Book Bullets From The Dark Side - Darth Heather in 2022

Another year in which I try to scavenge time to read while working and going to school.

I spent New Years Eve starting my first read of 2022 - Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. Its the first book in The Witcher series; I haven't watched the show, but did download the RPG and hope to get to it sometime this year.

So far it's really pretty good. The Witcher is an interesting character, and we follow him roaming around the land, seeking work as a monster hunter. There are allusions to fairy tales, such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Beauty & the Beast. I have a bunch of Amazon GCs to spend so might get the next book too.

really, spam already. I literally just posted this thread and have junk in it already. sigh.

>4 Darth-Heather:
Happy New Year and New Reading Thread.
Wishing you many spam-free posts!

>3 Darth-Heather: Happy New Year and Happy New Thread! I just finished this book yesterday. I have watched some of the series and I enjoyed the book more because of that.

Happy New Year and happy new thread! I read the first two Witcher books and stopped there, but I still don't know what's going on in the TV show most of the time.

>7 Karlstar: Lots of Henry Cavill grunting instead of speaking, that's what's going on... He is very easy on the eye, though.

>8 clamairy: He doesn't really need a lot of words. :-)

>9 Silversi: No. He doesn't. :D

Ah, Henry.... Happy new thread and new year!

>7 Karlstar: The books were recommended to me from a friend who has played all three games (which do add a lot of story content), plus he's read all the books and watched the show - he says the show is very confusing to follow, something about jumping around in timelines? Apparently there is some expectation that it will all become clear eventually... lets hope that is true!

>6 clamairy: Are you thinking of reading the next one? I've recently been gifted with a lot of Amazon GCs so I'm busily downloading things from my wishlist that I was reluctant to pay for with my own money :D

Happy new year! I hope some of those downloads represent some good hours of reading.

>13 jillmwo: I'm sure they will, as most of them are the result of BBs from this group :D

>12 Darth-Heather: I will eventually keep going, I think. But I'll wait for the ebooks to be on sale like the first one was, or borrow it from OverDrive.

Happy reading in 2022!

Happy New Year, and Book Bullets.

I've played the Witcher, and read the first seven books, which are less linear than the game. I've not yet seen the TV show, but they're all good fun in their own way. Just don't expect direct links.

Happy new year and happy reading!

I forgot to thank you for all the great pictures, including the plane! Now I'm trying to puzzle out the model of that plane.

>19 Karlstar: Thank you! I also tried to place it, and failed. Heather, please enlighten us

>19 Karlstar: >20 hfglen: it’s Rockwell B-1B Lancer 83-0067 Texas Raider, so Wikipedia sez.

>12 Darth-Heather: Season one of the show is very hard to follow, not so much because the timeline jumps around as that the timeline jumps around and there are no captions or anything to tell us when we are at any given moment, in absolute time or relative to the other storylines. Reading the books should help with that, as well as looking at any of the many timeline explanations that are on the internet for season one. It's a good show, though, so it's worth watching despite all that.

Season two follows a single, straightforward timeline, so it's not difficult to follow at all, happily.

>21 haydninvienna: thank you for looking it up, because I have no idea :) My husband was in the USAF, and is the aircraft aficionado in our house, so this was his contribution to our trip plans. I just take the pictures. He probably told me all about each plane, all of which went in one ear and out the other. I would have liked to spend more time there but it was a quick stop on our way back to the airport. I have a lot more photos, though.
You can see more of their displays here: South Dakota Air & Space Musume

>22 Julie_in_the_Library: It sounds like season 1 follows the book then, because it's a sort of collection of short stories that are not at all linear and don't really indicate relativity to each other either.

I see that there are several books; I wonder if they intend to continue with the show as well?

>21 haydninvienna: More thank-you for looking that up.

>23 Darth-Heather: >25 hfglen: No worries. I had a fair idea it was a B-1, and Wikipedia did the rest.

>23 Darth-Heather: "He probably told me all about each plane, all of which went in one ear and out the other." *snort* This frequently happens in our marriage when one of us tries to share the details of their interests with the other one who is along for the ride.

>27 MrsLee: I remember hearing a mumbling noise, it was probably about planes :) although it was pretty helpful when we went to an air show this summer - he knew every model that flew by, some of them just by the sound.

OMG!!! Every year I absolutely love seeing that Eddie Murphy pic! Heather, you have no idea how happy that picture every year makes me!

>24 Darth-Heather: It follows some of the short stories in Sword of Destiny and The Last Wish, as well as some of the first novels, but not all, and the structure is not the same. I've read through the second or third novel. I'd have to check which.

