2024 reads, #50. As always with books like these, I have an important ethical disclosure to make here at the start of my write-up, which is that Lucie2024 reads, #50. As always with books like these, I have an important ethical disclosure to make here at the start of my write-up, which is that Lucie Klaassen is one of my freelance clients and that I was actually the editor of this book, so my opinion here is far from “objective” and you should take that into consideration when reading my thoughts. That said, I can honestly say that I really enjoyed this book just as a simple reader, despite the fact that I’ve never actually interacted with a horse even once in my entire life. That’s because of the fascinating theory that Klaassen puts forth here, that highly intelligent horses are essentially like the much better known cats and dogs, in that they have individual personalities, can profoundly sense when the humans around them are happy, sad or angry, and respond to training much better when they can form a profound emotional attachment to the person training them, which you can essentially facilitate through many of the theories we currently have for human mindfulness.
Her guide here to the subject is both a fascinating and a practical one, leading you step by step through the process of connecting with your horse, making sure they’re in the best emotional and mental state possible through external cues like how high or low they’re hanging their heads, what angle their ears are at, and the kinds of noises they’re making as you’re going through the training. Essentially she’s calling for the end of the old mindset behind horse training -- that is, that the horse’s rider is the whip-wielding “master” over that animal, and that your main job is to teach the beast “who’s boss” -- and her results speak for themselves, including a video montage of her training a formerly abused horse through calmness and empathy that became a huge viral hit at Instagram several years ago. I can’t personally attest to the accuracy of the training methods, since I’ve never trained a horse myself; but I can tell you that this was an extremely interesting read even not being a horse person, which makes me suspect that actual horse people will find it mesmerizing. It comes strongly recommended in this spirit. ...more
2024 reads, #39. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #39. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #40. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #40. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #41. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #41. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #42. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #42. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #43. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #43. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #44. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #44. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #45. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #45. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #46. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #46. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #47. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #47. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #48. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #48. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 reads, #49. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and 2024 reads, #49. I had the fun experience this year of being a judge for the Prism Awards, celebrating the best in paranormal romance publishing, and this is one of the entries I ended up reading for that. Therefore I don’t think it would probably be ethically good for me to be actually sharing my thoughts about each book’s quality here publicly, but I can at least confirm that all of them were great (not surprising, given that this was a contest and we can therefore assume everyone will submit their best work). Frankly, I’m mostly logging this simply so that it will count towards my total number of books read in the 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge, so that I don’t end up reading all summer long and then have nothing to show for it here afterwards. ...more
2024 book reviews, #36. I’m 55 this year, which means I’ve begun developing “old people problems” for the first time in my life; specifically, I’m sta2024 book reviews, #36. I’m 55 this year, which means I’ve begun developing “old people problems” for the first time in my life; specifically, I’m starting to develop arthritis, and the pain that this causes is starting to put a major crimp in my life as an urban-dwelling heavy pedestrian, something I find quite alarming. So when this book popped up in the “newly acquired” list at the Chicago Public Library, I went ahead and put it on reserve right away, and just got done reading it today.
It’s well worth your time, although I will say that it essentially only repeats information I’m reading in all the other wellness books I’ve been reading these days, confirming yet again what the latest research in modern medicine has been seemingly saying over and over in the last ten years -- that conditions we used to think of as naturally occurring ones in old age that nothing can be done about, from arthritis to high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s, can in fact be largely prevented by a change in lifestyle, as well as focusing on a few specific new things once you get over the age of 50. To her credit, though, author Meredith Warner (a veteran orthopedic surgeon and professor at Louisiana State University) describes this well-known advice using an acronym I’ve never heard before, the easily remembered MEDS which stands for Mindset, Exercise, Diet and Sleep. Or in other words, if you adopt the mindset that you really can change your health for the better through your own actions; reduce stress through meditation; get the government’s recommended weekly amount of moderate exercise, including resistance training; follow the Mediterranean eating plan, plus add a few supplements to your life (most importantly omega-3); plan your meals to always take place at certain times, and go at least 12 hours a day without eating anything at all (i.e. no late-night snacking); and get a good solid seven hours or more of sleep each night (including going to bed at the same time each night), you can largely eliminate the pain that comes with orthopedic conditions such as arthritis, as well as lower your chances of getting degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s to almost zero.
