Reviews and Comments

Fun little book, with serious dark humor. This tells the story of 3 traveling fence installers, who get sent from Scotland to England to put up a high tension fence. While there, they stay in a "caravan" - a camper, get on each others nerves and hit the local pub. They have a few run ins with the locals and butt heads with the fence company owner (their boss). And that's about it.

Told by the "foreman" of this happy little group, who tries to make sense of the lugs that he has working for him. They do battle with a ridiculous boss figure and try to survive long rainy days in the field.

For a book that doesn't cover much ground, it is eminently readable and quite funny. I don't think any of them end the job with more money in their pocket than what they started with - probably less really. But I enjoyed meeting the three of them, and the deadpan narration was the best. Probably a 3.5 star book, but I'll bump it to 4 for being so unexpected.

Obviously, I am going to love a book of "noir" short stories, set in my home city, edited by the legendary Lehane, and including stories from authors like Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell and even Lehane itself. I even love the map at the beginning of the book, which shows where each story takes place. And it didn't disappoint. Each story had a twist, usually pretty dark, and had a desirably murky ending.

Some favorites:

+ Lynne Heitman opened the book with bang, as Exit Interview ever so slowly unveiled the story, a dark twisted one. Delicious!

+ Lehane's Animal Rescue reminded me of the movie The Drop, where a dog plays an interesting part in an otherwise grim story.

+ Femme Sole by Dana Cameron was a stand out, as it was set in 1745 Boston, about a woman trying to make her way alone in a male dominated society. It does a good job of showcasing our long history.

+ It was in "The Cross-eyed Bear" that John Durfresne dove into the darkest corner of Boston, with a story about the Catholic Church and pedophiles. Dark stuff indeed.

+ In "The Oriental Hair Poets", Don Lee wrote the twistiest story of them all, with actions and people turning round and round themselves. Even now, I'm not really sure what happened and who did it!

So yeah, this is a must read for any noir fans, but especially Boston area ones. You won't be disappointed!

Sometimes, you just need a little break. This "cozy" mystery was a fun little read and I enjoyed every page. Mel, Angie and Tate made a great trio, with relationships that date back to before high school.

But the trio is threatened when Tate decides to marry a woman the two ladies dislike, although they try their best to understand. But when the bride turns up dead, all eyes look to the "jealous" lover Mel and she needs to figure out who did it before the local (heartthrob!) assistant DA comes after her.

So I enjoyed the description of the tensions of a male / female friendship. Especially given the extra pressure of Mel's mom telling her how she should just give up trying to fight her attraction to the very desirable Tate and marry him already, when she just wants to continue to be friends, watching old movies as a threesome.

So it was a fun little mystery. I have to admit, not being very familiar with the "cozy mystery" genres, I am wondering how they can keep having Mel, as the owner of a cupcake shop, keep getting involved in murders! But I do appreciate the recipes at the end of the book and I may just have to try one or two of them!

This 2019 Nebula award winner tells the story of Rosemary and Luce in the near future after social unrest and some sort of pandemic(!) leads to anti-congregation laws, so everyone pretty much lives in the "Hoodie", which is a VR device. Luce is a musician, who either lives to play music or plays music to live - it is her, through and through. She became know as "The Last Power Chord" - the last person to play before a live audience.

Rosemary lives a quiet sheltered life in the country, working for SuperWally, a giant conglomerate that does all its business via the Hoodie. Barely into her 20s and barely remembering the Before, she gets involved in StageHolo, an entertainment giant that produces music and shows in this "hoodie space" as a talent acquisition expert. She and Luce bounce off each other through the book, exchanging chapters describing their lives in the After. Rosemary tries to find out who she is and what she should do, while Luce tries to find her musician's way in this new world order.

