Breakfast on Mars (Stern & Wolfe, ed)

Breakfast on Mars And 37 Other Delectable Essays, Edited by Rebecca Stern & Brad Wolfe (2013)

The cover states "Essays like you've never seen before -- Funny! Smart! Inspiring! And Best of All written by YOUR Favorite Authors"

The last part is overblown in that not only are they not my favorite authors, I don't think I've ever heard of any of them, let alone read any. That said, soe of them were funny and smart. Inspiring? Maybe about my writing, but not about the subject matter.

I picked up this book in a box at a school I was working at in the fall. The idea of the collection is that students tend to be bored with essay writing, and there isn't a lot of inspiring essays out there that are relatable for students. So this book is intended for teachers to use with students, so that the students will respond. Each essay, whether personal, persuasive, or information, is based on a response to a different writing prompt. And each should be fun to read.

Some of them were fun. Some were just odd, but that was okay. But a few seemed like standard essays, and a couple seemed like they'd been written before they even saw the prompt.

The overall affect was like catching up on an eclectic bunch of TED Talk podcasts, with topics all over the place. I enjoy some of those, while I listen to others on double speed, or skip through them entirely.

And while the personal stories were interesting, the introduction promised breakfast on Mars, showering with spiders, and humans needing tales. That's what I wanted to read. "It's on Like Donkey Kong" was a nice bonus. (That phrase is so well-established in my circles that we can parody it into something else). Likewise the comparison of Princess Leia and Queen Amidala. So of the other entries, I've already forgotten, even when I like back at the table of contents page.

I did like reading the prompt at the top of each essay, and I toyed with repeating them either here or on my (private) writing blog, but do I really want to type up 39 prompts? One-handed, while holding the book open with the other? Probably not.

For anyone who stumbled upon my personal reading blog, if this sounds interesting, check it out.

Dragon Precinct (DeCandido)

Dragon Precinct , Keith R.A. DeCandido (2004)

I've seen Keith R. A. DeCandido at science fiction conventions, particularly the possibly-defunct Lunacon and the newly-christened Heliosphere. He's had a long career and yet I don't think I've read any of his work before. Maybe a short story in an anthology? Thankfully, I'm remedying this!

I've never read any police procedural novels before that I remember. Mysteries, sure. Stories with cops, sure. But the written equivalent to Law & Order or C.S.I., no. (And for all I know, a different show might be a better analogy.)

This was a fun book to read, with one little caveat. The Prologue introduced a host of characters, one of which, Gan Brightblade, we know will be dead before Chapter 1 even begins. The prologue gave quite a bit of background and introduced a cast of characters of some renown: Gan, the great human fighter; Olthar, the elven wizard who betrayed the Elf Queen; Urbarlig, the dwarf fighter; Bogg, the barbarian; Mari and Nari, twin halfling thieves; and Genero, the human priest, who called them all together.

They arrive in Cliff's End ready to hire a boat to take them to see an old nemesis, whom many believe to be dead. Instead, Gan's neck is broken, unnaturally, in his room. Murder, but not by magical means. This is like the opening scene before the credits.

Where I had a little problem was with the first Chapter. We start in the police precinct with has parallels to a modern police station (as far as I know). Many of the characters for the series are introduced, along with a lot of dropping of place names and history. There wasn't a map to refer to, so I just went with it. Also, using the ebook (for me) is difficult to keep flipping back and forth, so it was a while before I got a handle on which first and last name went with each other.

Anyway (this is for me, this isn't part of a review), the main characters aren't those heroes, but the officers: Danthres Tresyllione is half-elf (hated by both races) and Torin ban Wyvald in human, and they are lieutenants on the Castle Guard. (They have Griffins, not Dragons, on their uniforms.) Two other lieutenants are Dru and Hawk, who are chasing down bad spells sold on the black market. Iaian is a veteran officer, two years from retirement, and he's paired with Grovis, a rookie who fails to be intimidating whenever he tries.

The biggest obstacle to writing a fantasy mystery, similar to science fiction mysteries, is determining what the rules are. In sci-fi, you need to know what tech is available. In fantasy, there's magic. Not a problem here.