It’s welcome news, even if Warner isn’t saying anything particularly new or radical here; in fact, you could say that the news is even better precisely because it’s not radical new information, but merely a confirmation of what health book after health book after health book in the 21st century is now saying about how to live a life that keeps you healthy far into old age without the need for medications or surgeries at all. Warner calls the MEDS protocol “lifestyle medicine,” which I think is a very smart term for it; so I’ll be calling it that myself from now, and considering it a legitimate form of mainstream medicine that all of us oldies should be adhering to on a daily basis. The book comes strongly recommended in this spirit, that you won’t be learning anything new here that you can’t read in dozens of other books on the subject, but that Warner puts it all together in a smart and easy-to-understand way in this particular version....more
2024 reads, #35. DID NOT FINISH. I wanted very badly to like this book; for one thing, just that title and cover art alone is the entire reason I pick2024 reads, #35. DID NOT FINISH. I wanted very badly to like this book; for one thing, just that title and cover art alone is the entire reason I picked up the book in the first place, once again proving the old adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can decide what to read next by one.” Then after it arriving from the Chicago Public Library, I learned that it’s the latest title by a new imprint of the small press Zando, in which they asked the delightfully dark and weird Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) to hand-pick a series of unknown experimental female authors who deserve more attention, which is an admirable project and one that deserves our support. Then there’s the engaging story concept itself, a subversive coming-of-age tale about a ten-year-old girl who has recently discovered cursing as her new religion, as she develops a fascination for a twenty-something juvenile delinquent who’s been forced by the courts to move into the sort-of co-op, sort-of halfway home where our hero Molly (the “Kittentits” of the book’s title) lives with her zany dad and even zanier housemates, the whole thing set in Chicago where I live, which is always a nice bonus. And if this wasn’t enough, there’s a bit of a slipstream alternative history going on here too; in the world of Kittentits, Chicago is about to host a World’s Fair in 1992 to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the famous one that first put them on the global cultural map, while no such fair took place here in our version of the multiverse.
But alas, there were just too many problems in this book for me to be able to get into it in any other way than a purely intellectual, stroking my chin while murmuring, “Hmm, that was clever” way, which perhaps reflects the fact that author Holly Wilson is a professional academe with a PhD in creative writing, which as we were just discussing a few weeks ago tends to be the death knell for the ability to write really engaging fiction anymore. The main problem is that Wilson has written this entire thing in an extremely experimental style, one that omits all quotation marks, is always dropping words you would normally find in real conversations, and really playing up the slang, in order to present this highly stylized prose that’s simply difficult to follow along with; then she marries it to the kind of “quirky unto infinity” milieu that became so big in the popular culture in the early 2000s (think Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, etc.; and let’s not even get started on those fucking Skittles commercials).
That’s not bad unto itself, but unfortunately for Wilson, that endlessly quirky style really got played out among audiences by the end of that decade, meaning that she’s not far enough away from those years to present this as a retro-quirky novel but not close enough to those years for readers to be able to enjoy it unironically. Or I suppose I should say “enjoy it in an ironic way unironically,” which is a big part of why this style burned itself out; by the time Postmodernism wheezed out its last gasps before its death, right around Obama’s first Presidential win in 2008 which birthed our current Wokeism artistic movement, it had become so masturbatory and deadpan and self-referential, it was impossible to enjoy it anymore in any kind of simple, unironic way.
So, while I applaud Wilson for doing an excellent job at late-period Postmodernism, I have to confess that I simply don’t want to read even a single new book in that style ever again, which made me lose interest in this book quickly despite it actually being well-written (or at least as “well-written” as you can say about a book that’s deliberately trying to challenge readers to put it back down again, one of the biggest problematic side-effects of devoting your entire life to academic scholarly study of creative writing, that the obsessive desire to “out-fancy” your peers results in books that practically scream, “I DARE you to make it to the last page of this novel!”). That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should avoid it, but certainly you deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into before you pick it up....more
2024 reads, #33. I picked up this book in my ongoing attempts to read widely and deeply within the world of quickie genre novels published through Kin2024 reads, #33. I picked up this book in my ongoing attempts to read widely and deeply within the world of quickie genre novels published through Kindle Unlimited, in order to stay on top of the latest trends so to better help my freelance clients who publish under the same circumstances. In this case you can think of the story as being essentially half-and-half a romance novel and a cozy mystery novel, about a young woman who accidentally reconnects with a man from her childhood who used to brutally bully her (it’s okay -- it was actually his pushy girlfriend at the time who forced him to do it), but who then discovers halfway through the book that her estranged father who she’s never met is actually a serial killer, and is back in town to make her life a living hell.
