60:100 In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Elliot is the nerdy, unlikable, smartass, totally obnoxious 13yr old kid is in his class.  His mother left him and his father when he was young and his father has paid almost no attention to him ever since.  Today, he is on a field trip with his school to some place he is sure will be boring and he couldn't be more wrong.  They are in a field when he sees a wall that none of his classmates can see and when he goes to climb it (as that seems like the most logical thing to do), he finds himself in the Borderlands, a world where technology doesn't work and is populated by all the creatures out of our fantasies including, to Elliot, mermaids.  He's not so sure about the rest of the world though since it seems that the human guards that he would be entering into is mostly about weapons and fighting which are definitely not to Elliot's taste but then he meets Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elf and the most loveliest creature he has ever set eyes on.  Right then, he decides to stay and his life turns upside down. 

Honestly, I really wanted to like this book.  I thought the premise was great and was looking forward to it despite how obnoxious Elliot was because I was figuring we would see character growth and development and he would turn into, if not a fully likable character, at least one that didn't just make me want to slap the crap out of him constantly.  That never happened.  He was always an obnoxious, insufferable character with moments of not being that but then he would revert back to form.  Add in the fact that we constantly have to hear about his supposed superior intellect but yet he speaks in small words and repetitive phrases constantly!  My 13yr old had a larger and more imaginative vocabulary when he was 8yr.  The other characters had more character growth but it still wasn't great and I found the over-the-top sexism of the elves horrendous as well.  The world building was solid but the characters populating it made it a slog to read.


Page count: 432p/16,976p ytd/325,671p lifetime

59:100 Stone Dead by Stefon Mears

A robbery gone wrong and now Stone and Karlsson are on the run but before getting the hell out of the city, they turn on each other to try and see who screwed it up.  But in cases like these, there's always more than one person selling everyone else out.

Written well but just not something that I typically find that interesting.


Page count: 21p/16,544p ytd/325,239p lifetime

58:100 Computer Concepts published by Parsons

A decent enough overview of the basics of computer concepts. Just could have done with a lot less (and I do mean a LOT less) of the "Go try to find some of this ancient technology and see just how primitive it was" when those were the toys I played with when I was young.  Gee, thanks for making me feel freaking ancient.  This book must have been written by early 30-somethings.

Page count: 632p/16,523p ytd/325,218p lifetime

57:100 Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Where Hercule Poirot goes murder seems to follow.  This time he is on a train from Istanbul heading home (or to his next case as he gets a telegram on the train) when one of the passengers has been murdered, stabbed to death many times over but luck is with him as this happened on the night when the train has been stuck in a snow storm and no way for the murderer to escape so Poirot waxes his mustache and sets to work to find out whose done it.

This was my first Agatha Christie novel and I don't know if it's because at this point it's not a novel ending or because so much of what Poirot lays out at the end is not really revealed through the course of the investigation.  You can't go back and go, gee, of course that is how it all fits together, and that type of "mystery" doesn't really appeal to me.  I'm not sure if her other books all follow this same thing but I'll probably give another one a try at some point to find out.


Page count: 265p/15,891p ytd/324,586p lifetime

56:100 Microsoft Office 365: Excel 2016 Comprehensive by Freund, Starks, & Schmieder

A decent enough textbook that went over a lot of the different things you can do with Excel.  My main issues were that this is a bit outdated so a few things didn't work correctly in the newest version of Excel which I was running, it didn't do enough to explain some of the error messages that could come up and why that might be so you could have a better idea of how to fix it, and my biggest complaint is that there was a lot "Just go do this" step by step for more complex things but without any actual explanation of what you were doing or why which makes it harder to then apply to your own material.


Page count: 816p/15,626p ytd/324,321p lifetime

55:100 Lost Souls by Kelley Armstrong

A man driving on a lonely stretch of highway sees a woman in white in need of a lift who directs him to her friend's house that is just a patch of forest in the middle of nowhere and then vanishes.  It's a familiar enough tale but something is odd this time so Patrick brings it to Gabriel to investigate hoping that Gabriel will use it as an excuse to try and patch things up with Liv since she loves a good mystery and weird ones even more.  But this case will have Gabriel facing more than white specter who gets people lost in the woods. He will have to realize and face how lost he has become.

