Books I've Read

Santa Barbara P.I. Kate Blanchard investigates suspicious goings on involving a rich ranch owner and her family.

Lawyer Wyatt Matthews gets tired of defending corporate creeps, sabaticals to the public defender's office and defends a teen accused of serial murders. Pretty good.

A teen girl disappears and is found murdered. Good story.

A boy named Roy dreams of going to Annapolis. Good story. Not like his other books.

Augustus McKnight quits his job to be a day trader, his wife gets murdered, and he finds out lots of stuff about her he didn't know.

Mace Maclain finds political deceit and terrorism when he is assigned the job of finding investors for an investment fund.

Jackie joins the swim team, kisses a girl, has bra practice with a chair, and finally writes something.

A silver dragon and a brownie set out to find the mythical Rim Of Heaven where dragons can live in peace. Nice story!

Meggie's father can bring characters to life from books. Mostly bad characters, it seems!

A boy goes through a mirror to a sort of steam punk/fairy land world, I think to find his missing father. I keep reading the title as "Feckless", I am the LOLZ

Two young brothers are hiding out in Venice from their aunt who wants to separate them so she can adopt the younger one. Pretty good story, and a map is always a plus. Would have been nice to know there was a glossary at end...

Non-fiction. Story of "Boy Fussell" in WW II. Very good, very thought provoking, uses a lot of big words, though. Funny, sad, scary...hey, it's war!

Edited by Diana Gabaldon. Series editor John Joseph Adams. Twenty short stories, some I liked, some I didn't.

Contents:

1. Life Sentence by Matthew Baker -- This one was.. interesting.
2. Another Avatar by S.P. Somtow -- Don't remember this one, probably didn't care for it.
3. Between the Dark and the Dark by Deji Bryce Olukotun -- I don't remember this one.
4. Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters by Kelly Barnhill -- I liked this one, it was OK.
5. Bullet Point by Elizabeth Bear -- I enjoyed this story.
6. The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra's Diary) by Gwendolyn Kiste -- I didn't like this one.
7. The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim -- Didn't like this one much.
8. Shape-ups at Delilah's by Rion Amilcar Scott -- "Magical female barbers" someone said. Well, it was different.
9. The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias S. Buckell -- OK, it was OK.
10. The Bookstore at the End of America by Charlie Jane Anders* -- Bookstores/libraries, they are (almost) always good. This one was, felt like it left me hanging, though.
11. Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen -- Never see a story done as a bibliography. Points for that!
12. The Freedom of the Shifting Sea by Jaymee Goh* -- Today I learned about Bobbit Worms. At least, fantasy ones.
13. Sacrid's Pod by Adam-Troy Castro* -- Space prison,... OK.
14. Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan by Christopher Caldwell -- I don't remember this one. Yes I do, gay sex on a whaling ship. Surprisingly OK.
15. Thoughts and Prayers by Ken Liu -- I didn't care for this one.
16. The Time Invariance of Snow by E. Lily Yu -- I REALLY didn't care for this one, and I read Anderson's fairy tales when I was a kid.
17. The Robots of Eden by Amil Menon -- I don't remember this one.
18. Erase, Erase, Erase by Elizabeth Bear -- This one left me not caring for it.
19. A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy by Rebecca Roanhorse -- I've read two books by this author that I liked.
20. Up From Slavery by Victor LaValle --I don't know, it was interesting, I guess.

In an alternative time line it seems hippopotamuses have been introduced to the Mississippi river region to serve as a food source. Well, Houndstooth has a agreement with the Government to rid the area of feral hippos. They think he is going to trap them. No, his plan involves dynamite. Also, revenge.

River Of Teeth #2. What's left of the gang is still separated from the last book, plus a baby. I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden the story is over and everyone has reconnected. I think everyone (well, everyone important) is still alive, too! What a hippo nightmare!

River of Teeth #0.5. Well, THAT was much shorter than I expected. What, sixteen pages? Eighteen? I forget. This one is about Ruby the hippo.

Shadow gets out of prison, meets a bunch of crabby gods who have ended up in America, where they aren't doing so well. A much better book then that sentence would suggest! Good stuff.

Fat Charlie discovers a few interesting things about his estranged father when he attends dad's funeral. Raised some self-examinations on my part about father-son relationships, karaoke. Read the Thorndike Press Large Print edition.

A British girl having a boring summer finds a quite a bit of excitement going through a bricked-up door.

Collection of short stories and poems. I especially liked the Sherlock Holmes story.