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+--- Thread: TQ's Book Count 2026 (/showthread.php?tid=8719)
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RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-03-2026
#11: Lamb by Christopher Moore. The subtitle of the book is “the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal.” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John give you a little but of the birth story, running away to Egypt, a tale of Jesus teaching in the Temple at age 12, and that’s about it until he’s 30 and starts preaching to crowds. In this book “Biff” (a nickname for Jesus’s BFF, Levi bar Alphaeus) provides the missing details from their childhood and young adulthood. Briefly, after determining that the local jobs of their fathers (stonecutting, carpentry) are not particularly attractive, and with “Josh” (Yeshua bar Joseph) questioning his unique abilities, actual parentage, and destiny, they decide to make a pilgrimage to the East to track down the Magi that came when Yeshua was born, and to learn from them, which is how he learns about yoga, meditation, the wisdom of Lao Tzu, and kung fu, among other things. It’s funny, it’s a wild stretch of the imagination, and overall was entertaining. I like Moore’s biting, sarcastic style, and his style reminds me a bit of a less British Neil Gaiman and/or Terry Pratchett, so I may check out other books he’s written.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - Dr. Ivor Yeti - 03-04-2026
I recommend several of his other books. He is a fun author.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-11-2026
#12: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett. Another fun, entertaining book. It’s all about the power of words, words, words, and set in a not quite Shakespearean fantasy, plays within plays within plays. Three witches of widely diverse backgrounds, two dimensional kings, people doing what they’re supposed to do until they figure out life is ever so much more enjoyable if they do what they want rather than what is expected of them.
I’ve ordered several Pratchetts from the library and look forward to soaking in them for a few weeks. I’ve a trip coming up and will probably download some Christopher Moore for the plane rides (I appreciate the Yeti’s endorsement.)
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-12-2026
#13: Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. A dying wizard passes on his staff and abilities… to a girl! As she grows up, she (and everyone around her) the has to figure out the difference between a witch and a wizard and why and whether there ought to be differences, and the difference between words, ideas, and things, and of course they come to realize that it’s all pretty much the same; it all depends on how you choose to look at them. Thoroughly enjoyable; especially on such a weird day when the only three things I could successfully accomplish were sleeping, reading, and being — never mind the unpleasant details, just generally unwell. I think I’m past the worst of it. Hope so. I’m scheduled to go into town tomorrow for a hair appointment and I need to stop at the library and get more books.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-15-2026
#14:Butterfly Effect by Seanan McGuire. In this latest episode in the Incryptid series, Sarah is abducted to the dimension and world of her Johrlac (humanoid wasp) species to stand trial for “crimes” she committed on Earth. Antimony, her Fūri fiance, Sam, and her 30-year-old grandparents, Alice and Thomas Price, manage to follow and effect a rescue that restores both Sarah, Arthur and Artie (whom we thought was dead and replaced by Arthur). As is typical of this series, none of it makes any sense and simultaneously works well as a good adventure story. I enjoyed it very much.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-19-2026
#15: Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire. I should have read this book before Butterfly Effect, but I screwed up remembering what I’d already. So, in this episode, Arthur (whom everyone still believes is the manufactured remnant of a dead Artie) and his sister Elsie (who is seriously depressed because her mom died, and her “real” brother Artie has been replaced) accompany Mary Dunlavy to Boston to help her rescue ghosts being hunted and destroyed by what little remains of the Covenant (a family and allies of species-ist humans who want to destroy any non-human intelligent species on Earth). Mary, is the ghost of a teenager who died in the late 1930s, and has been babysitting the Price family children for three generations (as well as serving the crossroads, but that’s a whole ‘nother story, and the crossroads no longer exist… no wonder I forgot where the hell I was in the story. After many adventures and mishaps and confrontations, Mary, Elsie and Arthur triumph. My favorite moment was when Mary helps a 300-something year-old child ghost to adopt a ghost dog… who died without having a human of his own… it really got me.
