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.

2024 Year in Review

This is a summary of the books that I read in 2024. Most have been recorded as blog entries. Some entries are not published yet.

There were 28 books consisting of novels, collections and nonfiction listed in 27 entries. (One entry had "Two short novels".) Also, one book was audio only because the book never became available at any of three libraries. Additionally, I read my own book (but I didn't write it out), mostly because I was looking for typos, but also because I wanted to read it back after a while away from it. Looking back, I see that Signal Fires was actually a 2023 book that didn't get written up until 2024.

• The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (Carter)
• The Crown of Zeus (Norris)
• The Mimicking of Known Successes (Older)
• What Kind of Mother (Chapman)
• The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (Goodman)
• The Hidden Palace (Wecker)
• The Golem and the Jinni (Wecker)
• Remarkably Bright Creatures (Ven Pelt)
• The Adventures of Larry the Alien (McDonnell)
• Tequila Sheila and Other Tall Tales (Lucci)
• 52 Loaves (Alexanader)
• The Lexical Funk (Clausen)
• A House with Good Bones (Kingfisher)
• A Cry of Hounds (Ackley-McPhail, ed)
• In Defense of Witches (Chollet)
• Pinata: A Novel (Gout)
• DNF: The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera)
• The Skeleton in the Closet (Fox)
• Two Short Books: The Race & Big Bullet Monster Bomb
• Funny Shorts 5 (McDonnell)
• The Shadow Glass (Winning)
• Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus)
• Stake and Eggs (Childs)
• DNF: The Zoo of Intelligent Animals (Holdsworth)
• I'm Glad My Mom Died (McCurdy)
• Raising Caine (Gannon)

Of these, The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, What Kind of Mother, The Golem and the Jinni, A House with Good Bones, In Defense of Witches, Pinata: A Nove, The Saint of Bright Doors, The Shadow Glass, and Lessons in Chemistry were Pandemic Book Club books. I'm Glad My Mom Died and 52 Loaves were alternate choices which weren't picked but which I read it anyway.

52 Loaves, In Defence of Witches, and I'm Glad My Mom Died were nonfiction of different sorts, which were meh, bad, and interesting, respectively.

There were several horror books, which is not my usual wheelhouse, and a few cozy mysteries (one paranormal), which is becoming my wheelhouse.

Two books were labeled DNF, The Zoo of Intelligent Animals and THe Saint of Bright Doors, but I got fall enough into them that I listed them.

Stake and Eggs was audio only. The book isn't available. After nearly a year, I started the next book.

It looks like if I want to continue with the Caineverse, I'll have to buy the next book. I do have a gift card to use if it hasn't expired.

No Sue Grafton books this year. I didn't realize.

In the "It's a Book, but It's Not a Book' category: I read the Book of Genesis. Yes, I came up with this idea a few years ago as something else to read in between books, and something that I can read in church with I'm early for Mass. (And, yes, I get there early because otherwise, someone will be in my spot.) I've started Exodus.

So with re-reading my own book (looking for typos, but reading), I read 30 books last year, literary, science fiction, fantasy, horror, religious, and nonfiction. Mostly novels but several collections.

The following magazines were mostly read in the pool. THere was a fourth book which I didn't finish. There's only one more story to be, plus the articles at the end. If there is one thing that I noticed, it's that they longer stories generally don't agree with me. I don't think I'll be selling any novellas to Clarkesworld any time soon. Then again, I haven't sold anything to Clarkesworld yet, but I think I could have a shot with shorter fiction.

• Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 171 (December 2020)
• Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 172 (January 2021)
• Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 173 (February 2021)

Those four are the only ones I have, but I do have other magazines to read, both in print and as ebooks. Plus, I made an entry to find old ebooks online.

Graphic Novels and Magna

• My Hero Academia Volumes 36-39 - I'm reading fewer because I'm up to date and waiting on new translations to be published, picked up by the library and made available -- and then wait my turn.
• Fangirl: the Manga, Vol 1-4 - recommended by the BPL, I had to wait for the series to complete. Based on a book. It was a comic more than Manga.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer, Vol 17 - a random volume found outside the library, nothing to make me want to read more of it.
• Power Girl: Power Trip - some random comics and then a series with a new "Terra".
• Superman '78 - Batman '66, it was not. It was a bit dull and there wasn't much to set it about from regular Superman except the images. But they included Braniac, so there's that.
• Superman in the Fifties - I love reprints of the old stories, except for when I don't. Contradictory, I know. Those stories are a bit quanit and a product of their time, so it's not unusual that I can't read the entire thing in one sitting. Also, they choose specific stories, so it isn't a continuous narrative like modern grahic novels try to be (but often fail because they can't condnese them -- they can only drop entire issues from the run).
• Shazam - I read it but I didn't write it up, apparently. I don't even remember the title of it. When I first looked at it, I thought there was some gag going on because Billy and Savanna looked like (non-blue) Smurfs. Nope, it was just the artist's interpretation of the material. Billy was even younger and looked to be about three heads tall like Charlie Brown. Sivanna was similarly short, but they made a joke about that when he was standing behind a podium. Literally behind it. Short. Since Luthor was president at the time, the writers made Savanna the Attorney General, but he was still crooked. It was interesting. Sivanna was more interesting in Power Girl though. (A villain slept with Sivanna to get what she wanted. Sivanna double-crossed her saying that he already got what he wanted and no longer cared what she wanted. And then I think killed her or made a good attempt at killing her.)

