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Top Ten All-Time Most Read Authors
According to the books I’ve put on Goodreads (which I’ve only been using for a few years), these are my all-time most read authors. 1. Terry Pratchett (40) 2. Isaac Asimov (7) 2. Michael Crichton (7) 4. Neal Stephenson (5) 4. Mark Waid (5) 4. Cory Doctorow (5) 4. Douglas Adams (5) 8. Alan Moore…
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Review: Havana Nocturne
Havana Nocturne by T.J. English My rating: 4 of 5 stars I knew that one of the things Castro prided himself on was ridding Cuba of the influence of the American Mob, but I had no idea just how entwined they were with the Batista government. It was also incredible what long-range planners the mobsters…
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Review: Limbus, Inc.
Limbus, Inc. by Anne C. Petty My rating: 4 of 5 stars The best way to describe what I just finished: a series of short stories in genres I may not have read as standalones but which combined into a highly enjoyable book. Not perfectly true as they all tended to have a bit of…
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Review: Red Rising
Red Rising by Pierce Brown My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is a little Enders Game, a little Battle Royale, and a little 1984 with a dash of Harry Potter. I don’t usually write such short reviews, but in some ways, while a lot happens in this book, not very much happens. Which…
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Review: Mother Fucking Flowers
Mother Fucking Flowers by Tammy L. Witzens My rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me begin by saying that I enjoyed this book. I won it as part of Goodreads’ FirstReads program. The title looked insane and so did the description; the subject of many an Internet joke and comic strip: if you could go…
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Review: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book deserves all the praise that has been heaped upon it. Brooks does an excellent job putting together a history of both how the zombie virus became an epidemic and how the human race came…
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Review: Jam
Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw My rating: 5 of 5 stars I had no idea what to expect when I started reading this book. All I knew was that I found Yahtzee Croshaw’s reviews at Zero Punctuation to be pretty funny. I’d acquired Mogworld and Jam via Humble ebook bundles. I’m not sure, but I think…
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Review: A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk
A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk by Scott E. Tarbet My rating: 5 of 5 stars It’s always tough when people redo Shakespeare. Sometimes it works really well and sometimes it’s just horrible. I absolutely loved the way Scott Tarbet resets a Midsummer Night’s Dream in a Steampunk Victorian England. He was able to use Steampunk to…
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Review: The Silver Ninja: Indoctrination
The Silver Ninja: Indoctrination by Wilmar Luna My rating: 2 of 5 stars Disclosure: I got this book for free for review. Let me start with what I liked. Wilmar does a good job creating a believable female hero. She has flaws. She sounds like a woman; not a man with breasts. At the same…
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Review: The Sword & Sorcery Anthology
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology by David G. Hartwell My rating: 4 of 5 stars I enjoyed all the stories but one on here – the one about the pick-lock. One of my favorites turned out to be the last one, which I think is the shortest story. But the there’s still a very compelling…
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Review: The Mocking Dead Volume 1
The Mocking Dead Volume 1 by Fred Van Lente My rating: 3 of 5 stars Parodies are hard to do well. The worst parodies are unbearable, the best deconstruct the tropes. I was afraid The Mocking Dead would be the former, but since I got it as part of a huge Humble Bundle, it was…
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Reviews: Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker
Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker by Ed Piskor My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is a commentary on the sad state our country has been in since the 70s and 80s when it comes to computer crime. Although there should always be consequences for skirting the law we have often taken it…
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Review: Striptease
Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve listened to somewhere between four and five dozen audiobooks (used to be an Audible subscriber) and the voice acting/narration on this book is definitely in my top three, if not in the top spot itself. Although the narrator slipped a bit in the…
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Review: From Hell
From Hell by Alan Moore My rating: 4 of 5 stars There’s something to be said for the rough style of this graphic novel. It goes quite well with the subject matter. There’s also a bit of – “oh, the gore’s it’s not so bad if it’s in black and white” like Hitchcock’s Psycho. And,…
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Review: How Music Works
How Music Works by David Byrne My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is not a book about how the mind interprets music or why we make music from an evolutionary point of view (although the topic is explored in the last chapter). It is probably more suitably titled How Music is Made – although…