Worst Person Ever - Douglas Coupland

Vintage Canada, 2014, 317 pages

Original copyright 2013 

ISBN: 978-0-345-81374-9 

Read: August 2025, age 47

 

I've been reading basically every Douglas Coupland book I've found since i read Microserfs, which turned out to be one of my favourite books.  I keep reading them hoping to recapture that, even a little, and I keep being disappointed.  I enjoyed the prose in this book, but the characters and plot were basically just a waste of time, and I bounced off of the humour.   

 

Rating: 2 

The Goblin Horde - Ivan Kal (Audiobook)

Tantor Audio, 2019, 8.4 hours

Read by: Ryan Burke

Listened to: November 2024, age 46

 

Tower of Power, book 2 

...yup.  Still bad.  There's unrealized potential for a good story - the visuals are good, and the setting is interesting enough.  The dialogue and the characters are very weak.  Kind of fun, though. 

 

Rating: 2+

Guild Master - Ivan Kal (Audiobook)

Tantor, 2019, 8.3 hours

Read by: Ryan Burke

Listened to: October 2024, age 46

 

Tower of Power book 1 

This book makes me feel like I could actually publish one of my own.  It wasn't very good.  The setting was interesting, and the setup was a lot of fun, but the actual prose...

 

I didn't completely hate it, and I'll probably keep listening when I'm feeling like something brainless, but I'm not proud of that.

 

Rating: 2+

How Stella Got Her Groove Back - Terry McMillan

Signet, 1997, 445 pages

ISBN: 0-451-19200-1

Read: March 2024, age 45

This was kind of a creepy May-December romance, where both characters had no particularly redeeming characteristics - the love interest was pretty and the main character was a Mary Sue who could do no wrong.  

 

The only interesting bit was that the book was very black, and I don't often get that perspective, so that was a nice change.  

Rating: 2

The Ringworld Engineers - Larry Niven

Del Rey, 1980, 354 pages 

ISBN: 0-345-33430-2

Read: February 2024, age 45

Ringworld 2

 

This book felt like just one more unnecessary sequel to cash in on the fame of the original, without adding anything to the story.  The original was pretty neat; but it was more a mystery exploration.  This one didn't have the sense of wonder, the characters weren't much, and the plot left a lot to be desired. 

 

There are a bunch more books in the series, but I'm done with it.

 

Rating: 2

Myths and Legends of the Celts - James MacKillop

Penguin, 2006, 388 pages

Original copyright 2005

ISBN: 978-0-14-101794-5 

Read: 2023

I started this book with some reasonable grounding in Celtic myths, and learned a bit more - the information was good, but it was formatted in such a way that it didn't work well for me at all.  The first portion of the book had all of the commentary and context, the second had the actual stories.  So by the time you got to the relevant myth, the commentary is well gone in the background, and there were precious few cross references to help out.  

It's possible that this book wasn't meant to be read front to back, but there was nothing to suggest that along the way.

I suspect that it'll make a good reference, but it wasn't a good read.

Rating: 2

A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

Penguin, 2011, 579 pages

ISBN: 978-0-14-311968-5

Read: October 2023, age 45

 

Book 1 of the All Souls Trilogy 

I hated the beginning - way too much infodumping when I didn't have any reason to care about the character yet.  I also hated the love story - it basically came down to 'He's a vampire!!!' on her part and 'we're fated to be together' from both of them.  There was just barely enough other story to keep me going through the book (I actually set it aside and started another, but then came back), and then it didn't really end - more of a 'part one is over' ending that didn't resolve much at all.

 

The story did get better toward the end, and I might even pick up the sequels eventually -  I think most of the setup pain is over, and we'll just get plot and maybe character development in the next two books.