The Geralt and Jaskier (Dandelion in the translations of the books) parts are not at the same place on the timeline as the stuff with Ciri or the Yennefer parts for almost all of season one. The show cuts between them without signalling that at all.

The show has gone off-book for season two, but the background lore and larger story does seem to be largely the same as in the books, despite the departure from the minute to minute details.

>21 haydninvienna: I did look that one up too - after looking at every single plane picture on that Pima Air Museum site!

>23 Darth-Heather: Thanks for adding more pictures! Your experience sounds a lot like ours when we visited the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, Fla.

>29 SomeGuyInVirginia: it's beef jerky time, Larry!

>27 MrsLee: and >28 Darth-Heather: Some of us got dragged into Doctor Who that way...

whoa, it's been a time since I posted anything here. This semester has been a challenge, but is almost over so I am finally able to get back to reading and gaming. In between homework assignments and some family stuff I've been able to get at least a few books, but not many of them particularly noteworthy. The few worth mentioning:

I finished the Books of the South, the second trilogy in the Black Company series, and had a good time with it, although as is typical it wasn't as well done as the original books. Somehow that seems to happen a lot with follow-ups.

A reread of Boy's Life by Robert McCammon was an exhilarating reminder of why I am a fan of his work. He takes his readers on some crazy rides, and this is one of the best ones.

The MoonSpinners by Mary Stewart was one of her better ones. I always enjoy her settings and exploration of culture.

I just finished Thieftaker by DB Jackson which is a sort of historical fantasy set in Boston before the American Revolution. While I liked the setting and plot, the characters somehow seemed a bit flat, although not enough to deter me from finishing or possibly trying out something else of his sometime.

>34 Darth-Heather: Welcome back!

That settles it. The next time Boy's Life goes on sale for Kindle I'm buying it.

Yep, I've got to read Boys Life, too. I've got it on Kindle so I don't even have to look for it!

>34 Darth-Heather: Glad you enjoyed the Black Company books, I thought the series was good up through those as well.

>35 clamairy:, >36 SomeGuyInVirginia: I hope you do get a chance to try out Boy's Life. Its a bit of a slow burner; the beginning seems like a pleasant view of a nice small town from a young boy's view, but that's like the part of the roller coaster when you are just going up the first big hill....

I see it come up on Kindle deals pretty often. Some of his others do too - I liked Stinger and Gone South quite a bit.

>37 Karlstar: do you know if there are more to the series, or more planned?

I remember you've mentioned Stinger before. I just checked and I've got a Kindle version of that, too!

Physics class? Needed some excitement in your life?

>38 Darth-Heather: Pretty sure both of those were part of a three pack I passed on the other day. I will check to see if they are still available.

Edited to add: so the three pack is Stinger, The Wolf's Hour and Mine for $2.99. Stinger is only $1.99 by itself. I'm kind of torn. LOL I find those bundled books are too easy to ignore on my Kindle. I might just grab Stinger, though.

>40 clamairy: Stinger is a fun read; I think it would make a good B movie :) The other two are only ok, which is probably why they get bundled.

>39 SomeGuyInVirginia: Based on my experience over the past two years of online school it seems that I must be a masochist or have some kind of self-hatred that I am in denial about. At least physics class wasn't as bad as Intro to Python Scripting - that was an awful semester with a lot of tears and bad language :)

>38 Darth-Heather: Have you read the 'last' 4 books of the original series, starting with Bleak Seasons and ending with Soldiers Live? I do not recommend Port of Shadows, the most recently published Black Company book, it was not good at all.

>41 Darth-Heather: Eh, I get it. I'm currently taking a Google certificate course and project management although I'd rather poke myself with a pointy stick than be a project manager. It passes the time, I learn things, and I get to pretend that I'm an undergraduate again! #winning

>43 SomeGuyInVirginia: why, Larry, you fellow masochist you! I see that you know my pain. What does a Google certificate entail?

We are both fellow sufferers! Google offers several certificates through Coursera in project management, IT desk, UX design, and a couple of other things. They're all self-directed but each is usually assumed to be a 6-month course. I started with project management because I figured it would be kind of familiar and, therefore, easier than the courses that I'm more interested in which are all tech heavy. I was going gangbusters and finished the first four modules in about a week each! Apparently Google reveres agile project management, the topic of the fifth module, almost as religion. The instructor described the Agile Manifesto as a source of truth, and the moment those words fell from her mouth I completely lost interest. So far I've spent about 6 weeks on the 5th module. Now it's just a slog.

Duplicate post.

