I read 7 books this month, mostly from the Black Friday harvest 🙂
I feel like I had some excellent hits with 5 great books and only one truly bad, which I read anyway because it was Lee Child.
Best books
We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor – an easy to read Martian style book. Loved it and it will be in the top 5 for the year.
Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey – a Star Trek-like story with a million different species but no Kobolds. One of the main characters is a teenage rabbit with exceptionally long ears.
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer – imagines what’s next with intelligent robots.
Worst books:
In Too Deep by Lee Child – it’s time for Jack Reacher to retire. He’s turning into Steven Seagal.
Infinity Gate by M. Carey would be the last book I read in 2024.
There’s a way to travel between alternative versions of Earth. Infinitely many alternative Earths. The stars are too far but the other Earths are near. You run out of resources? Next Earth has them and you may not be the only one reaching that conclusion.
Something in the storytelling makes this book exceptional. It sucks you in that world of endless variations. Like a horizontal Star Trek.
I was close to tossing it away in the beginning because it didn’t start well. Happy that I gave it a chance.
The perfect space for reading for me is my bed. I can read some and fall asleep. Most books make me sleepy, and the ones that keep me awake make me happy. It’s a win-win.
As for writing, I’m not sure. Last time I wrote a book was before Internet was a thing. I’ve tried writing some short stories after but, let’s say, I couldn’t figure out the right space. Maybe I need something appropriate, like a medieval castle with a Rapunzel tower.
Currently reading Infinity Gate, an unusual sci-fi that has good and bad moments. I hope it gets a separate blog post.
We don’t have lots of space for books and unfortunately I’m able to read and collect them at a pace that’s not sustainable and turns books into clutter. We are experimenting with an overflow shelf to resolve the problem. The way it works is that once I have no space to place a new book, I have to pull out an old one and add it to the overflow shelf for donation.
This is how the overflow shelf looks right now. The local library asked for more Lee Child books and will get some. I hope other people appreciate the latest trend with the Jack Reacher books more than I did.
I just completed book #29 from Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series called In Too Deep. I rated it 3/5 but it’s more like 1.5/5 and got a 1.5 point bonus because Lee Child is one of my favorite writers.
So, I asked myself a question, is it just me, or the series becomes unreadable? This is the ratings I gave the individual books, and the red line represents the community ratings on Goodreads.
Up to book 18, the community gives a pretty consistent 4.1-4.2 rating, then it hovers around 4 and goes under. The latest books may go under once they gain sufficient ratings as well. But unlike the community, my last 4 ratings are 3s and 4s, and I’ve been very generous. Feels like the community keeps liking the series.
According to some Goodreads sources, Lee Child felt like he runs out of steam and offloaded the actual writing to his younger brother, Andrew. Perhaps I just don’t like Andrew Child’s storytelling. Spoilers ahead.
Book 29 is about some world-scattering conspiracy. Reacher, a retired 60-something homeless vet who owns no phone, car, or ID, would interfere, overwhelming all the three-letter agencies in the US. There are stashes of property left unattended and owned by “the Russians”. There’s a hot police officer vigilante who wants revenge. What there isn’t is anything that’s remotely believable.
Of course, the Jack Reacher series doesn’t need to make sense but it follows certain math. Bullets are faster than people. Knives cut. A person attacks Reacher, Reacher punches back before person even sees it. This math is violated. We’ll see Reacher withdrawing, not using his head, not finding the location of enemies, and winning with absurd constraints that shouldn’t have been enforced in the first place because of the math. This enters the territory of the Marvel movies where the story is first, and whatever doesn’t make sense will be filled with CGI.
Reacher Book 29 – 1.5*/5. It’s like a Steven Seagal movie. The only thing missing is a chair for Reacher to sit during the book.
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