I'm Glad My Mom Died (McCurdy)

I'm Glad My Mom Died
by Jennette McCurdy (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club choice, but it got 0 votes, which is surprising because I thought I'd voted for it. It was the first one available for the library. I read it, without the audiobook. I get the feeling that the audio might've been difficult to listen to, both storywise and the way it was told.

Jennette appears to have OCD but she is diagnosed as Mormon. That attempt at humor as about on par with the tone of the book. Her mother dreamed of being a star and wanting that for her daughter. Jennette has older siblings, but she is the one that got pushed into acting. And she always did everything her mother wanted because she loved her mother and her mother loved her and wanted the best for her. Or so she believed to be the case at the time. Much of the narrative is written in the naive voice of a person who came to an ephiphany much later in life.

Unlike other Disney stars who came from wealthier background, McCurdy's family was poor, and her mother, a hoarder, delayed paying bills and kept the creditors away as best as she could. She also leans heavily into the story that she's a cancer survivor. McCurdy's big claim to fame, as far as her resume was concerned, was her ability to cry on command. THis was something casting directors looked for and it got her many parts.

Problems arose at puberty when her body started to develop and she wouldn't be able to play kiddie parts any more. Her mother encouraged her to become anorexic. Other mothers notice and told her mom, not realizing that she was the cause of it. Anorexia later gave way to bullima when McCurdy got more successful and got start binging on food.

Her big break was, of course, iCarly, where I know her from, although I likely saw at least some of her earlier bit parts. She refers to the person in charge there simply as "The Creator" and never names him. The Creator is able to control her with the promise of her own show when "iCarly" wraps up (years in the future). The first time he meets with The Creator alone, without her mother (whose cancer has returned), he gives her an alcoholic beverage, which she drinks because she wants to make him happy, and this is followed by some massaging. Not many details are giving here but when the show ends, her "team" (lawyers, agents, whoever) on a conference call tell her that there's a $300,000 bonus for her so long as she never talks about the Creator's behavior. To her credit, she calls it out as hush money and refuses to take it. To her further credit, in the book she includes her reaction after the call as "did I really just turn down $300,000?" Even after a successful series, McCurdy may be well off but she isn't exactly wealthy.

She goes into details about Sam & Cat, the followup show she did with Arianna Grande when she'd been promised her own show. McCurdy was denied chances to pursue a movie career while shooting "Sam" but Grande was allowed to leave to do singing performances. One time, she missed so many days that the episode was rewritten so that her character was locked inside a box for the duration of the episode. McCurdy had to act opposite a box and Grande's line were dubbed in later. A final straw happened when McCurdy's promised directorial debut was canceled because someone threatened to leave the show if she directed it. (Grande isn't named here, but no one else had that clout.)

Along the way, we read about her first kiss, her real first kiss, her first adult relationship, losing her virginity, and her therapists. The book is divided into Before and After her mother's death, and it's quite a while into the after that she starts to piece everything together.

This was an interesting and a quick read. I don't know if I would've read it if it hadn't come up an option for the book club (and was immediately available). Had it been a different actress, say from any of the children's shows that I didn't watch with my kids, I probably would've returned it to the library as soon as I knew that it had lost the vote.

I also write Fiction! Thank you for finding and reading my page. You can now order my newest book Burke's Lore, Briefs: A Heavenly Date / My Damned Best Friend, written by Christopher J. Burke, which contains the aforementioned story and a bonus story. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon.
Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Raising Caine (Gannon)

Raising Caine
by Charels Gannon (2015)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is the third book in the "Cainverse", which started with Fire With Fire> and Trial By Fire, and in fact follows immediately after the events of Trial By Fire where we meet the representative of the Slaasriithi (a big reveal for book 2). While the Consolidated Terran Republic is near the Arat Kur homeworld, a K’tor ship arrives. We learn more about the K’tor, which takes some of the mystery out of them, and their own representative states the same thing. This causes the Slaasriithi to move up their scheduled trip home because they fear K'tor treachery. As a result, Caine finds himself en route to the current Slaasriithi homeworld.

