Crazy Food Truck #1 (Ogaki)

Crazy Food Truck #1
Rokurou Ogaki (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.)

This was a graphic novel (manga) that I found in a Little Free Library. I'll bring it back to another one.

I look for graphic novels to bring into my classroom for my high school students to read in a Graphic Novel class (because few, if any, bring in their own). However, withing three pages, there was a naked lady (a young woman, age unknown, actually) in an open sleeping bag. Everything was obscured by fog and whatnot, but I could imagine the reaction. That, in itself, was borderline. However, within a few pages, she was buck naked and fully visible. It's not too much for my students, but it's too much for me as the adult in the room to bring it into the class.

Okay, then...

In some fanciful post-apocalyptic wasteland, Gordon runs a food truck. He sets up shop and starts cooking depsite there not being any people around. While he's driving, he sees a sleeping bag in middle of the road. He goes to yell at the owner when he discovers Arisa who is sleeping naked in the bag. When she wakes up, she eats everything in the truck with her ridiculous appetite.

We later find that the military is looking for Arisa and that she's escaped from some government institution or whatever. We also later learn that Gordon is former military who now just wants to drive his truck.

There isn't much to this. Looking online, I see that the entire run of comics was collected into three volumes, so I could read it but only if one of my libraries picks it up. It's not something I'm going to go looking for -- and definitely not something I'd pay for another volume of. But if volume 2 shows up in a LFL, I'll grab it.

This one is definitely going back somewhere. I'm not leaving it in my classroom or my basement.

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.

No Man's Land (McPhail)

No Man's Land
edited by Mike McPhail (2025)

(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 free Advanced Reader Copy from Library Thing. I'm encouraged (but not required) to leave reviews in exchange for the free books.

Also of note: I have been published by eSpec Books, which also published this book.

If this wasn't an ARC, it might've stayed on my electronic TBR pile for a while because I haven't read a lot of military science fiction. I have read novels by certain authors, and I have read stories that appeared in anthologies where military scifi wasn't the overall theme.

This isn't my first M SF anthology, but it's the first one I finished. Not that I didn't like the previous one, but anthologies are easy to put aside when a book club book comes along.

I left the following review on the Library Thing website:

The title "No Man's Land" refers to both the military aspect of the book as well as the fact that the protagonists of all the stories are female. This is the fourth book in the Defending the Future series, but it's not a shared universe. All the stories stand alone. The stories take place in a near future with more realistic science.

There are a dozen stories in this anthology. Some of them take place on battlefields in the middle of war zones while other have dangers in more unexpected places. There are ambushes, traitors, set-ups, double-crosses, and even training exercises that get real, with the stories turning faster than the military equipment they're piloting.

If I were to pick a couple of favorites, I'd start with "Godzilla Warfare" by Maria V. Snyder where Sgt. Val Harris's mission to defuse a bomb on a colony planet that Earth is at war with becomes more than it seems. In "Live Fire" by Deborah Teramis Christian, Simikan Amisano has been cybernetically synched with her weapon and with the techs of her tactical weapons crew becomes the human interface of the ship's armament -- but danger can still come from within.

You don't need to have read the previous books to enjoy this one. However, after reading it, you might want to go back for the other volumes in the series.

---

More of a breakdown of the stories, which doesn't belong on Library Thing:

I did want to get more into each individual story, but it's been a couple of weeks now since I read the book and started this post. The first story was the ambush for a goal that was deemed more important than the individual lives of the surviving soldiers, and a good place to start the anthology. Set the tone. The double-cross bomb defusing story was well done and as mentioned above, a favorite.

A couple of clunkers, for me, included the traitor on board sabotaging the ship with the POV character running down all the suspects including the robot and I knew I'd be disappointed in the ending if I'd guessed correctly, which I had. Another one had the sole male character who could best be described as ignorant and worst as misogynistic who seemed to be a living straw man argument or someone channeling a time several hundred years in the past. Except that the ladies seemed to think this was somewhat typical behavior. Anyway, for me, the story got lost in the commentary on human nature.

I may edit this as the week progresses, but I wanted to get this post up already because I have a manga and two audiobooks that need posting.

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.

2025 Year in Review

This is a summary of the books that I read in 2025. Most have been recorded as blog entries. Some entries are not published yet.

There were more than last year, thanks to my Pandemic Book Club, Library Thing, and my Graphic Novel class.