Miscellaneous

• More Gaming Books - I've read some, not as many as in 2023, but there is no write-up.
• A Firkin of eSpec Books - this is not posted yet. I've been reading more Kickstarter freebies. However, since I was going by size, I'm up to actual novels now unless more short stories are awarded.
• Novellas - I listened to a random novella, and then read it. "Pleasing the Queen" by Selina Coffey, 2015 was read July 2024.
• Some of the Best From Tor.Com 2016 Edition -- I'm not sure that I read anything from this book this year. I think I just noticed the draft and "saved" it so it would move up the list. Honestly, I download 4 or 5 books from them a year and don't read too many of them. I read a bunch a couple years ago. Some were okay. I don't think Tor dot com leans toward my interests in their current configuartion. I wouldn't mind selling to them but I don't think that'll happen. I don't write what they publish, and you have to know somoene to even get in the door.

Analog and Other Old Magazines

None this year. I should get back to that. It was fun. The problem is the downloading and carving up of the books. The PDFs are too big to mail. If I open the PDF in a browser, it will keep reseting to the top, losing my place. That means taking sections of the text and making 4 or 5 parts to submit to kindle. It's a pain.

And that's about it: 30 books (including my own book and 1 audio only book), 9 volumes of manga and 4 graphic novels, nearly 4 issues of Clarkesworld, and a smattering of short stories, novellas and gaming books.

Here's looking to 2025!

Some Online Magazine to Read

This is a (non-exhaustive) list of online science-fiction and fantasy magazines that are free to read the current issue, and which may or may not have archives. Almost all are currently publishing. I may add to this list.

• Apex Magazine
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Clarkesworld
• The Dark
• Interfictions Archive (ended in 2017)
• Lightspeed
• Podcastle (audio and written)
• Escape Pod (audio and written)
• Strange Horizons
• Uncanny
• Fireside Fiction

2023 Year in Review

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 libraries. I recently discovered that NYPL also uses SimplyE, which has rights to distribute some materials that Libby does not. So I started book 4.

Several of these books, I listened to as well as read, which helped get through some of them. Also, they were good to listen to as I was walking.

The following books were Pandemic Book Club alternatives, meaning that they didn't win the vote, but I reserved them from the library before I knew what the winning book would be. They looked interesting, so I read them as well.

• The Library of the Unwritten (Hackwith)
• Witches of New York (McKay)

I enjoyed both of these as well as the book of the month. It was a good month (or two).

These books were Audio Only. I listened to them while I was out for walks. I would like to read them at some point.

• Gods of Manhattan -- audiobook (Mebus)
• U is for Undertow (Grafton)
• A Dead Djinn in Cairo (Clark)

Obviously, I will read the Sue Grafton book at some point. The other I will nominate for the book club the next time it's my turn. The Djinn novella is a reread. I searched for audiobooks and it popped up. There are, I believe, 4 novellas, of which I have read 2. Hopefully, I can listen to all four of them.

The following books were my own picks. Some were free downloads. Some were library books. Some were from Kickstarter campaigns.

• Yeti Left Home (Rosenburg)
• Pumpkin Blend (Layne)
• The Fox's Fire (McPhail)
• Bedeviled Eggs (Childs)
• Harald's Adventure Wares (Redd)
• Steampunk Leap Year / Steampunk New Year (Lucci)
• Hobbies for Androids (Fenn)
• Trial By Fire (Gannon)
• Eggs Benedict Arnold (Childs)
• Cibola Burn (Corey)
• Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Doidge)
• T is for Trespass (Grafton)
• Fire With Fire (Gannon)
• The Bookshop and the Barbarian (Stang)
• ePulp Sampler, Vol 1

Oddly, almost all of those are series books. Two are Chuck Gannon (and I'm just finishing the third book). One is James S. A. Corey, which surprises me because I thought there were two of those. One Grafton mystery and two Childs cozy mysteries (Cackleberry club).

Magna

• My Hero Academia Volumes 32-25 - up to date
• My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Volumes 1-15 - the complete series (the first 13 books were read in 2022, but nothing was recorded in the blog. Libby has details.)
• My Hero Academia: Team-Up Missions Volumes 1-2 - this is what I'd like to see more of in the series, side missions outside of the big picture story line.
• One Piece Volumes 39-40 - I've been away from this for years and couldn't find where I left off, mostly because so of it was unfamiliar, but I remember Water 7.

Miscellaneous

• More Gaming Books - mostly a bunch of stuff written by Phil Reed. I need to document this stuff so it can inspire my writing.
• A Firkin of eSpec Books - this is not posted yet. I've been reading more Kickstarter freebies.
• Some of the Best From Tor.Com 2016 Edition -- not finished yet, basically I'd forgotten about it from earlier this year, but I do have a draft file of what I have read so far.