At the same time, there is a renegade bunch of K'tor who have been, basically, disgraced in the eyes of the familes (to use a Mafia analogy in place of the scientific/genetic one). There are sleeper agents in place that are activated who help take over a Republic ship and try to ambush the Slassriithi ship before Caine can reach their homeworld.

I enjoyed this one a little less because there were spots that it got a little bogged down. For example, it was pretty obvious that the K'tor renegades were going to take over the Republic ship, but it dragged out for several chapters at the beginning of the books, with several POV characters, even though I knew that half of those characters were going to die and their defense would come to naught. The only reason for the protracted struggle, I'm assuming, was so that the ship would have a particular amount of damage and so much of its resources would've been consumed or destroyed. A second contention was the two Slaasriithi planets that the Caine and company set down on. The Slaasriithi don't terraform exactly. They shape their biomes by introducing their own.

The science is over my head, but to its credit, from what I've read outside the book, the science is spot on, making this hard scifi and something that's been hand-waved. One planet is tidal locked to always face its sun, which leaves a habitable ring around the perimeter. Again, there are elements to the story here, and stuff will happen that may make a difference later on, but it seemed to take to long. Ditto for the second planent, until it occurred to me that the book would finish here and that they wouldn't make it to the homeworld before it ended. Caine's previous encounters with the primitive Slaasriithi proved invaluable to his survival as well as defending a water strider on this planet. Even as a saboteur was in their mix.

I did enjoy the book, and Caine and company are still pressed into service, if only because they know that going back to Earth and rejoining civilization is impossible. They'll all wind up in some "retirement community" where they'll be watched over for the remainders of their lives, no matter what anyone promises.

I did try to finish this be the end of 2023, but there were still 100-200 pages remaining, so it became the first of 2024.

Other stuff to read before I move on to "Caine's Mutiny". Gannon has a way with titles.

Disclosure stuff: I've met Gannon on a few occasions at a science fiction convention. We've hit some of the same parties. "Acquaitances", not "friends".

I also write Fiction! Thank you for finding and reading my page. You can now order my newest book Burke's Lore, Briefs: A Heavenly Date / My Damned Best Friend, written by Christopher J. Burke, which contains the aforementioned story and a bonus story. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon.
Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Signal Fires ( Shapiro)

Signal Fires
by Dani Shapiro (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club pick. It received a mixed reviews.

A car accident and its subsequent coverup affect the lives of a family of four -- and likely the family of the deceased -- as well as a family that doesn't even move into the neighborhood for years.

The book opens talking about all the possible future of Misty Zimmerman should see survive this night. I thought we'd see some of this. We did not. The girl who dies is pretty much an afterthought except for when (some characters believe) she extends her influence from the beyond, enamating from the tree under which she died.

The book then jumps to the 21st century. And then back to 1999, and 2010, and all over the place. I was curious if this book would work better as a linear narrative, not that I would read a copy of it should someone present me with one, but it sees like the structure and the feelings replaced the plot of the novel, as little of it as it was.

Biggest complaint among the club members is that not one of the characters were likable, least of all the fellow you weren't supposed to like, the only one always referenced by his last name, Shenkmen. The mothers in the book get short shrift. They get pushed aside pretty quickly without much to do.

Shenkman is not a great father, and it doesn't help that he doesn't know how to get through to Waldo, who appears to be on the spectrum, which may have been a result of the umbilical cord being wrapped about his neck during his delivery on his kitchen floor by Dr. Ben from across the street. Note that after his birth, the two families apparently never spoke to each other again despite living across from each other for a decade.

After Waldo runs away and gets rescued, Waldo explains about super galactic clusters. Rather than getting upset again, Shenkman has a change and calmly asks Waldo to tell him more about the super clusters. In any other novel, this would be a significant turning point. Instead, ten years later, Shenkman, suddenly a widower, is the one reaching out to Waldo (not that Waldo ever reached out to his dad), and Waldo is basically a little shit. If the point was too little, too late, something should've been said ten years earlier that Waldo was going to resent his father forever.