There were 49 blog entries last year. One of those was the 2024 review, and two of them were for the same book because I listened to it on audio and then months later I read it with my book club. I read another book that I listened to, but in that case, I updated the previous post because it wasn't as long before. (I don't have a hard and fast rule about this.)

I don't remember any books that I DNF'ed last year. I didn't make any blog entries. It could be because I just didn't have time for too many books that I didn't have to read.

On the other hand, there were at least two books, one hardcover and one ebook, that had to go back to the library, and I had to wait for them to be available. One is Dungeon Crawler Carl, which I currently have until Friday and will likely not finish before then, and the other I won't mention until I decide to Unsuspend or Delete my hold. I'm "next" to read it whenever I unsuspend, but I have other obligations, and it was a little outside my usual fare.

I downloaded a couple of Christmas books, but the only one I listened to (didn't read any) was Krampus. I just didn't have time. Also, I think I'll stick to the paranormal Christmas books because the cozy ones are all murder mysteries and that's not how I want to "get into the spirit".

This year I broke the list up by categories instead of going by the calendar. They aren't likely to be in the order they were read. I'm not linking to individual blog entries. If anyone finds this page and is interested, check the calendar for 2025 until you find the entry you're looking for!

Audo Books

• Krampus: The Yule Lord (Brom) - paperback wasn't available
• A Natural History of Dragons (Brennan) - a book for walking; no plans to read it
• Cast the First Stone (Warren) - reread with the Book Club
• New Beginnings (Masters) - another book for walking; no plans to read more in the series

Graphic Novels

• Understanding Comics (McCloud) - nonfiction
• Skim (Tamaki / Tamaki)
• Waverider: A Graphic Novel (Amulet #9) (Kibuishi)
• The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam: An Illustrated Memoir (Fleming) - nonfiction
• Kiss Number 8 (Venable)
• Yes, I'm Hot in This (Fahmy)

Manga

• Spy Classroom 2nd Period: Daughter Dearest, Vol. 1 (Tomari / Takemachi)
• Eden: It's an Endless World! Volume 1 (Endo)
• My Hero Academia Volume 40
• My Hero Academia Volume 41 -- I didn't make a blog entry, apparently, but I only have the final book to go!

Books

• Cast the First Stone (Warren)
• Selene: The Time Traveling A.I. G.F. (Gottfred)
• An Artsy Girl's Guide to Football (Taylor-Hart)
• Slewfoot (Brom)
• Dream Sweet in a Minor Sea (De Beer)
• Children of the Fire Moon (Bigfoot)
• The Sorrow Road (Dunstan)
• Cold Sassy Tree (Burns)
• The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (Córdova)
• The Bee Sting (Murray)
• The Bartender Between Worlds (Steuernagel)
• Write Something (Levenberg)
• The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (Hughes)
• In the Margins: They found their place by not fitting in (Shea)
• Trial by Moonlight (Hanford)
• Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-so-popular Party Girl (Russell)
• Renegades (Burton)
• Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch (Galchen)
• Beyond the Ocean Door (Sathi)
• The Silent Patient (Michaelides)
• Flume (Bigfoot)
• Fall Into Temptation (Score)
• Suburban Hell (Kilmer)
• I Know What UFO Did Last Summer (Garone)
• Starter Villain (Scalzi)
• The Fairy Godmother's Tale (Marks)
• A Peppermint Mocha to Die For (Valentine)
• Christmas, Pursued by a Bear (2020)
• Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not-So-Fabulous Life (Russell)
• The Full Moon Coffee Shop: A Novel (Mochizuki)
• Auto-Phobia (Spiegelman)
• Leo the Elf Saves Christmas (Doxon)

Finally, I noted one "random short story or novella", which was "Mud and Brass" by Andrew Knighton (2014), probably read around June.

There were no eSpec Books short stories because I've read all the smaller stuff I have from them. Barring obtaining more freebies as stretch goals in Kickstarter campaigns, I mostly have books of lengths that merit their own entries.

No Sue Grafton this year. I need to finish that series.

If I had to pick a favorite book of the year (leaving out the other categories), I'd probably pick Cast the First Stone (which ends on a cliffhanger/intro to book 2) or The Full Moon Coffee Shop, which was just a little different and ties itself up with a neat little bow.

Many of the others I could find fault with -- or are young adult books, which I won't label my best book of the year. Your mileage may vary.