The Virtually Certain Man Climbs A Head

[Steven]

Let’s see if I can add another dozen!

[Steven]

#49 - Rockford & Interurban Railway by Mike Schafer

Excellent overview of a long-gone line

The text is a bit stiff, as often happens with traction books, but the main issue is that the photos are often rather blurry and difficult to look at — which I don’t think is an issue of the vintage.

Enjoyed it, overall, as this was yet another Interurban/streetcar system I knew nothing about. Like so many others it’s story ended in the 1930s, a mistake we’re only now rectifying.

Via Kindle Unlimited

[Steven]

#50 - Help Is On the Way by Mindy Kaling

Kaling writes about the birth of her first child, and being talked into hiring a baby nurse to help her through the experience as a single mother, contrasting this with losing her mother just prior — her mother, a doctor, was to have helped her.

Kindle Unlimited

[Steven]

#51 - Heroes Reborn: America’s Mightiest Heroes by Jason Aaron & others
#52 - Heroes Reborn: America’s Mightiest Heroes Companion, Vol. 2 by divers hands
#53 - Heroes Reborn: America’s Mightiest Heroes Companion, Vol. 1 by divers hands

Once again Marvel recycles an event title, and with it an event — the world has abruptly changed. The Squadron Supreme are Earth’s champions, the Avengers don’t exist, Phil Coulson is President, and Mephisto is worshipped by all. Only one person realizes that things have changed — Blade, the semi-vampire Daywalker. These three books provide the main story and a variety of looks at this new world, as well as how it came about…and how it can be fixed.

It’s not awful, but it does feel like a rehash.

[Steven]

#54 - Batman: The World by divers hands

After the horrible opener by Azzarello and Bermejo (the art was okay, the writing was horrendous) I wasn’t expecting a lot from this anthology of worldwide takes on Batman. I was, though, very nicely surprised by a number of the stories — a number of straight-up actual detective takes, a charming story from Russia about a Batman-obsessed artist, a Spanish story about Bruce Wayne on a forced vacation, and a sneakily great Elseworlds tale from Japan. Some of the stories don’t quite make it — the German tale has a great Joker variant but the story falls flat, while the Chinese story tries to be cute but reads like a Culture Ministry-approved outing, making it nearly as dreadful as the Azzarello. The Brazilian story is flattened by the weight of its political agenda, sadly; I see the point, and favour it, but the story itself treads well worn ground.

Via DC Universe Infinite

Overall, though, this is well worth reading, and I’d like to see new volumes at intervals.

[Steven]

#55 - Cécile is Dead by Georges Simenon

Maigret is bedeviled by a young but dicey woman who is convinced someone is prowling her elderly aunt’s apartment at night. This time, though, she seems to have more on her mind. Before Maigret can see her, though, she leaves the police HQ. Arriving at his office, Maigret is soon swept into a murder case — that same aunt has been found dead. Soon after, Maigret grimly deduces that Cecile is also dead — hidden in the HQ.

From then on Maigret is driven to atone for what he sees as his great error…but his conclusion that there are two killers leads him on a twisting journey through the minds and hearts of many until he reaches the shocking truth.

One of the more forceful, darker of the Maigret stories, and one of the longest of the novels. Maigret here is a force of nature. Definitely a good read.

This was the 2015 Penguin translation.

Via the library.

[Steven]

#56 - The Midnight Watch by Tim Waggoner

A Matt Richter, Zombie P.I., story. Matt has to shamble into undead action when his half-vampire girlfriend Devona buys a business that’s hot an alarming history of dead (for the last time) owners. A pretty lightweight take set in Waggoner’s Nekropolis dimension.

Hoopla.

[Steven]

#57 - This Cleansing Fire by Joseph Nassisse

A prequel to THE TEMPLAR CHRONICLES with a modern team of Templar Knights battling supernatural forces — in this case, a nest of vampires in Boston. This audio version is full cast with music and effects, so it gets *extremely* noisy at times, though the narrator keeps evenly chugging on regardless.

Hoopla.

[Steven]

#58 - The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, adapted for BBC Radio

This is a difficult listen, sadly. It’s a yeoman attempt to adapt the source material, which does lend itself to radio, and there’s some excellent performers here, but it’s consistently wrecked by some of the performance choices and the electronic score from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (who I’ve loved for decades) who eschew music entirely (as well as any semblance of realistic sound design) and wallop the listener with shrieks, screeches, and warbles mixed far too high. It doesn’t help that the voice mix is muddy, either.

Via Hoopla.

[Steven]

#59 - Dogger, Forties, German Bight by Lee McAuley

I’ve lately become fascinated with the Shipping Forecast, delivered four times a day by the BBC — I’ve taken to falling asleep to compilations of it, in fact. Which brings me to this story, which hints at many things, at discoveries at Bletchley Park, at malign entities, at something out there in the dark, tracked by a phantom agency using agents in a radio chain around the sea areas, with the Shipping Forecast as the guide to…something. I’d like to read more, but the author sets the scene and stops.

Scribd.

[Steven]

#60 - British Diesel Locomotives of the 1950s and ‘60s by Greg Morse

Covers the stumbling move towards using diesel-electric locomotives on the British railway network, both prior to nationalization and immediately afterwards. There seems to have been great difficulty in designing locomotives that were adequate to the task…. An interesting read, but very much a summary overall.

Scribd.