Instead, Waldo finds friendship in the man who delivered him, who is the same man who covered up a crime in 1985. He's not a particularly good man, especially when compared to Shenkman. Again, basically no one was found to be a likable person in this book.

It was interesting but there was much to it. Just a lot of jumping around, two off-screen deaths, and an affair that gets forgiven (offscreen) and leads to a confession at an AA meeting without any consequences. The one thing that everyone appreciated was that it did take the Covid shutdown into account in its timeline and it affected the characters. Needlessly inserting politics wasn't appreciated.

This was another book that I listened to (read by the author) and read concurrently. This may become a thing for me.

I also write Fiction! You can now order my newest book Burke's Lore, Briefs: A Heavenly Date / My Damned Best Friend, written by Christopher J. Burke, which contains the aforementioned story and a bonus story. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon.
Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

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!

Gods of Manhattan -- audiobook (Mebus)

Gods of Manhattan
by Scott Mebus (2008)

[NO IMAGE -- AUDIO BOOK ONLY]

(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 title was suggested by the public library -- I forget if it was Brookly or NYPL. I was looking for another book to listen to while I was walking. I didn't realize that it was so old (or that, I just learned, it's part of a series). Once again, I listened to the first chapter twice just to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Interesting book about a secret world of Manhatta occupying the same space as Manhattan and filled with people, "Gods", from New York's past, including Lenape Indians. It's listed on Wikipedia as a children's novel, but it's about 272 pages long. I guess that's on par with early Harry Potter books though.

I enjoyed it and plan on reading it in the new year. Perhaps I'll suggest it to my book club, so two birds, one stone.

This is a place-holder entry. I'll write the full one when I read the book. That's my new rule for the blog. I can make up and change my own rules.

Yeti Left Home (Rosenburg)

Yeti Left Home
by Aaron Rosenberg (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was an ebook I purchased in a Kickstarter from eSpec Books, which also published my book In A Flash 2020. As a supporter of this book, my name appears in a list in the closing pages.

As silly as it sounds, many of these Kickstarter books go into the electronic TBR pile. I have a directory of them on my hard drive. Between my book club selections, holiday reading (whichever holiday) and older books already in my Kindle app, I sometimes go back and upload stories and books, usually starting with the shortest, looking for some quick reads. (This means I read more short stories, but then I read more authors, too.)

Happily, Yeti Left Home is from this year, so I'm not too far behind with this one.

First, side note, I told Danielle (Ackley McPhail, of eSpec Books) at a convention that the sequel should be called "Yeti Persisted". She laughed but it's not going to happen.

The story: Wylie Kang is an unassuming Yeti who desires nothing more than his isolated cabin in Embarass, Minnesota, with his reclining chair, his big screen TV and a cold breeze coming in through the window. He pays for this by catching and selling fish in town. One night, Wylie starts having dreams about running though the woods and attacking campers. He wakes up with leaves and twigs in his fur and hands, and no way of explaining it. Worse, he hears that campers were actually killed.

And, worst, a Hunter is looking for him. Hunters trap cryptids like him.

Wylie packs his chair and TV into his pickup and flees his cabin to lay low for a while. He drives all the way to Minneapolis and finds a motel, paying cash out of a coffee tin. He has a drivers license but little else.

While walking around the city, he gets pickpocketed, but the culprit is caught by a Red Cap who recognizes Wylie as something special. This fellow, Knox, takes Wylie under his wing, so to speak, and gets him settled into an apartment that will be cheaper in the long run than the motel, even if he's only staying in the city for a week. The apartment is owned by another supernatural being, and Knox introduces him to more.