Analog and Other Old Magazines

• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact March 1973 (not much read)
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact February 1973
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact January 1973

My three-year experiment ran out of steam. It couldn't survive my book club and my delving into the Expanse and the Caine-verse.

And that's about it: 27 books (plus my own book), 9 or 10 volumes of manga, 2 1/2 old Analogs, 3 audiobooks (only) and a smattering of short stories and gaming books.

Here's looking to 2024!

2022: Year in Review

It was an interesting year for reading. It started one way and morphed into something else. I read a lot of short stories early on, and moved on to more novels. And there were things from the past that came back, some of which weren't listed in the blog last year, but will get a mention here.

Novels, Novellas, and Short Story Collections/Anthologies

Of the 25 books listed below, all but 1 was read to completion. And one was utter garbage. A few were anthologies and a couple were novellas in book form. I think every single one of them was an e-book, except for The Dream Peddler which was partly read in paperback and mostly listened to as an audiobook. Surprisingly, only 8 of them are Book club selections, and one was the runner up for a book from the previous year. I don't know why it's only 8. The Expanse series mucked up my schedule a little bit.

• Miracle of Deck 34 and Other Yuletide Tales (Olsen/Ashby)
• The Witch of the North Pole (Snow)
• Beyond the Waterfall Door (Cooper)
• Steampunk!
• My Best Friend's Exorcism (Hendrix)
• John Dies at the End (Paragin)
• The Dream Peddler
• Abaddon's Gate (Corey)
• Caliban's Way (Corey)
• Leviathan Wakes (Corey)
• The Graveyard Book (Gaiman)
• The School for Good Mothers (Chan)
• The Deep (Solomon)
• The Easy Life in Kamusari (Miura)
• The Guest List (Foley)
• Envy of Angels
• Me & the Monkey
• The Book of Koli (Carey)
• An Ignorant Witch (Graham)
• Armored Saint (Cole)
• Southern Spirits (Fox)
• Reincarnation Blues (Poore)
• Super City Cops #1: Avenging Amethyst (DeCandido)
• Foe (Reid)
• Greegs and Ladders (Mitchell and Mendlow)

Middle Grade and Children's books

These three came from mailing lists or from Amazon's World Book Day:

• Puzzled (Nichols)
• Jerry the Squirrel, Volume 1 (Robinson)
• The Caiman (Manrique/Paris)

Old Magazine

I really wanted to keep the magazine thing going.That is, I liked the idea of reading 50-year-old sci-fi magazines. I even thought I could expand it by alternately Galaxy and If. It was too much. What finally did it in, besides the fact that I was never going to be principled enough to convert this into a column for Tor or someone else, were the Expanse books, which took a lot of time, and that silly counter in Kindle showing that I've read for nearly 500 days in a row. The problem is that the counter doesn't seem to count PDF files as reading books, so any day I read Analog, I had to read something else, too. I never actually finished July's issue, and I didn't go back and read the serials for this year. Maybe I'll try again in 2023, but I'm not pendiling them in just yet.

I thought I actually read one issue of "IF", but if I had, I didn't make an entry in the blog for it.

• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact July 1972
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact June 1972
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact May 1972
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact April 1972
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact March 1972
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact February 1972
• ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact January 1972
• Galaxy PLUS 50: Galaxy Magazine, January-February 1972

Other Short Stories

In January, I tried collecting all the stories that were published by Daily Science Fiction and Flash Fiction Magazine, using the links that they email me daily or weekly (respectively). I think I even managed to make an ebook out of DSF. Two problems with this were that it was time-consuming to collect them all in book form, and I tried to coment on each individual story, which wasn't practical. I have since tried to get published in Flash Fiction, but reading one month of their stories, I could tell that I wasn't writing what they were looking for. (And I wasn't writing specifically for them because if I didn't sell the story, what would I do with it?).

Daily Science Fiction will soon cease publication. They stopped accepting manuscripts a while ago. I may go back through my email to read the old stories. All of them are on the website, but they aren't categorized in a way that makes it easy to access them. This is likely by design.

The stories from The Arcanist are the winners, runners-up and also-rans of themed contest for the past five or six years. So about 40 stories total.

Finally, there was a second collection of stories from eSpec Books' Kickstarter campaigns. As I've read them from shortest to longest, most of the short stories are done with and I'm at the short novel level. That's not to say more short stories won't pop up as new campaigns come along.

• "The Arcanist" story collections (multiple)
• A Bushel and a Peck of eSpec Stories
• Daily Science Fiction, February 2022
• Flash Fiction Magazine, January 2022
• Daily Science Fiction, January 2022

Manga

There were two entries covering My Hero Academia Volumes 22 Through 31 and Volume 32 became available at the end of the year. It got very dark.

Not listed on the blog was One-Piece, which took me some time to find the last book that I read. I remembered some things but not others. I finally got to the shipbuilders at Water Seven, which seemed familar but I couldn't remember the ending. I read two volumes of One Piece, after skimming the three before them.

Non-fiction

Fewer than usual, I think. I carried Eating to Extinction back in forth on the subway in hardcover for a month before giving up on it. Then I borrowed the ebook from the library. Interesting reading, probably my favorite book of the year.

