TBR: Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1)

U.S. Marshal James Creed has known loss, starting from the untimely death of his wife and daughter in a sudden fire. His work, chasing down and arresting outlaws across the Wild West, is all he has left to live for. Then one day, in 1876, the infamous killer Corwin Blake catches Creed by surprise and guns him down.

Creed awakes after a mysterious young woman resurrects him in a basement laboratory beneath a brothel. Half alive, Creed feels torn between his need for justice and his desire to fall back into the peace of death. Creed’s instincts drive him to protect the city of Santa Cruz, California, from the outlaws it harbors while searching for Blake.

He uncovers a secret criminal organization, likely protecting Blake, determined to use resurrection technology for its own ends. The former marshal, now faster, stronger, and a more deadly shot than ever before, must work with a brothel madam, a bounty hunter, and the remaining marshals to uncover the criminal syndicate before they can misuse the machines of rebirth and create more mindless zombies. Meanwhile, he must also stop Blake, before the outlaw kills the only people he cares about.

His own death can wait.

So, like, any of ya’ll seen the TV show Preacher or read the comic book? Because this seems like that cowboy from hell…

Advertisements

The Order Of The Four Sons – Book 1 (The Order of the Four Sons #1) by Coyote Kishpaugh, Lauren Scharhag

ENTER THE WORLD OF THE ORDER.

For centuries, two ancient, magical sects, the Order of the Four Sons of Horus and Starry Wisdom, have battled for possession of the sacred, powerful Staff of Solomon. Whoever possesses the staff can open doors to other dimensions—or rip open the very fabric of existence.

The staff was broken into pieces and scattered across the cosmos.

Now, a member of the Order, Fernando Rios, has disappeared in a small Missouri town.

When a team is sent to investigate, they discover that Rios was close to finding one of the lost segments.

The problem is, he wasn’t the only one.

The Order of the Four Sons by Coyote Kishpaugh and Lauren Scharhag is a classic tale of good versus evil. An epic, magical journey of fantasy and adventure.

Join members of the team, Colonel JD Garnett, novice mage Kate West, Detective Ryan Murphy, scholar Doug Grigori, and field techs Bill Welsh and Cecil Morgan, as they race to stop evil from destroying not just Earth, but a myriad of worlds.

And life as we know it.

 

I don’t really trust books written by more than one author (who REALLY did the work on this?) but OK.

 

View more info on Goodreads.

TBR: And We All Fall by Michael Patrick Mahoney Jr.

United States Marine, Jackson Mills, home for a week on furlough, sets out on a road trip with his teenage son. Simultaneously, world leaders rush to manage an unknown virus that is rapidly becoming a global threat to humanity. As the father and son have an action-packed heart-wrenching journey up the East coast, will their destinies be changed when they encounter the apocalyptic illness? What – and who – will government powers sacrifice in order to save civilization?

This cover is scary af.

Learn more on Goodreads.

TBR: The Flats (A Liz Boyle Mystery #1) by Kate Birdsall

Detective Liz Boyle knows there is no crime more heinous than the murder of a child. When she and her partner, Tom Goran, are called to a new scene in an area of Cleveland known as The Flats, they find that a killer has taken that to new levels.

As the investigation takes them deeper into the city’s seedy underbelly, the case hits frighteningly close to home when someone Liz loves is added to the list of possible suspects. While fighting her personal demons, she must also pick her way around the department bureaucracy to avoid being pulled from the case.

Liz and Tom will need to solve the most mind-bending mystery of their careers, one in which their personal and professional allegiances—and maybe their sanity—will be tested. But Liz vows to bring the killer to justice at any cost.

 

At first I found myself willing to argue with the synopsis — there are crimes more heinous than murdering a child. Like, animal murders are worse to me because they are already victims of a human society and barely anyone is willing to solve their murders or their murders are actively part of our lifestyle. But then again… children are thought of as human so the fact any human at all thinks it OK to kill them is probably more atypical and the murderer is even more extreme than the status quo. But by that logic it’s even less OK to kill the pinnacle of all humans: White Man. Because children are barely people. They really have no rights until they’re about 18. So, either way you spin it on the “importance scale,” child murder isn’t the most heinous, you know?

Whatever, I’m funny.

But seriously though, murder is murder.

See more on Goodreads.

Book Review: A record of My Vinyl A COLLECTOR’S CATALOG By POTTER

 So, this was not what I thought it was. I didn’t realize that it was essentially a log book for your already-established record collection. I think I had a fever when I requested this, so I wasn’t thinking right. Yes, that’s my excuse. It’s very pretty, and I can see how a record collector would love this. But I requested it because it said “A catalog, journal, and guide all in one…” I don’t know what I thought it mean by “catalog” but I’m a librarian so I assumed it was…not this. This is…essentially an address book for your records….a list….to help you keep track…not necessarily help you organize their physicality…

As I type this I see how stupid I sound but THIS IS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT.

I thought it was going to help me learn to classify my records or something. But the “journal” and the “catalog” are really one thing! Don’t judge me. There’s only like 5 pages worth of actual info on how to take care of vinyl records. Other pages include a quote from Jack White (of course it would) and blank space (baby). As a once-preservation librarian (who never got to explore how to take care of this medium), I thought this was going to be right up my alley of how-to and nonfiction. Nope.

