Book Blog
August 16, 2025
ve read another one of Author Mitch Albom’s books, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, and that was an interesting novel that I really enjoyed (read before I was reviewing everything, like now). Anyway, in this book (with the secondary title of “an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson”) was a curious thing. At the time it made a big splash. A barista at the coffee house told me she cried while reading it. As for me? Well… To start, Morrie Schwartz is an old college professor who discovers he has Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative […]
August 10, 2025
ne day, I came into Framework Coffee and found all the baristas agitated. They’d discovered a new fantasy novel and were racing through it, eagerly chatting about the crazy and wonderful plot. Jacob and Maddy both were loving it and knowing my own passion for books (I go to that coffee shop more times with a book than my wife, and when I do go with the wife, I bring a book) they implored I read it too. So that day I picked up a copy. And now I have a strong contender for Best Books of 2025. As mentioned, it’s […]
July 27, 2025
his is one of the classics from the year I left high school, a watermark novel about a futuristic mercenary tank group, their armor no longer obtainable as economies falter (but the need for them growing, for the same reason). So the Slammers move from planet to planet, signing contracts and squishing rebels, militias, and other poorly-armed rabble. The thing is, Drake really did a good job charting out what futuristic combat might turn into (and it’s borne fruit in the half-century since this book’s release). These massive hovertanks are monitored and guided from orbit, swatting down artillery shells with […]
July 20, 2025
o here’s an interesting concept from 1977, an alien world where flying humanoid reptiles have been preying on fish people. And since these fish people can’t fight for shit, they make a contract with the March People (cats, it appears, what with the fur, sliding claws and quick tempers) to fight their wars for them. So these fish somehow figure out how to build nimble biplanes (I’m thinking Newport 11s) and, quickly, dart-driven machine guns to protect everyone. So that’s the set up; cats in planes dogfighting (catfightng) with spear-throwing bats. Author S. Kye Boult (not his real name) produced […]
July 13, 2025
nd we’re done! It’s been a long fifteen books about the plucky little destroyer, the USS Walker, chased by the Japanese out of World War Two and into this alternative world where velociraptors and lemors evolved to sentience, where English Indiamen, Spanish conquistadors, a boatload of American artillerymen from the Mexican-American war, a battle group from a fascist Europe and even a Q-ship from World War One came into being. Yes, a long slow slog against baddies so bad they made your teeth hurt. And all through this, I kept waiting to find out that the series had ended prematurely, […]
July 6, 2025
kay, so this is a two-fer, two novelettes in one. With this, you get… A psalm for the Wild-Built A prayer for the Crown-Shy These are just two stories that combine into a unified whole, so it’s better to get this collection. So anyway, Dex is a young man in a world that, after ecological instability and the robot rebellion (when Robots walked off their factory jobs and wandered into the wilderness), now lives in a utopia. But guess what – you can live in Utopia and still not be happy. So he quits his first job (kinda a part-time […]
June 29, 2025
friend of mine, while talking about books at the train club (hobbies within hobbies) to me how she’d liked the Mathematics of Magic series from back in her youth (her youth being a lot more recent than mine). Well, I did a little searching and found a copy of it up in a used bookstore in Jacksonville. Overjoyed, she ordered it, but when she read it, she was underjoyed. Turns out it wasn’t as good as she’d remembered. Yet, strangely, she decided that since she didn’t like it, she’d give it to me for a go. Kinda an anti-recommendation, sort of. […]
June 8, 2025
n interesting premise here. Jeff Shaara, a historian, writes a fictional account with real people, trying his best to tell the events of a war (this time, World War One) from the surmised point of view from some of the people who lived (and died) in it. For this novel, the author chose four people to represent various viewpoints – Rosco Temple (an American doughboy), John J. Pershing (his general), Manfred Von Richthofen (the “Red Baron”) and Raoul Lufbery (one of the early fliers in the Lafayette Escadrille, a French squadron of Americans). Other historic figures are also encountered, and […]