February 4, 2022

For all the music lovers out there

A music lover writing about his love of music for other music lovers? YES, PLEASE. 

Reading The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl right after finishing up Paul McCartney's The Lyrics was absolutely the best decision I could have made. Firstly, Dave is a huge Beatles fan (and a friend of the man himself!) so there were tons of references to him and his music making it feel like I was enmeshed in an almost surreal literary musical infinity loop. Secondly, the parallels to their musical journeys are undeniable (and fascinating). Thirdly, both books absolutely engrossed me and fired up my imagination. [A/N: And since I've had a fairly slow start reading wise this year I am eternally grateful to these two men for this.] 

The Storyteller is exactly what the subtitle claims it to be: Dave Grohl's musical journey from his childhood playing "pillow drums" in Virginia, leaving on tour as a teenager with the band Scream, making music history with the super band Nirvana, and creating his own label with his bandmates the Foo Fighters. Reading this book felt like watching a behind the scenes documentary of the 90s punk scene. It's gritty and devastating at times, full of heart always, cheeky (I definitely laughed out loud multiple times), and just an all-around excellent book for anyone who has ever felt overcome by the power of music. 10/10

Source: Amazon.com

What I'm currently reading: What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year by Charles Finch

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

January 27, 2022

The man, the myth, the legend: Sir Paul McCartney

I should have known that I wouldn't be satisfied with simply borrowing a copy of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney (with help from Paul Muldoon). Even though I've only had a chance to look at the first volume which covers his songs from A-K I know that this book set is one that I will most definitely be adding to my personal collection. Beautifully designed and executed, this is exactly what it purports to be: a collection of the lyrics that he's written from 1956 to the present day. I guess it must have been Paul Muldoon who suggested they arrange the songs alphabetically which was an excellent decision as it allows the reader to feel like they're sitting with Paul and hearing his reminiscences rather than a backlog of albums chronologically. Arranged into chapters by letter, each song lists the writer(s), vocal artist, recording studio, album, and year along with the entire lyrics. Following that is a short recollection from Paul about the story behind the song as well as various photographs and ephemera (some of which has never been seen before!). This is a gorgeous masterpiece of literature in my opinion. [A/N: And if you love a book that lays down flat then you're going to melt with rapture.] As you could probably guess, this is a 10/10 from me (and I haven't even gotten my hands on L-K yet!).

Source: USA Today


What I'm currently reading: The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl


**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

January 19, 2022

DNF Update 2021

As I was looking back at my book roundup for 2020, I realized that I had promised to make a DNF (Did Not Finish) post...and I definitely did not follow through with that promise. Oops! Well, I'm not going all the way back to 2020 (perish the thought) but I am going to give you all a peek into why I decided to put these 7 books aside in 2021. Writing these mini reviews/explanations really reinforced why it is that I end up setting books aside. If I don't connect with the characters, writing style, or the concept then I can't summon up the energy to care and/or continue with the book. *shrugs*

I really wanted to like All the Little Hopes especially since I don't tend to read a lot of books set in the South (which is weird as I'm Southern myself). But from the start I was thrown by the dialect of the main characters which didn't become more readable as I continued. Added to that, I just didn't feel any connection to the main characters. They felt like one-dimensional caricatures. The storyline was also extremely predictable which I know for some readers is a huge comfort and a plus when reading (like with the Romance genre) but it's not my thing. What made it even more of a disappointment was that I had received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader's Copy) thinking that it would end up being something I could recommend to my patrons. :-/ In the end I got about 1/4 of the way through before I ultimately decided to lay it aside.

I don't even think I made it 50 pages through Big Friendship before I knew that this book was definitely not for me. I had high hopes for this one because I have a long distance bestie and I thought this would be a good buddy read for us. That unfortunately didn't pan out. (Krystle, if you're reading this post you're on your own with this book.) The main issue was the choice of bouncing between using 'we' and 'I' as the authors volleyed back and forth telling their individual and intertwined narratives. It really distanced the writing and I felt zero connection to the authors as a consequence. That made it difficult when trying to put myself in their place and/or trust them enough to take on their "advice". Perhaps it would be have been different if I had been a fan of their podcast Call Your Girlfriend. *shrugs* Whatever the case, I didn't end up finishing this one. 

I picked up Monstrous Affections solely based on the absolutely stunning cover which overrode my better judgment re short story collections. I don't know when I'll learn that short story collections by multiple authors just aren't my jam. :-/ The premise of this one is excellent and I do think this will appeal to readers who like sampling different styles of horror writing...but that's not me I'm sorry to say. I made it nearly halfway through this tome before I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to finish it.

