I’ve read a lot of Ed Hoch’s stories, Mother and I used to compete to see who could get the mail in when EQMM arrived and who got to read the Hoch story first. 
Started this morning on The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson, a sci-fi novel about an epidemic that causes the infected to act out in murderous rage. I’m liking it so far. There has been one incident of animal abuse, but it was telegraphed enough so I could skim it, and I don’t get the sense that it’ll be an ongoing problem.
Finished Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne , by Edward D. Hoch, which I enjoyed. In short story collections I normally try to choose one or two favorites, but I really couldn’t do that this time. Quality work.
Now I’m reading How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, by Randall Munroe.
Finished it. Often fun, but I’d forgotten just how polemical it is. Heinlein’s libertarianism and sexism are on full display; he writes a lot about how evil taxes are and how most beautiful women secretly want to be spanked and bossed around by strong men.
I’ve now begun an audiobook of the sf thriller Firestarter by Stephen King, about a dad with mind-control powers and his little girl, who can start fires with her mind, on the run from government goons. It’s as good as I remember.
It’s my favorite, of two, King book. The movie was so awful it was fun to watch…
The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty Mary Hollingsworth
A history of the Medici from their origins in the 1200s as bankers in Florence, Italy to their demise in the 1700s. In between, they became the rulers of Florence, married into the royal families of Europe, and ascended to the Papacy. And helped kick off the Renaissance as patrons of the arts and sciences.
I quite enjoyed this book. The author has done a lot research digging into old letters and archives, the prose is straightforward, there are lots of beautiful photos of buildings and paintings, and there is a helpful geneology chart to help distinguish the various Lorenzos and Cosimos; not to mentions the Giulios, Giulias, and Giulianos.
My one quibble is that the trying to cover 500 years of history in a relatively short book leaves little room for detail. Even the redoubtable Catherine de Medici, who was the queen of France, gets only a few pages.
Finished How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems , by Randall Munroe. It was a lot of fun.
Now I’m reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow.
Finished Demolition Angel, by Robert Crais. Not part of the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike LA noir series. Former LA Bomb Squad technician Carol Starkey, now with the Criminal Conspiracy Section, hunts for a mad bomber who targets Bomb Squad technicians. While the book is a one-off, Starkey will go on to make appearances in the Cole/Pike books.
Have started Hostage, another one-off by Robert Crais.
Currently reading “The Bear and the Dragon” by Tom Clancy - taking a long time to get to the fireworks factory.
Finished The Ten Thousand Doors of January , by Alix E. Harrow, which was very good.
Now I’m reading Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine, by Damon Tweedy, M.D.
Over the weekend, I finished The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson. Wow, it blew me away! I rated it only four stars at Goodreads because it’s extremely gory, but I was able to go on reading it because I really cared about the characters. I even choked up in places, including the ending. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.
Started this morning on This Is Not a Ghost Story by Andrea Portes. At about 50 pages in, I’m already giving it the old dubious eyebrow, but it’s interesting enough to continue.
Finished Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine , by Damon Tweedy, M.D. It was very good.
Now I’m reading The Diploids: Eight Science-Fiction Stories by Katherine MacLean.
“Hate-reading” this now. The premise is that the main character, a seventeen year old girl, was on her way to college when she just got off the train in a strange town and started knocking on doors to ask for a job. A nice man who lives in a mansion said, sure, she could house-sit for him and supervise construction workers while he is away for the summer, and he will pay her a lot of money. Yes!
The girl doesn’t tell us much about the house, or anything really, but she does enjoy watching crap shows about aliens on the History Channel. Also, a Mrs. Doubtfire-type character stops by to check on her. Now some odd things are beginning to happen in the house, but what’s really important is something the girl can’t bear to remember and that’s why she’s not going to tell us about it.
This book sucks so hard I can’t wait to get back to it.
I finished This Is Not a Ghost Story. It kept getting worse and less believable, until I realized the author was doing it on purpose, and at that point I knew the reason why. Still, a terrible execution of a plot we’ve all seen before. Not recommended!
Next up, Tiny Nightmares, a collection of very short horror stories. I’m blowing right through it. It’s like gobbling up a bag of popcorn; no substance or satisfaction, but I’m compelled to go on. It’s too late in the week for me to start anything solid anyway.
Finished The Diploids: Eight Science-Fiction Stories by Katherine MacLean. Meh, except for “Pictures Don’t Lie”, which had a fun, rather Twilight Zone-ish twist. Unfortunately, its ending was given away by copy on the back cover. Hypocritically, the back cover also says that to give away plots “…as every S-F fan knows, is a dastardly crime punishable by indefinite exile on mysterious, fog-shrouded Planet X!”
Now I’m reading Shadow Tag, by Louise Erdrich.
Just finished: Stone Spring, an alternate-history story (set ca 8000 BCE) by Stephen Baxter.
Now reading: Bronze Summer, an alternate-history story (set in the 1150s BCE) by Stephen Baxter.
Up next: Iron Winter, an alternate-history story (set in the 14th century CE) by Stephen Baxter.
About a third of the way through Stephen King’s Firestarter, and I’m enjoying it. The mooks from the Shop just tried to nab the fugitives at an upstate New York farm and… it did not go well for them. There’s a lot about this book that I don’t remember, and it’s fun rediscovering it.
Yeah, that’s really one of the good ones. 
Finished Shadow Tag , by Louise Erdrich, which is uneven, although excellent in spots. It has an excellent example of what TV Tropes calls a “wham line”. The main character’s 6YO son loves to draw pictures of his family, especially his mother. In every picture of her, he draws a stick with a half-moon shape on top in her hand. She asks what it is.
“It’s your wine glass,” he says. Up until that point, I hadn’t realized that she was an alcoholic. (Neither had she.)
Now I’m reading A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II, by Simon Parkin.
I just finished reading One R. Pagan’s The First Brain: The Neuroscience of Planarians A fun read, and much more general public than the title suggests. But it didn’t have what I was looking for.
I also finished Al Jaffee’s Mad Life by Mary-Lou Weisman and Al Jaffee. Al Jaffee provided the information and the copious illustrations. Jaffee had a much more complex life than I knew. Born in Lithuania, moved to the US, then back to Lithuanian, then back to the US, then back and forth two more vtimes. Utterly amazing. He describes his life in Lithuania as a 19th century bexistence, complete with a heavy infestation of lice. But it was happier than the times he was being shuttled between households in the Bronx. Well worth the read.
Now it’s on to Rex Stout’s Homicide Trinity , a Nero Wolfe collection that I don’t think I’ve read yet, but it’s hard to tell. Then I’ve got a stack of other books to read, including a pair of thick Poul Anderson collections.
I’m not listening to anything on audio yet, although I’ve ordered Clive Cussler’s The Marauder, one of the new ones that came out since his death.