mahsdad's (Jeff) 2025 Thread - Q3

Welcome to 2025 Q3 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 - Q3

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


September
65. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (read by Too Many to Name) 🎧 :
65. The Last Colony by John Scalzi (read by William Dufris) 🎧 :
64. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers :
63. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (read by Paul Giamatti) 🎧 :
62. Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin :
61. Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness by Neil Swidey 🎧 :
60. Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky 🎧 :

Favorite : A Prayer for the Crown-Shy


August
59. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami :
58. Long Walk by Stephen King 🎧 :
57. Questions for a Soldier by John Scalzi (K) :
56. Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik 🎧 :
55. Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowel (K) :
54. Ask the Dust by John Fante :
53. You Look Like Death: Tales from the Umbrella Academy by Gerald Way (GN) :
52. Little Big Man by Thomas Berger 🎧 :
51. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis :

Favorite : Ask the Dust


July
50. So Far Gone by Jess Walter :
49. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 🎧 :
48. Zone One by Colson Whitehead :
47. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi 🎧 :
46. It Rhymes with Takei by George Takei (GN) :
45. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett 🎧 :
44. Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman :

Favorite : So Far Gone

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, How High We Go in the Dark

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, Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony

Rosalyn Landor - Never Let Me Go

Oliver Wyman - America Fantastica

Angela Brazil - Radium Girls

Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Message

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)

Andy Serkis - Small Gods

Barbara Caruso - The Year of Magical Thinking

David Aaron Baker - Little Big Man

Johnny Heller - Rabid

Kirby Heyborne - Long Walk

David H. Lawerence XVII - Trapped Under the Sea

Paul Giamatti - A Scanner Darkly

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
2005 - The Year of Magical Thinking - Dideon (Non-Fiction) 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 READ
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 Recap so far

Books Read - 43

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 - 9

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

First Book - Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera
75th Book - Not Yet
Last Book - You Like it Darker by Stephen King







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 : 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

Happy new thread, Jeff. As always and unsurprisingly I love your lists.

Happy New Thread, Jeff. Everything is Tuberculosis is my next audio.

>19 PaulCranswick: Glad to share my obsessions.

>20 msf59: Hi Mark. I think you'll like it. Who's reading it?

New Book

It Rhymes with Takei by George Takei



George Takei has shown the world many faces: actor, author, outspoken activist, helmsman of the starship Enterprise, living witness to the internment of Japanese Americans, and king of social media. But until October 27, 2005, there was always one piece missing—one face he did not show the world. There was one very intimate fact about George that he never shared…and it rhymes with Takei.

Now, for the first time ever, George shares the full story of his life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything. Following the phenomenal success of his first graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, George Takei reunites with the team of Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger for a jaw-dropping new testament. From his earliest childhood crushes and youthful experiments in the rigidly conformist 1950s, to global fame as an actor and the terrible fear of exposure, to the watershed moment of speaking his truth and becoming one of the most high-profile gay men on the planet, It Rhymes with Takei offers a sweeping portrait of one iconic American navigating the tides of LGBTQ+ history.

Combining historical context with intimate subjectivity, It Rhymes with Takei shows how the personal and the political have always been intertwined. Its richly emotional words and images depict the terror of entrapment even in gay community spaces, the anguish of speaking up for so many issues while remaining silent on his most personal issue, the grief of losing friends to AIDS, the joy of finding true love with Brad Altman, and the determination to declare that love openly—and legally—before the whole world.

Looking back on his astonishing life on both sides of the closet door, George Takei presents a charismatic and candid account of how far America has come…and how precious that progress is.

From me - thanks @msf59 for the nudge to read this. I haven't read a GN since January.

#newbook

Happy new thread, Jeff!

>22 mahsdad: ...not to mention how threatened the safety of QUILTBAG people in general is becoming again.

Good praise-laden review. He's an idol of mine.

>24 richardderus: These #newbook posts are prior to actually reading the book. Its just the blurb from Ammy to describe what the book is about.

I'm looking forward to reading it.

>21 mahsdad: I haven't checked yet. Looking forward to your thoughts on It Rhymes with Takei.

Happy new thread, Jeff

Happy new one!

>26 msf59: Takei - not too far into it, its pretty good. And infuriating what he had to go thru.

>27 ArlieS: >28 drneutron: Thanks Arlie, Jim!

Happy new thread, Jeff!

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday, such as it is. To paraphrase part of the Lord's prayer ... lead us not into a dystopian hellscape but delivery us from our Evil Overlord. ;p

At any rate, here's a cool sign that I saw the other day. I liked the kitschy 50s vibe at the top with the modern stores.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrick Backman : 81%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 10%
Listening - Small Gods by Terry Pratchett : 59%

43. You Like it Darker by Stephen King 🎧 : A short story collection from last year. Read mostly by Will Patton, with a couple by King. A very interesting mix here. A police procedural with an eerie bent. A couple real horror stories, including basically a sequel to Cujo, and a couple sci-fi twilight zone like stories. A good read. I didn't realize till I was done (20 hours, read at around 1.3x), that it was 500+ pages. Its a chunkster (as a lot of King's stuff is), but it didn't read that way.

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

#ff

>31 mahsdad: Won't be reading more King but I *love* that sign! Very cool indeed.

Spend the weekend happily, Jeff!

>31 mahsdad: I love your Fantastic Foto! And I just got a copy of that Stephen King AND a copy of his new Never Flinch from dear old library! A plethora of Stephen King!

And I’ve found with Mr. King that his words seem to roll me along so that I don’t notice any dragging or how many pages I’ve read (or have left to read).

Happy No Kings Day!

>31 mahsdad: Such a declarative photo!

I wonder what information would be encoded in a year-by-year/decade-by-decade sequence of images of such signs. Certainly take out food trends.

Happy 4th, Jeff. I have added the King collection. Looking forward to reading another King. Really enjoying Everything Is Tuberculosis.

>32 richardderus: Happy Weekend to you! No harm, no foul on not reading King. Plenty of other books to go around. :)

>33 klobrien2: Never Flinch - another Holly book? I haven't even read Holly yet, Been on the shelf since Christmas '23, just waiting for the right time to pick it uup.

>34 quondame: Time-lapse of the sign, that would be interesting to see.

>32 richardderus: >33 klobrien2: >34 quondame: Thanks for the foto love!

>35 msf59: Glad you're liking Everything...

New Book

Zone One by Colson Whitehead



In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One—but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety—the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world.

And then things start to go wrong.

Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One bril­liantly subverts the genre’s conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.

He always wanted to live in New York. His Uncle Lloyd lived downtown on Lafayette, and in the long stretches between visits he daydreamed about living in his apartment. When his mother and father dragged him to the city for that season's agreed-upon exhibit or good-for-you Broadway smash, they usually dropped in on Uncle Lloyd for a quick hello.

#newbook

>37 mahsdad: ...and another BB for me.
I am already looking forward to it.
Have a wonderful week!

>38 SirThomas: So far so good. A very interesting take on the genre

New Book - Audio

Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi (read by William Dufris)



The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms.

The universe is a dangerous place for humanity―and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF's biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.

Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared's brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.

At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin's memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason's for Boutin's betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat…

No one noticed the rock. And for a very good reason. The rock was nondescript, one of the millions of chunks of rock and ice floating in the orbit of a long-dead short-period comet, looking just like any chunk of that deceased comet might.

