Finished Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero (awesome) and Devil in the White City by Eric Larson (slow but interesting)

Started Neuromancer by William Gibson and it makes me wonder how hard it would be for someone to follow if they hadn't played Shadowrun or Cyberpunk. Should finish it tonight or tomorrow.

Finished:

Alphabet Squadron, by Alexander Freed

Took me about until the half way mark to really get into this book but I loved. Cannot wait for the next two series.

20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill

Finally managed to get a physical copy of it to complete my Hill collection and I really enjoyed it. Some of the stories made me feel ill, which is impressive as I'm not squeamish.

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero

Loved this even more on a second visit.

Started:

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen

Watched the Amazon adaptation first and really enjoyed it so went out and got the book and it's even funnier. Looking forward to reading more of it.

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero

Very cool book, kind of a Lovecraft meets It feel to it.

Finished since last week:

Six Of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo - Not quite Lies Of Locke Lamora, but has a good bit of similar excitement. The writing is crisp and snappy, there's a good bit of humor, and a lot of passages that left me smirking at their (or the characters) cleverness.

Paper Girls Vol 1, by Brian K. Vaughn It was really hot during the week so we went and spent a few hours in the local library taking advantage of the air conditioning. Ended up hanging out near the graphic novel section and I spotted this. The same excerpt had been showing up at the back of each book of Saga, so I grabbed the first one. It's good, and rather different from what I had been expecting. Checked out volumes two and three and will get through those in the next couple of weeks I'm sure.

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero - I'm conflicted here. The story itself was pretty good, but the writing was not. I didn't find out until the postscript that English was not the authors main language, which maybe explains some of the issues, but isn't that why books have editors?

I never figured out exactly why the book would change, sometimes mid paragraph, from traditional structure to stage directions. And then sometimes break the fourth wall sort of with things like "Before they could notice the ellipsis," following a ... in the previous sentence. Or " “NO!” Andy capslocked." Or after a paragraph break with a hypen, "The electric lamps on the left wall magically blinked on a space break later". Was this supposed to be amusing? Was it supposed to enhance the plot? I have no idea.

What about this passage describing a heart beat? "frantic to vivace, and then to piano," So, really fast, to really fast... to quiet? The latter does not describe speed but volume. This does not make sense. Did no editor with any music background look at this?

Or anyone with wikipedia to date check date things? The book was supposed to take place in 1990, but we have this "Myriad tiny voices within Kerri’s hair went yeah like a Rage Against the Machine chorus". Rage Against The Machine formed in 1991, and their first album came out in 1992. Yes I'm nitpicking on a date check given that this is a book with fantastical Lovecraft style monsters, but I really can't be the first to notice that can I?

Again, the story is decent. It's amusing. It has nice turns and twists while at the same time playing on and parodying classic young detective tropes. But it's a bother to read at times, definitely taking away from an amusing story.

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Currently reading:

Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo - The sequel to Six Of Crows, and picks up exactly where the first book left off. About halfway through and loving this one as well. Her writing continues to be great and full of wit and cleverness and I'm still enjoying how swapping between characters to show action from a slightly different and vaguely obfuscated view point is working.

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero

Just finished Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett. Really enjoyed this one, might be my favourite Watch book, but not my favourite Discworld.

Just started reading Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero.

Finished Piecing Me Together, by Renee Watson - I don't usually read a lot of YA but I enjoyed it.

Finished Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero which was a fun story but the writing was effing horrible I thought and it was a massive slog to make it through even tho I wanted to know WHAT HAPPENED but I didn't want to have to read the writing anymore

Currently reading The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Attwood which I somehow didn't read before now. It's amazing. The story is great and the writing is INSANELY PERFECT, and I don't think I just think this because I just finished Meddling Kids that was so bad but maybe? The annoying thing tho is that it's a slow read, probably because I'm savoring every word. But it is really surprising me how long it's taking me to get through.

Currently listening to I Can't Make This Up, by Kevin Hart which is H I L A R I O U S. Really really enjoying it.

Next up is Bird Box for paper reading, and probably American Gods after that. Next on audiobook I might go back and try to finish 4 3 2 1 again. Just because I've got like 18 hours invested at this point.

This week I finished volumes 1-2 of Infinity, by Jonathan Hickman, Jim Cheung, Jerome Opena, Dustin Weaver, Leinil Francis Yu and Mike Deodato Jr.. I’m currently reading Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero.

I finished Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero and The Fireman, by Joe Hill.

I have just started reading The Emporer's Soul, by Brandon Sanderson.

Started The Dry, by Jane Harper Great so far!

Finished Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero Fun but the execution of the idea was not as good as the idea itself. Also needed some editing for numerous factual errors. Still, good, just not great, as I had hoped it would be.

Finished Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero There's some strange style choices that were a little off putting. Overall it was silly and fun. The last act is really cheesy/campy, but sometimes you just want some good old fast food style reading.

Finished Black Science Premiere Vol. 1, by Rick Remender Typical Remender, but Matteo Scalera is doing some gorgeous work on the book.

Finished The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood I loved this.

Finished On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder Very accessible.

Started The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America, by Ernest Freeberg

Started The Angel of Darkness, by Caleb Carr

Started The Giver, by Lois Lowry

Finished: All That's Dead by Stuart MacBride - good as always from MacBride. I did guess some of the twists but completely missed others. Really hope McRae moves from Professional Standards soon though, it's getting a bit tortured involving him in investigations.

Started: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero - I'm really enjoying This Body's Not Big Enough for the Both of Us, which I'm almost finished, so I'm hopeful about this one

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero Fun so far.

Just finished A Casual Vacancy, by J.K. Rowling Loved it!! It's full of spiteful, nasty, gossipy people in a small village in England. I have never read Harry Potter (my wife loves them, though) as I refused to jump on the bandwagon back then and now just have other stuff I'd rather read. Casual Vacancy though and her Cormoran Strike novels are really good.

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero

It's like a mashup/parody of Scooby Doo and HP Lovecraft and I am really into it so far.

I finished: Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero - I really did not like this one. The formatting of the dialogue changes seemingly at random and I found it quite jarring. Other problems I had were an awkward, quasi-romantic subplot that is absolutely painful to read, a very enjoyable character who becomes my least favorite character in the last 3 pages of the book due to a quick retcon needed to close up a plot hole, and the author's need to invent new, awkward words like "lemminging".

I'm currently reading: The Seventh, by Richard Stark - This is the seventh Parker novel (hey look at that), wherein Parker is hunting down one of the thieves that he worked with to steal the ticket money from a college football game. So far I'm really digging it. It has the same great action, tense moments and wonderful descriptions as the previous books in the series.

I finally finished Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. It took me three goddamn weeks to slog through this. I enjoyed parts of it but overall found it to be disappointing.

I started and finished Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed that. Did not manage to guess whodunit so that was nice.

I’m starting either The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton or Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero tonight.

I just finished All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1, by Martha Wells A quick novella with a lot of action and likable characters. I knocked it out in three days. I started reading Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero,