mahsdad's (Jeff) 2025 Thread - Q2

Welcome to 2025 Q2 and my little corner of the world



Hi, I'm Jeff. I live in San Pedro California. Moved out from Pittsburgh in 1989. I'm an avid reader. My wife might say I'm bordering on the obsessive. But then, I think that could apply to a lot of us in this group. I also enjoy photography, movies, hiking and playing games and hanging out with my family. Book-wise, I have a pretty eclectic taste in what I read and I hope to give you not so much reviews but my impressions about what I read.

What you will find here is mostly my rambling thoughts, a whole mess of lists I'm keeping track of, my Wishlist and TBR pile temptations and a smattering of my photography. I don't really make a plan for what I'm going to read thru out the year. Its mostly what strikes my fancy from the TBR piles.

Past 75 Threads :
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2017 2018 2019 2020
2021 2022 2023 2024

Come in and sit a spell.

2025 Statistics - Q2

🎧 - Audio
ER - Early Review
GN - Graphic Novel
K - Kindle


June
43. You Like it Darker by Stephen King 🎧 :
42. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green :
41. The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (K) :
40. Run by Blake Crouch 🎧 :
39. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk 🎧 :
38. White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 🎧 :

Favorite : Everything is Tuberculosis


May
37. Time and Again by Jack Finney 🎧 :
36. The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai (K) :
35. The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
34. Faithful Executioner by Joel Harrington 🎧 :
33. The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson 🎧 :
32. After World by Debbie Urbanski 🎧 :
31. Felony Juggler by Penn Jillette (ER) :

Favorite : The Barn


April
30. Ringworld by Larry Niven 🎧 :
29. Stoner by John Williams :
28. Trap Line by Timothy Zahn (K) :
27. Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown 🎧 :
26. Behold the Ape by James Morrow (K) :
25. Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein 🎧 :
24. The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies :
23. Old Man's War by John Scalzi 🎧 :
22. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates 🎧 :
21. Earth by David Brin (K) :

Favorite : Stoner

2025 Statistics - Q1

🎧 - Audio
ER - Early Review
GN - Graphic Novel
K - Kindle


March
20. Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman 🎧 :
19. Radium Girls by Kate Moore 🎧 :
18. America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien 🎧 :
17. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson :
16. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 🎧 :

Favorite : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand


February
15. Replay by Ken Grimwood 🎧 :
14. Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery :
13. Dead du Jour by Kathy Reichs 🎧 :
12. Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black :
11. Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson :
10. A Model World by Michael Chabon :

Favorite : Written in Bone


January
9. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 🎧 :
8. Mort Cinder by Hector German Oesterheld (GN) :
7. A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers :
6. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis :
5. Wastelands edit by John Joseph Adams 🎧 :
4. Babel by R.F. Kuang 🎧 :
3. Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace :
2. The Eternaut by Hector Oesterheld (GN) :
1. Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera 🎧 :

Favorite : A Psalm for the Wild Built

Audiobook Narrator

Too Many - Wastelands, Weird Black Girls, Number of the Beast, After World

Thom Riveria - Season of the Swamp

Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown - Babel

Marin Ireland, Michael Urie - Remarkably Bright Creatures

Sue Black - Written in Bone

Bonnie Hurren - Dead du Jour

William Dufris - Replay

Rosalyn Landor - Never Let Me Go

Oliver Wyman - America Fantastica

Angela Brazil - Radium Girls

Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Message

William Dufris - Old Man's War

Alton Brown - Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations

Grover Gardner - Ringworld

Wright Thompson - The Barn

Jame Gillies - Faithful Executioner

Paul Hecht - Time and Again

Beata Pozniak - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Scott Brick - Run

Will Patton - You Like it Darker (with a couple read by Stephen King)

Pulitzer's Read

Ongoing bucket list to read all the Pulitzer winning novels.

Bold : On the Shelf

2025 - James READ
2024 - Night Watch
2023 - Demon Copperhead
2023 - Trust
2022 - The Netanyahus
2021 - The Night Watchman
2020 - The Nickel Boys - READ
2019 - The Overstory - READ
2018 - Less - READ
2017 - Underground Railroad - READ
2016 - The Sympathizer
2015 - All the Light We Cannot See - READ
2014 - The Goldfinch - READ
2013 - The Orphan Master's Son - READ
2012 - NO AWARD
- Swamplandia - READ - Nominee
2011 - A Visit from the Goon Squad - READ
2010 - Tinkers - READ
2009 - Olive Kitterridge - READ
2008 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - READ
2007 - The Road - READ
2006 - March - READ
2005 - Gilead - READ
2004 - The Known World
2003 - Middlesex - READ
2002 - Empire Falls
2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - READ
2000 - The Interpreter of Maladies - READ
1999 - The Hours - READ
1998 - American Pastoral
1997 - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer READ
1996 - Independence Day - READ
1995 - The Stone Diaries
1994 - The Shipping News
1993 - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - READ
1992 - A Thousand Acres - READ
- My Father Bleeds History (Maus) - READ (Special Awards & Citations - Letters)
1991 - Rabbit at Rest
1990 - The Mambo Kings
1989 - Breathing Lessons
1988 - Beloved DNF
1987 - A Summons to Memphis
1986 - Lonesome Dove - READ
1985 - Foreign Affairs
1984 - Ironweed - READ
1983 - The Color Purple - READ
1982 - Rabbit is Rich
1981 - A Confederacy of Dunces - READ
1980 - The Executioner's Song - READ
1979 - The Stories of John Cheever - READ
1978 - Elbow Room
1977 - NO AWARD
1976 - Humboldt's Gift
1975 - The Killer Angels - READ
1974 - NO AWARD
1973 - The Optimist's Daughter
1972 - Angle of Repose - READ
1971 - NO AWARD
1970 - The collected Stories of Jean Stafford
1969 - House Made of Dawn : DNF
1968 - The Confessions of Nat Turner - READ
1967 - The Fixer
1966 - The Collected Stories of katherine Anne Porter
1965 - The Keepers of the House
1964 - NO AWARD
1963 - The Reivers
1962 - The Edge of Sadness
1961 - To Kill a Mockingbird - READ
1960 - Advise and Consent
1959 - The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
1958 - A Death in the Family
1957 - NO AWARD
1956 - Andersonville
1955 - A Fable
1954 - NO AWARD
1953 - The Old Man and the Sea
1952 - The Caine Mutiny - READ
1951 - The Town
1950 - The Way West
1949 - Guard of Honor - READ
1948 - Tales of the South Pacific
1947 - All the King's Men
1946 - NO AWARD
1945 - A Bell
1944 - Journey in the Dark
1943 - Dragon's Teeth
1942 - In This Our Life
1941 - NO AWARD
1940 - The Grapes of Wrath - READ
1939 - The Yearling
1938 - The Late George Apley
1937 - Gone with the Wind
1936 - Honey in the Horn
1935 - Now in November
1934 - Lamb in His Bosom
1933 - The Store
1932 - The Good Earth
1931 - Years of Grace
1930 - Laughing Boy
1929 - Scarlet Sister Mary
1928 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey - READ
1927 - Early Autumn
1926 - Arrowsmith
1925 - So Big
1924 - The Able McLaughlins
1923 - One of Ours
1922 - Alice Adams
1921 - The Age of Innocence
1920 - NO AWARD
1919 - The Magnificent Ambersons
1918 - His Family

Hugo's Read

Ongoing bucket list to read all the Hugo winning novels.

Bold : On the Shelf

2024 - Some Desperate Glory
2023 - Nettle & Bone
2022 - A Desolation Called Peace
2022 - A Psalm for the Wild Built (novella) - READ
2021 - Network Effect - READ
2020 - A Memory Called Empire
2020 - This Is How You Lose The Time War - Novella - READ
2019 - The Calculating Stars - READ
2018 - The Stone Sky
2018 - All Systems Red - Novella - READ
2017 - The Obelisk Gate
2016 - The Fifth Season
2016 - Binti - READ - Novella
2015 - The Three-Body Problem
2014 - Ancillary Justice - READ (DNF)
2013 - Redshirts - READ
2012 - Among Others - READ
2011 - Blackout/All Clear
2010 - The Windup Girl - READ
2010 - The City & the City
2009 - The Graveyard Book - READ
2008 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union - READ
2007 - Rainbows End
2006 - Spin - READ
2005 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2004 - Paladin of Souls
2003 - Hominids
2003 - Coraline (novella) - READ
2002 - American Gods - READ
2001 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - READ
2000 - A Deepness in the Sky
1999 - To Say Nothing of the Dog - READ
1998 - Forever Peace - READ
1997 - Blue Mars
1996 - The Diamond Age - READ
1995 - Mirror Dance
1994 - Green Mars
1993 - A Fire Upon the Deep
1993 - Doomsday Book READ
1992 - Barrayar
1991 - The Vor Game
1990 - Hyperion
1989 - Cyteen
1988 - The Uplift War - READ
1988 - Watchmen - READ - category : Other forms
1987 - Speaker for the Dead - READ
1986 - Ender's Game - READ
1985 - Neuromancer - READ
1985 - The Crystal Spheres - READ - David Brin - Short Story
1984 - Startide Rising - READ
1983 - Foundation's Edge
1982 - Downbelow Station
1981 - The Snow Queen
1980 - The Fountains of Paradise
1979 - Dreamsnake
1978 - Gateway
1977 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
1976 - The Forever War - READ
1975 - The Dispossessed
1974 - Rendezvous with Rama - READ
1973 - The Gods Themselves - READ
1972 - To Your Scattered Bodies Go
1971 - Ringworld - READ
1970 - Left Hand of Darkness - READ
1969 - Stand on Zanzibar - READ
1968 - Lord of Light
1967 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - READ
1966 - Dune - READ
1966 - This Immortal
1965 - The Wanderer
1964 - Way Station - READ
1963 - The Man in the High Castle - READ
1962 - Stranger in a Strange Land - READ
1961 - A Canticle for Leibowitz - READ
1960 - Starship Troopers - READ
1959 - A Case of Conscience
1958 - The Big Time
1956 - Double Star - READ
1955 - The Forever Machine
1953 - The Demolished Man - READ

Retro Hugos - this are given for years when no award was given (more than 50 years ago). Of those...

1939 - The Sword in the Stone
1951 - Farmer in the Sky - READ
1954 - Fahrenheit 451 - READ

Nebulas Read

Bold - On the Shelf

2023 - Babel, Or, The Necessity of Violence, An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution READ
2022 - A Master of Djinn - READ
2021 - Network Effect - READ
2020 - A Song for a New Day
2019 - The Calculating Stars - READ
2019 - This Is How You Lose The Time War - Novella - READ
2018 - The Stone Sky
2017 - All the Birds in the Sky - READ
2016 - Uprooted
2016 - Binti - Novella - READ
2015 - Annihilation - READ
2014 - Ancillary Justice - READ DNF
2013 - 2312
2012 - Among Others
2012 - Paper Menagerie - Short Story - READ
2011 - Blackout/All Clear
2010 - The Windup Girl - READ
2009 - Powers
2008 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union - READ
2007 - Seeker
2006 - Camouflage - READ
2005 - Paladin of Souls
2004 - The Speed of Dark
2003 - American Gods - READ
2002 - The Quantum Rose
2001 - Darwin's Radio
2000 - Parable of the Talents
1999 - Forever Peace - READ
1998 - The Moon and the Sun
1997 - Slow River
1996 - The Terminal Experiment
1995 - Moving Mars
1994 - Red Mars
1993 - Doomsday Book READ
1992 - Stations of the Tide
1991 - Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
1990 - The Healer's War
1989 - Falling Free
1988 - The Falling Woman
1987 - Speaker for the Dead - READ
1986 - Ender's Game - READ
1985 - Neuromancer - READ
1984 - Startide Rising - READ
1983 - No Enemy But Time
1982 - The Claw of the Conciliator
1981 - Timescape
1980 - The Fountains of Paradise
1979 - Dreamsnake
1978 - Gateway
1977 - Man Plus
1976 - The Forever War - READ
1975 - The Dispossessed
1974 - Rendezvous with Rama - READ
1973 - The Gods Themselves
1972 - A Time of Changes
1971 - Ringworld - READ
1970 - The Left Hand of Darkness - READ
1969 - Rite of Passage
1968 - The Einstein Intersection
1967 - Babel-17
1967 - Flowers for Algernon - READ
1966 - Dune - READ

National Book Award Winners

2015 - Fortune Smiles READ
2014 - Redeployment READ
2001 - The Corrections READ
1988 - Paris Trout READ
1985 - White Noise READ
1983 - The Color Purple - hardback award READ
1981 - The Stories of John Cheever - paperback award READ
1980 - The World According to Garp - paperback award READ
1953 - Invisible Man READ

