The Book Count 2024

[Greg]

The Kimono years were covered.

[thatguy]

I'm more curious about Neil Peart's travel diaries and his personal hardships. He seemed an interesting character. He wouldn't take the tour bus between venues and instead opted to motorcycle. There one story I heard about where his group were riding in the rain at night and he was clipped by a deer which he had to shoot. 

There's a last book coming soon about his obsession w/60's cars: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music...234955563/




[size=1]Far and Away[/size]

Far and Near

Far and Wide

The Masked Rider

Roadshow

Ghost Rider

Traveling Music

[Greg]

I believe Ghost Rider is the one where he took off for two years after the death of his wife and daughter.

[Greg]

The Secret Hours by Mick Herron

Mick Herron writes the Slough Horses series about the British spy agency. On the face of it, The Secret Hours appears to be a sort of spin off from that series. It deals with the Park which is spy headquarter and the boss of the Park, the first chair. The story centers on Monochrome which is an advisory commission set up to look into any wrongdoing at the Park. But any power Monochrome might have had was gutted when the Park basically refused to cooperate. Until that is Monochrome acquires a file from a past case under odd circumstances. The file depicts the goings on in Berlin back in the 1990s just after the wall came down and the hunt for a Stasi agent.

The story is full of the usual less than salubrious characters involved in the spy world. There is also a parallel story of a man living under an assumed name in Devon. One night a group of people try to kidnap him. Eventually all the paths line up for a nice resolution wherein you realize this was the backstory for some of the characters in the Slough House novels.

[Greg]

The Mysteries by Bill Watterson and John Kascht

I don't know who Kascht is but I certainly know who Bill Watterson is. He wrote Calvin and Hobbes. The Mysteries is definitely not Calvin and Hobbes. It's a slight book, a fable really. One page of a drawing and the opposing page with a few lines of text. The pictures are creepy and surreal. The text wouldn't fill up a page. Glad I know what's going on but there is not a lot there. Get this book from the library or spend ten minutes leafing through it at a book store if you have the interest.

[Drunk Monk]

More like a graphic novel then? I’m intrigued. Been getting a lot of vintage C&H strips popping up on my fb lately.

[Greg]

More like a graphic novel then? I’m intrigued. Been getting a lot of vintage C&H strips popping up on my fb lately.

Not even. It's like 20 pictures and 30 sentences to go along with the pictures. A graphic novel would be much denser. I wish there was more to it.

[Drunk Monk]

Hmmphf

Well, I'll wait until it comes to hoopla then. 

If I even remember...

[Greg]

The sage of Violet and her dragons and her school continues. I think I'm done with romance/fantasy series. Yes, it did end on a cliff hanger but I think I'm done.

The fantasy setting and it's world was good but the constant love travails followed by the most incredible graphic sex ever between Violet and Xander got to be a bit much. Plus it was just more of the same. We went through the school. We tried to solve a problem. There were fights. It all seemed kind of dull.

[Greg]

Winter's Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch

A Novella from the River's of London series but with a minor American character doing an investigation in Wisconsin. Kimberly Reynolds gets a call that weird things are happening in Ennis, Wisconsin. By the time she gets there, the town has is blocked off by a blizzard and a tornado has hit the town. Reynolds proceeds to investigate the disappearance of townsfolk and the ex-FBI agent that call in the tip. 

Not quite as entertaining as the usual Rivers of London fair, but it will do. And again, it's a novella, so the story isn't quite as dense as the usual mystery. Read it in a day and glad I got the book from the library.

[Greg]

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The conclusion of the Children series. And, yes, I got a bit lost in Tchaikovsky's concepts. Again.

Here we have an ark ship that lands on a planet where the terraforming didn't finish. Or get started. But the colonists try and form a colony with what technology they have. The colony does not meet with a lot of success even when the the explorers from the previous two novels find the colony. There is a good twist at the end. But a lot of the ideas I couldn't get my head around so I just skimmed through.

[Greg]

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Architect series is much more fun than the Children series. Much more action and space opera. And the world building is equally as complex but I found it more accessible.

The Architects are back but humanity is starting to fracture along party lines instead of coming together to fight the foe. Haver has found a plot that is like a knife to the back of the Hughs. Idris still remains the game piece that all sides want to possess. He still just wants to be left alone. But he comes in contact with a civilization that might be older than the Architects and might hold a key to defeating them.

It is very much the middle novel with all the pieces being put in place for the final.

[Greg]

Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

This was disappointing. Maybe it was aimed for somebody younger but the subject matter wasn't somebody younger. Anyway. Benny wakes up to find the world is going to screw him. And the reason it wants to screw him is because he is too nice. He loses his job. He loses his girlfriend. Doors to future employment are closed to him. Turns out there is a secret cabal that wants to ruin nice people because they interfere with the world order the cabal wants to create. But Benny gets a present from a distant great Uncle to help him through these problems in the course of one night. They climb the ladder of the people against him. Interspersed with this is Benny's backstory and all the terrible people and schools he has had to deal with in his formative years.

It is all sort of screwy. There are Echoes of Koontz's other novels and his ideas about life especially the conspiracy of all the forces arrayed against us just for being decent humans. 

As I read the book all I wanted to be is done reading this book.

[Greg]

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The last book in the Architects series. At first, I was going to be dismissive of this book as it seemed all Adrian was going to do was talk about unspace and the search for the bad guys who dwelled in there. I didn't think I could take 600 pages of that. But then all the twists and turns started and the book was just a great conclusion to the trilogy. My brain did cramp a little at some of the descriptions of unspace but only a little. I'm amazed that Adrian can keep his theories straight. 

Idris, our main Int, is on a quest to find out who is sending the architects against the planets. Olli, my favorite character after Idris, has been cursed/blessed with helping Aklu. Solace is caught up in a mutiny amongst her own people. Kit tries to keep Idris alive. All the alien races are so well defined in this series and they seem utterly alien.

Wish there more but this was a good conclusion. One of those books I would stay up late reading then curse myself for reading too quickly.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The last book in the Architects series. At first, I was going to be dismissive of this book as it seemed all Adrian was going to do was talk about unspace and the search for the bad guys who dwelled in there. I didn't think I could take 600 pages of that. But then all the twists and turns started and the book was just a great conclusion to the trilogy. My brain did cramp a little at some of the descriptions of unspace but only a little. I'm amazed that Adrian can keep his theories straight. 

Idris, our main Int, is on a quest to find out who is sending the architects against the planets. Olli, my favorite character after Idris, has been cursed/blessed with helping Aklu. Solace is caught up in a mutiny amongst her own people. Kit tries to keep Idris alive. All the alien races are so well defined in this series and they seem utterly alien.

Wish there more but this was a good conclusion. One of those books I would stay up late reading then curse myself for reading too quickly.

Agreed.