Horror Book # 25 - Books of Blood Vol.4 by Clive Barker

So while I was taking a break from reading nightly for a bit I still needed something to read if I went out for lunch. And so that's how I ended up reading Books of Blood Vol. 4 entirely on my phone. And it only took two months! This volume has five stories and all of them were pretty solid and definitely scary. My favorite is the one about a guy's hands that take on a life of their own and decide to rebel. A-.

Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

This may have been the first Stephen King book I've read that I thought was too short! Gwendy's Button Box is a nice short novella about a young girl, Gwendy, that is given a magical box by another incarnation of RF. Will the box corrupt her? Destroy her life? Maybe because it is a collaboration the ending here is completely satisfying. Let's say it gets a B+.

Mystery Book # 67 - Stick by Elmore Leonard

Wow... almost two months between entries. See this is what happens when I decide that the next book I'm going to read is something that is super long and generally considered a difficult and not fun read (Ulysses). So instead of reading that specific book I find ways to procrastinate. First I started using my small window of free time each day to watch television instead of read...(Westworld! Check it out!). Then I put holds on library books (like Stick) and figured I'd have to read Ulysses after those... So someday I'll start Ulysses... just not yet.

Anyway, Stick is pretty much what I expected from an Elmore Leonard book... a likable criminal type gets in trouble with unlikable more criminal types and finds a way to scam their way out of a jam. I enjoyed it but the details are already evaporating out of my memory. Maybe I'll watch the movie version from 1985, it looks like it has a good cast but then I won't have time for Ulysses. B

Acceptance (Southern Reach #3) by Jeff VanderMeer

Well Acceptance doesn't really answer all of the questions posed by the previous two books in the series. But really those kinds of questions usually don't have satisfactory answers anyway... So I did enjoy reading it and several of the threads from the previous two books are picked up while giving a sense of what maybe Area X really is. I guess it ties up the story as best as possible. B+

Book # 54 - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Even though I watched the film version of The Age of Innocence maybe fifteen years ago or so I had no idea what this book would be about. Memory huh? Anyway the book is set in New York during the late 1800's and is about this guy that falls in love with his fiancee's cousin. The writing is to be admired and there as some lovely passages... but for the most part I couldn't get into the story. I guess I wasn't really sold on why Newland would fall so much in love with the Countess, or vice versa. And the end was a bit frustrating too, or at least that's my interpretation of it. Another list book, Middlemarch, gets a mention. Let's say B+

Book # 32 & Sci-Fi Book # 22- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Have I ever mentioned here that Slaughterhouse-Five is my favorite all time book? Well it is. Probably because when I first read it as a teenager I really found the whole dark humor, meta-fiction, ironic tone thing right up my alley. Plus it has time travel and space aliens while still being considered serious literature. How could I not love it? And got me thinking how most people's favorites are formed before they hit their thirties. I'm pretty sure that nothing I read during this list project will dethrone this as my favorite book in the same way that I know my favorite superhero movie will always be the 1989 Batman. Why? Because I saw that movie when I was 13...

Now I'm not sure if I thought this the last time I read it... probably not... but on this read through it really seems like the novel is about PTSD and you know maybe the Tralfamadorians aren't actually real. I think I always took it at face value... it was after all nominated for a Nebula and a Hugo. But I think we're dealing with an unreliable third person narration here which is I'm guessing fairly rare. Really, if someone with a history of mental problems tells you that they were abducted by aliens and lives life non-linearly would you really believe them? Especially when that life is always going back to the most traumatic events in that person's life? So yep, still my favorite book A+. Also, The Brothers Karamazov are mentioned.

Mystery Book # 63 Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey

Wobble to Death has a nice little set up about a murder during a six day footrace in late 1800's London. But by the end I didn't care about who was the murderer. Additionally I found the main detective to barely have any personality at all. I really couldn't tell you anything about him. Really the most fascinating thing was finding out that there used to be six day races and the whole strategy behind them. C+