Booktalk

Eighteen Books

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Eighteen Books read out of my Twenty Books Yearly Goal

Good Morning Friends! This year has been extremely unusual in that I have been consuming more books than I have likely ever consumed in a single year before. Previously I needed to do a disclaimer because the year I burned through ten Dresden Files books in rapid order might have completed. However, now that I have reached the point where I have finished eighteen books out of my original goal of twenty books for this year… I am absolutely certain that I’m treading undiscovered territory. The weird part about this is that I have always loved books, and will never turn down a chance at going to a used bookstore. However my entire life I have struggled with some general feelings of anxiety over how slow I actually read. Granted I’ve not proved this wrong time and time again this year, but I still feel like I do not read anywhere near as fast as my wife does. She is I think on book 38 of the year for reference.

Libby App Screenshot showing three library cards on my account

This rapid transformation has been due to a few different variables clicking into place. Firstly we “discovered” the Libby App, or in truth were painfully late to that party. This gives you easy access to all of the books and audiobooks available in your local library collection. In my State there are effectively three Library systems: The Tulsa City-County Library, the Metropolitan Library System covering the Oklahoma City area, and the OK Virtual Library which allows smaller rural libraries that can’t afford their own access to sign on to a collective system. Recently we got the third of these accounts and now in theory have access to the collections of all of the libraries in our state. This has been deeply beneficial because not all of these accounts are created equal and some systems have had books that others did not. Even more common is that the hold lines for a given book may be shorter out of one of the collections than they are out of our “home” TCCL collection. Granted we are now also paying $50 a year for our OK Virtual Library account and $75 per year for the Metro Library account… but we figure the money goes to supporting the public library system in general which is another win.

The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi

When last I updated you on my book journey, I was about a third of the way through The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. I have to say this is probably the best book I have read all year to this point, and it is very unlikely that another is going to dethrone it. It feels like the love of Kaiju seems to be one of the common GenX traits, and I grew up watching the original Toho Godzilla films broadcast each summer during “monster movie” weeks from my local “pre-Fox” UHF channel. Now I just desperately want the KPS to exist and for me to somehow end up as an IT Guy for it. This was precisely the sort of read that I needed following Red Seas Under Red Skies. The Locke Lamora novels are so dense with plot elements and I have never really understood the concept of a “light read” until this point, but I was desperately in need of it. I guess I should warn you that this is very much also a novel about the pandemic and how it changed society set against the pastiche of giant Monsters. There are just so damned many things I loved about this read, and I realistically burned through it in less than a week at my oftentimes sluggish before-sleep reading pace.

Truth of the Divine – Lindsay Ellis

I only really know about this book series in the first place, because I have always loved Lindsay Ellis and her long-form video essays. While other YouTubers were securing book deals to talk about themselves… she pitched a handful of science fiction novels. Axiom’s End was excellent and I have described it many times as X-Files meets WikiLeaks meets E.T. but with a cast of adult characters. It is so rooted in the early 2000s internet nonsense that it was this weird delightful trip down memory lane, as well as setting up some of the more interesting extra-terrestrial interactions I had seen in a while. The problem with the first novel however is that Linsay is a researcher at heart, and the novel was so filled with random Apocrypha of the early 2000s, and random bits of information that take a while to click into place tightly.

The sequel is no different, including random screenshots at the head of some of the chapters of AOL chatroom-like interfaces with discussions related to the events of the novel. Thankfully coming off of the “light read” of KPS, I was ready for more nonsense detail and this book delivered. I’ve described this story as Enemy Mine meets Pretty In Pink meets the Iran-Contra scandal. Essentially we get to know so much more about the Amygdalan species, their cultures, and how widely different their personalities can be. There is a somewhat creepy relationship that bothered me a bit in this book featuring some sorta fucked up power dynamics, but if you can look past that the book is centered around a very imperfect human being trying to make the best of a sort of fucked up situation that they have been thrust into. I will absolutely read the third book which is set to come out later this year.

The Shadow of the Gods – John Gwynne

I have no clue who suggested this book to me, but it is essentially my first playthrough of Skyrim or at least feels a lot like that. In that very first playthrough, I was a Nord warrior that aligned himself with The Companions of Whiterun, and the whole dynamic of that group, feels deeply similar to the Bloodsworn from this novel. They are a band of warriors known throughout the land by their “Battle Fame” and one of the core characters is a former slave a “thrall” that just happened to find their way into the group. The novel shifts back and forth between a few perspective characters that weave in and out of the narrative and give us a view into different points in the plot.

