David Woodger

The relatively unknown Ibn Battutah (1304-1368) grew up in Tangier, Morocco. At the age of 21, he embarked on a journey throughout the Middle and Far East for almost 30 years. The author, a British man who has lived in Yemen for 17 years and is fluent in Arabic undertakes a journey that will be about a third of Ibn Battutah's.

I used to read a lot more travelogues and I've really enjoyed them. Not this one, though. In fact I'm surprised I got as far as I did with this one (more than half-way). The author's prose is dry, uncompelling, and rambling. Yeah, he knows a lot of history... but he doesn't convey it very well. He's just dull.

Read this aloud to my nine-year-old daughter, who, every time I announced that I was done reading for the night, told me that I must read more or she would kill me. The story concerns young Egbert (who prefers to be called Egg) who lives on the island of Deadweather with his father and two older mean siblings. When the family travels to the neighboring island of Sunrise (which is much nicer and not so infested with pirates), events take a dramatic turn for Egg. He's soon pining away for the spunky Millicent (about his age, 13, and much richer) and then on the run for his life. This story grabbed me from the get-go and I enjoyed reading it to my daughter who would often chuckle at some of the developments. This is fun yarn with pirates and young kids in trouble. We'll be reading part two of this trilogy next.

Originally this was going to be another read-aloud-to-my-daughter book, but she quickly became uninterested in it. Nonetheless, I continued on my own. But the slow pace was reason enough for me to put it aside for about six months before picking it up again. And I almost put it aside for another spell, but then I got that completist urge and I finished it. Not at any great rush either. So, the story was okay... not a page-turner, obviously... but good enough to finish it off. It also helped that it was handsomely illustrated by the author's wife.

The story concerns a girl Prue, whose baby brother Mac gets kidnapped by a murder of crows and taken into the Impassable Wilderness (outside of St. Johns, Portland, Oregon). Prue and her friend Curtis manage to get into the Impassable Wilderness and there they meet talking animals, humans, bandits, and a certain power-mad evil-doer. This is the first of a trilogy (but can be read as a stand-alone book). I spoke to one of my nieces who loves this trilogy. But I didn't love it.

It had been too long since the last time I read a travelogue. This one was a excellent choice. The author, a travel journalist who freely admits he doesn't do that much traveling, hooks up with an tough Australian guide in Peru to follow the trail of Hiram Bingham III, a Yale man who had “discovered” Machu Picchu in 1911. The narrative weaves together Bingham's history, Peruvian history, and his own trekking in the area and succeeds in telling a fascinating, well-paced story. The book includes a number of black and white photos as well.

Just for fun, here's a quote from his guide, John, when they were discussing craziest things they've ever eaten:

“I once ate a cockroach, but that was on a bet back in Australia. I also once, after quite a lot of beer, ate a kilo of butter.” He leaned forward between the front seats. “Won ten dollars on that bet.”

I'm a big fan of this silly, absurdist series. These books never fail to get me chuckling and this outing is one of the better ones (although as the author tweeted to me, “THEY'RE ALL AMAZING”) . And it never fails to amuse me that the chapter titles have nothing to do with the contents of the chapter. Anyway, in this outing, the Pirate Captain and his crew find themselves on Lake Geneva and eventually hook up with Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Godwin (author of Frankenstein). The Pirate Captain gets a crush on Mary and the usual silliness goes from there.

Read this for the third time (it's 84 pages, illustrated) and this time I did it aloud to Luke. It's the story of a girl named Capable living in the town of Frip who's exhausted from her job of brushing off gappers from her goats on a daily basis. Gappers are baseball-sized, multi-eyed creatures that adhere themselves to goats and then shriek joyfully. The goats get put out. Capable's neighbors are buffoons and she comes up with a plan. It's a bizarre and occasionally funny tale which has the importance of being neighborly as a lesson learned. George Saunders is more well-known for his offbeat short story collections (I've read ‘em). This book is gorgeously illustrated by Lane Smith (of Stinky Cheese Man fame).

I re-read this again on December 3rd, 2012 to both my kids.

It's been quite a while since I last read this author – the mid-90s to be imprecise. He's a talented writer and I enjoy his stuff though others I've read by him I've liked better, I enjoyed this one as well. This is sort of a more literate take on a gothic horror story. There's some wonderful imagery throughout. The story takes place in mid-19th century London and its main characters include John Crawford, a veterinarian, Adelaide McKee, a reformed ex-prostitute, Christina Rossetti and her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a very interesting rogue named Edward Trelawny. These latter three are all real characters from history. At a young age, Christina unwittingly lets loose the vampiric ghost of John Polidori, her uncle and one-time physician to Lord Byron. Polidori, along with some other vampiric spirits are up to no good and Crawford, McKee, Trelawny, and Rossettis have good reasons to vanquish him and his kind. There are occasional bits of action in the story, but too often it tends to get bogged down with the characters discussing their plight.

