Finished reading 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, because last month someone here reminded me about it and said it didn’t suck. He’s right. It’s not a best in breed of the alien invasion genre, and some of the YA themes weren’t intended to captivate guys who’d cross the street to avoid overhearing teenage girls gushing about dreamy teenage boys. But it’s good enough that I can donate it to a neglected little free library and not feel guilty about shortchanging whoever takes it. I think the reason I passed over it earlier was that I thought it was the 5th in the series, not the first.

Now I’m re-reading Bone Collector by Jeffrey Deaver. I’ve read some of his Lincoln Rhyme mysteries, but couldn’t remember which ones. I’m only about 50 pgs in, but it looks familiar. I expect it to end with some unrealistic coincidences, but can’t remember what, so I’ll continue.

From a little free library, just finished Burn by Nevada Barr, part of her Anna Pigeon series. Normally these are all set in a national park, where the natural geology plays a major role in the mystery. This one happens near the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park, but doesn’t have anything to do with the park, or jazz, or even New Orleans and could have taken place anywhere there’s a black market for certain illicit services. I liked some of the more outdoorsy ones a bit better, but this was worth the read. I have to think about whether Anna Pigeon qualifies as an E5-caliber grump for bingo card.

It’s Banned Books Week, so I downloaded a pdf of The Turner Diaries. I’m told this book is considered inspirational by those who think having a race war would be fun and glorious. It might also be of interest to non-racists with morbid curiosity about White Nationalist ideology. Otherwise, I do not recommend it for its literary value. I read this so you don’t have to.

What do you think about 5th Wave? You reminded me that I have a copy on the bottom of a stack, still unread. I’m currently about halfway into Red Sparrow (I like it so far; the author seems to know his stuff), and I’ll finish that first, but I could re-sort my piles to make it more visible if given a reason to.

They changed quite a bit, but yes, The Meg (2018).

Jonas Taylor is the human protagonist and megalodon expert. Mac and Heller are approximately the same character as in the book. Most of the Japanese characters got changed to Chinese. The (ex-)Mrs. Taylor got completely remade. There are some other major plot adjustments.

MEG by Steve Alten

The titular megalodon qualifies it for the 1C bingo square. Unfortunately, the human characters were all disappointing, and some of them survive long enough to appear in sequels which I won’t bother with.

Asimov’s Breeds There a Man …?

A suicidal genius figures out the relationship between his brilliance and his mental health.

Recently finished Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan.

It starts off by confusingly introducing a large number of characters at the narrator’s funeral, but gets good once 12 of them arrive in China for the Burma Road trip she organized for them. She joins them in spirit, but can only observe cultural misunderstandings she would have saved them from had she been alive, culminating in 11 of them going missing without explanation when their lake excursion never returned.

It’s surprisingly funny given the subject matter involving oppressive regimes and human rights abuses. It’s also entertaining and informative and gets a positive recommendation.

I scored it under Minority Author for bingo as she is Chinese-American. However, I think Amy Tan’s more interesting affiliation is as vocalist with the Rock Bottom Remainders, who I learned about after reading a good book by their guitarist.

Recently finished The Housemaid. It felt more like chick-lit than what I’d normally go for, but someone said I should read it and lent me a copy. The main plot premise was solid. The reveals were less surprising than perhaps the author intended, but well written regardless. I’ve scored it under film adaptation which is cheating, but I’m told Sydney Sweeny will make it valid before the bingo closes.

Up next I think is going to be Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan. Not far enough into it to recommend yet, but looks as if it could be interesting, and set in a part of the world I’m underinformed about.

The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharon McCrumb.

The sheriff of a fictional rural county in East Tennessee is invited to witness the execution of a local man he arrested 20 years ago for a double murder on the Appalachian Trail. He remembers what the then sheriff told him at the trial:

There’s only two murder cases in these mountains I’m not happy with. One is the fellow you’re about to put on death row, and the other is Frankie Silver.

So he ruminates over both of these cases, wondering if justice was served, or if something was missed. The Frankie Silver case is told through Burgess Gaither, clerk of the court that tried and executed her.

I think I’ll count this for folklore (3A) bingo square. The author did significant historical research into Frankie’s case which after 200 years is probably more legend than fact. Other of McCrumb’s novels might also be good recommendations for this category, or just in general.

Stephen Hunter is on my list of authors where I expect an unfamiliar book to be worth reading. I’ve read about 6 of his, and will continue until one of them disappoints me.

