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Reading Roundup, Q3 2023 · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step off the train and delivering episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley Well greeting some listeners. It's a lovely day here in
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  suburban Chicago, and I am enjoying my stroll. I'm out for a walk
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  on a actually kind of drizzly and gross day, but the weather is relatively
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  nice. It's almost forty degrees. Apologize for the amount of road noise you're
• 0:41
  hearing. The streets are wet so because it rained a little bit, so
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  all the cars are making a lot of noise. But you know, hopefully
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  it won't be too unpleasant and we'll enjoy ourselves. So we're into early December
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  now, so it's been a couple months since the end of quarter three,
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  and yet I have not regaled you about the reading I've done in quarter three.
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  So that's what we're going to do today. Today is going to be
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  Reading Round Up twenty twenty three Quarter three meaning July August September. For those
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  of you new to this format, the Reading Roundup is essentially where I just
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  go through and I talk about the different books that I read during that time.
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  I have twelve books that I read during July, August and September,
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  some as audiobooks, some as paper books, and I'd like to talk about
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  them. The first one I talk about is The Troupe. I think this
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  is recommended by someone on TikTok. Actually I was talking about good scary books
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  to read. The author is Nick Cutter, and this one is. It
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  is a horror story in the style of Scott Snyder, or it's got a
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  little bit of Stephen King feel to it, something like. I mean,
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  I hate to point to Dream Ketcher because Dream Cutch is not a great book,
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  but plot wise, it reminds me of that a little bit. The
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  Troop is about a group of boy Scouts and their scout master who are on
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  an island for a weekend in very rural Canada. I think it's British Columbia,
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  and while they're there, they're all cut off. You know, none
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  of them have that one adult has one cell phone. No one else is
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  allowed to bring any cell phones. They have a radio. Actually I don't
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  even think he brings a cell phone. There's a radio that they can use
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  to call the sheriff, but otherwise they cut off because it's meant to be
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  a kind of back to nature weekend thing. Something shows up and it's like
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  this sort of terrible parasite that shows up and starts causing all kinds of trouble.
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  This was really good, very creepy, plenty of sort of body horror
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  in terms of really describing the ways that people get deformed. So not for
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  the squeamish, but an excellent journey into madness and the scariness of gore,
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  and particularly the way that people's psychology gets affected when they are in a life
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  or death situation. There's sort of hints of Lord of the Flies, although
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  it's too short to do much of that, but like the best horror novels,
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  the unreal situation that people find themselves in reveals their true character and pushes
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  them to heroism or villainy or both. And yeah, it was great.
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  So if you like that sort of thing, Nick Cutters, The Troop is
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  definitely top notch version of that kind of story. Next Tup, I read
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  The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder by David Gran.
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  David Gran is fast becoming one of my favorite writers about weird stuff that
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  happened. I really enjoyed his book about the Lost City of z And just
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  the other day I noticed another book that he'd written that was that I'd read
• 3:49
  that was really good, and I'd forgotten it was his, but I can't
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  remember now. So go look up David gran if you haven't encountered his stuff.
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  He's a very good writer. The Wager is about a ship then in
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  the time was very famous. Its shipwrecked during a rounding of Cape Horn at
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  the southern tip of South America. I think it's Cape Horn, and it
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  got lost in storms, and they tried to head north, but they had
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  north too early and they ended up grounding, and they all got stuck on
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  this island out in the middle of nowhere, with very little in the way
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  of resources. They spent months there fighting over dwindling supplies. Finally some of
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  them decided to leave, and then some other ones decided to leave, and
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  they had competing stories when they got back about who was to blame and so
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  on and so on. It's a fascinating story, really interesting, and doesn't
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  end as darkly as some of these do, although there were quite a few
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  people who died because of it. But the wager it's great. Check it
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  out. Next up, I have a pair of books that I'm just going
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  to point to and talk about in one go, because frankly, I read
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  them back to back. I don't remember the differences between them. I guess
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  I do a little bit, but whatever. The first one is called an
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  Elderly Lady is up to no Good. The second one is called an Elderly
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  Lady Must not be Crossed. And these are Norwegian books. They were written
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  by Ellen Turstin, translated by Marline de Larghi, and narrated by Suzanne Torren,
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  the narrator. And both of these stories are about an elderly lady who
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  is very independent, but the people around her see her as being feeble or
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  needing a lot of help, or potentially someone to take be taken advantage of.
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  And basically, anytime someone crosses her, she murders them. And usually
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  these are people whom she has no other way to deal with or no easy
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  other way to deal with, and so being relatively helpless in other ways,
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  she kills them in ways that look like accidents. It's dark comedy, of
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  course, and it's interesting how the book sort of manipulates you to feel positive
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  about her in different ways, because what she's doing is pretty horrible, but
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  at the same time, the book gives you the perspective that makes it feel
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  like, oh, yeah, you can totally see why she would commit those
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  murders. And the thing is that's some of the murders, not all of
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  them. There are a couple that you really feel like, oh that one
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  was not not cool. But overall really fun books, amusing to read,
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  lightly written with a charming persona. It's a nice follow up to Killers of
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  a Certain Age, which I read in quarter two, which is about women
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  who are assassins but are in their sixties or seventies now, And this one
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  is about a lady in her late seventies I think or early eighties who is
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  just as deadly, although generally for more petty reasons. That's worth reading if
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  you get a chance. I want to talk about is Keller's Fedora. I
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  just happen to find this one on the new really shelf at our library.
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  Keller's Fedora is the next in a series of books written by Lawrence Block about
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  his again dark humor assassin Keller, who murders so that he has spending money
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  for his stamp collection. It's basically the premise of the series. Over the
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  course of the books, he's gotten married and had a kid, and he's
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  kind of stopped being an assassin, but he still takes the occasional jobs when
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  his handler reaches out to him for something important. I guess this one.
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  Part of what's interesting about the book is it turns on this hat that he
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  buys because he loses a hat, and so he goes to buy a new
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  hat, and they don't have the kind he wants, so he ends up
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  getting a fedora, and then he's thinking about what it looks like to wear
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  a fedora, can he pull it off? Etc? Side out while he's
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  going and committing his murders. Block has always done a really good job of
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  illustrating sort of amusing stories about this character, and I've always continued. I
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  continue to enjoy them quite a bit, and I'm excited to read another one
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  when they come out. It's been a while, but I was happy to
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  get right back into it. These are very light, fluffy books, not
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  a lot to them except they're about a murderer. So if you like that,
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  hey, I guess I guess July was my murder month. Next up,
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  we have The Falcon Thief, a tale of adventure, treachery, and
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  the hunt for the perfect bird. This is a fascinating book about a subject
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  I knew nothing about, which is the common or the collecting of wild bird
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  eggs and the poaching of wild birds for sport. So apparently falcon racing is
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  a really big thing in like in some Arab countries, particularly like United Arab
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  Emirates in Dubai. In those places, very wealthy people will have these massive
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  stables of birds and train them to fly very very fast. And while those
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  birds purport to be all captive bread like there's no birds being brought in from
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  the wild, the reality is apparently that the eggs from the wild get a
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  huge bounty because it introduces new blood into the stock. And so there are
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  people who, for various reasons will steal bird eggs, and this book is
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  about this one guy who has his whole life been stealing bird eggs and either
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  selling them to collectors who will apparently hollow out the bird eggs and just save
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  the shell, or to people who want to breed these birds in captivity.
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  It's a fascinating book both about the thief himself and about the law enforcement team
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  in Britain who caught him really interesting worth checking out. That's why Joshua Hammer
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  next up. This one doesn't take a lot of commentary. Very good Jeeves.
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  It's another PG Woodhouse story and the second to last in the book collection
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  that I'm reading, which is I think four different Jeeves novels. This is
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  basically like the other ones. I mean, if you've read APG Woodhouse Jeeves
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  novel you've got the idea of them. Each of them is charming and interesting
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  and funny in its own right, but like episodes of a sitcom, they're
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  sort of not all that widely distinguished from one another, and relatively forgettable,
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  but delightful. Nonetheless, I still think there's no better humoroist or use of
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  weird language than PG Woodhouse. Next time we have the Fireman. I listened
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  to this one narrated by Kate Mulgrew, who was the captain on Star Trek
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  Voyager. This is a novel by Joe Hill, and it is great.
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  It takes place in a post apocalyptic world where a new disease has emerged that
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  causes these black patches to appear on your skin and when they and when you
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  get emotional, those black just heat up, and if you get too upset,
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  you start on fire and burn to death. And that's kind of what
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  happens, is that people start burning to death. It becomes this whole thing.
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  Then we discover that there are some people who are able to work together
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  to do something else with the emotions in the skin, and able to hold
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  off burning to death in a way that most people who get the disease cannot.
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  It's a fascinating post apocalyptic story. It ranges a wide range of times,
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  and it follows a couple characters through a whole bunch of different stuff.
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  I thought it was really good. It's sad, it's compelling. It reminds
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  me of the more epic Stephen King's stories like Under the Dome, the ones
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  that take a long time and have these big casts of characters and kind of
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  remind us of the many different ways that people act. It's really compelling.
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  I liked The Fireman a lot and recommend you read it if you get a
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  chance. Kate moll Grew's narration was also great. Next tip, we have
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  The Fourth Wave by Rebecca Yarros. This one was very popular on the Internet
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  and still is it's gotten a whole bunch of sales and everything. It is
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  a sort of teen adventure story in a fantasy world, and I mean it
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  is sort of your standard reluctant hero teen who turns out to be especially talented,
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  and there is a charming villain who she has reason to hate but she
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  falls in love with. I mean, it was fine. I don't.
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  I think at the time I thought I might read more of them, but
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  I don't. The further way I get for the less interested I am in
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  going back. I think it's part of a trilogy or maybe a longer series.
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  That was fine. That's the fourth wing. Next up by a couple
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  of comic books, I read Marvel's The Avengers prelude Furies Big Week by Christopher
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  Yost and Eric Pearson. This basically just imagines like the week before the first
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  tier of Avengers movies happened the Iron Man Thor and what's the third one that
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  happened sort of in that early trilogy. I mean, Captain America is a
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  little later Iron Man in Thor particular Captain America too, I guess. So
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  basically it's just sort of funny mignettes that set up some of the stuff that
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  happens in the in the later the first round of the Avengers. So it's
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  pretty fun and nothing all that remarkable though. Batman. The Doom that Came
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  to Gotham, written and Drowned by Mike mgnola and Richard Pace, is the
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  I think in ink Or The Dream That Came to Gotham is basically like it's
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  an elsewhere story with HP Lovecraft Elder Things from the Mythos as the villain in
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  Gotham, and basically Bruce has to decide how far he's willing to go to
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  defend Gotham in the face of these nightmare creatures. It's great. I liked
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  it a lot. You know, Mike mcnola is a very reliable storyteller and
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  I love his art style. I have so definitely worth checking out if this
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  is something that you think you might like. It's an else world's story,
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  so it doesn't connect to the larger Batman narrative. It's not canon, as
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  they say, but it's pretty entertaining. That's the Doom that came to Gotham.
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  Next up we have a Charles Strass novel narrated by Getting Emory. This
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  is Quantum of Nightmares. This is just a random novel from the Laundry Files.
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  This is his series where he imagines that magic turns out is real and
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  we can use computers to do it once we understand it, sort of the
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  other end of the Arthur C. Clark quote that any sufficiently advanced technology is
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  indistinguishable from magic. Therefore magic is just the technology we don't understand yet,
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  and in the novels we figured it out. This series is from the New
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  Management, I think the third one, so I haven't really gotten to it
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  yet, and the broad Strokes of the World I didn't understand, but the
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  tighter narrative still fits the kind of story he's been telling, and I was
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  able to follow it pretty easily. Good romping adventure stories with technology and Cuthulhu
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  stuff I enjoy quite a bit, and I was happy to take a look
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  at that's quantum of nightmares. Our narrator was good in Emory, and that
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  is the last thing I read in quarter two. September was very busy our
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  quarter three. I didn't really get anything else read during that time, and
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  so that's it. Well, I'm keen to hear what you've been reading,
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  Dear listeners. We usually have a forum on Board game Geek where we talk
• 15:35
  about this in our guild number. Three two sixty nine is the guild number.
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  If you head over there and tell us what you've been reading, we'll
• 15:41
  be happy to chat about it. You can reach out to me while bat
• 15:45
  nine two nine is my username on Board game Geek, or you can email
• 15:48
  me Brendan at rottobox Games. I'll get back to you eventually. Well,
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  thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope your next walk is
• 15:52
  it supposed to a nine one? Bye bye. Brought to you by rattle Box