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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Dan Frey–The Future is Yours (2021) [audiobook 2021]

Posted in Aneesh Chaganty, Beer, Cary Hite, Catherine Ho, Dan Frey, Dion Graham, End of the World, Joshua Kane, Kyla Garcia, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Natasha Soujek, Quantum, Ron Shapiro, Technology, Thérèse Plummer, The Future, Vikas Adam on July 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: July 2023] The Future is Yours

I didn’t know much about this book, but the blurb sounded good.

And wow, was it a a well-told future/time-travel story.  I also really enjoyed that whole cast that was employed for the book.  Usually a single narrator is fine, but there were so many different voices in this story that having multiple narrators was great.

I had known Cary Hite from a Mike Chen novel so his familiar voice was great.  He reads the part of Ben Boyce a young entrepreneur who has great ideas for how to get startups to work.  He is best friends with Adhi Chaudry (read by Vikas Adam).

Adhi is a once-in-a-generation genius.  He writes a thesis that postulates creating a kind of time travel machine using quantum computers.  Fortunately, there’s not a lot of hard science here, so you don’t really have to know what they’re talking about (I also have no idea if what they postulate is feasible in reality).  The thesis is so theoretical that Stanford doesn’t want him to defend it because they think it’s more philosophical than computer science based.

Adhi struggles with things a lot (he is bipolar) but Ben is always there for him.  Ben believes in him 100%.  So when Adhi gets a job at Google (and hates it) and Ben has tried a few startups (that have failed), Ben asks Adhi about that thesis.  And what they might be able to do with it. (more…)

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Ed Lacy–Room to Swing (1957)

Posted in Ed Lacy, Leonard (Len) S Zinberg, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Racism, South, Taxis, Technology on July 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: July 25, 2023] Room to Swing

I receive books that are part of a series, but often I get one book and never see any other books in the series.  So this book is part of the Library of Congress Crime Classics series–reprints with wicked covers.

I’d never heard of this book even though it won the 1958 Edgar award for best novel.

Much of the reason this book is reprinted in this format is because the main character, Toussaint Moore is a Black private investigator.  Black sleuths were not common at the time, although they were not unheard of.  Indeed, white author Octavus Roy Cohen had created Florian Slappey, a caricature of a Black detective for the Saturday Evening Post.  By the 1950s, there were several Black detectives, but not many Black private detectives.

Ed Lacy (pseudonym of Leonard (Len) S Zinberg) was a white author who married a Black woman and lived in Harlem.  He created Toussaint Moore as an opportunity to capture the struggles of a Black man in the 1950s.

But the story is not a polemic about race relations.  Indeed, the mystery is pretty interesting and fun to follow.  And Touie is a charming and resourceful detective.

As the story opens, Touie is heading to Ohio from his home in New York City.  Southern Ohio is not the South (although Kentucky is only 20 miles away), but when Touie walks into a diner, they tell him he can’t eat there.  He only wanted to see a phone book and the local policeman quickly arrives to make sure that’s all he’s getting.  However, the mailman is Black and he quickly tells him what it’s safe for Touie to do.  He also has a room that Touie can stay in for a couple of days.

So why is he here?  He is here looking for clues about a murder.  However, he is also the prime suspect in the murder, so it’s possible he’s also laying low.  Although a Black man in a beautiful Jaguar (a crazy expensive import) does not lay low in Southern Ohio.

The man who was killed (in NYC) was from this small town.  And the story is that he was a heap of trouble when he was here, so maybe someone was tailing him to give him trouble in the City. (more…)

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Andi Watson, Simon Gane–Sunburn (2022)

Posted in Andi Watson, Donkeys, Drinking, Graphic Novel, Greece, Humiliation, Image Comics, Romance, Simon Gane, Vacation on July 24, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: June 25, 2023] Sunburn

I haven’t read a book by Andi Watson in a long time.

I used to be a big fan of his indie comics and then I lost touch with him–turns out he was hired by the big guns and has been working with Dark Horse for a pretty long time.

