The Book Count 2025

[Greg]

I'm just the Yeti's book bird dog. And I'm down with that.

[Greg]

Fahrenheit-182 by Mark Hoppus

Well, I read the Travis Barker version of Blink-182, I might as well read the Mark Hoppus version. Hoppus's version is much more fun. From soup to nuts, it's all there. Hoppus starts with his early days in Ridgecrest where his father worked on a military base all the way to the band reforming after years of acrimony.

The stories are interesting. Hoppus is quite funny and very self deprecating. He has dealt with a lot of problems and issues, especially the cancer diagnosis several years ago. There isn't a lot of depth, it felt cursory at times, but he does explain of the goings on. It was quite a nice rise to fame story and what they had to do to get there.

You're going to have to really like Blink-182 to want to go through this. But as autobiographies go, this was enjoyable.

[Greg]

Relentless by Jonathan Maberry

Back to Joe Ledger and the Rogue Team International. After the death of those closest to him, Joe and his dog go on a solo mission to track down those responsible. Naturally, those responsible are in the middle of getting ready to kill big groups of people. But Joe isn't in his right mind. He is having black out episodes. And there is an old foe messing with him from the spirit plane.

I see a lot of elements of Bond and Spectre in these books. The villains are out to make a lot of money on their schemes. And Joe gets to use bunches of cool gadgets and tech yo kill his enemies.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Service Model by Adrian Tschjgchaikovskyii

Spelling is hard. He should change his name to something easier to spell.

Anyway, not his best outing. I finished it, but only out of cussedness. Stilted allegory, and trying too hard. I recommend giving it a pass.

[Greg]

I thought I read Service Model. Last robot story? But, yes.

[Greg]

The Children of Eve by John Connelly

I love the Charlie Parker books but I'm thinking the series might be running out of gas or Connelly is just tired of writing him. In this book barely appears and when he does, he has no baring on the story. The main thrust of the book is one drug lord in Virginia stole something from another drug lord in Mexico and now the Mexican Drug Lord is sending a killer to get his stuff back and kill everyone involved.

The is the usual supernatural stuff with Parker's daughter but that seems to be going nowhere or didn't have a payoff in this story. And the denouement was particularly dull.

I hope for better in the next installment.

[Greg]

The Infinity Gate M. R. Carey

I took the Yeti's recommendation but then I recalled how much I enjoyed Mr. Carey's work but always forget to check for new works from him. So, Thank you, Dr. Yeti.

It was really good. The first part was really deep science nerd stuff but I got through it. I did like the soap opera stuff in the latter two-thirds but I think the momentum dropped off a bit when we had to do Paz's back story. Granted, we needed to do Paz's backstory but that area seemed to drag. It all picked back up for the escape stuff. Yes, I have the second book on order from the library.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I'm just the G-Man’s book bird dog. And I'm down with that.

I have the second book here. You want it when you visit in late August?

[Greg]

If I don't have it from the library by then, sure.

[Greg]

Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland

This is the first in the series of a Korean themed fantasy adventure. I'm pretty sure this will be the last book I read in the series. It's not very good. The book is told from the viewpoint of six different characters and with the exception of one, they all talk pretty much the same. I did like the character of the bodyguard, Royo, but everyone else was just tiresome. There was a large romance element to the novel which added to the tiresome issue. Everyone was in love with their partner but for whatever reason, they couldn't act on that love. Blah Blah blah.

And they all used modern vernacular which was off putting. I didn't really need people in a semi-medieval setting saying "Awesome"

Big no bueno.

[Greg]

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei

Sort of an Indiana Jones in Space but with more larceny. Maya Hashimoto leaves her education at Yale behind when she realizes she has the clue to find the artifact that might save all the space lanes/wormholes from closing. It might also save her best friend, who happens to be an alien. Lots of Space Opera and World building as Maya and her group travel to distant locations and fight other aliens and the Navy. There is also a robot that will be voiced by Alan Tudyk if the film ever gets made.

[Greg]

Penric's Progress by Lois McMaster Bujold

This book collects three Novellas in Bujold's Penric and Desdemona series. Penric was made a wizard when the demon Desdemona jumped mistakenly into his body. There is more to it but that is where it gets started. These are all fantasy mystery stories where Penric with the help of Desdemona solves crimes or gets into trouble. The first novella covers how he got the Demon and what people will do to get it out of him. In the second, he has to help local law enforcement track down a fugitive who may or may not be a murder. In the third, Penric needs to find a missing demon and the person who killed the Demon's previous host.

They are all fun quick reads. I read some of the novellas later in the series but it was good to see how it all started, but this is why Bujold is such a frustrating author. She doesn't write novels and she doesn't write in a linear fashion. The later stories in the Penric timeline were written first. Then she wrote these earlier stories. She writes whenever in the timeline the mood strikers her fancy. Since they are novellas, they are hard to distribute. I read the first ones on the Kindle. Bujold has always done this. She did the same with her Vorkosigan saga. You never knew where in the timeline the next story would be told.

Supposedly, these Penric novellas make up part of her Five Gods Universe. The world building is good. The characters are engaging. The stories should be longer.

[Greg]

Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh

The story of Britain and America's adventures in drug smuggling from India to China in from 17th to the 20th century.

The book is really well written, should be since Ghosh won the Booker prize but is very accessible. Ghosh balances the drug trade then with events that are happening now and how the forces that drove them still exist today, you know, greed. I learned a lot. Some of it was painful like how involved the US was in the drug trade at that time and how most of the important New England families built their fortunes on the drug trade. Think Forbes for instance.

Ghosh does like to point out on many occasions that he wrote a trilogy of books that cover all this ground in a fictionalizes format as well. Probably worked. I might read those books in the future.

[Greg]

Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh

The Opium Trade from the perspective of India around the time of the Opium Wars. The Opium Wars are touched on but the battles aren't really the focus, it's more of how the British used India to grow the opium and distribute it to China. There is also a lot of the richest families in the United States got their fortunes by doing the same thing only using Turkish Opium. Ever wonder why there are 31 cities named Canton in the US. Opium.

The book is really good and eye opening. It is basically all the research Ghosh did for his fictional trilogy about the Opium trade, one of the books in the trilogy won the booker prize. One of the things that was a bit off-putting was the constant references to that trilogy. Ghosh does show the relevance of the opium trade of yesterday still affects us today with his comparison to the Opiod epidemic and Purdue pharma. Purdue uses a lot of the same arguments the British used to justify their trade.

[Greg]

Echo of Worlds by M.R. Carey

I think the opening book was better. This one was still good but it didn't have the same sense of action as the first. This time the race is on between the flesh people and the machines to see who will come up with the better way to destroy the other. And it comes down to our small band of heroes to save both civilizations from mutually assured destruction.