This is a new feature in which I will copy and paste my recent book reviews from my books page These are the last 5 books I have read. I will update in a month or 2 when I've read 5 more.
I'm Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
Rating: ****
Uber driver and terminally online gamer Abbot gets offered $200K to drive a woman and her large black box from LA to DC, no questions asked. What results in the book is a madcap odd-couple road trip story crossed with a dark satire on online culture mixed with some very insightful commentary about what the black boxes of doom in all our pockets are doing to us. This is the YTD leader for my book of the year. I enjoyed it that much.
Relegated by Todd Smith
Rating: ****
Todd Smith runs a landscape supply shop in MN. He is also a big soccer fan. So it's poetic that the US equivalent of the "blue-collar soccer fan" took a couple of months off and wrote a book based on his travels through the upper and lower echelons of the English soccer system. From Liverpool to Grimsby, we see what the local soccer club means to their supporters at every level of the soccer tables. From immaculate pitches to barely level meadows, pubs and meat pies to pick up soccer games, it's a whirlwind tour that very effectively captures the special sauce that makes football fandom different.
Note: The author of this website is a Southampton supporter. I am all too familiar with relegtion.
The Faith of Beasts by James S. A. Corey
Rating: ****
In book two of this epic space opera centered on the enslavement of about 4000 humans (all that they spared when they attacked), the story again mostly builds on survival. The Carryx are brutal. Animals that don't prove to be useful will be exterminated. The parallels to slavery in US history are pretty damn obvious here. All the "Why didn't the enslaved rebel" questions have the same answer in US history that they have in this book. Likewise, just because you don't see a rebellion brewing doesn't mean that there isn't one brewing. I'm looking forward to book 3, which I think is supposed to wrap up the series.
The Midnight Train by Matt Haig
Rating: ****
Haig returns to the somewhat familiar landscape of what happens when you die. In this book, you get on a train that runs you back through the most important moments of your life to allow you the chance to really know yourself before you head off into eternity. You are just an observer. But what if you realized you screwed up badly in life and blew the only love you ever had? What if you decide to ignore the rules and try to change the past, to give yourself the life you should have had? And what if the price of that effort is losing your shot at eternity? Would you trade eternity (whatever that is to you) for another shot at an earthly life with the one you love?
Would you take that trade?
Trailed by Kathryn Miles
Rating: ****
We spent the July 4th weekend camping just two miles off the Appalachian Trail. I did an 8-mile hike mostly on the AT. Back at the campsite, I read this book in less than 24 hours. It's the story of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, a young couple that was brutally murdered while on an AT section hike in 1996. The book is beautifully written, with lots of backstory on the victims and a detailed account of just how badly the FBI and Park Police screwed up the investigation. The book details how the FBI fixated on one guy and ruined his life, a guy they never had any real evidence on, even though they went to great lengths to manufacture something useful to their case. The book ends suggesting a serial pedophile from NC might be the real perpetrator, but he was killed by police in the commission of another crime. In researching updates since the book was published in 2022, I learned that a private lab using newer DNA tech was able to tie yet a third serial killer to the crime, but he died in jail in 2018, so even though the FBI has named him the killer, we will never know for sure.
In other news, what's up with all the serial killers hanging out on the AT in the late 90s?