This surprises me, because his stories were usually very quiet and introspective.  Like this one.

It also surprises me that Simon Gane did the art for this book because I was especially attracted to Watson for his drawing style.  However, Gane’s designs are quite excellent and work really well for this story.

The story starts out pretty simply.  Rachel is a sixteen year old British school girl.  Her parents are typical, with her dad giving her a hard time because she doesn’t like eggs.  And making dad jokes.

Then her mom comes in the kitchen and says that Peter, Rachel’s dad old friend, has invited Rachel out for the summer holidays.  Rachel is mortified at the thought of spending the summer with her parents’ friends–ones she doesn’t even remember–is horrifying.

Until her mom says that they are vacationing in Greece.

Greece is lovely–so much more beautiful than rainy England.  Peter is an older gent and is super nice, but it’s Peter’s wife Diane who is full of ebullience and life.  She swoops down, gives Rachel a huge hug and tells her to make herself at home.   She gives her regionally appropriate clothes to wear (British swim suits are very different from Grecian ones) and even lets her have some wine with dinner.

That first night they go out to a grown up (boring) party.  Fortunately, there’s a local boy, Benjamin, who is very nice to her and they begin hanging out. Rachel teaches him to swim and he provides her with her first kiss.

But things seem a little off.  Or if not off exactly, then maybe uncomfortable.  Benjamin says that everyone knows everyone else at these parties.  There’s no secrets.  “I know who cheats at backgammon and I know who’s gobbling pills by the handful just to make it through the day.”

It turns out that everyone at these parties also knows about Ben and Rachel.  One day Diane warns her to be careful to not bring home “anything unwanted.”  She is offended by the lectureand is upset when Ben doesn’t act the way she thought he would.  He basically says that no one cares about what they do, but it sounds a bit like he means he doesn;t care what he does either.

Things grows tense.  And then even more tense when an actual secret comes out.  I was rather surprised by the secret myself.

But it’s also nice that Rachel grows from the experience.

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Anthony Berkeley–Jumping Jenny (1933)

Posted in Anthony Berkeley, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes on July 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: June 6, 2023] Jumping Jenny

I tend to receive unexpected books at work.  The most recent shipment included a couple of “Classic” mysteries.

This book is from a collection called British Library Crime Classics.  I enjoyed the book and thought I’d look for more from this series although I see that there are at least 100 books in the series, so that’s gonna take awhile.

The book opens at a costume party.  The fascinating theme is “famous murderers and their victims.”  Honestly I had to wonder how anyone knew what any of these people looked like.  Can you dress like a murderer?

In celebration of this party, the host, Ronald Stratton, has erected three gallows on the roof of his house.  He has put stuffed dummies in each one.  And if you are wondering about the title:

“In times gone by, a hanged man was sometimes colloquially referred to as a ‘Jumping Jack'” -Martin Edwards in the introduction.

And as such, a hanged woman might be called a Jumping Jenny. (more…)

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Damian Bradfield / David Sánchez–Algorithmic Reality (2022)

Posted in Corporate skewering, Damian Bradfield, David Sánchez, Dystopia, End of the World, Environmentalism, Graphic Novel, NBM, Outer Space, Sci-fi, Technology, The Future on July 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: July 15, 2023] Algorithmic Reality

I received this book at work with a bunch of other graphic novels from NBM.  I liked the stuff they sent out–anti-corporate and promoting the underground.  And this book fits in with that ethic.

I don’t know David Sánchez’s work, but his style in this book reminds me of Chris Ware and Ted Rall.  Ware in particular because the characters look vaguely the same in every panel (on purpose) with minimal changes between panels.  Damian Bradfield is a British businessman (that’s pretty much all it says about him on the book) and he has written four tales of dystopian technology takeover.