Man Booker Books
2024 Orbital READ
2023 Prophet Song
2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
2021 The Promise
2020 Shuggie Bain READ
2019 The Testaments
2019 Girl, Woman, Other
2018 Milkman READ
2017 Lincoln in the Bardo READ
2016 The Sellout READ
2015 A Brief History of Seven Killings READ
2014 The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2013 The Luminaries
2012 Bring Up the Bodies
2011 The Sense of an Ending
2010 The Finkler Question
2009 Wolf Hall DNF
2008 The White Tiger READ
2007 The Gathering
2006 The Inheritance of Loss
2005 The Sea
2004 The Line of Beauty READ
2003 Vernon God Little
2002 Life of Pi READ
2001 True History of the Kelly Gang
2000 The Blind Assassin
1999 Disgrace
1998 Amsterdam
1997 The God of Small Things
1996 Last Orders
1995 The Ghost Road
1994 How Late It Was, How Late
1993 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1992 The English Patient
1992 Sacred Hunger
1991 The Famished Road
1990 Possession
1989 The Remains of the Day READ
1988 Oscar and Lucinda
1987 Moon Tiger
1986 The Old Devils
1985 The Bone People
1984 Hotel du Lac
1983 Life & Times of Michael K
1982 Schindler's Ark
1981 Midnight's Children READ
1980 Rites of Passage
1979 Offshore
1978 The Sea, the Sea
1977 Staying On
1976 Saville
1975 Heat and Dust
1974 The Conservationist
1974 Holiday
1973 The Siege of Krishnapur
1972 G.
1971 In a Free State
1970 The Elected Member
1969 Something to Answer For

International Booker Prize

2023 Time Shelter - Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria) : trans. Angela Rodel Read
2022 Tomb of Sand - Geetanjali Shree (India) : trans. Daisy Rockwell
2021 At Night All Blood Is Black - David Diop (France) : trans. Anna Moschovakis
2020 The Discomfort of Evening - Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Netherlands) : trans. Michele Hutchison
2019 Celestial Bodies - Jokha al-Harthi (Oman) : trans. Marilyn Booth
2018 Flights - Olga Tokarczuk (Poland) : trans. Jennifer Croft
2017 A Horse Walks Into a Bar - David Grossman (Israel) : trans. Jessica Cohen
2016 The Vegetarian - Han Kang (South Korea) : trans. Deborah Smith Read

100 SFF/Fantasy Reads as compiled by NPR

https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fant...

1. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien READ
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams READ
3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card READ
4. The Dune Chronicles By Frank Herbert READ
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series by George R.R. Martin
6. 1984 A Novel by George Orwell READ
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury READ
8. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov READ but only the 1st one
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley READ
10. American Gods By Neil Gaiman READ
11. The Princess Bride S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman READ
12. The Wheel Of Time Series by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm by George Orwell READ
14. Neuromancer By William Gibson READ
15. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons READ
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov READ
17. Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein READ
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles BY by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five By Kurt Vonnegut READ
20. Frankenstein By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley READ
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick READ
22. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood READ
23. The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King READ
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey BY by Arthur C. Clarke READ
25. The Stand By Stephen King READ
26. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson READ
27. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury READ
28. Cat's Cradle By Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman READ
30. A Clockwork Orange BY by Anthony Burgess READ
31. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein READ
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein READ
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz By Walter M. Miller Jr. READ
36. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea By Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes READ
39. The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells READ
40. The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad By David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. Mistborn Trilogy Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld by LARRY NIVEN READ
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin READ
46. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King BY by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere by NEIL GAIMAN READ
49. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact by Carl Sagan READ
51. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust by Neil Gaiman READ
53. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson READ
54. World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks READ
55. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman READ
57. Small Gods A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle READ
62. The Sword Of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road by by Cormac McCarthy READ
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson READ
66. The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Sword of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series by Robert E. Howard and Mark Schultz
69. The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger READ
71. The Way Of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
72. Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne READ
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series by R. A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War by John Scalzi READ
75. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson READ
76. Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke READ
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire READ
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde READ
83. The Culture Series by Iain Banks
84. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon
90. The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man By Ray Bradbury short works collection
92. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov READ
95. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle READ
97. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
99. The Xanth Series by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis

100 Horror Reads as compiled by NPR

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/632779706/click-if-you-dare-100-favorite-horror-s...

1. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley READ
2. Dracula by Bram Stoker
3. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
5. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
6. The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James
7. The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
8. The Monkeys Paw by W. W. Jacobs
9. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
10. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman READ
11. Oh, Whistle, And Ill Come To You, My Lad by M. R. James and Darryl Jones
12.The Werewolf Of Paris By Guy Endore
13. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson READ
14. Let The Right One In By John Ajvide Lindqvist
15. The Vampire Chronicles (First Triology) by Anne Rice READ
16. Minion (Vampire Huntress Legend Series) by L. A. Banks
17. The Hunger by Alma Katsu
18. Those Across The River by Christopher Buehlman
19. Bird Box by Josh Malerman READ
20. Feed (Newsflesh Series) by Mira Grant
21. World War Z by Max Brooks READ
22. The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey READ
23. The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft
24. The Ballad Of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle READ
25. The Fisherman by John Langan
26. Laundry Files (Series) by Charles Stross
27. The Cipher By Kathe Koja
28. John Dies At The End by David Wong READ
29. At The Mountains Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
30. All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts by Sonya Taaffe
31. Uzumaki by Junji Ito
32. Communion: A True Story by Whitley Strieber OR Majestic by Whitley Strieber
33. The Repairer Of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers
34. The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
35. The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons
36. Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
37. The Shining by Stephen King READ
38. House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
39. The Elementals by Michael McDowell
40. The Woman In Black by Susan Hill
41. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
42. The Bone Key by Sarah Monette
43. Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
44. Infidel by Aaron Campbell, Jose Villarrubia, Pornsak Pichetshote and Jeff Powell
45. The Ruins by Scott Smith
46. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
47. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates
48. The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan
49. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
50. The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree Jr.
51. Left Foot, Right by Nalo Hopkinson
52. Come Closer by Sara Gran
53. Furnace by Livia Llewellyn
54. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
55. Through The Woods by Emily Carroll
56. Sandman by Neil Gaiman READ
57. Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
58. White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
59. Goblin Market by Christina Georgina Rossetti
60. Experimental Film by Gemma Files
61. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson READ
62. The Collector by John Fowles
63. The Terror by Dan Simmons
64. Intensity by Dean R. Koontz
65. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
66. Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
67. Night They Missed the Horror Show by Joe R. Lansdale
68. Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
69. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill READ
70. Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler
71. Lord Of The Flies by William Golding READ
72. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood READ
73. Beloved by Toni Morrison
74. Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler
75. The Devil In America by Kai Ashante Wilson
76. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
77. Books Of Blood by Clive Barker READ
78. The October Country: Stories by Ray Bradbury
79. The Weird: A Compendium Of Strange And Dark Stories by Ann Vandermeer and Jeff VanDermeer
80. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
81. Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell, 1961-1991 by Ramsey Campbell
82. Things We Lost In The Fire by Mariana Enriquez
83. Shadowland by Peter Straub READ
84. A Head Full Of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
85. Rosemarys Baby by Ira Levin
86. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
87. The Body by Stephen King READ
88. Its A Good Life by Jerome Bixby
89. The Other by Thomas Tryon
90. The Troop by Nick Cutter
91. Elizabeth by Ken Greenhall
92. Please, Momma by Chesya Burke
93. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell
94. Goosebumps (Series) by R. L. Stine children
95. Rotters by Daniel Kraus children
96. Jumbies Rise Of The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
97. The House With A Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs
98. Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh
99. Coraline by Neil Gaiman READ
100. Down A Dark Hall by Lois Duncan

Weird Books List

From Book Riot - The 100 strange and weird "must read" books. https://bookriot.com/i-got-your-weird-right-here-100-wonderful-strange-and-unusu...

A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons
After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones
Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss
An Exaggerated Murder by Josh Cook
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer READ
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace
As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem
Bear vs. Shark by Chris Bachelder
Beatlebone by Kevin Barry
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Big Machine by Victor LaValle
Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe (Author), Alexander O. Smith (Translator)
Cat Country by Lao She
Damnificados by JJ Amaworo Wilson
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham
Dendera by Yuya Sato (Author), Edwin Hawkes (Translator), Nathan A Collins (Translator)
Disquiet by Julia Leigh
Duplex by Kathryn Davis
Escape from Baghdad! by Saad Hossain
Fram by Steve Himmer
geek loveGeek Love by Katherine Dunn
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland READ
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
Half Life by Shelley Jackson
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (Author), Michael Glenny (Translator)
I Crawl Through It by A.S. King
In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell
Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe
Just Like Beauty by Lisa Lerner
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis
Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet
Motherfucking Sharks by Brian Allen Carr
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood READ
Paper Tigers by Damien Angelica Walters
Prodigies by Angélica Gorodischer
Pym by Mat Johnson
Radio Iris by Anne-Marie Kinney
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
Sister Mine by Nalo HopkinsonSister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson
Slade House by David Mitchell READ
Slapstick or Lonesome No More! by Kurt Vonnegut
Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue (Author), Natasha Wimmer (Translator)
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor
The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
The Bees by Laline Paul
The Blue Girl by Laurie Foos
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders READ
The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman
The Daughters by Adrienne Celt
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier
The Incarnations by Susan Barker
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour
The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosely
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mckenzie
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Author), Lola M. Rogers (Translator)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall READ
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Author), Christina MacSweeney (Translator)
The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
The Unfinished World and Other Stories by Amber Sparks
The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits
The Vaults by Toby Ball
The Vegetarian by Han Kang READ
The Vorrh by B. Catling
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The Weirdness by Jeremy Bushnell
The Wilds by Julia Elliott
Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce
Version Control by Dexter Palmer
Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
Waiting for Gertrude by Bill Richardson
What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Jeff's Weird Additions
Help! A Bear is Eating Me by Mykle Hansen
WhaleFall by Daniel Kraus
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

Esquire's 75 Best Sci-Fi books of all time.

Choosing the 75 best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. Though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author. We also emphasized books that brought something new and innovative to the genre—to borrow a great sci-fi turn of phrase, books that “boldly go where no one has gone before.”

75 - The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey
74 - The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal READ
73 - Redshirts, by John Scalzi READ
72 - Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino
71 - The Ten Percent Thief, by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
70 - Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson
69 - Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson READ
68 - Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
67 - Contact, by Carl Sagan READ
66 - Under the Skin, by Michel Faber
65 - Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak READ
64 - Sea of Rust, by C. Robert Cargill
63 - What Mad Universe, by Fredric Brown
62 - The Book of Phoenix, by Nnedi Okorafor
61 - Semiosis, by Sue Burke
60 - Excession, by Iain M. Banks
59 - The Claw of the Conciliator, by Gene Wolfe
58 - Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
57 - This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone READ
56 - The Resisters, by Gish Jen
55 - Rosewater, by Tade Thompson READ
54 - Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
53 - Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem READ
52 - A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess READ
51 - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein READ
50 - A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle READ
49 - The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
48 - The Body Scout, by Lincoln Michel
47 - An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon
46 - The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler
45 - Neuromancer, by William Gibson READ
44 - The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester READ
43 - The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
42 - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams READ
41 - A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr. READ
40 - Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir READ
39 - Zone One, by Colson Whitehead TBR
38 - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers READ
37 - Engine Summer, by John Crowley
36 - The Children of Men, by P.D. James READ
35 - Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente
34 - The City & The City, by China Miéville
33 - A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
32 - Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie DNF
31 - The Stand, by Stephen King READ
30 - In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes
29 - Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany
28 - The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman READ
27 - 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami READ
26 - Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich
25 - Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith
24 - Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer READ
23 - Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood READ
22 - Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
21 - Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
20 - Shikasta, by Doris Lessing
19 - The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
18 - Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky READ
17 - Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke READ
16 - The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov READ
15 - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu READ
14 - Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley READ
13 - The Employees, by Olga Ravn
12 - 1984, by George Orwell READ
11 - The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu TBR
10 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick READ
9 - Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel READ
8 - Exhalation, by Ted Chiang READ
7 - Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
6 - The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin READ
5 - Kindred, by Octavia Butler READ
4 - The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
3 - The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury READ
2 - Dune, by Frank Herbert READ
1 - Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley READ

Woman's Prize for Fiction

Got this list from Paul, another one to add to my collection.

https://womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-fiction/

1996. A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
1997. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
1998. Larry's Party by Carol Chields
1999. A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne
2000. When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
2001. The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
2002. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
2003. Property by Valerie Martin
2004. Small Island by Andrea Levy
2005. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
2006. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
2007. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
2008. The Road Home by Rose Tremain
2009. Home by Marilynne Robinson
2010. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver On the shelf
2011. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
2012. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller READ
2013. May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
2014. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimar M
2015. How to be Both by Ali Smith READ
2016. The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
2017. The Power by Naomi Alderman READ
2018. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
2019. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
2020. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell On the shelf
2021. Piranesi by Susannah Clarke On the shelf
2022. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
2023. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver On the shelf
2024. Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganesthanathan

Christmas Gifts

2015
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories - Kevin Wilson READ
The Magician's Book: A skeptic's Adventures in Narnia - Laura Miller
Burning Paradise - Robert Charles Wilson READ
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories - Hilary Mantel READ
The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides READ
St. Lucy's Home for Gilrs Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell READ

2016
The Sellout - Paul Beatty READ
The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi READ
Among Others - Jo Walton READ
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
An Abundance of Katherines - John Green READ
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri READ
Empire Falls - Richard Russo READ

2017
Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds READ
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell DNF
Consider Phlebas - Ian M. Banks
Tenth of December - George Saunders READ
Some Luck - Jane Smiley
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess READ
Stone Spring - Stephen Baxter
The Path Between the Seas - David McCullough
The Hours - Michael Cunningham READ
Beloved - Toni Morrison DNF
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

2018
Adventures of Oliver Twist/A Christmas Carol/A Tale of Two Cities/Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan READ
Circe - Madeline Miller READ

2019
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood READ
Under the Black Flag - David Cordingly
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson READ
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons READ
Advise and Consent - Allen Drury

2020
Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline READ
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers READ

2021
Intercourse/Severance: Stories Rober Olen Butler READ
Salt: A Word History - Mark Kurlansky READ
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi READ
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon READ

2022
Faulkner: Novels 1942-1954 - William Faulkner
West - Carys Davies READ
Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers READ
Shlock Is My Name - Howard Jacobson
Justice - Larry Watson
Lost Everything - Brian Francis Slattery READ

2023
Growing Up Yinzer - Dick Roberts READ
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vindge
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley READ
Prophet Song - Paul Lynch
Holly - Stephen King

2024
A Psalm of the Wild Built - Becky Chambers READ
American Dirt - Jeanine Coummins
Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo

2025 Reading Results, so far

Books Read : 20
# of Authors : 19
Authors of Color : 1 (5%)
Lady Authors : 9 (47%)
Narrators : 11 (Most books - : Multiple Narrators - 2 )
Rereads - 0

Pages Read - 2,756 Hours Read - 5 days, 19 hours, and 58 minutes

1st Book - Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera
75th Book - Not Yet
Last Book - Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman

Books Purchased/Gifted/Found - 18
Books Given Away - 6







Map of 2025 author birthplaces

Scatter Plot

My favorite graphs for some strange reason. Not quite sure they're useful for anything, I just like them artistically. Here's all the books I've read so far plotted out in order of when they were published

2025 Reads

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February : Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
March : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

April :
May :
June :

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :



#botm

Happy new thread Jeff!

>1 mahsdad: Excellent picture! I love cacti

happy new thread

I put off making new threads because I usually have 7 or 8 opening posts....you make me feel lazy!

>18 quondame: >19 figsfromthistle: >20 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks All

Linda, its just a matter of cut and paste at this point. It got easier when I took all the touch stones out of my lists. That took forever to calculate when there's 100 books in the list, and then had to go thru and check them to see if LT went off the rails on assigning the right link.

The "hardest" part, and its only hard because its several steps is getting the chart images.

Happy new one, Jeff. So happy to wallow in your lists for a while.........

>22 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul, so glad to provide the pit you can wallow in. LOL.

Thanks for stopping by

Happy new thread and congrats on the car from the last thread! Oh, and nice lists. You certainly have a few. ; )

>24 Berly: Thanks Kim!

>21 mahsdad: Can't you have AI process your lists to activate and fact check the TouchStones?

>1 mahsdad: Yo! Needles. When my older son was in high school (Geez, back around the dawn of time), he had a very small cactus in a pottery cup. Named it Einstein. I adopted Einie when Jeremy left for college. My wife—possessed she was—watered it. 'Twas a sad day.

Happy new thread, Jeff!

Happy new thread, Jeff!

>26 weird_O: (AI touchstones) Ha, would that it were so.

Oh no, a water cactus never grows. ;)

>27 drneutron: >28 ArlieS: Thanks guys!

New Book - eBook

Behold the Ape by James Morrow



A satirical SF caper of evolution, gangsters, Darwin’s brain, and the Golden Age of Hollywood from the Nebula and World Fantasy Award–winning author.

When Sonya Orlova, a successful 1930s horror-film actress, crosses paths with a gorilla whose brain has been swapped for the frozen cerebrum of the late Charles Darwin, the two are inspired to write and produce evolution-themed monster movies—with Sonya in her greatest role, Korgora the Ape Woman!

As this offbeat and controversial Hollywood series finds a devoted cult audience, Sonia’s relationship with her strange simian collaborator acquires an intensity neither could have imagined. Then disaster strikes, as zealous opponents to Darwin’s ideas contrive to put the Ape Woman out of business.

By turns satiric and romantic, madcap, and thoughtful, Behold the Ape is at once an outré love story, a tribute to classic monster movies, and a science-fictional celebration of that beleaguered institution we call public education.

Wherever you go, she is there. The famous monsters she created appear on postage stamps, T-shirts, lunch pails, beach towels, and mouse pads. The estate of the late Sonya Orlova has licenses her likeness, in all its iterations, to the makers of action figures, plastic model kits, collectible dolls, soft drink cups, and PEZ dispensers.

#newbook

Just some thoughts to end the night.

Wil Wheaton has a new short story podcast to fill the void left when LeVar Burton Reads ended. He reads one story a week. The first one was Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death by Caroline Yoachim.

I finally decided to fork over the $20 to turn off ads on my Kindle. Sure I could ignore them, but they just started to annoy me. Figured Bezos was making more off the ads so better to cap it with my $20. Its nice now to have the cover of the book I'm reading be the lock image.

Lastly, I have a couple credit cards, that give cash back points, that I, historically, use just to apply to my balances. But Amazon and others are starting to more and more offer you the "opportunity" to use those points when you buy things. I just had a epiphany that you should NEVER use those points to buy something outright, because you are giving up the cashback for a purchase in favor of getting something for "free". Maybe I'm wrong, but I think its better to buy things using the credit card, get the points and then later use the points to apply to your balance.

New Book

The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies



Winner of the 2015 International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award

Winner of the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize

Shortlisted for the 2015 Wales Book of the Year: Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2015 Edge Hill Short Story Prize

The Globe 100: The Best International Fiction of 2017

In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado jail. In the ice and snows of Siberia an office employee from Birmingham witnesses a scene that will change her life. At a jubilee celebration in a northern English town a middle-aged alderman opens his heart to Queen Victoria. A teenage daughter leaves home in search of adventure. High in the Cumbrian fells a woman seeks help from her father's enemy.

Spare, precise, charged with a prickly wit, the stories in Carys Davies's sparkling second collection remind us how little we know of the lives of others.

She didn't hear him arrive. The wind was up and the rain was thundering down on the tin roof like a shower of stones and in the midst of all the noise she didn't hear the rattle of his old buggy approaching.

From me: I just read the first story, "The Quiet", and OMG what an amazing story. I thought it was going one direction and it went somewhere completely unexpected. Love it.

#newbook

New Book - audio

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (read by William Dufris)



John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.

The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-and aliens willing to fight for them are common. The universe, it turns out, is a hostile place.

So: we fight. To defend Earth (a target for our new enemies, should we let them get close enough) and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has gone on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force, which shields the home planet from too much knowledge of the situation. What's known to everybody is that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve your time at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.

John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine-and what he will become is far stranger.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

#newbook

>32 mahsdad: You got me with a big BB with your review of The Redemption of Galen Pike. I loved Davies’s Clear, so I’m really looking forward to this one. Thanks!

Karen O

>34 klobrien2: Hi Karen, I loved Clear as well, that's what drew me to this book. Not quite a review yet, only read the first story, but if the rest are anything like this first one, I (and you when you get it), are in for a treat.

And they're short short stories. 17 stories in only 150 pages.

>33 mahsdad: I think Old Man's War is my favorite by Scalzi though The Kaiju Preservation Society has its charms.

>36 quondame: Yeah, I think this is at least the 3rd time I've read OMW. He's on my must read Author list.

Did you read Starter Villain? Its really funny and completely implausible.

>37 mahsdad: I did read Starter Villain. It's got cats. I don't always enjoy Scalzi's humor, and well cats.

>37 mahsdad: Mahsdad: I don’t have a thread, but I am a lurker. You helped me one time before when I had a problem and explained it so this old dummy could understand. My question: when I change the cover of a book, it shows up correctly on my home page. When I point my cursor over the cover, it shows the original cover instead of the one I chose. LT recently made several changes, am I doing something wrong?
Thanks, Old Dan.

>39 OldDan: Hi Old Dan. I'm assuming you mean when you hover your cursor over a touchstone link and it brings up that pop-up screen. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that that pop-up logic just shows the default cover for the book, its not going thru and looking at your preferred cover that you choose.

In my test, that seems to be the case. When I actually click thru to the work page, or if I show covers in my Catalog list, it shows my cover.

Also, sometimes I've seen it happen where I've selected a cover and later, that cover image gets changed or goes away somehow, and LT puts in the default "blank" cover. This seems to happen every so often with Amazon covers.

Hope this helps.

>38 quondame: Cats, okay I concede your point. :) But for me the cats were a big plus. ;)

>40 mahsdad: "This seems to happen every so often with Amazon covers." It happens a LOT with covers from Amazon. I try to use member-uploaded covers if possible. Of course, those could have come from Amazon originally too. I've even scanned my own book covers on occasion, especially for older editions. It's fussy, but they don't disappear!

>40 mahsdad: Thanks, Jeff. You figured out what I was trying to say correctly. You are fantastic. I guess there is nothing I can do about it, but thank you for your answer.

>42 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks Laytonwoman3rd. I did use the member-uploaded cover, but like you said, it could have come from Amazon originally. That's as far as I can go. Scanning it myself is way beyond me. Thank you again for your response.

Fantastic Foto Friday
First Friday in April, ack my taxes are due in 11 days. Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend. ;)

Here's an interesting ceiling



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - The redemptions of Galen Pike by Carys Davies : 16%
Listening - Old Man's War by John Scalzi : 27%
eBook - Behold the Ape by James Morrow : 6%

22. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates 🎧 : Listened to this on audio, read by Coates. Its a collection of essays, mostly about his writting, about his books being banned and his time in Africa, where he sees his books and himself being quoted by students there. The biggest essay is about an extended visit to Palestine and the gap between the realities there and what we hear at home. This is the first of his that I've read. I've wanted to read Between the World and Me and I have Water Dancer on the shelf.

21. Earth by David Brin (K) : This is a reread for me, from many years ago, and it might as well be a first read, because except for the basic premise that you can glean from the back cover, I had no memory of the story. In a all too real dystopian world, 10 billion people are struggling to live on a world wracked by climate change and political upheaval, a man-made black hole is unleashed in the inner core of Earth and a group of people are scrambling to try to destroy it before it destroys the world. This is the basic backbone of the book, but its a lot more. Brin is exploring so many futurist ideas that we still struggle to deal with today, climate change, population control, species extinctions, AI, the 'net and it was written 35 years ago. Excellent read.

20. Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman 🎧 : Listened on audio. A very interesting collections of quasi-science fiction stories written by an African American author from Pittsburgh. My favorite was a story called Tournament Arc, where a LARP meet-up goes sideways, when some out of this world real warriors show up. A decent read.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>3 mahsdad: Happy new thread!

>42 laytonwoman3rd: Interesting Member Upload vs Ammy. My uninformed gutshot opinion was that the Ammy ones would be more stable. Going forward I won't be so precious about selecting the "official" one.

>43 OldDan: No Problem, OD

>46 ocgreg34: Thanks for stopping by Greg.

Happy Friday, Jeff. Happy New Thread. Just checking in. I hope all is well. I loved Radium Girls.

>45 mahsdad: It is interesting, also beautiful, and that's a captivating photo of it. But is it a ceiling or a roof? Don't ceilings hang below rafters? Is all that decorative?

I liked Scalzi's Redshirts better than The Kaiju Preservation Society. I ran across an uncharacteristic book, Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb, which he must have had to write on a lost bet. (And then you know who read every last stinking word.) He's got a new one out called When the Moon Hits Your Eye. The premise is that the moon IS indeed made of cheese.

>45 mahsdad: Stopping by to give some photo love. And vow to read some Scalzi this year...

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi.

>48 msf59: Hi Mark, Welcome back, thanks for stopping by.

>49 quondame: Susan, its the ceiling in a chapel. Its the Sanctuary by Wedgewood, a wedding/event space in Long Beach. We went to a wedding reception there last weekend. I can only assume that its all decorative.

>50 weird_O: Hey Bill, I've heard of Book of the Dumb, I'll have to see if I can find it. Cause you know I'm going to want to read every stinking world.

Can't wait for Moon Hits Your Eye, sound crazy enough that it just might work.

