2025 Reading List

Welcome to a new year of reading!

I read 28 novels and 26 graphic novels last year. Not bad! This year, I’m putting recent acquisitions and reads at the top. That does not mean READING order, just PILE order.

The Piano Tuner, Cheng Naishan. An old novel (1989) by a famous Chinese writer. It’s called New Chinese Fiction.

Road of Bones, Christopher Golden. This guy is known for his horror novels (Snowblind, Dead Ringers) so I hope I like it!

Re-reading Taste, My Life Through Food, by Stanley Tucci. I enjoyed the stories and recipes.

Re-reading On Writing by Steve King. It’s time!

The Revenant, Michael Punke. Yes, the book that the movie is based on. I have a niche like of Westerns set in the great expansion West period. This one is well written – it’s my treadmill book, which means it’ll be finished in Jan 25. FINISHED! It did not end particularly well as far as wrapping shit up, but it is still great for historical semi-fiction (main character is real as are others and the locations). At least the afterword finished the story up. Not sure why he didn’t finish it IN the novel? Anyway, well written.

Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong. Got this one for xmess and it is EXEMPLARY. Truong is an excellent writer. This book explores Lexical-gustatory (LG) synesthesia, which is the condition that makes words have tastes. This was my initial interest in the book, but the book is about finding oneself and family. This is Truong’s second novel, the first is The Book of Salt, which I will acquire shortly. I also like that her books all relate to TASTE.

Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi. SO GOOD! It’s a quick read because it is highly entertaining. The ending was a little blah, but I loved this book! It’s about corporate greed and sentient life. Good stuff!

You Like It Dark, Stephen King short stories. Almost finished. I’m lukewarm on this story collection. I feel as if SK just dusted off some old stuff and published it. A couple are good, but nothing is really jumping out at me as great.

From 2024 list:
Learning to Bow, Bruce Feiler. Subtitled Inside the Heart of Japan. I got this one for the look inside Japanese culture, but this guy writes a lot of Christian crap, so we’ll see how it goes. It seems to be less novel and more guide? I’ll report. Started this as my treadmill book. It is a slightly outdated (1991) look inside Japanese culture. It’s written well and a pretty good read! It is from a teacher’s point of view, so lots of info about Japanese schools, which is fascinating.

Courtney Crumrin, Ted Naifeh. (Things I realised I’d missed!)
Courtney Crumrin Vol 4: Monstrous Holiday
The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 1: The Lost and the Lonely
The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 2: The Charmed and the Cursed
The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 3: The Wild and the Innocent

The Drowning Kind, Jennifer McMahon. This is a mystery/horror story – and a fairly good one. McMahon is a decent writer, but she still falls back on a couple of phrases a bit too much – barking laughs is one. UGH. Death to adverbs!! But it’s a pretty good read nonetheless.

The Woman in the Window, A.J. Finn. “A Netflix film”. Sounds like a derivative of Rear Window to me.

Leaving Time, Jodi Picoult.

Four Hours of Fury, James M Fenelon. The story of WWII’s largest airborne invasion and the final push into Nazi Germany.

Bunker, Bradley Garrett. Building for the end times. This is a look at prepper communities around the world and how they prepare for the apocalypse. Timely, no?

Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite, Roger Daltrey. His memoir.

Alice Hoffman’s Magic Series
NOT reading these, as two have magically disappeared. I don’t remember loaning them out, so I’ve no idea why they are gone from the read pile. ??? The gremlins apparently do not want me to read them. So be it. I was lukewarm anyway.
(NOT in published order, but in storyline order)
Magic Lessons, Alice Hoffman. Part 1
The Rules of Magic, Alice Hoffman. Part 2
Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman. Part 3
Book of Magic, Alice Hoffman. Part 4

Paper Son, S.J. Rozen.

On Gold Mountain, Lisa See. I always get her books.

Born Standing Up, Steve Martin. His autobiography/memoir. I’ve read some of his fiction – he’s a good writer.

2024 Reading List

Welcome to the 2024 Reading List! I read 39 books last year! Very happy with that number! This year I will keep the list more orderly, with newest acquisitions at the TOP. It got messy last year! All the books brought forward from 2023 will be at the bottom, with xmess next, and so on. Here we go!

Number of novels: 28 That’s it for 2024, folks! The next book I start will be on the 2025 list!
Number of graphic novels/comics collections: 26

A couple strays from Goodwill:
The Recipe Box, Viola Shipman. This is a fluffy girly novel about how important family and heritage is. It’s sappy, but I’m getting through it. The book is written by a dude who uses a pen name for all his girly stuff, which I find infinitely amusing. It’s a quick read, very formulaic.

Learning to Bow, Bruce Feiler. Subtitled Inside the Heart of Japan. I got this one for the look inside Japanese culture, but this guy writes a lot of Christian crap, so we’ll see how it goes. It seems to be less novel and more guide? I’ll report.