I am such a sucker for books about the creative process, particularly about music (one of my favorite books last year was [b:Daisy Jones & The Six|40597810|Daisy Jones & The Six|Taylor Jenkins Reid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580255154l/40597810.SY75.jpg|61127102]), and this one is no exception. The setting is eerily prescient, especially with Rosemary reacting in different ways to being around people, sometimes far too close for comfort. It's beginning to look like that is how I am going to feel if / when things ever open up again.

Luce is a real strong character. Her passion for her music and how it "rescued" her from a life she desperately did not want, pours through every word. And you can tell that Pinsker is a musician (she has 3 albums to her credit) because her writing about the passion music can create is powerful stuff indeed.

So I really enjoyed this book. I would like to read the short story that started it all out, Our Lady of the Open Road, published in Asimov's, which, according to the author, "features Luce at another point in her life." I'd like to learn more about Luce. It is exactly the kind of sci-fi I enjoy - just barely enough future to make it sci-fi, but really about timeless themes like longing, love, music and the creative driving force. Good stuff!

This was a fun little book, with a killer title (see what I did there?). It tells the story of a pair of sisters, one of whom is a real looker and tends to kill her lovers, while the other is the older sister who is called in to clean up the mess. The older sister works as the head nurse in a hospital, with her eyes on a handsome single doctor, but when her sister begins to notice him, things get complicated in a hurry.

It is a very short book - 226 pages but even the hard cover is barely bigger than a paperback in dimensions. The story unfolds over just a few weeks but it is gloriously well written from the point of view of the older sister, who is both jealous and protective of her gorgeous younger sister, who lives a life completely at ease, while the older sister is torn by anxieties. It is set in Lagos, Nigeria, so a pretty exotic setting, even if it doesn't play too much in the story.

Plenty of descriptions of local food, dress and customs make for some work on the Internet. which was fun. And the story had both humor and pathos as it rolled right along. I really enjoyed it and would like to read more from Ms. Braithwaite. I just noticed that Kindle "Hush" book I currently have queued up, Treasure, is actually by her. I will have to get into that pronto!

This Hugo Award winning and Nebula nominee for 2019 is a big book about an ambassador sent to a territory hungry empire, trying to stave off annexation. The previous ambassador died suddenly (murder?), and so that is another thing she gets to work on. All Lsel natives (a satellite nation) have an imago implanted, which is the memory of 1 or more previous generations. In this case, Ambassador Mahit Dzmare got the imago from the previous ambassador, albeit 15 years out of date.

So she goes to Teixcalaan and tries to figure it all out. This is an ancient empire, defined by ever growing annexations and she is trying to keep Lsel out of the maws of this hunger empire.

So first off, this is not a "space opera", despite the claims from multiple blurbs, including one on the front cover by [a:Ann Leckie|3365457|Ann Leckie|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402526383p2/3365457.jpg]. I am not sure what their definition of "space opera" is, but mine includes hopping across planets and/or the galaxy and/or galaxies, full of action and derring do. There is none of that in this book. Virtually all the action takes place on the city planet of Teixcalaan and for much of the book, Mahit is a velvet handcuffed prisoner.

Now there is plenty of political intrigue, as she tries to figure out how to keep Lsel out of the claws of the Teixcalaani. She plays various factions off against each, and deals with the Emperor himself a few times. But far ranging and full of action it is not.

But it does have some great characters. Mahit is a wonder, as is her local attache, Three Seagrass (the names of all the Teixcalaani are a number and a noun). The two woman play off each other wonderfully and their growing friendship is a cool part of the book, despite what may seem like Three Seagrass' competing loyalties. Mahit's internal discussions are interesting, deep and emotional and she is an easy character to really get into and love.

Plenty happens, and there is some action that goes on, although Mahit is mostly just a passenger in these cases. The dialogue between her and her imago is fun to eavesdrop on as well.