I feel silly. I also feel this cover.

Interesting cover. #tactilecover #penguinrandomhouse #vinyl

A post shared by Amanda L. Ross (@amandapandaduh) on Oct 9, 2017 at 12:36pm PDT

 I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.

Wikipedia, information literacy and open access

On Wikipedia and Open Access (bookmarking here to find later).

Leeds University Library Blog

In the 1980s my parents invested in an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It’s still there, taking up shelf space in its burgundy livery, unopened since 1993, the information frozen in time like Britpop and New Labour.

SEWilco (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia was launched in 2001, some 12 years after Berniers-Lee invented the Web, and is often maligned in academia. Yet it remains a default information source for many a denizen of the Web, whether layperson, undergraduate or PhD (citation needed).

Unlike a leather-bound Britannica, information is dynamic, updated by a small army of volunteers and there can be little argument regarding the success of the project in terms of sheer scale and cultural impact. Wikipedia and its sister projects are edited at the rate of 10 edits per second (which would equate to more than three-quarters of…

View original post 418 more words

TBR: Strawberries by Casey Bartsch

Strawberries is the name he has been given.

When they let him out, they had no way of knowing what he was. A psychopath. A killer. The body count is at twenty already, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Agent Harry Bland can’t see one anyway. He doesn’t have a single clue to go on. It doesn’t help that his mind won’t focus. His heart just isn’t in it anymore. Half way across the country, Sylvia is in a different state of mind. When she isn’t selling sex to the rich, she is doing her best to disappear. She lives a life of assumed names, one night stands, and a constant stream of narcotics. Sylvia has heard of Strawberries. Of course she has. So has everyone who has turned on the television or surfed the net. Yet, she has no way of knowing just how much his life will affect hers.

Seedy hotels, cross country truckers looking for the meaning of life, homemade pie, a reporter with her own secret agenda, obscenely expensive champagne, and plenty of spilled blood await our cast. But make sure to read fast…..Strawberries has killed number 21.

I, too, have heard of strawberries. They have a lot of pesticides, I hear. Super deadly.

View on Goodreads.

Book Review: The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up

After attempting to read the prose work this is based off of and failing to be inspired to actually put it into practice, I decided to give the magic one more shot at putting me under its spell.

I have to say, this is the better format for this kind of how-to. When you need to tidy, you see the mess. This manga helps you visualize that need for change better than words on a page do. It’s also more digestible and leads me to want to pick up the original again — now that I have a quick snapshot of how it works, I feel like I could buckle down and really start to analyze it.

Do I feel like this method really works? I can now see how it might. Do I feel like I’m in the right place in my life to actually start tidying according to these rules? No. But this manga has helped me see how I could do it in my life. Next year I plan to move and I am daunted by how much stuff I have accumulated. I’m very good at organizing crap and making room. But why do I need so much stuff? Why do I have to keep making room? This book made me realize I have a lot of baggage I’m carrying around.

The manga inserts a contrived story about a woman who is messy and therefore has a messy lovelife. It is very cute at times but a little too childish to appeal to most adults. I particularly enjoyed the superstitious aspects of this book — at one point, the character of Marie Kondo says to use salt in a ritual to get rid of bad karma. So, this verges on new-age for me which makes me shifty-eyed. But I’m still really fascinated!

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review. Read my review policy here.

TBR: The Deceived by E.C. Fisher

What if the Bible was a con devised by none other than Lucifer himself? What if The Rapture came, and it was a trick? In E.C. Fisher’s biblical thriller The Deceived, it is the devil who is behind religion, and everyone from Adam and Eve on up are in the thrall of his lies. But as the End of Days plays out on Earth—a ploy designed by Lucifer to give the world to his followers—the archangel Michael is sent down to earth from heaven, where he must battle the devil to save God’s children—not to mention the planet. As God lays dying in heaven, and Lucifer kidnaps Michael’s soulmate, Ari-el—Michael must face not only the potential of demons overtaking earth, but the loss of both his Father and his one true love. Armed with the Sword of the Spirit, forged from God’s own powerful wings, Michael sets out to destroy the Antichrist, and thereby bring an end to the deadly masquerade that is Lucifer’s religion.

Written with the verve of a contemporary adventure fantasy, and the deep, complex knowledge of a religious thriller, The Deceived is a harrowing tale that reflects the rifts and tensions of our modern political moment. This is the story of Revelations that you do not know, but one that you will not be able to put down.

I’m pagan-leaning and often find myself believing that the “if/then” of why monotheism exists is because one god either wanted to fuck with all the others or just make things less confusing.

View on Goodreads. 

TBR: Afterdeath by Benoit Chartier

Death is a country we see through the tiny keyhole of an immovable door.
Raised by their grandmother after their parents’ death, Chloe and Olivia Borders are now in mourning for Rose. The Alzheimer’s that forced them to be split into separate foster homes has taken their last living family member. As a way to rekindle their friendship, the twins commit to a road trip— which spells their demise. Now the question is: What comes after, and how will they get back to life?

Sounds depressing AF.

View on Goodreads.