Inside Man: Double Threat by F. Paul Wilson

"healing crystals" on a table

In F. Paul Wilson’s Double Threat, the main character, Stanka Daley, is a con artist who makes the fateful, life-changing decision to hide out in a desert cave while on the run from some angry housewives she scammed with a fake car contest.

While Daley, as she prefers to be known, hides in that cave, a strange slug-like creature drops on her head and knocks her out. When she comes to, she stumbles to the house of Juana, a local who watches over the cave and who informs her that surviving an interaction with the alaret, as the creature is known, is a vanishingly rare occurrence, and that she will now serve as Daley’s guide.

Daley isn’t sure what to think when Juana tells her that her life will change forever, but she soon finds out what she means when she starts seeing a man following her and hears his voice in her head. Is she going insane, or did something far stranger happen to her because of the alaret?

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Oh, What a Year in Reading (2021)

A book lying in leaves

Despite the general state of the world, 2021 was actually a good year in reading for me. By the end of the year, I’d read 105 books, which is close to my previous all-time record from 2017 when I read 111. My secret? I read a lot of manga because my brain was mush.

Honestly, though, I think it would take a lot for me to have a genuine reading slump. I had a much harder time focusing for the first half of 2020 and still read a hugely respectable 75 books that year. That’s an unqualified success by just about any standard.

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My Year in Reading: 2018

My totals for 2018 were as follows:

87 total books

52 by male authors
35 by female authors

27 audiobooks
41 graphic novels

16 physical
71 digital

I feel like the best year-end wrap-up posts arrive a few months into the next year to make sure that they are totally relevant. That’s why I’m dropping this post about 2018 halfway through March of 2019 – to strike while the iron is warm but not so hot that it might burn me because who wants that?

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Raylan by Elmore Leonard

Published: January 17th, 2012 Publisher: Harper Audio Genre(s): Crime, Thriller Format: Audiobook Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins When I was in high school, I watched Out of Sight and Get Shorty and became intrigued by Elmore Leonard, whose books were turned into such crackling crime thrillers. I quickly took it upon myself to familiarize myself with his … Read more

Horrible Author Thinks Libraries Are Outdated Concept

Earlier this week, Terry Deary, author of the popular (in the UK) Horrible Histories series, started quite the shit-storm when he declared that libraries “have been around too long” and are “no longer relevant”, among other things. Apparently Deary just wants people to buy his books instead of getting them for free. Never mind the fact … Read more

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

Published: October 12, 2010 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. Genre(s): Young Adult, Fantasy Format: eBook Length: 352 pages In Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, Sam LaCroix is a college drop-out with a dead-end job at a burger joint. He just coasts along, hanging out with his friends/coworkers Ramon, Brooke and Frank, never quite satisfied with his … Read more

Old Friends -or- The Same Book Over and Over Again

When I was a kid I read and re-read the same handful of books. The complete works of Douglas Adams were in heavy rotation. Hitchhiker’s Guide, sure, but I also read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency until the cover fell off. I also picked up Roald Dahl over and over again. I remember reading The … Read more

Bad Medicine Volume 1

Story: Nunzio DeFillipis & Christina Weir Art: Christopher Mitten Colors: Bill Crabtree Published: January 30th, 2013 Publisher: Oni Press Genre(s): Graphic Novel, Fantasy Format: Paperback Length: 120 pages Bad Medicine follows disgraced former cardiologist Dr. Randal Horne and hard-nosed NYPD detective Joely Huffman as they work together to solve strange murders apparently caused by fringe … Read more

My Most Anticipated Books of 2013

The Human Division by John Scalzi, January 15th to April 9th, 2013 – The first two installments of John Scalzi’s episodic novel set in the Old Man’s War universe have already been released, but there are eleven more episodes to look forward to over the next few months. The first episode, The B Team, felt … Read more

On Gender and Genre

I’ve been in a book club with some friends from college for a few years now, and a couple of months back we had a discussion about whether or not certain books could be considered “girl books” or “boy books”. The discussion was inspired by The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which my friend Aaron … Read more

Young Adult: Just Another “Dumbed-Down” Genre

Recently while thoroughly frittering away an evening online, I decided to respond to a commenter who was doing a bit of trolling with some admittedly low-hanging fruit. The thread was over at io9, which actually has what I consider the rare comments section worth reading, and it was on their post about essential SF&F reads … Read more

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

Discount Armageddon is the story of Verity Price, a blonde twenty-something cryptozoologist and recent transplant to New York City. She pays the bills by working as a waitress in a strip club, supports the family business by working to help the local populations of cryptids – monsters to the unenlightened – and secretly dreams of making it big on the ballroom dancing competition circuit. She hates public transportation, instead getting around by running parkour-style across the city rooftops, all while armed to the teeth with every kind of weapon she can hide under her skimpy waitress uniform. Oh, and her roommates are a colony of talking mice that venerate her every act with religious celebrations and feasts.

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The Postmortal by Drew Magary

Published: August 30, 2011 Publisher: Penguin Genre(s): Science Fiction, Dystopian Format: eBook Length: 384 pages The Postmortal is pitched as a darkly comic satire about a world where a cure for aging is invented and becomes widely available. However, if it is a satire, it is of a character most similar to Jonathan Swift’s infamous … Read more

Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich

Published: May 25, 2010 Publisher: Random House Genre(s): Literary Fiction, Humor Format: Hardcover Length: 240 pages I read Elliot Allagash in one three-hour sitting. It was mildly entertaining, and I remember laughing once or twice, but ultimately it’s a remarkably slight novel that felt like a padded novella with pretensions of bigger things. On the … Read more