>45 SomeGuyInVirginia: Which was it that lost your interest - the hills, epics, sprints, stories or boards?

I finally got around to a KU title that has been on my TBR for some time:
An Old Man's Journey by Gregory Allanther is the story of Charlie, an elderly man who is convinced by his friend to play an immersive online RPG. Charlie and his "you-kids-get-off-my-lawn" mentality makes for a pretty fun adventure as he voyages around this online game world and meets the types of people who make up this kind of online society.

>48 Darth-Heather: What’s a KU title?

>49 Volt875: its from Kindle Unlimited, which I have a subscription for that costs me $10 every month and I can read as many titles from the KU list as I want, although they don't often have anything I want on their list... :/

>48 Darth-Heather: I wonder if the Great American novel is actually an immersive online RPG novel? Don Quixote in the Metaverse?

>47 Karlstar: none of that! I really can appreciate agile project management for a way to tackle really large, perhaps ambiguous or somewhat unformed, projects, or creat entirely new creatures. I think it's brilliant. What absolutely turned my stomach was when the instructor referred to the agile manifesto as the ultimate source of truth. Every time I hear something like that I turned into Pontius Pilate. Truth?! What is truth, is truth unchanging law? I saw it as unchallenged and unfettered reverence for an accomplished and probably inspired by genius document, and if I want ultimate truth I'll go sit in a field of daisies or sit in one of those gorgeously ornate Catholic cathedrals and pray to saints or whatever dark angel will take up mine cause and destroy mine enemies. Or listen to hardcore old timey bluegrass music. Oh my God, nothing connects me to the eternal more than the music of my people.

I'm not going to refer to a document created by some brilliant anarchists, stoners, and tech wizards as the ultimate source of Jack. Although anarchist, Stoner is, and tech wizards are some of my favorite people.

Darth, forgive me for running on.

>51 SomeGuyInVirginia: that would explain a lot :D
actually quite a few classic novel settings would make good RPGs, although I suspect a Don Quixote game would attract a lot of trolls, in that way that humans often seem to want to crap on anything they don't understand. (trolls are the reason why I only do single-player games; like most things, it works better when you don't let people into it)

>52 SomeGuyInVirginia: Piffling is always welcome here, and your perspective never fails to be interesting :)
Have you ever visited the bluegrass museum in North Carolina? I was really struck by the stories behind the musicians. Blue Ridge Music Center

Now that I have survived a week-long visit from my Dad involving stress and family drama, and caught up at work and with school assignments, I'm finally able to resume reading for fun:

Aloha From Hell by Richard Kadrey is the third book in the Sandman Slim series, and is a whirlwind of action and snarky comments like the other books. I think there is a total of 12 in the series and I hope they will all be as entertaining.

>48 Darth-Heather: - that sounds surprisingly fun. Tao Wong has a whole bunch of litRPGs too which I've quite enjoyed.

>54 Darth-Heather: That's a long visit, sorry to hear it included drama.

>55 reading_fox: far out. I didn't know it was a genre with other authors involved! I followed the author link you provided - he has a lot of work. Are there certain ones you recommend?

>56 Karlstar: thanks for that :) I'm just hoping the drama will settle down now that he's back home. I'm not very patient with that sort of thing. Now if he would just stop texting us and stirring things up... What do you do with a bratty parent? I can't ground him or send him to his room...

>58 Darth-Heather: Take away his cell phone? I'm joking, I hope it settles down soon. I really dislike family drama.

>57 Darth-Heather: - Sub-sub genre maybe. I don't know how many other authors are writing it. Of Tao's I started with Gamer's wish which I picked up from Storybundle. A healer's gift is the start of his more DnD feel work, I've not read the thousand Li series yet. They're all short novels.

>54 Darth-Heather: Ouch. :o/ Well, he's gone now and hopefully the drama fades away. You have my sympathies.

>61 clamairy: thank you dear :) Its tough - I love my dad, but he's a handful. My siblings are no help. If it wasn't for my husband I would have gone totally insane during the visit.

I survived, but returned to work feeling less than refreshed, only to be confronted with my boss giving his notice. So, now I have to take on a great deal of extra work while I train a new boss. It's lousy timing - I just started a new class and it's a really important one to my degree program, and I had expected to be able to concentrate fully. I have two years left of school and had hoped everything at work would remain reliable for the duration. sigh. I guess things never really work out the way we plan.

>62 Darth-Heather: I guess things never really work out the way we plan: wisest thing John Lennon ever said was that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

so, there's always good news too if I look hard enough for it:
I FINALLY made time to read The Count of Monte Cristo and am delighted with it. Dumas' writing is so clear and timeless that it has aged very well, and his characters are interesting. I love when a book lives up to my expectations, and I will want to read his other works at some point.

