Tanner Stuebanks

Having now read the entirety of the currently published V.I. Warshawski novels, I can safely say that this, while not the best of the series, is in the upper tier. I may be biased, as a significant portion(as in almost all) of the book takes place in my current hometown. Still, I highly recommend Paretsky's work for anybody looking for strong female characters who don't take shit from anybody.

I was already familiar with Anthony Bourdain from his Food Network show, A Cook's Tour, before I picked up Kitchen Confidential. I knew that he was a bit of a wild-card, bad boy kinda guy. And, seeing the praise that had been heaped on the book, I was excited to read about some of his tales from the kitchen. However, I was not prepared for the fantastic prose and storytelling that awaited me in this book. Bourdain is now one of my favorite writers in any genre and cannot be beat when it comes to the art of food writing. This is a fantastic book that deserves to be read by all.

Most people would probably say that I am not the target audience for Denise Swanson's Scumble River Mystery series. It is a cozy mystery series about a 30-something school psychologist in a small town in rural Illinois. This doesn't seem to be a book series that should fit into the preferred genre zone of a 38 year old heterosexual dude who loves professional wrestling, noir novels, and comic books. Yet, here I am, 5 books into the series, and fully committed.

Honestly, a good portion of my love of these novels is that they are full of stealth feminism. The protagonist, Skye Denison, is often making comments about her town's sexist attitudes towards her gender. And, as somebody who was born in a town that is about the size of Scumble River, I feel her pain every step of the way. The fact that this novel also addresses the evil that are multi-level marketing schemes makes me even happier.

Seriously, this series is one of my favorite things I've discovered in the past year, along with Chelsea Cain's Archie Sheridan/Susan Ward novels, and I owe the recommendations for both of them to my amazing partner, Liz.

I'm a fan of a large variety of protagonists. While, in most of my recent reading, I have been leaning towards female protagonists(and writers) as my platonic ideal, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for severely damaged male protagonists, as long as they are handled in a non-exploitative of women way. Archie Sheridan fits this model to a T. When you can add that the secondary protagonist(and often the primary) is an equally damaged woman in Susan Ward, is it any shock that I have loved this series from the jump. The only negative of this book, in my eyes, is that finishing it means I only have one more book left in this series.

I read this book several years ago and, to be perfectly honest, don't remember a great deal of it. One thing I do remember is that it was, at the time, a juggernaut. Everybody was talking about how great it was and how profound it was. I was really excited to read it. Another thing I remember is how I was horribly disappointed by the book. While it wasn't horrible, I found nothing profound or extraordinary about it. It was just obnoxious.

This is the third Bachman Book that I've read as part of The Grand Stephen King Experiment on TannerWillbanks.com. It is, however, the first one that I have truly enjoyed. It is a well-written story about a man losing touch with reality and the links that somebody will go to when they reach rock bottom.

This is the 3rd book in The Grand Stephen King Experiment for www.tannerwillbanks.com. It is a wonderfully written novel that reaches beyond the horror genre, which it is rightfully claimed by, to be a novel about familial relationships, addiction, and living with the decisions one makes, both bad and good. As King's third novel, this is a masterwork from early in his career. Highly recommended.

The idea of a grown up Scooby Gang appeals to me. The idea of a grown up Scooby Gang that has serious mental health issues due to the shit they dealt with as they solved some of their crimes is pretty much an exact description of my wheelhouse. While the odd jumps between stylistic choices can be a bit jarring, I still really liked this book from start to finish.

I've been meaning to read this book since we bought it shortly after it came out in paperback. Instead, I kept finding other things to read. However, while on my vacation to Nashville, I was able to finally just lock out all the distractions and dive into the world of Mr. Penumbra's store. And, boy, I should have done this a long time ago. A very interesting, if quirky, story that I was a fan of from cover to cover. The ending was a bit odd, so it lost a star there, but I liked it pretty well anyway.

It took me a long time to return to the Harry Hole series after reading The Bat. Why? I honestly couldn't tell you because I enjoyed that first book quite a bit. Not shockingly, I also enjoyed the 2nd book too. I mean, we are talking about a supremely flawed protagonist, a truly disturbing run of crimes, and some good social commentary. What is there not to like?

Tina Fey is one of the funniest people on the planet. She is my favorite SNL head writer and a comic that I've always admired for both her performance skills as well as her writing skills. Knowing that she was responsible for turning out week after week of sketch television in her time, as well as movies and 30 Rock, my expectations for her memoir were very high. Luckily, she not only met them but exceeded them by a large margin. A wonderful book.

This was the beginning of my challenge to read/watch all the Stephen King novels and movies in chronological order(and to document the process of my blog at TannerWillbanks.com). While I found the frequent mistakes made by the copy editor to be galling(this was a '70s rush paperback edition), I was quite impressed to see that Stephen King was able to craft a compelling and unique story even with his first published novel. The use of epistolary to tell the tale is reminiscent of Stoker's “Dracula” and made me smile, knowing that King's respect for the masters of horror fiction runs deep.

All in all a very nice freshman effort that makes me really excited for the rest of my Grand Stephen King Experiment.

I resisted picking this book up for a long time. However, I eventually decided that I was just being stubborn and that I would give it a whirl to see what everybody was talking about. Boy, am I glad I did. Larsson has written two of my favorite characters of recent years in this book in Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. I love them not because they are flawless but because they are so brutally flawed that you have to love them in spite of that. A fantastic book that I would recommend to most folks, though the violence can be both triggering and off putting to some.

As a person who has suffered from a anxiety disorders for the majority of my life, I have very rarely seen mental health issues depicted well in literature that I've read. In this book, John Green does a great job of showing the intrusive thoughts, thought spirals, and other aspects of mental health issues that have plagued me for over 2 decades. Add the quality of the depiction of mental health with the generally damn fine writing and plotting and you end up with a book that lives up to some pretty high expectations.

This book, which I most recently read for The Grand Stephen King Experiment on TannerWillbanks.com, has been a favorite of mine since I was young. I read it for the first time when I was in 8th grade and have returned to it multiple times over the years. This is the first time I've read it in over a decade and was impressed that it still resonated as deeply as it does. I adore this book.

I read this as part of The Grand Stephen King Experiment for TannerWillbanks.com.

I loved this book. I thought it was a wonderful character study of a man who loses everything he wanted in one fell swoop. He fights his way back but encounters roadblocks at every step of the way. While I know that King is considered a horror writer, this is far from being a horror novel. This is a book about a man who has something extraordinary happen to him and the way that he deals with that.

Highly recommended.

This was the 4th book in The Grand Stephen King Experiment for www.tannerwillbanks.com.

I was intrigued to read this book because of the fact that it was both the first book to be published by Stephen King as Richard Bachman and it is the only book of Stephen King's that has ever been taken out of print(willfully by the author and his publisher). It deals with an issue that is a hot button in a post-Columbine America, the subject of school violence. However, while it could strive for sensationalism, and probably would in lesser hands, this book is actually presented in a very straight-forward and interesting manner. It is slightly unnerving to read a first-person account of a high school senior taking his classmates hostage, especially when you realize it was written by an 18 year old King, but it is still a book worth tracking down if you get the chance.