Read this one out of order, not that it matters much.  It was an interesting tale and always fun to get more insights into these characters.

Page count: 190p/14,810p ytd/323,505p lifetime

54:100 Cruel Fate by Kelley Armstrong

Olivia is finally getting what she has wanted since she found out the truth about her past, her father's release from prison.  Unfortunately, not everyone is so happy to see Todd freed and while he was innocent of the crimes that sent him to prison for the last 20 years, he does have one murder on his hands, the one that kicked off everything that came about afterwards and someone is laying the clues out for him to go back to jail with no possibility of being found innocent this time.  Liv is hovering over her father like a nervous mother hen and when she starts hearing about this trail, she will do everything in her power to make it go away including using her position as Matilda as well as calling in her Arwen and Gwynn. 

My biggest disappointment is that this is the last planned novella for this series and I would love to continue reading all about Liv, Gabriel, and Ricky.  This was a good note to end on with the wrapping up of Todd's story and how things got started so many years ago.

Page count: 200p/14,620p ytd/323,315p lifetime

53:100 Patternmaster by Octavia Butler

Patternmaster - Seed to Harvest #4

Set far into the future, at a time when civilization has moved backwards towards a more agrarian based community, non-telepaths (Mutes) are basically slaves, and those with psychic powers have all been combined into the Pattern which is held by Rayal.  But now Rayal is old and dying and a new Patternmaster will be needed.  Of course, Rayal's most powerful child, Coransee, has positioned himself to be the one to take Rayal's place.  Teray has just been apprenticed to a new house but before he can take his place there, he is taken by Coransee and placed as the lowliest member of his house instead.  Teray is powerful but it comes out that Coransee is his half-brother, both of them sons of Rayal, and Coransee wants no challenge to his plan to become the new Patternmaster.  So of course, Teray runs away and heads straight for Rayal with the help of a powerful healer who has been staying with Coransee but is not part of his house.  On the way, there are many dangers for them to face but the biggest is the Clayarks, the non-humans who run in a pack and are a constant threat to mankind.

This book was the first written in the series and it shows.  I enjoyed it but it was definitely the weakest of the series.  Similar themes of self-determination and enslavement by the powerful are woven throughout but they are much more stark in this one with the characters and the whole novel written in a much more simplistic style.  None of the subtlety and nuance that is present in Wild Seed.  The Claryarks that she spent an entire novel building up as a species that is trying to hold onto its humanity are portrayed as simple animals for the most part through this one although with having read Clay's Ark first, you definitely wonder if there is more to them than is being shown here but if you had read this first, they are definitely written as just another obstacle for the protagonist and one that he learns quickly and easily how to mow down in cold blood.

I've enjoyed this series a lot and after reading it, it's hard to know which order is the best to recommend to people (chronological world order or published order).  The books written later are definitely stronger and better written but even the early ones are rich with strong themes and intriguing world building.  No matter what, I definitely will be reading more of Octavia Butler's books and recommending her writing to others.

Page count: 208p/12,420p ytd/323,115p lifetime

52:100 Closing the Zoo by Stefon Mears

"Snake" may be living off the royalties of his one big hit but music is still his passion and he never wants it to end.  So when his band mates come in, late again, for practice and tell him that it's over, Snake is determined to find a way to hook them back in.

A lovely little story of what happens when your passion for the music remains long after the rest of the world has moved past your sound.


Page count: 26p/12,212p ytd/322,907p lifetime

51:100 Rough Justice by Kelley Armstrong

Liv as Matilda has made her choice which is to not choose.  Tonight marks her first night leading the Wild Hunt in a true Hunt where someone will be brought to Justice.  Ioan has given her the name and said she should do her research but she wanted to just trust but once she was there with the man having judgement passed, she found that she was not clear enough in her mind.  The Hunt was called off and Liv started researching the case to try and put her mind at ease but what she found was much less clear cut than she was lead to believe would be the case.

Good to see Liv truly embracing her role as Matilda and seeing how things are going now that the choice has been made.  Really enjoy the fact that Ms. Armstrong gives us these extra stories that don't fit into the main story arc but add so much depth to the world.

Page count: 190p/12,186p ytd/322,881p lifetime