This is a reread for me. The first time on audio.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday, here's some flowers. :)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Zone One by Colson Whitehead : 44%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 31%
Listening - Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi : 31%
Graphic Novel - It Rhymes with Takei by George Takei : 55%

45. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett 🎧 : Read on Audio by Andy Serkis, with Bill Nighy reading the footnotes and Peter Serafinowicz playing Death. Classic Pratchett. Loved it. Bruther is a monk who discovers a tortoise who embodies his god Om, but only he can hear him. Political intrigue, comedy, fights. Battles between religion and philosophy. The philosophers believe that the world is a huge disk on the back of 4 elephants on the back of a giant space tortoise, but the religious types believe that its a globe, a not so subtle dig (IMO) at the flat earther. If you're new to Discworld, or just haven't gotten to this one yet, its definitely worth your time.

44. Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman : Ah Backman does it again. Britt-Marie is aging woman who has left her domineering husband and the only life she's ever known to get a job in a down and out town to run a recreation center and monitor the local ragtag kids soccer club. A game in which she knows nothing about. She is opinionated, set in her ways, borderline OCD and clinically obsessed with cleaning, and I first I wasn't too sure I liked her. She was a character in one of his previous works; My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry and if I recall correctly was not very likable in that one. But as the book moved on, I found I was more and more on her side. It took almost the entire book, but as Backman has done in just about everything of his I've read, he did make me cry. An excellent read.

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

#ff

>41 mahsdad: Pretty color of pink. I'm sure the fence is the better for the decor!

>41 mahsdad: I like the contrast between the soft curves of the petals and the grid of the fence.

>42 richardderus: >43 quondame: Why the heck didn't I respond over the weekend. Bad Jeff.

thanks for stopping by and giving the photo love.

I appreciate it!

Interesting video of a rare book dealer that I follow on TT and YT. Its his experience trying to buy a first edition of Alice in Wonderland

https://youtu.be/oq-2HHnjXrw?si=tCQuKOHM8-7NcCU5

>37 mahsdad: Thank you for a wonderful review and an equally enjoyable read!

>46 SirThomas: Hi Thomas. My New Book posts aren't reviews. I'm posting this when I start a new book. The blurb is usually whatever Amazon has as the description of the book and I add the first line(s) of the book.

I only post reviews (if you can call my drivel reviews) in my Friday recap posts.

I'm still reading it. I'm a little over 75% done. I'll probably finish it by Friday.

Thanks for the info.
That's what happens when I read too quickly as a foreign speaker...
However, the Amazon blurbs are less pleasant here.
I'm looking forward to your opinion.

No worries, you're not the first to make that assumption.

Interesting about the blurbs on Amazon differ between here and Germany. I wonder were they come from. Are the publishers supplying them to every version of Amazon in the native language, or is it poorly translated (either by human or AI)

Have a nice weekend!

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday, here's a bee.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Zone One by Colson Whitehead : 94%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 37%
Listening - Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion : 7%

47. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi 🎧 : Read on Audio. Book 2 of the OMW series. I'm rereading the series, in anticipation of a new book Shattering Peace coming out later this year. Its a good yarn. This time dealing with recorded consciousnesses and what happens when you implant them into someone else. The Ghost Brigades are the special forces of the Colonial Union and they are grown not born. In an effort to catch a bad actor who's committed treason, they have to implant that person's construct into a new solder. Good read, even if its probably been the 3rd time.

46. It Rhymes with Takei by George Takei : Graphic Novel suggest by Mark. Its the 2nd half of Takei's memoirs that started off with They Call Us Enemy about his time during WWII's internment camp. This one is about his life after and his acting career and his struggle with who he is/was a gay man and keeping it secret for years. Then how best to be an advocate after coming out late in life. An excellent read.

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

#ff

New Book - Audio

started Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (read by Barbara Caruso)



Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later—the night before New Year’s Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life a you know it ends. The question of self-pity. Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20, 2004, 11:11 pm," but that would have been the case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it.

#newbook

>51 mahsdad: An extremely tough read.

>50 mahsdad: Bees are fraught to me, a sting can lead to the ER but their work is so very important to me because I love the fruits they make possible. The image, though, makes me happy because you got the framing just right and those colors...!

>52 richardderus: Year of Magical Thinking. Yeah, its definitely not going to be light reading. But its only 5 hours long, so since I listen generally at 1.25x, I'll be done in a couple days. Small consolation I'm sure. But given my years, it is a subject that (grief that is), that I should be more well versed in. The older we get, the more funerals we tend to have to go to. :(

Picture - yeah, I can believe that if you're allergic, you'd be wary. In my experience, life and let live. Laura has cultivated such a natural environment in our yard that we always have lots of them flying around.

thanks for the photo love. If I would actually allow myself to think I'm good at something, it would be photo composition. :)

>50 mahsdad: Ah, peeping at a bee's private life! What a different world scent must be for those tiny ones - and all encompassing too!

nice coincidence - tiny yellow flowers just opened on our garden path and there was one Happy Little Bee!

Happy Saturday, Jeff. I love both of your past 2 "foto"'s. I am so glad you loved the Takei, although I am not surprised. Year of Magical Thinking was excellent. Enjoy!

>54 quondame: Hi Susan, yeah, I'm a bit peeping-Tom when it comes to insects. LOL

>55 m.belljackson: Too cute!

>56 msf59: thanks Mark! Yeah, the Takei was right up my graphical novel alley. I finished Zone One last night and decided it was time for Walter, so I started So Far Gone this morning. Very good so far.

New Book -

Started So Far Gone by Jess Walter



Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons.

Now Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia?

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind. So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called “a genius of the modern American moment” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick's front porch. Next to her, a cowlicked boy shifted his weight from snow boot to snow boot. Both kids wore backpacks. On the stairs below them, a woman held an umbrella against the pattering rain.

#newbook

New Book - audio

Little Big Man by Thomas Berger (read by David Aaron Baker, Scott Sowers and Henry Strozier)



“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.” So says Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old narrator of Thomas Berger’s 1964 masterpiece of American fiction, Little Big Man. Berger claimed the Western as serious literature with this savage and epic account of one man’s extraordinary double life.

After surviving the massacre of his pioneer family, ten-year-old Jack is adopted by an Indian chief who nicknames him Little Big Man. As a Cheyenne, he feasts on dog, loves four wives, and sees his people butchered by horse soldiers commanded by General George Armstrong Custer. Later, living as a white man once more, he hunts the buffalo to near-extinction, tangles with Wyatt Earp, cheats Wild Bill Hickok, and fights in the Battle of Little Bighorn alongside Custer himself—a man he’d sworn to kill. Hailed by The Nation as “a seminal event,” Little Big Man is a singular literary achievement that, like its hero, only gets better with age.

I am a white man and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten

#newbook

>2 mahsdad: Happy new thread! Love John Scalzi! Redshirts is fantastic, if you haven't read it yet.

>60 ocgreg34: Hi Greg, thanks for stopping by. I love me some Scalzi. I've read just about everything of his, including Redshirts, which I loved.

For some reason, I never read the Interdependancy series. I have Collapsing Empire on my Kindle that I never started. Have to remedy that.

>61 mahsdad:
And I need to get back to the Old Man's War series and finish it.