But it went on for a very long time, nearly 500 pages. I ran out of steam a few times, but chugged on to the ending. It is also definitely a book one, because the real nemesis to both Teixcalaan and Lsel barely made a showing, so I am sure we are due for a real reckoning soon. I enjoyed it, but it is like a 3.5 star book for me. Given its current high rating, which I find unreasonable, I am going to mark it down to the 3 star book, mostly because it is not a space opera!

But I am anxious to read book 2.

Okay, I guess I should know better by now. I can deal with science fiction that is relatively straight forward - just ordinary folks in a future time, but otherwise pretty easy to digest. But I just can't get into these twisty far out science fiction novels, like say [b:Ancillary Justice|17333324|Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1)|Ann Leckie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597476110l/17333324.SY75.jpg|24064628]. And to that list you can add The Light Brigade. It just isn't for me.

Not to say it didn't start out promising. Much like [b:Old Man's War|36510196|Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1)|John Scalzi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509467059l/36510196.SY75.jpg|50700] or [b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)|Joe Haldeman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386852511l/21611.SY75.jpg|423], it was a military sci-fi. But then the protagonist made the first jump and everything went sideways, both for her and for me. Time travel, revolution, torture, you name it. I read another 150 pages and still had little idea what was going on.

As I said in my review for Ancillary Justice, it's not the book, it is me. I just can't seem to follow these "far out" science fiction novels. I had another 100 pages but felt I wasn't having fun and life's too short, so I will just move on. I am surely in the minority here (even more so for Ancillary Justice) so please, if trippy time traveling sci-fi is your bag, go for it!

Bill Bryson has made quite the career out of funny, informative, light reading books and The Body is no exception. Each chapter covers some portion of the human body, like discussions about blood, brain, nerves, sex organs, death and cancer. Here are a few tidbits of info for your perusal:

+ If you blew [a virus] up to the size of a tennis ball, a human would be five hundred miles high. A bacterium on the same scale would be about the size of a beach ball.

+ researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines.

+ Giraffes, oddly, sometimes have gallbladders and sometimes don’t.

+ To power our forward motion, we have a distinctively gigantic muscle in our buttocks, the gluteus maximus, and an Achilles tendon, something no ape has.

+ If you are deprived of it for long enough, you will die—though what exactly it is that kills you from lack of sleep is a mystery, too.

+ The prostate, it might be said, produces seminal fluid throughout a man’s adulthood and anxiety in his later years.

+ It has been suggested, in fact, that if all men lived long enough, they would all get prostate cancer.

+ That’s why you are constantly told to eat more fiber: because it keeps your gut microbes happy and at the same time, for reasons not well understood, reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, bowel cancer, and indeed death of all types.

But the most amazing one to me was in the chapter on the brain. In discussing how long it takes an image to get from your eye to the brain (about a fifth of a second) :

+ To help us deal better with this fractional lag, the brain does a truly extraordinary thing: it continuously forecasts what the world will be like a fifth of a second from now, and that is what it gives us as the present.

Mind blowing. It was also amazing just how little we still know about the body, especially the "Whys". My wife is probably glad I am finally finished reading the book so I will stop interrupting her reading by narrating another wild fact from the book!

My two biggest take aways from the book are that while there are indeed plenty of disagreements about what we need and don't need, the scientific community is solidly behind the need for both exercise and, believe it or not, fiber. Exercise continually showed up in the book, as it reduces the odds of everything from cancer to Alzheimer's. And while there might be some disagreement on how much of both exercise and fiber, both are essential to a healthy life. As one of fibers biggest boosters (again, much to my wife's chagrin), I felt vindicated!

So while this isn't any kind of text book, it sure is an informative and interesting read. You will learn a lot of things you just didn't know before. And he also name drops a lot of other books for more in depth study, which I have added to my Want To Read list, like [b:Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less|48984802|Clean The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less|James Hamblin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585632554l/48984802.SY75.jpg|74399656], [b:Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex|5981308|Bonk The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex|Mary Roach|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335719323l/5981308.SX50.jpg|2398516] and [b:Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life|2051708|Microcosm E. Coli and the New Science of Life|Carl Zimmer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435335989l/2051708.SY75.jpg|2056731]. Gotta get to reading!

