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Any fans of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series here? Amazon has made a pilot based on Concrete Blond and City of Bones. It will be streamed free to all Amazon customers in February. Check it out!
 
I just read this thing I picked up out of the bargain bin-The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom. It's a haunted house story, somewhat entertaining, nothing special, but not as bad as some of the over the top one star Amazon reviews. I thought this one was funny lol:

Oh no he didn't , January 25, 2010
This review is from: The Birthing House (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program ( What's this? )
Fans of the horror genre know that there are bad houses just as there are bad
cars and bad dolls. Gentle readers, I'm here to tell you all about a bad book. A
very bad book indeed. It's called The Birthing House.
The general premise of a building that may be evil itself isn't new nor is the
concept of the failed writer with too much time on his hands. In the hands of a
writer like Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, or Stephen King such a setup
means hours of satisfying chills. And one doesn't need blood dripping from the
walls to deliver the scares as John Harwood, Dennis MacFarland and Patrick
McGrath have recently shown. The narrative can be untraditional like The House
of Leaves and still pack a wallop. But you do need a coherent plot and a lead
character whose actions inspire a modicum of human sympathy. Alas, this book
has neither.
Others here found at least the first half of the book enjoyable. For me it went
downhill around page 10 when main character Conrad shows off the death
benefit insurance check he received for his father who died less than a week
before. This lead to two unscary questions: an insurance company payout in
less than one week? And in check form instead of a direct deposit? I expected
to suspend disbelief in this story but not over the finances. Unfortunately the
stupid has just started rolling. Conrad is regularly confront with "eerie"
happenings and he generally reacts like someone who awakes to find that the
deliveryboy failed to get the paper on the front porch again. When you think
you've had sex with a ghost or you've hallucinated having sex with your wife the
usual response is not to fire up another ice tea, just as a for instance. Conrad
and his stick figure wife Jo aren't believable or likable and the rest of the
characters are actually worse.
Ransom doesn't seem to understand that less is more (especially where snakes
are concerned), that the characters' fear is what delivers the fear to the reader
and that the words "what the hell just happened" is not what happy readers
utter at the conclusion of a well-crafted story. While I wouldn't want to make a
bet on this but I think the ending had something to do with a reverse birth.
Yeah, I don't really know what that means either but it's the best I can manage
since the ending not only makes no sense it isn't clear either. "He was nothing."
And yet he's still hanging around getting on my nerves. The only good thing I
can say about the ending is that Ransom gave the ellipses - his "go to" for
creating suspense - a much needed rest.
The book reads as if the author sold it based on an outline and then had to
actually write the darn thing. On a deadline. In the dark. With crayons.
Click to expand...
 
I'm halfway through A Feast for Crows, the fourth book of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Next up, A Dance with Dragons, then I get to wait for the next book to come out...
 
Finished Burglars Can't Be Choosers, #1 in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series by Lawrence Block. Very entertaining! Starting #2, The Burglar In The Closet.
 
Read the Dragonriders of Pern and the Harper Hall trilogy... don't know what to read next before I start into the standalone Pern books...
 
Finished Burglar In The Closet. Also very good. Reading The Burglar Reads From Kipling. It Started slower than the 1st two but is still good.
 
Finished reading a couple non-fiction books-- America's Women, and a somewhat crappy book on salt water aquariums.
 
Just finishing up the Black series by Russell Blake. Next up, a continuation of the Bomb Squad series by J.E. Fishman. The first book was a special on BookBub. I had never heard of this author before, but he is quite good.
 
Currently reading How to Build a Time Machine: The Real Science of Time Travel by Brian Clegg

After that, I will likely pick up K. B. Spangler's Maker Space. Her first book was a fairly quick read (I've read it twice over the past week) and pretty engaging.
 
Just finished Scott Lynch's
The Republic of Thieves. Started slow but got real good. Dude rights slower than rr Martin and Patrick Rothfuss though so it will be a while till book 4 :(

Gonna start The Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks
 
When I finished Republic of Thieves, which was pretty darn good, I started Brent Weeks newest series. The Lightbringer series.

Crushed the first 2 books in a week, they were amazing. 3rd is due out soon, but not soon enough, lol.

I started the first in Jack Reacher series, killing floor. Started slow but got real good. I'm 90 percent done.

Not sure if I'm gonna go all out on the series or not.

Newest Dresden Files book just came out, Skin Game. Gonna crush that with the quickness.
 
Did Critical Failure in one day... going for The Stars My Destination by Alfred Baster next, I think. Running out of books on my tablet. :/
 
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