In the first, a man goes to a store to buy a pair of shoes.  He doesn’t buy any but the employee follows him seemingly everywhere to make sure he doesn’t want them.  On the street.  In the grocery store (where the employee has photos of the sneakers).  Then he sees the employee in different outfits everywhere until finally the employee is in his house. The employee is never aggressive, just always there–like your ads on your phone. (more…)

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Sam Ernst–The New Manifesto or The Slow Eroding of Time (2021)

Posted in Arthur B. Johnson, Books about writers, Choose Your Own Adventure, Dreams, End of the World, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Sam Ernst, Skiing, Unreliable narrator on July 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[READ: June 1, 2022] The New Manifesto

So I received this book at work and it was my job to catalog it (it has yet to be cataloged by anyone else).  But there was a problem.

The cover of the book says The New Manifesto a novel by Sam Ernst.  But you never trust the cover for the actual title of a book, you trust the title page.  And the title page says The New Manifesto or The Slow Eroding of Time Arthur B. Johnson edited by Sam Ernst.

Now the cover also has an about the author of Sam Ernst (with an author photo of the back of his head).  And the list of books by Arthur B. Johnson don’t seem to exist.  So, clearly, the author is Sam Ernest and Arthur B. Johnson is fictional,  But from a cataloging standpoint, Johnson needs to be acknowledged in some way.  Which is a pain.

Anyway, I decided to see if this book was worth all of the trouble.

I’m not quite sure.

It opens with a Foreword by Dr James L. Vanderworthy of Bradford College (also fictional).  He says that The New Manifesto is the novel that resonates with him more than any other.  The editors preface is from Ernst, he says he had a copy editing position at Smith Ralston Excelsior which led him to meet and befriend Arthur B. (“Artie”) Johnson.  It was this that inspired him to edit Artie’s words in the way we see here.  The Publisher says they didn’t really know what to do with the book, but they thank Ernst for his tireless work on it.

The book is presented in nine parts.  Many are short, but some (like part 2 An Assemblage) are nearly 100 pages.

Part 1 the Prelude is a series of 25 numbered paragraphs

1. He sat down to write
4. He was writing a book.  A book he never finished.  This is a story of failure.
18. Given the book’s title, he was finding it surprising how little manifesting was being done.

Part 2 is written in several much longer sections.  Each one is a hilarious account of the narrator’s life as he does remarkable things and then moves on.

He averts a war between two countries. He speaks neither language but found a letter from one kingdom to the other.  Had the message not gotten through, war was inevitable.  But he rowed for days across the sea to bring the message to the beacon he saw.  He walks to a war torn country and is taken for a doctor (he is not).  Because of a book he had just read, he is able to diagnose a seemingly dying patient, and as he leaves the area he inadvertently participates and wins the 1984 Sarajevo Ski Jump Competition.

After a few more adventures, including one aboard a ship, he gets a job at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he uncovers a brilliant scientific schema because of the box elder bugs that swarm his office window. (more…)

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Kami Garcia; Gabriel Picolo–Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven (2021)

Posted in Beast Boy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Death, Gabriel Picolo, Graphic Novel, Kami Garcia, Raven, Supernatural, Teen Titans on July 17, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: May 20, 2023] Teen Titans: Raven

Kami Garcia has written (and Gabriel Picolo has illustrated) a trilogy of books about Raven and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans.

I only know about Teen Titans from teen Titans Go! which I think is hilarious and (which I realized years after watching it) has nothing really at all to do with the actual Teen Titans who are serious (and kind of dull in a DC comics way).

But these stories are interesting and seem to be breaking out of the darkness that DC is under with these lighter (but not nearly as light as Teen Titans Go!) origin stories.

