I can't say that I'm a big Neil Gaiman fan. I know, I know, I've read a number of his books, but the more of his books I read, the less I'm interested in reading his books. I'm not sure why this is, but I'll speculate that a large part of my lack of enthusiasm is due to the small amplitude of the plots in his books. In particular, I find most of his stories that I've read plod along. The climax of the of the stories are often "Oh, okay" instead of "OH MY GOD WOW," or something close to that. There isn't a thrilling zing or fast heartbeats or shallow breathing, just a thing that happened that of course it would happen, because, really, that's what should happen and okay.

Which is why I can say I have this book because Mom picked it out. Yes, I'm back to a book from that pile of books, because Internet (no, not really, but maybe a bit).

Anyway, I have this book. I read it. It was, uh, well, cute. Gaiman was fascinated by the Norse gods as a kid, and retells their tales in this book as a series of short stories.

From which we conclude, the Norse gods were asshats.

There were a number of amusing stories, and a number of "What. The. F---?" stories. Pretty much all were entertaining. A number included lessons one could take to learn what NOT to do. I enjoyed the book, and would likely recommend this book as someone's first Gaiman book to read. Just don't listen to the audiobook.

The Dresden Files, book 7

This is, hands down, my favorite Dresden book. I thought, "Wow." the first time I read it. And the second. And the third. And the fourth. And the lost-count time, too. Because I knew this, that this is my favorite Dresden book, I was aware of myself trying to figure out why I like the book so much, what makes it so good?

I figured out a few reasons, but I think the top reason is that this is the first (and one could argue only) book that Dresden is vulnerable. He asks for help. He reaches out. He reaches out to his friends, and they say yes. He confronts his own mortality. He talks about death. A lot.

Which is pretty much what the book is about, with necromancers and all happening in it.

This book also has Butters, an unassuming unmagicked mortal, seeing a horrible act and, screaming like a little girl the whole time, pushes against his fear to do what needs to be done to save a life.

In any book, you see the author come through in her characters. I would believe Butcher was experiencing loss when he wrote this book, perhaps even actual deaths in his family. I haven't looked up what was happening in his life when writing this book, so I don't know if he were. Yet here, for the first time, Dresden isn't just a know-it-all, isn't an all-powerful arrogant witty Warden wizard, he's also human. And that's what I liked so much about this book.

Okay, I hadn't exactly intended to sit down and read this book all in one go. I am in the middle of three other books and just happened to have none of them with me, along with no cell phone coverage and no wifi, when I realized I needed both to be doing something, and to be reading.

When in such a situation, you do the normal thing. You panic.

Okay, no, you pull up another book and start reading. If you don't mind having 10 books in progress, 11 isn't going to matter much.

At the end of the day when I finished this book, I was like, yep, I will read pretty much anything Scalzi writes, and I'm happy I read this one. It is classic Scalzi, with an interesting science-based world, action to satisfy any swashbuckler, and wit to entertain everyone.

Which is a thing with Scalzi books. All of his characters, the "good" ones, are witty and smart and quick. And good. Which is just ... not ... realistic. His stories and characters lack the overt pettiness and cruelty and anger and jealousy of the real world. Which may be why they appeal so much: a world where smart, good, even nice people are actually able to succeed. Oddly.

Anyway, yes, on my new book-review scale, this is a fan-worth book. If you're a Scalzi fan, DEFINITELY read it. If you aren't, you'll likely still enjoy it.

"You’ll be emperox soon enough.”

“And then no one can tell me what to do.”

“Oh, no,” Batrin said. “Everyone will tell you what to do. But you won’t always have to listen.”
Page 36

Right. Kim. Kimball O'Hara, an orphaned Irish boy who grew up in India during the English colonial days. Or rather, during the Great Game, before India was split into India and Pakistan, an important distinction. Kim's story is actually in parts of the Pakistani areas, which is how I came to read the book.

Let's ignore the fact that the book has been sitting on my mother's bookcase since forever, and that I tend to grab books from her shelves and read them (hello, Voltaire). Instead, let's note that when a good friend says, "This book totally describes my childhood!" and then repeats several times about how it is one of his favorite books EVAR, well, you read the book.

Of course, I'm not likely to describe the plot, so many other sites do that, but I will note that the book is available on Gutenberg, so little excuse not to read it.

I enjoyed the book. In this case, I made the mistake of switching from audiobook to ebook. This technique normally works quite well for me, but in this case, didn't, because I needed to look up a number of the words, see the spelling, search on wikipedia for the references, and understand better what was going on. The audiobook didn't lend itself to that style of understanding, so I gave up on it fairly quickly. That said, if audiobooks are your thing, and you want to hear the book in English, I recommend this performance of Kim. It is good.

I don't have pages for the quotes, because I read a Gutenberg version that lacks page breaks. Easy enough to find them, I suspect.