The rest include a very old humor book, writing tips, selling tips, a cookbook (with "Geometry" and "Pasta" in the title), random legends, and information on whiskey.

• Eating to Extinction
• The Geometry of Pasta (Hilderbrand, Kenedy, Vandy)
• The Literary Handyman: More Tips from the Handyman (Ackley-McPhail)
• Famous Legends From Portugal (Abrantes)
• At Wit's End (Bombeck)
• Exactly How I Promote and Sell Books (Dee)
• Whiskey (Diller)

Gaming Books

There were a few gaming books, but not enough to merit a blog entry yet. Most of those were from Philip J. Reed. There were a couple others, which will go in a different post when it gets to enough pages.

Summary

So there were about 50 blog entries dedicated to reading. They include 25 books (plus 1 more), 7 (or 8?) magazines, 5 bundles of flash fiction or short stories, about 14 volumes of manga, and 6 (plus 1) nonfiction books. Not a bad year.

Updates Coming

This blog got away from me toward the end of the summer. I was reading quite a few things, trying to get through all of them, and not making headway anywhere.

That's not entirely true. Those Exapnse books are huge and take some time. I've finished 3 of them now.

I've also taken a couple other books from the library, one nonfiction and one an anthology, and I keep going back to them and then putting them aside after a while. However, I intend to finish both of them.

Likewise, I've started other things that were on my phone mostly because they were there. Since I plan to finish these and not abandon them, there won't be entries until I'm done.

That is all for now, except that I hope to start making entries in the next couple days.

Quick Links

In an attempt to expand my reading of 1972 science-fiction literature, here are some reference links for easy access:

Amazing Stories (6 issues): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?137315

Also: http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/AS.htm

Analog (12): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136722

Galaxy (6): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?619829

The Mag of F & SF (12): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136799

-- 1970s IS available!
Also: for up to 1959 -- http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/FSF.htm
Also: Change BOTH Month numbers for each new issue! https://ia601604.us.archive.org/1/items/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v042n01_1972-01"

IF (6): http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136799

Also: for up to 1959 -- http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/IF.htm

2021 Year in Review

My 2021 End-of-the-Year Review

Calendar year 2021 has finally left us, and during that time I left 66 entries on my blog, which is basically record for me. In 2009, I had 86 posts, but many of those were reprinting old reviews I'd written in a tiny notebook that I kept for the same reason. That's not to say that I didn't have any "old posts" this past year, but I didn't have as many.

So what could be found in those 66 entries? A lot of different stuff, different genres, and various lengths. I tried not to stuff a bunch of 100-200 page books in at the end of the year.

Fiction

First, of those, only 23 were novels, long or short. Three were Christmas stories, which may be short for "novels" but longer than the other Christmas material I read. Ten of these books were from joining a book club. (Shame on me, it should've been 11, I skipped one month, and I wasn't part of the group at the beginning of the year.)

A quick rundown:

Book Club: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry (Zevin), Beartown (Backman), Ninth House (Bardugo), The Only Good Indians (Jones), The Bear and the Cardinal (Arden), Anger is a Gift (Oshiro), The Oracle Year (Soule), Bellewether (Kearsley), Scythe ( Shusterman), The Anomaly (Ruger).

Christmas books: Jake and the Gingerbread Wars (Foley), Claus for Concern (Lester), The Ghost of Christmas Past (Fox), and A Very Beechwood Christmas (Garrett). The last one was finished in January after Christmas 2020.

Anthologies: Aesop's Fables (Aesop/Jones), and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle).

And the rest: Tooth and Claw (Walton), Circle (Miller), Vampire Addiction: The Vampires of Athens (Pohler), The Outposter (Dickson), Kings of the Wyld (Eames), Troll Hunter: Witch for Hire (Mason), and The Crime Beat (Fuller), which was really a novella.

Of those, one was a library recommendation, one a scifi con recommendation, one was an Analog serial that I found in book form, two were free in emails, one was a free Tor.com ebook, and one was a free download I found when I was searching for books with trolls.

Abandoned was They Were the Best of Gnomes ... (Wills). I couldn't get into it.

Nonfiction

There were six books in this category. One historical, one biographical, one inspirational, two informative, and one about TV.

The Man From the Other Side (Orlev), Don't Burn This Book (Rubin), I Heard God Laugh (Kelly), The Literary Handyman: Tips on Writing From Someone Who's Been There (Ackley-McPhail), Doctor Who: 365 Days of Memorable Moments and Impossible Things (Richards), Principles of Zen Philosophy.

Full disclosure: Danielle Ackley-McPhail is an editor whom I've worked with on three book titles.

Poetry

One was a short poetry book I was asked to review. (It wasn’t great.) and one was a collection of short stories that I got on World Book Day book from amazon == I tried to get through it but couldn’t. It was more the writing than the subject matter.

Learning to Breathe (Stephens), Amora: Stories (Borges)

Additionally, I discovered by accident that a former student of mine had published a collection of poetry (which I haven't acquired yet) and then I found out that she released a second collection for the holidays. That title is in the Christmas section.