Of particular interest are Brea, the Ogress, who is keeping an eye on Wylie to make sure that he isn't any trouble, and Sinead, a Banshee who tended to keep to herself before meeting Wylie. Brea suggests Wylie go to docks to look for work, and Sinead gives him directions.

Once at the docks, Wylie is immediately popular after preventing an accident that might've led to a bad injury, and because he's great at the job of lifting and hauling, even though it exhausted even a yeti like him, but in a good way. He's also popular because he puts an end to the shakedown from a protection racket. His coworkers are so grateful that they give him the heads up that there's a woman looking for him.

Note that his coworkers don't know what he is. They just think he's a big, hairy guy who can lift a lot.

He's finally caught by the Hunter but tells her that he'll find the actual killer, and the "scooby" gang is off to work.

As one can imagine, the Yeti didn't leave home. He's found one.

A quick, enjoyable read with a lot of cool characters all getting along.

Pumpkin Blend (Layne)

Pumpkin Blend
Paramour Bay #14
Kennedy Layne (2020)

(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 freebie from a BookBub mailing. I downloaded it and read it before Halloween, and then forgot about it. Not that it was forgettable (well, maybe a little), but I got behind in my blogging and didn't check my library for everything I'd read. On a side note, I already had book #15 in my Kindle library, which I apparently downloaded last year (or earlier), but haven't read yet. It's a Christmas mystery. There is very little chance that I will get to it by this Christmas as I have a couple of other things going already.

This will be short, and hopefully the Christmas entry will be longer. It was a little difficult to get into because it's the 14th book, so the author is free to assume that the reader should be at least somewhat familiar with the characters.

The big mystery is the disappearance of a very large, prize-winning pumpkin from a cart in town a couple of weeks before Halloween. It disappeared by magical means, but no one knows how. At the same time, the witnesses had to be convinced that they didn't see what they thought they saw. The farmers on the wagon assume that it fell off along the way.

The main character is a witch, and her mother is also a witch, but she's away and can't help with this. The witch has a cat that's a familiar and addicted to edibles and naps. The cat got confusing when he talked about his Former True Love, his New True Love, his On Again True Love, etc, mostly because at first I assumed he was talking about other cats, not actual people. Some people are aware of the paranormal, in general, and the circumstances of the main characters, in particular, but most are blissfully unaware.

The story eventually leads to a cemetery right before Halloween and the spirits trying to break through and the ones trying to prevent that from happening. Pumpkins help with that some of thing.

It wasn't bad, but two months later, it doesn't seem to be very memorable.

Here's the Good Reads synopsis, for any visitors to my site wishing more info:

Pumpkin tea blends aren't the only things that are being stirred up in the next baffling whodunit of the Paramour Bay Mysteries by USA Today Bestselling Author Kennedy Layne...

All Hallows' Eve is only a fortnight away, and the residents of Paramour Bay can't wait to get their hands on all the candy corn, caramel apples, and pumpkin tea blends this fall season. As a matter of fact, the highly anticipated Halloween Festival is about to kick off in town square with the reveal of the largest pumpkin that has ever been grown in their very own local pumpkin patch.

There's only one itsy-bitsy problem--someone has stolen the town's prized jack-o-lantern! Raven ropes Leo into solving another mystery, but he goes all in when he realizes that a pilfered pumpkin is the least of their worries!

Fill up your candy bowl, grab your favorite pumpkin-flavored drink, and get ready to solve the perplexing case of the missing prized pumpkin!

This was an ebook.

The Fox's Fire (McPhail)

The Fox's Fire:
And Other Fantastic Tales
Danielle Ackley-McPhail (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is another eSpec Books book, of which I have many, thanks to a number of Kickstarters and lots of bonuses and freebies.

Note: Danielle Ackley-McPhail was the editor of my collection, In A Flash 2020, and one of the editors of Devilish & Divine, which contains three of my stories. And, finally, my name appears in the back of the book along with the names of other kickstarter contributors who helped make this book happen.

I read this a couple of books ago, so forgive me if some thoughts have already fled.