Just finished 47th Samauri by Stephen Hunter. Atypically for an author who usually writes about firearms, this is about swords. The protagonist’s father fought on Iwo Jima and took a sword from a Japanese officer who committed seppuku with it. Now 60? years later, his kid asks for it back. He doesn’t have it, but finds out who does, agrees that returning it is the right thing to do, and brings it back to Japan and the guy’s family. Then things get very violent because some bad guys discover the sword’s very famous past. So naturally, Bob Lee Swagger has to quickly learn swordfighting and basically re-enact the 47 Ronin event to avenge his new friend’s honor.

It’s not the author’s best work (for that I still recommend Black Light), but is interesting enough. The books in this series are self-contained, but do have an order. I had already read the book that immediately follows this one and knew how Bob Lee won the climactic swordfight, and what he brings home from Japan.

According to their online catalog, there in fact is a copy in my local public library. According to the statewide database, there’s another library copy next county over (in the author’s hometown).

It does appear to be self-published, by a local author. He should have known of and approved what boilerplate he was attaching to his text.

1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates – Sellar, Yeatman, and Reynolds.

Worth all of its 116 pages. (Also valid for 1A, but I have other plans for that square.)

Row 1 is also still in play since I’m currently in progress on one of the books from your card, Relic.

Roger Ackroyd and Gone Girl were both recommended by someone who thought I’d like them. She’s often right about things, and was this time too. Scent of Death most exceeded my expectations and also gets a favorable review. The first-person narrator and detailed descriptions of colonial NYC made for a very immersive setting. No particular order among them, but that’s my top 3.

There’s probably a way to engineer a bingo here by reclassifying things that fit multiple boxes. I just put things in the better fitting or more interesting category.

• 1A: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie. Missed Hard mode by 2 years. Old enough to read via wikisource. Everything else here was read in dead tree format.
• 1C: The Quantum Spy – David Ignatius. Quantum computing, espionage thereof, and USA-China relations. Very Macguffin.
• 1D: Secrets to the Grave – Tami Hoag. A single mother is brutally murdered. Her young daughter witnesses and survives the attack. Investigators wonder who the father is.
• 2C: Hannibal Fogg and The Supreme Secret of Man – Tahir Shah. Hard Mode Published by and available free at http://secretum-mundi.com/
• 2D: The Cartographers – Peng Shepherd. Hard Mode. About the 1930 General Drafting highway map of New York state, with the Agloe copyright trap. Additionally, includes a discreet, but significant shout-out to Ursula LeGuin’s Lathe of Heaven.
• 2E: Boar Island – Nevada Barr. A main character suffered a severe spinal injury (in a previous book, while mountain climbing with Anna Pigeon). She can walk with technological assistance. Boar Island was not designed for the mobility impaired; they move there for her teenage daughter’s comfort, not her own.
• 3B: The Scent of Death – Andrew Taylor. Hard Mode The narrator is a English clerk, assigned to New York City for the duration of the book, during the American Revolution. (I didn’t look up the hard mode criteria, but assume it isn’t this.)
• 3D: A Column of Fire – Ken Follett. Follows Pillars of the Earth and World Without End in the Kingsbridge series.
• 4A: Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn. I haven’t seen the movie, but am told they made one.
• 5E: The Illustrated Man – Ray Bradbury. Short stories, the majority of which involve extraplanetary travel, interstellar in some cases.
• AltA: Fatal Error – F. Paul Wilson. I read Implant some years ago, but nothing of his recently or from this series. Order matters in this series; don’t start here.
• AltB: Bones to Ashes – Kathy Reichs. The author is a well-credentialed and academically respected forensic anthropologist who cares about getting the science right in her novels.
• AltC: Demon Crown – James Rollins, ne James Czajkowski
• AltD: Inferno – Dante Alighieri tr. Allen Mandelbaum. Hard Mode. I couldn’t read it in the original Italian.

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. It’s about a near-future maverick geo-engineering operation that hopes to protect Netherlands and other low countries from flooding and rising sea levels. It might also affect global weather systems. The organizers aren’t very concerned about that, but India and China might get upset if it screws up their monsoon seasons.

It probably won’t even get me a bingo square, but I’ll read and recommend it anyway.

Does he go for science fiction? I liked Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle as an adult, but think it’s intended as YA. The main character is about your kid’s age, an orphan in a extrasolar colony. Thanks to some things his parents did for him before they were killed, he knows some things the adults in charge of the colony don’t. Including that the native life on the planet is more intelligent than assumed, and advanced enough to defend itself from human encroachment.

See if your local library occasionally runs a booksale. I get most of my books that way. Their prices are competitive with thrift stores, usually about $1 paperback and $2 hardcover. But because it’s run by friends of the library, tends to be higher quality and better organized. At those prices, I can afford to be disappointed, and sometimes get pleasantly surprised.