And now I’m going to probably have to go back and read the one before this to make sure I read it. Maybe the whole damned series.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-22-2026
#16: Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. Basically, it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Discworld with an intelligent orangutan and bees. The veil between worlds has grown thin and humanity’s only hope is that three witches of questionable intelligence or priorities can stand between them and the elves that want to take over their kingdom. Like all Pratchett’s books it is simultaneously silly and serious with occasionally excellent puns in the footnotes. And in the end I’m quite hopeful that the newly married Magrat and her fool might figure out what sex is.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 03-29-2026
#17: Jingo by Terry Pratchett. Another in the Discworld series, this time taking on the utter pointlessness of politics and wars, the advantages of stupidity, the disadvantages of skin-color-based prejudice, how both idiocy and competence are to be found equally among friend and foe, and why confidence is really not a reliable substitute for intelligence.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 04-02-2026
#18: The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. This was the 2nd book in the Discworld series (I’m reading them completely out of order, which I’m told is perfectly fine because with few exceptions, you don’t have to know who the characters are or what they’ve done previously in order to understand or appreciate each story for itself.) The best character in this one was the sentient, magical luggage. I was not a big fan of Cohen the Barbarian. Danger, adventure, trials and travails and travels, and lots of silliness with occasional puns.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 04-08-2026
#19: The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Pratchett says that it doesn’t matter if one reads the Discworld books out of order, and for the most part, that’s true, but I think reading the second book immediately before the first book was an error. I would have enjoyed The Light Fantastic a lot more if I’d red The Colour of Magic first. Regardless, still enjoyable. The first of the series both is and isn’t typical world building: he was just trying to explain how a flat world was carried on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle swimming through space through the sort of characters that might make sense in that situation. Because I’ve already read so many of these books, I was already somewhat comfortable with the idea and had moved beyond that irrationality to focus on the characters. It would, in fact, have been a little better to read the first book before the second to better appreciate the Luggage.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 04-11-2026
#20: Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore. Definitely a page-turner. Initially, I had a problem with how he wrote the female characters, but the more I read, the more I realized that he was unkindly writing everyone in the story, regardless of gender, and that it fit the narrative. These are not nice people; they are definitely not smart people, but they each have some very small ability to redeem themselves and most show it by the end of the story. Despite dislike all of the characters and not caring at all which ones lived or died, I found it surprisingly engaging: I wanted to know how (or whether) they’d manage to stumble through and survive it.
Apparently Christopher Moore wrote two more books set in the same town. I’m not feeling compelled to immediately dive in and read more, but if I find myself at a loss for books or authors, I might go back to it.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - Dr. Ivor Yeti - 04-12-2026
This was one of his earliest (if not actually his first) book. He gets better as he goes.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 04-17-2026
#21: Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
Another in the DiscWorld series. Created by the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork, the growing ‘clicks’ industry moves to the sandy land of Holy Wood, attracted by the light of the sun and some strange calling no one can quite put their finger on… Victor (a wizard student dropout) and Ginger (small town girl) are also drawn to Holy Wood, and get their big break. There’s also Laddie the dog who’s a very good boy, and Gaspode, a small, less attractive but far more clever dog who somewhat befriends but mostly just commiserates with Victor. The problem with Holy Wood (aside from the two-dimensional characters that fill it) is that the belief in the magic of the clicks is powering a potentially world-ending event. The puns and allusions are thick and often silly, and frequently pointless. The story is not quite as good as some of the other DiscWorld books, but it was still entertaining.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 04-23-2026
#22: Sourcery by Terry Pratchett. In this episode, we re-meet Rincewind, the very incapable wizard from The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, who would very much like to be bored, and The Luggage, which didn’t get nearly enough storytime. I appreciated the concept of the Apocralypse, but it wasn’t satisfying. The last thing I want to read about in my leisure time right now are a bunch of idiot losers (Ankh Morpork wizards) who suddenly get all the power they ever dreamed of, can’t possibly mnage, and immediately use it to fuck up the world (and themselves, of course, in the process). Ah, well. Moving on.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 04-30-2026
#23: Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire. This is a story I somehow skipped in the Incryptid series. I enjoyed getting to know “Grandma” Alice, watching her persistence pay off, seeing how she confronted her blindspots, her comfort with her personal morals vs. morals others would likely have expected to impose on her… There’s something very satisfying about seeing a very long quest pay off.