Er, did you check the link? We're obviously talking of very different books.

Song of Kali, by Dan Simmons, is one of those hard to classify books. It's marketed as a horror novel, which is probably the most reasonable genre for it, but the horror is more of a psychological style. You could easily describe it as a thriller or even a crime story. There are hints of supernatural things, but the book itself offers reasonable explanations for all of them, and most the horror vibe is rooted in the idea that the world is just sort of going to crap and the Stephen King-ish notion that "some places are inherently bad or spoiled".

It's about an effete poet who helps edit a literary journal who goes to Calcutta with his wife (born in India but raised in Britain) and baby daughter because a famous Indian poet has apparently started working again despite everyone thinking he's been dead for 8 years and the hero's "mission" is to negotiate for the rights to reprint his latest work in the west. Once they arrive, things don't go as planned.

It's one of those books in which not a lot actually happens, but it's skillfully written in the way that you feel like the sands are slowly shifting under the protagonist's feet instead of stuff suddenly exploding everywhere, and then finally he makes one or two bad decisions and things go pretty badly for him and his family.

As in many horror stories, the main character is not a likable guy, IMO, and I kept having the feeling that he was asking for something bad to happen to him. He comes across as one of those people who rails against issues like poverty when they're safely abstract, but when confronted by them in reality his response is something like "EWWWW!" while trying to push the grody people away. He also frequently refers to his strong-minded and intelligent wife as "kiddo" - if I ever call my wife that, I hope she slaps me one.

The book has a somewhat controversial reputation because of its portrayal of Calcutta and Indian culture. I can understand the complaints about how Hinduism is portrayed since the book is founded on the same idea of Kali as a psycho bitch goddess with psycho cultists that has bounced around for a long while. But I don't think Calcutta itself actually came off that badly, all things considered. The book is set in the 1970s, when I understand the city was economically down and some bad stuff was happening - it's not that different from how 1970s New York was like a post-apocalyptic wasteland in real life, yet now it's Disneyland. The Sikh police inspector was a cool character that I could have used more of. And a lot of the negativity is a reflection of the narrator's own prejudices and insecurities. Like I said, he's not a particularly likable or admirable person. Like a lot of artistic types, his mind swings on a pendulum instead of keeping level-headed like his wife does.

I binged on Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs this weekend. I requested it from the library before release and my name came up last week. I checked it out, expecting to read it after I finished the other reading Ive been working on (to figure out what my next tabletop RPG was going to be...). I got a library notice that I need to return it tomorrow with no renews possible, so I fit it in.

It's one of my favorite Mercyverse stories now. It was strong, and used the built-up extended cast of characters pretty well. It tied together a lot of dangling threads in interesting ways and snipped some of them off. The series might be on a contraction after this (which is good -- I don't like infinite going stories).

Some parts of the writing was weaker than usual, other parts stronger. The author is still trying to find her place again after the unexpected death of her husband [who was also her researcher] just before her previous book finished. A lot of this book was taking it back to the roots of Mercyverse, which is something I appreciated after a lot of travel/distant stories in both halves of the intertwined series.

That's read, and I've decided the next RPG I'm running (Nest setting for Fate, 4 sessions or so for my turn. We're rotating GMs in short arcs like that), I can return to -- and hopefully finish -- Team Human. I can guarantee you it won't get a good review from me.

Shadow of the Wind, Angel's Game (sequel/prequel), Prisioner of Heaven (sequel/prequel), all in spanish, and The Fuhrer's Heir in portuguese. Currently reading The Lights of September. Every single one of those books are from the same author (Carlos Ruis Zafón) but the portuguese one. (Natália Galli).

★★☆ Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street / Tomáš Sedláček
★★★ The Art of War / Sun Tzu
★★☆ Kato-botoks Trzy sposoby odmładzania duszy / Szymon Hołownia
★☆☆ Gar’Ingawi. Wyspa szczęśliwa. Tom II / Anna Borkowska
★☆☆ The Anti-Procrastination Habit: A Simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks / S.J. Scott

List of all books read in 2019.

Before the Golden Age Book 3 edited by Isaac Asimov.
A 1930's science fiction anthology of stories that inspired Isaac Asimov to become a writer, with afterstory commentary. Though most of the stories are obviously outdated, I still enjoyed some of the stories.

The Thing and Human Torch in Strange Tales: The Complete Collection is what says it is: a complete collection of the Human Torch stories (later co-starring the Thing) from Strange Tales. Relatively minor stories from early Marvel that in retrospect did little more than introduce some recurring villains like the Wizard.