Rating: 2+

The Beasts of Barrakhai - Mickey Zucker Reichert

Daw, 2001, 347 pages

ISBN: 07564-0040-6

Read: August 2023, age 45

Beasts of Barakhai, book 1 of 2

Maybe it's just that I don't find animals as magical as the author does (see: The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature), but this book really didn't land for me.  I didn't like the characters, and found the setting idea kind of interesting but poorly executed - not much about it hit me as 'cool'.  And all of this wasn't rescued by any kind of novel plot.  

 

It was a disappointing read, made even more disappointing since I remember highly enjoying this author's works in the (relatively distant) past.

 

Rating: 2

Shock Wave - Clive Cussler

Pocket Books, 2010, 537 pages

Original copyright 1996

ISBN: 978-1-84983-110-9

Read: February 2023, age 45

 

Dirk Pitt #13

This book really suffered for being read after Circe and The Old Man and the Sea.  Both those books had wonderful prose, and this really didn't.  It was terrible.  The story was all right, I guess - a bit of a stretch on the physics, but otherwise okay.  The prose was just awful.  The ever-present Cussler bigotry was still present and just as unnecessary as ever, but somewhat in the background for most of the story.  Mostly, I need to stop reading these.

Rating: 2

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

Riverhead, 2005, 333 pages

ISBN: 1-57322-302-6

Read: October 2022, age 45

 

 

The prose was nice, but there wasn't really much of a story.  It was a character story, with very little for external plot.  I didn't overly care about any of the characters, and the character voices all blended together.  Those are both pretty critical flaws in this kind of story.

 

Rating: 2

Kraken - China Mieville (Audiobook)

Random House, 2010, 16.2 hours

Narrated by John Lee

Listened to: February 2022, age 43

 

The narrator didn't work for me on this one.  Even though I was liking the story, I DNF'd it after about four hours.  It just wasn't worth it.  I'll probably pick up a paper copy eventually.

 

Among other things, the tone didn't seem to match the text, and I couldn't tell the difference between the main character's voice and the narrator's voice, so I spent a lot of the book confused as to who was talking, having to wait for the dialogue tags at the ends of sentences  (when I'm reading, I pretty much read paragraphs at a time, so I always have a pretty good idea who's speaking at any time).  

 

I also had trouble with the understanding the words - maybe it was the accent, but I don't usually struggle with English accents after a few minutes, so I expect that I just don't hear this reader's voice very well. 

Rating: 2

 

The Stand (complete and uncut) - Stephen King

Doubleday, 1990, 1153 pages

Original copyright 1978

ISBN: 0-385-11957-0

 

Read October-November 2021, age 43

Stuff I liked:

• Hmm.  The whole post-apocalyptic setting was all right, but it was wasted - not much in-depth thought put into it, and then it was more about limiting the number of people available for the showdown between good and evil than playing with what would happen after such an apocalypse.
• I've now read a Stephen King book, and can discuss how I found his writing. 
  

Stuff I didn't like:

• The pervasive casual racism, misogyny, and sexual violence.
• The lack of agency by any of the characters (the main characters had some agency from about pages 700 to 900, but then it was all ripped away again) - the entire story was deus ex machina, by design.
• The lack of characters that I cared about at all. (This surprised me - I'd figured that as a mainly horror writer his characters would be a strength, as horror needs audience empathy for the characters to even work.  Instead, I found that I couldn't really tell some of the main characters apart other than their jobs, and the ones that stood out were more caricatures than 'people'.)
  
• The lack of creativity working with the setting. (It was basically all 'rebuild America just as it was', but with fewer doctors and lawyers.)
  

Nothing was particularly terrible, but overall, it just fell flat.  And it fell flat for a really long time. I'm figuring out that when I generally like the setting and the ideas, if the characters don't have agency, then I'm not going to like the book.  In this case, the world falls apart for like, 600 pages - while all the characters start having various dreams depending if they're good or bad, and start to follow the dreams.  Then they get to re-build for a while, (my favourite part of the book) but then get told by the God stand-in what to do, and then go do it.  Bravo, the end.

As far as post-apocalyptic books go, Earth Abides was much more thoughtful, and Dies The Fire was much more fun.  This one, I was just happy to finish so I could read something else.