As with all comic book characters, origin stories are canon.  Until they need to be modified for the new series. I don’t know what the actual origin stories of either of these characters are, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.  I also rather liked this book because on the cover Raven looks like Miss Calendar from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

At the end of each of their books, they were heading to Nashville to meet Slade, a mysterious figure who says he has answers.  They are in the same cafe and when their orders get mixed up (Beast Boy is vegetarian), they wind up talking.  Beast Boy falls for her instantly, but she is very suspicious and blows him off. (more…)

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Kami Garcia; Gabriel Picolo–Teen Titans: Beast Boy (2020)

Posted in Beast Boy, Death, Drugs, Gabriel Picolo, Graphic Novel, Kami Garcia, Raven, Supernatural, Teen Titans on July 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: May 20, 2023] Teen Titans: Beast Boy

Kami Garcia has written (and Gabriel Picolo has illustrated) a trilogy of books about Raven and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans.

I only know about Teen Titans from teen Titans Go! which I think is hilarious and (which I realized years after watching it) has nothing really at all to do with the actual Teen Titans who are serious (and kind of dull in a DC comics way).

But these stories are interesting and seem to be breaking out of the darkness that DC is under with these lighter (but not nearly as light as Teen Titans Go!) origin stories.

As with all comic book characters, origin stories are canon.  Until they need to be modified for the new series. I don’t know what the actual origin stories of either of these characters are, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.

This story begins in Georgia where teenaged Garfield Logan (Beast Boy) has a bucket list that mostly includes gaining weight and muscle.  As he leaves the house, his parents ask him if he has taken his Aminotrianidol, to which he says yes, just like every day.  This is a supplement that they say he absolutely must take every day.

Garfield and his friend Stella drive to the county fair to watch their friend Daniel ‘The Tank” Tanaka win a hot dog eating contest.  Stella is an online gamer with thousands of followers.  Garfield is bummed because he doesn’t have a thing that he’s good at. (more…)

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Kami Garcia; Gabriel Picolo–Teen Titans: Raven (2021)

Posted in Amnesia, Beast Boy, Death, Gabriel Picolo, Graphic Novel, Kami Garcia, Raven, Set at School, Supernatural, Teen Titans on July 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: May 20, 2023] Teen Titans: Raven

Kami Garcia has written (and Gabriel Picolo has illustrated) a trilogy of books about Raven and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans.

I only know about Teen Titans from teen Titans Go! which I think is hilarious and (which I realized years after watching it) has nothing really at all to do with the actual Teen Titans who are serious (and kind of dull in a DC comics way).

But these stories are interesting and seem to be breaking out of the darkness that DC is under with these lighter (but not nearly as light as Teen Titans Go!) origin stories.

As with all comic book characters, origin stories are canon.  Until they need to be modified for the new series. I don’t know what the actual origin stories of either of these characters are, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.

This story begins in Atlanta where teenage Rachel (Raven)’s foster mother is planning to adopt her.  But there is a car accident and Raven’s mother is killed. (more…)

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Jodi Taylor–A Symphony of Echoes [The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #2] (2013) [audiobook 2014]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dinosaurs, Fears, Feminism, Fire, Funny (ha ha), History, Huh?, Jodi Taylor, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Supernatural, Thieves, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Zara Ramm on July 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2023] A Symphony of Echoes

This is the second book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because I was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

Book 2 continues the time travelling saga of the historians of St. Mary’s.  Like the other stories there are several seemingly random adventures that the crew must go on.  The first, in this case, is with a soon-to-be-retiring historian named Kalinda Black.  She wishes to go to Jack the Ripper times and suss out what actually happened.

Things go horribly wrong when Jack the Ripper (in some form or another) hops a ride with them back to St. Mary’s.  It’s confusion and chaos trying to fight a near invisible enemy.  And that’s before anyone realizes that Captain Farrell is missing.

It is, of course, the dastardly duo of Izzie Barclay and Clive Ronan, set in a future St. Mary’s.  In a sign of things  to come, Max realizes that they cannot kill Ronan because of time paradoxes (I am not about to go into details of that) and that Izzie is much harder to kill than it seems when Max shoots her and dumps her in an elevator.

Because the future St. Mary’s has been decimated by Barclay and Ronan, Max stays on as interim head. (more…)

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