I didn't realize it until after I'd finished reading the book, but it's a sequel of sorts to the book The Stress of Her Regard which involved vampires, Lord Byron, and the father of John Crawford. I remember that one as a quicker moving tale. (Read it back in 1992). Took me about a month to get through this one. Powers' earlier books, On Stranger Tides and The Anubis Gates are among some all-time favorites of mine.

This has been a read-aloud book for my daughter and has been sporadically attended to. Making the time for it gets harder and harder. Still, we soldier on.

Anyway, this book is a sequel of sorts to the very good The Goose Girl. But we've got a new main character and she learns the ability to control fire, sort of like a medieval version of Steven King's Firestarter. Only her control of this power is tenuous and comes with its own problems. Enna, our protagonist, wants to help her country of Bayern in its war with, um, okay I forget right now. Let's call them the mucky-mucks. Well, things get a little heated with the mucky-mucks. (See what I did there?) And the plot is interesting – in parts – but it didn't really catch fire. And, yes, fizzled out in the end.

Essentially Alice going through hell to get the third and final blade necessary to vanquish the Fiend. Moves at a fast clip and never flags (although that sacrifices any real character development). This book is all Alice, Tom is only mentioned in passing. There's a welcome surprise at the end. One more to go in this series!

Another in a long line of books I've been reading aloud (in this case to my daughter). We've enjoyed the story and got a number of chuckles out of it. Our hero, Egg, has to deal with pirates, imprisonment, battles at sea, siblings who are much less than perfect, and jealousy. He comes out all right. We've enjoyed this trilogy.

A dozen years ago my inamorata bestowed upon me the first book in this lexigraphic series. Loved it. Six years later I read the penultimate book. Dug it. And now I've finally read the third book. Liked it. The first one was the best but these are all fun for word nerds and those of us who aspire to linguistic snobbery. Along with learning arcane words, we are treated to the authors humorous example sentences where he tries using the word. A brief example:

gilliver n. A wanton wench. “What is this ‘gilliver' you have on your Christmas gift wish list, Morris?”

The bulk of this long series was excellent. Towards the end, however, it began to fracture. In a few of the books, the main character, Tom Ward, doesn't even make an appearance. Then this book short changes the Spook and Alice's stories. Their story arcs get a big “huh?!” and “what?!?” respectively. The explanation for the strange turn in Alice's story will no doubt be expounded upon is a new series featuring Tom Ward that is advertised in the last few pages of this book. It was a good ride overall. But I'm done.

This is a historical fiction adventure set in southwestern Germany from 1524 to 1525. The castle of the title is Trifels Castle (a real place) near the town of Annweiler. Our two protagonists are Agnes, the young daughter of the castellan of Trifels, Philip von Erfenstein, and Mathis, her childhood friend and son of the castle blacksmith. Around this time there's a peasant uprising. At 644 pages, this one took some time, and takes a little time to get the story really moving along. But it was worth it. There's family secrets, hidden passages, castle sieges, robber knights, dungeons, fights, escapes, betrayals, mysterious characters and so forth. The second half of the book has so much going on. Very enjoyable tale.

I finished Alan Campbell's Deepgate Codex back in 2010 and thought that it was wondrously strange and fun. Now he's got a new series going called the Gravedigger Chronicles. This first book takes place in a whole new, fascinating world. One of the things that's great about this author is that he doesn't fall back on a faux-medieval world like so many countless other fantasists. He creates a new world from scratch. The main character in this story is Thomas Granger, a colonel in an elite infiltration unit nicknamed the Gravediggers. But when he insults the emperor, he goes underground and becomes a jailor in a backwater place called Ethugra. It's here that he meets a daughter he didn't know he had named Ianthe. Ianthe has unusual psychic powers and as such is coveted by various factions. There are strange characters galore and some inventive action set pieces. I just found the whole book fascinating and cool. Campbell's' imagination is on par with China Mieville's. I've already got Book 2 on tap.

After reading Wicked Plants a couple years ago and gobbling it up, when this book appeared it was a foregone conclusion that it would be mine. This is a handsome book with many cool illustrations (if you're interested in bugs). I found it to be endlessly interesting and a little bit horrifying (screw-worm flies that burrow into you; foot-long centipedes with painful bites, a swarm of locusts bigger than the state of California, etc.) Also, I think the French must be a little weird. Their term for pubic lice is papillons d'amour (butterflies of love.) Ah, love.

This was a cool book about a young boy, Hugo, who lives in Paris in 1931. He's been orphaned and is living hidden within the Paris train station. The story involves a toy shop owner, a young girl, many clocks and an automaton. The story is told alternately in words and pictures and as such reads very fast. The book itself is big, fat doorstopper but I actually read it in only two days. It was fun, I may read it someday to my kiddos.

