Werner Lind's reviews > Likes and Comments

My friend Andrew Seddon has a story included in the anthology The Haunted Train: Creepy Tales from the Railways: Gothic Ghost and Horror Stories, edited by Rayne Hall, but I bought a copy, rather than getting one as a review copy. My three-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences by Mark Twain is a roughly 16-page essay rather than a book; but I read it by itself (in vol. 22 of the 1899 edition of the author's collected works by Harper and Brothers, which Twain authorized during his lifetime), as background reading for my 2012 reread of The Last of the Mohicans. My retrospective one-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Recently reviewing Usula K. Le Guin's novel Planet of Exile made me aware that, of all the books by Le Guin that I've personally read, The Word for World Is Forest was now the only remaining one I hadn't yet reviewed. I've now done so, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . This wasn't the one I enjoyed the most --it's not an enjoyable book, as such-- but it's the only one of her books that's gotten five stars from me.

Wilkie Collins' classic Victorian proto-mystery novel The Moonstone is one that I regarded as a must-read literally for decades. So my recent read of it was a long time coming, and didn't disappoint me! My four-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Kim Oh, the pint-sized but plucky Korean-American series protagonist created by veteran author K.W. Jeter, is one of my favorite action heroines; so it's not surprising that I'm gradually working my way through the series. The installment that I've just finished is Real Dangerous Place; and my four-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Here's my five-star review of Mexican Gothic by a new-to-me author, Silvia Moreno-Garcia: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . This was a common read in another group, and I blazed through it in nine days, doubling up my reading sessions. That was partly because it's a public library book with a relatively short due date, but mostly because I didn't want to put it down once I got fairly started!

Here's my (unrated) review of The Poems of John Milton: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . As I explain in the review, I've only read parts of Paradise Lost, not the whole thing. But I have read all the rest of Milton's poetic corpus, though the read was spread over some 56 years and was mostly not in this particular collection. I do think that what I share about what I did read may have some value for some other readers.

Although I'm a fan of K. W. Jeter's Kim Oh series, I didn't rate the fourth installment, Real Dangerous Fun, as highly as I did the preceding ones. My review, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... , explains why.

The Avenging Angels series is actually written by a number of different authors invited by the publisher, all of whom use the same pen name, A.W. Hart. As I explain in my review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) of the second installment, Avenging Angels: Sinners' Gold, there are legitimate reasons for both practices. Barb and I have read two of these Westerns, and really liked both of them.

Last year, a group read (in another group) inspired me to resolve to research the whole phenomenon of so-called "elite" culture in the modern Western world. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America by Lawrence W. Levine was my first step in that study, and my review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Barb and I continued our read of the Barks and Beans Cafe' "cozy" mystery series, by Heather Day Gilbert (whom I've often mentioned here!), with the second installment, Iced Over. (As I explain in my review, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... , the four-star rating is Barb's, and would have been four 1/2 if Goodreads allowed for that.) I'd recommend this series to all fans of this type of mystery, especially those who love dogs!

Back in 1989, I'd read the pioneering partial collection of Louisa May Alcott's short fiction, Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott and liked it; but I'd forgotten just how good these character-driven page turners really are! Following a reread, my five-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Alcott was a much more gifted and versatile writer than most people realize.

Here's the link to my review of Fair Trade by Heather Day Gilbert, the third book in the author's Barks and Beans Cafe' Mystery series; https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . For Barb and me, this completes our reading of all the books in the series that the Bluefield Univ. library has; but there are currently eight books in the series altogether, plus one that's not yet in the Goodreads database.

Although I've previously read and greatly liked several books by G.K. Chesterton, his themed short story collection The Club of Queer Trades wasn't one I ever saw as a must-read. I only read it because it was picked as an annual group read in one of my groups. Even so, I liked it well enough to give it three stars. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

The Covert Guardian: The Unsanctioned Guardians #1 by Liane Zane is the opener for a projected prequel trilogy for her Eliuod Legacy series. (I classified the latter as supernatural fiction, but this book as action-adventure/espionage fiction.) I was kindly gifted by the author with a paperback ARC, and my four-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

If you assumed that Assassin's Vow: An Espionage Thriller Novella by David Bruns and J.R. Olson is pretty straightforward action-oriented pulp fiction, with no particular aspirations to be Great Literature, you'd be correct. But it's a very well-written work of its type, and definitely recommended for genre fans. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Girls of Silver Spur Ranch by Grace MacGowan Cooke and Anne McQueen (1913) is a book I originally read as a pre-teen kid. I was privileged enough to find a copy a few years ago in a thrift store, and it's the latest book Barb and I read together. (We both liked it!) My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . (Note that this is general fiction, not an action-oriented Western!)