There's a magical medical examiner, on loan from the Brotherhood of Wizards, who checks crime scenes for magic use. Oddly here, he doesn't detect any, which makes sneaks sneaking up on such a hero even more unbelievable. So if there is magic being used, it's been covered up expertly.

This was a fun read -- once I got past the first chapter, that is. And I'm glad that I picked up most of the series during a recent $.99 sale by eSpecbooks. (I usually visit their blog more than their homepage.

I'm looking forward to reading more, probably every other ebook I read for a while. (Print books are a separate matter.)

Doctor Who: The Writers Tale -- The Final Chapter (Davies, Cook)

Doctor Who: The Writers Tale -- The Final Chapter , Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (2010)

The second part of the ebook continues the correspondence between Davies and Cook past "The Journey's End" and through "The End of Time". For the uninitiated, that would be the last episode of Series 4 of Doctor Who through the last of the specials that followed that series, in place of a fifth series.

Once more you see the trials and tribulations of trying to run such a massive series. Lots of trivia, quite a few setbacks. Plenty of talk about Davies' old work, the search for a new Doctor, and the final shots of David Tennant as the Doctor.

And, of course, working with lots of secrecy, much of which gets blown one way or another (such as the careless reveal of Timothy Dalton in costume, leaving little wiggle room for whom he could be playing or what was coming back.)

Enjoyable to read, although I did want to skip to the end of some of the longer emails, particularly ones that didn't involve Doctor Who primarily.

Amulet, Volumes 1 - 8 (Kibuishi)

Amulet , by Kazu Kibuishi (2010-8)

A couple of months ago, there was a Scholastic book fair at the school that I'm currently assigned to. While I wasn't officially "working" the book fair, it took place in the room I usually spent my free time in, so I did lend a hand, mostly straightening up piles. There were a number of graphic novels on one of the tables, and one of these (particularly one of the ones that had Volume One on the table) was Amulet. The cover looked interesting and a quick flip of the pages showed some great color artwork. I took a picture of the first book and made a note to look into it.

Fast forward a couple weeks, and I find myself regularly in an English classroom where there is a pile of these books. Basically, almost a class set of book 1 and two copies of the rest. I spent the next couple weeks reading them, 50 minutes at a time. It wasn't until I was on book 5 that I realized that there were more than six books in the pile. (I thought only six were shown on the inside back cover.) There were seven. Nope, wait, there were eight. (Someone must've borrowed it.)

As you can tell, I enjoyed it enough to keep reading. And I enjoyed it enough to be annoyed to find that there is a NINTH book, which the teacher didn't have. So I checked the library website, and they didn't have it either. And then I did a little research and discovered something:

Volume 9 hasn't been published yet!!

I haven't had this feeling a series of books in a long time. And it's worse because most of the story has (or seems to have) wrapped up in Volume 8, and we are promised that it will "conclude" in Volume 9. When I saw that the first book was published in 2010, I didn't think it was still being created, unless it was an open-ended story. Who knew? Other than fans who have been reading it from the beginning, and waiting one or two years between each edition. And considering that volume 8 was only released this past September, I probably have a while to wait for it.

Okay, so the brief notes for me to review when book 9 comes out:

It starts with a family and there's a car accident, but the father doesn't make it out and falls into the darkness with the car. A grim start, but one that gets reference much later on, so it isn't gratuitous. (Seriously, some books, particularly ones written for kids, could start after these events and refer to them in flashbacks.) Mom takes the two kids, Emily and Navin, to an old house in the woods that belonged to her grandfather, Silas Charnon. And this is where the weird stuff begins.

Emily and Navin find an amulet in Silas's old library. That night, the mother gets kidnapped by giant spider-like things and brought to another realm. The kids follow. They're eventually rescued by the rabbit creature from the cover of the first book, which turns out to be a robot that Silas built. Silas, who is still alive, but barely, is a "stonekeeper". Before he dies, he passes the stone on to Emily, along with all its power, responsibilities and its curse. (There's a voice within the stone that talks to Emily and tries to gain control.)

Mom is rescued within a couple of books, but there's a bigger story involving the Elves, who are the "bad guys" of this series, being at war with the "humans" for many years. I put humans in quotes, because many of them have begun to look more animal-like because of an affliction. And then there's Trellis, the son of the Elf King, who knows there's something wrong and wants Emily to join him to help overthrow his father. (The Elf King has no problem seeing Trellis dead if he cannot perform certain actions.)