ANALOG

In 2021, I acted upon an idea that I had the year before, and started reading issues of Analog dated 50 years earlier. This is from before I had my subscription. As such, I read 12 issues.

Shorter Christomas works, stories and poetry

The titles I read were: A Country Christmas by Azmat Hussein (ridiculously bad); Hectic Holidays by Heaven Santiago (poetry); Merry Christmas 2021: A Short Story Novel by Stephen Leacock (not good, didn’t suck); Sneaky's Christmas Mystery by Debbie De Louise (not good, 32 pages, bailed after 3 pages), The Chrsitmas Eve Landing by John O'Boyle (a picture book, I read it anyway), Frosty Blend by Kennedy Layne (book 15 of 23, not good), Old Christmas by Washington Irving, Christmas Elf by Arnie Lightning.

For a total of 7 titles plus 1 abandoned.

Random Short Novels, Short Stories & Gaming Books

Random Game/Gaming Books - 1 title, but this entry wasn't posted yet.
A Bushel and a Peck of eSpec Stories - Also not posted yet, there were 6 short stories, although they are getting longer because I'm ready by size. The last was another Christmas sotry.
A Bushel of eSpec stories - 12 stories from eSpec authors. These were bonus stories from Kickstarter campaigns.
A Peck of eSpec Stories - 12 stories from eSpec authors. These were bonus stories from Kickstarter campaigns. I sorted my directory by size, and these were the shortest ones.

That's a total of 31 stories in this section.

Graphic Novels and Manga

It was a good year from Graphic Novels. For one thing, I found actual graphic novels to read instead of collections of reprints that didn't tell a complete story. (Or worse, told three incomplete stories.)

In one calendar year, I read 21 volumes of My Hero Academia, 4 volumes of Ultraman (sadly volume 5 is not available in electronic form), 2 volumes of My Monster Secret, Shadow of the Batgirl and Supergirl: Being Super.

There was also Superman Vol. 7: Bizarroverse, which was incomplete reprints.

That's a total of 30 books in this section.

Assorted Blog Postings

Rounding out the blog were the following postings:

An old year-end Review for 2007, An old Year-end Review for 2006 An old Year-end Review for 2005 An old Year-end Review for 2004 An old Year-end Review for 2003 and Books I've Read Twice.

The 2020 Year in Review was actually published on Dec 31, 2020.

And that was my year. I think I've accounted for all 66 posts (and a couple which haven't been posted yet). Looking forward to 2022. I've already started the runner-up novel from last month's book club vote. Two of the choices looked equally interesting to me, and the winner was a quick read. I would've read the other by now, but I decided to get into the Christmas spirit.

Books I've Read Twice

Every now and then, I see posts online, or hear people in real life, talk about favorite books. I really can't say that I have a favorite book any more than I can say I have a favorite movie.

And then comes the silly part: they talk about how many times that they've read a particular book. Or that they've lost track of the number of times that they've read them. It's like returning to an old friend.

In a similar vein, there are people out there who will reread entire series of books. This becomes a case of triangular numbers as they reread from Book 1 to Book (N - 1) whenever Book N is published. My wife bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the day of its release, and then proceeded to let it sit on the shelf until she had reread the first six books. And, no, no one else was allowed to touch it first. (*) Likewise, some online acquaintances reread every book in A Song of Ice and Fire before A Dance With Dragons came out, and will do so again whenever (ha ha!) The Winds of Winter is released. (And some people read them all annually, any way.)

I am the first to admit: I am not the world's greatest reader. I don't read quickly. I get easily distracted. And I don't retain a lot of what I read, particularly if I try to speed-read through or just "soldier on" to the finish. This is part of the reason for this blog, like someone with a speech impediment taking singing lessons.

There are just so many books that I would like to read either because I have an interest in them, or because I want to know what other people are talking bout, that I just couldn't find the time to reread the same books over and over. Granted, sometimes a reread is much quicker. But only sometimes.

So I reflected on it, and I tried to think of what books I have read more than once. This is tricky. There are books that I have returned to that I didn't get through the first time. There were books from high school and college that I thought back then, if I ever have a chance to read these at leisure, and not "by next Tuesday", I might try this agin.

As best as I can recollect, in my entire life, I have only reread five books total. These fit into two categories: I wanted to read a series from the beginning, or I wanted to read an assigned book because I wanted to not because I was told to. There could also be a third category: I forgot that I had read it before until I was halfway through.

This is the List I came up with:

• B is for Burglar, Sue Grafton. In the 90s, I listened to quite a few of the alphabet series on tape while commuting from Brooklyn to Parsippany. I believe I picked up Burglar before that as a used book store. Sometime in the 2000s, I started reading the series. I don't count books on tape as rereads because those are abridged, excerpts of the real books. (The same goes for the other books, like Tom Clancy novels.) After A is for Alibi, I happily picked up Burglar again. I probably still had my original copy, as this was before I started downsizing my library of mostly unread books.
  Honorable mention for, I think, G is for Gumshoe. I started reading 2 or 3 books in this series per summer, and somehow, I picked up the same book I had read the previous year. But I don't remember which was it was.