Despite her prominence as an evangelical Christian novelist, until this summer I'd never read anything by Francine Rivers, though I'd wanted to for a long time. Last month, my wife and I began a read of Redeeming Love. She bailed on it early on, because of the unremittingly bleak Prologue; but I persisted, and here's my five-star review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

There was a long time in my reading life, starting as a kid and extending into my late middle years when I first joined Goodreads, when I thought I didn't like Westerns. Happily, I know better now, and have enjoyed some good ones in more recent years. Here's my five-star review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... of the Western story collection Shadow of the Lariat: A Treasury of the Frontier.

My reading in medieval literature over the years has been scanty, so I was glad to bolster it by completing a read of The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology by Snorri Sturluson. (It also adds a country, Iceland, to my personal "Read Foreign Authors" challenge!) Here's the link to my three-star review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Continuing our progress through the Barks and Beans Cafe' cozy mystery series by Heather Day Gilbert, Barb and I have finished the fifth installment, Spilled Milk. My four-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Now, for us, it'll be on to the sixth book, Trouble Brewing!

Here's the link to my five-star review of To Calm a Storm, the second book of the Tavland Vikings historical fiction duology by Heather Day Gilbert and Jen Cudmore: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . If anyone's interested, this link: https://www.goodreads.com/videos/2018... is to a video of co-author Gilbert reading an excerpt from the book.

Last night, I discovered that I'd never posted links in this group to my reviews of Gideon's Torch by Charles W. Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn (here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) or of The President by Parker Hudson (here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). So I've now remedied that! These are both politically-themed novels, written in the 90s by evangelical Christian authors.

I don't read many plays (and haven't seen that many performed, either); but I have seen, and think very highly of, the 1988 movie production of the play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, starring Charlton Heston. My reading of the original play was partly motivated by a desire to see how closely the movie follows it (and the answer is, very closely!); but even if you've seen it performed in some venue, I definitely recommend reading the play.

My library colleague Paula recommended a favorite book of hers, The Ghosts by Antonia Barber, to me some time ago; so I was delighted when a common read in another group gave me a good opportunity to work it into my reading schedule. My four-star review is review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . I recommend it for fans of time travel or supernatural fiction.

I've also just discovered that when I meant to link to my review of A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, I did everything except actually post the link. Mea culpa! Here it is: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

I've just discovered that I never linked here to my review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), posted back in 2008, of Walking with the Celtic Saints: A Devotional by Andrew M. Seddon and Neil and Gerlinde Kennedy-Jones. This is the only devotional book I've ever read, since I don't use that type of literature in my own devotional life; but this one was a gift from one of the authors, my friend Andrew.

My wife and I are following the Barks and Beans mystery series by Goodreads author Heather Day Gilbert; but the latest release in the series, House Blend, is a novella outside the regular series numbering, and intended as a sort of appetizer for the longer books. I read it in electronic format earlier this year, as an ARC from the author (so it's not one Barb and I read together); but it couldn't be entered into the Goodreads database until it was published. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Where historical fiction is concerned, the medieval period is one of my favorite settings; and I have a particular soft spot for Robin Hood retellings, having read one as one of the very first independent reads I can remember. So I'm definitely part of the target audience for Robert of Wakefield: Robin Hood's Father by my Goodreads friend G.K. Werner. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

My latest review, of the classic book-length (albeit a short book!) poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . I'd expected to like it better than his The Song of Hiawatha, which I'd read in 2021 and only rated as okay; but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I actually did like it.

In Cry, The Beloved Country, South African writer Alan Paton produced a major contribution to world literature, a book searingly exploring the social injustices of a particular time and place, but in a way that's universally relevant in any time and place. I've long wanted to read it, and now I finally have. My five-star is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

As I have opportunity, between writing reviews of newly-read books, I try to take time to review some of the many book I read pre-Goodreads, provided that I remember them well enough to do them reasonable justice. One nonfiction book that's well deserving of a review is Introduction to the New Testament by Everett F. Harrison, one that I read as a young man fairly new to serious Bible study, and learned from immensely. Here's my five-star review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

Barb and I have now finished the fifth book (and the fifth book of it that we've read together) of the Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series by Heather Day Gilbert, Trouble Brewing. (I've often referred to this series before on this thread.) While we had more of a credibility problem with this one than with other books in the series, we still liked it. My review is at this link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Despite its title and author, The Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker is not vampire fiction. When I started to read it as a kid, I didn't know that; but by the time I went back to finish it this fall, I had picked up that fact from secondary sources, so didn't go into it this time with that expectation. I did expect (or hope) that it would be a better read than it was. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Rather than reading the series opener and then waiting years to pursue the next sequel (as I've been guilty of more times than I'd like) I'm trying to follow up with my Goodreads friend G. K. Werner's The Clerk of Copmanhurst's Tales series in a more timely fashion! So, here's my review of the second installment of this Robin Hood retelling, Robin of Locksley: Tales of Robin and Marian: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

As I explain in my review of The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin (here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), I don't usually review individual short stories. However, I did read this 19th-century Russian classic as a stand-alone, both in my initial read some 20 years ago and in my reread this weekend. (I couldn't review it properly without a reread, having largely forgotten the plot.)

