Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was a GREAT issue. I don’t think there was one story that wasn’t top-notch. My favorite SF stories were Codename: Delphi and Exhalation. My favorite fantasy was The Only Death in the City. The Afterparty excerpt was great and I…

Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood by Jamie Russell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Anyone who has followed my book reviews on Good Reads or my blog knows that I have read quite a bit of video game history. Whether it’s a history of video games starting with the miltiary and university campuses, a…

Programming Perl by Tom Christiansen My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve effectively finished this book, although I’ll admit to skipping the section called “reference”; the book had already gotten deeper into the weeds than I needed at the moment. I’ve read a lot of programming books over the past 15 years (and a few…

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is my second time reading as I do my Discworld re-read. Dropped the start rating from 3 stars to 2 stars. This one seems a slight step backwards in the progression of Discworld novels. It’s not really about any character growth and we…

Introducing Go: Build Reliable, Scalable Programs by Caleb Doxsey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Over my many years as a programmer (and now boss of programmers) I’ve read many of O’Reilly’s series – Learning {language}, Programming {language}, {language} in a Nutshell, {language} Pocket Reference. This is the first time (that I can remember) that…

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress My rating: 3 of 5 stars A reminder that I go by Goodread’s tooltips for the star ratings. At the time I’m writing this, 3 stars is “liked it” This is a very compelling short novel (or maybe novellette? or novella?) That jumps…

Lies of the Beholder by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 3 of 5 stars This novella is a great wrap-up to the story of Stephen Leeds. Now that the trilogy is published as one volume, I think that’s going to be your best way to get into the story. For this final entry, we find that…

The Gryphon’s Skull by H.N. Turteltaub My rating: 4 of 5 stars As per usual, I had a lot of fun with this historical fiction taking place in Ancient Greece. Just like the first book, the story revolves around cousins Menedemos and Sostratos and their journeys around the Aegean during the trading season. Looks like…

Palpitations: The Highway To Never After by S.K. Munt My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book gets a few extra points from me for taking place in Australia. All too often we get zombie/vamp tales taking place in the USA, England, or Europe (in that order). In fact, the only other apocalyptic Australian book…

The Boys, Volume 1: The Name of the Game by Garth Ennis My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is a pretty rough book. I mean, I think it probably wins for most trigger warnings for a commercially released comic. Since Watchmen we’ve had a few different takes on super heroes being less noble than…

Wayward Stars by Mary Fan My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book picks up right where the previous one left off – Iris Lei and the rest of the abolition are trying to plan out their next steps. From there, the plot goes off into a few twists, but in a fairly expected progression.…

Eric by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading the book. Dropped rating from 4 stars to 3 stars A seemingly novella-length tale featuring the return of Rincewind, unseen since the events of Sourcery. The story is a parody of Faust (my paperback version even has Faust crossed…

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book We finally are introduced to The Patrician as he will be portrayed for the rest of the Discworld books. He’s no longer the overweight Patrician we saw in the first two books. He’s infinitely more cunning…

InvestiGators: Off the Hook by John Patrick Green My rating: 4 of 5 stars Another fun entry in the Investigators to read with the kids. The cast of characters continues to grow and reward re-reads of previous books with lots of references to previous events. It’s evident now that Green has written each book to…

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale My rating: 4 of 5 stars My preschool kids have been enjoying Shannon and Dean Hale’s The Princess in Black series (I reviewed a few entries last year). So when I found out that Shannon Hale also does middle grade and young adult books, I recommended them to my oldest,…