Books read in 2018: No. 20 -- Eighty Million Eyes

by Ed McBain

Started: March 28
Finished: March 30

Notes: I've read quite a few of these 87th Precinct novels this year, and while I'm not in a rush to finish the whole series, there are a lot of these books, so I am trying to make my way through them. Here's another.

Mini review: A comedian dies on live television before an audience of millions, and a woman is stalked by a man intent upon making sure she can't date anyone else. These are the cases the boys of the 87th have to deal with in this book. This one was a little more melodramatic than the usual 87th tales, but since such is a rarity, I suppose in an odd way it makes sense for it to happen at least once. As always, I enjoyed the reading. It's not so much the plotting that draws me to these novels, but the writing I love, and I've grown to feel like the characters are, in a way, family and friends. I'll be reading more.

Books read in 2018: No. 19 -- 90 Minutes in Heaven

by Don Piper with Cecil Murphey

Started: March 23
Finished: March 27

Notes: I am highly skeptical of near-death, life-after-death or returning-from-death claims, whatever you want to call them, but I'm also not convinced by the handful of scientific explanations I've read over the years. Anyway, it's a matter I have some mild interest in, so I thought I'd check out this popular book on the subject, the story of a pastor who was apparently killed in a car crash and then came back to life to report of visions of Heaven.

Mini review: Christian believers and those in grief might find some succor here, but the skeptics will not find anything to sway them, or not much. This isn't really a book trying to validate near-death experiences, but tells how one pastor felt about his and how he handled it and the physical and emotional trauma a major car accident caused him, his family and his loved ones. This is a book to turn to in order to help one with grieving, or to embolden one's Christian beliefs, but again, skeptics are not likely to be swayed nor to find much here of use. Still, books like this sometimes help people, or make people change their mind about a topic, so it might be worth reading if you are interested in such matters.

Books read in 2018: No. 18 -- Under the Dome

by Stephen King

Started: March 6
Finished: March 23

Notes: I've read most of King's works, but there's a half dozen or so of his books I've yet to get to. It doesn't help that he seems to churn out another book or five every year. Anyway, now it's time for this long novel.

Mini review: A small town is trapped behind a gigantic dome that comes out of nowhere. While this was probably the best King book I've read of the last decade or so, I had some issues with it. The writing is good, King in top form, so fans of his will enjoy this one. However, this book is soooo King, practically absurdly so, almost as if someone set out to write a spoof of King that would include nearly every cliche of the author's style and characters. Or maybe I've just read too much King over the decades. Either way, still a good book and I can suggest it for fans of the author. Another nitpick I had was that I've grown tired of the everybody-in-a-small-town-has-secrets plot lines that King has used more than a few times, and here it has grown to gigantic portions.

Books read in 2018: No. 17 -- The Talhoffer Society

by Michael Edelson

Started: March 2
Finished: March 6

Notes: To my knowledge, this is the first and only novel centered around HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts, of which I am a former practitioner (former because of health reasons). It apparently involves a bloodsport type plot in which characters face off in a longsword competition that is quite deadly. I'll learn more as I read. And for those wondering who or what Tolhoffer happens to be, Hans Tolhoffer was a 15th Century fencing master.

Mini review: For anyone familiar with the historical swording community ... heck, even for those who aren't familiar ... there's a lot of longsword fanboy wish fulfillment to be found here. But ya know what, a lot of fiction is basically wish fulfillment, so there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. This is also a thriller, so there can be some moments of the outlandish common to many a modern thriller. The writing is decent enough, not great but it doesn't suck, and it gets better as the book goes along. For those with interests in historical swordsmanship, there is a lot here that's informational, especially concerning the longsword, rapier and somewhat concerning the Japanese arts. Definitely worth a read.

Books read in 2018: No. 16 -- Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

by Ed McBain

Started: Feb. 27
Finished: March 1

Notes: Yep, it's another 87th Precinct novel. I've a huge stack of these things, and they've got to be read.

Mini review: The title of this one is a bit of a play on words as the mystery here involves a severed hand discovered by a police officer. In the end, this is one of the more disturbing of the 87th Precinct books, but that's one of the things I love about these novels, that they're all so different from one another when it comes to plots and crimes and criminals.

Books read in 2018: No. 15 -- Paperbacks from Hell

by Grady Hendrix

Started: Feb. 25
Finished: Feb. 27

Notes: I read a lot of horror in the '80s. I mean a lot. So what could be more fun than taking a trip down memory lane by looking at the history of horror literature of the 1970s and '80s? Much of that literature was simply awful, but there was also much that was good. I look forward to this read.

Mini review: This was a fun read. The true horror fan who is well read in the genre will not find much new here, but they will likely discover some books or authors with which they are unfamiliar. This is not a concordance or an encyclopedia, more of a collection of reminiscences and book covers. Surprisingly, Stephen King is barely mentioned. Maybe the author felt King didn't need the shout out, or maybe felt King's career had gone too far beyond horror, but there's little doubt King had a huge influence upon the genre, helping to kick off its popularity in the 1970s. Casual readers of horror, or younger readers looking for older material, will find much here to learn about.

Books read in 2018: No. 14 -- The Map of Time

by Felix J. Palma

translated by Nick Caistor

Started: Feb. 15
Finished: Feb. 25

Notes: It's time to get back to some fiction, so I thought I'd try this novel about H.G. Wells in a time travel investigation.

Mini review: This book is well written, and well translated, which is no mean feat. This is really three novels in one, with H.G. Wells not always as the main character but always at least an important character to each tale. The novel plays with notions of time travel, sometimes presenting the possibilities as real and other times as not, jumping back and forth until a final conclusion, one which I will not reveal as it would ruin the story for anyone reading this. The writing here is a bit flowery, but it's by no means a difficult read. There were a few things which threw me off, but they were not enough to ruin the book for me. Such as, at one point it seems the author is including every single famous person from late 19th Century Britain, and while this isn't literally true, the story can feel that way sometimes, as if name dropping for the sake of name dropping. The thing that annoyed me the most about this novel was that the reader would follow a character along for a hundred pages or more, and then they would practically disappear from the rest of the book just as one is truly becoming interested in the character. This book is apparently the first of a series, so I might be tempted to find the others. I will point out the last 50 pages take a slight turn from the rest of the book, becoming somewhat philosophical and metaphysical, especially during the last 10 pages, and I did not quite feel it fit the tone of the rest of the book.