>51 elorin: Hi Robyn, thanks for stopping by. Always recommend Scalzi. :)

>52 weird_O: Ha, that's hilarious

>45 mahsdad: - That is gorgeous!

>55 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley

Book Haul

I went and gave blood today (Power-Red - 2 units), and I celebrated with a little retail therapy

20. A History of the African-American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmond as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid - with a name like that, it was a no brainer
21. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - I already had this on eBook from Project Gutenberg, but I couldn't resist a physical copy. Inspired 1984. An introduction by Margaret Atwood, and Ursula Le Guin blurbed : "The best single work of science fiction yet written". Another no brainer
22. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli

#bh

I forgot that I had a quote saved from Earth, that I found remarkable (and by remarkable, I mean I found interesting enough that I wanted to mark it down)

If you have the means to experiment, do it! If not, then wait till experiments are possible. Theory by itself is only masturbation

Happy New Thread, Jeff!
And Yay to Scalzi.
>58 mahsdad: 🙂

>59 SirThomas: Hi Thomas. Scalzi, absolutely. He has a new OMW book coming out, so I'm trying to reread all the others. This time on audio. Tho it might take a couple years to do it. Ghost Brigade (book 2) is currently an 11 week wait on audio. :)

New Book - audio

Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein



The Number of the Beast, by the legendary author of the classic bestseller Starship Troopers, is one of the most audacious experiments ever done in science fiction.

Robert A. Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast, originally published in 1980, follows the adventures of Zeb, Deety, Hilda, and Jake when they are ambushed by the alien “Black Hats” and barely escape with their lives on a specially configured vehicle (the Gay Deceiver) that can travel along various planes of existence, allowing them to visit parallel universes.

However, unknown to most fans, Heinlein had already written a “parallel” novel about the four characters and parallel universes in 1977. He effectively wrote two parallel novels about parallel universes. The novels share the same start, but as soon as the Gay Deceiver is used to transport them to a parallel universe, each book takes the readers to a totally different parallel world. From that point on, the plot lines diverge completely. Although some later passages may be found in both books, most of them are, fascinatingly, given a totally different context or perspective.

The companion parallel book was never published, and there have been many competing theories as to why (including significant copyright issues in 1977 due to some of the material used in the book). Over time the manuscript was largely forgotten, although it survived in fragments. A recent re-examination of these fragments made it clear that, put together in the right order, they constituted the complete novel that is finally being published as The Pursuit of the Pankera.

As both books are “parallel” books, they carry the subtitle A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes.

So here it finally is, the other half of Heinlein’s audacious experiment: a parallel novel about parallel universes.

"He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his beautiful daughter." That's what she said: the oldest cliche in pulp fiction., She wasn't old enough to remember the pulps.

#newbook

I bought a copy, Jeff. And since I just completed a read, I'm going to take it to bed with me and blink my eyes over its lovely word-filled pages. When the Moon Hits Your Eye. John Scalzi.

I was going to mention the other day that on your recommendation, I downloaded We by Yevgeny Zamyatin from Project Gutenberg.

>62 weird_O: Cool, hope you like it (Moon...)

As far as We goes, I have the Gutenberg version as well, just couldn't resist it in the library. Got to every once in a while skew the B&N's buyer's algorithm to keep from buying soooo many Colleen Hoover books. LOL

Its here.... The first trailer for Apple's Murderbot series.

https://youtu.be/vEioDeOiqEs?si=kHI_rFuVBd7jDC-t

Spoilers, Alexander Skarsgard is playing our titular hero. Not sure I really thought of it as male, but okay, maybe they'll address that. It looks pretty fun and gritty.

I don't currently subscribe to Apple TV, but we have to watch season 2 of Severance, but maybe this might be a reason to re-up

>64 mahsdad: Oh, that looks great! I still think of Murderbot as female, but that’s my issue. 🥴

Thanks for posting the trailer!

Karen O

>33 mahsdad:
I loved Old Man's War. It was one of the reasons why I keep reading space opera.

Somewhere along the line I lost your thread, so I'm back and glad to give Old Man's War some love. I also read Human Division. It is part of the Old Man's War series, and just as good as the first one, but it is also the title of a separate series.

>66 benitastrnad: Hi Benita, glad that you found me again.

I love the OMW universe. I'm reading them all again. Its been a long time since I read them, but I think his most interesting stretch was that Zoe's Tale is a retelling of Last Colony from a different perspective.

Looking forward to The Shattering Peace that's coming out this fall.

Well it wouldn't be my thread without yet ANOTHER book list. A site called Altaonline.com, asked a bunch of authors, booksellers and critics... What is your favorite California Novel. Here's their top 25

The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Golden Days by Carolyn See
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Ask the Dust by John Fante On the Shelf
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
There There by Tommy Orange Read
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stenger Read
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Fat City by Leonard Gardner
Mecca by Susan Straight
City of Night by John Rechy
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen On the Shelf
The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes
The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Read
The Sellout by Paul Beatty Read
Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Maria Viramontes
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I'll always be a Pittsburgher, but California is my adoptive home. I want to read all of these.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Ah we made it to another Friday. At least we've got that going for us

Here's a rose...



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies : 86%
Listening - Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein : 29%
eBook - Behold the Ape by James Morrow : 52%

23. Old Man's War by John Scalzi 🎧 : Read on Audio. This is Scalzi's first book, and its a good one. This probably my 3rd time reading this. Its comfort food for me. In the vein of Forever War and Starship Troopers, in this world, the Solar System's Colonial Defense Forces recruit from Earth's elderly population. At 75, you can enlist, get a new body and help defend human colonies from a vast area of alien species trying to do the same thing. An excellent introduction to what would become a seven book (in September) series.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>69 mahsdad: Such glowing colors!

>57 mahsdad: We is a great book. I hope you enjoy it!

>61 mahsdad: I like The Number of the Beast better than The Pursuit of the Pankera but Deety and Gay Deceiver are definitely my favorite characters. I hope you enjoy this novel as a first read.

>70 quondame: Thanks Susan!

>71 ocgreg34: Hi Greg, Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

>72 elorin: Hi Robyn. This by far, not my first read of Number. Its probably my favorite Heinlein. I've read it at least 3 or 4 times. It might be, however, my first listen.

TBH, I had never heard of The Pursuit of the Pankera until this time, as I was looking something up about Beast. I'm going to have to try it out.

New Book

Stoner by John Williams



William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to a university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life. As the years pass, Stoner encounters a series of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams' deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges not only as an archetypal American but as an unlikely existential hero, standing in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956

#newbook

>73 mahsdad: Oh I hope it's good as an audio book! My favorite Heinlein is To Sail Beyond the Sunset but # of the Beast is one of my top 5.

>74 mahsdad: I thought Stoner was a quiet masterpiece.

>75 elorin: I went thru a big stent in my 20's when that was pretty much all I was reading (Heinlein). I'm sure I have that on the paperback shelf and, if I recall, really enjoyed it.

>75 elorin: Hi Linda, Yeah, I'm only 30 pages in and quiet masterpiece is a good way to describe it.

New Feature? Or just something I never knew.

In threads when I couldn't remember someone's actual name, I would always right-click on their user name in the post and open up their profile on another tab and then if they had their real name listed, it would show in the tab description, or I would look at their profile.

Now it seems that if you hover over the user name, it will bring up a pop-up window similar to the book popup that will give their name their picture and the bio.

Cool.

>78 mahsdad: Now that is a new feature!

>31 mahsdad: You always loose point value when you redeem it for merchandise. My card gives me points that I can use towards travel and other things. The travel redemption direct credit on the card after I purchase my flight gives me the best bang for my buck. If I use it for things bought on amazon, I would end up loosing 45% of the value. So it's a good idea to avoid using points to buy something outright for sure.

>78 mahsdad: That is a really neat feature!

Happy week ahead.

>74 mahsdad: Maybe the perfect novel...it's certainly a candidate.

Photo Friday orisons.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Its Friday. And this Friday, I'll share with you my heartbreak. Just shy of a month ago, I bought a newish car (23 Prius) that I was loving. Well on Sunday, as it was sitting, parked on the side of the road, minding its own business, this happened...



I came out to get in the car, and the car wasn't there. Not only had it been hit (hit-n-run, according to the police form that was on the windshield), it was towed away. Sigh. Just waiting now on the damage $$. Sure I have really good insurance coverage and they'll pay for it, but damn.... I hadn't even made the first payment yet.

Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Stoner by John Williams : 38%
Listening - Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein : 96%
eBook - Behold the Ape by James Morrow : 82%

24. The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies : This is such a great little collection of stories by Davies. 17 stories in 157 pages. A lot of them had endings I wasn't expecting. A man meets Queen Victoria at a Jubilee celebration and he tells her the story of his's wife's affair. Another is about a strange night at an Inn in Siberia. The title story is about the unexpected friendship of a Quaker woman and a condemned made and his subtle yet obvious redemption. A couple weren't perfect, or more likely they just didn't hit with me, but nevertheless and excellent collection.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>82 mahsdad: Oh, no…how horrible to have your brand-new (and so pretty) car smashed up! The other vehicle must be looking just as bad. What a waste. I hope the situation gets resolved quickly.

Karen O

>82 mahsdad: ZOMG!! I am so sorry this misery was inflicted on you. Kinda like Stoner come to life. Or even Number of the Beast.

I'm glad for your insurance and that no one was hurt physically, but the psychic damage....

Oh no! Do they know who did the damage? Surely, that driver must hold responsibility! Did you get a loaner in the meantime? Is it fixable or is it a write-off? So sorry to hear this.

>83 klobrien2: I can only hope the other car looks worse. I wasn't there when it happened, and I have to wait at least 2 weeks to get the police report. It was a hit and run

>84 richardderus: Thanks buddy!

>85 jessibud2: Hopefully, there was a witness that caught the license plate, otherwise, they're in the wind.

I do have rental coverage, but thankfully I work from home and we're able to get by on 1 car between the 3 of us. I'll probably get a car short term couple days here or there, if I need to.

Fingers crossed that it is fixable. I haven't gotten the estimate yet.

>82 mahsdad: Oh, the horror! My condolences, Jeff.

>82 mahsdad: That is an outrage against useful, indeed, essential, property, a major hassle, and just all around lousy.

>87 weird_O: >88 quondame: Thanks Bill, Susan. I appreciate the sympathetic camaraderie

New Book - audio

Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown



From Alton Brown, the New York Times bestselling cookbook author and beloved culinary food personality, a debut collection of personal essays defined by his flair, wit, and insight.

From cameraman to chef, musician to food scientist, Alton Brown has had a diverse and remarkable career. His work on the Food Network, including creating Good Eats and hosting Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen, has resonated with countless viewers and home cooks. Now, he shares exactly what’s on his mind, mixing compelling anecdotes from his personal and professional life with in-depth observations on the culinary world, film, personal style, defining meals of his lifetime, and much more.

With his whip-smart and engaging voice, Brown explores everything from wrestling a dumpster full of dough to culinary cultural appropriation to his ultimate quest for the perfect roast chicken. Deliciously candid and full of behind-the-scenes stories fans will love, Food for Thought is the ultimate listening experience for anyone who appreciates food and the people that prepare it.

When it was first suggested that I'd reached a point in my career where I might consider having a go at writing a collection of essays, I replied that I didn't think I had anything to say. When asked about writing something more memoir-esque, my answer was that nothing had ever really happened to me, at least nothing worth writing about.

#newbook

How horrible to wake up and see that destruction - hope that someone reports the other smashed up vehicle, maybe a monster truck...

>82 mahsdad: Oh that's terrible! That happened to us once, years and years ago. We'd have the car two weeks and someone ploughed into it when it was parked on the road outside our flat and wrote it off! I remember it being so upsetting as it was the first halfway decent car we'd had.

>82 mahsdad: Another voice of empathy for the tragedy. How gut wrenching for the car to be missing! How did you find out it was towed? I hope all goes well in recovery.

>90 mahsdad:
The reviews for this book have been fairly good and caught my eye. I already have it on the TBR listing.

>91 m.belljackson: >92 SandDune: >93 elorin: Thanks all. I did hear on Friday that they are going to total it. Before even doing a complete itemized list of what it was going to take, the initial estimate to repair was over $24k. I'll find out exactly how much they are going to give me for it sometime this week. :(

>91 m.belljackson: I'm still waiting on the police report so hopefully that has some information about the jackhole who did it, so my insurance can cover my deductable and go after them

>93 elorin: I called 911 when I came out to where I parked it and it was gone. I thought it was stolen, but they were able to tell me that it was towed. When I talked to the tow yard, they said it was towed because it was blocking the street, and that usually means it was hit and boy howdy was it hit. They couldn't get in touch with me because its so new (to me) that DMV didn't even have the registration info yet.

>94 benitastrnad: Hi Benita, so far so good, he's reading it himself so its a fun listen.

And on a lighter note, here's a couple more book lists for you.

LA Times Festival of Books is happening this weekend and they are apparently celebrating their 30th year. So they had authors and editors and such compile their list of essential books published in the US since 1996. (yeah its US-centric but it is the LA Times)

I don't think they are in any particular order, this is just how they were posted in the article.