When I read a review of Care of Wooden Floors, the impression given by the reviewer was that this was an observational comedy about a man who house sits for a fussy college friend. Through a series of farcical mistakes, he manages to do pretty much the exact opposite of all the things asked of him by the apartment's owner. In actuality, this is a book about an unlikable (and unrelatable) main character who was so blah that the book never really hooked my interest. While the little notes peppered about the apartment by Oskar (the owner) were funny because they were so over the top these were not enough to save the book overall. If your character is as dull as dirt then you'd better draw the reader in with an exceptional storyline or else you lose the reader which this book absolutely did. 
I only read the first 1/4 of this one.

I kept seeing lots of positive press for Under the Whispering Door and since it explores one of my favorite topics (death) I thought I'd better put it on hold. The writing is done well with lots of descriptive passages and an interesting concept but I didn't really connect with any of the characters. [A/N: When you have a book that talks about the meaning of life (and death) that's a real drawback.] I kept putting it down with no desire to pick it back up again and when I left it sitting on my desk for more than a week I decided it was a no for me. I think this is more of a 'not the right book for me' but would definitely be a good fit for someone else.

Not sure if it was Joe Hill's writing style or what but I just couldn't connect to the stories in Full Throttle. I read 5 of them and thought the best of the lot was about a bookmobile visited by ghosts. [A/N: Since I'm a librarian I may be a bit biased.] I found myself rereading sentences because they just weren't making enough of an impact to linger in my mind. Just not my cup of tea. 

Annoyingly, I ordered The Little Sleep through Interlibrary Loan because I had heard it was a really unique detective story. Ostensibly, the most interesting aspect of the main character is that he is narcoleptic and suffering from delusions but he remained a one-dimensional character that I could not connect to on any level. A large part of the disconnect had to do with the writing style which felt disjointed and untethered from reality and in a hardboiled detective novel was a major turnoff. [A/N: Maybe that was on purpose as the character in himself was all over the place but I didn't enjoy that literary device.]

For those curious about the book covers:

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

What I'm currently reading: The Lyrics 1956 to the Present: A-K by Paul McCartney & Paul Muldoon

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **


January 3, 2022

2021 Book Roundup

I had a pretty great reading year even if the year itself was not quite so spectacular off the page. (You can probably relate.) I continued to read a lot of comics in 2021 as well as a lot of nonfiction intermixed with some literary fiction sprinkled here and there. But rather than just talk about what I read, let's get to the list! (And maybe I'll post more regularly this year starting with my 2021 DNF post. *fingers crossed*)