Memorials, Richard Chizmar. I got this randomly. As Stephen King describes it, it’s ‘suburban horror’, and I agree. Chizmar is a slow burn kind of author. He takes his time with set ups and character development. This is the best of the books I’ve read of his. My one criticism is the ending(s). The Big Finale is, indeed, BIG, and I liked how the story came to its penultimate scene. I did NOT like how Chizmar prattled on with irrelevant chatter for a dozen pages AFTER the Big Finale, BEFORE he got to the wrap up. I actually skimmed those pages and was actively annoyed. I’m not sure WTF he was trying to do, but that whole section should’ve been edited out. IRRELEVANT. Once he finally go to the wrap up, it was satisfying. Not satisfying in how it ended, but a good END of the story. He did not pull any punches with the wrap up and I appreciate that. Not every story has a happy ending; not every character comes out unscathed.

Courtney Crumrin, Ted Naifeh. (Things I realised I’d missed!)
Courtney Crumrin Vol 4: Monstrous Holiday
The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 1: The Lost and the Lonely
The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 2: The Charmed and the Cursed
The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 3: The Wild and the Innocent

Ollies/Goodwill Summer

The Drowning Kind, Jennifer McMahon.

The Restaurant, Pamela Kelley. The author calls this “fiction for women”, I call it a 100% predictable, light summer beach book.

Rewired, S.R. Johannes. A YA novel that is VERY teen oriented. The author misuses tech terms (LAN is NOT any cable) and there are many typos of the sort that autocorrect will miss (breath is not the same as breathe; sentence fragments) which tells me this is definitely a low budget YA book. It’s just OK. The story is fairly good if the author would get out of her own way. I’m not in a hurry to read anything else by her.

Leaving Time, Jodi Picoult.

The Cure for Dreaming, Cat Winters. A YA novel set in 1900. It centers on suffrage and women’s rights with a little hypnotism thrown in for colour. It is a good read and the author added a suffrage timeline as well as more reading for the younger readers this book is aimed at. Well done!

Strike Me Down, Mindy Mejia. This was a mystery, action-y type story. A fast read and entertaining.

Ollies Hurl Feb 2024!

Finding the Flavors We Lost, Patric Kuh. Started today. It’s a tad dry, but it is an exploration of the notions of “artisanal” and “farm to table” and how they’ve shaped the American restaurant landscape. This is my treadmill book, so it will take a minute to get through it. Finally finished! Yay! This one is strictly for those who wax poetic about high end chefs and restaurants. It is ponderous and meandering.
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2023 Reading List

Welcome to the 2023 Reading List!

As always, I’m pulling over the books I didn’t get to last year and I’m full out dropping a couple that I just could not finish. In process or finished reads are in BOLD. They are not really in any particular order.

I read 31 (and 3/4) books in 2022, a number I’m very happy with. I hope to meet and/or top that this year.

After reading the synopses of these, they are dropped for 2023:
Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen
Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe
Things We Lost to the Water, Eric Nguyen
Intimacies, Katie Kitamura

I read 39 books in 2023!

Surprise gifts:
Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl. NYT food critic’s memoir. Really enjoyed it!

Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl. Another memoir. Very good, but a bit more personal that the one above. This woman hung out with the chefs that we venerate these days: Alice Waters, Jonathan Waxman, Wolfgang Puck – hell, she was even besties with Danny Kaye, who was an amazing gourmet cook!! 

Making It So, Sir Patrick Stewart. YES! Got my preorder and started! SO GOOD. Of course, I read it in his voice! He starts at the beginning, in England during WWII when he was born. LOVE IT! (But I will say, it is very much geared towards theatre nerds than Trek nerds.)

Holly, Stephen King. About Holly from the Mr Mercedes books. This character will not let him go! EXCELLENT! The premise is so crazy, it is compelling! One of the best King reads since Fairy Tale.

Book Nick picked up:
Gwendy’s Final Task, S King and Richard Chizmar. Final book of the Trilogy: Gwendy’s Button Box, Gwendy’s Magic Feather and this book. It’s NOT AT ALL what I expected, but good in a Stephen King kind of way. 

Pulled from a donation pile: 
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.  Surprisingly readable, considering he’s English and the book is old. HOWEVER, the notion of children being encouraged to “play erotic games” does squick me out a bit. The whole premise is using pleasure and conditioning to control the population. Creepy, man. 


Goodwill hurl! (late Aug)

On Gold Mountain, Lisa See. I always get her books.

Wake, Lisa McMann. Some creepy story about people invading your dreams.

A Cat Is Watching, Roger A. Caras. Author is a wildlife authority and this is a book about cats! It was a silly book. This guy is a little on the dotty side.