Most people (on Amazon and GoodReads) seem to love this book. I am not one of them. In fact, if I had not decided to read this aloud to my kids (who liked it), I wouldn't even have finished this one. The story concerns a 12-year-old girl named September who is whisked off to Fairyland and makes magical friends, must deal with a fickle-minded marquess, and achieve some fuzzy-sounding goals. Whatever. I wasn't buying in for a moment. This is one of those books for which the word “twee” was invented. It seems as though the author tried very hard to combine a Alice In Wonderland vibe with a Wizard of Oz vibe. I just found it tedious. And the language used is frequently unfriendly to those with grade-school vocabularies. Sheesh. Can I tell you how much I hate that? Are you writing for kids or not? Make up your mind. Stop showing off. Yes, this author can write. But this book was frikkin annoying. I'm glad you like it, though.

This novella (a mere 135 pages) is a prequel to the Deepgate Codex trilogy, a favorite of mine. Sal Greene wants to stop the mad angel Carnival from killing him due to a centuries-long vendetta. The Spine assassins want to kill Carnival too. And Carnival wants to just do her thing. This has all the ultra-strange otherness, I expect from this author. There's dangerous wizards (“thaumaturges”), dreamworlds, gods, church assassins, traps, and more. Read it in a rush of pages. Found a used copy that came from a library in Mishawaka, Indiana.

This is the fourth book I've read by this author. I've been a fan since reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers back in 2004. This book is full of fascinating details about the nitty gritty life of astronauts in zero gravity. It doesn't take long to realize that the life of an astronaut is far from glamorous. In fact, the problem of waste management (i.e. going pee and poo) in zero gravity is a real... mess. Astronauts have a term for floating bits of fecal matter: “escapees.” And you can't open a window to help with the smell either. Astronauts on a short trip generally hope to be a little constipated just so they don't have to deal with it. Dealing with it actually takes about a good 45 minutes too. Anyway, there's more to this book than astronauts having to take a crap. And the author brings her sense of humor to bear on numerous occasions.

Firedrake the dragon and a furry, mushroom-loving brownie named Sorrel head out looking for the fabled Rim of Heaven, one of the last refuges on Earth for dragonkind. Early on their travels they pick up a young orphan named Ben. Trying to hunt them down is an extremely large flightless dragon named Nettlebrand. I read this aloud to the kids and it was okay but I think even they were getting tired of it near the finish. It's not a very exciting story. It's more cute and plodding with several fortunate circumstances aiding our small band of adventurers. Also, the author brings along her own brand of dragon mythology which felt pretty weak even for a chapter book. Everything wraps up nicely in the end but is also easily guessable (something my kids did.) Not great, but I've read worse.

After zipping through the first two Murderbot books, I went to this one, the first of a five-book series about a shapeshifting creature named Moon who becomes a winged creature when he shifts. His life among other humans gets disrupted and he learns of others like him. And there's some evil creatures known as the Fell that are menacing all on his world. The worldbuilding is top notch, the story moves along at a clip, and the characters are engaging. There's some cool details about the creatures of this world and several neat surprises. Super exciting too. I'll be continuing with this series too.

I've been doing a lot of genre reading lately; lots of fantasy, the occasional crime story – and a non-fiction title here and there. With this novel I got back into a big, meaty, literate tale. You know, high-brow stuff. I'd almost forgotten how captivating that can be and this one did captivate. This story is about a Dutchman, Jacob de Zoet, who travels to a small island called Dejima located across a small bridge outside of Nagasaki in Japan. The year is 1799 and the Japanese do not allow foreigners within their country. But the Dutch East Indies Company is allowed to have about a dozen traders live on the small manmade island of Dejima. (There's a sketch of it early in the story.) Jacob has given himself five years to make his fortune so that he can return and win the hand of a woman back home in Holland. But things take an interesting turn after he meets a local midwife named Orito Aibagawa and he becomes somewhat besotted with her. My expectations for the story were changed completely after about 100+ pages into the story and it wouldn't be the last time. This was very well written and absorbing. It was a story I was eager to return to again and again. I'll most likely be reading more books by this author. (This would make a great book-club book.)

This is the last of a trilogy and I enjoyed it but not to the gushing degree I've found on Amazon. Nevertheless, the characters don't exactly take a fairy-tale story arc. Instead, their arcs seem more realistic. That was interesting to see. Also, there were a couple of characters you just knew were headed to the grave but their route to the hereafter seemed anti-climactic. I suppose my biggest gripe would be that none of the characters really merit rooting for – or actually, just don't overcome a certain flaw in their character. But without a doubt, the most interesting character was the crippled torturer Glokta. He's heinously twisted, ruthless, miserable, smart, and perhaps a softie at heart. And, for a fantasy epic, this trilogy curiously did NOT come with a map (but then again, it wasn't really necessary either).