• The King Beyond the Gate, David Gemmel. In the late 80s, my brother and I attended a science fiction convention in Rye, NY known as Lunacon. One of the panels was about new books coming out, and there were freebies at the end. They asked everyone to limit themselves to one of the three books. We both passed on the one that had the most copies, figuring that there would be leftover copies, and we'd grab an extra. I don't remember what my brother took, but I got this book. I still have it. (The third book was garbage.)

  After reading it, I went to exchange with Thomas, and I told him, "Remember when I said that other book was kind of dopey with a video-game mentality set-up and didn't hold my interest?" I handed him King and said, "This. Book. Is. Good!" He took my meaning and read it immediately. What I didn't expect was that he would buy the other three books that were (then) currently in release, read those and pass them along.

  The story of Druss the Legend is mentioned in King, without being spoiled. It takes place about a generation later, and is an enjoyable standlone book. The second read added to the enjoyment.

• The Western King, Ann Marston. For a while, I wasn't sure if there actually was an Ann Marston, or if it was a psuedonym used by multiple writers in the series. Actually, I still don't know, but I don't think I care any more.

  There was a time in the 90s that you can buy remainder paperbacks off racks in drugstores for 69 cents or so. Keep in mind, you usually get what you pay for, and there's a reason why these books were remaindered. On the other hand, if you bought 3 or 4 books and struck pay dirt with one, you could toss the others and be satisfied. Such was the case with The Western King, which was book two in The Kingmaker's Sword trilogy (which later became two trilogies, and I wasn't particularly happy about that). There was some stuff up front that I didn't follow as well as I could, but everything I needed to know was summed up early on. The rest was the story of the sons of Red Kian of Skye.

  Some time later, after not encountering the first book anywhere, it dawned on me to try the library, and inter-lirbrary loans. I enjoyed the first book as much as the second, and then I went on to enjoy Western King more than the first time. The series unfortunately went a little sideways after that, and I'm glad I didn't spend $7-10/book to buy them online. Oddly, I was able to borrow the last book from a library in Florida. The librarian in Brooklyn was quite helpful. However, when she mentioned that she knew who Ann Marston was and enjoyed her work, I'm sure she was confuing authors. Marston is credited with these six books, and that's the end of the publishing history.

  
  
• A Separate Peace, John Knowles. Techinically, this would've been the first book I reread. Sometime in the late 80s, after college, I took this high school assigned book off the shelf and wondered if it was as bad as I remembered it. Yeah, it was. It might be the reason I haven't reread other books.
  
  
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie. Back in December of 2020, I saw that I could download an ebook collection of Agatha Christie novels for free. So I did. Back in high school, I had to read this and Curtain. I might've struggled with it a little back then, but as a more accomplished reader, I figured I wouldn't have much trouble with it now. Actually, I did. I fell asleep more than a few nights before reading another two pages. I didn't remember much about the story other than "It wasn't strychnine, was it?"

  Ironically, my thinking was to read this novel quickly so I could up my count for the end of the year. I almost didn't finish it by the end of the year. However, I am not opposed to revisiting the collection when I have other books taken care of.

Update: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling (2004). I found a note that said I reread this prior to seeing the movie.

Other possibilities

At some point, I may update this post, or just make a second one. It seems to me that there should be a few -- not many, but a few -- more books. One that comes to mind is Dracula. I bought a copy in the early 90s when I participated in a Dracula-themed musical production with Xaverian Alumni Community Theater. However, I can't swear to the fact that I had read it before that. Similarly, Frankenstein I know I tried once before but couldn't get past the first few chapters.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were once each.

Anthem was assigned to be read the summer before high school. To say that the point of the book was lost on me would be putting it kindly. I remember joking to classmates that the character's names were all phone numbers. Um, yeah. I might have read it again during college but I honestly don't remember if I ever did.

I can't think of any Asimov books I've done twice, or any other author. The Doc Savage books in the basement (another series) was once each, for the ones I got to. When it comes to that series, I stopped reading because I started reading books that I was going to get rid of afterward. I don't plan on getting rid of those. Silly reason not to read them, I know.

(*) (Side note: I was away camping that week. As I had picked up The Half-Blood Prince a few minutes after midnight when it came out, I assumed it was my obligation to pick up the final book as well. So we had two copies.)

2020 Year in Review

My 2020 End-of-the-Year Review

It's not unusual that very little of what I read this year was published this year. What is unusual is that one of those things was actually written by me. Yay, me!

The year should have a total of 30 posts, including this 2019 Review, this entry, and, I'm hoping, one more book before the year is over.

Of the books read, most were fiction, but there was more nonfiction than usual. Some of the nonfiction came from free downloads with interesting titles or topics, like Celts or the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program (which I remember little of now). The rest were math books, biographies and self-help/inspirational. Plus a pub quiz book.

Fiction is a mixed bag. There are at least two books I didn't finish, but there were other books I gave up on that I didn't bother to list. In the latter case, it was either because I was asked for a review and didn't wish to be mean publicly, or I gave up before I even hit 10% of it. There's also the Best of Tor.com 2016 which I made a dent in, but the book is huge, and I wanted to read other things.