Lots going on, both in the past and the present, in one world and in the void.

Great artwork, particularly on the splash pages. I can see why it takes so long to finish each book. And I want to finish the next one already.

I'm counting this as eight books for any "goals" I decide on, because I can.

Doctor Who: The Writers Tale (Davies, Cook)

Doctor Who: The Writers Tale , Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (2008)

First book of the new year, and I'll count it as two because it was originally published as two books, even if the ebook collects them together. Plus, I'll only have time to read the first before the library loan expires.

I only recently became aware that this book exists, and it was available at the New York Public Library website. It contains correspondence between Russel T. Davies, the Doctor Who showrunner (writer, producer, multi-hat person), and Benjamin Cook, a writer for Doctor Who Magazine, which took place from the time that Series Four was being conceived (and Series Three was to begin airing) through production of the Series Four finale, not counting the specials which came afterward.

If nothing else, this book was fun for the trivia -- Note: SPOILER ALERTS for Series Four, both here and in the book. For one thing, Donna Noble was not supposed to be the Companion for the entire series, but was supposed to return in the finale along with many of the others. In fact, the character, Penny Carter, who appears as a reporter in the season opener gets her name from the would-be Companion. (Not that this character, or the actress, were ever set to be the Companion. Likewise, the return of Wilf (Bernard Cribbins) was brought on by tragedy. He was made Donna's grandfather after the fact (along with an excuse at why he wasn't at the wedding).

But the big draw here is seeing what went into creating Series Four, the writing process, the rewriting process, editing, FX days, meetings, and oh so many struggles. The veil gets lifted from some of those pieces that looked like they were so carefully planned and laid out, and yet there is so much that happened by circumstance, or just worked out that way. Granted, it takes a master to leave dangling threads that can be grasped later, or work together similar plot points into an intended pattern.

Also there's a lot of talk about other shows that Davies was involved in, most of which I've never seen, and aren't likely to.

Fascinating, interesting book. I'm likely to read Book Two (The Final Chapter) which runs from The Next Doctor to the end of his (and David Tennant's) time with the program.

Note: not a book to read if you are offended by a gay man constantly thinking about sex, particularly with certain actors on his sets, or by the overuse of the word "Arse".

2018: Year in Review

Last year, I seemed to avoid keeping track of what I was reading, giving the sparse use of the blog until the very end of December.

Also, I seemed to avoid reading altogether, considering how long it took me to get through some of these entries.

According to the sidebar, there were 26 entries for the entire year. Of those, three were not about specific books. On the other hand, there were a lot of graphic novels, particularly in the summer, and manga, particularly near the school library. So my book total was closer to 35. This comes with a little bit of a caveat: I counted the ROM comics as 4 graphic novels because I believe that's how they were available, even as I read 14 issues. Likewise, Clean Room, which had its review deleted by accident, and will get restored at some point, counted as 1 book, even though it was the first six comics in the series. Most of the graphic novels were similar to this.

Additionally, there was at least one One Piece book in there, but I was going to wait until I'd read a bunch more of those ... which I then didn't do. At the very least, I'll wait until the end of the present story line. But I have other things to get to.

It was an odd year for me. I see that there were only two science fiction books: 1634, which is alternative history, without a lot of sci-fi once you've accepted the premise, and Space Team, which I don't need to rehash.

There was a bit of nonfiction, including biography and essays, as well as some poetry and one old self-help book.

And again, two more Sue Grafton mysteries. I should just read through and close out the series.

One book does appear to be missing. I read a book about The Beatles, a behind-the-scenes book that I picked up in the school library, either in late 2017 or early 2018. I thought it was around the time I read the Maya Angelou book. (Interesting pairing, right? They were in the same pile on the same desk.) For whatever reason, I didn't log it.

Lots of books, real and electronic, on deck to be read. Once again, I'm commuting by car (and I could actually walk), so most of my reading is at bedtime, and sometimes at meals. When I'm not all over social media, that is.

Goals for 2019?