Preserving the Harvest, cookbook with tons of canning/preserving info.

Chinese Cuisine, cookbook of authentic Chinese recipes, directly translated from the Chinese. Cool!

Born Standing Up, Steve Martin. His autobiography/memoir. I’ve read some of his fiction – he’s a good writer.

The Revenant, Michael Punke. Yes, the book that the movie is based on.

Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz. I think I may have read this long ago? Looks interesting even if I have.

Teachings of Zen, Thomas Cleary. Just curious about Zen.

The Rules of Magic, Alice Hoffman. As I’ve said, I like her writing, so I picked this one up, too.


Ollie’s Graphic Novel HURL Aug 6!
Book:
Memories of the Future, Siri Hustvedt. Sounded interesting. Started this (9/6) and while it’s called a novel, it is actually a memoir!! And a GOOD one, too! She’s got a conversational tone rather like Mary Karr and I am IN LOVE with this book!

GNs:
Get Jiro!, Anthony Bourdain. I think I’ve got the comics of this? It’s Tony, I’m IN.
Fables: Farewell Last of the series, will hold on this.
Fables: Happily Ever After
Fables: Snow White
Fables: Storybook Love
All Fables GNs/collections are done by various writers and artists, but ALL these are Willingham, Buckingham and Leialoha.

Books brought forward:
Fear, Bob Woodward. Yes, THAT Bob Woodward. Nick picked this one, but I’ll read it, it’s about T****.

A Country Road, A Tree, Jo Baker. WWII historical fiction set in Paris. VERY English, which to me, means rather dry and boring. I’ll probably get through it. See next!

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. I didn’t count this as READ in 2022, I’m about 1/4 into it… Probably won’t finish. VERY English. Blech.

Paper Son, S.J. Rozen.

Fifth Chinese Daughter, forgot about this one, it’s my treadmill book. Finished this one. It’s dry, but OK. You really have to remember it’s written in the 40s and in the Chinese way: third person – even tho it’s an autobiography.  It’s odd. 

Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee. This is a short novel and a fast read. The story is pretty good, nothing special. It’s a story about an Indian girl’s journey from a poor, remote Indian village to New York, then to Iowa. The pacing is good, I’d recommend for a good summer read.

The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande.

The Good Demon, Jimmy Cajoleas.

The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls. This is NOT a memoir, unlike the two books of hers I read last year. I like her voice, I hope it carries into fiction. 8/7 Almost finished. It is a retelling of her rather terrible childhood with different characters. It reads well, but has not much new to offer as far as her stretching her writing abilities.

The Interior, Lisa See. NOT a Chinese historical fiction, more of a mystery. Just started this one Dec 20, so it won’t be finished this year. It’s pretty good. It’s a mystery within a historical setting.

Island of Sea Women, Lisa See. This historical fiction is about the island of Jeju, a Korean island where the women open dive into the sea for food and products to sell. It is a matriarchal society, which is interesting in itself. I picked this one up randomly at Ollies. It is typical See, except for being Korean rather than Chinese. This novel starts during the Japanese occupation of Korea and the island of Jeju (1930s-40s) and covers the decades into the 21st century. It’s a good read.

OLLIES HURL Jan 23!

Ollie’s Hurl!!

Fairest: Return of the Maharaja Graphic Novel, various writers and artists. This is an offshoot of the Fables series, which I LOVE for the art! The stories are usually pretty engaging, too. This one is really good! It’s a collection of the comics series for this story line. Excellent!

The World That We Knew, Alice Hoffman. Set in WWII Germany and France. A Jewish girl leaves her home in Germany with a golem her mother had created for her. History AND magic. A good read so far! 

Crush, Cathy Alter and Dave Singleton. This is a collection of essays from famous people and their first crushes. It’s pretty interesting. Not a page turner, but good! Almost done with this one, I recommend it.

Burn the Place, Iliana Regan. This is a memoir by Michelin star Chef Iliana Regan. It’s about her life and how she ended up being the renowned chef she is today. It’s a good read! It is about growing up queer AND being a chef, so a great twofer.

The Road Home, Richard Paul Evans. I was hesitant to start this one when I discovered it was the third of a trilogy AND it had a whiff of religion to it, but I started it today and it’s oddly good – no religion so far. Perhaps I resonate because I am familiar with Route 66, but the author also has a conversational tone that reminds me of Stephen King a little bit. It’s my treadmill book and will be a quick read! Good read, does not require reading the first two. Skirts religion nicely.
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2022 Reading List

Welcome to the 2022 Reading List! I read 35 books last year! I hope to beat that this year. :)  I am also happy to add that my voracious reading has inspired Nick to read more, as well! This pleases me! I’ve not beaten 35, but I’m at 31 on Dec 20, and I’m happy with that! 

