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Making Money

by Terry Pratchett

394 pages

Making Money is the second-to-newest book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. It concerns Most von Lipwig from Going Postal… this time, Lord Vetinari (Patrician of the city of Ankh-Morpork)  has attempted to convince him to run the Royal Bank.  He refuses and… ends up running the Royal Bank due to plot events.

It’s your usual Discworld fare, which is to say that it’s amazing. I’m loving the Lipwig books and I can’t wait for the next one.

And so is finished the 15K part of Project 15K.  But fear not!  I’m going to be going into OVERTIME and blogging the rest of the books that I read this year.  WOO!

Coyote Blue

by Christopher Moore

320 pages

Coyote Blue is the second of Moore’s books and is an improvement over his first in writing style, characterization, and general weirdness.

Samuel Hunter is an insurance salesman who is very guarded about everything in his life… considering that he’s a full-blooded Crow Indian who ran away from the reservation when he was a teenager.  He wants to escape his past.  His past ends up finding him in the form of the Trickster God, Coyote.  Hilarity, weirdness, and property damage ensue.

I liked this one a lot and I’m excited to read more Moore.  I’ve laughed my ass off in plenty of inappropriate situations while reading it– always a good sign, right?

Practical Demonkeeping

by Christopher Moore

243 pages

Kristen has been reading a lot of Christopher Moore lately (well, lately-ish).  It started when she picked up one of his books (A Dirty Job, I think) via a Swaptree trade and she liked it.  She told me that I’d probably really enjoy Moore’s dark sense of humor and (as usual) she was right.

Practical Demonkeeping tells a story of a man and the demon he summoned, Catch.  Catch kills people.  His master doesn’t like that.  The two end up in the quaint little town of Pine Village, CA… which happens to also be where the King of the Djinn, Gian Hen Gian, has ended up trying to stop Catch.  Hilarity ensues.

Moore’s one-liners (“By Aladdin’s lamplit scrotum, man!”) and plotting are damn good and I can’t wait to read some more of his stuff.  Read it.

For another opinion, read Kristen’s review.

Summer Knight

by Jim Butcher

464 pages

I’ve just now realized the problem with reviewing sequels to other books.  I can’t mention a lot of stuff without spoiling things.  Suffice it to say that SERIOUS SHIT WENT DOWN ad the end of the last Dresden book and good ol’ Harry isn’t looking too good.  Unshaven, unbathed, unkempt, and unappreciative of the help that some friends of his from Book Two are offering is not a good way to go through life, especially when there’s a war going on.

Of course, that’s not the worst thing that’s happening to Harry Dresden.  His debt to his godmother, Lea (a Sidhe) has been purchased by Mab, Queen of the Winter Court.  This is bad.  Really, really bad, as Mab is not only incredibly cunning but roughly as powerful as your average archangel or demigod.  She gives Harry an offer he can’t refuse and he immediately sets off to try to discover who murdered a prominent patron of the arts in Chicago, Ronald Reuel.  Of course, since this is a Dreden things aren’t as they seem with Mr. Reuel and Harry is brought into a confrontation that equals either life or death for the entire planet.

Butcher’s writing keeps on getting sharper and sharper and the plotlines keep on taking new and unexpected twists and turns.  The Dresden books are quickly gaining a place next to my all-time favorites.

Mockingjay

by Suzanne Collins

400 pages

Mockingjay is the third and final book in the Hunger Games trilogy. After the events at the end of the second book, Catching Fire Katniss is faced with nothing that I’m going to mention to avoid spoiling anything for those of you who haven’t read the books.

I know a lot of people don’t like how Mockingjay ended. I am not one of them. I feel the book ended in the only way it could’ve. The Hunger Games books aren’t books about a relationship / love triangle between the heroine and the two guys in her life. It’s a book about revolution and war. War ain’t pretty. Bad things happen. People react differently when put into a wartime situation. Sometimes they die for no good reason and there’s not a damn thing that you can do about it. War is hell.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows.  And that’s the way it has to be sometimes.

The Spy

by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

448 pages

There’s little to be said about this one. It’s another one of Cussler and Scott’s Issac Bell novels. I could just copy and paste the last review and change a few names and it’d be the same. The big wrinkle this time is that naval engineers developing the next great warship (codenamed “Hull 44″) are dropping like flies. The Navy hires the Van Dorn detective agency, Issac Bell is put on the case, international intrigue happens, the villain is well-to-do, and you know the rest.

Read if you like Cussler’s work. If not, you’re not missing anything much here.

As we all know, I’ve gone from being awesome at gettin’ my personal blog on to… crap. Well, I’m trying to change that.

By doing a meme.

(acknowledges boos, dodges thrown shoes and rotten vegetables)

A really LIVEJOURNAL-ISH meme.

(ducks behind lectern to avoid the hail of gunfire)

Basically, over the course of the next thirty days, I’m gonna post about my life, my thoughts, and stuff like that. However, due to the personal nature of what I’m writing about I don’t want this stuff floating all over the vast, churning, cyber-sea. So I’m gonna password-protect these posts. If you want the password, comment and identify yourself and I’ll e-mail you at whatever address you leave with said password. If you read me by Google Reader or whatever your preferred RSS/Atom feedreader (or on Facebook), you’re not gonna get these posts. You’ve gotta visit the actual blog to read these.

So without further fanfare, here are the topics for the Thirty Days of Blog.

Day 01 – Introduction
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – What you ate today
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favourite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment

Thanks / curses go to Jessica, who’s doing the same thing on her Livejournal and suggested I give it a shot.

Ruminations on College Life

by Aaron Karo

176 Pages

Kristen got me interested in Aaron Karo’s Ruminations e-mails a while back and I subscribed to his mailing list. I figured I’d read his book because his mailings are funny and… well, so is the book.

The book is a collection of selected passages from his original Ruminations on College Life E-mails. From these, I learned the following:

• Lots of people get really, really drunk in college.
• Like, seriously drunk. You have no idea.
• Also, lots of random hookups.
• Sometimes you learn, too. But mainly drinking and trying to get laid.

In a completely unrelated note, there’s a part of me than wishes I went to a traditional college, lived in the dorms, and all of that kind of stuff. 19-Year-Old Spin would have loved that shit.

The book was pretty good and very short. It’s probably not something that you’ll pick up and read again, but it’s good for a few laughs.

TekLords

by William Shatner

223 pages

Just finished this one a few days ago. TekLords features the further adventures of Jake Cardigan, private investigator OF THE FUTURE. It (like the first book in the series) was a great quick read. The book involves a mysterious plague attacking San Fransisco and, in a seemingly unrelated plot thread, Cardigan (and his sidekick, Gomez) tracking down more information on something big going down with the remaining Tek Lords (leaders of the Tek Cartels, of course).

I liked it, I know I’m half-assing the book report requirement of Project 15K, and I don’t care. I’m going to be so damned happy once the year is over that I don’t have to meticulously record every book I read and go back to reading some of the classics that I’ve been itching to revisit (Ender’s Game, anyone?) that I could do a little jig of triumph.

But yes, I do know that I’m gonna read more books that I haven’t before thanks to this. So… uh… thanks, Project 15K!

TekWar

by William Shatner

216 pages

A book? By William Shatner? How could this be?

Yes, boys and girls, it’s true. William Shatner wrote a series of novels (and did a few Star Trek books… and a few other non-related books too) and… here’s the shocking part… they’re PRETTY GOOD.

I’d read two of Shatner’s memoirs back when they came out (Star Trek Memories and Star Trek Movie Memories) and liked ‘em but figured that I wouldn’t read the Tek books for… well, I’m sure my reasoning at the time sounded pretty good.

Jump to 2010.  My used bookstore of choice had a bunch of the Tek books in hardcover for relatively cheap and I figured that I’d give ‘em a try.  I picked up the first one of ‘em and decided to bump it forward on my never ending list of stuff to read, despite the cheesy-as-hell Boris Vallejo cover (tangent:  Vallejo is a fantastic artist, but I guarantee that the schlocky bad sci-fi art that adorns the bulk of the Tek books scared people away… and the art has damn little to do with the story to boot).

The book opens with an android traveling to a space station known as The Freezer… an orbiting prison where criminals are placed in medically-induced comas and cryogenically frozen for the duration of their sentences.  Our hero, Jake Cardigan, is due out of The Freezer eleven years early because of… something.  Jake was in the freezer because he was a good cop that was set up… evidence was planted to make it look like he was distributing Tek (you knew the titles weren’t just clever names), the biggest drug in the 21oos.  (Tek is a computer-based hallucinogenic drug that basically places you in an altered state where whatever you want to happen seems to happen.)  He returns from his imprisonment to find that his wife and son have left him… and that he has a new job lined up at the Cosmos Detective Agency.  Jake and his wisecracking partner (another ex-cop) are to find a missing scientist and his daughter and… mystery ensues.

Oh, I didn’t tell you?  The Tek books are sci-fi mysteries.  Chandler, Queen, or Hammett they ain’t, but they’re damn fun reads.  Shatner’s characterization is vivid, the plot is full of plenty of twists and turns, and the ending… is too abrupt, but you can’t win ‘em all.  I was impressed with TekWar and was hungry enough for more (CLIFFHANGER ENDING~!) that I bought most of the rest of them.

After all, what higher praise is there that I can give than that?