Fiction

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell READ
Milkman by Anna Burns DNF
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri READ
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Underworld by Don DeLillo
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr READ
The Hunger Games by Suzannne Collins READ
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang READ
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen READ
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan READ
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel DNF
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin READ
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz READ
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Never Let Me Go"by Kazuo Ishiguro READ
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides READ
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead READ
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders READ
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Sellout by Paul Beatty READ
The Overstory by Richard Powers READ
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt READ
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon READ
James by Percival Everett READ
2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Non-Fiction

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan
Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann READ
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari READ
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Master of the Senate by Robert Caro
Solito by Javier Zamora
On Writing by Stephen King
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer READ
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Evicted by Matthew Desmond READ
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Honorable Mentions

These are the prolific authors that they couldn't decide on which book to put on the list

Margaret Atwood
Dave Eggers
Tana French
William Gibson
Lauran Groff
Stephen Graham Jones
Celeste Ng
Sally Rooney
Danzy Senna
Zadie Smith

>82 mahsdad: Horrible!
Hopefully they'll find the idiot and you'll find an adequate replacement. All the best for you!

>37 mahsdad: I loved Starter Villian! ( better to comment late than never?) I thought it was a fun read. I usually avoid anthropomorphism but this book worked for me for some reason.

>99 SirThomas: Thanks Thomas. Still waiting on the police report so I can get my deductible back, but for those that are following along with my saga, they are totalling it out. Preliminary estimate before they even started tearing it down was $24k. Yikes. Looks like I'm not going to be completely made whole, but getting back more than I was expecting. Off to go car shopping, again.

>100 mckait: Yeah, it was light-hearted fun. Looking forward to When the Moon Hits Your Eye

>69 mahsdad: I also like Old Man's War

>78 mahsdad: Thanks for pointing this out. I had not noticed it. and it's useful.

>80 figsfromthistle: I refuse to use cards that give points-for-merchandise and similar. Give me cold hard cash. Also, don't give different % for different classes of merchant, changing regularly, with me expected to keep track.

>82 mahsdad: Ouch! My condolences on the loss of a car you had barely gotten any time to enjoy.

>101 mahsdad: Used teslas going for Free...

>102 ArlieS: Hi Arlie, thanks for stopping by and the sympathies. :)

>103 m.belljackson: That'll be a big no for me. Even at free, its too high a cost. ;)

>82 mahsdad: Oh man! What a smash up! At least no one was hurt.

>82 mahsdad: Oh dear! Glad that no one was hurt!

>97 mahsdad: I highly recommend "The Devil in the White City". Fantastic blending of two different historical events!

>105 figsfromthistle: >106 ocgreg34: Well from my side, no one was hurt because I wasn't there. But if I'm being honest, I hope the jackhole who hit it has a sever case of whiplash.

>107 ocgreg34: I've always wanted to read The Devil in the White City, I think I actually have it on the shelf somewhere.

New Book - audio

Ringworld by Larry Niven (read by Grover Gardner)



Pierson's puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of the Ringworld''s surface.

In the nighttime heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality. His foot-length queue was as white and shiny as artificial snow. His skin and depilated scalp were chrome yellow; the irises of his eyes were gold; his robe was royal blue with a golden steroptic dragon superimposed. In the instant he appeared, he was smiling widely, showing pearly, perfect, perfectly standard teeth.

This is a reread for me. I think I only ever read this one, and maybe Ringworld Engineers. I want to try to read all 4

#newbook

New Book - ebook

The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai



From an award-winning Tunisian author comes a stirring allegory about a country in the aftermath of revolution and the power of a single quest.

Sidi lives a hermetic life as a bee whisperer, tending to his beloved “girls” on the outskirts of the desolate North African village of Nawa. He wakes one morning to find that something has attacked one of his beehives, brutally killing every inhabitant. Heartbroken, he soon learns that a mysterious swarm of vicious hornets committed the mass murder—but where did they come from, and how can he stop them? If he is going to unravel this mystery and save his bees from annihilation, Sidi must venture out into the village and then brave the big city and beyond in search of answers.

Along the way, he discovers a country and a people turned upside down by their new post–Arab Spring reality as Islamic fundamentalists seek to influence votes any way they can on the eve of the country’s first democratic elections. To succeed in his quest, and find a glimmer of hope to protect all that he holds dear, Sidi will have to look further than he ever imagined.

In this brilliantly accessible modern-day parable, Yamen Manai uses a masterful blend of humor and drama to reveal what happens in a country shaken by revolutionary change after the world stops watching.

The 320 foot long yacht left Sardinia early in the morning. Apart from the crew, sober by obligation, everybody on the boat was hungover, and no one spared the hunt for their undergarments upon waking.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday
Its Friday and I don't have really anything to report, so I'll just give you some flowers.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Stoner by John Williams : 72%
Listening - Ringworld by Larry Niven : 21%
eBook - The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai : 14%

28. Trap Line by Timothy Zahn (K) : . This was a Prime Reading short story. Its an interesting take on how to deal with interstellar travel. Humans figured out how to send their astral projection from someone's body out to a clone on a distant ship. Problem is that other creatures have figured out how to do it and how to trap said astral projections. Would be interested in reading more about this "world"

27. Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown 🎧 : An excellent collection of funny essays about Brown's life, about the early days of the Food Network and the development of Good Eats, along with his recipe for baked chicken and a classic Martini. He reads the book, which makes it all the better.

26. Behold the Ape by James Morrow (K) : Morrow is one of my favorite authors. He writes great satirical stuff. His most "famous" work is Towing Jehovah, which is literally about God is Dead and they have to tow his body to cold storage in the artic. This one is about Evolution and the early film industry and horror movies. The MacGuffin is that Charles Darwin's brain is implanted in the head of a gorilla and it becomes, along with the main character, the female version of Lon Chaney; the Woman of a Thousand Faces, controversial stars in Hollywood. Especially in the wake of the Scopes Monkey trial. Really weird, really good.

25. Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein 🎧 : Classic Sci-Fi. I've read this at least 3 or 4 times. Heinlein's answer/take on the Multiverse. An eccentric scientist invents a way to travel to other dimensions and universes. He, his wife, his daughter and her husband, mount the device in their car/plane/space ship and go exploring the vast infinite universes, including places you wouldn't think would have universes; The Land of Oz, Barsoom, the World of Alice and Wonderland. Heinlein's libitarian politics, as well as his somewhat misogynistic yet feministic views on women and relationships is on full display. A little dated, but not quite so much as Stranger in a Strange Land. An enjoyable read.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>112 mahsdad: Pretty blooms. You're getting near the end of Stoner, which I can't wait to hear what you think of!

Happy weekend-ahead's reads!

>112 mahsdad: Four books is something to report. What a great shot of the daisies! Of course those aren't daisies, but the appearance is similar...

YT rabbit hole where this guy talks about how Dua Lipa (the singer) is a really good interviewer of authors. Very interesting, made me want to go find her videos.

https://youtu.be/QN1rULxGHCA?si=zu9iFLPSQQbBQ1vK

>113 richardderus: Thanks RD. Yeah Stoner is really good. He's a completely unlikeable character and that's why I like him. My only "complaint" would be that the end of the affair was something that just wouldn't fly today, but that's okay, it was a subject of his times. Have you read Augustus? It won him the National Book Award in 73. I might have to check that out.

>114 quondame: Daisies, actually, I think they are, just not the species we're used to. Four books - it just worked out well this week. Made up for those occasional weeks where there's nothing. In this case, the Brown was on audio and only 7 hours so that was really easy to finish and Trap Line was a short story, so that's a little bit of a cheat. ;)

>116 mahsdad: There's little to say about happy, shiny people. Stoner's murky path through his life, feeling his way and stirring up all kinds of mud, makes for a very interesting story not like anyone else's.

I have not read Augustus, at least not that I can recall.

I have copies of all three of the books you have just discussed. Stoner, Augustus, and Ardent Swarm. Plus Butcher's Crossing by John Williams. I guess I need to get to reading them. However, I am not sure what box they are in, so will have to do some digging to find them.

>117 richardderus: Absolutely

>118 benitastrnad: That's what I love about this group. When you think you've picked up something obscure, someone else has bound to have heard of it. That and packing books and then finding them again must be a daunting task. :)

Book Haul

Happy Independent Bookstore Day. Had to get a couple books from my favorite local bookstore

23. The Blue Fox by Sjon - impulse pick. I liked the cover. Not sure I ever read an Icelandic author
24. The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal. Sequel to The Calculated Stars

#bh

>120 mahsdad: Your haul is by two authors I love, so of course I'm offering praise. Enjoy the week-ahead's reads!

>121 richardderus: Again, when I thought I found some obscure author (Sjon), not only have you heard of him, he's a favorite. That bodes well. ;)

New Book

Felony Juggler by Penn Jillette



From Penn Jillette of the legendary magic duo Penn & Teller: A street performer finds himself enmeshed in a crime and must outwit his fellow conspirators in his greatest juggling act yet

IN THE EARLY 1970s, Poe is living a nomadic life, hopping trains, sleeping rough, and juggling to feed himself. He eventually settles in Philadelphia and masters his street act before ever-growing crowds. When one of his fellow buskers presents him with an opportunity—a bank heist—he should have refused, an innocent bystander is killed, and he splits town a felon.

Unable to resist the lure of performing, he resurfaces halfway across the country as a regular act in a Renaissance Fair(e). Unfortunately, his notoriety outs him to the criminal organization who believes he took something of importance from them during the bank heist. Using all of the wit and misdirection that has made him the best street performer anyone has ever seen, Poe must outsmart and outmaneuver them in order to return to the peaceful life of juggling.

Drawing from his own youthful experience as a nomadic juggler—before earning international acclaim as one half of the magic duo Penn & Teller—Jillette’s madcap thriller is an authentic and often hilarious glimpse into the pleasures and perils of performing on the street.

There were two things I wanted in high school: I wanted to be Jewish. I wanted to be gay. I listened to Lenny Bruce, and he talked about the goyim and that was me. In Do the Right Thing Spike Lee says to John Savage, with disdain, "Go back to Massachusetts." I wasn't from smart Massachusetts, like Cambridge. I wasn't even from dumb tough Massachusetts like Dorchester or Revere. I was from the part of Massachusetts that doesn't matter to anyone.

#newbook

>122 mahsdad: Well, I have reviewed Red Milk and Moonstone, so....

>122 mahsdad:
I also read that book. It was a good'un. I read it back in 2020 during the lockdown. I had what I termed a "short books project" going. I pulled all the books on my shelves that were under 200 pages and read as many of them as I could during the 3 months I was off. Blue Fox was one of them.

I also loved the cover.

>124 richardderus: 👍

>125 benitastrnad: Your praise adds to it. I'm glad I picked it. I have a bunch of small books on the shelf, I sometimes have those discussions in my mind whether to select on of the smaller books for my next read verses "normal" sized books. A lot of times, if I read a long one, I'll choose a shortie next. :)

New Book - audio

After World by Debbie Urbanski (read by Sura Siu)



Faced with the uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is simple: remove humans from the ecosystem.

Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.

storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc’s assignment is to capture Sen’s life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen’s whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.

After World is a “riveting, creepy…dazzling,” (Kimberly King Parsons, award-winning author of Black Light) novel about what it means to be human in a world upended by AI and the bonds we forge with technology

Game No. U7 in Reverse. Mode(s): Predict, Reenact
Replay of run #0812 (Human 2272696176's) The cabin sits at the outskirts of a mixed-hardwood forest among the rolling hills of the Central Allegheny Plateau. The afternoon sun is angling through the maple branches, highlighting the section of porch where the raccoon will move in later in the year and nest, and the quick calls of the grackles signify that the iridescent black birds are either arriving or leaving the trees.

#newbook

April Recap

Books Read - 10 (30)

First Book: Old Man's War
Last Book: Ringworld

YTD sources
DTE - 30%
Audio - 53%
Digital - 17%

Unique Authors - 29
Lady Authors - 10
Authors of Color - 2

Total BFB/Chunksters for 2025 - 4

Pages Read for 2025 - 3,984
Hours Listened for 2025 - 8 days, 2 hrs, and 56 min
Books per Month - 7.5
Books per Week - 1.67

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February : Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
March : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

April : Stoner by John Williams
May :
June :

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :




#botm

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday, here's yet another picture of my favorite (photogenically) bridge around here.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Felony Juggler by Penn Jillette : 41%
Listening - After World by Debbie Urbanski : 35%
eBook - The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai : 39%

30. Ringworld by Larry Niven 🎧 : Read on audio. A reread of this classic SF novel. There is a vast calamity coming to the universe. The Pierson's Puppeteers discover an artifact deep in space that might be a solution. They send a representative along with a cat-like Kzin and two humans. What they find a vast circular structure millions of miles across, encircling a star. They end up crash landing on it and have to trek across it to find a way home. I want to reread, or read for the first time, the rest of the series.