There are eight stories contained within: The Fox's Fire, The Promise of Death, The Devil in the Details, A Moment Out of Time, Forever and a Day, Crossroads and Curses, Mis En Place, and Mama Bear. They cover a wide expanse of fantasy.

Favorites include the title story, which finds a Japanese kitsune encountering Native Americans; Mis En Place, about a restaurant where everything is in its place; and Mama Bear, which is a tale of the Wild Hunt.

An enjoyable book, which I wish I hadn't waited so long to write up. Unfortunately, the real world intrudes and blogs take a backseat.

Bedeviled Eggs (Childs)

Bedeviled Eggs
Laura Childs (2010)

(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 is the third in the series that started with my pandemic book club selection. THe first one was interesting enoug that iI thought I'd try a couple more. This book was not available as an ebook from any of three NYC library systems, so I had to get it as a paperback, just as I did with the previous two. I also got the audiobook, as I did with the last two. It's good to listen to when I'm out for my walks.

The usual gang is back. Szanne, the recent widow, and her new boyfriend, Sam the doctor, along with Petra, whose husband is in a medical facility, and Toni, who is still married to Junior. Junior proves to be little more useful in this book. The relationship stays on-again-off-again. I'd imagined Junior as a cross between Jethro Clampett and Max Baer, Jr (who played Jethro, but could play parts that were more physical). This book describes him as a cross between Fonzie and Homer Simpson. I'm not sure I can switch that description into my head.

As luck would have it, this was another Halloween book, taking place just before the holiday and Election Day.

I enjoyed the book, because I'm getting to know the characters, but this one seemed to end abruptly. The murderer is caught but then it's over without any loose ends tied up.

The book opens wtih a Read Dating night at the Cackleberry Club, a take on Speed Dating where each person brings a favorite book. An argument ensues with one woman and a mayoral candidate about pieces of his mother's estate which apparently she was talked into donating. The moment is diffused, but afterward, as he and Suzanne walk out the back door, someone in the field shoots him between the eyes with a crossbow. More bolts him the building and the women hide inside until the police come. We meet a new, young deputy who searches the field. A couple days later, Suzanne and Petra find him deceased.

There are a couple of contrivances here. The book starts with a historical quilt trail, where places with a significant history hand up a quilt square (made of wood) and folks follow the trail to visit these places. Petra and Suzanne drive the trail, as night is falling, of course, and think they're lost. They pull over, found the police cruiser and then the deputy handcuffed to the tree and shot. Suzanne finds a hurt dog on the way home and calls Sam the doctor to come over and take a look.

Since it's almost Halloween, as well as Election Day, the Cackleberry Club is hosting a Halloween event. A guy owes Junior a favor and he can get them all the pumpkins they need for cheap. Once again, they go out at night, using a hand-drawn map of Junior's. They get lost again, and stumble upon a dog-fighting kennel, and are chased to a canoe to escape. Now we know what happened to the first dog.

And then there's a prison break that causes the Reverend Yoder to have a heart attack while his spreading the alarm. The ladies save his life, and he'll recover.

And then it all comes to a head at the Halloween event. Junior gets a good showing here, and Doogie lets him because Doogie might not trust himself at this point.

And it's over.

For all the talk of the election, we never make it to Election Day. The crooked mayor is now unopposed, so he's a shoe-in, but Doogie was afraid of his chances if he didn't close either of the murders. He got the guy to confess (off-camera, in the car) to the first killing, but not the deputy. But Doogie will work on it. No mention that, oh, there's a gun in the field behind the restaurant and it might be the same one that killed the deputy. No reelection celebration after closing the book on the murders. No followup on the prison break (other than they were rounded up) or any fallout from the dog fights. So while I enjoyed the book, it could've used a denouemnent of a half-dozen pages of so.