I will say at the first… this novel maybe felt a little “Too Norse” for my tastes. I mean I have always loved all things Norse… but this was a lot and forces you to get used to a number of very specific terms for things. However about halfway through the novel my brain got used to it all and was able to spend less time trying to imbibe words, and more time focused on the story as it evolved. I am absolutely going to continue forward in this series, but I would throw it in the “heavy read” column and it was maybe a mistake rolling straight to this after Truth of the Divine. In truth, it was chosen in part because my hold came open and it was available. I think I am going to need some lighter fare for the next book.

Hexed by Kevin Hearne

So originally prior to divine into Truth of the Divine, I was originally planning on rolling into the second book of the Iron Druid Chronicles series. I think I am probably going to pick back up that plan because the first novel in that series was fairly light. I could use a bit of formulaic fiction for the moment to sink into like a warm blanket. Unless something changes and one of my holds comes open, I am likely going to start on this one tonight. It has been interesting how quickly this whole “always reading a book” thing has become a habit. I’m kind of mad at myself for not doing this sooner, but really… it is the easy access to books that have made the key difference. Then there is also that subtle pressure of knowing that once I start something… I have to finish it because I have a very limited amount of time that I can borrow the book. In past years I had a night table full of partially read novels, and being forced with a timetable helps me actually keep moving forward.

The only negative of this whole thing… is that I have all but stopped watching television or any of the big series. I have yet to start the new season of The Mandalorian for example, and I still need to sit down and finish The Bad Batch. It is like I have shifted all of my energies that used to rapidly consume series… to rabidly consuming books.

Fifteen Books

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Good Morning Friends! It has been a bit since I gave an update on my reading journey, so I figured I might as well close out the week with one. At this point, I’ve read fifteen books and am currently working on my sixteenth. As sad as this sounds, this is more books than I have ever read in any given year at any point in my life. Traditionally I am at max a five-books-a-year sort of person save for that one year where I read ten Dresden Files novels back to back. I love books and I even love bookstores more, but I’ve never really carved out a place for reading in my life. My wife on the other hand reads every moment she has available so it isn’t like books are an uncommon objective in our household. However in the past, if I had time to fill, I would do it with games, movies, television, anime, or comics well before I would sit down and read a block of prose.

Now Audiobooks have helped a lot in this venture because I can play something while listening intently to the radio play happening in my ears. However, I’m now working away on my fifth actual book of the year so something seems to have clicked in my brain. I’ve said before that I always considered myself a slow reader in the past, but I’ve also noticed that this seems to no longer be the case. I’ve only been working on my current book for two nights and only then in an hour or two before I fall asleep and I’m already a dozen chapters in. Granted I have largely pushed aside everything but gaming from my normal diet of media and dove full-on into this experiment. At some point, I will probably pause these proceedings and catch up on things like my growing queue of Netflix and Disney Plus shows. For now, I am going full steam ahead and seeing how far I can get.

When last I talked about my reading journey, I mentioned that it was pretty likely that I would be starting Hounded the first book in the Iron Druid Chronicles pretty soon. I had this recommended to me by my good friend Lyle as a somewhat Dresden Adjacent series of stories. When I read through the Heroic Hearts compilation of short stories, there was a short story called Fire Hazard centered around the perspective of Atticus’ Irish Wolfhound companion Oberon. This gave me the impression that this series was going to maybe be a bit too “Captain Planet” for my tastes, but thankfully after having finished the first novel this was very much not the case. I am guessing the perspective of a dog sort of cartoonized the tale and sanded down the rough and jangly bits to smooth it down into a largely technicolor experience.

All told I greatly enjoyed this first novel. I like this setting and its take on the Druid and in large part the Fae. The character of Atticus O’Sullivan was largely enjoyable as well. It rode the line between having a being with immense power and trivializing every encounter. There were actual dangers and they get bonus points for looping in Witches, Werewolves, and Vampires without making it a setting ABOUT Witches, Werewolves, or Vampires. I get the Dresden Files reference because it does feel really compatible with that body of work. If you had told me that these two individuals inhabited the same space I would have probably believed you… other than some slightly incompatible bits centered around specific spins on how magic works in each world. Then again that could even be chalked up to just the perspective of each family of casters. I’m absolutely going to dive further into this series at some point.

