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+--- Thread: TQ's Book Count 2026 (/showthread.php?tid=8719)
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TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 01-01-2026
#1: Open Season by C. J. Box. First book of a mystery series featuring game warden/ranger Joe Pickett. I give it two stars, one for the interesting daughter character (Sheridan) and one for the wildlife descriptions. The hero doesn’t seem very bright. I’ll give the second book a try and see if he gets smarter.
RE: The Book Count 2026 - Dr. Ivor Yeti - 01-02-2026
TQ is back! Yay!
RE: The Book Count 2026 - Greg - 01-02-2026
(01-02-2026, 09:35 AM)Dr. Ivor Yeti Wrote: TQ is back! Yay!
Shows you how bored she is lying in bed.
RE: The Book Count 2026 - Dr. Ivor Yeti - 01-02-2026
(01-02-2026, 10:10 AM)Greg Wrote:(01-02-2026, 09:35 AM)Dr. Ivor Yeti Wrote: TQ is back! Yay!
Shows you how bored she is lying in bed.
Heh.
RE: The Book Count 2026 - Drunk Monk - 01-02-2026
(01-02-2026, 01:58 PM)Dr. Ivor Yeti Wrote:(01-02-2026, 10:10 AM)Greg Wrote:(01-02-2026, 09:35 AM)Dr. Ivor Yeti Wrote: TQ is back! Yay!
Shows you how bored she is lying in bed.
Heh.
Wasn't going to touch that one.
Glad to know the faux pas kid still lives in 2026!
![[Image: BB101A_ESCAPE_ROOM_08c.jpg?w=1581&h=1013&crop=1]](https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/BB101A_ESCAPE_ROOM_08c.jpg?w=1581&h=1013&crop=1)
RE: The Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 01-03-2026
#2: Savage Run by C.J. Box. Second book in the Joe Pickett series, and my last. If possible, the “hero” was even more stupid than in the first book. His failings don’t make him more human or more relatable, they just make me roll my eyes. The only reason he survives is that one of the villains has a conscience, and a blind, lucky shot. Not skill, no thinking involved, just dumb luck. That might have worked if the book had been better written, but if I’d had a physical copy vs. on my iPad, I would have thrown it in the trash rather than store it on a bookshelf or give it away. Moving on.
(And thanks; good to be back.)
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - Drunk Monk - 01-04-2026
Is this a Lynch lair contest now? I’ll put my money on tQ but only if she includes the romance novels she doesn’t include (no need to review; just post to win).
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 01-05-2026
Oh, I’ll never win a reading contest with Greg.
That said, #3 for 2026: “Phantom Evil” by Heather Graham. Apple recommended this, supposedly based on other books I’d read. I was hoping for a nice, escapist ghost story with a little romance, which was what the blurb made it sound like. Not so much. I kept hoping for it to get better, and wound up yawning my way through it. Bleh. At least there wasn’t as much blatant misogyny in this one. I think I’ve had my fill of authors I’ve never heard of recommended by an algorithim. I’d rather go back and re-read something I’ve already read that’s good trash than take a chance on another POS like this.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 01-06-2026
#4: Constituent Services by John Scalzi washed the unpleasantness of the first three books of the year out of my mind. This novella was a delight from start to finish. The delightfully smart, capable, and unflappable heroine, Ashley Perrin, manages to provide top notch, capable assistance to the citizens of the Third District, whether they are scam artists assaulting public transport with a chicken or aliens with excessive curiosity about touching her hair. I loved every word. Scalzi knows how to keep me turning pages and manages to make me snort with laughter at least a couple of times.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 01-10-2026
#5: Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire. This is book #13 in the “Wayward Children” series. There are an endless number of worlds, and the premise of these books is that when you don’t fit in yours, there’s a chance you might encounter a doorway to another. However, you’re warned to “be sure” before stepping through, and that if you go through and you’re not sure, there’s a chance you may be accepted only temporarily and then ejected back to where you were. In this episode, we re-meet a girl who was already quite sure and very happy to be in her new world but threatened in it, and needing the help of old friends waiting for their doors to re-open to help her make her new world safe. I liked that in this particular world, the “god” figures were vulnerable, flawed, and surprised at being openly flouted and disrespected, but nonetheless caring toward those they saw as the people who belonged to their realm.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 01-24-2026
#6: On Freedom by Timothy Snyder.
Reading this book was like consuming a huge, meaty, chewy meal. Every few paragraphs, I had to stop and think and digest. I frequently wanted to copy tidbits to social media to see who would react to a passage and how. I’ve never been a member of a book club, and I doubt I’d find one in my neck of the foothills that would read this, but I wouldn’t mind listening to the reactions of others who read it. It also made me want to run away from social media. Briefly, this book confronts the concept of freedom seen from positive and negative perspectives. Positive freedom is “freedom to.” Negative freedom is “freedom from.” One actively encourages human interaction/community; the other isolation and the shedding of responsibility. Both are attractive in their own ways but negative freedom depends more on your societal and economic status, and positive freedom tends to be healthier and brings about more positive outcomes for a greater number of people.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 02-05-2026
#7: Twelve Months by Jim Butcher. Ah, Harry Dresden. I think I may need to go back and re-read some of the series, because I was definitely lost at first; couldn‘t remember what had happened in the last couple of books. I appreciated and genuinely liked this entry in the series. It’s all about being broken and having to heal, surrounded by legitimate excuses and opportunities not to get better, to let yourself be damaged rather than find the inner resources and accept outer support to survive with your true self in tact.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 02-11-2026
#8: Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb. This is the 62nd book in this series. With anything episodic, you get some stories that are fantastic that keep you coming back; some stories that are okay (they have all the elements you’ve come to expect plus a little more, with at least two or three moments that make you wonder where they’ll take that new thread in the future), and some that suck. Unfortunately, this was solidly in the last category. She’s gotten to the point where every character she’s introduced has been solidly established as 100% reliable. Only the bad guys make mistakes or have character flaws, the good guys don’t make mistakes on or off the job. It was readable, but didn’t add any new information. Will I read the next one? Probably, but if it’s as blah as this one, I’ll probably let say goodbye.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 02-18-2026
#9:Feral Vengeance by Emily Kimmelman. This is Book 19 of the Sydney Rye “mystery” series. Sydney is an assassin who concentrates primarily on rapists and misogynists, which is a nice fantasy. She’s also a dog lover. Her dog, Blue, is described as “tall as a Great Dane but skinnier, with the snout of a collie, the markings of a Siberian husky, the ears and tail of a shepherd, and the body of a wolf with one blue eye and one brown.” I don’t particularly like or empathize with any of the humans in this series, but I do like the dog, and the fact that no matter how bad things get, the author never harms the dog. However, I think this is the last one of these I’ll bother reading. In the beginning, it was a genuinely interesting mystery series with some extreme and unexpected twists. Now, it’s mostly vengeance porn. This latest book was Kimmelman musing about bringing together a group of elite assassins to kill all of the top AI financiers; characters that were clearly standing in for Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, et al. Very violent, and in the end, not terribly original or satisfying.
RE: TQ's Book Count 2026 - The Queen - 02-22-2026
#10: The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
After reading Greg’s review and needing a genuinely good book, I dived into this one. I agree that it was a pretty good story, well-written and compelling, but now that it’s done, I’m a mite dissatisfied. There are a number of loose threads and logic failures that the author seems to be willing to explain away with, “Because, dragons,” that makes me think I missed something somewhere. Perhaps I did, or perhaps I’m being overly picky.
I hope to avoid fascistic rulers in whatever I read next. There’s enough of that shit in reality, I’d like a little escapism in my fantasy.