The other nit to pick is that Suzanne finds a clue that Doogie missed. A post-it that says only "Tortuga" on it. Now forget that this is the kind of clue you only find in Scooby Doo or other contrived mysteries, but the number of people who knew that it means "turtle" in Spanish was astounding, considering that no one has spoken Spanish yet. There was scarce mention of the island, which if you're aware of popular culture, Tortuga plays an important part in Pirates of the Caribbean, and is an actual place. This allows for a misdirection because someone happens to know that another character has a turtle tattoo. Without a spoiler, there is no reason why the word "Tortuga" on the note shouldn't have been followed by another word, except that then it would identify what it meant 50 pages too soon.

Once again, the dual media has its advantages, where I catch something in one that I miss in the other.

My Hero Academia Volumes 32-35

My Hero Academia Volumes 32-35, by Kōhei Horikoshi (2021-2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Apparently, I haven't listed a review of one of these manga books since last November. I've been requesting them whenever they become available at the library. These are the past four books. There is one more listed online, but it isn't available at any library at the moment.

We're getting new adult heroes as the continuation of the All-For-One story line continues, along with the development of Shiguraki, and the big reveal over who Dabi really is. There is less about the students, but they do get bck into the action.

The time jump has Deku out of school on his own. It gets dark as he pushes himself farther and farther, and the heroes let him. Eventually, his former classmates are able to bring him home before he falls too far. He costume is fuzzy and raggedy, and it isn't so obvious that he's a hero.

The world isn't happy with heroes, especially with all the villains on the loose. (The prisons have been emptied.) And my heroes are just quitting. And then we learn that there was a traitor in the midst at the Academia, and the writers even pointed out just where they planted the seeds and nearly did the reveal sooner.

One book brings in another new American hero into Japan so we see more of what is happening around the world.

If anything bothers me here, it seems like the end of the series is coming with the conclusion of these story lines, even though this is the story of how Deku became the world's greatest hero, according to the intro of every issue. He hasn't even graduated high school yet.

Next issue isn't available at the library, but as soon as it is, I'll have it on hold.

Clown in a Cornfield (Cesare)

Clown in a Cornfield
Adam Cesare (2009)

Image withheld under the book is read.

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club pick, and not one that I would've chosen. The cover itself was a turnoff despite not judging books by one. I'm not into horror, and I had a feeling that this young adult horor would "Friday the 13th" everyone. Yeah, pretty much.

Quinn and her dad Glenn move halfway across the country from Philadelphia to an old house in a small town. Glenn is a doctor who has seen too much death, including that of his wife, who'd become addicted to painkillers. They move into the house of the town's former doctor, who left rather abruptly. From Quinn's bedroom (the attic), which runs the length of the house, she can see a factory in the distance with an eery looking clown. She'll learn that it's Frendo, the town mascot. The original factory owner doodled a clown with a hat and put it on the label of whatever it was that he sold. Yeah, I forgot already because it wasn't actually important to the story.

The prologue of the story, which was a year earlier, was a bunch of kids live streaming stunts and practical jokes. They're at the town reservoir. Unfortunately, the younger sister of another main character (Cole) who is too young for these parties decides to climb on the "stacks" and dive in. She hits her head on the way down and dies. Cole jumps in to rescue her, but it's too late.

When we next meet this crew, Janet is still making videos but Cole quit because of an incident that happened off screen a week before in which he accidentally set fire to his Dad's factory. His father had closed the factory the year before and now the town was suffering a bit. Quinn learns all this when she's suspended on her first day of class along with the gang that can't shoot videos straight. Quinn winds up going with Cole to a big school party.

At the Founders Day Parade, a prank that Tucker (Cole's "bodyguard") participates in causes some damages to the floats and a few minor injuries, plus an M-80 goes off scaring people. The sherrif grabs Cole and wants to know what he did and lets him know that the town is down with their hijinks.

There's an emergency town meeting called, after which the murders start, all at the hands of someone dressed in a Frendo costume. They start with knives slitting throats and stabbing guts, but then switch to crossbows. Every kid at the barn seems to be a target, Janet in particular. Quinn and Cole seemed to be spared but not by any plot armor, but by the plot itself.

