Yeah, I couldn’t even get into that one.
I finished *Sexted by Santa * by D.J. Jamison, it was a lot sweeter and better written than the stupid title implied. I’ve liked a lot of her stuff and this was no exception.
This is the only one of his books I’ve tried, and I hated how it was written. Are his other books not written in this style?
No. IMHO this was a ham-handed attempt to write a female lead. Both The Martian and Project Hail Mary are very different, very focused on science with much less action and MUCH better written (I Think).
IMHO it goes like this: The Martian >>> (3 times better) Project Hail Mary >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Artemis
I finished reading US Submarines through 1945: An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. It’s background for a book I’m researching, but fascinating stuff in its own right.
I also read Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Alice Kang and Nate Pedersen. It’s a book I gave someone else for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I picked it up while visiting. It’s a very good read. I knew a lot of this already, but Ms. Kang and Mr. Pedersen still managed to find lots of tidbits I hadn’t encountered before, such as that “Snake OIl” really was made from the oil of snakes (at least, the good stuff was. The cheap stuff generally had mineral oil and some random animal fat in it). Even more impressive, the original snake oil medicine – a formulation made by Chinese traditional pharmacists using Chinese river snakes – may have actually worked, having high levels of omega-3s in it. But the American-made substitute – even the best of them, using rattlesnakes – had no curative properties.
Now I’m back to Clive Cussler’s Wrath of Poseidon.
New thread: New Year Resolutions? BAH!
Finished The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly. Another well-written page-turner from one of my favorite authors.
Next up is one of my Christmas presents: The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski.
Finished Reprieve (and with that, the final total for books read this year comes to 54).
I was hoping for a horror story and it wasn’t really that. It was, however, compelling to get to know all the characters. I had trouble buying into the setting (a full-contact horror-themed escape house? No.) Also, the description at Goodreads and Amazon includes phrases like, “blisteringly relevant literary novel”. It’s really hard to buy into that too, unless I’ve somehow become all highbrow without knowing it. Seemed like just a story to me.
Finished The Crystal Palace: The Diary of Lily Hicks, London 1850-1851 , by Frances Mary Hendry, which I thought was very well done.
Now I’m reading Quantum Leaps: How Quantum Mechanics Took Over Science, by Jeremy Bernstein.
Glad you liked it! Hope you’ll read his Moriarty, too, another good Holmesian tale.
Finished it. Farfetched but good fun.
Off to the January thread!
Finished Quantum Leaps: How Quantum Mechanics Took Over Science , by Jeremy Bernstein. I didn’t really understand most of the science, but he had some great anecdotes about Oppenheimer, W. H. Auden, Marvin Minsky, and a bunch of other people.
This is my last book of 2021.
Tomorrow, I’ll start Metropolitan Diary: The Best Selections from The New York Times Column, edited by Ron Alexander.