David's two books a week.

[David]

I read mainly within Speculative Fiction. I do also read a fair bit of mystery.
Here's are the books I've read/finished so far this year. I'll post as I add more.

1/ Can Such Things Be? collected short stories by Ambrose Bierce.
2/ The House on the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
3/ The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger.
4/ Wolf in Sheep's Clothing by Charlie Adhara
5/ The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks by Josh Lanyon
6/ Driving Ambition by Fiona Moore
7/ Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshana Chokshi (started in 2020 finished in 2021)
8/ Tao te Ching attributed to Lao-Tze

[David]

I finished Station 11 last night.

Quick review:
Far too literary for my tastes.
Like Dr. Zhivago, the book takes place against a fascinating background - leading into a Global Pandemic to twenty years later.

But the focus of the book isn't Man vs World (Disease), Man vs Man (Death Cult), or even Man vs Self (Journeys of Transformation). The focus is on the Inner Life of characters who never seem to feel anything more than vague regrets and disappointment.

I'm the type of Speculative Fiction fan who is most interested in world building - how does the external work? After that I'm interested in relationships. That's why, even though I liked the plot, the time jumping, and the multiple points of view; the writing left me disinterested.

[David]

Review Can Such Things Be.

A collection of Ambrose Bierce. I recommend reading a best of Ambrose Bierce other than this hodgepodge. You'll get the stories that are good without the stories that are dreadful.

[David]

The House on the Cerulean Sea.

The elements of this book: the main character is a cog in the wheel of a dystopian bureaucracy dealing with an orphanage where the young Anti-Christ is living shouldn't have ended up this charming.

It's a delightful book about how someone can invite wonder into their life

[David]

The Heroine's Journey.

A fascinating set of essays putting forth an argument for an underlying myth different from the Hero's Journey. This is what I'd call better than perfect - instead of merely convincing me; it started me thinking about the way stories are told.

ie. Power in the Hero's Journey comes from the individual. Power in the Heroine's Journey comes from the collective. Which is why posters from the Wonder Woman movie show her isolated while poster from Harry Potter show him standing together with his friends.

[David]

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.

One of the perpetual arguments about m/m romance is about the authenticity of (straight) women writing fetishized versions of men in love with men.

This book is a proof text that women can write books about gay men that don't feel so horribly false. I had to look up the author to find out her gender.

The mystery is not as good as in her previous books with these characters. But the relationship between the two main characters is strong and believable. They are functioning people whose flaws and strengths feel real.

I recommend this book and anticipate the next in the series.

[David]

The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks.

A solid gay mystery with elements of a haunted house story. A nice cosy mystery with a plausible characters.

[David]

Driving Ambition

Glorious world building that manages to make a truly weird premise believable.

Think of this as a prequel to Cars written by someone with a brain. The main character is a person with a techno-telepathic link to intelligent motor vehicles who gets caught up in a murder mystery.

For so long I've been wanting a good story where AIs are neither humanoid nor disembodied. I highly recommend this story.

[David]

Aru Shah and the End of Time.

This is another book where I have to say I'm not the audience. It's a YA for Hindu girls.

Unlike the Percy Jackson books, I have no familiarity with the underlying mythos or society. From what I can understand it is as well written and well plotted. My inability to enjoy this is purely due to ignorance on my part.

[David]

Tao Te Ching

It's not meaningful to try to rate this classic of Chinese art/philosophy. It is what it is.

I'm glad I read it and I'll likely return to it over and over again.

[David]

Art of Violence.

Mystery/Suspense.

A mentally ill murderer has been released after becoming an accomplished artist. But he's been having blackouts and more girls are dying. He hires a PI to find the evidence of his guilt so he can return to jail.

The two most interesting and endearing characters in the story are the mentally ill painter and the police officer who isn't convinced he is guilty. The depiction of mental illness strongly resembles what I've seen in real life rather than the way mental illness is usually portrayed in fiction - especially murder mysteries.

It's not quite a cosy and not quite a film noir. I would recommend this book to fans of mysteries.

[David]

Across the Green Grass Fields

Before you can deconstruct Fairy Tales you have to understand how they work. While the books in this series tend to be short, they are rich in themes and imagination.

[David]

Cry Wolf by Charlie Adhara.

I also read this one in a day. I preferred the earlier books in this series.

(view spoiler)[
One of the things that happens in fantasy/science faction that many fans love, but not me, is the movement toward the main character becoming over powered.

I like the episodic mysteries. I like progress in the relationship between Cooper and Oliver. In previous books there was more lot dealing with Cooper's injury leading to a permanent disability.

And there was some good snarkiness in the early part of the book about Coopers flaws. He makes the observation that a single afternoon isn't enough to put him off being a parent forever - but it had been a long afternoon. His father tells an anecdote on how his refusal to show vulnerability as a child meant that he won't let anybody can help him when he's hurt. Which pulls in a lot as Cooper is moving toward getting married.

The plots of Cooper's ex and Oliver's ex both showing up and getting involved in the mystery was good as far as it went. I liked (as plot) the very dysfunctional relationship with Cooper's ex.