29. Stoner by John Williams : What an excellent and profound story of an ordinary man living a less than ordinary life. On its surface, it should be a depressing book, but somehow its not. Its the story of Stoner, who leaves his family farm to go to University for Agriculture to help out the family. There he discovers his calling; Literature, becomes a professor and never leaves. He meets a woman, who begrudgingly marries him but then really wants nothing to do with him, he has a daughter, whom he has to raise almost single handedly. He gets tenure, has an affair, it ends badly. he clashes with his bosses, and just when you think he might be getting a life, its over. Like I said, it should be depressing but its somehow uplifting, you keep rooting for this sad sack hero to succeed, and I guess at then end he does. It was a really excellent read for me.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>130 mahsdad: The bridge certainly is a compelling subject.

>130 mahsdad: I'm with you on the bridge being photogenic AND Stoner being excellent!

>131 quondame: >132 richardderus: Thanks guys!

New Book

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes



It's a hilariously revisionist account of Noah's ark, narrated by a passenger who doesn't appear in Genesis. It's a sneak preview of heaven. It encompasses the stories of a cruise ship hijacked by terrorists and of woodworms tried for blasphemy in sixteenth-century France. It explores the relationship of fact to fabulation and the antagonism between history and love. In short, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a grandly ambitious and inventive work of fiction, in the traditions of Joyce and Calvino, from the author of the widely acclaimed Flaubert's Parrot.

They put the Behemoths in the hold along with the rhinos, the hippos and the elephants. It was a sensible decision to use them as ballast; but you can imagine the stench. And there was no-one to muck out.

#newbook

New Book - audio

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi



Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.

In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.

Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

Willie Reed awoke early Sunday morning to the sound of mockingbirds. Mosquitos hovered and darted on the bayou behind his house. The cypress floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he stepped outside into a wall of humidity. Local kids like Willie had a name for the little riffles rising from the dirt: heat monkeys, animated like a living thing. A Mississippi Delta sunrise is feral and predatory; even at 6:00am, the air feels hot on the way in and stagnant on the way out.

#newbook

^I will be dipping into this one today and going full bore on it tomorrow. I know you showed interest in reading along with us. Are you still in?

I thought The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi was excellent.

>136 msf59: Hi Mark, thanks for stopping by, and the reminder about Murakami. I had forgotten.

I will read it next, but probably not for a couple weeks, unless my current book I started last night completely fails, I'll start on the Murakami right after. Don't wait on me. :)

Regarding The Barn, I can't remember who recommended it. it was probably you. I heard about it and immediately added it to my audio wait list (cause when can you get anything right away in Libby), and it just came in the other day. Very good so far.

I am glad you are interested in reading Uncertain Walls. Start it when ever you can. I will watch for your thoughts.

>138 msf59: 😄

For the Stephen King fans in the audience, in case you haven't seen it, the first trailer for The Long Walk is out.

Looks pretty intense.

https://youtu.be/vAtUHeMQ1F8?si=ARsfr1yep2fn2Bm2

Might have to dip into the Bachman Books again, its probably been 30 years.

>139 mahsdad: As much of a fan of Steven King as I am, that looks like like it might be too much for me to watch. I’ll have to think about it. But that you very much for posting the link!

Karen O

This certainly isn't one of his "happier" works. Shawshank it ain't. If memory serves, it was a pretty brutal story.

Interestingly, this is the 2nd book he wrote as Richard Bachman. The first one was Rage, which after Columbine, he had it pulled off the shelves.

>112 mahsdad: Thank you for the beautiful flowers. You have a genuine talent!

>143 Whisper1: Hi Linda. Thanks for your kind words.

Fantastic Foto Friday



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes : 16%
Listening - The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson : 30%
eBook - The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai : 55%

32. After World by Debbie Urbanski 🎧 : Listened on audio. An interesting take on a dystopian/climate disaster world. Its a world, where there is enough technology capabilities to be able to load the human consciousness into the cloud, a digital representative. But its also a world dealing with impending climate collapse. Society decides that to save the world, humans will be sacraficed and uploaded into "After World", to be monitored by AI (shades of the Matrix?). As this is happening there are Watches, humans who are tasks to record everything they see, until at last there is only one. The story is told from readings from a watcher's journals and the observations of the AI. It might have been better reading it, but it was a little convoluted at times on audio. A decent read.

31. Felony Juggler by Penn Jillette (ER) : I received this book from the Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review. This is a crime story wrapped in a memoir of Jillette's early life. Or is it the opposite. It starts off with him describing his early life, his time at Ringling Brother's Circus College and being a street performer. He breaks the 4th wall, talking to the reader, subverting whether or not the story is true. Then it turns to the crime story, where he is involved in a bank robbery, he gets away and starts a new life, as a RenFaire juggler (which he was in real life), and then his past comes back to haunt him. It was a fun read, I could hear his voice in my head and appreciated his irreverence. Sure it just might have been an excuse to flesh out a short story idea with his own life, but it worked pretty well for me.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

Gorgeous photo, Jeff. Very artistic!

>145 mahsdad: What a beautiful image of water droplets! Lovely indeed.

>145 mahsdad: Those leaves posed delightfully for you!

>145 mahsdad: WOW! INCREDIBLE PHOTO! WORTHY OF A PRIZE!

>146 jessibud2: >147 richardderus: >148 quondame: >149 Whisper1: Shelley, RD, Susan, Linda...Thanks so much for the photo love!

>150 mahsdad: It's beautiful, so you earned the accolades!

>151 richardderus: Awww, too kind.

New Book - audio

The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel F. Harrington (read by Jame Gillies)



The extraordinary story of a renaissance-era executioner and his world, based on a rare and overlooked journal.

In a dusty German bookshop, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington stumbled upon a remarkable document: the journal of a sixteenth-century executioner. The journal gave an account of the 394 people Meister Frantz Schmidt executed, and the hundreds more he tortured, flogged, or disfigured for more than forty-five years in the city of Nuremberg. But the portrait of Schmidt that gradually emerged was not that of a monster. Could a man who practiced such cruelty also be insightful, compassionate—even progressive?

In The Faithful Executioner, Harrington teases out the hidden meanings and drama of Schmidt’s journal. Deemed an official outcast, Meister Frantz sought to prove himself worthy of honor and free his children from the stigma of his profession. Harrington uncovers details of Schmidt’s life and work: the shocking, but often familiar, crimes of the day; the medical practice that he felt was his true calling; and his lifelong struggle to reconcile his craft with his religious faith.

The sun has barely cleared the horizon when a crowd begins to form on the chilly Thursday morning of November 13, 1617.
Yet another public execution awaits the free city of Nuremberg, renowned throughout Europe as a bastion of law and order, and spectators from all ranks of society are eager to secure a good viewing spot before the main event gets under way. Vendors have already set up makeshift stands to hawk Nurmberger sausages, fermented cabbage, and salted herrings, lining the entire route of the death procession, from the town hall to the gallows just outside the city walls.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday. Here's a shot of one of my neighbors that I helped get off the sidewalk, not sure why they were so timid. I was able to pick them right up and transfer them to a bush.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes : 52%
Listening - The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel Harrington : 34%
eBook - The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai : 67%

33. The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson 🎧 : Read this on audio. This was an excellent non-fiction history of the murder of Emmitt Till in Drew Mississippi. But its not a history of Till, its really the history of the barn where Till was murdered and the larger history of the south. It was written by Thompson, a sports writer who grew up 30 miles from Drew. This was a very interesting take on history. He starts out at the Barn and goes back and explores how the town was formed, and the history of slavery and the political and social environment that lead up to the Civil Right's movement and the murder and the aftermath. Very interesting, but not surprising details about how with not so surprising easy, the murderers got away with it, and how shortly after, most people in the area forgot it happened. It was a fascinating story and taught me a lot of things I didn't know. Highly recommend.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>154 mahsdad: You captured the magic of a butterfly close encounter.

>154 mahsdad: Your neighbor was squeamed out by a butterfly? Why ever, I wonder. I love the portrait of a good deed well done, Jeff.

>154 mahsdad: Monarch = Maybe just awakened?

>156 richardderus: :) I meant that the butterfly WAS my neighbor.

>157 m.belljackson: You're probably right. It was a little windy and cool that day. It might have gotten blown off course.

Book Haul

From Sunken City Books

25. Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu. Short stories by contemporary Chinese authors, plus a couple essays about Chinese SF publishing
26. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

#bh

New Book - audio

Time and Again by Jack Finney (read by Paul Hecht)



When advertising artist Si Morley is recruited to join a covert government operation exploring the possibility of time travel, he jumps at the chance to leave his mundane 20th-century existence and step into the past. But he also has another motivation for going back in time: a half-burned letter that tells of a mysterious, tragic death and ominously of “fire which will destroy the whole world.”

Traveling to New York City in January 1882 to investigate, he finds a Manhattan teeming with a different kind of life, the waterfront unimpeded by skyscrapers, open-air markets packed with activity, Central Park bustling with horse drawn sleighs—a city on the precipice of great things. At first, Si welcomes these trips as a temporary escape but when he falls in love with a woman he meets in the past, he must choose whether to return to modern life or live in 1882 for good.

In shirt-sleeves, the way I generally worked, I sat sketching a bar of soap taped to an upper corner of my drawing board. The gold-foil wrapper was carefully peeled back so that you could still read most of the brand name printed on it; I'd spoiled the wrappers of half a dozen bars before getting that effect.

#newbook

>160 mahsdad: First time reading it? Enjoy!

Nice little haul, too.

>160 mahsdad: - This is one of my all-time favourite books and one of the very few I've read more than once, including the audiobook version. Make sure you find a hard copy just to see his sketches, which are included in the book. I am still waiting for a Spielberg or a Ron Howard to make a film as magical as the book. Hasn't happened yet and, on second thought, maybe it's just as well. I'd sure hate for someone to mess it up.

>161 richardderus: Book Haul, yeah they looked good, especially the Chinese SF.

Regarding Time..., my #newbook posts are right at the beginning, when I start a book. I'm only about 56m in, out of 17h. Its good so far, he's just getting recruited, we don't know if he's qualified, but why wouldn't he, he's the main character. :)

Oh, it gets better and you are in for a treat! Such a fun story!

>154 mahsdad: I very much enjoy the photo of a butterfly in your hand/on your fingers. You are incredibly gentle!

New Book

The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami



NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A REAL SIMPLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

"Haruki Murakami invented 21st-century fiction." —The New York Times • "More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world." —San Francisco Chronicle • "Murakami is masterful." —Los Angeles Times

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

You were the one who told me about the town. On that summer evening we were heading up the river, the sweet fragrance of grass wafting over us. We passed over several little weirs that held back the flowing sand, stopping from time to time to gaze at the delicate silvery fish wriggling in the pools.

#newbook

>164 jessibud2: 3 hours in now, and it certainly is getting better

>165 Whisper1: Thanks Linda

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday. Here's some more "native" wildlife. The PV peafowl flock has been migrating off the hill into Pedro the last couple years. We've had a Mama leading her kids around several times. This time, she decided to make our front garden bed, her nesting location. She been tucked up in for at least a week. Hardly ever moves. Last year we had one in the backyard. Laura thought it was dead because it never moved. Animal Control came out and said, nope she's just nesting. We should have 6 babies cheeping around in another week or so.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

eBook - The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami : 3%
Listening - Time and Again by Jack Finney : 18%
eBook - The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai : 76%

35. The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes This is an excellent collection of stories. All quasi-satirical takes on Religion and primarily Noah's Ark. The first story is a first hand telling of what really happened during the flood, by a stow away on one of Noah's ships (yes, Barnes posits that there was a whole fleet, and it makes sense, if a fictitious parable from an ancient book has to make sense). Then there's a story about a medieval blasphemy trial of woodworms. Another very interesting story is a POV telling of the ship Medusa and its wrecking in the first half and in the second, its about the painting of the wreck called "The Raft of the Medusa".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa#/media/File:JEAN_LOUIS_TH%C..."

I truly would have given it another half star, except that the 1/2 chapter, called Parenthesis, really didn't work for me. It was, I think, just an essay by Barnes about love and how its portrayed in the arts. As we say in my family... Slow and Developing, so I just moved on. Otherwise most excellent stories.

34. Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent 16th Century by Joel Harrington 🎧 : Read on Audio. This was an excellent narrative non-fiction story of the life of an Executioner in Medieval Nuremberg. Meister Frantz Schmidt was a professional executor for 45 years and he kept a journal. It was one of the few from that time and was pretty much overlooked, until Harrington took it as a starting point to give an really interesting look at these ancient times, how life and crime and laws were so vastly different from our own, but also, in some ways, almost the same. Fascinating read.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>168 mahsdad: Wow, peafowl with cohabiting entanglements!

You rated The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters .5 higher than I did. Possibly that had something to do with the tone/feel of the book, more than the contents.