>62 benitastrnad: You should because there's a new one coming out in the fall - The Shattering Peace

Also, I just found that there was a short-story chap book that he put out called Questions for a Soldier, it was slotted right after Old Man's War.

I bought it on Kobo, it was $1

>58 mahsdad: My library copy of So Far Gone just came in. Yah!! I will start it Monday. I am sure it has been a fine read, correct? 😜🤞

>64 msf59: Hi Mark. For some reason I thought you had already read it. I'm a little over half-way thru. I'm really enjoying it Its definitely a product of the times, political-wise. Unless it completely falls apart in the end, which I highly doubt, its another win for me.

Hardback book questions to the room.

When you read a hardback. Dust jacket on, or off? Never really thought about it until just the other day. I think I'm an on person.

>66 mahsdad:
I take the dust jacket off most of the time, except when I am traveling. When traveling I store my papers inside the front cover the book I am reading. The dust jacket helps to keep papers more securely than without. I put things like my hand held computer (shut off or in airplane mode) deep inside my backpack where it would be hard for somebody to steal it and put the important papers I need inside the front cover. I don't leave my book laying around because I read it while standing in lines. A person can get lots read while standing in line and have your papers where you need them. Despite what Abbie Hoffman said, people rarely steal books from unsuspecting travelers. From libraries - yes, but from travelers - no.

>67 benitastrnad: Wise plan.

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday. If you don't know, one of my photographic "kinks" is rust. We have a old Nike base near by and the surface of the "roof" of the facility is just being left to decay. So there's lots of interesting fittings and hinges and stuff to rust in the salty air. Always got to look for interesting shots when we go there for a walk

Here's this past weekend's shot



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - So Far Gone by Jess Walter : 59%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 37%
Listening - Little Big Man by Thomas Berger : 20%

49. The Year of Magical Thinking 🎧 : Read on audio. This was the first book of hers that I've read. It was an excellent read on a difficult subject. In 2003, while her daughter was in the hospital in a coma, Didion's husband died suddenly of a heart attack. This book is her memoir of the following year as she comes to terms with her grief, life alone after 39 years of marriage and helping her daughter, who recovered from the coma only to have a traumatic brain injury due to a fall. A fascinating, quick read.

48. Zone One by Colson Whitehead : Five years before the Underground Railroad, Whitehead wrote a zombie thriller. And its a pretty darn good one. Its an interesting take. After a pandemic whips out most of the population and turned them into the undead, the story is set over a 3 day period in New York City, where most of the hordes have been cleared out by the Marines already, and our main characters are dealing with the stragglers, trying to clear out "zone one", a walled off section of lower Manhattan, where they're trying to make sure that every zombie has been taken care of. They have to go thru every building and search every apartment and office building, and horrifyingly, the subway. It was a fascinating take on the genre, and you can definitely see the award winning prose and praise that is due to come in his subsequent books. Recommend

That's where every fortification splintered: where the nail pierced the wood, the rivet penetrated the concrete. The prayer met the truth. There is always a place for the dead to find purchase.

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

#ff

And if anyone wants Zone One, let me know and I'll send it to you.

>66 mahsdad: Off, *especially* when traveling unlike Benita.

>69 mahsdad: is really cool! Happy weekend.

>71 richardderus: If I was travelling with a hardback, I think I'd be off too. It would invariably get messed up being jostled around in a bag when I wasn't reading it. But around the house...

Now that I think about it more than I need to, there are some where the dust jacket is of a paper type that likes to curl up unless the book is closed. That's annoying and it would be off in that case. Reading So Far Gone and its a heavy quality paper that doesn't do that.

And thanks for the photo love! Happy weekend to you too.

>66 mahsdad: I don't remember ever traveling with a hardback. It wasn't until the 90s that the F&SF I'd buy even came out (in non-book club) hardbacks, and I wouldn't risk one of those traveling. I recall stocking up on pbs for travel.

>67 benitastrnad: Layers. Layers & Layers and still not enough for forever.

>73 quondame: Hi Susan, yeah you're right I never travelled too much with hardbacks, but if I did, I think it would be without the jacket.

New Book

The Dog of the South by Charles Portis



From Charles Portis, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of True Grit, The Dog of the South is a novel about a husband on a crazy road trip pursuing his runaway wife.

Ray Midge is waiting for his credit card bill to arrive. His wife, Norma, has run off with her ex-husband, taking Ray’s cards, shotgun, and car. But from the receipts, Ray can track where they’ve gone.

He takes off after them, as does an irritatingly tenacious bail bondsman, both following the romantic couple’s spending as far as Mexico. There Ray meets Dr. Reo Symes, the seemingly down-on-his-luck and rather eccentric owner of a beaten-up and broken-down bus, who needs a ride to Belize. The farther they drive, in a car held together by coat hangers and excesses of oil, the wilder their journey gets. But they’re not going to give up easily.

My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone. I was biding my time. This was October. They had taken my car and my Texaco card and my American Express card.

#newbook

I stumbled across a story about Dan Pelzer. Who just recently passed at the age of 92.

During his lifetime, from 1962 til 2025 he kept track of every book he read. The list stops in 2023 with 3,599 books, but he probably read close to 5,000. Virtually all of them were borrowed from the library.

His family wanted to honor who he was at his funeral, and wanted to share his list. But since his journal was 100+ pages, that wasn't logistically feasible. So they created a web page.

https://what-dan-read.com/

It was a little confusing at first, just click on each page and it will flip to the next. Some of the pages are a little hard to read, but it was fascinating just skimming thru them. I want to read his list more in depth. I definitely saw some that I have read as well.

He would have fit right in with this group.

>69 mahsdad: I agree with The Year of Magical Thinking...fantastic book, and it's the only one of her books that I've read so far.

What Dan Read - redux.

Someone did the hard work already and created a spreadsheet. I put it in my Google Sheets. Here's the link, feel free to grab it and make a copy of it for yourself.

Since its 3,000+ books long, I will NOT be putting this in as a list in my opening thread posts. :)

https://www.columbuslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/What-Dan-Read-Booklis...

Edited to change from my google sheet, to the link from the Columbus library which has the link to the original Excel file.

>78 mahsdad: Good find! OCD tendencies nipped in the bud, thank you!

>79 quondame: I know, I was just starting to print out the library's PDF catalog a page at a time and trying to figure out how to convert it to Excel, when I thought, someone has to have already done this, when I found the link.

I'm still reviewing it to see how many I've read. :)

Oh Jeff. You and your damned lists. You da pusher man. I did follow the link (>76 mahsdad:) and flipped some pages, but allowed myself to be daunted by the handwritten entries. It's inevitable that I will check out your conversion of the list. So thanks for that. Sarcastically speaking.

>81 weird_O: "One of Us...One of Us...One of Us" :)

No conversion happening by me, too daunting, the link in >78 mahsdad: will get you the Excel file, if you want it. Someone else did the herculean task.

I'm going thru it to see how many I've read. I will NOT be putting it into my threads. Too long. I might start using a tag in the books he read.

Happy Friday, thanks for stopping by.

