Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard

Rating: 0.5/5
244 pages
2009
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Library book

Description: As the end of summer approaches and a long, hot Labor Day weekend looms, the life of lonely thirteen-year-old Henry Wheeler is irrevocably changed when he and his emotionally fragile mother show kindness to a stranger with a terrible secret. (from the back cover)

Three to Conquer, by Eric Frank Russell

Rating: 4/5
202 pages
1956
Publisher: Penguin
Source: Borrowed from family
(Note: Does not seem to currently be in print, at least in the US.)

Cover: I don't know what's up with the cover of the edition I read. The flowers don't have anything to do with the story, and it hardly sets the tone for the book.

Description: 'Wade Harper--Forger'. 

That was the cryptic inscription on his card. But it was lucky for the F.B.I. and the world that this tough, thick-set micro-instrument maker who first discovered the dying state trooper just off highway one April afternoon in 1980. For Harper possessed the uncanny telepathic power of 'hearing' thoughts which alone could track down the killers and crack a staggering interplanetary plot to grab world control through men's minds.

How he does it, his desperate fight to convince police and Pentagon of his own innocence and the Venusian threat, and the urgent America-wide manhunt that follows make a skillful scary blend of science and fiction at their best.

Dragonquest, by Anne McCaffery

Rating: 4.5/5
352 pages
1971
Publisher: Del Rey
Source: Kindle ebook

Description: Another Turn, and the deadly silver Threads began falling again. So the bold dragonriders took to the air once more and their magnificent flying dragons swirled and swooped, belching flames that destroyed the shimmering strands before they reach the ground.

But F'lar knew he had to find a better way to protect his beloved Pern,and he had to find it before the rebellious Oldtimers could breed anymore dissent... before his brother F'nor would be foolhardy enough to launch another suicide mission... and before those dratted fire-lizards could stir up any more trouble! (from Goodreads)

Dragonflight

Rating: 4/5
203 pages
1968
Publisher: Del Rey
Source: Kindle ebook

Description: On the beautiful planet Pern, colonized for centuries, Land Holders and Craftsmen have traditionally tithed food and supplies to the dragon weyrs to which they are bound. In times past, the mighty telepathic dragons and their riders were the only protection from the dreaded, life-threatening Thread.


But it has been over 400 years since the last Thread fall, and some people have come to doubt that the menace will every strike again. But F'lar, rider of Pern's greatest bronze dragon, has no such illusions. The Red Star is near; Thread will fall soon. (from Goodreads)

Concealed in Death, by J.D. Robb

Rating: 3.5/5
402 pages
2014
Publisher: Putnam
Source: Library book

Description: In a decrepit, long-empty New York building, Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband begins the demolition process by swinging a sledgehammer into a wall. When the dust clears, there are two skeletons wrapped in plastic behind it. He summons his wife immediately—and by the time she’s done with the crime scene, there are twelve murders to be solved. (From Goodreads)

A Feast For Crows, by George R.R. Martin

Rating:3.5/5
976 pages
2005
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Source: My Collection

Description: After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it's not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors. (from the back cover)

Review: This books greatest weakness isn't that its half a book, its that its this half. 

101 Places To Not See Before You Die, by Catherine Price

Rating: 3/5
235 pages
2010
Publisher: Harper Collins ebooks
Source: Library ebook

Description: From the Grover Cleveland Service Area to the Beijing Museum of Tap Water to, of course, Euro Disney, "101 Places Not to See Before You Die" brings you lively tales of the most ill-conceived museums, worst theme parks, and grossest Superfund sites that you'll ever have the pleasure of not visiting. Journalist Catherine Price travels the globe for stories of misadventure to which any seasoned traveler can relate--including guest entries from writers such as Nicholas Kristof, Mary Roach, Michael Pollan, Rebecca Solnit, and A. J. Jacobs--and along the way she discovers that the worst experiences are often the ones we'll never forget. (From Goodreads)

A Year At The Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey, by Kevin Murphy

 

Rating: 3/5
372 pages
2002
Publisher: It Books
Source: Library eBook

Description: Kevin Murphy, who played Tom Servo on Mystery Science Theater 3000, spent 2001 seeing a movie a day, in all types of different venues, circumstances, and countries.

Discount Armageddon, by Seanan McGuire

Rating: 5/5
344 pages
2012
Publisher: Daw
Source: Present

Description: The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and to protect humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. 
Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George.
To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city.... (from the back cover)

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, by Mary Roach

Rating: 4.5/5
327 pages
2013
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Source: Library book

Description: Science writer Mary Roach explores the human digestive system and gets answers to questions you probably never would have though to ask in the first place.

The Fishing Widow, by Amy K. Marshall

Rating: 3.5/5
460 pages
2013
Publisher: Alaskan Gothic Press
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Description: There’s an old saying that goes: The difference between a fairy tale and a fisherman’s tale is this… a fairy tale begins, “Once Upon A Time,” and a fisherman’s tale begins, “This Ain’t No Bullshit.” 