Here's a four-star review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) of another short story, though in this case an e-story that I read just last night, Bloody Justice: A Short Story by J.M. Wight. As I explain in my review "J. M. Wight" is a pen name used by Goodreads author Joe Vasicek. This tale is (very violent) action-oriented SF set in far-future outer space.

The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett was a five-star read for me, and by my standards a fairly quick one (I blazed through the 186 p. "swords-and-planets" SF novel in about 12 days, which means around six hours of actual reading). My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Although I originally meant to read it as a stand-alone, I'm now happily committed to reading the whole Book of Skaith trilogy!

The Secret of the Old Clock (1930) by Carolyn Keene, --which was actually a house pen name for various authors, in this case for Mildred Wirt Benson-- was the book that launched the long-running Nancy Drew series. As I explain in my review, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... , I recently read this for the first time as an adult, which may help to explain my relatively low rating compared to my Goodreads friends who've reviewed it.

Since December of 2021, during the Christmas seasons, I've been intermittently dipping into the Fireside Book of Christmas Stories (1945) for seasonal reading. I finished the book this year, and my three-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . That's an overall rating; a few stories I didn't get into, but most of the others are good, or even outstandingly good.

At the conclusion of every year from 2014 (when Goodreads inaugurated this feature) on, I've always enjoyed doing an annual retrospective and summing up of my year of reading. So here's my review of 2023 on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Here's an additional statistic that's not in the review --out of 32 books that have individual (or paired) authors, a majority (18) were written by women. For me, it's usually been the opposite.

Here, finally (and only ten years late! :-) ) is my review of 2013 on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . As I explain in the review, until very recently, I didn't know that Goodreads had introduced its "20__ on Goodreads" feature in that year; I'd thought 2014 on Goodreads was the first. That gave me the chance to write this review as a 10-year retrospective look into the past, a perspective which I actually found kind of fun!

At this time last year, even though my own country borders on Mexico, I'd never read a book set there, nor one written by an author who came from there. Now, I've read two books that fall under both of those descriptions, and both have been five-star reads for me! The most recent one is The Hacienda by debut author Isabel Cañas, a supernatural Gothic tale set in 1823. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

As I explain in my four-star review (here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), I first encountered the occult detective heroine Sheila Crerar, created back in 1920 by Ella M. Scrymsour, through the story "The Werewolf of Rannoch," read in an anthology. I've now read the modern collection of all six of the stories, The Adventures of Shiela Crerar, Psychic Detective, and am glad to have finally done so!

My first nonfiction read of the year (if you classify traditional folk and fairy tales as "nonfiction," which I do, being a librarian :-) ) is Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, retold by 20th-century Irish novelist, poet and folklorist James Stephens, a new-to-me writer. My solid three-star review (which on Goodreads' scale means that I liked the book) is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

The stand-alone fantasy novel Through the Ice (1989) is, as I explain in my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... , an unusual posthumous collaboration between best-selling genre author Piers Anthony and Robert Kornwise, who was tragically killed by a car accident in 1987, at the age of 16. Barb and I have now read the book together twice, and my appreciation of it grew on the second read.

A short story I wrote is included in the newly-published anthology of wolf-friendly fiction Wolf Wanderings, ed. by my friend Andrew M. Seddon; but my rating and review (here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) only refers to the other content. (All profits from the sale of this collection go to reputable wolf conservation organizations and sanctuaries.)

I've been privileged to get review copies of all of the books by my friend Liane Zane, both of her supernatural fiction/romance Elioud Legacy trilogy and of its action/adventure prequel trilogy-in-progress, The Unsanctioned Guardians. The book I've just finished, The Harlequin Protocol, is the second installment in the latter. My five-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... of Dr. Andrew's Curious and Quirky Compendium: Hints, Helps, Perils, Pitfalls, Constructive Comments and (Hopefully) Awesome Advice for Aspiring Authors, by my friend Andrew M. Seddon.

The collection Ranger's First Call: More Short Stories & Memories of German Shepherds by Andrew M. Seddon is really a sequel or companion volume to his earlier Bonds of Affection: Short Stories and Memories of German Shepherds. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Although I'm a science fiction fan, my tastes don't really run to the genre's "hard" strand, so I've never particularly sought out the work of Robert A. Heinlein. I just finished reading his Hugo Award-winning novel Starship Troopers only because my oldest grandson gave me a copy last Christmas; but it turned out that I appreciated it more than I'd expected to. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Since Barb and I are following the Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series by Heather Day Gilbert, I've posted reviews of several of these books already. My review of the latest one we've read, Cold Drip, is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .