Category: Books

April in Books

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

I read 6 books in March. This is a significant decrease from the previous months. I wake up before 7am and go to bed earlier, perhaps because of the daylight savings time. Falling asleep earlier means less time reading and fewer books in the monthly report. It may also be related to my choice of books, these 6 above are not page-turners.

The best book this month was Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie Plum is blue like Smurfiette there and solves crime. The other 5 were also fine. Nothing stands out as particularly good or bad. The two Sand Wars omnibuses (6 novels inside) were classic sci-fi with aliens and had some good moments but can’t compete with a bounty hunter Smurfiette.

Desert Fire

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

The character is a freelance tank driver, roaming the desert with the tank on a square map. He enters a competition. What does he need to do? Solve a bunch of riddles! Anagrams, basic math, and the music kids listened to in the 80s.

Here’s a riddle from the book.

You have two 6-side dice. What’s the odd for one dice to show 6 and the other to show an even number?

I’ll try to finish the book later this week. After this question, my tank was disqualified because I couldn’t find the solution I knew from playing Backgammon as a child.

Stephanie Plum – Lean Mean Thirteen

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

This book was unremarkable in the beginning but then very satisfying in many ways until the end. I enjoyed the exploding taxidermy and the overall improved independence of Stephanie. She is chasing a criminal mystery because she could be framed for murder. She does it, not Ranger.

I’m not done with the series. Part 13 was nice and refreshing.

4/5

The Horseman of the Apocalypse by Lubomir Nikolov

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

I got a surprise new book. This one was sent to me by the publisher. I was pleasantly surprised and will write a review once I reread it. I’m very thankful for the nice surprise!

I find it very nice that people are republishing these old books. The old ones are collectibles and published with cheap paper so thin that you feel they’ll fall apart if you touch them. The new ones have a great quality and feel.

The previous edition (on the left) features me with this crossword puzzle:

I was about 16 when I did this creation. Can’t imagine solving it, it’s full of untraceable terminology from gamebooks. It says that there are only 2 squares that can’t be filled by using gamebook terms. Perhaps that’d be the 2 squares I’ll fill with my present-day knowledge.

Sand Wars parts 4 to 6 by Charles Ingrid and the nine fingers

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Parts 4 and 5 of the Sand Wars series were back to the roots of what was enjoyable in the first part – battles, new worlds, spaceships, and mild mystery. Part 6 went into the torture territory and was off-putting to me. I would rate the books 4/5/2 for an average of about 3.

The nine fingers

Back in 1993 or 1994, I wrote fiction. One of my main characters was a warrior and I wanted to highlight that you can’t be that without losing a limb or two, so he was missing a finger. Of course, it was the pinky finger so the sword-yielding was unaffected.

In 2006 I read “The Blade Itself” by Joe Abercrombie. It introduced the incredible warrior Logen Ninefingers or The Bloody Nine. He lost a middle finger due to his vicious lifestyle, having the bad habit of battling gigantic northerners. He was very similar to my nine-fingered creation. Jack Storm from the Sand Wars is also a pinky-misser due to a cryogenic accident. Charles Ingrid was more modest than Joe Abercrombie or perhaps had a worse editor.

My father is an engineer whose hobby was making furniture. I had a first-hand experience with finger-related injuries. If a blade encounters fingers, it starts with the index finger, soon to be followed by the middle one. Soon equals milliseconds. Science confirms that observation. The most likely reason for losing fingers is not sword fights but using mundane objects like doors, windows, and power tools. It would be very realistic and ironic if Logen Ninefingers lost his index finger to a folding chair rather than a sword fight. Jack Storm’s accident could’ve been a door.

Both authors left their fingers in the early character building and bounced back to create some good books.