Supernatural terror stalks the crew of the purse seiner the F/V “The Case In Point” during the March 2010 Sitka Herring Sac Roe Fishery in Southeast Alaska. As the herring war intensifies, each boat is an island, and being alone can cost you everything. As the web spins from the depths, the past is not so distant; the lines between history and myth begin to blur. The forgotten horror surrounding the 1835 loss of the Nantucket whaler “The Covenant” threatens to overwhelm the present. One among the seven men aboard “The Case In Point” is unwittingly marked by a woman beautiful and cursed, who not only desperately needs his help, but needs, desperately, to tear out his heart and consume his crew. (from LibraryThing)

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
1954
5 discs
Source: Library
Narrator: Robertson Dean

Description: Robert Neville is the only survivor of a plague that has turned all of humanity into vampires.

The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers

Rating:4.5/5
Publisher: Tachyon
427 pages
1989
Source: My collection

Description: When Michael Crawford discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed, he is forced to flee not only to prove his innocence, but to avoid the deadly embrace of a vampire who has claimed him as her true bridegroom. Joining forces with Byron, Keats, and Shelley in a desperate journey that crisscrosses Europe, Crawford desperately seeks his freedom from this vengeful lover who haunts his dreams and will not rest until she destroys all that he cherishes. (from Goodreads.)

Feersum Endjinn, by Iain M. Banks

US Cover

UK Cover

Rating: 3/5
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
311 pages
1994
Source: My collection

The Cover: While neither of these covers seems to be the current cover art, they're roughly from the same period. I'm wondering what the American publisher was thinking. That art is just so bland. (Plus it has nothing to do with the content.)

Description: Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time...

Chief Scientist Gadfium to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones...

And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt...

And everything is about to change...

For this is the time of the Encroachment and, while the sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of the Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisors know it, yet still they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery.

The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures. (From the back of the UK edition.)

Last Days, by Adam Nevill

Rating:1/5
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
531 pages
2013
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers


Description: Last Days by Adam Nevill is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult—with creepy consequences 

When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered. The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle’s brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals.  The shoot’s locations take him to the cult’s first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven’t broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him? (From the back cover.)


Review: What a difference the ending of a book can make.

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Rating: 4.5/5
Publisher: Daw Books
662 pages
2007
Source: Library

Description: The tale of Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as "quothe") from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But The Name of the Wind is so much more-for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's legend. (Slightly edited bit from the end of the book jacket description.)

Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe, by William Rosen

Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Viking
367 pages
2007
Source: Library book

Description: In the middle of the sixth century, the world's smallest organism collided with the world's mightiest power. Twenty-five million corpses later, the Roman Empire, under her last great emperor Justinian, was decimated. Before Yersina pestis, the bacterium that carries bubonic plague, was through, both Rome and Persia were easy targets for the armies of Muhammad on their conquering march out of Arabia. In it's wake, the plague~history's first pandemic~marked the end of a multinational Mediterranean imperium and the birth of the European  nation-states... the transition from late antiquity to the medieval world. (Copied from the book jacket.)


Review: I found this book to be fascinating, but a little disappointing.

Unfinished books of 2012

I read a lot of books, but I don't finish everything. They aren't all bad books, some just don't click with me and I decide to move on. Sometimes I still have thoughts on them.

Sweet Valley Confidential, by Francine Pascal

Source: Borrowed from library
Rating: 0.5/5
2011
Reason for reading: I was looking for a fun, cheesy read after finishing House of Leaves and Battle Royale back-to-back.

Description: Hooking up with your twin's long time boyfriend causes family rifts. Who knew?


I read the Sweet Valley High series growing up and I was expecting more of the same. Maybe, if I took down the nostalgia filters, I got more of the same. My expected fun, cheesy entertainment turned out to be moldy Limburger.

After about 100 pages, what finally got me to give up was the ice.

I don't drink, and I don't hang out in bars or clubs, yet I was thrown out of the story when someone requested ice in their white wine and the person offering the drink didn't  find this strange. After I was thrown out of the story again when a bartender asked if someone wanted a dirty martini, "on the rocks," I didn't go back.

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith

Source: Borrowed from library
Rating: N/A
2000
Reason for reading: A random number generator assigned me this book for a group reading project.

Description: Middle-aged man hooks up with teenager, and it actually doesn't come off as creepy. Then we follow his family and the family of his good friend.


This is not a bad book, it just didn't work for me.

The main reason it didn't work for me was, whenever Archie came on the page, Beck's "Loser" started running through my head, and I really hate that song.
 

 Skarlet, by Thomas Emson

Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers program
Rating: 2/5
2012
Reason for reading: I liked The Passage and The Strain.

Description: Drug dealer passes out drug that turns people into vampires. They run amok in London. 

This was an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC), so maybe the "queasy bladder" and the "sagging bladder" will be gone by the finished version. But the unlikable heroes, the plot holes, and the villains who where creepy, but in the wrong way for a horror book, will probably all make it.

The two stars is probably generous, but it might have redeemed itself in the final third of the book.