Looking for Your Next Book

 I reviewed this book on Goodreads ten years, just before starting my book review blog, and while I liked it well enough, I had only given it 3 stars. But do you recommend a 3 star book to friends and family? Tor Books has rereleased the book, now as a "Tor Essential" - meaning (from the Tor website) "Tor Essentials line was created to give readers new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles that have stood the test of time, and to bring back ones current SFF fans might have missed out on in the past." And with this rerelease I was able to get an ARC (is it still an Advanced Reader Copy if it's a reprint?) which motivated me to read this classic, this 'essential' again. The valiant crew of the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid have suspicions that there is something uniquely unusual going on with their ship and their senior crew. That senior crew - those bridge officers, mostly - will survive the worst disasters ever faced by man or beast, wh...

A group of energetic and ambitious kids have decide to work and play together and to make their very own movie. It's a cute picture book with fun, lively illustrations and generally moves along quite well. But who is the book for? It looks a lot like a kid's picture book, but the rhyme scheme is not always very smooth (the book is written in rhyme) ie: “But what will be the title/of this grand pastiche?”/ The Ninjas Fight the Killer / Sharks at Bikini Beach ! and “Sign me up! Here’s a check!/The movie biz sounds fun./I’m executive producer now,/so cast my wife and son.” In addition to the struggling rhythm, some of the thoughts (such as the above "I'm executive producer now so cast my wife and son" and "The dance sequence is challenging./The instructor is so saucy./He’s got a lot of talent,/but still, he’s no Bob Fosse." and "Instead of shooting film,/digital’s the way to go./The DP has a trick or two,/low-fi, not quite Truffaut.") are definite...

 Peter Banuk is a video game developer.  His last project was a bomb so he's been working overtime to make sure that his latest project. It's a Catch-22 that a lot of working professionals face ... Banuk wants to take care of his family - a wife and two daughters - and he wants to do that by working at something he knows well and enjoys.  But working at the pace he does means that he is not spending time with the people he loves and wants to provide for. Things go from bad to worse when Peter's friend and tech partner shows him a new high-tech virtual reality set-up that, if it works as well as his friend says it will, will change the gaming world.  Peter is given the chance to try it out and he can't believe how real the visuals are. This VR head gear takes him places that are otherwise unimaginable.   But something goes wrong just as the simulation is finishing and Peter becomes stuck in the VR world.  He knows he's stuck.  He knows that somehow...

 Steve Almond has written a novel?  That's really good news.  It's better news that this is a really powerful, epic novel. The book begins almost as a YA angst story when two 13 year-olds from very different social and economic backgrounds are assigned to work together on a school project.  The teacher believes it is good for the girls to get to know one another and see what life is like for the other.  They do form a friendship which binds together not only them but their families. But this isn't a YA novel and it twists, turns, and convulses into an anxiety filled police thriller with families torn apart, a criminal justice system that run amok, and cops that straddle the line between 'good cop' and corrupt. There are no easy answers here, and that's part of what Almond smacks the reader over the head with ... we don't always get the right answer, or the good answer, of the easy answer. And sometimes life has to go on for the survivors. And yeah, that real...

 This is a very good beginner's guide to understanding and, as the title suggests, enjoying bourbon. Author Frank Flannery doesn't get too deep into any of the topics touched upon, but the reader will come away feeling confident enough to join a bourbon conversation at a cocktail party. We start with a brief history of bourbon and how bourbon is made. Then we get some tips on how to read a bourbon label.  This is pretty helpful and not something you typically find in books like this.  Note that Flannery states right at the start: "Depending on the bottle, a bourbon label might tell you a whole lot or very little." I've found that the information I am most interested in when I'm shopping for a bourbon is generally not listed on the label (the rye content). The chapter on tasting bourbon was also quite helpful. However, I do think that this is one of those categories one must really experience to understand.  To talk about hints of cherry or vanilla or oak or ci...

Ocean Wu has graduated from high school and, now looking to put the pressure to succeed and the heaviness of depression behind her, moves to to New York. She has been accepted to a very prestigious university and will receive a very nice scholarship. But Ocean is still uncertain about what she wants to do, and now, out of the immediate shadow of her mother and with some unique freedom, she chooses to defer her first year of college for a year and decides to live off her savings and explore life and what New York has to offer. She moves in to an apartment with two strangers (though they become fast friends). In a frightening moment of power outage while hoping to take a subway, Ocean meets a boy - Constantine "Constant" Brave. Constant is a graffiti artist, painting maps on subway walls.  Ocean is perhaps more fascinated than attracted to Constant, but his apparent freedom is highly appealing to the girl searching for her own path as an adult. The two stay connected primarily ...