In fact, I almost did dive into the second Iron Druid book and probably would have were it not for the fact that my Library Hold on the second book in the Gentleman Bastards series came open. Red Seas Under Red Skies is the second outing of Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen and it picks up pretty much immediately following the events of the first book with a very broken Locke convalescing very poorly. I am not entirely certain who told me this, but I had it expressed to me that the first book in this series was excellent and that they largely went downhill after that. I heartily disagree because if anything I like this second book considerably better than I did the first. Sure you have the same pattern of “Locke Plans a Big Heist and Things Go Horribly Wrong Until they Don’t” but the details are unique and nonetheless still enjoyable to experience.

I’ve never aspired to be a thief or a criminal mastermind, but I absolutely get why this sort of character is so fond by the fanciers of skullduggery. I think more than anything I enjoyed the introduction of some interesting crews of pirates, and honestly, I am hoping some of those characters show back up in the third story. Republic of Thieves is the next book in the sequence and it was released in 2013, and Thorn of Emberlain has been announced for years… with constantly sliding release dates with the speculative date of January 2021 long past. I am trying to set my expectations of this being a series that might be something I very rarely get to visit given the seemingly slow release schedule.

Truth be told, Locke Lamora’s books are so dense that I could not handle reading more than one of them in a row. They involve having to keep a bunch of characters and details in your head while consuming them, in order to try and keep the plot that often jumps around between time periods straight. This led me to my current book The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. This was recommended to me by my friend Ace, but even before then I knew of its existence and the title alone would get me interested. I love “monster movies” in part because I grew up with a UHF channel that would play marathons of them during the summer months. Mothra is the queen and we should all bow down before her. I am not sure what it is but I think the love of Kaiju is a specifically Gen X trait, as most of my friends of similar age brackets also have a thing for them.

So far I’m about a dozen chapters into this novel and I am enjoying it greatly. I would classify this as a very light read, not getting bogged down in too much cryptic detail. Granted I am only a short way into the book as a whole so that might change, but if it does it will have earned it by giving me a long on-ramp of relatively chill prose. As is often the case I don’t want to talk too much about the details because my goal with my book talk posts is to not really dive too far into the story beats or risk spoiling anything. Suffice it to say however this is a book where Kaiju are very real and a group of scientists of assorted disciplines is studying them. Rather than seeing Kaiju in the trappings of a disaster movie, this is more of a clinical and scholarly setting, which I am enjoying greatly. Think of the corporation in Cabin in the Woods that maintains all of the Lovecraftian horrors, but instead this friendly group studies Kaiju. If that premise at all interests you then I suggest you give this one a look.

I don’t usually plan too far ahead, but at this point, unless something really shifts around and changes I am likely to dive into book two of the Iron Druid chronicles once I finish with my Kaiju friends. The only thing that would really change this is if one of my longer Library Holds come open, but so far that looks unlikely. They both estimate that it will be months before I see any of my holds. I’m not sure if anyone out there really cares about my reading journey, but considering it is part of my world at the moment it ends up presented in blog form. I am enjoying myself so I guess that is all that really matters.

Thirteen Books

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Good Morning Friends! I am on my fourth day this weekend and as a result, it has made me terribly late to sit down and write a blog post. When last I shared my progress in this year’s bookish journey, I had finished my tenth book. As of about 11 pm last night, I have now finished my thirteenth. I find myself in a position currently where none of my holds are available and I have nothing currently checked out of the library. So once I finish writing my morning post, I will begin the process of sifting around and trying to land on my next novel. I have a handful of ideas but ultimately it will be determined by what is actually available. I acquired the Iron Druid series from something other than Amazon or the Libby app, so I might start down that road next. I am thinking about starting an audiobook section of my Plex Server so that I can use that to keep track of my progress and shift between machines while listening to the same book.

The goal of this weekend was to acquire two shiny new library cards. That did not exactly work as expected, because thankfully I consulted one of my librarian friends first. It turns out that most of the smaller libraries are all signed on to the “OK Virtual Library” which was a way of allowing smaller communities with smaller budgets to be able to afford the trappings of full access to digital materials. However, this means that one Library card at the OK Virtual Library system is effectively the same as any other card, meaning that if I really want a third card to expand my access… I will need to make a trek down to the Oklahoma City Metro Library system. I’ve already noticed a difference in what I have access to through Libby however, so our trip to Bartlesville is definitely a net positive. I also got to hang out albeit briefly with my friend who is a Librarian there which was also extremely good.