I am probably not the right person to review a memoir about a mid-20s woman who decided that a career in New York book publishing wasn't exciting enough, so she dropped everything and headed to Silicon Valley to work as a customer support rep for an up and coming software start up. Even worse, it specialize in "data analytics" - all the data you wished they didn't have on your. Then she moved on to a big open source company that was just getting bigger.

While there, she ran into all the usual types - bro programmers who didn't believe a woman could know or contribute anything in the tech world, driven male CEOs who felt like just because they happened to sell out at the right time and got tons of money meant they know everything about everything. And customers and modern hippies and long time natives dealing with the gentrification of San Francisco.

I am hugely ambivalent about this autobiography. She combines both deep and banal insights, often in the same paragraph. She often comes across as condescending, which is weird for someone who admits she doesn't know really what she wants either. I mean there is the usual litany of just outrageous sexism, but she also seems to miss the driven passion of lots of tech people who just love the tech. She talks of them like an exotic specimen, but sometimes it just sounds to me like someone who doesn't have that focused drive and can't understand it.

But as a white male who has been a software programmer for more years than you can imagine, I certainly can't comment on the attitudes she must have faced. I'd like to think I haven't allowed it when I hear it, as I have had plenty of highly respected women developers. But it is obviously a sick problem my industry is rife with and I have no idea how to make it go away, besides just hire more women. She has quite a bit about how hard it is to break the chain, as people who aren't like the interviewers always seem to fall short. Maybe some day...

But it is a quick, interesting read of the sky rocketing Silicon Valley scene of the years from like 2000 thru the 2016 election. She is a bit coy about naming names, calling the companies "the search engine giant" or the "highly litigious Seattle-based software conglomerate" or the "social media company everyone loves to hate", which got tiring after awhile, to be honest. But it is an excellent record of the time and I recommend it highly.

This book tells the story of the Battle Of Britain, when the German air force (the Luftwaffe) bombed London and England from 1940 to 1941. It follows Winston Churchill as he became Prime Minister and tried to get America to help out. But, just as importantly, it follows all kinds of other people, like John Colville, one of his private secretaries and Mary Churchill, his 18 year old daughter. Both Mary and Colville, who was only a few years older than Mary, kept meticulous diaries, so we see their private emotional turmoil as well, from Colville's unrequited love to Mary's engagement to someone not very popular with the folks.

So that's why I think it would make a great book for someone who claims to be not interested in history, as they would learn so much and yet be so enamored with the description of the balls and parties, catty remarks about other people and the like. The book really puts you inside the Churchill inner circle, in both public and private views.

To be honest, I got choked up in a few spots, especially at the beginning, as Churchill lays out his plan to the public. So many strong words and ideas made me weak in the knees in longing for a time when both our countries had real leaders, with backbones and integrity and courage and able to use complete sentences. Little things, I know, but I could hardly read them aloud without choking up.

The epilogue was nice, although he never really said what happened to Mary. According to Wikipeida, in 1947 she married Baron Soames, and they had 5 kids, while she continued to stay involved in all kinds of things, from being a writer to being on the board of the Royal National Theater.

A truly page turner history lesson and, once again, Erik Larson has scored a bullseye.

It's funny. I read the first book in this trilogy (now a bit of a long running series actually) [b:The Blade Itself|944073|The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)|Joe Abercrombie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1284167912l/944073.SX50_SY75.jpg|929009], back in 2015. I really enjoyed it and promised I would read the next one, this one, soon.

But that didn't happen. Hey, I am a guy with nearly 2,000 books on my Want to Read list, so it isn't surprising. But earlier this year, I read [b:A Little Hatred|35606041|A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness, #1)|Joe Abercrombie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558367199l/35606041.SY75.jpg|57338685] and really enjoyed it, not even realizing it is connected to The First Law trilogy! It is the next generation of these characters. So I decided I should head back and finish reading the original trilogy.

