89:100 Final Girls by Mira Grant

Dr. Jennifer Webb has designed a new therapy combining virtual reality, a drug cocktail, and psychology for healing past trauma by introducing new traumas that force confrontations differently.  We start with the scenario of two sisters who had become estranged undergoing treatment to heal their relationship which consists of a throwing them into a scenario where they are trying to escape a monster in a corn field.

Esther Hoffman is a journalist for a science magazine who has always been skeptical about funky new treatments and has signed up for a treatment from Dr. Webb in order to debunk her methods.  Knowing that if Esther can't do so it will mean great press, Dr. Webb agrees.  That's where things go sideways because this is a Mira Grant book.

Mira Grant writes horribly awful things in well researched detail that seem to be prescient (please go read Feed and then look at today's news cycles if you don't believe me) so I really worry about how this one will turn out in the future.  But honestly, as usual with her work, I could barely put it down and this was after my 13 year old had been hounding me to read it as he is also a huge fan.


Page count: 112p/22,075p ytd/330,772p lifetime

88:100 The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch had just been told that his pancreatic cancer was now terminal and he had less than 6 months left to live when he was invited to give a "Last Lecture".   He knew that he had to take this opportunity to leave a record of who he was for his children so he wrote his book and gave his lecture for them more than anyone else, to let them know who he had been and pass along the things he had learned and would have told them eventually. 

Randy seems like a good guy and the book definitely shows his sense of humor even in the face of everything but his stories and advise definitely come from a place of privilege without understanding it.  He had a middle class background and ended up in situations with offers and mentors that most people will never get.  He was thankful for it but most of his advise just boiled down to work hard enough and it will happen for you which is unfortunately not true for many.  I can see why a lot of people enjoy it but I felt that it was a bit tone deaf that anyone else might have different experiences.


Page count: 206p/21,963p/330,660p lifetime

87:100 Badlands Witch by Carrie Vaughn

The second book in the Cormac and Amelia spinoff.  Cormac made a lot of enemies when he was a bounty hunter and thankfully most of them are dead...but not all of them. When he gets recruited by an archaeologist for a job and Amelia seems eager, they head off.  Now someone from his past is gunning for him and instead of just killing him has managed to steal Amelia away.  This leads Cormac to understand just how close he and Amelia have grown and how much he will do to get her back.

I'm enjoying getting to return to this universe with other characters and Cormac and Amelia is such an unusual pairing so that makes it doubly fun.  I've heard that there will be more and I certainly hope so.

Page count: 83p/21,757p ytd/330,454p lifetime

86:100 The Asian World 600-1500 by Roger V. Des Forges & John S. Major

Review from 2011:
Middle School History covering China, Korea, India, and Japan from 600AD-1500AD.  I really enjoyed the presentation and learning more about this period of time in Asia.  Interesting to see how religion spread through the different areas and how it would change in accordance to the needs of the people of that region.  I found it fascinating to learn that the Korea had a movable metal-type printing machine 50yrs before Gutenberg made his movable type press.  There were lots of little tidbits like that which makes the history much more fun and accessible to the middle schooler and even to those adults (like me) who tend to find history dry and boring.


Page count: 176p/21,674p ytd/330,371p lifetime

85:100 Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant

So many people had been immunized that herd immunity became taken for granted. Then the anti-vax movement came and the herd immunity weakened and we started seeing diseases we thought had been wiped out forever make small comebacks.

Then came Morris's Disease which was new but presented like measles even in an immunized little girl who had a pediatrician for an aunt.  A little girl who became ill while visiting DisneyWorld with her parents and didn't want to miss out on a second of her last day so didn't let them know her throat hurt or she felt bad.  A little girl who then flew home while she was burning up and ran into her aunt's arms at the airport.

A little girl who died after infecting who knows how many people.

After the pandemic has spread and the dead mourned, the living are trying to put things back together again and that's when the awful truth starts coming out about the side effects of Morris's Disease and Dr. Isabella Gauly, the aunt of the little girl, is one of the first to be told.  She has a plan that may not be entirely legal or ethical but may give the human race a chance for survival and herself a chance for atonement.

As always, Mira Grant knocks it out of the park in doing the research and adding in the medical details to make this truly horrifying in a "this shit could really happen" kind of way with characters that are both sympathetic and complex and that twist at the end to drive things home.


Page count: 128p/21,498p ytd/330,195p lifetime

84:100 Dark Divide by Carrie Vaughn

A spin-off set in the Kitty Norville series but focusing on the strange relationship between Cormac and his new mental guest, Amelia, since he got out of prison and Kitty's arc is over. 

Cormac and Amelia have been asked to come to Donner Pass to investigate the death of one of the docents who starved to death in a cabin full of food.  It certainly seems to have a possible supernatural cause but is it merely some type of haunting based on the tragedy from the past or something even more sinister.

I thought that the twining of Cormac, a supernatural bounty hunter, and Amelia,a deceased witch, taking up residence in his head was a great idea when it first happened in the Kitty series and I really enjoy that Ms. Vaughn is now giving us stories of the two of them as they learn how to navigate the world and exploring how they can work together.


Page count: 94p/21,370p ytd/330,067p lifetime

83:100 Urban Enemies Anthology by Various Authors

We finally get to hear from stories from the Villains point of view in this new anthology.  17 of them in fact.  These are all from existing series with established worlds, most of which I didn't know previously or only in passing.  I bought it primarily for the stories from Kelley Armstrong and Seanan McGuire with interest in the ones from Jim Butcher,Kevin Hearne, Carrie Vaughn, and Faith Hunter and because I will usually get introduced to at least one or two new authors that look interesting.

To that end, I really enjoyed the two stories that I bought it for.  I felt that they did a great job of giving stories that enriched the worlds but at the same time served well as stand-alone introductions to them.  Butcher's didn't fare so well as even though I have read all the Dresden files books, I could barely remember this villain and didn't care about him or this story that much.  Kevin Hearne's from the Iron Druid is with characters that are later in the series than I have read but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the tale.  I enjoy the Kitty Norville series by Carrie Vaughn and maybe this serves a nice intro to newbies of the series but it just fell flat for me but really enjoyed Leo's story from Faith Hunter's Jane Yellowrock series.  However, I do feel that one might be harder for readers not familiar with the world to get into.

The new author that stood out to me from this anthology was Diana Pharoh Franics with a tale from her Horngate Witches series.  Never heard of the author or the series before but definitely want to check it out based on this story. 

Other than these, none of the other stories really stood out for me.  Many of them were simply meh and just didn't interest me at all, some were total slogs to finish, and a few were ok but not interesting enough to me for me to go out and read more by that author.  So in all, 5 of the 17 were worth the price of the book, a few more were fun, but I'd say that at least half of the book was just not my cup of tea which was definitely disappointing.