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Rocket Man was a very enjoyable story. It centers around Dale, husband and father of two. Dale is stuck in the burbs, hating every minute of it. His idea was to get out of the city and live the idyllic country life. This is not what he ended up with. instead, his house is close to foreclosure, bills are piling up, and his daughter cries at the drop of a pin. Dale is an author in a slump. His first few novels are published but he has had nothing new in four years. He fights with his wife, his boy seems to hate him, and the cops keep stopping blaming him for a sign that was cut down illegally in their neighborhood. When Dale’s father enters the book, everything gets far more interesting than expected. I will let you make up your own mind when you read the first chapter as Dale off-roads an SUV full of boy scouts through an field while drinking a bloody mary behind the wheel (hair of the dog), purely because he did not want to go the long way home. The last 3 pages of this book made my he...

Simply put, this book was fairly amazing. Who would have thought you could read a whole book about Rifles and find it interesting from beginning to end. Not I. From the origin of the musket, the riffling process where its name comes from, to the historical movements influenced by its use,  t his reads like a meandering plotline with no standardized characters. I t was very rare when I felt like I was slogging through a text book, and more often like I was watching a well written history channel segment. Minus the commercials of course :) This review is based on a book kindly provided for free by the publisher or author. Please check my FTC Douche-claimer for details regarding this disclaimer’s existence.

Chelsea Cain has become one of my favorite authors over the last year. I have read a great number of her books, and have even considered getting a newspaper subscription so I can keep up with her more day to day writings as a columnist at The Oregonian. I lucked into an Advance Reader Copy of this book. By 'lucked', I mean that I hit up every source I knew which was giving away copies and threw myself in the pot. I waited patiently through all of July, crossing my fingers and hoping. Though my fingers are stiff, I guess it worked. The better part of a month before public release, I received a glorious copy. When it arrived in my cubicle at work, I opened the package and felt a little tug in my blood box. Evil at Heart (Chelsea Cain) Series: Archie Sheridan & Gretchen Lowell (Book 3) 320 pages Minotaur Books ISBN-10: 0312946783 ISBN-13: 978-0312946784 Other books in this series include HeartSick and SweetHeart, each of which includes key characters Archie Sheri...

William Gibson’s Burning Chrome, 1986 Public transit actually made this a more enjoyable read than I would otherwise think. It is not so much that the bumping and swerving of bus drivers, or the low pitched drone of a rail system enhanced the book. Instead, there was more that there was time to mull it over. A couple weeks back, I finished reading Burning Chrome on my way to work. When finished, I was surprisingly lucky that I did not have a “back up book” with me. It is very rare that i do not have a second book available to me. In this case, it had slipped my mind that I would be finished soon. Half of the last story was left when I just gave up. When i arrived at work, I handed the book to a coworker who wanted to read it and wrote it off as unfinishable. As far as collections of short stories go, I tend to stay away from them. They seem like teases to a larger plot line, the story that i would prefer to read. They often seem either too rushed to make a point, or too slow and thus m...

1961 Hardcover Viking Press edition. Jenn’s grandparents passed her a variety of books recently, which included a set of hardcover Steinbeck. Each book is a tan color with smooth faux leather and John Steinbeck imprinted into the front. Deciding to read this was one of the best moves i have made in a long time. I have always felt that Steinbeck was hit or miss. some of his work is easy. Others can never cath my attention enough to be able to make it worth the time. Reading Discontent, i thought at first i would be working with the latter of the two choices. I was dead wrong on this. As Steinbeck’s last work published before his death, it is a work worthy of the title “Literary Classic” that it is often assigned. Ethan comes from money. The founders of New Baytown included his family. Whalers and supposed pirates, their fortunes were amassed over generations. through a series of bad decisions and bad advice, Ethan’s father loses it all. Ethan finds himself stuck working as a clerk at a ...