More than 2018, for sure.
Read or discard a lot of books in the basement.
Alternate more between paper and ebook.
Read older stuff before downloading new (sometimes "old") stuff.
Expand a bit -- find other topics and genres to visit.
Do a mini-run on a series or two: I've started Sue Grafton, Jim Butcher, Laurel K. Hamilton, and some things I didn't care for. And there's an entire world of Eric Flint's 1632. (See the sidebar -- I'm not hotlinking everything.)

Rocket Fuel (McGovern, Lough)

Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best of Tor.com Non-Fiction , Bridget McGovern and Chris Lough, ed. (2018)

Even though I'm on the mailing list for Tor.com, probably since the first time I downloaded a copy of 1632 or something else, I rarely check out their website unless I see links to specific articles posted elsewhere on social media. One such link brought me to this ebook.

I didn't know what to expect from the title. Well, that's not exactly true. I know what I expected: non-fiction with a name like "rocket fuel" meant that this should've been a lot of stuff about space and planets and stuff like that. That's not what it was. That's not to say what I got was bad, just unexpected.

Even though this is a work of non-fiction, many of the essays deal with fiction, from the perspective of fandom, or just deep analysis of some facet of the work. I enjoyed some more than others, and some I might've enjoyed more had they been about half the size. Seriously, most of the stuff I read on the site is short by comparison to the pieces included in this book. Again, not a problem, but when I realized just how much was being written about Galadriel, I took a break, moved on, planning to get back to it.

Additionally, two back to back essays about Robert Jordan were interesting, but I haven't read anything of his. No, haven't started Wheel of Time, and I've had friends who have warned me away from it -- even as they are drawn into it.

The most interesting piece, at least for quirkiness, has to do with the anatomy and diet of centaurs, taking a scientific look at a fantasy staple, and pondering just how it gets enough nutrition to survive. Digestion problems abound.

A couple of essays started off too well about things I hadn't read, causing me to stop, lest the books or stories be spoiled. Not that I know if I'll read those any time soon.

On the social justice warrior front, there are important notes from affected folks, but overall, stuff I'd heard or read before and I found myself moving on before getting halfway through many of the entries after the first couple.

I guess I was skipping ahead looking for ice volcanoes of Neptune or realistic flying cars for Mars. Or just notes on rocket fuel.

Clean Room (Simone)

Clean Room,

My review was erased. I'm not re-writing it now. I'll get back to it. (sigh)

Eternals (Gaiman)

Eternals, by Neil Gaiman (2007)

Placeholder for review.

I had two days left on my ComicXology subscription, and I search on Neil Gaiman. I struck pay dirt with Eternals. I didn't really know a lot about the Eternals from Marvel lore, only that they've been around a long time. If I remember an old What If--? correctly, they were created by the Sentinels, which also created Inhumans. Or something like that.

It's a damn shame that I didn't have Neil Gaiman's name listed as a hashtag, before now. That is something that needs to be rectified in 2019.

Rom (comic)

ROM, 2016-2017

About a month ago, I saw a link to download from free digital comics. Found a few that I might read and clicked. When I tried to open them, my iPad brought me to the App Store and the ComicXology app, which I would need to read the comics. Upon opening that, I found that I ha a free week of unlimited comic reading. (Exactly a week, not a minute more.)

The immediate questions were: what do I want to read, and where do I begin?

Many comics have continual story lines that don't seem to have a definite beginning, and some of them never end -- or at least wouldn't within a week. You can't even assume a story starts with issue #1 these days.

In the list of suggestions, I spotted ROM. I read every issue of the original run of ROM: Spaceknight, although I might have missed crossovers when he appeared in other comics. I didn't buy a lot back then. I knew that he was brought back because of a "Free Comic Book Day" comic which amounted to a four or six page preview for the first issue.

ROM and the rest of the spaceknights were re-imagined a bit, but they were still essentially the same. The Dire Wraiths were more the kind from later in the original series, not that original, though somewhat ill-defined, form. The Wraiths have infested Earth on a massive scale. ROM wishes to save the planet while the other knights think it's a lost cause and wish to burn it.

It was enjoyable, even if it was a different take. Likewise, early issues feature other Hasbro toys, namely Transformers and GI Joe. And then there's a problem.