 Allie and her husband Rav and their two small children have moved into the picture-perfect little cottage on the outskirts of some woods in the British community of Pluckley. This promises to be the beginning of a long, happy life together. But Pluckley has a reputation - it is known as the most haunted village in all of England.  Shortly after the birth of their son, Allie begins to notice strange things - from scratching noises coming from the chimney and a ghostly white figure moving through the woods behind the house. Allie, alone with the children throughout the day as Rav goes to work, explores the history of the area and of their home and learns of a history of witchcraft that might still exist today. Slowly, Allie loses control of herself and her senses.  Is this that witchcraft pulling her in, or is it, as the local doctors claim, just a case of post-partum depression? And what is Rav up to through all of this? There is definitely a nice, creepy sense to this bo...

 Archer is master of hand-to-hand combat as well as an expert marksman.  He is always on the hunt for truth but is perhaps a bit slow on .  Think of him as an updated Kwai Chang Caine. Archer has partnered with Armstrong, a street-smart but none-too-bright fighter who cannot die. He's been alive since the dawn of history and realized that the most important thing in life is grabbing a drink. The pair balance each other in many ways throughout this book.  The title is 30 years old and Valiant Publishing pulls together some key past issues to give readers a good look at the history of the characters and some highlighted adventures, starting with Archer's backstory - again, reminiscent of Kung Fu 's Kwai Chang Caine or even Batman . I was not at all familiar with this title, but I was not much of a comics reader back in the 1990's. I did, however, recognize the names of the creators for this - Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Shooter, Bob Layton - and it was on the st...

 In 1977 a small town in Oregon was rocked by murders done by a woman, dubbed The Lady Killer Murders. The leading suspect was Beth Greer - a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman who was seen fleeing one of the crimes. She was acquitted, however, and she she became a recluse in her family mansion. Forty years later, Shea Collins - a receptionist by day but by night the force behind a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases.  This has been a fascination of hers since she escaped an abduction attempt as a child. When Shea runs into Beth Greer by chance, Shea asks if she might interview Beth and is surprised when Beth says yes. The two meet regularly at the mansion, but Shea is never comfortable there. She's convinced that things in the house move about on their own when she's not looking, and she can feel the presence of someone else at times. Even so, Shea believes she gets to the truth behind this cold case. I wasn't sure what to expect with this book but the de...

Marius don Hellespont may not be the most morally upright person, but his survival instinct is strong.  He and his apprentice, Gerd, are walking through a field of corpses, looting the fallen bodies, when Gerd accidentally informs the nearby soldiers as to he and his master's activities. Marius is mistaken for the  King of Scorby (the body that he just looted) and the a soldier (who also happens to be dead), takes Marius to the Kingdom of the Dead. The dead, it seems, need a ruler and since Marius came in  place of the anticipated dead king, Marius is given one chance - to return to the land of the living and send a dead king back down to the Kingdom of the Dead, or return to the land of the dead and suffer for all eternity. It wouldn't seem like much of a choice, but Marius tries to invoke another option ... run away! But we know you can't run away from death no matter how hard you try, and this sends Marius into a series of (sometimes amusing) incidents. I liked the gen...

Darryl Openworld is a graphic novel based on a French YA book series by Rémi Guérin. Darryl is a journalist - probably the most popular journalist in all of Openworld because of his ability to travel between realities. Darryl is passionate about being a journalist, and in this world journalists are generally well respected and as much detective/investigators as they are reporters. At some point, when Darryl travelled into our world, he met and befriended Julianne. Also at some point, Darryl's best friend, Dean, died and is now a ghost ... who is in love with Julianne. Julianne thinks she might know a way to bring Dean back from the dead, but it could have significant consequences. Meanwhile, Darryl is also investigating the disappearance of a giant and a stolen piece to a special clock. The book has a strong steampunk sense to to it, though that comes more with the artwork than with anything specific in the story. The artwork definitely is nice to look at and does share in the stor...

 While I am familiar with the name Tad Williams and have seen his books in bookstores for as long as I can remember, I don't believe I've ever read any of his books. There's no particular reason for this other than - too many books, too little time. Also, I tend to think of his books as 'dragon fantasies' because I always picture his covers as featuring dragons (quite like the cover depicted here) and despite an appreciation of the fantasy genre, I've never been particularly drawn to stories with dragons. But I thought it was time to get familiar with Williams' work and what better way than to read his 'very best'?! Overall, I really liked this collection. It definitely showed a lot or variety and versatility for Williams. The collection starts off with a dragon story ("The Old Scale Game") and I cringed a bit, hoping it wasn't going to be all dragon stories, but the next is a horror story ("The Storm Door").  This might be my...