and her mother loved her and wanted the best for her. Or so she believed to be the case at the...

Raising Caine by Charels Gannon (2015) (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 is the third book in the "Cainverse", which started with Fire With Fire> and Trial By Fire , and in fact follows immediately after the events of Trial By Fire where we meet the representative of the Slaasriithi (a big reveal for book 2). While the Consolidated Terran Republic is near the Arat Kur homeworld, a K’tor ship arrives. We learn more about the K’tor, which takes some of the mystery out of them, and their own representative states the same thing. This causes the Slaasriithi to move up their scheduled trip home because they fear K'tor treachery. As a result, Caine finds himself en route to the current Slaasriithi homeworld. At the same time, there is a renegade bunch of K'tor who have been, basically, disgraced in the e...

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (2022) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This was a pandemic book club pick. It received a mixed reviews. A car accident and its subsequent coverup affect the lives of a family of four -- and likely the family of the deceased -- as well as a family that doesn't even move into the neighborhood for years. The book opens talking about all the possible future of Misty Zimmerman should see survive this night. I thought we'd see some of this. We did not. The girl who dies is pretty much an afterthought except for when (some characters believe) she extends her influence from the beyond, enamating from the tree under which she died. The book then jumps to the 21st century. And then back to 1999, and 2010, and all over the place. I was curious if this book would work better as a linear narrati...

This is a summary of the books that I read in 2023. A couple of blog entries have not been made yet. The following books were Pandemic Book Club books Signal Fires - (This entry has not been written yet. Clown in a Cornfield (Cesare) Elder Race (Tchaikovsky) A Terrible Fall of Angels (Hamilton) Cult Classic (Crosley) Wrong Place, Wrong Time (McAllister) The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Moreno-Garcia) The Atlas Six (Blake) Eggs in Purgatory (Childs) What Moves the Dead (Kingfisher) The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories (Andreasen) Of these, Wrong Place, Wrong Time , Eggs in Purgatory and A Terrible Fall of Angels were my favorites, but the latter was too much set-up with a lot going on. A couple were quite dreadful. The rest were interesting. Some of the other group members read more books by Blake or Kingfisher . I've read three books in the Eggs series by Childs . I stopped after three because I couldn't get paper, ebook, or audio for book 4 from any of three librar...