Reading Recap, Week 50

There are 53.5 weeks on this calendar, wtf

Last week had its ups and downs, and the ups included a lot of reading. Here we go.

Audiobooks

MOUNTAIN MAN by David Weston Marshall. Nonfiction about a guy named John Colter who rode with Lewis and Clark, and was documented somewhat by Washington Irving. Not a ton of detail is known about the man himself, but his contributions to the L&C expedition were critical, and it’s worth reading for that alone.

OLD GODS WAKEN by Manly Wade Wellman. This is a reread of a book in a series that I’ve meant to explore further. Written in 1979, it’s about a traveling bard who teams up with various and sundry folks to fight dark powers—in this instance, a pre-Indian god gets mixed with some jiggery pokery from Europeans and now it’s waking up and causing trouble. Silver John, the MC, has to deal with it, and it’s a good piece of small-culture flavor.

MILITIA DEI by Rob Kroese. Killer ending to a trilogy that was “just good” with some interesting ideas in the first two installments. Rob shows you how to write a hyper-intelligent computer even if you yourself are not omniscient. Just a great execution.

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. A delightful reread. This book gets better every time I read it. Collins is so damn good here. Man alive, I really hope she stays on target for the upcoming fifth book. 3 months to go. I’m going to write up some pieces for this next year.

A CHRISTMAS STORY by Jean Shepherd. Lots of fun. The book is a collection of short stories that were mashed together to make the classic movie. Worth the read for the powerful prose alone.

Print and Comics

None, surprisingly enough. I picked at a few pages of L’Amour, but there weren’t any new comics. Well, that’s not true: I have Absolute Superman #2 but the store still doesn’t have my copy of #1, so I still haven’t read it, so there’s no point. I ordered a copy off of eBay because I’m now a month behind. A day later, the store called me back to say they got one. I told them I’d waited long enough.

I’m not mad at them, necessarily—if the vendor had given them more options or more info, they would have given it to me. This is a good store run by good people (and one guy at the counter who’s kind of dumb but whatever.)

Anyway, I’ll get AS1 next week and then I can finally read 2, right after I get a whole bunch of other comics on Wednesday. Blah.

Next Week

I’ll keep reading L’Amour whenever I get downtime at work. Man, I did 55 hours last week, some a-hole must have gone on vacation with all the duty I pulled. Blah.

Anyway, Wednesday will be a big one for comics, and I’m also going to knock out some other short reads, including BEHEMOTH (Westerfeld) and some Christmas stuff. I’ve got a semi-political book to read and tbh I’m apprehensive about it but I trust the writer, we’ll see how it goes. Also trying my hand at another author that I’ve not enjoyed in the past.

Talk to you soon. Subscribe.