Audio: Krampus: The Yule Lord (Brom)

Krampus: The Yule Lord
Brom (2012)

[Audiobook]

(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 book was a Pandemic Book Club selection.

The meeting was pushed back because of the holidays and because some members had trouble getting a hold of the book.

We just read Slewfoot, and this book was recommended. I wasn't looking forward to it because I'm not a fan of Christmas horror stories (scary, sure, but not outright horror).

The book wasn't bad in that regard although there was one torture scene (with only humans) that was a little too intense for me. The rest was calm by comparision.

The audiobook got off to a rough start because the voice of Krampus was a little loud and irritating. (It got better, or I got used to it.) The next chapter had Jesse, the main human character, contemplating suicide, and I contemplated bailing on the book.

Krampus has been imprisoned for 500 years and is now free. He wants to get revenge on the one who imprisoned him, which is the Norse god Baldr who later took on the guise of Santa Claus. Along the way, Jesse gets hold of Santa's sack which produces any toy he thinks of, or toy versions of anything else he thinks of.

Jesse is mixed up with the drug market in his town and wants to get out of it. The General tells him he's going to keep doing his job or he'll kill his estranged wife and child. Things later go sideways when bellsnickels show up and the outlaws think that Jesse set them up with a rival gang from another town. This leads to the aforementioned torture scene.

Jesse winds up in the service of Krampus, which has the side benefit of his body healing. Krampus promises to help Jesse with his problems but he first has to help Krampus bring joy to children first and regain his title as Yule Lord.

The pace picks up as Jesse and Krampus have their redemption arcs, but Baldr gets his revenge with the help of a pair of angels.

I enjoyed the book more than I expected to, and I liked the ending better than Slewfoot. I have to say, given the previous book, I thought the ending could go another way.

I don't think I'll read the acutal book, but if I remember to reserve it at the library around October 2026, maybe I'll have it in time for Christmas.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Audio: A Natural History of Dragons (Brennan)

A Natural History of Dragons
The Memoirs of Lady Trent #1
Marie Brennan (2013)

[Audiobook]

(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 random audiobook to listen to while walking. It had a slow start (but then, I find most audiobooks have a "slow start" to get my attention, and I often listen to the first chapter a second time). It was enjoyable.

In this alternate history Victorian novel, dragons exist and usually keep to isolated mountains. Isabella (the Lady Trent of the subtitle) has already had a fascination with them and read any book that she could get access to, which would've been frowned upon. After Isabella meets Jacob Camherst, he courts her mostly because of her fascination with dragons instead of his wealth.

This is also the reason she manages to work her way into an expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana to study them, where she proves vital in discovering why the dragons have turned on the human population that they usually avoid.

This was a good audiobook, but, for once, I wonder if I would've enjoyed the printed version (or the ebook) because parts of the science might've been a slog to read through but a pleasure to listen to a voice reciting it. Granted, I don't know how much of it that I recall.

The book is told as a memoir of an older woman who became the foremost authority on dragons at a time that few women had such august positions. That does tell you that she will survive a long time and that there may be many more books to come.

On the other hand, this book is from 2013, and I hadn't heard of it before the library suggested it to me.

Just for giggles, I'll include what Google AI said about the book when I was looking up the publication date:

A Natural History of Dragons is the first book in Marie Brennan's Lady Trent Memoirs, a Victorian-era fantasy series about a woman who defies convention to become a renowned dragon naturalist, blending adventure, science, and fantasy as she recounts her early expeditions. The story follows the young, bookish Isabella as she pursues her passion for studying dragons, a pursuit that leads her on perilous journeys and ultimately to a career that brings the study of dragons out of myth and into modern science.

Key aspects of the book:

Genre: Science fantasy, with a tone reminiscent of Victorian natural history writing.

Protagonist: Isabella, Lady Trent, a strong-willed and intelligent woman who challenges societal expectations for women of her time.

Plot: The book details Isabella's early life, her forbidden passion for dragons, and her first expedition to study them in the wild, which is fraught with danger and discovery.

Series: It is the first book in The Lady Trent Memoirs, a series that chronicles her life and adventures.

Themes: The novel explores themes of scientific inquiry, adventure, and a woman's place in a restrictive society, all through the lens of dragon biology and behavior.


If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Understanding Comics (McCloud)

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud (1993)

(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.)

Every source, from TED Talks to web pages to actual comic people that I know, tells me that Scott McCloud literally wrote the book on Understanding Comics. He's actually written a few. And he will reference Will Eisner as the guy who wrote the book before him.

Understanding Comics is a book I would've bought back in August if I knew I was going to be teaching two classes in Graphic Novels. I was told on the first day of school and wasn't given any curriculum or guidelines to work with. For the record, I'm a math teacher (and still teach math the rest of the day). I'm neither an English teacher nor art teacher. However, the administration knows that I like to write so this idea occurred to them.

