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Translation State by Ann Leckie
I like Leckie. I never really know what is going on in her books. She does sort of sociological Science Fiction. In this book, two Presger teens are trying to determine if they will match or not. One of things Leckie's books helps me with his how to look at gender because most of her books discuss this.
Not a lot of action in this book. It's mostly talking about what they want to do. There is a bit of a mystery one of the characters has to solve but it is resolved pretty quickly and only leads to more talking. This book does tie in to her Ancillary series and I feel like I need to read those to get a better understanding of this book.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson
Ah, the comfort of a junk food book, stepping back into a world of really familiar characters, reading about them doing things you like them to do. As in most of the Longmire books there is a family legend that steps up to influence the past. In this case, Longmire's grandfather might have been involved in a murder. Walt longmire is inclined to believe that his grandfather committed the murder because he hated his grandfather. Things become even more important when Walt finds the gun used in the murder and it no doubt belongs to his grandfather.
Things take a current turn, when people involved in the investigation start getting shot.
It's all fun and games in Wyoming. There are shoot outs and fist fights and people being mean to Walt. Plus, there is the dog named Dog.
These books go down smooth like DM's 50 year old whiskey.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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Mrs. Plansky's Revenge by Spencer Quin
Spencer Quin is better known for writing the Chet and Bernie stories set in Arizona narrated by a dog with short term memory issues. This is a stand alone about an elderly widower living a sad life who suffers the ultimate indignity when she is scammed of all her life savings. She decides to do something about so she travels to the town of the fraudsters and deals with them.
It's an Amuse-bouche of a story, slighter than slight. Plansky's life is filled with people all trying to take her money. She's got memory issues. She talks to her dead husband. And the problems keep piling up. The cybercrime is just one more indignity.
But Plansky doesn't get a lot of her misfortune. She stumbles her way through the mystery, relying on the kindness of strangers. At the end of the mystery, she seems to be back in the same spot from where she started.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
Chuck Wendig's fascination with heirloom apples blossoms into a full blown horror novel.
Wendig writes well but I don't know if he has put together a really good novel yet. This novel felt a lot like a Stephen King fan fiction which goes so far as to use some of King's linguistic quirks (parenthetical with opposing views) in the story.
Basically there are bad apples and these people are eating them and the apples are changing them. The people who don't or can't eat the apples see the changes and are worried. Eventually the people who change, change too far.
It's a solid book. You have to be in the mood for a lot of talk about the history of the apple in America.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Elizabeth Zott is a Chemist in the early 1960s trying to get the male establishment to taker her seriously but they refuse because she is not a man. She falls in love with another Chemist. They get adopted by a dog. Through circumstances, she has to host a daily cooking show where she becomes an unlikely star despite the best efforts, again, of the male establishment who think they know better.
I loved this book. I'm not doing it justice in my description. It is a simple story really well told. It's sad and it's funny and I wish there was more of it. It is one of those books that makes you sad half through it because you know soon the book will end.
I can't say it's a Doom book but it is a very good book. Yes, it's the one the new Brie Larson TV show is based on. Hopefully, the show is half as good as the book.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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The show was good, but Christina said they changed it a lot from the book - introducing some things happening at that time that didn't have anything to do with the main story. My hold on the book came through so I'm picking it up at the library today.
the hands that guide me are invisible
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I went and looked at the trailer for the show and decided not to watch it because I spotted a bunch of differences, chief among them the dog.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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Alias Emma by Ava Glass
Emma works at an adjunct agency to MI5. Her secretive task for the night is to get a man across London to MI5 before the Russians kill him. She can't contact her own agency for help because they appear to be compromised. All the CCTV cameras seem to be in the hands of the Russians so she can't appear on the streets. Emma will have to use every trick she knows to get her man to safety.
It's a bit derivative. There is nothing new or noteworthy about the character. The situations made me sleepy.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty
Everybody's favorite Northern Irish detective from Carrickfergus, Sean Duffy is down to his last case before he stops being head of CID and becomes a part timer. A tinker girl has gone missing and Duffy decides to pull out all the stops to find her. Then he finds her car at the bottom of a river and the missing persons case becomes a homicide. Turns out the girl was sleeping with men for money and they all become suspects.
Duffy still does a lot of alcohol and drugs to numb himself. He still has to check his BMW everyday for bombs planted by the IRA. He also has to deal with the fact he is moving across the Irish Sea to maybe safer digs. There are plenty of false trails and new mysteries on the trail of the killer.
It's a good solid mystery. Not quite as twisty as some of the previous chapters in his tale, but solid.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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McKinty is always a fave. I'll look this one up
In the Tudor Period, Fencing Masters were classified in the Vagrancy Laws along with Actors, Gypsys, Vagabonds, Sturdy Rogues, and the owners of performing bears.
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I prefer his Duffy's to his stand alone works.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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I liked his Michael Forsythe trilogy a lot. Very, very noir.
In the Tudor Period, Fencing Masters were classified in the Vagrancy Laws along with Actors, Gypsys, Vagabonds, Sturdy Rogues, and the owners of performing bears.
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The Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Mr. Tchaikovsky really likes his highly advanced bugs. I could almost see how this book might be the prequel for his Shadow of the Apt series, but no. Earth is seeding the galaxy and they want to start a whole new species/ecosystem using monkeys and some bio-engineering to make them evolve faster. But something goes wrong and spiders get the evolution juice instead. The book follows their evolution over the course of several thousand years as successive generations evolve. Meanwhile an Ark ship from earth needs to settle there but also runs into problems. The two storylines intertwine as the ark ship people go in and out of cold storage while the spiders get smarter.
I almost stopped when I realized it was another evolved bug book but the story kept taking turns and I was involved. I was lost on some of the evolution stuff Tchaikovsky throws in there but I did like the story by the end. Two more books to go.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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I enjoyed the first two. I haven't read the third
In the Tudor Period, Fencing Masters were classified in the Vagrancy Laws along with Actors, Gypsys, Vagabonds, Sturdy Rogues, and the owners of performing bears.
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Ghost Summer Stories by Tananarive Due
I want more snap and twist from short stories than this collection offered. Or that the stories should be more fully rounded. These stories just seemed to end. There are a couple of Ghost stories from Northern Florida that seemed to building to a bigger mythos that I thought was going to fill out the entire book but no. There is a trilogy of post apocalyptic stories set in California. There is a sort of zombie story.
This collection got some buzz but I don't think it lived up to the hype.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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