  1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  2. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell
  3. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
  4. Fox Tossing: And Other Forgotten and Dangerous Sports, Pastimes, and Games by Edward Brooke-Hitching
  5. Single. On Purpose: Redefine Everything. Find Yourself First. by John Kim
  6. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
  7. Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson
  8. My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith
  9. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
  10. Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure by Ryan North 
  11. Bury my Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's by Tiffany Midge
  12. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
  13. Crooked House by Agatha Christie
  14. Spring by Ali Smith
  15. A Tiger Like Me by Laura Watkinson, Joelle Tourlonias, & Michael Engler
  16. The Vision Vol 1: Little Worse Than a Man by Tom King, et. al.
  17. The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
  18. House of M by Brian Michael Bendis
  19. Avengers: Vision and the Scarlet Witch: A Year in the Life by Richard Howell et. al.
  20. The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark
  21. Star Trek: The Stardate Collection Vol 1 by Scott Tipton et. al. 
  22. Star Trek: The Stardate Collection Vol 2 by Scott Tipton et. al. 
  23. Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America by Eliza Griswold
  24. Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire 
  25. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunately Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
  26. The Vision Vol 2: Little Better Than a Beast by Tom King et. al.
  27. Talking to Strangers: What we Should Know About the People we Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell
  28. Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
  29. Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living by Elyakim Kislev
  30. Ancestor Approved by Cynthia Leitich Smith
  31. Star Trek: A Cultural History by M. Keith Booker
  32. Summer by Ali Smith
  33. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  34. The Lost Village by Camilla Sten
  35. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon
  36. A Promised Land by Barack Obama
  37. Slow Horses by Mick Herron
  38. Birding is my Favorite Video Game by Rosemary Mosco
  39. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
  40. Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade
  41. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
  42. Scarlet Witch Vol 1: Witches' Road by Vanesa Del Rey
  43. Dead Lions by Mick Herron
  44. Beauty Sick by Teri Schnaubelt
  45. In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire 
  46. Back to the Future: Tales from the Time Train by Bob Gale et. al.
  47. Back to the Future: Biff to the Future by Bob Gale et. al.
  48. The List by Mick Herron
  49. Real Tigers by Mick Herron
  50. My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs: The Nobel Lecture by Kazuo Ishiguro 
  51. The Trouble With Women by Jacky Fleming
  52. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
  53. When Pigs Fly by Stephan Pastis
  54. Spook Street by Mick Herron
  55. Alena by Kim W. Andersson 
  56. The Guncle by Steven Rowley 
  57. Little Soldiers by Lenora Chu
  58. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her own Making by Catherynne Valente
  59. The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager
  60. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 
  61. The Nature of Life and Death by Patricia Wiltshire
  62. The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness by Ella Berthoud
  63. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
  64. Cyclopedia Exotica by Aminder Dhaliwal
  65. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
  66. Good Eggs by Rebecca Hardiman
  67. The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World by Amanda Little
  68. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  69. Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
  70. Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
  71. This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
  72. Star Trek Voyager: Seven's Reckoning by Dave Baker et. al.
  73. Star Trek: Gold Key Archives Vol 1 by George Kashden et. al.
  74. Star Trek Voyager: Encounters with the Unknown by Nathan Archer
  75. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Too Long a Sacrifice by Scott Tipton et. al.
  76. Star Trek: Voyager: Mirrors and Smoke by J.K. Woodward et. al.
  77. Who Killed Captain Kirk? by Tom Sutton et. al.
  78. Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor by John Byrne
  79. Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Gorn Crisis by Kevin J. Anderson et. al.
  80. Star Trek Classics Vol 2: Enemy Unseen by Tom Sniegoski et. al.
  81. Star Trek: Hell's Mirror by J.M. DeMatteis et. al.
  82. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Through the Mirror by Scott Tipton et. al.
  83. Star Trek Classics Vol 4: Beginnings by Mike Carlin et. al.
  84. Star Trek: Burden of Knowledge by Federica Manfredi et. al.
  85. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Intelligence Gathering by David Messina et. al.
  86. Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War by Angel Hernandez et. al.
  87. Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton
  88. Death of a Cad by M.C. Beaton
  89. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
  90. The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
  91. Star Trek: Alien Spotlight - Romulans by John Byrne
  92. Star Trek: The Q Conflict by David Messina et. al.
  93. Star Trek Archives Vol 1: Best of Peter David by Bill Mumy et. al.
  94. Star Trek: Romulans - The Hollow Crown #2 by John Byrne
  95. Star Trek: Romulans - The Hollow Crown #1 by John Byrne
  96. Star Trek: The Classic Episodes by James Blish
  97. The Autobiography of Mr. Spock by David A. Goodman
  98. AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Quifan
  99. How Y'all Doing? by Leslie Jordan
  100. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre
  101. Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events by Brent Spiner
  102. A Will to Kill by R.V. Raman
  103. The Boys by Ron & Clint Howard
  104. Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History by Richard Thompson Ford
  105. Back to the Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines by John Barber et. al.
  106. Back to the Future: Hard Time by John Barber et. al.
  107. Back to the Future: Citizen Brown by Bob Gale et. al.
  108. Back to the Future: Who is Marty McFly? by John Barber et. al.
  109. DeadEndia: The Watcher's Test by Hamish Steele
  110. Back to the Future: Time Served by John Barber et. al.
  111. Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum by John Barber et. al.

And the reread books:

  1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams 
  3. Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
  4. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
  5. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
  6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  7. The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

That brings our total count to: 118 books including rereads. 

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

December 3, 2021

Intriguing concept with excellent follow-through

AI 2041: Ten Visions for our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Quifan is a unique undertaking. AI 2041 seeks to explore the way that AI (Artificial Intelligence) will advance and change over the next twenty years. Both authors have experience in the tech fields (Kai-Fu in particular as he owns and operates a venture capital that focuses on technology). However, after leaving their respective jobs at Google they took very different career routes. Chen has pivoted to become a successful sci-fi writer using his knowledge and experience to create realistic stories with a science fiction slant. This book is a combination of their two vocations.

