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Review: Skipped Parts (GroVont Trilogy, #1)
Skipped Parts by Tim Sandlin My rating: 4 of 5 stars Supposedly (according to the cover on the version I selected on Goodreads) this was made into a movie. I found this so incredulous that I looked it up on IMDB. Apparently it was made in 2000 and is rated R so MAYBE there’s hope…
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Review: Riley Parra Season One
Riley Parra Season One by Geonn Cannon My rating: 3 of 5 stars It seems every year I’ve been reading a book about a detective working in our world, if our world was an urban fantasy. The last two I’ve read Dead Witch Walking and Neon Noir: A Delilah Street Paranormal Investigator Anthology were in…
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Review: Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way
Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way by Evandro Caregnato My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book starts off with a biography of the author, one of the founders of the Texas de Brazil restaurant chain. It then gives a brief history of where Churrasco came from in Brazil. After a primer on the tools and…
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Review: Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above
Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above by Ian Sales My rating: 1 of 5 stars I don’t usually say this because I can understand people having different opinions about fiction, but I’m baffled by the higher scores on this book. The first two in this quartet had a conventional plot; even if the…
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Review: White Sand, Volume 2 (White Sand, #2)
White Sand, Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 3 of 5 stars As per usual, the second volume in a trilogy keeps setting things up without any resolution. The same applies here. That said, I do like the forward momentum in Kenton and Kris’ respective stories. While it is nice to see an illustrated…
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Review: The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself
The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself by Ian Sales My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is definitely one of those stories that’s more about the journey than the destination. I was wondering the entire time what the point of the story was going to be. It literally took place en route somewhere…
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Review: The South’s Best Butts: Pitmaster Secrets for Southern Barbecue Perfection
The South’s Best Butts: Pitmaster Secrets for Southern Barbecue Perfection by Matt Moore My rating: 3 of 5 stars I gave this book a three, but it’s really more of a 3.5 rating. The stories of all the pitmasters that Matt Moore interviews are a 4. They really bring to bear the diverse people who…
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Review: Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming: Build robust and maintainable software with object-oriented design patterns in Python 3.8, 3rd Edition
Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming: Build robust and maintainable software with object-oriented design patterns in Python 3.8, 3rd Edition by Dusty Phillips My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve rarely done object-oriented programming in Pytnon and haven’t done any serious OOP since undergrad, nearly 20 years ago (and in Java). i found this book to be…
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Review: Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection
Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 5 of 5 stars The first book I started in 2019! I started reading it yesterday while working on photos (sometimes writing metadata to the files takes a little bit so I wanted to have some reading to do while waiting). That evolved into me…
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Review: What is Obscenity?: The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy
What is Obscenity?: The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy by Rokudenashiko My rating: 4 of 5 stars I first heard about Ms. Rokudenashiko on the Daily Show years ago. A couple years ago I remembered her story and added the book to my wishlist. In 2018 I got it for…
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The Kobo Clara HD
Almost exactly 9 years ago I got a Nook after rethinking my prejudices against ebooks. Four years ago, I started using Calibre to manage my ebooks. Back then I had 324 ebooks. Now I’ve got 1396. A big difference from 9 years ago is that I don’t use the dedicated ereader as much as I…
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2018 in Books
This year I continued last year’s trends of reading cook books and stories I’d purchased as part of a Humble Bundle or Story Bundle. This led to some great surprises like Singularity Girl, which I really liked and Kissing Booth Girl which had a bunch of haunting short stories. Because it was the 200th anniversary,…
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Reviews: Babylon’s Ashes; Katamari Damacy; Milk Street: Tuesday Nights: More than 200 Simple Weeknight Suppers that Deliver Bold Flavor, Fast; Zeroes; Oathbringer; Nightflyers & Other Stories; Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses; The Alloy of Law; Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania; A Planet for Rent ; Adrift on the Sea of Rains; Shadows of Self; The Bands of Mourning; Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell; Cook’s Illustrated Magazine 2018
Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is probably the most direct sequel so far in The Expanse. It pretty much picks up right where the last one left off (not counting the interstitial novella). One thing JSAC use for great effect in this book (and I think…
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Reviews: Muffins & Biscuits: 50 Recipes to Start Your Day with a Smile; Storm Front; Skin Deep; The Vital Abyss; The Marshal’s Lover; Dinner Illustrated: 175 Meals Ready in 1 Hour or Less; The World’s Most Dangerous Geek: And More True Hacking Stories
Muffins & Biscuits: 50 Recipes to Start Your Day with a Smile by Heidi Gibson My rating: 3 of 5 stars Written by the owner of a bakery, this book has relatively easy-to-follow recipes and beautiful photos of the muffins and biscuits. I’ve made one biscuit recipe in here and it’s already a staple of…
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Reviews: The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan; Cibola Burn; Edgedancer; Sixth of the Dusk; The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone; The Churn; Altered America: Steampunk Stories; Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games; Nemesis Games; Legion
The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan by Masumi Washington My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another anthology. As usual, I’ve included my status updates with some spelling fixes. Overall it was a very uneven collection in terms of what I enjoyed. The stories all seemed to…