Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Onyx Storm is out. Back in June, I ate books 1 and 2 of the series like ice cream on a hot summer day and rated both 4*/5. The problem is that this new book is huge, and 4/5 is not a very high rating for my blog. More like meh. Where do I draw the line when a series is interesting but flawed with plot holes bigger than TON 618?
I know that shopping isn’t supposed to be a thing that brings joy and we need a more sustainable source of dopamine, but here we are. Got a delivery with 7 gamebooks from the period 1992-1998.
Prisoner of Tehran is an autobiography by Marina Nemat about the abrupt end of her childhood. She was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard at the age of 16, imprisoned, tortured, and sentenced to death without trial. Some of her friends and schoolmates were executed and she escaped death by accepting a forced marriage to her interrogator.
Marina is quite calm and angelic in the book. She tries to do what’s best to never hurt anyone other than herself. What happens to her and her friends, however, triggers more rage than the top five X influencers combined.
I rated it 5*/5 despite the anger the book induces. Knowledge sometimes hurts. This book is a painful read. I need a book by Janet Evanovich next to flush my brain, to forgive and forget.
I’m now on Bluesky and TheStoryGraph.
Bluesky is the new Twitter with everyone seemingly moving there but not really. I want to migrate out of Twitter for some reasons:
Two of these do not apply to Bluesky. My user is dzver.bsky.social. I’m not fully committed to the migration but I added Bluesky to my phone. I wouldn’t dare to do that with Twitter.
TheStoryGraph is an alternative to Goodreads. It’s worse in terms of books availability but:
You could not hope to see anything like that on Goodreads.
Here’s my profile. Getting 1-2 friends there will help me explore the social aspects of this service and see if I can realistically migrate out of Goodreads in the future.
The Waiting is Michael Connelly’s 39th book from the Harry Bosch Universe. Renée Ballard from LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit is going to chase a number of different cases at the same time, with the help of Maddie Bosch. Two of the cases are serial killers. Harry Bosch also makes a brief appearance. The avalanche of cases is something we can imagine from an unit that digs into the past and the entire series is plausible. It’s very satisfying because you read about multiple resolutions throughout the book.
Renée Ballard is my current most favorite character by Michael Connelly. She’s experienced but impatient. Doesn’t shy away from yelling at people. Relies on others to do the job. She chills by surfing, which puts her in difficult positions from time to time, including in that book. It starts with the theft of her belongings while surfing. She has no superpowers and doesn’t rely on Deux ex machina to solve the cases. I like the whole setup.
This thriller gets an easy 5*/5 Goodreads rating. It will be a hard thing to read a better book in January. The bar is set high.
Veselin.blog 