But the developing plot of Cooper as The Moon. AKA Werewolf Messiah fills me with trepidation. It is not quite jumping the shark, yet. But the sign that the stories moving away from husband's solving murder mysteries to Human (White) Saviour tropes is worrying. Cooper deciding to make Eli a member of his pack, without discussing the ramifications with Oliver, shouldn't be OK. The suggestion that Cooper magically called Oliver's wolf while he was drugged, is a red flag.

I stopped watching Supernatural after the show put a turnstyle on the Afterlife. I hope these books avoid making Cooper some sort of Magic Werewolf Messiah. (hide spoiler)]

[David]

I'd forgotten to keep up to date on this. Several books to add.

The Magic of Oz
There are reasons why the general public has forgotten that there were several sequels to The Wizard of OZ . There's very little plot here; getting birthday presents for Ozma and a half-baked plot to conquer Oz. The big problem is that we get told that someone is evil just because while the society as a whole seems very unfair.

[David]

Hell House
A good scary haunted house novel that bridges between golden age horror and modern horror. Well worth reading on it's own terms.

It is incidently similar to The Haunting of Hill House, since they were both published in the same decade and reflecting on the pre-WWII 'psychic investigators in a haunted house'. It most reminds me of a less coy The Great God Pan by Arthur Machan.

[David]

Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey
Check, Please!, Book 2: Sticks & Scones

Graphic novels that started off as a webcomic. This is a coming-of-age story set in a college hockey team over four years of college.
The form covers the same level of information as two short novels.

One of my favourite stories about a gay character. It's my go-to example of how to write a character who is neither defined by his sexuality (he has a personality!) nor a Straightest-Gay-Man possible. The anti-stereotypes can be even more harmful than the stereotypes if they are presented as good-gays-act-like-straights.

[David]

Chaos Station
I found this m/m Space Opera book unsatisfactory. The personal interaction is fine and the world building is fine. There's just so much that has been left unanswered to have this feel like a book complete in and of itself.

[David]

The Engineer
This book is a magic Steampunk m/m with the same problem as Chaos Station . Unless my copy ....
Relooking at it, I hadn't realized that it was 0.5 story as opposed to The Gangster which is the full story.

[David]

A Ferry of Bones & Gold
Now this one I loved. Again, it's an m/m romance with a God's infested paranormal romance. The main couple are each over-powered yet damaged. The incidental characters where interesting in their own right. While there is a long term set of problems for a series the plot of the story had a satisfying conclusion.
I have bought what has been published of the rest of the series.

[David]

Vixen Ecology
This is a short story that requires knowledge of the rest of the series. It's a nice addition to the series.
I included it as a book for the reading challenge by also rereading The Enforcer Enigma .
I highly recommend the series.

[David]

The Darcy Boys and the Case of the Secret Skulls
This sounded like a nice fluffy piece I would have enjoyed - a gay parody of Boy Detective Stories - I was disappointed.
I have a fuller review elsewhere. It's too shallow a parody for my tastes.

[David]

Calculated Risks
Not m/m. I do read other stuff.
I enjoy the Incrypted Series a lot. This book is part two of a story that I think you need to have read part one.
This story was very good with elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction. The main character spends a lot of time questioning some of her basic assumptions on who is a monster and who is a victim.

[David]

All Souls Near & Nigh
The sequel to Ferry of Bones and Gold
I enjoyed this book even more than the first one. (I have a strong preference to media res over origin stories.)
The world building is getting more complex. Starting a relationship is a lot easier than the work toward maintaining a relationship. Actions, and inactions, have consequences.
And there's a teenage dragon who eats too much. What's not to love? <3.

[David]

The Mermaid Murders

An m/m murder mystery, more suspense/police procedural.

A lot of these types of stories the mystery is the tacked-on afterthought not the m/m romance. I enjoyed the mystery a lot. I think the story would have been better without the m/m. The sudden romance feels out of character. I would have liked to have seen more of the main character's background in the visual arts play a role in his detection.
The POV puts this story higher than otherwise. I like the viewpoint of the inexperienced but intelligent younger agent who is unreliable but aware of their biases.

[David]

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
The part where the author is talking about how we can observe animals, how we can devise meaningful experiments on non-human thought, and the biases we have to get past to understand the specificity of animals as neither machines nor pretend humans, is very interesting.
The part where he's gossiping about other scientists and making polemical statements bored me.
Disclosure: Were my math skills better - let's be honest, my math skills are dismal - this is the area of biology I was wanted to study. I had started planning a Master's thesis on wolf re-introduction to Yellowstone Park where I would have studied the social dynamics on new pack formation. I love the study of evolutionary behavior although I stay away from most theories of mind.

[David]

I dropped all social media back in April.

I did manage to read my goal of 104 books for the year. I'll try being social again in 2022.

[Heather]

Do you feel like you've missed a lot by dropping all social media? I like hearing how some of my high school frieds are doing, but sometimes I don't relies how much time goes by looking at my phone.