There are 10 short sci-fi pieces written by Chen that delve into different existing (and evolving) technologies powered by AI through a realistic lens. At the end of each story, Kai-Fu discusses in detail why he believes these advances in AI will have sufficiently progressed by the year 2041 to make these stories seem less like science fiction and more like science fact. Some of the topics discussed like deep learning (we're seeing the beginnings of it now with Google Maps following where we've been and making suggestions) and the mechanization of the workforce (this has been happening for years but in twenty years time we could see major industries like medicine, education, and construction almost entirely taken over by AI) have been developing for decades. 

Each of the stories was so well-written and the analyses were so fascinating that at times I forgot my absolutely debilitating fear of Artificial Intelligence (until I read the section on autonomous vehicles). This is a great read for fans of sci-fi, technology, or futurology. And it's one of the few short story collections I've read in recent memory where each of the offerings could stand on its own. (And I actually recall more than half of them after finishing it roughly 3 days ago.) 10/10

                                                                            

What I'm currently reading: Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir Inspired by True Events by Brent Spiner

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

September 29, 2021

I love Star Trek comics

Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while will know that there are some subjects near and dear to my heart. One of those is Star Trek. I. LOVE. STAR. TREK. Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or anxious I turn to those space travelers to take me boldly where no one has ever gone before. So of course now that school has started back in NYC and my workload has exponentially increased at the library (we're back to in-person programming) I've felt too scatterbrained to focus on anything except for Trek related entertainment. Hence my reading (like Gollum down in the caves) of several Trek comics all in a row. Here's a quick rundown:

  1. Star Trek: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor
  2. Star Trek Classics Vol 1: The Gorn Crisis
  3. Star Trek Classics Vol 2: Enemy Unseen
  4. Star Trek Classics Vol 3: Encounters with the Unknown
  5. Star Trek Classics Vol 4: Beginnings
  6. Star Trek Classics Vol 5: Who Killed Captain Kirk?
  7. Star Trek/The Green Lantern: The Spectrum War
  8. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Intelligence Gathering
  9. Star Trek: Burden of Knowledge
  10. Star Trek: Voyager - Mirrors and Smoke
  11. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Too Long a Sacrifice
  12. Star Trek: Voyager - Seven's Reckoning

Some of these felt like I was totally immersed in new episodes of the TV series while others fell a bit short of the mark in terms of character believability. (Some of that I think is due to when they were written because I don't think the personality traits were fully fleshed out yet. I'm looking at you Data with feelings!) Some of my favorites (this will not come as a surprise) feature the original cast of the Enterprise on various missions (I really loved the McCoy series). Those had vintage artwork and were really peak 1960/1970s humor, fashion, and sensibilities. I think for anyone who's a fan of the TV series, films, or the universe of Trek in general it's a great way to spend a few hours (or in my case weeks) reading your way through the various adventures of these intrepid space travelers. Go boldly!

From ST Classics: Who Killed Captain Kirk? (Source: Star Trek Comics)

If you'd like me to do super long-winded Trek posts in the future please drop a comment because I would most definitely be down for that. I have thoughts. lol

What I'm currently reading: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Through the Mirror

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

August 13, 2021

A cure for a reading slump

I read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman as a buddy read with one of my coworkers (something that wonderfully started happening around the start of the pandemic and has continued). Neither of us knew that 1. we would end up falling so in love with these characters or 2. that this was the start of a series (huzzah!). [A/N: I looked at the author's name and thought I knew it from somewhere even though this is his debut novel and then I saw his author photo. He's an English comedian!]

Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about this book. The story bounces between perspectives but what anchors it are the diary entries of one of our main characters, Joyce, who has recently been invited to join the exclusive Thursday Murder Club at Coopers Chase senior living facility. This group of unlikely compatriots is comprised of Elizabeth (unrivaled head and sassy queen), Ibrahim (retired psychologist and super detail-oriented), Ron (affable rabble-rouser), and newest member Joyce (retired nurse and lover of a good police procedural). I really love books that take place at retirement homes especially if they're elaborate retirement villages like this one where the inhabitants aren't portrayed as dreary depressives. (In fact, these retirees are more likely to day drink and break the law.) What starts the story off is a cold case that they're investigating together but that quickly evolves into a murder played out in real-time much closer to home. They insinuate themselves into infiltrate the local police department (hilariously and with much subterfuge) as the case moves forward gaining momentum (and bodies). If you like fast-paced mysteries with a hilarious cast of characters then you are truly in luck because this one absolutely fits the bill. 10/10

P.S. My coworker listened to the audiobook and she highly recommends it.

Source: StoryGraph

What I'm currently reading: The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World by Amanda Little

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **