Book #52 of 2015: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker I wasn’t sold at first, but I ended up really liking this story about two mythical beings in nineteenth-century New York. It definitely got better as it went along – the beginning is brimming with characters that don’t have a clear relation to …
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Book #45 of 2015: Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson This sci-fi novella is unfortunately the most disappointing thing I’ve ever read from Brandon Sanderson. (I guess something had to be…) It has some neat ideas, but for the most part they’re woefully unexplored, and the resolution just doesn’t hit the logical or emotional beats that …
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Book #42 of 2015: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #4) I’ve yet to be really blown away by this series, and it’s getting harder to ignore their awful gender politics. Count Olaf’s (nonbinary?) lackey who looks like neither a man nor a woman is regularly treated as a grotesque …
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Book #41 of 2015: Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan I don’t know how I feel about this one. I did learn a lot, and Michael Jackson had a very interesting life, but this narrative is a really disjointed telling of it. It keeps hopping around in time …
Book #35 of 2015: Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld I really love this novel, which is the first thing I’ve ever read from author Scott Westerfeld. It utilizes a cool narrative structure with two parallel stories told in alternating chapters, each of which has a pretty awesome female protagonist. One is a first-time Young Adult novelist, …
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Book #31 of 2015: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror by Dina Temple-Raston This was a fascinating piece of local and national history that I’d had no idea about before stumbling across this book in the library. Basically, the Lackawanna Six were a small group of …
Book #30 of 2015: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King This short book reminds me somewhat of the author’s earlier From a Buick 8 with its lack of resolution at the end, but I think that aspect is handled a lot better here. Although we don’t really get any answers about the cold case of …
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Book #29 of 2015: Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen I know Carl Hiaasen is supposed to be this great comedy writer, and his stuff is mostly set in my home state of Florida, so I should be predisposed to like — or at least relate to — the jokes. But I really didn’t enjoy any …
Book Review: Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #2) This Stormlight Archive sequel is much better and more eventful than the first one, which could seem like just a massive prologue in a lot of ways. (The Way of Kings does have great writing, worldbuilding, and character work, but so very little …
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Book #48 of 2011: The Bro Code by Barney Stinson with Matt Kuhn Eh, not recommended. This was a last-minute Christmas gift from my dad after he found out I’d started watching How I Met Your Mother. And it’s funny for what it is, which is a list of amusing life tips (mostly of the …
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