Rating: 2

Living Dead In Dallas - Charlaine Harris

Ace, 2002, 291 pages

ISBN: 978-0-441-00323-7

Read September 2021, age 43

 

Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 2

Well, two books in, and the character's voice hasn't grown on me.  The framing mystery was a waste of time, and basically unconnected to the central meat of the book.  The middle was okay, and it's a short book, so not a huge time investment.  I'm done, though - if this series improves, it'll be a while from now.

These books can go sit in a box with the late Anita Blake books, and I'll see if I'm ever so hard up for reading material that I decide to go back.

Rating: 2

Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris

Ace, 2008, 292 pages

Original copyright 2001

ISBN: 978-0-441-01699-0 

Read:  September 2021, age 43

 

Southern Vampire Mysteries, book 1 of 13

Well, this was disappointing.  It was basically romance crossed with mystery, but our heroine had no effective tools or even really reasons to solve the mystery - and certainly was less well-equipped than other people around her.  She basically alternated between useless and stupidly brave, and solved the mystery by getting beaten up. The romance consisted of nothing more than 'sigh! he's a vampire!' and then they fell into bed.  I really didn't like much of anything about the book.  

If I hadn't already read From Dead to Worse, I'd be done with the series.  As it is, I think I'll give it one more book.

 

Rating: 2

 

On the Prowl - Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, & Sunny

Berkley, 2007, 341 pages

ISBN: 978-0-425-21659-0

Read: March 2021, age 42

I picked this up solely to have a paper copy of Patricia Briggs' Alpha and Omega, and then I decided to read it just 'cause.  That wasn't a fantastic idea, mostly because of the format.  Each of the four novellas were written to launch a series, so it felt like a sequence of pilot episodes, that didn't really go anywhere.  None of the four novellas were terrible, but overall, it was not at all what I was looking for in a book.

 

Rating: 2+

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

Signet, 2011, 983 pages

Original copyright 1989

ISBN:  ‎ 978-0451235091

Read: February 2021, age 42

There were a lot of good points in the book, but I didn't enjoy it much, especially the first half.  The villains were overly hissable, and until the latter portions of the story, I didn't care about the protagonists at all.  The research was good, and I quite liked all the bits about the architecture.  

There.  How's that for a shit sandwich? I almost DNF'd the book, 400 pages in.

Rating: 2

The Death Cure - James Dashner

Delacorte, 2011, 324 pages

ISBN: 978-0-385-73878-1

Read: October 2020, age 42

 

The Maze Runner, book 3

 

Well, the big payoff that we've been working toward the whole time... <<insert sad trombone noises>>.  

Really big spoiler alert....

The Halfling's Gem - R. A. Salvatore

TSR, 1990, 314 pages

ISBN: 0-88038-901-X 

Read: October 2020, age 42

Icewind Dale Trilogy, book 3

As ever, somebody's D&D campaign does not make for an effective novel.  It's just murder-hoboes doing murder-hobo things.

Rating: 2

Streams of Silver - R. A. Salvatore

TSR, 1989, 342 pages

ISBN: 0-88038-672-X

Read: September 2020, age 42

Icewind Dale trilogy, book 2 

This was a bad book. D&D campaigns don't translate well to novels.  I stopped reading and went to sleep with twenty pages to go. Sunken cost fallacy, here we come!

Rating: 2

The Crystal Shard - R. A. Salvatore

TSR, 1988, 333 pages  
ISBN: 0-88038-535-9
Read August 2020, age 42

Icewind Dale trilogy, book 1

Generally poorly written and repetitive, with a one-line paragraph (often a fragment) at the end of each section.  So many, many stingers.  And each knocked me out of the book with a sour grimace.  Interesting characters, because they're archetypes that have been overused and abused horribly since this book came out, but that's about it.  I'll read the sequels, because this is the author's first book, and I believe that he does get better.

Rating: 2