Reading Recap, week 31

LIFE IS TOO SHORT DAMMIT

Audiobooks

I finished a short sci-fi in a series that I’ve had fun with so far, called Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes. My friend Bossy recommends it a lot on Facebook and for good reason. The books are short and well-paced, there’s a fair amount of levity to them, but the characters are in real danger and have to overcome significant problems, which I appreciate.

I don’t think I finished anything else. I got halfway through DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK by Walter Edmonds and while it should have been interesting to me, I just didn’t care. It was written well, the prose was nice, it was set in the American Revolution, but…I did not care.

And I’ve decided now that I’m 40 years old, I’m not going to push myself through books if I don’t care. I’ve read over 1,900 books in my life. I can’t remember most of them. So if I decide I don’t care about a book, I’m not going to force it. I do audiobooks at work because I don’t like to work, if I don’t like to listen to the audiobook then I’M JUST BEING STUPID.

Print and Comics

Aaaaaaaand I’m having the same problem in print, with a book I’m not going to name, just because…it isn’t bad, it’s just not as strong in execution as it is conceptually. You know what, I’ll put that part behind the paywall jump down below. Yeah.

This week’s comics were VOID RIVALS #11 and ROOK EXODUS #4.

I’ve officially gone stagnant on the Energon Universe. We’re almost a year into it and the creative brainpower behind the first few issues has not shown up for the last few issues.

VOID RIVALS used to really move through its story, now it’s going extremely slow and we’ve had about four issues in a row of the same thing. Plus there’s a scene where the Autobot Springer is trying to save Darak and Solila from the bad guys hunting them, but he’s having trouble staying afloat in his helicopter mode…but Springer is a triple-changer and has a ground vehicle mode…and the writers apparently decided not to address that at all…

Man, this world was good, then it slowed down, and now I don’t know what the hell it’s doing. Some of these books aren’t going to make it much longer on my pull list and to be honest, that makes me sad.

ROOK EXODUS on the other hand continues its streak as the best comic that I’m reading right now. Four issues in and this thing is perfect. Art, story, characters, pacing, all of it. The stakes keep growing or changing or both, the cliffhangers are strong, and I’m genuinely excited for it every month. I really hope it stays this way.

Okay, now for the paywall jump, where I’m gonna be a little bit impolite to a book, even though it’s probably not a bad one. You’ve got to pay me if you want me to do this, so