When last I shared my journey through books, I mentioned that I was about to start Heroic Hearts. This is a collection of short stories from various authors, but the primary reason I was interested is it includes another tale that takes place after the events of Battle Ground involving Major General Toot-Toot Minimus and Lacuna… and to a much much much smaller extent Harry Dresden and Will the Werewolf. The story itself was fun, but I stuck around and consumed a number of the other tales including one set in the Iron Druid Chronicles focused around the dog Oberron and his point of view. Probably my favorite of the stories was The Dark Ship by Anne Bishop… which means I need to do some searches to find out what else that author has written. I think this is why I have always liked these anthologies of short stories because it gives you a view into the world of a lot of authors in a short condensed manner. I have to admit from the short focusing on Oberron I am thinking the Iron Druid Chronicles might be a little too “captain planet” for my tastes, but I am still willing to give it a shot since it was suggested by a good friend.

Next up I dove into Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis. This has been on my list of books to read for a long while because I am a big fan of Lindsay’s long-form YouTube video essays, and wish that was a thing she was still doing. I remember listening to some podcast discussion centered around the creation of this book and how one of the things about being a popular YouTuber is that book deals appear out of the woodwork, and how she waited for the right one that would more or less give her free reign. What we get in Axiom’s End is a nostalgic trip through that particular brand of internet weirdness that was the late 2000s, more specifically 2007. Effectively this novel is Dubya-era nonsense blended with Wikileaks scandals, a bit of the X-Files, and the movie E.T. centered around a fully adult cast rather than a group of kids.

It takes a bit to really get engaged in the setting because it starts throwing out what sounds like important vocabulary without really explaining what any of it means. It reminds me of reading Dune for the first time and having to interpret a lot of things through context clues, the key difference being there was a thick glossary at the back of that novel… which is lacking here. I like the central character of Cora Sabino and the journey she goes through during the course of the pages. It is a bit of a weird romp, but well worth your time sticking around until it properly grabs you. There are a few unanswered questions that you sort of have to roll with because I still have no fucking clue why the first events of the novel actually took place. There is a logical sequence that never really resolves that you sort of have to hand wave away, but the rest of the novel resolves neatly.

Most recently I finished up Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher… who is the son of Jim Butcher the author of the Dresden Files series. While digging around to catch up on the Dresden series I stumbled upon the existence of this novel which immediately placed it on my radar. My friend the aforementioned Librarian said that they were reading the novel, and funnily enough, my hold kept them from extending their own old so I technically finished it first. At its core… Dead Man’s Hand is the most generically competent urban fantasy novel you have ever read. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it feels like a setting you have been to before with highly regulated magic users and a not-quite-ministry-of-magic governing them and their actions. I guess one of the things that do make it more interesting is this is a post-unmasking society where “usuals” and “unorthodox” have learned to live together in a somewhat unsteady peace.

One of the cardinal sins of this novel is that it has some truly awful character names like the primary protagonist of Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby. At face value, it is a slightly awkward first novel from an author that at times feels like a caricature of his father’s writing style. That is probably unfair however because if I did not go into this expecting at least some similarities due to my extreme familiarity with the other’s body of work… I would likely judge it more positively. The novel did manage to make me care about the characters and make me interested in hearing more about this world. The second book in the Unorthodox Chronicles series has already been announced and will be called Long Past Dues releasing this October. I am interested enough in GG Grimsby, Huntsman Mayflower, and Wudge to definitely throw that on the list of must-reads. If you like magical detective stories, and more specifically like the buddy cop dynamic of a completely green rookie and grizzled grumpy veteran, then this is probably worth a read for you as well.

More than likely I am going to be starting book one of the Iron Druid Chronicles at some point today. The series begins with a book called Hounded, which I am guessing will dive into the bond that the main character has with the hound Oberron that I met in the short story discussed earlier in this post. I liked Oberron quite a bit, so if nothing else I think I can limp through a novel just based on that alone. My friend mentioned that it felt a lot like Dresden Files and even though the story I read was from the point of view of the dog, I can absolutely see some similarities. It still floors me that I am thirteen books into this journey with no real signs of slowing down. I know at some point I will probably stall out at least for a bit as I will want to play some narrative games this year, namely the new Jedi Survivor game coming out in April. Tomorrow I will likely share my progress in Guild Wars 2 that I made over the weekend.

Hopefully, you have a great week and as always feel free to drop me any suggestions for novels I should explore. I will say that I am not terribly interested in anything with a more romantic focus. That isn’t really my jam, as I tend to skip through romance scenes in novels because I find them exceedingly awkward most of the time. I might have to dive into a few at some point because I happen to be friends with several romance authors, but I am largely putting that off for now lest I get bogged down.