Speaking of Tor, their free ebook of the month club has given me lots to read, not that I've read a lot of it. But the timing of The Haunting of Tram Car 015 coinciding with my just finishing A Dead Djinn in Cairo was too good to pass up. That rated its own entry.

There were two Oz books (one was manga), and two Kinsey Milhone mysteries (one better than the other). And aside from the Tor book, there were a couple of anthologies (including my own): If We Had Known, and Unidentified Funny Objects. I have books 1, 2, 3 and 8 in that latter series. Book 9 will probably kickstarter in the spring, and I'll fill in some gaps. (And maybe submit something.)

Ebooks accounted for 18 of the 28 book entries. Of those, only two were library books, and most of the rest were free downloads. I think only UFO 1 and If cost money. Both of those would be among the best things I read this year. I finally read Redshirts, but I was a little disappointed, but that could be all the buildup I've gotten since it's release. I don't know what I expected of it.

On the nonfiction side, putting the math and games aside, A Sick Life and Out of the Silence were interesting reads, while The Highly Sensitive Person might give me something to think about.

2019: The Year in Review

For a year without a Challenge checklist, I had a pretty eclectic year. Granted, I didn't read as much as I would have liked, and I lost a lot of my reading time this past summer due to ... reasons. Also, at least two crossword puzzle books factored in, as I needed a diversion every now and then.

There were over three dozen posts last year, almost all of them about completed books. Only two about books that I gave the old college try before abandoning them for not being good, enjoyable, or even well-written.

There were fiction books and nonfiction, sci-fi and foreign translations, graphic novels and self-help, math book and game books, long and short.

In the graphic novel category: I discovered the series Amulet at my last school, before discovering that each issue was published about a year or more apart -- and that the final issue had not been published yet. Indeed, at the time, it probably hadn't been written yet, as #8 was not that old. There were summer comic books, most of which were disjointed collections of monthly titles, which shared a theme, but not a coherent story line because too many parts were left out. (And different included titles had different side plots.)

The odd thing was that I made no entry for One Piece and haven't since 2017 when I listed the first 27 books. I know I'm somewhere in the 30s, possibly low 40s, so I need to find out which was the last book I read, so I can catch up and make another entry. Honestly, I don't remember if I read any last year. I would have had to have put them on hold at the library. (Note: that's actually not a bad way to check on it.)

I will plug Amazon only because I tend to use their images, but because of their annual "World Book Day" where I get to download a bunch of free translations, and then proceed to read one or two of them. This year, I read another Japanese book, Go (even though I should have gone to another part of the world), and a Dutch book, An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew. The amazing thing about the Dutch book was that it took place, for the most part, in the United States, in New York and Pennsylvania. Allene Tew was born in New York at the fringes of high society, rose up and eventually married actually royalty in Europe. She died in Holland, and the author worked backward from there -- no spoilers, as the story starts with her final days, far from the place where she was born. Had I had more time to go walking this year, I thought about a tour of places she'd lived (or were mentioned in the book) -- the Manhattan ones, at least. Fascinating book, and there were some copies of original society pages included.

In the fantasy category: last year's eSpec Books sale gave me a collection of Precinct books, by Keith R. A. DeCandido (I recently found out it's "de Candid o"), except for Mermaid Precinct, which I selected after winning a flash fiction contest. (Those are gone now.) I liken it to a fantasy Barney Miller with its cast of characters that originated in roleplaying games, but are three-dimensional.

Nonfiction, other than the translation, included essay books ("Writing Science Fiction", and "Breakfast on Mars" which is NOT science fiction) and self-help. Humble and Kind was a gift book with the lyrics to the Tim McGraw song (which he didn't write) along with a short essay introduction (which he did). Speak Thai was just a quickie free ebook, which I read as a curiosity -- it didn't achieve its goal. I don't need to break up with my phone -- in fact, I need to get a better phone -- but reducing screen time wouldn't be a bad idea. And, of course, there were two math books.

Finding a challenge for 2020 may be difficult. Many are boring, or just have dumb things added. I think I did okay last year. Plus, I have a whole lot TBR.

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.)

(blog): 100 YA Books to Read in a Lifetime, Part 1

100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime??

This is my first blog posting about books in general. I felt like writing something, and I'm not done with my current book, so I'm writing about reading itself. I may decide to do this ever so often.

I recently saw a link to Amazon's 100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime. (Normally, I shy away from free advertising on my blogs, but I've taken most of my images from Amazon, so I guess I've already established the pattern here.)

It's an interesting list to be sure. In fact, it seems to be two lists. The top part of the page shows 60 book covers under the heading "100 Books ..." etc. The bottom parts shows -- I kid you not -- "1-12 of 113 results for Books : 100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime". It then goes on to list books, only some of which appear in the 60 icons above. I haven't explored beyond those 72 titles yet. There's much to mention here.