>169 quondame: They are loud and messy (they like to dig around your yard looking for food, but they're cool to have around

The reading/social/physical climate at the time you're reading can always have an affect. Plus not every story is for everyone. I know there are probably plenty of books that you loved that don't work for me. That's the beauty of this place there's always more and always something out there that hits just right. ;)

Speaking of The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, I forgot that I had a couple quotes that struck me when I was reading. Here they are...

(The Vistors) He talked of early Zionist settlers and Western concepts of land-ownership. The Balfour Declaration. Jewish immigration from Europe. The Second World War. European guilt over the Holocaust being paid for by the Arabs. The Jews having learned from their persecution by the Nazis that the only way to survive was to be like Nazis. Their militarism, expansionism, racisms. Their pre-emptive attack on the Egyptian air force at the start of the Six Day War being the exact moral equivalent of Pearl Harbor.

(Shipwreck)The raft would then be towed to the shore and all would be saved. This plan was perfectly well-laid; but as two of the company were later to affirm, it was traced upon loose sand, which was dispersed by the breath of egotism

>168 mahsdad: What a fun addition to your pretty garden the Peafowl are!

>160 mahsdad: I really liked this book, Jeff.
>168 mahsdad: A great photo and a great story.
Have a wonderful day!

>166 mahsdad:
I am also reading this book. It has much the same atmosphere as iQ84 and Windup Bird Chronicle. I am enjoying it a great deal, but it is proving to not be a fast read.

>172 m.belljackson: Thanks!

>173 SirThomas: Hi Thomas, I am enjoying Time and Again as well. And thanks for the photo love.

>174 benitastrnad: Yeah, you're right, right there in Murakami's wheelhouse. I just started it, and I didn't realize it until I opened up the ebook, that it's a chunkster (500+ pages), but I guess we shouldn't expect less of him. It is a little slower, I'm a couple pages per day under my usual pace, but that's okay, its a good read so far.

New Book - Audio

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (read by John Lee)



The stunning Booker Prize–winning novel from the author of Amnesty and Selection Day that critics have likened to Richard Wright’s Native Son, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8).

The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.

Recalling The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, The White Tiger is narrative genius with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.

Now, I no longer watch Hindi films, on principle, but back in the days when I used to, just before the movie got started, either the number 786 would flash against the black screen - the Muslims think this is a magic number that represents their god - or else you would see the picture of a woman in a white sari with gold sovereigns dripping down to her feet, which is the goddess Lakshmi, of the Hindus.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday, here's a little bit of ivy I saw on a walk recently. I thought this looked cool aesthetically.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

eBook - The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami : 23%
Listening - The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga : 8%

37. Time and Again by Jack Finney 🎧 : Read on audio. This was an interesting read. Si is an advertising artist who is recruited by a shady government organization to work on a secret mission. Turns out its time travel. He eventually goes back to 1882 New York, to investigate some business/political mystery from modern times. But then falls in love and has to decide which world he wants to live in and if he'll help the government in its plans. It was interesting, Finney jumps right past the "technology" of time travel. The MacGuffin of it was pretty much that you just hypnotize yourself back. There had to be a place that existed in the past and in current time. For NY, it was the Dakota (that I only knew about from John Lennon fame). There was a lot of interesting detail about life in NY in the mid-19th century. Initially, I thought it was just a good thriller set back in time, but, he kind of flipped the script near the end that elevated it for me. A worthy read.

36. The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai (K) : Manai, is an author from Tunisia and this was translated from the French. I forget why I got this. I definitely bought it from Amazon Kindle store. Probably was one of those suggestions from around here and it was on sale. Its the story of a small remote village in a fictious Muslim country that is dealing with religious extremists "invading" their remote world. In this village is a man who is a bee keeper and he is dealing with trying to protect his charges from an invading army of rampaging hornets. He has to travel to the big city to research a solution and finds the world around him changing more than he'd expected.

Once again, man, in search of land, gave the plague to his fellow man in the folds of his offerings.

Professor, you will notice that there are several buttons in the bathroom that generate multiple sprays of water. Do not panic. Trust your instinct.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>177 mahsdad: - So good to hear that you enjoyed the Finney. There is a sequel, which I own but have not yet read. I keep thinking I'll be disappointed...lol

>177 mahsdad: Agree with you about the Finney and about the ivy. Love the trailing vertical angle. The green and concrete colors are great contrasts.

Happy weekend-ahead's reads!

Happy Friday, Jeff. I hope all is well. Hooray for the visiting peafowl. Glad to see that you started Uncertain Walls. It has been a hit with the shared group. I am really enjoying my audio of Heartwood. Keep this one in mind, my friend.

>177 mahsdad: It's good to see Ivy being seen! It is so ubiquitous that its extraordinary qualities are often missed.

Time and Again mostly annoyed me. The descriptions of a "good old days" that took almost opaque rose colored specs to a great grasping greedy time, and declared "people then knew how to have fun." Nope.

>180 msf59: Hi Mark and Jeff - I've never read Murakami before, so ordered Uncertain Walls to join in.

>178 jessibud2: Hi Shelley, yeah I saw that about the sequel. Looks like it was published right before he died (or at least in the same year). Maybe trying to squeeze out one more story? I agree, Time and Again worked as it is, maybe no need for the sequel.

>179 richardderus: Thanks for the photo love, RD

>180 msf59: Hi Mark, Uncertain Walls, I'm a little over 30% done. Its pretty good, in the typical Murakami weird way. I'll add Heartwood to the WL. Thanks!

>181 quondame: Ivy, yeah it is pretty ubiquitous. I think it was the one strand that caught my eye. Time and Again - I can certainly appreciate your opinion. Given it was written in 1970, its kind of a nested "good-ol-days". 1882 being colored by the 70's and now our "modern" eyes being colored by the 70's and the 80's. :)

>182 m.belljackson: Good luck with your first Murakami. He's definitely an aquired taste, but worthwhile, if you enjoy the odd. Its still too early for me to see where it ranks with the others I've read, but my favorites are The Strange Library, A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

May Recap

Books Read - 7 (37)

First Book: Old Man's War
Last Book: Time and Again

YTD sources
DTE - 30%
Audio - 54%
Digital - 16%

Unique Authors - 36
Lady Authors - 11
Authors of Color - 2

Total BFB/Chunksters for 2025 - 4 (but the Murakami that I'm reading now is one as well)

Pages Read for 2025 - 4,734
Hours Listened for 2025 - 10 days, 3 hrs and 45 min
Books per Month - 7.4
Books per Week - 1.61
Average Pages per Day - 9.14 (but that's skewed by one book where I started reading it in 2023, put it down for over a year and finished it. My tracking list shows it took me 693 days to finish). I got to figure out how to ignore the outliers. :)

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February : Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
March : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

April : Stoner by John Williams
May : The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
June :

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :




#botm

>168 mahsdad: What a fantastic sight to have in your backyard!

>186 figsfromthistle: Tho it might be the curse of wishful thinking. We say a Mama and 3 babies walking down the driveway and we thought, oh great, they hatched. But then Laura checked and "our" Mama was still brooding. So we have 2 (at least) families walking around. We used to only get the occasional visitor. I think they've expanded their range and moved in permanently.

New Book - Audio

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (read by Beata Pozniak)



In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?

I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.

#newbook

>187 mahsdad: - Ha! I drove by a local parkette today (not really a park just the grounds between a few high-rises) and couldn't finish counting the family of Canada geese sitting and walking around there before I had to put my eyes back on the road.

I'd rather see peacocks than geese!

>189 jessibud2: Geese vs Peafowl, you may be right, but their effluence is about the same volume. LOL

>188 mahsdad: I enjoyed this book immensely. It was adapted into a film (screenplay by the author) called "Spoor" if you're looking for an interesting movie.

>191 ocgreg34: Very interesting about the movie, I'll have to look for it. I'm about 20% in, its pretty good so far

New Book

Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green



John Green, acclaimed author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Signed edition

“The real magic of Green’s writing is the deeply considerate, human touch that goes into every word.” –The Associated Press

″Told with the intelligence, wit, and tragedy that have become hallmarks of the author’s work.... This is the story of us.” –Slate

“Earnest and empathetic.” –The New York Times

Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be­came fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century the Scottish tinkerer and chemist James Watt began working on a new project. He had already achieved fame and success for making steam engines more efficient, helping to fuel the industrial revolution taht would radically reshape human history... But Watt hoped his new project would be his most important yet. He became obsessed with finding some kind of chemical solution to treat the lung disease known to physicians as phthisis

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday, here's a flower for ya. Sorry if its a little bit racy. ;)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green : 14%
eBook - The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami : 45%
Listening - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk : 34%

38. White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 🎧 : Read on Audio. This won the Booker in 2008. Balram Halwai is a successful man, but he wasn't always. Over the course of 7 nights he tells his story of how he started out as a driver for a wealthy man and thru circumstances, and a bit of murder was able to rise above his caste and situation. It was a good read. My only problem with the audio was that it was read by John Lee, who is Irish, but he read it in a very stereotypical Indian access that was a little jarring. I suppose 15+ years from when it was recorded, times have changed, but in today's world, I would hope they'd actually get an Indian to record a story about an Indian, if not, at least don't do Apu.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>194 mahsdad: Truly fantastic! What a gorgeous color! And such a sense of motion.

Book Haul

27. Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford : bought from my favorite Pittburgh indie - Citybooks PGH.

#bh

>195 quondame: Thanks Susan!

New Book - audio

Run by Blake Crouch (read by Scott Brick)



A gripping apocalyptic thriller about a man and his family running for their lives in an America gone mad—from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

No time to think. No time to ask why. Only time to run.

Five days ago, the epidemic of rage began.

Four days ago, the rash of senseless murders swept the nation.

Three days ago, the president addressed the country and begged for peace—even as the murders increased tenfold.

Two days ago, the killers began to mobilize.

One day ago, the power went out.

And tonight, the killers are reading the names of those to be killed over the Emergency Broadcast System.

Jack Colclough is listening over the battery-powered radio on his kitchen table in Albuquerque, and he just heard his name. People are coming to his house to kill him, his wife, his daughter, and his son.

He has no idea what’s happening, or why, but the time for questions is long past.

His only chance is to run.

Following an ordinary family on a desperate race through an America that’s destroying itself, Run is a terrifying, brutally stripped-down thriller from master storyteller Blake Crouch.

The tattered wind sock hangs limp against its pole. Weeds erupt through fissures in the runway where she stands, and in the distance, support beams rise from heaps of twisted metal - three hangars, long since toppled upon a half dozen single- and twin-engine airplanes.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Its Jacaranda season here in SoCal. Its a tree that for most of the year is pretty sparse with thin green leaves. But then they bloom in spring and its purple galore. They're sometimes hard to capture in an image. I think this one works.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green : 45%
eBook - The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami : 69%
Listening - Run by Blake Crouch : 53%

39. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk 🎧 : Read this on audio. I had never heard of this Polish Nobel Laurette, before someone recommended this book. Its the story of Janina, (as someone described in the LT reviews that I read), an elderly, misanthropic, animal-loving, astrology-wielding, ghost-perceiving mystic. And also a translator of Blake (where the title of the book comes from). She lives in a small village on the border of the Czech Republic, and one night she's awakened to find that her neighbor has been murdered and due to the fact that he's a poacher/hunter and there were animal tracks around his body, she thinks that the animals killed him in retribution. As several other murders turn up under similar circumstances, she is further convinced. Her neighbors and the police are not convinced. Its a noir thriller and the main protagonist, might be a little insane. A good read.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>198 mahsdad: ...so MAGAworld only dusted with fictional deniability. I look forward to knowing what you think of it after finishing.

>200 richardderus: If it wasn't that it was originally written in 2011, I would say you weren't far off. Its not bad so far (I'm about 2/3 thru), I can see the potential in his writing that I've come to love in his famous books that came later. But its basically, a McGuffin happens that causes some portion of the US to go on a murderous rampage. The main character and his family start driving away from their lawless town. its a series of Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire vignettes. Think, The Purge, crossed with the Stand (maybe, not sure yet) crossed with the Road.

Not his best work. But Scott Brick is reading and he's one of my favorite narrators, so that's a plus.

Apparently, they're making a movie version of Whalefall with Josh Brolin.

It was a completely terrifying and anxiety inducing book about a man surviving after being swallowed by a whale. if you've read it, you know, if you haven't, I would recommend it, if you're into that sort of thing, it was a good read.

Just found out from one of my local San Pedro FB groups, that they're filming in the area. Not sure how they'll shoot the "interiors". I suspect it will be either really good or really cheesy bad.

Happy Friday, Jeff. Love the last 2 Friday Fotos. How are things going with the Murakami? Keeping your attention? I also enjoyed White Tiger.

>202 mahsdad: eeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

>199 mahsdad: A very imposing tree!

