Reading Recap, weeks 46 and 47
I missed last week
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Audiobooks
Oh boy. Lots in the last two weeks, haha.
LEVIATHAN by Scott Westerfeld. Re-read. I’m writing up a summary script for here that will eventually be a video. This is a steampunk alternate history of World War One. Great story, great characters, love the artwork inside.
JEFFERSON DAVIS by William C. Davis. Good and fair biography of the Confederate president.
PIRATES OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES by Fenton Wood. Strong start to a series, I’ve got the rest of them and will eventually read them all in one go.
THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF MYLES STANDISH by Cheryl Harness. Already reviewed in this post.
GRAVEYARD OF DEMONS by Larry Correia. No spoilers since it just came out, but just fantastic. This series has done nothing but reward the reader.
BLACK BOTTLE MAN by Craig Russell. A surprise from a channel viewer that I really enjoyed. Originally a stage script with literary aspirations, this is an “old man looks back on his life” book with a supernatural element that lands very well.
ALIEN ARSENAL by Jeffrey Haskell. Utterly adequate, this is the fourth in a series that is usually somewhere between “really cool” and “that was fine.” This one was fine, Haskell is reliably entertaining. If I ever need to get out of a bad book rut, he can right the ship with one of his series.
Print and Comics
Only two chapters left in The Silmarillion, I will finally finish it this week.
Two weeks ago my local comics shop changed their pull file system and as a result, a few of my pulls didn’t get ordered and I don’t have the books I want. I’m still waiting on Absolute Superman #1. Kind of annoyed, but they’ve been good to me otherwise and it wasn’t like they screwed up, they’re just trying to implement a new system so I’m being patient with them.
Absolute Batman #2 came out, it had less action and more character than issue 1, and the reveal of the haul truck at the end was cool 100/100 but sensible like…9/100. My familiarity with mining equipment might be a permanent stumbling block for me on that one. Alas.
I also picked up Transformers #14 and G.I. Joe #1. Those two storylines are finally converging and this pleases me. The backstory on Starscream is an unexpected but well-delivered surprise. And since the movie of Transformers One just hit Paramount+ this week, I get to complain a little more loudly that for the eighth or ninth time, movie studios can’t seem to give lifelong Transformers fans what they really want on screen, but whatever.
Next Week
I’ve got five audiobooks that I’m going to rip through, they’re short enough that I can do one per day at work. The only one I’m going to list here (because I know I’ll finish it) is HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN by Larry Correia. I paid good money for the advanced reader copy because the man has done nothing but satisfy me as a reader for the last fifteen years, I have no doubts in his abilities.
Current totals on the year: 97 audiobooks, 27 print books, 124 books total. A shocking majority of those print books are comics and graphic novels. I don’t count individual issues of comics as whole books, it’s more like 5-6 comics = 1 book because that’s usually how many are in a trade paperback.
Of the four actual physical text books that I’ve read, one is a Warhammer40k novel, one is a Nibley nonfic about the Book of Mormon, one is a history of the Mayflower replica from the 1950s, and the other is the Silmarillion, which I’ve been reading and re-reading for months in order to do my Five-Minute series on here.
All that AND I published a fully illustrated novel while averaging fifty hours a week at work. I don’t feel bad for not reading more print books.