July Recap

Books Read - 7(50)

First Book: Britt-Marie Was Here
Last Book: So Far Gone

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

Unique Authors - 48
Lady Authors - 13
Authors of Color - 4

Total BFB/Chunksters for 2025 - 6
Rereads - 5
Purchased - 30
Gave Away - 9

Pages Read for 2025 - 6,681
Hours Listened for 2025 - 13 days, 8 hrs, and 4 min
Books per Month - 7.14
Books per Week - 1.61
Average Pages per Day - 31.51

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 : So Far Gone by Jess Walter
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :





#botm

This months BOTM was a very close thing. 4 out of my 7 reads were 9/10, IMO. It could have been anyone. The honorable mentions go to

Year of Magical Thinking
Small Gods
Britt-Marie Was Here

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy first Friday in August. How the heck did it get to be August. Here's some sunflowers.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - The Dog of the South by Charles Portis : 30%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 47%
Listening - Little Big Man by Thomas Berger : 49%

50. So Far Gone by Jess Walter : An automatic read and recommendation for me. I got a signed copy of this during book signing event in Pasadena when it came out. In 2016, Rhys punched his conspiracy obsessed son-in-law at Thanksgiving. He had had enough with society, so he went off the grid to live in his father's old cabin. Left primarily alone until just over 7 years later, his two young grandchildren are on his doorstep, their Mother has run-away, their Father's basically in a cult, and they need Rhys' help. Thus begins the story of Rhys having to confront his issues with his daughter, his fish-out-of-waterness of being out the societal norms for 7 years and looking out for the Christian Nationalists that are coming for him. Its funny, unforgiving and at times shocking. Its an excellent story, one firmly rooted in the politics of the post-Covid age. An excellent read.

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

#ff

>86 mahsdad: That sunflower expresses how I feel about today's heat!

>86 mahsdad: They are *the* summer flower, aren't they? That particular yellow is the epitome of how August feels.

Jess Walter's going after the targets I'd point him at, glad to see. Enjoy the rest of the Elma York read!

>87 quondame: Come to the coast its been quite pleasant over here. ;)

>88 richardderus: That they are. I don't know if this house where they grow planted them intentionally, or if they just grew spontanteously from someone dropping some seeds, but they come up a couple times a year. Always like taking pix of them.

Walter - he definitely is.

I'm liking the reread of the Lady Astronaut. Looking forward to reading the 2nd one, which is on my shelf

Book treasures. Its always fun to find little things in used books that people have left. Interesting to see what they used for bookmarks.

I've been reading The Dog of the South by Charles Portis. Its a paperback that was printed after 1998 (copyright of the afterword), so no idea exactly when the book was first purchased

Well, while I was reading along, I came across not 1, but 2 cigar bands. A little too small for my bookmark tastes (I'm currently using a $2 bill), but I'll keep them in the stash.

Luckily, the book does not smell like cigars, but it seems apropos given the subject matter in the book. What's the most interesting thing you've found in a used book?

>89 mahsdad: On Wednesday I was high on the western slope of the Palos Verdes peninsula watching the sun light the waters beyond the headland. Also towhees (my sister-in-law's id, I thought they were sparrows hopping about), very small hummingbirds, and lizards. I did not enjoy going down the hill in full dark. But though warmer than I expected, the afternoon was quite pleasant. As it is here except when I'm moving about and getting into and out of the car.

>91 quondame: So glad you could make it over to our neck of the woods. Yeah we have lots of Towhee's around.

Yeah, if you stayed on the coastal route, it can get quite curvy. I'm assuming you didn't make it all the way over to Portuguese Bend. With the ever present land movement around there, its always an adventure going around that area.

For the Jess Walter fans, his talk with David Duchovny has finally hit YT and podcasts. It was recorded at Vroman's Bookstore during Walter's book tour for So Far Gone

It was recorded for Duchovny's podcast; "Fail Better"

Here's the YT link : https://youtu.be/QjTrb7BDVLg?si=eAqjUTe1oN16ksQ2, or if you want to listen to it in podcast form, just search for Fail Better. It was a lot of fun (some of the laughter, not that you could tell, was mine :) )

New Book

Ask the Dust by John Fante



Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.

One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, ,down the very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention.

#newbook

New Book - graphic novel

You Look Like Death: Tales from the Umbrella Academy by Gerald Way



The first Umbrella Academy spin off series!

Umbrella Academy creators Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá are joined by Way's Killjoys cowriter Shaun Simon (Collapser, Electric Century) and artist INJ Culbard (Everything, At the Mountains of Madness), for a supernatural adventure featuring the breakout character from the hit Netflix show, now on Season 3!

When 18-year-old Klaus gets himself kicked out of the Umbrella Academy and his allowance discontinued, he heads to a place where his ghoulish talents will be appreciated—Hollywood. But after a magical high on a stash stolen from a vampire drug lord, Klaus needs help, and doesn't have his siblings there to save him.

Collecting issues #1–#6 of the first Umbrella Academy spinoff miniseries, with a foreword by Robert Sheehan, portrayer of Klaus in the hit Netflix series!

From the Forward - I swallowed a comic. Inhaled the bastard. Called The Umbrella Academy. Then got to be possessed of the guy who floats out of Gerald and Gabriel's combino-brain.

#newbook

New Book -audio

Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky (read by Emma Newman)



Ogres are bigger than you.
Ogres are stronger than you.
Ogres rule the world.

It’s always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call.

Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It’s always been that way. It’s the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes.

But when the headman’s son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord’s son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule.

You were always trouble. Inevitable, really. And you weren't to know it, but you were following a particular trajectory. The Young Prince is always trouble.

From me - I have no idea what this about. I've always wanted to read Tchaikovsky, especially Children of Time and I put this on my Libby wishlist quite a while ago. I'll report back later.

#newbook

>93 mahsdad: Thanks for the link, Jeff. I am a fan of both of them so I look forward to watching it.

By the way I didn't mention but I take the dust cover off whilst reading it at home and replace it when I put the book down.

>97 PaulCranswick: Hey Paul, thanks for swinging by

Fantastic Foto Friday

Before you get your flower for your Friday, a funny bit of political humor. I saw a clip from Bill Maher's show, they were talking about Howard Lutnik, our ever capable(?) Secretary of Commerce. One of the guys on the show said that he has a "thumbless grasp of international trade". I laughed out loud. I'd never heard that phrase: thumbless grasp, but I love it.

Now your flowers.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Ask the Dust by John Fante : 8%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 47%
Listening - Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky : 0% - Just starting today
Graphic Novel - You Look Like Death by Gerald Way : 41%

52. Little Big Man by Thomas Berger 🎧 : Read on Audio. This the "memoir" of 111 year old Jack Crabbe telling the story of his life to the "author". Jack was a white man, who was taken by the Cheyenne as a kid, he escaped, roamed across the west, meets Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock, General Custer, went back to the Indians, saw many battles on both sides, and ultimately was at Little Big Horn. My initial thought that he was Walter Mitty of the West, but an afterword by Larry McMurtry said that he was Zelig of the West, and I think that fits better. I loved the movie growing up, it was one of those that was on TBS on a Sunday afternoon all the time. I had never read the book. I'm glad that I finally did, it was an excellent read. But in my mind's eye, I could only see Dustin Hoffman, but I guess that's not a bad thing. The story ends right after Little Big Horn, when Crabbe was still in this 30's. I'd like to see what he did for the next 70 years, but in the conceit of the story, he died soon after telling his tale and we'll never know. If you like a good Western, especially one told from primarily the Native American point of view, pick this up.

51. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis : Picked this up on a whim at a used books story. I had only read True Grit. This is a weird little book, and I liked it. Ray is chasing his wife and her ex-husband into Mexico, she left with his car and his credit cards. He's following their trail with the receipts. Its a road movie to Belize. He's driving the ex's car, which is on its last legs. He meets Dr. Reo Symes, living in a stuck bus, named "Dog of the South". Their trail ends in Belize at the church of Reo's mother. They find the ex but not the wife, Reo has weird one sided conversations about John Selmer Dix a reclusive writer that he's obsessed with, interact with a whole bunch of eccentric characters and survive, barely, a tropical storm. A good quick read. Ironically of finishing these two books, at the end of the audio of LBM, there was an advertisement for DotS. Small world.

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

#ff

>94 mahsdad: It's a new book, but is Fante a new writer to you? If so, ¡suerte! in your pilgrimage.

>99 mahsdad: "a thumbless grasp" is per.fect.ion. to describe All these scumbags breaking everything they touch.

I love that aura effect! Pretty the way it spreads color so softly.

>100 richardderus: Fante - yep he's new to me. I liked the title, and the intro from Bukowski helped. Is the luck a good thing or a bad thing?

Aura effect, I'm not sure how that happened, but it does kinda work. I think there were smudges on the lens

>101 mahsdad: I was sure it was calculated because it adds so much to the impact of the image!

I love Fante, imperfections and All.

>99 mahsdad: Flower colors may contrast, even clash, but they all go with green. Lovely.

Happy Friday, Jeff. Hooray for Jess Walter. Never disappoints...I loved Ask the Dust. I hope you enjoy it too.

>103 quondame: >102 richardderus: thanks for the photo live.

>102 richardderus: >104 msf59: It continues to happily amaze me that while we are such a diverse group I find that we aren't a diverse group. Just when I find a book that I've never heard of invariably you all have already read it and are thinking, its about time Jeff. LOL.

Happy weekend all!

New Book

Battle Royale by Koushun Kakami



In a dystopian future Japan, forty-two junior high school students are outfitted with weapons and bid to kill one another until there is only one left standing.

Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller envisions a nightmare scenario: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan—where it became a runaway best seller—Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world.

What? Battle Royale? You're asking what a battle royale is? Don't you know? Then what are you doing coming to a wrestling show? No, it's not the name of an offensive move. No, its not the name of a championship title, either. A battle royale is a type of match

#newbook

This is my current "Virtual Free Library"

Its my pile of books that I will eventually distribute to LFLs in the area, or donate to my local used book shop.

Anybody want anything?

https://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=mahsdad&collection=514691&...

>106 mahsdad: *ewww*

>108 richardderus: Yeah, I'm sure. It probably is one of those books that wouldn't be published today. I'm thinking Stephen King's Rage or The Long Walk.

It is a chunkster tho (600+ pages)

>109 mahsdad: Worse and worse! *shudder* better you than me.

Seen on a random TikTok...

Your TBR isn't a list, its a Hydra. Take one book off and 3 more take its place

😁

Fantastic Foto Friday

A quick FF post this morning. I'm on PTO for the next couple days for my impending birthday. We're going to do a bit of a stay-cation. Going to spend a couple days at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown LA. Go to some museums, perhaps a trip to The Last Bookstore. :)

And here's your flower picture. Hmmm, I think my Fantastic Foto Friday post is becoming the Fantastic Flower Foto Friday post. :)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Battle Royale by Koushun Takami : 11%
eBook - The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal : 85%
Listening - Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky : 0% - Paused
Listening - Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik : 84%

54. Ask the Dust by John Fante : A gritty story of a down and out writer in 1930's LA. He lives in a hotel on Bunker Hill and is obsessed with the waitress at a local bar. It was an excellent read, with a setting that now a 30+ year native of LA can recognize. In fact I will probably be on the exact streets where this story takes place tomorrow. Going to have to read his other works. Recommend.

53. You Look Like Death: Tales from the Umbrella Academy by Gerald Way : A graphic novel spin off of the Umbrella Academy. This is the story of Klaus, the brother who can see dead people and what happens to him when he gets kicked out of the Academy and goes to Hollywood. Typical Way weirdness.

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

#ff

>107 mahsdad: Big Fish, The Priory of the Orange Tree, The Stranger. I would like to read/reread those.

>112 mahsdad: Oh gorgeous! Absolutely in your face flower.

>113 elorin: Robyn send me a PM with your address and I'll be happy to send them out.

>114 quondame: Thanks Susan!

New Book - audio

Long Walk by Richard Bachman (okay, actually Stephen King) (read by Kirby Heyborne)



In a dystopian near-future, America has fallen on hard times. Sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual grueling match of stamina and wits known as the Long Walk. One hundred boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour day and night, without ever stopping. The winner gets “The Prize”—anything he wants for the rest of his life. But the rules of the Long Walk are harsh and the stakes could not be higher. There is no finish line—the winner is the last man standing. Contestants cannot receive any outside aid whatsoever. Slow down under the speed limit and you’re given a warning. Three warnings and you’re out of the game—forever.

An old blue Ford pulled into the guarded parking lot that morning, looking like a small, tired dog after a hard run. One of the guards, an expressionless young man in a khaki uniform and a Sam Browne belt, asked to see the blue plastic ID card. The boy in the back seat handed it to his mother. His mother handed it to the guard...

From me. This came off the hold list, just as I was finishing Rabid. I don't think I've read this since I got the Bachman Books for Christmas from my Grandmother in 1985.

#newbook

>116 mahsdad: I just learned about ultra marathons and this synopsis really intrigues me.

>117 elorin: I don't think it would be an ultra marathon you'd want to do. They're making it into a movie, search YT for the trailer if you're interested.

Stay-cation quick recap.

We went and stayed for a couple days at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown LA. On Friday, we went to the Petersen Automotive Museum and walked around the La Brea Tar Pits and looked at the new construction. Then had dinner at the revolving lounge at the top of the Bonaventure. Yesterday, we went to the Broad Museum, the MOCA (museum of contemporary art), wandered around the Disney, and for the first time (for me) went to the LA Central Library. Today we went to the Last Bookstore. An excellent weekend all in all.

There'll be a WHOLE lot of more pictures. I'll probably just share a link, but in the mean time...



In the Fiction department, there was a kiosk, where you could get a random short story or poem. I got a Langston Hughes poem

Mother to Son
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor -
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now -
ForI'se still goin', honey.
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Last Bookstore Haul

31. The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen : 2022 Pulitzer
32. The Boat by Na, Le: short story collection. Just when you think, that you were just drawn to this book completely sight unseen. You later realize that you've had this book on the WL since 2014. Amazing.
33. Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien : I love me some O'Brien, and had to look for this one that Mark suggested that I didn't know existed.

#bh

>120 mahsdad: Happy birthday haul! It sounds like a really lovely time all around.

>118 mahsdad: I am on the hold list for the book. Knowing Steven King, I doubt I would be tempted to enter. I'm searching for the trailer now.

>121 richardderus: Thanks RD!

>122 elorin: Good luck, with the hold, and the trailer

Jeff,

I will take some advantage of being 12 or so hours ahead of you and wish you a very Happy Birthday, buddy.

>124 PaulCranswick: Thank you kind sir!

>125 mahsdad: Welcome, Jeff. Have a wondrous book-filled day.

Merry birth-aversary. I'm old enough to want to forget them but y'all forty-year-olds ain't near that yet.