>63 haydninvienna: yep, it feels like playing chess; you anticipate several moves ahead, only for your opponent to make a totally different move than you thought of...

>62 Darth-Heather: Oh yikes. :/

>64 Darth-Heather: Well that is good news. That is also on my TBR.

>62 Darth-Heather: family drama is the worst! I totally relate and hope you are now getting some relaxing/de-stressing in.

>64 Darth-Heather: loved that book!

>67 catzteach: it really IS the worst, only because we love them. if it was anyone else, their drama wouldn't get my attention at all.

I am definitely not getting any de-stressing, as I have to put in extra hours at work to cover my departing supervisor's workload, plus spending an inordinate amount of time trying to reassure everyone else that the sky is not falling and that we can in fact keep going. They all follow me around, constantly bringing up every possible bad thing that can happen, and I am not yet able to convince anyone that we will be fine. It's like having a flock of pet chickens following me, pecking and squawking constantly and bickering among themselves.

catchup time!
I have been finding a bit of time to read, but not as much time as I would have liked to post about the ones worth mentioning. Here's a few from the past few months:

The Sea King Trilogy by Nancy Springer Madbond, Mindbond, Godbond - I picked up from KU and it ended up being better than I anticipated. A fantasy world where the population has dwindled to a few small clans who each believe they know why the gods no longer smile on them.

Nyctophobia by Christopher Fowler is not the typical spooky haunted house story, and is well written.

Time's Convert by Deborah Harkness is the fourth book in the Discovery of Witches series, and it picks up right after the previous book so I had to struggle a little at first to remember exactly what was going on and with who, but the pace picks up right away and keeps it interesting.

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre is a classic futuristic fantasy book that I finally managed to catch up to.

Right now I'm in The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker, the sequel to The Golem and Jinni which I enjoyed very much and am hoping this one will have as much heart.

Thanks for the heads up, I love reading spooky books during October! Wacky that you read Nyctophobia, because it's kind of off the beaten path. But both of us, dare I say all of us here, travel off the beaten path. I've been a fan of Christopher Fowler's ever since I stumbled on a tattered copy of his Rune in what was, at that time, my favorite used book shop. I read it around the same time that I read another horror novel called Furnace, that took place on a stretch of i-81 in Virginia that I knew almost by heart. Maybe it was a time/place thing.

I was thinking about you the other day, not because I travel to any place interesting, but because of the wildlife that citizens of Lynchburg are confronted with everyday. I see herds of deer outside my living room window all the time, about cat one time, bunnies which I'm convinced are my spirit animal. Of course part of the reason that I'm aware of being neighborhood wildlife is because I've moved from such a high crime area and have spy cams on every flipping corner. And keeping with these spirit of Halloween, I keep on telling myself that one of these nights I'm going to turn on my basement cam and see a lunatic clearing face grinning at me inches from the lens. Maybe I'm bored, maybe I'm PSTD, and maybe I just like the visceral thrill.

Were you ever a zombie movie fan? When I lived on the top floor of a high-rise I never used to worry or have bad dreams about zombies, but now that I live on a ranch house in a bucolic country town, I have zombie dreams all the time. I quite like them, usually. But since I'm fairly old and have to get up to take a leak several times during the night, if I'm having one of those dreams and I need to get out of bed, it can be an either/or thing for me.

Any other reads you can recommend for Spooktober?

>70 SomeGuyInVirginia: My son gave me a ring video doorbell as a gift a few years ago. The deer (at night) look very zombie-like. Luckily no leering faces... yet.

So far my October Spooky Reads is going pretty well, with a lot that are fun but not very spooky so far. I will see what else I can work in before the end of the month.

Some good ones include:
Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell - what a lot of fun these ladies are! I've read the first one, which introduces the setting and the characters, and I have the entire five book series so will probably get to another one soon. They aren't very long books.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson - was actually more interesting than I expected, and I like how it ends. For some reason I think I thought it was going to be a ghost story...

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is really well written, but leaves more of a feeling of outrage than horror. The female characters are treated in an objectionable way.

Empty Smiles by Katherine Arden is a great installment in the Small Spaces series, and I don't know if it is meant to be the final piece to the story but it does wrap up a lot of loose ends so it felt kinda finished.

The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen - honestly I hadn't even though about any of his other books; I only associate him with the Books of Swords. This was really entertaining though; it is the story of Dracula from the Count's perspective, and oh how terribly he was treated by Harker and Van Helsing!