Note that I write prose, not comics. I do (did?) have a webcomic for many years, but that was a joke per day, not a continuing story, and it wasn't anything artistically special. It was loaded with bad puns, and you can't teach that. Maybe you can teach timing for it ... but that's another story. And, let's face it, they weren't aware of the comic.

The book is nonfiction but it's written as a graphic novel or just a giant comic. McCloud illustrates himself and plays with the surrounding to take about what makes comic books work and what makes them "art". He includes reproductions of many old comics and paintings to make his points.

I did get a bit more understanding and comprehension (just to use a different word) of the topics within the subject, so that was good. And if I'm giving this class next fall, I'd juggle some of the earlier vocabulary lessons. This is, I was stumbling in the dark. However, several comments he made make more sense in the order he mentioned them. So maybe I should go that way next time.

If nothing else, the topic of Sequential Art should've come in the first week.

I may buy this paperback as an ebook just so I can take screenshots.

This was a fun read, and I got to read it in my classroom during Free Read Fridays where I allow my students to read graphic novels ... most of which I had to provide, with the help of Little Free Libraries and a couple of nice donations.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Cast the First Stone (Warren) -- repost

Cast the First Stone
David James Warren (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.)

This was a book club selection. I decided to make a separate entry rather than update the entry from June. That's the blog biz for you. And there was so much time between the two readings that this make sense. The last time (that I recall) reading after listening, it was closer in time and there were no other grand revelations to discuss.

I listed Cast the First Stone as one of my three picks for the book club. My other choices were Sea of Tranquility, which I read after, and Gods of Manhattan, which I haven't read. Gods was rejected mostly for being a kids book.

Overall, the book was well-received. A couple of people would be interested in the second book, or at least hearing about what happens next. It was a pretty straightforward book, so there weren't a lot of questions for discussion. Mostly, what did we think of the plot, characters, and situation. What do you think will come next?

We did compare it to other time travel books that we've read previously.

Also of interest is that David James Warren doesn't exist. There are three authors for this book: Susan May Warren, James L. Rubart, and David Curtis Warren. So I each of the three supplied one name even though Susan and David have the same last name.

It was just as enjoyable the second time around, and it's eassier to review what I missed or what happened while I was falling asleep, as opposed to rewinding when a loud truck or train passes by.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. The fourth book will be available by the time you see this!

Yes, I'm Hot in This (Fahmy)

Yes, I'm Hot in This
The Hilarious Truth about Life in a Hijab
Huda Fahmy (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.)

I was glancing at some titles among the grpahic novels at the libary and I saw Huda F Cares, which caught my attention. Huda Fahmy had several books there with similar titles that caught my interest.

Since I have too many physical books out that I haven't read yet, I figured I'd see if these were available electronically. That's where I saw that her first book was "Yes, I'm Hot in This".

I checked it out.

I reads like a comic strip that has been collected and worked into a book with chapters. Irreverent humor and poignant criticism and commentary, a little repetitive and sometimes preachy, but that's her life and the situations that arise.

Basically, the parts that resonated with me were the parts I could identify with, which were things relating to her loving but sometimes clueless husband.

Hilarious? no, but amusing.

It was an interesting read. Will I request the next book? Maybe after I've returned some of the outstanding books I have and caught up a bit with my TBR pile and book clubs.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Sea of Tranquility (Mandel)

Sea of Tranquility
Emily St. John Mandel (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.)

I listened to this book earlier this year and reserved it to read later on. I thought it had problems when I was listening to it, but I thought I just missed stuff while I was walking.

Not so much.

My plan is to leave a review a four-star review on Good Reads that says, "I really wanted to like this story more. I also wanted to rate it less, but I wasn't sure that that would be fair."

My contention is that the first three parts of the book aren't necessary and that the reader could start at Part 4 and read the book as a novella and have the same or better experience. You could then go back and read the first three parts as an appendix with more information.

Basically, nothing in the first three parts actually matters. We get stories about people that mean nothing to the story until they encounter the anomaly, but they're stories don't have endings. Everything we encounter with them is like a human interest segment five minutes before the end of a newscast. Had they been actually short stories that tied into the anomaly, maybe I'd've felt differently.

As it is, when we get a character that hangs around a while, it seems odd and the older characters seem more quaint.

As for the story, time travel exists in the future, and the danger is present that someone will do something to change the past. Also, there is an anomaly that has been observed leading some researchers to wonder if our very existence is a simulation. (side note: by sheer coincidence, this is the second book in a row I read where characters don't know if everything is a simulation, after Selene.)

However, it seems that the anomaly created itself because everything that happens because of the time traveler (introduced midway through the book) has already happened. Nothing he does that changes history actually changes history -- his changes have already been documented -- with one exception that gets him into trouble, which we already knew was coming.

In summary: it was good, but the first parts weren't important. It would've been a good novella.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.