>126 PaulCranswick: 😁

>127 richardderus: Forty-Year-Olds. Ha! I am 10 year's past seeing my 40's. But thank you very much for the birthday wishes!

Happy Birthday, Jeff. I've been pretty unreliable on birthday wishes. My older son texted me last evening to remind me to salute his youngest, and even so, I let it slide until 9:45. No longer is she our Teen Angel. Back at school she is for her third year.

Ha! I am 10 year's past seeing my 40's. OK junior. Call me in thirty years.

Happy Birthday, Jeff. I hope you are celebrating with a brew or 2. The Boat: Stories sounds really good. Your touchstone is incorrect.

🍻🎂

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

>129 weird_O: Thanks for the Birthday wishes Bill. It can't be 30 years between us, that'd mean you were pushing 90. (I'm 59). You're not there yet, are you?

>130 msf59: Hi Mark. I'm sure I'll have at least one here in a little bit. We are going out for sushi for dinner so there will be some saki in my future.

I've fixed the touchstone on The Boat, I'm sure the story of Das Boot is vastly different than this collection of stories. :)

Jeez, Jeff. You're nigh unto Geezerhood. I am pushing 90, but from a distance...like 81.

>133 weird_O: There was a time when 9 years was just a blink of an eye, but now, 81 - 90, that's AGES away! :)

>133 weird_O: A hill to climb yet, Bill, take comfort...the horizon line's still between you and the summit. Way better to look up at it than around at the mishegas we're passing through.

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday.

Today's image is of a literary flavor. Its by Edward Ruscha, on view at the Broad museum. its called Gilded, Marbled and Foibled



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Battle Royale by Koushun Takami : 49%
eBook - Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie : 12%. I have an ebook collection of a bunch of her works. This is book 2.
Listening - Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky : 0% - Paused
Listening - The Long Walk by Stephen King : 54%. The Hold list wins again, over Ogres.

57. Questions for a Soldier by John Scalzi (K) : A small little story, more of a transcript, of when the main character of Old Man's War was at a colony taking questions. A fun read, only really necessary for a Scalzi completest

56. Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus 🎧 : Read on Audio. A fascinating read about the history of rabies. Its been with us for almost ever. From the early history and attempts to cure, to Louis Pasteur's work on a vaccine to the modern day. A good read.

55. Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowel (K) : This was a reread of book one of the Lady Astronaut series. An alternate history story of the space program and how it got started differently after an asteroid hit the Eastern Seaboard. It didn't disappoint the second time. I have The Fated Sky waiting on the shelf that I'll be getting to in the near future.

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

#ff

>136 mahsdad: Such a sense of motion in that picture.

>136 mahsdad: What a gorgeous image of feathering!

Happy weekend-ahead's reads, Jeff.

>115 mahsdad: Package received! Thank you so much.

Jeff, Your opening image is stunning. You are an incredible photographer!!!!!
Happy Belated Birthday!!!

>137 quondame: >138 richardderus: Yeah, its a really nice image. Its really hard to believe that its completely flat, its a painting. Its seems so 3-dimensional

>139 elorin: Glad to hear it. Hope you like them, when you get to them, cause if you're like me, you have a seemingly insurmountable pile of books that you already have to get to somehow. :)

>140 Whisper1: Hi Linda, thanks for the photo love and the birthday wishes. Thanks for stopping by

Sent after your birthday, but the sincerity is the same. I hope you had a wonderful birthday!

>142 Whisper1: Thanks Linda! I like the image.

I finally finished going thru the "What Dan Read" List. He had 3,595 books that he cataloged over his life. (50+ years).

I read 158 out of that. A mere pittance.

Over all, if my LT "read" tags are accurate, since 2005, I've read 1,349 books. Many more to go.

Since 2007 I've read 4322 titles. A few of them multiple times.

>144 mahsdad:
There was a feature story on one of the Sunday morning programs about the "What Dan Read" list. The Cleveland Public Library is getting really good press about it.

>145 quondame: Wow. According to my 'all' and 'to read' counts, I've read 1900 titles since 2009. Not that this is a contest, of course. But I am impressed with your count.

>146 benitastrnad: In case you missed it >78 mahsdad: has a link to the Columbus Library page that then has a link to a spreadsheet that you can download. I'm sure there are plenty of people that have done the same amount (or surpassed him, like Susan ;) ), but it is a neat legacy.

>145 quondame: >147 ffortsa: Yeah. What Judy said. Both that its not a contest, but also that I too am impressed. So many books to read, so little time.

I just went through 'What Dan Read' to discover that
a) I read 38 of his titles
b) He is focused on religion, and Catholicism in particular, so I'm not surprised I haven't read those books
c) He has read a wide range of history and political theory - impressive

A few of his books are on my 'to read' list.

And I think he would have been a very interesting man to talk with.

>149 ffortsa: Yeah, I agree, he would have fit right into this group.

More religion and philosophy than meets my tastes as a heck of a lot of history and current events.

But his fiction selections had quite a bit of overlap with me.

>84 mahsdad: I just read "A Psalm for the Wild-Built". Great book, very philosophical.

>106 mahsdad: This is one of the rare books for which I saw the movie first, then had to read the book. I was not disappointed with either. I enjoyed it more than "The Hunger Games".

>151 ocgreg34: >152 ocgreg34: Hi Greg.

After reading a couple a couple dystopias (just finished Long Walk, and Battle Royale is close behind), I might need a palette cleanser. I think I'll have to read A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Battle Royale vs Hunger Games. BR is certainly a more gritty, grounded story than Hunger is. I tend to agree with you.

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday.

Over the last couple years, I've been lacks in using my "big-boy" camera and just taking all my pictures with my phone (which has an incredible camera IMO), but for our Downtown LA staycation, I broke out the Canon and took a bunch of shots, I finally got them processed (little bit of editing, cropping, etc - I'm a photoshop minimalist), and uploaded them. So I'll have plenty of content for my FF posts.

This is the first. Our hotel room faced (well sort of, the Bonaventure is a curved building) west, so we got 2 nights of sunsets. Here's one that I quite like



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Battle Royale by Koushun Takami : 91% Couldn't quite finish it, last night. Maybe tonight, but definitely tomorrow.
eBook - Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie : 19%
Listening - Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky : 42%

58. Long Walk by Stephen King 🎧 : A reread/listen on audio. This is supposed to be the first book that King wrote. Carrie was his first published work, but he published this later under his Richard Bachman nom du plume. In an unspecified near future dystopian US, the Long Walk is a yearly nation-wide contest where 100 teenage boys are picked to start walking in Maine and keep walking until there is only one left. The catch is that you have to keep walking above 4 miles an hour or you'll start to get warnings. Three warnings and then no warning, they just metaphorically "punch your ticket". The winner gets whatever they can wish for. There's no horror in this, just a horrific story about a world that celebrates torturing and killing young men for sport. Its a happy read, okay no its not. But it does have a trippy little ending that is typical of King. "Liking" this, makes me sound like a psychopath, but it is an excellent read, IMO

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

#ff

>154 mahsdad: What a beautiful sunset! It's so much more dramatic to see sunsets from high up, isn't it?

Spend the weekend doing lovely things.

>155 richardderus: Thanks RD. You are absolutely correct. We were up on the 27th floor, I think. Well actually I suppose it was the 25th, because the Bonaventure doesn't have a 7th or 13th floor.