The art is mostly workmanlike efforts by Dick Ayers, and the writing is handled by various people who aren't Stan Lee, including Jerry Siegel, who stopped by just long enough to create the Plant Man before Marvel apparently decided they didn't want the creator of Superman after all. Stan does eventually take over, but since he wasn't working with Kirby or Ditko, the stories don't really improve. Some of these minor series feel like something DC would have done with slicker presentation at the time. A lot of them feature the Torch being challenged by some kook villain, the Torch being set back by water (Plant Man manages to kick his ass using morning dew) or more likely asbestos (yes, all the jokes about cancer have been told many times over), before finally winning with his teenaged moxie and because he uses his nova flame attack or something. There's almost no supporting cast beyond the Invisible Girl and the Torch's girlfriend, who loves him as Johnny but can't stand him being a superhero. She seems like they thought of a gimmick before giving her a personality. Despite being part of the FF, the Torch usually insists of taking down villains to prove himself. It's not a consistently interesting personality hook and it sucks a bit of suspense out of the series since everyone knows if things get serious the Torch can just call in his buddies to totally nuke the villain. The Torch has a mighty support system behind him, unlike the low-budget, DIY Spider-Man. Early on I found the stories charmingly silly, then I just got kind of bored by them, and they're probably best consumed by completists only.

In an effort to boost sales, they brought in the Thing later and although his personality livens up the stories a bit, things still didn't improve and Marvel ended up canning the feature in favor of starting Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, which was vastly better considering it was a full Lee/Kirby and later Steranko production.

I finished Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Paradoxes of power, 1878-1928.

The book is far too long and overly detailed, an editor should have forced Kotkin to organize his material better.
I also caught at least one minor mistake (Kotkin calls the WW1 German military the "Reichwehr", but that was only the name of the army of the Weimar republic).
Most interesting parts for me were the early chapters about late Tsarist Russia and the events of 1917; for long stretches this is more of a general history of Russia, with Stalin being only a minor character. Kotkin's judgement about both the tsar and the Provisional government that replaced him are highly negative; some very interesting insights here (e.g. the weakness of the Russian right, because the tsar with his essentially pre-modern views didn't even want his own supporters to organize in a mass movement). One gets the impression of stunning incompetence.
In the later sections attention is more focused on Stalin and his creation of a personal dictatorship after Lenin's death. Too detailed imo, gets somewhat tedious, though parts are still interesting.
Rating: 3/5. I've now started the sequel about 1929-1941.

While late, include me in anyway


4/10 A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

7/10 Vacationland by John Hodgman

7/11 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Din negura timpului (From the Mist of Time)

Still reads quickly, I finished it in three days without really trying, but mainly what saves this book somewhat, and what made me give these three stars, albeit under protest, is the action and some twists that have clearly been planned ahead and well. There are some moments that’d probably deserve more praise, if I could separate them from the rest.
The problem is that said “rest” is a bigger part and means that I still didn’t care in the least about the characters and, if angering me isn’t really the case anymore when I got to the third book, I’d rather say that it downright sickened me. Obviously, this starts from the focus on having children and their importance and that of the act of having them in the story, with “extra nausea” added by how much Roxana wants a “flock” and how she sees a child, so I return to the choice words for the one who recommended the series to me though she should have warned me away from it, knowing how I see this.
Then, if some would say that the above is strictly subjective, the magic system would still deserve many details but they’re not offered, the love stories between the characters still come out of nowhere and leave me cold, everyone’s fate is I’d say actually embarrassingly good, there are slips even in that action and those twists that I said are the good part, how what happens at the end actually happened isn’t explained at all… And it’s not just that somebody should fire the proofreader, but I’d be embarrassed even to post a random comment written like this, even if I’d be terribly sleepy for example, not to mention publish a book, and a second edition, with so many mistakes. Not that there wouldn’t have been plenty before as well, but in the last chapter and the epilogue I tended to count a few on each page.

Rating: 3/5

★☆☆ Bajeczki ekonomiczne / Maciej Rybiński
★★★ Chinlandia / Roman Konik, Damian Leszczyński
★★☆ Przeszłość jest prologiem / Jacek Bartosiak
★★☆ The 7 Habits of Happy Kids / Sean Covey
★★☆ Dzienniki / Stefan Kisielewski
★☆☆ The Wolf Hunters / James Oliver Curwood
★☆☆ On War / Carl von Clausewitz
★☆☆ No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline / Brian Tracy
★☆☆ Mimochodem o chodzeniu / Szymon Augustyniak
★☆☆ Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager / Kenneth H. Blanchard, Susan Fowler, Lawrence Hawkins
★☆☆ Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less / S.J. Scott

List of all books read in 2019.

I have quite a lot of catch-up to do, and I will try to remember to copy somewhere else what I will write now here, in fear that GOG's forum system will eat my post again... ^_^

Panic - Jeff Abbott

Imagine all you thought was a given in your life - your family, your life, etc... - was just a lie and now you have people wanting to kill you/retrieve something from you. Not very original, I know, but in that novel, it quite works. Oh, it's not the most gripping novel I've ever read, but it's not too bad either.

Un Crime - Georges Bernanos

"A crime" is more a moral study about a priest, a small village in the Alps mountains and a dark past coming back. Many of "old" French crime stories were like that (see Simenon's Maigret series, for example), but it's not a bad thing. It's slow paced, but it gives you time to really go deep into the different characters of the story. A nice change of pace. I don't know if it has been translated to any other language, but if it is the case, try it!