For starters, I apparently have No Idea what makes a book Young Adult. Someone once told me that it's a regular book with the violence toned down and the sex removed. That was a tongue-in-cheek definition, but not a bad indicator at the time. Either way, many of the books listed, the ones I'm familiar with at any rate, don't seem to me to be the sorts of books that appeal to young adults. If anything, they are the sort of thing they might get assigned in high school. Forced reading is not fun reading, even if they eventually like the book.

That said, I thought I might give my impressions of the books I have read. (Note: I normally only put reviews/summaries of books I've recently read while the details are still fresh in my mind. I don't usually like to review something I read so long ago that I don't remember the details. One of the reasons for this blog is so that I will remember the details.)

I'm not going to cover all the books, but I'll get to ones I have read, and may have something to say about some of the others.

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess: never read it, but nothing I know about it (yeah, the film, which, believe it or not, I've never seen either) tell me it's a young adult book. Odd that this is listed first. It is a classic, so I can see its inclusion on some list, but this one? I should make a note to put it on a TBR list.

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray: I've actually read it and reviewed it. Yeah, for me! Second book on the list. Fairly recent and a good book, and definitely YA. I'd recommend it if asked.
Reviews of books by Libba Bray.

A Separate Peace, John Knowles: One of the few mandatory reads from high school that I voluntarily reread in college or shorter thereafter. It was still on my bookshelf and I honestly didn't remember too much about it. Plus, I'm sure I didn't "get it" in high school when I likely just read it to be finished. Read it from an older, wiser perspective, I probably thought. I still remember a lot of the crappy parts of it, and don't remember much of the rest. But, hey, it's literature, not fluff or melodrama. It's not like stuff I read today where writers kill characters because they don't know what else to do with them or because they need a plot twist every 20 pages.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain: school book, but I'm glad I read it, even if I might not have been back then. Then again, I'd seen enough TV and movies about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to know the basic story. Again, it's Americana, and you should go back to the original source rather than an "updated" Hollywood retelling. And Tom Sawyer, too. To this day, I still have the copy from high school in a box of books in the basement. I can probably find a free ebook of it (and Tom Sawyer). This one should be on my reread pile.

Dune, Frank Herbert: Another surprise listing. I had trouble getting in this book post-college. In fact, the first two books were my "Secret Santa" present at my first job. I know it's a classic, and I'm a sci-fi fan, but I just didn't get through it. Oddly, by that point, I had already read "National Lampoon's Doon", which made little sense, having not read the original.

Ender's Game: the Ender Quintet, Orson Scott Card. Another classic, and least Ender's Game is. I'm not sure what the "quintet" is. I have read the novel of Ender's Game, and I have read "First Meetings in the Enderverse" although I apparently didn't blog about it. The first meetings book includes the original novella. Changes were made to get from novella to book. The novella was a little less depressing. It's still a good book, and I'd recommend it. I might even read more in the Enderverse.
Reviews of books by Orson Scott Card.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury: Another high school book, mandatory read. I remember having trouble getting through it. I remember not getting it. Was it an alternate history where Ben Franklin started a fire department that started fires? What? I've had people talk to me about it and mention scenes that I have no recollection of. Oddly, those conversations have made me change my thoughts about it. So, yeah, it's something that I should reread. Will I? I don't know. Maybe. Some day.

Go Ask Alice, Anonymous: A high school book that I read on purpose. In fact, I borrowed a copy from someone because I wanted to read it. (The person I got it from was happy to be rid of it -- either he or his sister were assigned to read it. Don't remember which.) I read this book for one reason: I was involved in a one-act play based on the book. It interested me enough that I read it. I felt sorry for the poor girl, whose name was not Alice (even though it was in the play). There's an entry in her diary (the book consists of diary entries) where she makes an "Alice in Wonderland" reference about herself. The only reference to a name in the book is "Carla", and that was likely changed. Interesting read. Not sorry I borrowed it. (In fact, I might still have it.)

Harry Potter box set: J. K. Rowling: Not a cheat listing them all together. I'm glad they did. Obviously Young Adult, and they grew up as their readers did. I wonder how this will affect newer readers. Will the final books be too mature for them if they read them earlier? I don't know. That's what parents are for.
Reviews of Harry Potterbooks.
Reviews of books by J. K. Rowling. (Obviously, there is overlap.)

Hatchet, Gary Paulsen: Never read it, but my daughter has. She couldn't stop taking about not only how much she hated the book, but how stupid she thought it was. I can only think of one other book that she might have liked less. She was older by then, and I wasn't reading books with her, so I can't comment, but I had to pass these comments along.

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman: I have a copy of it. It's unread. It will probably remain so. My brother gave it to me as a gift. I hadn't heard of it, so he explained it to me. Since it was a gift, I didn't ask, "why the hell would you think that this might interest me?" Your mileage may vary. I listed it here so you can form your own opinion when I could have just ignored it.

Lord of the Flies, William Golding, E. L. Epstein. I was never assigned to read this, but there was a copy on my bookcase at home. (I have older siblings who were readers, along with my parents.) Another classic YA book. Read the original. Don't just watch the movies. I enjoyed it as much as any other classic. (I'm pretty sure that I read it after I saw a movie -- one from the 80s, I think.)

* * *

That's it for this time. I'll check this link again soon.