>154 mahsdad: A great smoldering Los Angeles sunset - thankfully without benefit of fire. Determining west in the basin is always tricky - I recently dined with the sun in my eyes looking out a window on the south side of and east-west blvd.

>157 quondame: Thanks Susan!

I have a poor internal compass to begin with so the weird way that LA faces has always messed me up. Heck I can see the Pacific Ocean from my house, but yet I face East and get sunrises. :)

New Book

Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin



Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she’s found a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, the nasty lunch, the whimpering children and punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes.

Changing planes—not airplanes, of course, but entire planes of existence—enables Sita to visit societies not found on Earth. As “Sita Dulip’s Method” spreads, the narrator and her acquaintances encounter cultures where the babble of children fades over time into the silence of adults; where whole towns exist solely for holiday shopping; where personalities are ruled by rage; where genetic experiments produce less than desirable results. With “the eye of an anthropologist and the humor of a satirist” (USA Today), Le Guin takes readers on a truly universal tour, showing through the foreign and alien indelible truths about our own human society.

The range of the airplane - a few thousand miles, the other side of the world, coconut palms, glaciers, the poles, the Poles, a lama, a llama, etc, - is pitifully limited compared to the vast extent and variety of experience provided, to those who know how to use it, by the airport. Airplanes are cramped, jammed, hectic, noisy, germy, alarming, and boring and they serve unusually nasty food at utterly unreasonable intervals. Airports, though larger, share the crowding, vile air, noise and relentless tension, while their food is often even nastier, consisting entirely of fried lumps of something; and the places one has to eat it in are suicidally depressing

#newbook

August Recap

Books Read - 9(59)

First Book: Dog of the South
Last Book: Battle Royale

YTD sources
DTE - 31%
Audio - 51%
Digital - 19%

Unique Authors - 55
Lady Authors - 14
Authors of Color - 4

Total BFR/Chunksters for 2025 - 7
Rereads - 6
Purchased - 33
Gave Away - 9

Pages Read for 2025 - 8,364
Hours Listened for 2025 - 14 days, 23 hrs, and 27 min
Books per Month - 7.38
Books per Week - 1.64
Average Pages per Day - 34.56
Average Days per Book - 26.69

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 : So Far Gone by Jess Walter
August : Ask the Dust by John Fante
September :

October :
November :
December :





#botm

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday.

At LACMA (LA County Museum of Art), there's an outside art installation called Urban Light. Its a collection of over 200 restored antique street lamps. I always love taking pictures of it. Its been around for over 15 years and I always see a new angle every time I walk around it. Here's one new one. (and yes that's Laura in the blur at the end of the line)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin : 42%
eBook - Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie : 27%
Listening - Trapped Under the Sea by Neil Swidey : 26%

60. Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky 🎧 : Listened to this on Audio. I've had this on my Libby Wishlist for a while and quite honestly, I can't remember where I first heard of it. Probably because of Tchaikovsky. I've always wanted to read something of his work. This was a decent read. Novella length. Its the modern world, but its quasi-Feudal, where the world is run by Ogres and humans have been reduced to serfs only slightly above farm animals. One man decides to stand up against the status quo and finds that the world isn't exactly what it seems. Its written in 2nd person, and that's always jarring at first, but I eventually got used to it.

59. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami : Boy what a roller coaster of a read this was. In a dystopian Japan, a class of junior high schoolers (middle to late teens) are kidnapped and put on an island and made to fight to the death. Each is given a pack with food, water and some random weopon. Why, who knows, just like with Long Walk that I finished last week, it seems to be at the whim of the government, probably to keep the general public down, you would think that it would be televised but it doesn't seem to be. Like with the Long Walk, the ultimate winner/survivor gets their greatest wish, but given the road to get there, is it worth it? With this, its non-voluntary participation and the deaths, when they come are horribly gruesome, so I'm sure this will not be everyone's cuppa tea. My problem with it, other than the obvious fetishizing of violence against kids, is that even though they are supposed to be a random selection of teenagers from the same school, the bulk of them that survive further into the book (starts out with 42, 21 boys and 21 girls) are somehow spectacular shots and spectacular with tactics and methods that would give Seal Team 6 a run for their money. Seems, in the end, like a conclusion in search of a story.

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

#ff

>162 mahsdad: That is a surprising angle on that installation. Sunlight brings out a very different contour and mood.

>163 quondame: Yeah, that's why I love it. I came at it from a different direction. Usually I see it from the other side, cause I came up from the parking garage at the museum. This time we walked over from the Petersen, which is on the other side of the street.

That, and I looked down instead of up.

Always change your perspective to see things differently.

>162 mahsdad: That photo has a great perspective and texture. Good work!

>165 ffortsa: Thanks Judy

Book Haul (okay not really a haul)

34. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

#bh

>162 mahsdad: The exhibition sounds really cool. I think the photo captures what the point of of it is: look at what light does to a city! Very nicely done. Hi Laura!

>162 mahsdad: love the photo!

Hope you have a great week

>168 richardderus: >169 figsfromthistle: thanks RD, thanks Figs

New Book - audio

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (read by Paul Giamatti)



"A Scanner Darkly is about a descent into the deep fears of our 24-hour consumer society: the twilight of intellectual and emotional collapse...A fascinating portrait of 70s Californian counter-culture."—The Guardian

Bob Arctor is a junkie and a drug dealer, both using and selling the mind-altering Substance D. Fred is a law enforcement agent, tasked with bringing Bob down. It sounds like a standard case. The only problem is that Bob and Fred are the same person. Substance D doesn’t just alter the mind, it splits it in two, and neither side knows what the other is doing or that it even exists. Now, both sides are growing increasingly paranoid as Bob tries to evade Fred while Fred tries to evade his suspicious bosses. In this dystopian future, friends can become enemies, good trips can turn terrifying, and cops and criminals are two sides of the same coin.

Caustically funny and somberly contemplative, Dick fashions a novel that is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

“Dick is Thoreau plus the death of the American dream."—Roberto Bolaño

Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday.

Today's image came from the Petersen Auto Museum. They had an Art section that was all auto themed and this artist like to recreate famous works and give them an car-tilt. Magritte is one of my favorites so I found this hilarious



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers : 19%
eBook - Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie : 36%
Listening - A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick : 44%

62. Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin : I think this was a premise in search of some stories. Its an interesting idea. Someone finds a way that when your stuck in a airport, you can essentially flip yourself into different planes of existence, visit other worlds and flip back to catch your flight with virtually no time lost. With this premise, Le Guin gives us 16 different stories of these other planes. Some of these stories were written before this collection came out, so I don't know if she had this idea before and just started writing stories to match, or if the stories were preexisting and she modified them to fit the mold. To be honest this was an okay read for me, but I don't think it was her best work. I liked most of the stories, some I just pushed thru and I tapped out on 3 of them. Its Le Guin, so of course I want to read it, but they all can't be Left Hand of Darkness

61. Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness by Neil Swidey 🎧 : This was on audio, read by David H. Lawrence XVII (the 17th? Wow, that's some commitment. But as I type this, looked him up in Wikipedia, and he's an actor and he was the 17th David Lawrence in SAG, so that's why he added the 17th, not that there's been 17 generations of David Lawrence's). This is the story of the Deer Island waste water treatment tunnel in Boston. It was a 10 mile tunnel out into the harbor and part of the construction was to send divers back thru the tunnel that had no ventilation to do some work. It was a bit cludge where they had to use some jury-rigged system to produce breathing oxygen AND oxygen to get the trucks they used to drive out this 10 mile tunnel using liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. There was an accident and two people died. The actual tragedy was almost a side note, when it happens its over quick. the author spends a good portion of the beginning on "side-quests" to talk about the history of the tunnel project, and deep sea diving and other tangents, and the last half of the book is about the myriad lawsuits that took place after and the multiple businesses that were involved. It was recommended to me by a work colleague and it was an okay read, but not one I would rush right out to get.