Random additions: 

Fairy Tale, Stephen King.  This is an excellent story! I mean, of course, it’s King, but really, it is quite good. It’s a new realm with little to tie it to the bigger King Universe. I hope he will revisit this world again in the future! This story is about a kid who gets involved with an old dying man who has been keeping a secret world SECRET for his whole life. Good stuff! 

Nickel and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich. This author is an investigative reporter with a long list of books about various subjects (that I need to read!). This book is about her experience doing bottom rung, minimum wage jobs in various cities in America and the undeniable truth that these jobs are not only mind numbingly horrible, but you cannot live on just ONE of them. A very good read and as we know from personal experience, VERY TRUE. Every rich American should read this. 

Goodwill Hurl! June 2022

Cruising Attitude, Heather Poole. Picked this up for light reading – and it certainly was! LOL This is a collection of anecdotal essays about being a flight attendant. This girl is pretty dumb and overall, she doesn’t really raise the perception of flight attendants. My fave sentence went something like this: …and the motel I was in was in view of a big white building in DC. The White House? I don’t know. Wow. So, yeah, a lightweight trying-too-hard to be a tell-all, this book is strictly a palate cleanser between better reads.

The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman. This was an excellent read! Set in SW Australia, it is a lovely story set at a lighthouse far from anything. Stedman’s descriptions of the SW Australia coast is exemplary. I did get pulled out of the story occasionally by the comments of a “blistering January” or a “chilly June”. It is really odd to think of the seasons as opposites! But the characters are pretty well written and the story, while sometimes slow, is compelling. I have the movie version of this book that I’ll watch once I’ve digested the book. I like to have space between reading a story and seeing it redone in visual form. If you run across this book, it is worth the read.

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls. I just read Half Broke Horses, and it was EXCELLENT. This is Walls’s memoir of growing up with two mentally ill parents. It’s not as chilling as The Sound of Gravel (see below), but still pretty damned harsh. Her mother was bipolar and a hoarder and her father was an alcoholic (and probably bipolar, too). They drug their children all over the place in their car and regularly did not feed them. The parents ended up homeless in NYC – and liked it that way. There was a movie done in 2017 with the same name that starred Naomi Watts, Woody Harrelson and Brie Larson as Jeannette. It was pretty good, but of course, the book is better. The movie portrayed her parents – particularly her father – very sympathetically, which I don’t think they really deserved. The book is well written with a strong voice.

Fifth Chinese Daughter, Wong. This book was actually written in 1945!! I have a 2002 edition, with an updated intro from 1989. The author died in 2006 and was known for her ceramics work. The story is written in third person, which is a Chinese tradition, but makes it read a little dry. But still an interesting look into turn of the century Chinese immigrants.

A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean. Yep, the movie was made from this. This is a short story collection with the title story being the first. Maclean has a very distinctive voice and a lovely, lyrical way of writing.

Half Price Books hurl!

ALL these are from the memoirs section. I’m on a memoir tear!
Ruined By Reading, Lynn S Schwartz. This is a short tome, which is to its benefit. It is a memoir of a life of reading and musing on various authors. The book was published in 1996, pre-internet as we know it. Which is why this quote is prescient:

“If those of us who live by language become superfluous in years to come, it will not be because of the advance of technology, but the loss of coherent discourse.” – p.24, Ruined by Reading.

OH, YES. She is right on the money. She is of the Silent Generation (b. 1939), so many references are a bit dated, but she certainly has a handle on being well read and dealing with morons who are not. Good read!

MORE BEHIND CUT!
Continue reading “2022 Reading List”

2021 Reading List

Welcome to the 2021 Reading List! The list is in chronological order of when I read the books, but the first SIX are the ones carried over from 2020. Photos of books below the list. Books are moved up into the list as I read them.

Bird Box, J Malerman. The book is very close to the movie, but in several ways I think the movie was better. The movie put events in more of a linear fashion, which is easier to follow. But I’d say a good 85% of the book is represented in the movie and the movie is more suspenseful.

Sharp Objects, G Flynn. I liked this book a lot. I think the book is complementary to the mini-series on HBO with Amy Adams. The book is written from the main character’s (Camille, portrayed by Amy Adams) point of view, so you get a LOT more context about her. I also like the tweaks that the series made with Amma – she had MUCH more depth in the movie than she did in the book. Overall, a good read and excellent companion to the mini series.

Dry, Shusterman. This is a what-if type story: what if Southern California’s water really did run out? That’s the backdrop, but the story is about a small group of teens who must survive the breakdown of society that occurs in short order once the water stops. It’s a good paced read and all the action is in the space of just a few weeks. It ends on a good note, so it’s not one of those disaster books that leaves you wishing you’d not read it. Which is important at this point in time, I think.

I read 35 books in 2021! More behind cut! Continue reading “2021 Reading List”