A Little Song
A Little Dance
A Little Seltzer
Down Your Pants
And apologies for last year’s comment-less display
Here is the annotated list of books that I read this past year.
Peter Clines – 14
Combination Sci-Fi and Horror, about an LA apartment building that’s also a machine built by Tesla, sealing a rift into a world of monsters and demons.
Jennifer Macaire – A Crown In Time – A Remedy In Time
Murray Leinster – A Thousand Degrees Below Zero
Previously unread, vintage Sci-Fi. 1909’s version of Mister Freeze
A candidate for Published before I was born.
Lawrence Krauss – A Universe From Nothing
A book from an astrophysicist which shows how the Universe may have come into existence without a God – but with an unfortunate, poorly chosen title which seems to show Christian Apologists to be right.
Lee Child – Better Off Dead
Child continues to pump out wildly successful Jack Reacher books each year.
Gregg Hurwitz – Dark Horse – Into The Fire – Prodigal Son
Guns and knives and explosives – just some quiet, peaceful men’s-action reading to pass the time.
Mike Maden – Tom Clancy’s Firing Point
Tom Clancy may be dead, but the franchise lives on with hero, Jack Ryan Jr.
Scott Gier – In The Shadow Of The Moon
Good, contemporary Sci-Fi.
Andrew Grant – Invisible – Too Close To Home
Andrew Grant – also known as Andrew Child – takes older brother Lee Child’s story framework, and inserts his own do-gooder, social justice warrior, working as a janitor in a courthouse. Interesting concept, and the quality is about as good.
James S. A. Corey – Leviathan Falls
Finally, the end of a massive series! It’s been a ride.
Nicole Gallande – Master Of The Revels
Time travel from a woman’s point of view. Like the Terminator movies – you arrive naked.
Mark Greaney – Mission Critical
When, like Mike Maden, he isn’t writing for Tom Clancy, he free-lances novels under his own name.
William Gibson – Neuromancer
Prophetic book from 1986, showing the birth of the Internet, and hacking.
Steve Perry – Past Prologue
Social, political, and religious reasons for action and adventure around the world.
Mark Cameron – Tom Clancy’s Shadow Of The Dragon
They’d be just another excuse to get you to buy a book – if they weren’t so damned enjoyable.
Crawford Kilian – The Fall Of The Republic
Modern time-travel Sci-Fi.
Fritz Leiber – The Big Time
A re-read. 1950’s time-travel Sci-Fi. There seems to be a theme here.
Nick Petrie – The Breaker – The Wild One
A war-vet hero, with PTSD and claustrophobia. It’s hard to run into the burning building to save a kid.
K. D. Wentworth/Eric Flint – The Course Of Empire – The Crucible Of Empire
Steve Berry – The Malta Exchange – The Warsaw Protocol
Urban fantasy/adventure – if you can fantasize being able to afford to go to Malta or Warsaw for adventure.
Gregg Loomis – The Poison Secret
The secret is, it was an enjoyable way to pass the time.
Raymond Khoury – The Sanctuary – the Sign
The Sign was interesting. Trying to use a giant hologram to brainwash and control society.
D. J. Harrison – The Secret Of The Scroll
Alternate Christian history – how The Church really began.
Allen Appel –Time After Time
Time travel by believing hard enough, and wishing yourself back into history.
Tom Hammond – What Time Is Purple
See my book review, if you haven’t already.
A Bit Of Orange – Answering Atheism – Proof Of God
As above, See my book review
Thanx for helping me renew my library card.
Archon's Den 
Be careful with that “men’s” reading qualifier. I love Hurwitz, Child, Petrie, Berry, etc as well and have read all those series. Didn’t know Grant was actually Andrew Child though. I’ll try that one next, thanks!
Here’s one you may not know… the Alex McKnight series by Steve Hamilton. I’m currently ripping through that series.
😉
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cool selection. I’ve been reading like a fiend since my husband got us a Scribd subscription.
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Since retirement, I’ve come to love the library. I just have to remember to keep up with the various series. More than five years old, tends to be culled, to make room for new titles. 🙂
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What an utterly fantastic post title! What’s missing (to me) from the list, is which one(s) would you recommend?
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It depends on the person, their taste and needs. Do you wish to be soothed, fascinated, educated?? I would recommend any title on the list, except perhaps the last three, and there’s even something to be learned from them. 🙂
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It’s been a while since I’ve read anything, other than military tech books. Can’t seem to find the time, especially right now with one cat passed (yesterday), another one ageing rapidly, and our dog with some kind of bloat we lack the money to treat. That, and there’s always something that needs work around our lovely palace. I envy you the time! 🙂
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When you get to be my age, you’ll find that you need to sit and rest more often, and for longer. My TV watching is less that an hour a week. I need something to exercise the little grey cells. 😉 😀
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If, when something has really been through the wringer, it turns tattletale grey, what do wrung-out grey cells turn? ‘Cause that’s where I’m at right now. I can’t even relax with a nice PC game, ’cause thanks to my cold, I’ve got no voice to yell at the PC with! 😀
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Not quite! We try on a pro bono basis to help promote crime and espionage books (especially non-fiction) where the profits from publishing go to noble causes related to the authors’ experiences. The Burlington Files ticks all those boxes and just as happened to Mick Herron’s now famous Slough House series, the series was rejected for spurious reasons by mainstream publishers in pursuit of profit.
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Find out why reading really is dangerous! The best gift on Valentine’s Day has to be plastic flowers! Why? As Bill Fairclough, the enigmatic author of The Burlington Files autobiographical series of spy novels once wrote “Plastic flowers Last for hours”. Alternatively just buy the love of your life an everlasting copy of one of those noir spy novels and try reading it in bed tomorrow … and for the man in your life train him to be a real spy not a bashful Bond … give him a copy of Beyond Enkription in TheBurlingtonFiles series this Valentine’s Day.
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Shameless self-promotion – but thanx. 😉 🙂
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Not quite! We try on a pro bono basis to help promote crime and espionage books (especially non-fiction) where the profits from publishing go to noble causes related to the authors’ experiences. The Burlington Files ticks all those boxes and just as happened to Mick Herron’s now famous Slough House series, the series was rejected for spurious reasons by mainstream publishers in pursuit of profit.
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At the risk of being excessively nosey, do you have a site of your own? Between the MI6 moniker and your Gravatar picture, I’m intrigued, being an amateur historian and devourer of all things military. (While the rifle in the shot is M16/M4 lineage, the camo pattern looks decidedly non-American which, combined with the stated location of London, further intrigues me, being a lifelong Anglophile.)
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Obviously a well trained eye in the sky! We had links to FaireSansDire for decades but do not have a website or any formal presence (such as a registered charity) for that matter. For more on FaireSansDire please see https://theburlingtonfiles.org/Faire-Sans-Dire/.
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Rats! I was hoping you had a blog presence somewhere. I’d love to read some tales of your past. Me, I’m just an armchair quarterback, though I did WW2 re-enacting, so I got a VERY tiny insight into soldiers’ lives. Otherwise, I’m a tech-head, far more familiar with such esoterica as the difference between Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks (and their various sub-models) than I am with slogging through mud (been there) freezing to death (done that) while being shot at (well, 2 out of 3 and all that). Thanks for the reply!
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Thanks, MI6, your comment on my blog mysteriously opened it back up to me, after I lost my password and WordPress locked me out! Thank you, and beware world, I’ll be back! (Mwah-hah-hah-hah! 😀 )
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Glad you got my last comment.
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For more articles about FaireSansDire, Fairclough et al please see https://theburlingtonfiles.org/Faire-Sans-Dire/news/index.php and https://theburlingtonfiles.org/index3f7b.php. That should keep you out of mischief for a day or two! Best wishes and for today anyway, over and out.
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Impressive list! I just wanted to comment on A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. So much of the book (from reviews, since I haven’t read the book) seems to be about disproving the need for a god that he appears to have shortchanged his physics. (I agree that requiring a god gains you nothing, but physics is a different story.)
As I mentioned in the comments my own blog, I’m also writing about the same topic (minus needing to discuss gods). To give you an idea of how Krauss fell off the deep end, read
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html.
First, I need to mention that Krauss is well-versed in cosmology and has the credentials to prove it; I don’t. But Krauss stumbles badly in explaining quantum theory. Again, I haven’t read the book, but he seems to be describing a closed (supercritical) universe, which is definitely not observationally true of our universe. I hope this isn’t what he described.
He begins with a de novo universe, which is only conjecture, and in addition, he assumes that quantum theory is independent of every possible universe — definitely not true. (For instance, Yang-Mills theory is beautiful, but hardly guaranteed,)
His most egregious error, however, is that he apparently wants to to violate conservation of energy. The problem is that quantum fields require a pre-existing source of energy, which is slightly impossible if there is nothing to start with. The only way around this that I know of is called a zero-sum universe, which depends on some hypothetical way to manufacture negative energy.
I guess I’ll find out what kind of stupid mistakes I’m making in my next blog post.
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Disclaimers – I am not a physicist, and have read neither Krauss’s book nor your post. Given that, you point out some critical failings in his theories. While I know the universe from the bottom up (I studied at Fermilab one summer in high school), your point on the conservation of energy and quantum theory are spot-on (unless there’s some new theories I haven’t heard of). I can’t speak to universal cosmology as strongly, but if I were to bet, I’d back your horse any day. I may have to go check out other reviews of his book – it sounds like he’s “cherry picking” from topics known to the pop culture to support his preconceived conclusions.
By the by, a very coherent and cogent discussion. I tip my hat, sir.
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Thanks. My blog post is taking more time than I thought, but I hope I’ll get it out this month.
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Glad you got my last comment
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