To its credit, this book has the opposite problem from most quickie Kindle Unlimited reads -- it’s not way too short but rather way too long -- but that nonetheless results in a problematic reading experience, with lots of scenes that should’ve been just summed up in a single sentence (“like Bob had mentioned, the blood test down at the hospital only took ten minutes”) but that instead go in excruciating detail for pages upon pages (“We arrived at the hospital. Bob opened the door. I walked through the door. We asked the receptionist where room 116 was. She told us to go down the hall and take a right. We went down the hall and took a right”...). Combined with a plot that’s pretty easy to guess, and a writing style that’s fairly pedestrian (be prepared for every character to be the ur-archetype of whatever kind of person they represent -- the gay guy’s the gayest gay who’s ever gayed, the villain is the most villainous villain who’s ever villained), that results in a book that was just barely mediocre in this case, which is why it’s getting 2 stars out of 5 when usually I give so-so Kindle Unlimited novels 4 stars so to embrace the lowered expectations of this form of publishing. Go into it, if at all, with this warning in mind....more
2024 reads, #30. This was my latest attempt to read widely and deeply within the world of quickie genre novels published through Kindle Unlimited, in 2024 reads, #30. This was my latest attempt to read widely and deeply within the world of quickie genre novels published through Kindle Unlimited, in order to stay on top of the latest developments and help out my freelance clients who write and publish under the same circumstances. I would consider this book a textbook example of what I typically expect from such novels, by which I mean it’s aggressively mediocre, the kind of book that deliberately chooses to not expend even one ounce more of energy than absolutely needed to qualify as A Book That Exists And That I Suppose You Can Read In A Single Day If You’re Super Bored Without Necessarily Becoming Infuriated At The Author. As such, it of course features cardboard-cutout characters, an easily guessed plot, the absolute minimum amount of pages needed to count as a “novel” while ironically featuring a storyline that’s much too slow, and a prose style that maddeningly adds a new paragraph break after every single freaking sentence in the entire book, which makes me want to go to the author’s house and give her a high-school tutorial on “How to Write Narrative Prose When It’s Not a Twitter Update, Sheesh, Enough Already.”
I mean, I suppose all this is acceptable, which is why it’s getting three stars from me -- Lord knows, Kindle Unlimited is now filled with millions of these kinds of lowest-common-denominator books, and they’re apparently delivering just enough to keep their always-grinding readers satiated through their book-a-day habits; it’s just always disappointing to me to see authors who don’t even try to be even a little bit better than the absolute minimum required of them to break even with their latest title and thus afford to live another day. I always try to push my clients to be better than this, and books like today’s are a good reminder of why that’s so important for anyone who aspires to something more than “eh, I guess this will do.” Inhale it on your next bored Tuesday with this warning in mind. ...more
2024 reads, #26. I picked this up as part of my ongoing efforts to read deeply and widely within the world of quick genre novels published through Kin2024 reads, #26. I picked this up as part of my ongoing efforts to read deeply and widely within the world of quick genre novels published through Kindle Unlimited, as a way of helping out my freelance clients who write and publish under the same circumstances, in this case actually a cozy mystery novel instead of the romance novels that usually take up my time with KU titles. I actually got halfway through this the first time I read it, then got distracted by several other books that came up in my library reserve list, then had to go back and read this one again all the way from the beginning, because I had totally forgotten the storyline by then; but this should be interpreted as a big compliment, because normally I wouldn’t go to nearly this much trouble for one of these disposable KU books I download for free from those KU promotional websites (I think Bookspry in this particular case).
That’s entirely because of our delightfully trainwrecky, highly rootable protagonist at the center of our story, the perpetually unemployed and underloved actress Madison Cruz, whose self-sabotaging misadventures in her Seattle hometown are a true delight. That’s a real key to enjoying these kinds of stories, I’ve discovered as I read more and more of them; so many Kindle Unlimited authors use these kinds of main characters as basically Mary Sue stand-ins for themselves, presenting perfectly perfect heroes who never do anything wrong and never have a hair out of place, always saving the day with one hand while serving up another plate of yummy homemade scones with the other; but author Lucy Carol understands that these kinds of protagonists are much more interesting when they mess up big and often, which Madison certainly does, taking two hilarious steps back for every step forward she makes in her debut adventure here when it comes to the men competing for her attention, her strained relationship with her mother, and the constant humiliating situations she finds herself in as an actress who can only find work doing singing telegrams and kids’ parties and the like.