Ten Books Down

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve continued to keep busy with my whole consuming books nonsense and thought I would give some updates this morning. I’m feeling a little groggy this morning because I was up until well after midnight finishing up a book. I’ve also come to the realization that any concerns I had about being a slow reader were largely unwarranted. The speed at which I read seems to be directly related to my desire to read, and maybe the books that I felt like I was reading slowly… just gave me an insufficient drive to keep going. At this point, I am halfway through my 20 books this year goal that I set for myself, which makes me think I maybe need to re-evaluate that goal. I continue to greatly enjoy using the Bookwyrm website/app to track my progress.

I suppose I should have started things off with a Happy Valentine’s day greeting for those who are participating in it. My wife and I are a bit weird when it comes to holidays and our “valentines” activity is going to be on Friday when we both have the day off. It probably says a lot about us as people and as a couple that the chosen activity is going to be hitting up two libraries in nearby communities and getting additional library cards there. One of the neat things about the Libby app is that you can add multiple libraries, which effectively expands the pool of available books to check out. We are part of a massive regional library system already, but two larger communities in the nearby vicinity are not and have their own offerings. They charge a fee to get a library card if you are not from that community, but I am more than happy to support said library systems. So our Valentine’s gift to each other is to go sign up and get two more cards a piece, to theoretically mitigate the holds a little more easily.

Since I last gave a book update I have consumed three novels or more two novels and a novella. The first was The Lies of Locke Lamora and this is something that I had recommended to me numerous times over the years. At the beginning of the novel, I was not entirely certain I would enjoy it, because I don’t usually go in terribly well with the whole thieves guild thing. That said as the adventure unfolded before me, the more hooked I became with the fate of the Gentlemen Bastards. At its core, this is a grand heist novel… but instead of one single heist, it is made up of innumerable smaller outings culminating in one final major event. The flowing back and forth between the current time and past remembering was a bit jarring at times because you essentially needed to keep putting a mental bookmark where each timeframe left off. I figure I will give the next novel in this series a shot, but I expect it to play out in a more linear fashion since this LoLL served as a bit of an origin story as well as the tale of an epic heist.

Next up was Battle Ground, the latest novel in The Dresden Files series and in truth the second half of the novel Peace Talks. For as badly as I viewed Peace Talks, this novel was effectively the payoff, and given that they came out in the same year… my assumption is that a single larger work was crudely chopped in half and then released as individual books. Dresden is best when it is a small personal outing that is focused on a single “monster of the week”. This is the other sort of Dresden novel however that is focused on wide-sweeping cosmic forces… and as a result, it effectively becomes “Changes 2.0”. I won’t explain that further because I don’t want to spoil the flow of the series for anyone who is otherwise unindoctrinated but suffice it to say Changes was a novel that changed everything about the world, and Battle Ground similarly opens a brand new story arc. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but also I am looking forward to dropping down this hill into what seems to be more “Core Dresden” for lack of a better term for it.

Lastly is the novella that I read last night in a single sitting called The Law. This takes place directly after the events of Battle Ground, so I would highly suggest NOT reading it out of order if you have not fully caught up with the baseline novels. This story alone gives me a lot of hope for the sort of Dresden we might see in coming outings because it was effectively an old-school detective case file. It wasn’t exactly the best thing I have ever read but followed the case of someone down on their luck turning to Harry Dresden for help and him having to navigate the subtleties of the supernatural world for them. It makes me anxious for the release of the next proper novel because I think we are going to be entering a period of the sort of Dresden stories that I enjoy the most.

I have a number of holds on books that are not quite available yet, so I think I am going to roll into Heroic Hearts and keep with the Dresden theme for the moment. This anthology has another short story that is set after the events of Battle Ground, featuring the valiant fae Toot-Toot and Lacuna. Toot was one of the first characters you got introduced to in Storm Front, and he is still one of my favorites of the reoccurring cast. I fully expect this to largely be a comedic story because Toot has always at least somewhat served that role in Dresden. The little folk however have also shown that they can be mighty adversaries just due to the sheer number of them, so I expect a proper adventure as well. It should be a fun diversion until some of the more serious novels come off hold and become available.

I think more than anything I wish I had landed upon this pattern of interaction with books before now. I know I tend to be super into one thing for a period of time, but I am hoping that I can sustain this sort of thing because I am really enjoying myself.