Reviews of Peter David's Sir Apropos of Nothing, Ryan Leslie's The Between, and Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes
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The Books I Read: January – February 2026
Constituent Service by John Scalzi A small novella by John Scalzi. Was debating whether or not to even write about it, it’s more of a snack than a meal. But people like snacks. Scalzi seems to be eschewing serious stuff like Lock In and The Collapsing Empire for humorous science fiction (at least in terms of what he’s producing). I don’t know what the market is like for that genre, but I enjoyed this story. It’s like an episode of a TV show, or maybe a pilot, with some sitcom one-note characters (not a slight–you don’t need heavy character development in comedy) solving a low-stakes mystery. This takes place in…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2025
My Steamboat: A Ski Town Childhood by Dori DeCamillis It’s a basic memoir of living in rural Colorado in the fifties. Nothing really earth-shattering happens. There are no eating disorders or parent deaths. But I got this book because I was hoping it would talk about living in a skiing town, and there’s none of that. Apparently, this was the only person in Steamboat who didn’t take advantage of the slopes. When you don’t have that, it’s mostly amusing stories about getting into mischief and trying to keep from being bored before there was the internet. Gnome Cave by James Rolfe It’s really a novella. A good idea, but poorly…
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The Books I Read: September – October 2025
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl #2) After reading some crappy boring books, this is a breath of fresh air. Just a guy and his cat having adventures in a dungeon. I wish I could write like this. I mean, yeah, the profound deep heavily written stuff is what has staying power, but above all I just want to be entertaining. People don’t remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. It’s all just fun. Just a guy playing D&D with himself, and he gets a following. He’s got board games and graphic novels coming out. I’m not saying I’m jealous–the guy…
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The Books I Read: July – August 2025
Vendetta by Peter David(re-read) This is one of my favorite books of all time. I’ve since fallen out of love with Star Trek, so I was anxious as to how I would respond as a forty-four-year-old. Nope, it’s still good. The great thing about Peter David is he was never afraid to go crazy, to do the awesome things the actual show couldn’t because of budget or it wasn’t mild enough. But here, we got a Ferengi borg, the Doomsday Machine from TOS, we got actual repercussions of Wolf 359, we got going to Warp 10, we got guest stars from previous episodes, we got a female Borg WAY before…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2025
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay Paul Tremblay wrote The Cabin at the End of the World (Movie: Knock at the Cabin), which I liked and this kept popping up on my Amazon feed, and it seemed like it would hit all my buttons. I’m impressed with his style. He doesn’t use any metaphors or similes like I do. The result of that, though, is that the book comes off as pretentious. It feels like a book the author wanted to be IMPORTANT. Like he wanted it to be taught in schools and have study guides written about it. And that means reading this is like deciphering a puzzle. There are…
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The Books I Read: March – April 2025
The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind by Jackson Ford On a Facebook post for my library, they offered a challenge saying “Give me any book and I’ll recommend something based on it.” For a lark, I gave it “I’m Worried About This Black Box of Doom“, since I’d love to find anyone that matches Pargin’s unique style. This book was the response. It did not hit the mark. The narrative is snarky enough, but it’s not wise or conventionally intelligent or containing hard truths. It’s a basic action chase story about a girl with telekinesis who’s part of a BlackOps team. They’re searching for a killer who…
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The Books I Read: January – February 2025
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Essentially, the pitch for this book is “What if The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was a scientist?” or “What if Bones was Betty Crocker?”. It’s a fun and clever romp, but it’s so trapped in antiquated tropes it’s like reading history. I read to discover the new and different. I want what’s innovative and creative, not what’s already been tread on. The fact that this takes place in the 1950s is bad enough, but it contains all the old pastiches, especially regarding women in the workplace (e.g. sexual assault by a boss, women not being able to break the glass ceiling, being fired for being…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2024
The Rack: Stories Inspired By Vintage Horror Paperbacks edited by Tom Deady This is a collection of short stories all based around “monsters”, kind of. It says it exemplifies those books in the paperback rack in the grocery store or bookstore that had scary violent covers meant to inflame the senses (as featured in Paperbacks from Hell) but those are mostly monsters. Some are serious, some are ridiculous. You got giant spiders, werewolves, haunted houses, demon bears, lots of dolls, clowns. You know, the standard, very eighties. And it had some good authors like Max Booth III, Richard Chizmar, and an old Stephen King story that was dramatized in Creepshow…
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The Books I Read: September – October 2024
Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon I’ve had this in my library for a long, long time, but never really had the inclination to read it until I was going to write a short story about an army woman in Afghanistan and needed research. I’ve already read “Love My Rifle More than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army” by Kayla Williams, but I barely remember anything from that. That was a personal memoir and very anti-military. This is more of an ensemble cast or narrative non-fiction. A report on the first women integrated into…