I'll go ahead and spoil this because it was stupid. Basically, half of the town is down with "culling" the latest crop of high school students, but in this case, they plan to pin it all on the new girl and Cole, for whom a suicide note was written, along with Rust who is supposed to make the third part of a love triangle. Janet's stepfather has absolutely no qualms about the girl dying at all. And then Cole's father shows up. He blames Cole for everything including the death of his daughter, which makes his okay with murdering his own son. Wut?

Rust turns out not to be dead, shows up, saves Cole, who's dangling by his neck at this point. Quinn manages to shoot the sherrif who'd been planning this for a long time, even longer than the previous week's fire, saying how you can persuade people over time that killing their children is the correct thing to do.

I'm not exactly sure how many students go to that high school or how many of them were at that party or how many might've escaped. However, for the plan to have actually played out, those survivors would all have to be hunted down so that the actual story couldn't get out.

I kept waiting for some screwball revelation, like the dead daughter actually being the sherrif's love child or something, giving him a stake in all this. Or Quinn with a rifle confronting her father who was there and dressed in a clown outfit (he dressed like that to escape the prison he was in, where he found the rat-infested body of the former doctor). Instead, the only curve was after Rust saves Cole, the two embrace and start making out. This was not telegraphed anywhere in the story, so it was almost comedic when it happened. They used to be friends (one rich, one poor) until one started playing football and the other wasn't athletic enough. That's their entire story. There was more to suggest that Tucker was "gay" for Cole, who wasn't interested, except that Tucker had mentioned how he enjoyed his hooking up with Janet. So not so much a surprising twist as a head-scratcher.

Finally, the father, who had been double-crossed by the sherrif, who tries to kill him at the end, doesn't have any revelations or changes of heart. He still wants Cole and the rest of the kids dead. And rather than crawling off and dying in a field somewhere, we learn that he was escaped and will return at some point. (There's a sequel.) Meanwhile, Cole is rich with access to all his father's money, even though no body has been found and no one can be certain that he's actually dead.

So much to complain about with this book. But I'm done complaining. On to some other Halloween books -- there are a few cozy mysteries set around Halloween.

U is for Undertow (Grafton)

U is for Undertow
Sue Grafton (2009)

Audio only

Image withheld under the book is read.

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I needed another book to listen to while I was walking, and I selected the next Sue Grafton book. I haven't had a chance to actually read it yet. Last time, I listened and read together. I will update this entry after I read it.

I'm not sure what "undertow" refers to in this title. It's metaphorical, having nothing to do with the ocean or the beach.

Like recent books, there was a prologue taking place years ago. And like Trespass, this one has chapters that center on other characters, but in this case there are more characters to take center stage. On top of that, there are more flashbacks mixed in. It got a little confusing keeping track of all of these before they all got tied together. It's like Grafton went out of the way to leave out information so that it could be revealed at the correct time.

The story follows a man having a suppressed memory when he was a kid, he saw two "pirates" digging a hole in the vicinity of where a young girl disappeared. He thought that they might've been burying that girl. The police send him to Kinsey to look into it. She does, and miraculously finds the burial site. There's a dog buried there.

But there's more going on, and the "pirates" have grown and still live in the area. Also in the area is the young woman who was kidnapped weeks before the dead girl was kidnapped. She remembers Santa Claus and having a fun time before she was returned. Kinsey looks into her hippie parents as having something to do with it, but they did not.

It was a little convoluted and all over the place. Not one of my favorites, but not down there with "L is for Lawless", which I believe was the one where Kinsey was just along for the ride. (I might be misremembering.) On the other hand, we learn more about her family and her grandmother's attempt to actually be a part of Kinsey's life, even if it would've been a controlling part. I hope that this part of Kinsey's story gets resolved by "Y" because there is no "Z".

I do plan on reading the book at some point, at which point, I'll update this entry.