Other than the next Lychford book, I think I'm going to fit in time for Marina by Carlos Ruiz-Zafon.

>72 Darth-Heather:
I am glad you enjoyed Witches of Lychford. I enjoyed the series.

I also enjoyed We Have Always Lived in The Castle.

Mexican Gothic is on my shelf, my virtual shelf - it's on Kindle, awaiting my attention. It was a book bullet from Sakerfalcon.

I am not familiar with Empty Smiles and The Dracula Tape. Some things to investigate.

You appear to be having a good reading month this October.

>72 Darth-Heather: Spooky reads indeed. I'm very impressed.

>73 pgmcc: I don't know why I hadn't caught on to the Lychford books sooner. I picked up a used copy at a thrift store and loved it so much I bought the series as a Kindle bundle.

I often hear people mention We Have Always Lived In The Castle as one of their spooky october rereads, and it's been languishing in my TBR for too long. The cover has creepy child faces so I guess I assumed there were going to be ghosts. Have you read others from Shirley Jackson?

>74 clamairy: yeah, the one bright side of my bout with Covid - I got lots of reading time in!

>75 Darth-Heather: .
I have read, The Haunting of Hill House and her short story, The Lottery. I will be reading the rest of the short stories in the collection containing The Lottery. I believe I have another collection of her stories and hope to eventually get around to that book too.

>72 Darth-Heather: I enjoyed The Witches of Lychford. I need to read all of them. I think I have only read two. My library doesn’t have all of them. I have Mexican Gothic on my TBR pile. I have to move it up. And The Dracula Tape sounds good! I’ve always had a thing for vampire stories.

I finally got in one that was actually spooky!

Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is brilliantly written, like all of his works, with delightful characters and a beautifully drawn setting. It is set in Barcelona, and is meant to be YA, but it has everything that makes a good gothic urban fantasy - underground lairs, a conflicted villain, ancient cemeteries, opera houses, mysterious cloaked figures, and a compelling hero. There is even a dramatic reveal, and a surprise ending.

>78 Darth-Heather: That one sounds good! And my library has it. It’s in ebook format, but I can read that on my iPad. :)

>79 catzteach: I hope you enjoy it! I've loved everything I've read of his. He has published several other YA novels in addition to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, and his writing style amazes me every time.

I haven't had much time to update my reading lists, but I have been fortunate to grab a bit of time to read, at least. This term I am taking Geostatistics, which uses software that is new to me so I'm putting in a lot of hours with that. Also, planning for Thanksgiving dinner with my family, and Friendsgiving a couple days later, which at least is my chance to test out some new recipes!

On the recent reading front:
Black Sand Baron and Gilded Ghost by Kyle Kirrin are the second and third installments in the Ripple System LitRPG series - if you haven't seen books like this before, LitRPG are written from the POV of players in massive online role playing games. They are fun, if you game. Otherwise, probably a bit boring in parts. This particular series is hilarious though; the author has a great way with character dialogue, and since it's set in a game setting there's nothing terribly serious.

Leaving Cold Sassy was a big letdown, but that may be my own fault - I don't know why I didn't realize that it is not a complete work. It is segments and character sketches from the author that furthers the setting in Cold Sassy Tree, which I enjoyed, but she didn't finish this book and for some reason someone decided to publish the bits she did have. It sets up characters but then trails off with editor notes about what they think the author intended to do.

The Sun At Midnight by Rosie Thomas is not an extraordinary story but the setting, at a research station in Antarctica, is terrific. This author must have done a lot of research, and the characters are believable and interesting.

I am hoping to fit in at least one more before the month ends, but that will depend on how my homework goes. Only one more year left! After that, I will start preparing for retirement...

>81 Darth-Heather:
"Geostatistics" sounds fascinating. When I studied Geology for my degree we had Mathematical Geology. Markov Chains were probably the most complex thing we covered. Of course, in those days most of the calculation was done by hand, or by preparing a deck of computer cards containing instructions to a statistical package and the data. The cards would dropped off at the computer department to be fed into the computer for processing. Assuming you have not misplaced a comma, or made any other mistake in your card deck, you would be able to collect the printout of your results a couple of days later, and then start trying to interpret what all the numbers meant.

I also took Statistics for my degree, so I was happy enough with the Mathematical Geology. I am really envious about the power of today's computers when compared to the cutting-edge technology we were using in the 1970s. :-)

Good luck with the reading, and enjoy the weekend with your family and friends.

>81 Darth-Heather: I bought a paper copy of Leaving Cold Sassy but I never got around to reading it. Now I probably won't bother.

Best of luck with the rest of the semester!