The Book Count 2025

[Drunk Monk]

What the what?

[Greg]

I keep forgetting I don't think Schwab is all that good and keep getting her books from the library, case in point "Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil".

I kept telling myself to stop reading this book because I wasn't enjoying it very much, but I'm no quitter. Or I'm a glutton for punishment. It's a female vampire book. We start with a medieval vampire then we get a modern day vampire and almost to the end we get a victorian age vampire. Sabine from medieval Spain takes up the majority of the book. It is her first several hundred years as a vampire and I felt like I was experiencing her life in real time. Nothing really happens to her. Or nothing exciting. She meets other vampires. She learns the vampire ropes. She remains selfish and vain. It is not someone you want to spend time with.

Then there is Alice our present day vampire from Scotland currently going to Harvard. She has a miserable life which includes flash back to her childhood. She becomes a vampire and that doesn't make life any better for her. We spend a lot of time with her trying to track down Charlotte, our third vampire, who made Alice a vampire during a one night stand. Alice gets to learn the ropes of being a vampire before finding Ezra who helps her to find Charlotte. When we meet up with Charlotte we get more pages of her being a vampire and learning to be a vampire and how she met Sabine which is why we are in the mess we are in now. 

It just kept going and going. The conflict never really drew me in. 

I was glad when I finished and returned it to the library.

[King Bob]

Why would you go to college if you're a vampire? It's not like you can just get a job. Someone's going to notice you never get older.

I'm glad you posted this. I saw one of her books and thought about reading it, but now I can skip it.

[Greg]

She was in college before she became a vampire.

[Greg]

Lives of Bitter Rain by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Kind of cheated. This is a novella set in the Tyrant Philosopher's world. It's kind of the cliff notes to the main character in Tchaikovsky's last book Days of Shattered Faith. I was about halfway through the 160 pages when I realized it was the same character. The novella does flesh out the world more. You get some insight into the Pals and how they operate. But the Novella ends basically where Days of Shattered Faith starts.

It was diverting, but I felt a little cheated we weren't entering another odd city in this world.

[Greg]

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby

Roman goes home from Atlanta to his small town in Virginia after his father gets hit by a car. Upon arrival he finds his brother might be the cause of the accident because he owes a lot of money to the local drug gang. When Roman goes to work out a deal, things go poorly and now Roman is responsible for more money. At the center of this is the family mortuary that there father devoted his life to and Roman and Dante's sister Neveah now runs. They are still suffering from their mother disappearance years ago.

Lots of threads to pull. I wasn't completely enamored by this because there are no good guys in this story. Roman is ready to do all sorts of bad things to get extricated from the gang. Dante is an addict pulling everyone down. Neveah doesn't have much to do except yell at her brother's for not telling her what is going on. Also her name should be spelled Nevaeh which is heaven backwards. You got Dante in hell and you have girl called Heaven or should be.

I need someone to root for in my books and this book doesn't have it. You could think of it along the lines of The Godfather or Scarface updated for modern times, but it's not as good as those tales

[Greg]

Robert B. Parkers, "Hot Property" by Mike Lupica

Junk Food Book, baby. Like sitting down with a bag of store brand chips and polishing off the bag.

Mike Lupica takes over the Spenser duties from Ace Atkins. Lupica has been doing the Jess Stone series by Parker for several novels. More Spenser stuff but none of these author's still capture the innate Spenser properties that Parker brought to the books. If I didn't have the template to compare these books, too, I'd probably enjoy them more.

In this case, Spenser's lawyer, Rita Fiore gets shot at  and it is up to Spenser to find out who did it. It seems to involve a property development in South Boston. Two billionaires are fighting and one of them might be behind the shootings/killings.

It's the usual stuff. It's fun to run around Boston with Spenser especially since I was just there. The same old characters like Hawk and Henry Spicoli and Susan are all there doing there same old things.

[Greg]

Return to Sender by Craig Johnson

Walt Longmire goes undercover on the longest postal delivery route the US located in Wyoming to find the missing postal woman who delivered that route. He is not very good at going undercover because everyone seems to know who he is or suspects instantly that he is not a postal worker. Which is good because Walt finds out pretty quickly what the problem is there in the desert in Wyoming. Much like in the Spenser books, Walk does the Way things. His supporting cast does what they do. And in the end, Walt saves the day with few bumps and bruises for his trouble.

Reading these never ending series is like watching a police procedural on TV only the shows come out once a year. You get the same familiar characters to spend time and then you move on, waiting for the next episode.

[Greg]

Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The race is on to save Earth. A mysterious organism is eating the sun. The solution seems to lie at the Star Tau Ceti. The race is on to get a ship there to find the solution and get that solution back to Earth before the sun can no longer sustain life on Earth.

The usual Weir stuff, known best for writing The Martian. Our hero has to solve innumerable scientific problems which Weir loves to write about. I tend to gloss over those. The world building is kind of good. There are a bunch of twists as our hero solves problems scientifically.

Very readable.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

1/2 way through the new Aaronovich, the new Seanen McGuire is waiting.

[Greg]

I tired of Ms. McGuire and probably won't read her latest.

[Greg]

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

First off, this was a slog for me. Maybe I'm not smart enough to get all of Kuang's allusions to Cambridge and PHds and all the different works that describe hell. I keep falling for the premises of her books but forgetting they don't pay off. I read the first book in the Poppy War and wasn't thrilled. I read Babel having forgotten about Poppy War and here we are again with Katabasis. I read a bit and then I realized I'd Kuanged again. I have to pay more attention.

Two PhD students in the magic program at Cambridge accidentally (or maybe not) kill their gifted and hated mentor. But they need him to sign off on their papers for their PhDs so they decide to go to hell to get him back. Naturally the two students hate each other (or do they?) but agree to work together as they go through the nine levels. There is lots of allusions to Dante and his journey. They talk about many different versions of hell around the world. It's a lot of the two of them walking and hating each other and bumping into the different denizens of hell.

[King Bob]

There was a profile of her in the New Yorker and she sounded insufferable, which made me not want to read any of her stuff.

[Greg]

Silver Screen Fiend by Patton Oswalt

Comedian Patton Oswalt recounts his early journey to be a stand-up comedian and his addiction to movies.

There are some good anecdotes. I think I wanted the book to be funnier because I think Oswalt is hilarious and it just wasn't. I wanted to get deeper insights into all the movies he saw at the New Beverly Theater in Los Angeles but that wasn't there either. He did chart for himself an interesting journey but it could be the journey of any comic of going to the clubs and learning his craft. He does frame his revelatory journey against a particular painting of Vincent Van Gogh's called "The Night Cafe" and how entering the Night Cafe awakened his mind to new ideas.

You are going to have to really like Patton Oswalt to want to read this book.

[Greg]

The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie

The book is really well written but the plot left me wanting.

Babs Dionne lives in Little Canada, a French speaking section of Waterville, Maine. She and her fellow elder ladies are in charge of selling drugs in their area. A man is coming as the representative of a large Canadian drug cartel to tell Babs and the rest of the ladies they now work for him. Meanwhile, one of Babs's daughters is missing while the other daughter, a drug addicted Afghan War Vet is looking for her and trying to straighten out her own problems.

It felt good while I was reading it but it was a mess when I think back about it. The characterizations and situations were all really good but the ending left me cold as it was done off screen.