DNR: The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera)

The Saint of Bright Doors
by Vajra Chandrasekera (2023)

(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 selection. This book was chosen because it was one of three in the window of a bookstore in Nashville. We all hate this bookstore now.

The book was popular enough that I had to settle for reading the hardcover, which I needed to pick up in Manhattan because I couldn't get it in Brooklyn. Being only a year old, it's still quite popular, apparently.

If this had not been a book club selection, I would've given up on it a lot sooner than I did. As it was, I kept reading until the day of our meeting and I was still only about a third of the way through the book. I found out that only one person managed to finish it (and she was mad at us that she stuck it out). Even the group founder, who is a librarian, was unable to finish this.

No one had anything nice oto say about it beyond the fact that it started off interesting in the first chapter and then went whereever it was that it went. It didn't go through a bright door, though, which were described a lot, but otherwise were beside the point of the story, which went hither and yon.

Anway, this book was a waste of a few weeks of my time -- although not completely because I did read a different book on my kindle app at the same time. It's not only a "DNF" but I've added the tag "WTHDIJR" to the blog for this book. Because what the hell did I just read?

Once vacation is over, I'll be on my way back to Manhattan to drop this thing off. And then, on to the next book.

The Skeleton in the Closet (Fox)

The Skeleton in the Closet
by Angie Fox (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.)

Book two in the Southern Ghost Hunter Series became available for free from Book Bub, so I picked it up. I was in between book club books and I figured that this would be a quicker read than anything else I had ready since I was alredy familiar with the premise.

Verity Long is still poor, after being forced to pay off her fancy wedding after she left her cheating fiance at the altar. He still wants to get back with Verity despite or even because his mother opposes it. In the meantime, she has (maybe) a thing with his brother who is in local law enforcement, rather than being employed as a rich snob. And Frankie the 1920's era gangster ghost is still around.

Verity tries to unground Frankie (see book one) with little success. Meanwhile, it's the annual Cannonball in the Wall celebration of a Civil War battle that saw a cannonball get lodged a wall in the middle of town.

Darla, a friend of Verity's (and her sister's) is handling donations for the event, and the two oldest and most fuedin'-est families are trying to out-do each other. She makes a startling discovery and ends up dead. Her discovery is missing as well.

Verity investigates the library and all the ghosts who are stuck in time within its walls and finds some revealing evidence, but not THE revealing piece of evidence until much later.

After that, it's dodging dangers on two planes of existence until the truth about the Cannonball in the Wall is know to all.

But most people still think Verity is nuts for blowing off the wedding.

I wouldn't be opposed to reading more of these, but they aren't so great that I'll be buying them any time soon. If the libary has them, I'll borrow them.

Two Short Books

Big Bullet Monster Bomb: lost little things: a short story for mature readers
by Adam Archer (2020)

The Race
by John Russo (2021)

(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 don't remember where I found these stories. I don't think it was reddit. It could've been on Facebook or Twitter.

Nothing about the Bullet Bomb book was particularly geared toward mature readers, other than the cover showing a woman wearing rags that barely cover what they need to. It seems like a story set in a larger world that I haven't read but I have no idea of this is the case. It's post-apocalyptic and the last of the human race is slowly morphing into cratures. This much is interesting.

The main character is pulling a sled of her belongings (including guns) and looking for some place to hide so she can sleep. Her sleep cycle is screwed up so she's up for a long time and then needs a prolonged sleep.

When she encountered some creatures attacking an overturned RV, she decides to go into action. It's at this point and after that it fell apart for me. It was a bit of a mess after that. But I read it until the end. I didn't bail on it. Interesting, but not great.

The first notes I wrote after reading it were: too many parenthetical expressions. Eloise and Marhsa. Good setup, no follow through. Fell apart with the first battle.

By contrast, The Race is just a mess. It takes place in a dystopian future. Amazon makes deliveries by drone. One brother decides that they can get rich by shooting down the drones and taking the packages for themselves. The packages would be insured, so no one loses. The other brother thinks it's a stupid idea.

Brother 1 shoots down a down with a shotgun (it might've been a rifle, I forget), and the drone goes down. Brother 2 says that Brother 1 has to get the package and return it. Brother 1 says he's going to keep it.

And now the race is on over hill and dale not to mention through woods, quicksand and swamp, to get to this package. It seems like they are surprised by the terrain that is right next to their own farmland. It also seems like Brother 1 must be an incredible marksman to shoot down a drone so far away with a store-bought rifle without a laser scope. You would think that the drone would crash within a couple hundred yards from where he fired.

If that wasn't bad enough, they get to a point where they haul the huge package, a large TV, of the bayou (again, suprise -- there's a bayou!) in a boat. The boat gets flipped, depositing the brothers in the water, and sending the large box flying into the air, up the enbankments, and into the trees. The physics of it are basically "somehow".

The item finally retrieved and they head home after spending most of the day following the path a disabled drone. There's a twist at the end that is 100% the twist you would expect to see even before you knew that there would be a twist at the end because the story needed an ending.

My notes when I read it were: Johnny and Robert. Shooting packages from Amazon drones. how far away was this thing? Race from the farm into the swamp, and they came to a bayou that they seemed surprised to see. They rescue the package and it manages to magically fly up a hill and clear some trees. They spend the majority of the day looking for something that was taken down with a shotgun. And the final twist, SPOILER, telegraphed really, was that the lost package was ordered by the wife.

Funny Shorts 5 (McDonnell)

Funny Shorts 5
More Comic Plays
by John McDonnell (2024)

(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.)

My first book of 2024 but not really. It is a collecting on one-act plays, or scenes, really, that one can use in theater classes. I'll use the Good Reads description because I read this nearly a month ago and I've already forgotten much about it:

In this collection you’ll find Dracula getting an image makeover, pigeons discussing their artistic methods, sibling rivalry among witches, an assassin who writes poetry, a verbal shootout in a senior center, Lucifer getting dumped by his girlfriend, a first date with an alien, and much more. These funny skits are perfect for community theater, schools, senior productions – anywhere audiences want to be entertained.

Some were amusing, some were harder to get through. Not much to say. It was a quick read: about three days, reading in fits and starts.

Edit: Okay, so there was a reason that I didn't remember the end of this book: I didn't finish reading it.

I must have been reading this when the last Book Club book came in from the library and then stopped reading. I have now completed it. It had its moments.

My overall opinion hasn't changed, so I guess my sample was indicative of the entire product.