And wow, am I glad I did! It is another grim, dark, brutal fantasy, with limbs flying and a dark cold death around the corner for everyone. To be honest, I don't remember much of the first book at this point, so I'm not really sure how the story carries along. But I quickly became friends (again?) with the main characters. In this book, there are 3 groups:

+ The Magician Bayaz and his group head off on a quest for a "thing" to help win the war.

+ Colonel West tries to help the stupid prince not die in a battle, then gets dragged along by another group to fight a big battle against Bethod.

+ Superior Glokta tries to save an outpost against the Ghurkas

Told in usually alternating chapters, the story moves along quickly and the characters in each group reflect off each other, have adventurers, kill, die and make love in equal doses.

The book suffers a bit in being the middle book of the trilogy. It starts off in the middle of stuff and the endings are not much. The futile end of the quest and the start of another, a murder and a huge battle that ends when things fade away in the mist, literally. But other than that, I was pretty riveted for the entire book. Loved (and hated) the characters, enjoyed their growth and their humor and can't wait to read the third book.

However, a couple things bring this down. First one is, of course, the big quest. If you have read any of my reviews, I am not a big fan of quests, ie, just one damn thing after another. This one wasn't quite as bad as others I have read and at least I liked the characters. But it was still A Quest.

But the biggest drawback to the book is the use of torture. I know Superior Glokta is an Inquisitor, who, almost by definition, uses torture like others use a credit card, but it still gets tiring. Ever since watching The Report, an expose on the torture of Iraqis by American soldiers, I have become a warrior against torture. I won't watch shows that glorify torture (I'm looking at you Watchmen) or movies either.

And this book uses it as a sort of deus ex machina to give Abercrombie an easy way out. Want to solve a murder? Torture some one and he spills be the beans. Not only does he tell the truth, but you don't doubt it in the slightest and without even a shred of supporting evidence, you convict the other two. Even just the threat of torture works every time. It's just wrong, it's just ugly and it's just lazy.

But besides that, I love this series and love this world. I need to read the next book ASAP!

What a fun series this is! These are pretty short books but there is a ton of action, humor and atmosphere packed into each one. I am always chuckling at the sarcastic and often profane asides by Murderbot, as it gets itself into all kinds of trouble.

It is trying to investigate GrayCris, a shadowy corporation that is up to no good and seems to be responsible for the near disaster in the first book. There are a few adventures on the way, but once on the space platform, the action really ramps up. It is especially funny how Murderbot deals with the other robots, who are often much simpler than it. But they still have their own surprises!

So the story ambled right along, and Murderbot gets in and out of jams constantly. So much atmosphere and world building with such an economy of words. Fantastic reading and I can't wait to get on to the fourth book in the series, [b:Exit Strategy|35519109|Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)|Martha Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518642623l/35519109.SY75.jpg|56934601]!

As the title indicates, this history of the American Revolution concentrates on the military aspects of the war. And he does a great job of it. I loved the side histories of most of the major figures in the war, which really gives you a good picture of the men involved. Every battle is described in detail, and Leckie isn't afraid to call out tactics, both good and bad, on both sides. He can be down right brutal at times! There were some excellent discussions of the men and equipment that fought the war, just how ugly it got at times. Didn't realize how many atrocities were committed on both sides. Ugly.

But in the end, I was depressed. Leckie tried to end it on a high note, with high falutin' words about the first government of and for the people, with some small concession to just how one sided it really was. But it just gets you to thinking, maybe this wasn't so great. I mean, Britain abolished slavery something like 30 or 40 years before we did. And while I am sure being black in the UK is no picnic, I am pretty sure it is better than being black in America. After reading about the revolution in [b:A People's History of the United States|2767|A People's History of the United States|Howard Zinn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1494279423l/2767.SY75.jpg|2185591] by Zinn and, most especially, [b:These Truths: A History of the United States|43726521|These Truths A History of the United States|Jill Lepore|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1560822249l/43726521.SY75.jpg|59883979] by Lepore, you see how one sided these histories really are. And how depressing the end result is currently even.