Zombi - Joyce Carol Oates

Another thriller, about a serial killer. Like some other novels in the genre (American psycho?) you are in the killer's mind and it's really terrifying. The author did a really good job to make us witness the twisted way of thinking of a depraved mind and it's very unsettling. Quite graphic, too, but not as much as American Psycho. A good read, but be warned.

La fachosphère - Dominique Albertini & David Doucet

A non-fiction book about how the "facists" are taking the lead on the french web, a bit like american websites (stormfront, I think?) did in the USA. Very very interesting and helpful to understand how certain i"ideas" spread to "normal" medias...

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

Do I really need to say anything about that one? ^_^

Les pis rennais - Pascal Dessaint

The French title is a nearly unstranslatable wordplay on the Pyrénées mountains between France and Spain and the "Rennes udders", because it sounds the same. Yeah, lame, I know, but the Le Poulpe series work that way... ^_^ The story itself sees Le Poulpe, the main character, going to southern France to solve a bizarre case of bear attack in a region where there is no bears since decades. Quite a good episode in the series, efven if the hero appears a bit on the soft side, this time.

So far in 2019: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/books_finished_in_2019/post10

The Visitation by Frank Peretti. This is that book that I always consider my favorite, and when I finally reread it, I remember why I say that. Part mystery, part thriller, part horror story, part exploration of the main character’s religious crisis (which reflects a similar experience the author himself went through and which served as the inspiration for the novel), this is Frank Peretti at his best. There are hints of Stephen King in the way it follows the lives of several people in the setting of Antioch, Washington, a small town near Spokane. It’s an incredible novel that never ceases to make me laugh, cry, sit on the edge of my seat, and even shiver with fear. It speaks to me on many levels, and I just love it.

Prey by Michael Crichton. After his two Jurassic Park books and Next, this is the fourth novel by Crichton I’ve read, and... dang. It amazes me that he can give decently detailed explanations of complicated scientific concepts in an understandable way AND write nail-bitingly tense scenes in the span of just a few pages. I don’t know enough about the fields of science he talks about to know how accurately he portrays them, but it still speaks to his skill as a writer that I can kind of understand what he’s talking about. He also generally does a good job of getting just enough “out there” with the science that his plots are almost unbelievable, but never enough that it takes one out of the plot (well, maybe except for The Lost World, but that’s less because of crazy science stuff and more because the plot doesn’t make much sense in context of Jurassic Park). Do I really think a swarm of little nanomachines could function like those in the novel and do all the crazy things they do? Well... no, but I’ll be darned if Crichton doesn’t almost make me believe that it’s possible.

Bethany's Sin by Robert McCammon. This is one of his early works, which he was ashamed of for a while and even tried to block it from being reprinted, because he didn't think the writing was up to his later standards, before deciding to leave it alone after all. Usually when I hear about artists acting like that I think they're probably overreacting, but in this case I think I agree with McCammon to some extent. It shouldn't be repressed or anything, but it's certainly one of his lesser works and if you read it before something like Boy's Life you might come away thinking he's nothing special as a writer.

It's about a Vietnam vet turned author who's just moved to an idyllic Pennsylvania village, and shortly after they arrive he starts noticing odd things about living there. It's a horror novel, so stuff being odd is usually a sign that the residents are a bunch of murderous psychos. Specifically (I don't think this is a huge spoiler), the town is controlled by the ghosts of ancient Greek amazons who are possessing the female residents and either murdering the male residents or mutilating them and keeping them around as sex slaves, and now they're after the hero's wife and daughter. The whole thing started after a female archaeologist investigated a tomb in Turkey and came out of it possessed, taking the evil back home with her, and it amused me to think that this person was like an unfortunate relative of Lara Croft.

I think the concept is fun and it was interesting enough to keep me reading until the end, but it definitely has a lot of rough aspects that mark it as the work of an inexperienced writer. The plot is a bit slow, some of the attempts at atmosphere fall flat (flat, flat, flat...), and I was never quite clear on the town's geography, which does become a factor during the climax. I felt like McCammon wasn't sure of how to end the book, so he went with something that a movie producer might do, and there's this thing with the hero also having some degree of clairvoyance that doesn't affect the story in any truly meaningful way. It made me think that McCammon started out maybe doing his own take-off of The Dead Zone but then got onto this killer amazon idea and couldn't bring himself to totally chuck the psychic powers.

★★☆ Port of Earth #1-12 / Zack Kaplan, Andrea Mutti
★☆☆ The Now Habit / Neil A. Fiore
★☆☆ Rule of St. Benedict / St. Benedict
★☆☆ Święty spokój. Instrukcja obsługi emocji / Jarosław Gibas
★☆☆ Palimpsest / Catherynne M. Valente
★☆☆ Your Kids Are Your Own Fault: A Guide for Raising Responsible, Productive Adults / Larry Winget
★★☆ Galloway's Book on Running / Jeff Galloway

List of all books read in 2019.