There were other comics, somewhat important to the story line, that happened outside of the main run of ROM. Unfortunately, just because you have "unlimited" access to comics, that doesn't mean that the platform itself has unlimited comics available. I couldn't read these things. (I'm sure I could have bought them however.)

For the fourteen issues that were there, I enjoyed this "alternate" take on ROM.

Pedro & Me (Winick)

Pedro & Me: Friendship, Loss & What I Learned, by Judd Winick (2000)

This edition contains a foreword written in 2008, and was published in 2009.

For all my recent complaints about graphic novels, I finally found out that was actually what it was supposed to be, and it's been in a "to be read" pile for years now. Pedro & Me came to me from the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library, most likely through a nearby science fiction convention. (That would've been the recently departed Lunacon. Sigh.)

Pedro is Pedro Zemora, who along with Judd Winick (the "Me" of the title) and others, was a part of The Real World: San Francisco in 1994. I didn't watch it, and I had no interest in the series or the ones before it. Frankly, I couldn't tell you the difference between the Real World and, say, Big Brother. But Pedro's story is worth reading.

Judd is a cartoonist from Long Island. He applied for the Real World, and when MTV called, one of the questions they asked was if he'd have a problem with a housemate who was HIV positive. That shook his world a little bit. What shook it more was when he was accepted onto the program and that housemate was his roommate.

What follows are some of the struggles Pedro faced as his illness progressed, and the friendship that was forged. It's wonderfully written and illustrated and makes great use of the medium.

How good is it? It's not a book that I thought I'd be interested in. Not something I thought I would pick up. But I sat in an inner tube in the backyard pool reading it morning after morning. (Okay, full disclosure -- I usually only bring things into the pool that I wouldn't mind losing should it get blown or dropped into the drink.) It was worth reading.

Space Team (Hutchison)

Space Team, by Barry Hutchison (2016)

The full title of the book is Space Team: Screwing Up the Galaxy so you don't have to!, and I believe I got the capitalization and punctuation correct. An editor might've suggested different.

This book was downloaded as a freebie. If I remember correctly, it was probably one of those "first book in the series is free" deals, to get you to read one and buy the rest. Nothing wrong with that, so long as the books are good. Wellllllll ....

So how many books are in this series? I just checked, and it seems, as of this writing, that there are 13 of them. In three years.

If they're making money, more power to him. Maybe it's a model to try out for my own writing.

Okay, so the story starts off like some is trying too hard to be Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchet or just, you know, funny. It isn't too clever, but it's what's there, so let's so with it. Cal Carver is a criminal, and he's in prison, but a mistake was made and he's been set to a maximum security facility. His next mistake is ticking off the warden. Because there aren't any buses available to transfer him until the morning, he'll have to stay the night. And because Carver was a pain in the ass, the warden puts him in a cell with an overly-large cannibal, who Hutchison describes in great detail as the man has no pants on. Hutchinson waxes poetic about his member.

Anyway, just about the point where Cal is about to be killed in the cell (which the Warden could have easily have anticipated, so he's a pretty sucky guy himself because Cal wasn't that big a pain in the ass), the prison is attacked and Cal is abducted. By space aliens. Who mistake him for the cannibal. (Yes, I will keep referring to him as "the cannibal" because I'm too lazy to scroll through my kindle to find the name, and despite the number of books in the series, every site I checked has the same stupid two paragraph synopsis of the book.)

Next thing you know, we're in a room with the president of the galaxy and a bunch of other criminals, and we're playing, "I bet you're wondering why I called you all here." Seriously, he says that. Or something just like it.

Out of the entire galaxy, he needs this handful of weird criminals from various planets, to come together to be a team to go on a mission for him. To Hutchinson's credit, he does, at the end, give a rationalization for exactly why these people are here, and what they bring to the secret agenda that the president has.

Oh, and Earth was destroyed, quite by accident really. It wasn't like it was in the way so the Vogons destroyed it or anything. (And I'd already had the Hitchhikers-wannabe comparison in my head before he got around to telling us Earth was killed during the prison break.)

A lot of silliness, some of which isn't as silly as it could or should be, follows. They save the day. And they ride off together because they have no place to go.

Would I read more of this? If someone handed me a stack of books and I knew I was going to be stuck on a subway. Maybe.

In the end, it didn't suck, but it wasn't all that great.