It’s within such a milieu, then, that Madison stumbles across an honest-to-God international conspiracy involving missing babies, crooked FBI agents and former Soviet dissidents, the details of which are best left a surprise; what I can tell you without fears of spoilers, however, is that somehow Carol actually makes this an organic part of what’s otherwise a cozy domestic story about a bunch of city-going single twentysomethings, and rather than forcing the international intrigue onto a situation that can’t naturally fit it in, comes up with an extremely clever way to make it seem like such developments are the most natural thing in the world to happen in Madison’s plucky life. (Of course, both her mom and her uncle are FBI agents, so this helps quite a lot.) I have to confess, I was a little in love with Madison myself by the time I finished this extremely engaging story, and if I was someone who actually had a Kindle Unlimited account, I would launch right away into the other half-dozen titles that have now been written in this series. If you’re a KU person, I strongly encourage you to do so yourself, or at the very least read this funny, warm, witty start to it all, which can be found for free at multiple promotional websites for these kinds of books. ...more
2024 reads, #25. It occurred to me the other day that it’s been almost a year since I last read one of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Relaunch” novel2024 reads, #25. It occurred to me the other day that it’s been almost a year since I last read one of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Relaunch” novels (see this page for the full list of books I’ve already reviewed), so I threw the latest in the series on my Kindle and just finished it up today. To remind you, this is a series of around a hundred novels that were published between 2000 and 2020 which, unlike is usual with non-canon franchise novels, actually follows its own persistent storyline that is basically supposed to start the day after the final episode of the TV show, which allows the books to make major decisions that then have repercussions in later books, introduce new characters who keep showing up over and over, growing and changing like the characters from the original television iteration, and basically provide all the serialized goodness that made us DS9 fans such admirers of the original show to begin with.
When last we left this Relaunch series, Ben Sisko’s son Jake had stolen a shuttlecraft and plunged himself into the wormhole, in an attempt to track down his messiah-like father, who famously ended the TV series by saving humanity and then getting sucked into the wormhole by the “Prophets,” a mysterious alien race who live outside of normal 3D time and space, and who the nearby citizens of Bajor worship like gods; and page one of this latest book opens with Jake getting spit out the other side of the wormhole by said Prophets without achieving his goal, his spaceship now non-functioning and with it looking pretty clear that he’s going to die. Lucky for him, then, that a ragtag group of salvagers in the Gamma Quadrant just happen to come across his craft right when he’s about to run out of oxygen, and end up taking him in and recruiting him as the newest member of their team.
This was an extremely clever thing for author SD Perry (an admired Star Trek novelization veteran) to do, because it gives us an excuse to step away from the usual characters and plot developments of this series altogether, to instead spend an enjoyable 300 pages with this entirely new group of people and other sentient creatures, as they traipse across their area of space in pursuit of a Glowy McGuffin that basically serves as an excuse for character development and a lot of casual hanging out. That’s essentially a bit of a breath of fresh air for this series, which like the TV show usually hews closely to an ever-expanding mythos which requires more and more background knowledge with each new title in order to adequately follow, which as fans of serialized franchises can tell you can be both a blessing and a curse sometimes, especially those times when all you want to do is go through a fun little adventure without having to keep track of 50 different characters and the latest developments with all of them.
That said, this book does provide a pretty major new development to the main mythos, as Jake and company stumble across a character who literally hasn’t been seen since season 1 of the original TV series and had never shown up in the novels before now; I’ll let the details remain a surprise, but she essentially plays a major role in bringing an end to the “avatar” prediction that’s been a running theme since the very start of these Relaunch books (but for more, see the literal book Avatar that kicked off this entire series, again written by Perry). I found this enjoyable, because as fans of heavily serialized fiction know, there’s nothing quite as frustrating as having a major new development introduced and then have it just linger on and on in the background while everyone slowly forgets about it, so it looks like from what we’re seeing at the end of this book that the ancient prophecy about Ben Sisko’s child becoming a fabled “chosen one” is finally going to be resolved in the next several books (or at least we’ll see). Meanwhile, though, Perry does her usual excellent world-building here, giving us such fun new Gamma Quadrant species as an artificially intelligent creature who lives inside the circuit boards of spaceships, five rocks that can join together into a creature through a hive-mind network (and that happens to be psychic when it does), and what can best be described as a sentient puppy, which is exactly as adorable as that description makes it sound.