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

#ff

>172 mahsdad: I absolutely love that Magritte-inspired painting!

regarding Trapped Under the Sea, it takes more than history to create a gripping disaster story. I'm reading a science book right now told by a scientist who is combining being full of himself and not knowing how to structure his topic. I'll try to get through it, but your book sounds about the same.

>172 mahsdad: I laughed so hard I spit coffee over that one!

I took thought Changing Planes was a better idea than the stories were executed as.

I don't know if you recall @mckait /Kath...your fellow Pgh-dweller.. from the old days around here...her younger sister just died very unexpectedly. A kind word would not go amiss on her profile or her Bsky feed.
https://bsky.app/profile/mckait.bsky.social

>173 ffortsa: Thanks Judy for the photo love.

Regarding Trapped..., I don't usually go into current event type books, but I tried it since it was recommended by a colleague, pretty sure I would have never given it a thought otherwise.

>174 richardderus: Glad I could bring a smile to your face and coffee to your shirt. LOL

Thanks for the info about Kath, I'll go see her over there.

New Book - audio

The Last Colony by John Scalzi (read by William Dufris)



Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up.

That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game — as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war.

The highly anticipated conclusion to John Scalzi's SF trilogy begun with Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades concludes with The Last Colony (from me - turns out it wasn't really a trilogy but a septology - 7)

Let me tell you of the worlds I've left behind.

#newbook

New Book

Beyond the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo



In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.

As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.

Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father. In a slum hut by the international airport, Abdul's parents came to a decision with an uncharacteristic economy of words. The father, a sick man, would wait inside the trash-strewn, tin-roofed shack where the family of eleven resided.

#newbook

Little busy today, so the full FFF post will be a little delayed, either later tonight or tomorrow, I promise.

In the meantime here's a couple pictures. Last month when we were out and about walking around LA, we stumble on this installation that I never knew was there. 10 pieces of the Berlin Wall. Fascinating.

This was the Western side. The first 6 panels were repainted by artists at the invitation of the Wende Museum. The last 4 have the original graffiti that was there at the time they were up.



This is the backside that faced East Germany and when they got them, there was nothing painted on this side. Several artists were commissioned to paint this side as well.

>178 mahsdad: Cool! It seems a shame to me to make the sides match, when a more authentic representation of the wall would've been one side wild, one blank...like the authoritarian culture side was somehow a vacuum that needed filling instead of a huge bulging skin filling All that space leaving none for selfhood.

Still, it's done and I like the art.

>179 richardderus: I totally agree to both points. Especially since they said that 4 of the panels retained the original graffiti, why not leave the backs of those 4 original as well?

but then, like you say, its still good art. ;)

Fantastic Foto Friday on a Saturday

Happy Saturday.

Sorry I didn't do a full post yesterday, cause I know how much you all are waiting with baited breath to see my drivel. LOL.

Today, I share an action shot of one of my girls (sorry RD, had to post it, she's too cute)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo : 37%
eBook - Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie : 51%
Listening - The Last Colony by John Scalzi : 84%

64. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers : The second book in the Monk and Robot Duology (tho I hope she writes more in this world). This starts almost right after the last one. Mosscap and Sibling Dex are now traveling to different cities and letting the people meet their first robot and for Mosscap to meet the people and continue with their quest to find out what humans "need". Ultimately Mosscap and Dex find what they need, and that was to go out and keep searching. Its a delightful little book.

63. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (read by Paul Giamatti) 🎧 : Listened to this on audio. This was a very trippy book. In a future LA, Bob Arctor is a drug dealer and user of a drug called Substance D. Fred is an undercover cop who's obsessed with taking Bob down. Little does he know that since Bob is a big user of the drug, and the drug causes split personalities, Fred is Bob and Bob is Fred. Classic PKD weirdness.

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

#ff

*CHOO*

Gesundheit

New Book - audio

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (read by a large cast)



For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.

In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.

Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe. (from Amazon)

In Siberia, the thawing ground was a ceiling on the verge of collapse, sodden with ice melt and the mammoth detritus of prehistory. The kilometer-long Batagaika Crater had been widening with temperature rise like some god had unzipped the snow-topped marshlands, exposing wooly rhinos and other extinct beasts.

#newbook

>172 mahsdad: Great layered humor!

>178 mahsdad: Recycling as it should be.

>185 quondame: Hi Susan, thanks for the photo love.

Okay, Instagram seems to be going the way of TikTok, everyone posts reels and videos, and I just like sharing pictures, so I'm going to start sharing more pictures here.

There were some amazing clouds yesterday. Here's a few.

>187 mahsdad: Marine-layer shenanigans in the clouds are so cool!

>188 richardderus: Totally :)

Seen in a display at the Petersen Auto Museum



but reminds me a lot of the Disney



#photo

>184 mahsdad: Looks like a great read!

>187 mahsdad: Excellent cloud photos. Has a calming effect.

Happy weekend reading

>191 figsfromthistle: Hi Figs, thanks!

Fantastic Foto Friday

Happy Friday! Here's another of the Petersen Auto Art "homages" I thought this one was funny.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q3 Books
>3 mahsdad: Q2 Books
>4 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>5 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo : 66%
eBook - Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie : 62%
Listening - How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu : 61%

65. The Last Colony by John Scalzi (read by William Dufris) 🎧 : Reread of Book 3 in the Old Man's War series. Still a good read. John Perry and Jane Sagan are retired from the CDF and just living a normal life running a colony world with their adoptive daughter Zoe (see Book 2), and just when he thought he was out, he gets pulled back in to Extraterrestrial political intrigue. A good read. But then, if you're contemplating reading book 3 of a series, you've already read the first 2 and its pretty cut and dry whether you're going to keep reading. :)

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

#ff

>190 mahsdad: Uncanny!

>193 mahsdad: I love it!! Witty and silly and plain ol' fun. Good weekend, Jeff.

>194 richardderus: >195 richardderus: Thanks! RD. Hope you had a great weekend!

>194 richardderus: >195 richardderus: Thanks! RD. Hope you had a great weekend!

Still have 3 days til the end of the month, but I'm not sure if I'm going to finish anything else and what I'm currently reading ain't going to change my opinion. So...

(Also, new thread coming soon)

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 : So Far Gone by Jess Walter
August : Ask the Dust by John Fante
September : A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

October :
November :
December :





#botm

New Book - audio

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (read by Jefferson White)



When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena. (from Amazon)

"Happy Birthday, Haymitch!" The upside of being born on reaping day is that you can sleep late on your birthday. It's pretty much downhill from there. A day off school hardly compensates for the terror of the name drawing. Even if you survive that, nobody feels like having cake after watching two kids being haul off the Capitol for slaughter.

#newbook

Hi - you may enjoy connecting with Mary's (bell7) to see her Mother's Photography!

>201 m.belljackson: Thanks, I'll go check out her thread!