>203 msf59: Hi Mark, sorry I didn't reply sooner. I usually only reply or post content when I am on my actual computer. As techy as I am, I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to typing on my tablet or phone. I am still throughly enjoying Murakami. Just got to the point where the Yellow Sub Boy disappeared

>204 richardderus: Yeah, I agree with you.

>205 quondame: Thanks Susan!

New Book - audio

You Like it Darker by Stephen King (read by Will Patton)



“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

“King’s skills as a storyteller remain undimmed” (The Minnesota Star Tribune) and his ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace is unsurpassed. “The titular darkness promised is as riveting and all-consuming as ever” (New York magazine). You like it darker? You got it.

My father - my famous father - died in 2023, at the age of ninety. Two years before he passed, he got an email from a freelance writer named Ruth Crawford asking him for an interview (from Two Talented Bastids)

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Here's your weekly dose of flower pics from Jeff :)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green : 75%
eBook - The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami : 96%
Listening - You Like it Darker by Stephen King : 28%

40. Run by Blake Crouch 🎧 : Read this on audio, by one of my favorites; Scott Brick, a plus that added a half star, I think. This is an early Crouch book. Originally written in 2011, its been rereleased this year (contractual obligation book? Maybe.). Its okay, I guess. Something happens that makes have the US go crazy and start killing the "normals", the world collapses and its Mad Max seemingly overnight. Our main character Jack and his family live in New Mexico. When things go sideways, they jump in the car with as much supplies as they can carry and they start driving north to the safety of Canada. Thus begins a series of vignettes, where they come across a mob, run away, or fight, get shot at, barely survive into a beautiful situation where all is well and they can relax, only to do it all over again, but worse. The far fetched cause with no real explanation as to why, gets resolved right at the end with no real reason why, in what I call the Star Trek ending. (ST, especially TNG, always seemed to get into some calamity and the resolution and climax always happens in the last 5 minutes of the show. :) ). At any rate, if you want a mindless thriller to listen to on audio, go for it. If you're a Crouch completist, go for it, but its not one of his bests, by far (IMHO)

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>208 mahsdad: I feel safe ignoring that Crouch. I love that shades-of-purple composition! Forms and colors are balanced so well, giving a real sense of motion to the whole.

>209 richardderus: Thanks RD. And from the commentary on your thread and on FB, I'll add and say, I'm glad you're back home and on the mend!

>208 mahsdad: What a symphonic display of pink!

>211 quondame: Thanks Susan, I appreciate it.

New Book

Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman



From the best-selling author of the "charming debut" (People) A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, a heartwarming and hilarious story of a reluctant outsider who transforms a tiny village and a woman who finds love and second chances in the unlikeliest of places.

Britt-Marie can't stand mess. She eats dinner at precisely the right time and starts her day at six in the morning because only lunatics wake up later than that. And she is not passive-aggressive. Not in the least. It's just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention.

But at 63, Britt-Marie has had enough. She finally walks out on her loveless 40-year marriage and finds a job in the only place she can: Borg, a small, derelict town devastated by the financial crisis. For the fastidious Britt-Marie, this new world of noisy children, muddy floors, and a roommate who is a rat (literally) is a hard adjustment.

As for the citizens of Borg, with everything that they know crumbling around them, the only thing that they have left to hold on to is something Britt-Marie absolutely loathes: their love of soccer. When the village's youth team becomes desperate for a coach, they set their sights on her. She's the least likely candidate, but their need is obvious, and there is no one else to do it.

Thus begins a beautiful and unlikely partnership. In her new role as reluctant mentor to these lost young boys and girls, Britt-Marie soon finds herself becoming increasingly vital to the community. And, even more surprisingly, she is the object of romantic desire for a friendly and handsome local policeman named Sven. In this world of oddballs and misfits, can Britt-Marie finally find a place where she belongs?

Zany and full of heart, Britt-Marie Was Here is a novel about love and second chances and about the unexpected friendships we make that teach us who we really are and the things we are capable of doing.

Forks. Knives. Spoons. In that order. Britt-Marie is certainly not the kind of person who judges other people. Far from it. But surely no civilized person would even think of arranging a cutlery drawer in a different way from how cutlery drawers are supposed to be arranged?

#newbook

New Book - ebook

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal



Mary Robinette Kowal's science fiction debut, 2019 Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Award for best novel, The Calculating Stars, explores the premise behind her award-winning "Lady Astronaut of Mars."

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process.

Elma York’s experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too.

Elma’s drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.

Do you remember where you were when the Meteor hit? I've never understood why people phrase it as a question, because of course you remember. I was in the mountains with Nathaniel. He had inherited this cabin from his father and we used to go up there for stargazing. By which I mean : sex.

#newbook

From me - this is a reread. First read it in 2021. I just got the sequel The Fated Sky, and I want to read it, so I thought I would reread the first. It is my ebook read, which means this will probably take me a couple months to read (I generally only read on my kindle when we go out to dinner and such ;) )

>214 mahsdad:
I have been wanting to read that series. I don't have these books so will have to place an ILL request for them, but I do look forward to reading them - sometime.

>215 benitastrnad: So sorry I never replied. The week got away from me. I had Calculating on ebook, that I got from the TOR book club when they were doing that. I have an unlocked MOBI version and I can convert it to EPUB (or probably just about any format), let me know if you want a copy.

I got Fated at a Used Bookstore.

Happy Friday, Jeff. I wanted to warble about a couple of GNs- I can't say enough about It Rhymes With Takei by George Takei, which I recently finished and I just started Flamer and it is off to a promising start. I enjoyed The Calculating Stars and the new King novel sounds intriguing.

Fantastic Foto Friday

A little late today, but here's some flowers. This is from a visit to Armstrong's Garden center. Laura buys actual plants (she needed to stock up on milkweed for all the Monarch caterpillars we've got in the yard) and I take flower pictures.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>4 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrick Backman : 41%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 10%
Listening - You Like it Darker by Stephen King : 83%

42. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green : Its John Green, he's one of my Day One authors, so I got a signed copy when it first came out in March. This is a surprisingly (tho I really shouldn't have been surprised) engaging history of still one of the most deadly infectious disease in the world. John didn't really think TB was a thing still, until in 2019 he met a young man in in Sierra Leone who was suffering from hit. He had the same name as John's son and a friendship and an obsession was borne. A fascinating read where I learned many facts that I was not aware of. One of which was that Pasadena came to be, partly as a TB sanatorium. And that WWI, started due to TB. Franz Ferdinand's assassins were dying of TB.

Dr. Girum later told me, "Yes, I know, it's just one patient. There are so many patients, and Henry is just one. Why should we move mountains to save one patient? Because he is one person. A person, you understand/ And anyway, what if he can be the first of many?

41. The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (K) : Murakami is another of my favorite authors. He's always challenging to read, only from the standpoint that his books are weird, and I'm not sure I'm smart enough to get them, but I love them anyway. This one is no exception. I'm not sure I can adequately describe this book. It was engaging, and at times confusing, but all in all an excellent read.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>218 mahsdad: Beautifully fragile!

I wish that they sold milkweed at garden stores around here. I would buy them. But it would be in vain because the chemical spray used on most of the fields of corn and soybeans that surround the house would kill them. Milkweed is very susceptible to glyphosates and that is part of the reason why the Monarch's that migrate on the Midwest flyway are in big trouble.

Regarding City and Its Uncertain Walls, I can say with no doubts, that Murakami writes beautifully. His descriptions are engaging and engrossing, but I can't say that I really liked this book. I know it is a tag-on to Hardboiled Wonderland but it just didn't have the impact on me that Hardboiled did.

>220 benitastrnad: My wife has done a great job of creating a natural garden at our house (we live on a hill so no really flat ground, no grass) and has the sin of success, the Monarchs hang out around us, which means all the natural stuff gets consumed quickly. That's too bad about the herbicides in your neck of the woods.

I've never read Hardboiled Wonderland, I'm going to have to look for it. I've read 7 now, and I have Norwegian Wood on the shelf

Author Event

I ventured up to Pasadena yesterday to see one of my favorite authors; Jess Walter talk to David Duchovney about his new book So Far Gone. It was a excellent talk. It was being recorded for Duchovney's podcast (Fail Better), not sure when it will be out. They've been friends for years, so it was fun hearing the easy banter. Can't wait to read the book.





Of course while I was waiting for the event, I couldn't resist a little retail therapy

28. So Far Gone
29. Cartoons by Kit Schulter. This was an impulse buy, based on the cover and the description that said "Set in the uncanny valley between Bugs Bunny and Franz Kafka, Cartoons is an explosive series of outrageous, absurdist tales." Right in my wheelhouse.
30. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers. The 2nd Robot and Monk novella. I read A Psalm for the Wild-Built in January and I loved it. Had to get this.

#bh

New Book - audio

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (read by Andy Serkis)



The audiobook of Small Gods is narrated by the BAFTA award-winning actor and director Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings; Planet of the Apes). BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually; Pirates of the Caribbean; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) reads the footnotes, and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace; Shaun of the Dead) stars as the voice of Death. Featuring a new theme tune composed by James Hannigan.

'You should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.'

Religion is a competitive business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion and their own gods, of every shape and size - all fighting for faith, followers, and a place at the top.

So when the great god Om accidentally manifests himself as a lowly tortoise, stripped of all divine power, it's clear he's become less important than he realised.

In such instances, you need an acolyte, and fast. Enter Brutha, the Chosen One - or at least the only One available. He wants peace, justice and love - but that's hard to achieve in a world where religion means power, and corruption reigns supreme...

'An intriguing satire on institutionalized religion corrupted by power . . .' Independent

'Deftly weaves themes of forgiveness, belief and spiritual regeneration' The Times

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle. The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no thread to anyone and too much trouble to eat.

#newbook

>218 mahsdad: What IS that thing?! I expect it to say "FEED ME, SEYMOUR" any second!

No Harukista, me, but this latest one feared better than usual with me...more than the ordinary two stars for once.

I'm dragging my feet on the Green, just too scared of the subject....

Happy week-ahead's reads.

>223 mahsdad: Small Gods is one of my favorite non-Watch Pratchett novels.

>224 richardderus: Its Evening Primrose.

Green is worth the time, IMO. Despite the scary subject.

>225 quondame: Glad to hear. Fine praise!

Project Hail Mary Trailer!

https://youtu.be/m08TxIsFTRI?si=Dr1BCahnODVV1b_1

I'm in, with the caveat of how they're going to handle Rocky.

>227 mahsdad: I don't expect anything great from Rocky's depiction. I think no matter what they choose there'll be loud naysayers. Like Mickey 17 (unfairly vilified by the loudmouth whiners), it'll be run down by some seriously disturbed "fans".

It already is. People on TikTok are saying, fi you plan on reading the book don't watch the trailer, its too spoilery.

My take is, the people who have already read it and love it, are spoiler proof, if you haven't read, but are just because of the movie, then you don't care about spoilers. Readers are such a small part of the market the studio is trying to sell to. They have to sell to the majority who will never read it, nor never even knew it was a book. They have to know the stakes. That and there's probably going to be a ton of Rocky merchandise.

Either way, I thought it was a good trailer.

>229 mahsdad:
The trailer might make me read the book. It wasn't on my TBR list until I saw the trailer.

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February : Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
March : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

April : Stoner by John Williams
May : The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
June : Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :




#botm

>230 benitastrnad: I recommend it. I thought it was excellent

>227 mahsdad: Ooh la la! Can’t wait for Project Hail Mary. I loved the book.

Karen O

>223 mahsdad: My favorite Discworld novel. Brutha is the best prophet.

>233 klobrien2: I know, unless its complete crap (which I doubt), its pretty much review proof for me.

>234 elorin: Its pretty good so far. And as expected Serkis is doing a great job.

June Recap

Books Read - 6 (43)

First Book: White Tiger
Last Book: You Like it Darker

YTD sources
DTE - 28%
Audio - 56%
Digital - 16%

Unique Authors - 42
Lady Authors - 12
Authors of Color - 3

Total BFB/Chunksters for 2025 - 6
Rereads - 4
Purchased - 30
Gave Away - 6

Pages Read for 2025 - 5,441
Hours Listened for 2025 - 12 days, 4 hrs, and 30 minus
Books per Month - 7.17
Books per Week - 1.59
Average Pages per Day - 30.23

Hey, Jeff. Did you see my post up in #217?

>237 msf59: I did not, I humbly apologize.

I was looking at the timestamps and I think what happens is that the threads don't automatically update, so if I have my thread open, unless I explicitly refresh it I won't see any new posts. I posted a little after 4pm, you posted @ 4:44 and then I posted again @ 10p, but I hadn't refreshed, so I just saw my 4pm post when I was posting at 10. I should probably get into the habit of refreshing before I post.

I had not heard of It Rhymes with Takei, I loved his They Call Us Enemy book, I'll have to look for this as well. As well as Flamer, that seems like an interesting read.

FYI, since you're a big short story fan, like me, You Like it Darker is a collection of stories, not a novel. I'll have more to say on Friday with my weekly recap, but they were mostly really good.

See you on the new thread.