That said, also as usual, Perry’s prose is just a bit too tedious for me to give a full five stars; in particular I found myself really frustrated with Jake’s endless journal entries in this novel, which seem to serve no other purpose than to recap developments we had just read only a chapter or two previous. All in all, though, I found this to be a really satisfying read, just like all the rest of the Relaunch novels I’ve now gotten through, and I’m looking forward to tackling the next soon, the Klingon-focused The Left Hand of Destiny. I’ll be reading that right away, so to avoid the long delay that happened last time, so I hope you’ll have a chance to join me again soon for that....more
2024 reads, #24. I picked this up as part of my ongoing efforts to read deeply and widely within the world of quick genre novels published through Kin2024 reads, #24. I picked this up as part of my ongoing efforts to read deeply and widely within the world of quick genre novels published through Kindle Unlimited, as a way of helping out my freelance clients who write and publish under the same circumstances. It’s a short erotic bisexual MMF story, about a couple who own a restaurant and have a night of naughty fun with their new sous chef. (Hint: the name of the series this is a part of, “Swords Will Cross,” tells you a lot about what you can expect.) It’s...you know, it’s fine, although one thing I’ve noticed about most quickie erotica published through Kindle Unlimited (especially when being shelved in the “romance” category like this one is) is that, no matter how kinky the subject matter, the actual sex scenes all tend to be just plain ol’ boring middle-class suburban vanilla intercourse, even when that’s two men and a woman having boring suburban vanilla intercourse, two lesbians having boring suburban vanilla intercourse, a master and a slave having boring suburban vanilla intercourse, etc. That’s the same case here, which is why it’s getting a thorough and solid “meh” from me, three stars to reflect its “eh, I suppose this is fine for a boring Wednesday afternoon” nature. It should be read, if at all, with these low expectations in mind. ...more
2024 reads, #23. DID NOT FINISH. I picked up this hugely popular 2015 novel in preparation for watching the streaming adaptation that just came out of2024 reads, #23. DID NOT FINISH. I picked up this hugely popular 2015 novel in preparation for watching the streaming adaptation that just came out of it. Although technically his debut novel, there are a lot of things about author Viet Thanh Nguyen that make it easier to understand why it had such a phenomenal amount of success for a first book (including winning that year’s Pulitzer Prize); for one thing, he actually has a PhD in creative writing and was already a popular and famous professor at the University of Southern California (and a guest professor at Harvard) before writing this, and had also already been writing short nonfiction pieces regularly for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, mostly on cultural and political issues related to him being a Vietnamese immigrant whose family fled the country during the civil war there in the 1960s and ‘70s, which also doubled as a Cold War proxy battle between the US (who supported and sunk billions of dollars into the southern army) and the Soviet Union (who did the same thing with the northern army, which famously ended up winning the war).
That’s what this novel is about as well, interestingly told not through the filter of any American soldiers (the viewpoint of almost 100% of every other book and movie ever made in the US about the war), but instead using a double-agent who ends up emigrating to California after the fall of Saigon to take a sweeping look at how the Vietnamese themselves dealt with the massive, complicated after-effects of the war, including over a decade of brutal Maoist-style re-education camps for the southerners who lost but couldn’t get out of the country in time. That’s all very interesting, and unlike most books I give up on, I actually made it halfway through The Sympathizer (or close to 250 pages) before finally stopping; but Nguyen’s PhD bona fides just finally did me in, and his habit of (to paraphrase “The Simpsons”) taking forever to say nothing, until I had finally had just one too many page-long run-on paragraphs of tedium and gave up in frustration.
However, I did at least achieve my goal, which was to get a sense of the book and its writing before watching the television series based on it; and that for sure I’ll be doing, because this is a really fascinating story, told from a unique perspective that most of us Americans have never really gotten to see regarding this infamous black stain in America’s history, essentially the first military conflict the US ever lost in its entire history, beginning a downward spiral that many argue we’re just now finally seeing bottom out into the collapse of our country fifty years later. If you can take the hoity-toity prose style, it’s well worth your time; or you can just be like me and watch the streaming adaptation instead. ...more
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