But if what you are looking for is an entertaining and informative read about the military side of the American Revolution, I don't see how you could do any better.

I just don't know what to make of this book! The two main protagonists, Harrowhark and, especially, Gideon, were just great. Gideon was a real wise cracker. She had a snappy comeback for almost everything. Her and Harrowhark fought like two sisters for years but finally came together. Their banter was definitely the high point of the story.

This is a story about magic. Magic in space! The Nine houses all live on different planets and travel around by spaceship. The Ninth House is all about necromancy. They get called together, I think to figure out who will become the next Lyctor. What a Lyctor is, I am not sure. In fact, I am not sure what to make of the entire story.

To begin with, I was never too sure who the other characters were. Each house sent their lead magic user and their best cavalier, a sword bearing defender. And each was described in so many different ways, my head was spinning. First names, last names, nicknames, houses, physical descriptions - I just could not keep any of them straight.

And magic! I generally do not like magic in my books, as it is too easy. And not only did the author not bother explaining it (besides the occasional talk of "thanergy"), she just jumped right in and had magic flying all around. Maybe because it was so pervasive, I didn't seem to mind it. They just did all kinds of magical stuff and it seemed to fit.

There were a couple huge battles and I could barely follow the action. Don't get too attached to any of the characters (if you can figure them out), because any of them could go poof. But the story moved along really well and I just plowed on, despite any confusion.

And the writing was great! I do a "Word of the Day" on my Twitter feed when I come across an interesting word in my reading and I haven't done so many entries since Stephenson's [b:The System of the World|116257|The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, #3)|Neal Stephenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407712273l/116257.SY75.jpg|905463]! There were also plenty of laughs and some real gut punches too.

So despite being confused for most of the book, I was totally entranced as well. Maybe the two are intricately linked? I dunno, but I can't wait to read book two of The Locked Tomb, [b:Harrow the Ninth|39325105|Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569871560l/39325105.SY75.jpg|60943273].

Just to be clear - I am a white, middle aged (plus...) upper middle class heterosexual male with stable childhood and great family. I am, as John Scalzi wrote in his brilliant blog post, playing the game of life on The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. My single interaction with the police was a weird one when a crazy person tried to attack my car with a baseball bat - I'll be glad to tell you that story over a beer some day. But it was more humorous than dangerous. We have a cop living in our neighborhood and, while my daughters played with his daughters, we didn't have much to do with each other, but it was nice to have the feeling our neighborhood got a little more coverage than the normal one.

All of that is to say that I just can't imagine what life as a black male in today's, yesterday's, last year's, last decade, last century, America must feel like. Coates wrote this 5 years ago and, as you are all well aware, things have not gotten at all better, especially it seems this year of awfulness that is 2020. Friends were murdered by the police and he never knew if he would be next. He writes the book like a letter to his growing son, relating a tough life in Baltimore growing up, finding redemption in the quadrangle at Howard and struggling as a writer and as a black man.

I loved his turn of phrase in discussing "the people who think they are white", and actually how he is a bit jealous that they (we!) can be so comfortable in our own lives. He writes extensively about how, even now, a black person is not the owner of their own body, that the powers that be can take it away without any fear of retaliation. How, when a woman pushed his 4 year old son and said get out of the way, when he "made the mistake" of sticking up for him, he was told "he could be put in jail".

It is just heart breaking to read this and realize, once again, just how little has changed. It's like Kenneth Clark said before the Kerner Report committee in 1968:

I read that report . . . of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’43, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot. I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission—it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.