Words On Wednesday

I'm getting a new Kindle for my birthday and I wanted to detail how I've been preparing for that. I had a Kindle 4th Generation that a coworker gave me back in April 2020. His family recently upgraded to Kindle Paperwhite devices, and since nobody was using that old Kindle, he offered it to me. I've picked up a lot of his hand-me-downs through the years, but that one was one of my favorites. Thanks, Matt! While I had that Kindle, I would frequently  sync library books from Overdrive  and then turn on airplane mode so I could keep those books indefinitely. It was a convenient system for hanging onto books for longer than an intended checkout period, but it wasn't perfect. I would occasionally check out large batches of books, sync them all at once, and then go offline so I could have some options available. If I ever wanted a different book, however, I had to resync and I would lose the books that had expired at that point. Alas, it did give me the capability to hang ont...

Fourth Wing isn't what I expected when it was recommended to me by my favorite librarian, but I'm not mad about it. I love new book recommendations. When someone recommends a book to you, it says a lot about them. Sometimes the book doesn't fit my personal preference, but I try to give an honest attempt at any book that gets recommended to me. This is especially true for people like librarians, who tend to read a lot of books. When the librarian recommended Fourth Wing, it moved immediately to to the top of my reading list. Unfortunately, it was already at the top of a lot of other people's reading list. The five copies of the audiobook that my local library had in circulation were already heavily requested. It took several weeks before I was able to get my digital hands on it. Near the beginning, Fourth Wing comes across like pretty standard fare high fantasy fiction. There's a little drama, plenty of magic and dragons as one would expect, and just the general feel...

When I recently wanted to revisit the Ender's Game series, the first book wasn't immediately available in audiobook form from the library, but they did have "A War of Gifts." I'm not one to read interim novellas while I'm working through a series for the first time, but I read the first four books of Ender's Game years ago and really enjoyed it. With a pretty good familiarity of the series, I figured it might be a good time to read one of those shorter in-between stories. As I have never officially covered "Ender's Game" or its series, I think it's important to provide context there. The first book is incredible, and I would easily recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction. The second book, "Speaker for the Dead," is an excellent follow up to Battle School and showcases Ender's growth. Now... "Xenocide" is kinda awful. Perhaps it isn't bad on its own, but within the series, it is clearly the weak link. ...

Coming up on spooky season, I was looking for a new horror book to listen to. I came across a list of book recommendations from someone who claimed to love horror books and figured that was probably a good starting point. I'm a little late to the punch, since it's now November, but it can be my recommendation for NEXT October, or any time you're in a spooky mood. I skimmed through the list, giving a quick pass through each of the descriptions. Iain Reid’s "I’m Thinking of Ending Things" was quickly dismissed, after a Netflix adaptation baited me into listening to Thirteen Reasons Why and I hated it. Agustina Bazterrica's "Tender is the Flesh" sounded interesting, especially as that blogger's MOST disturbing book, but it was only available from the local library as an e-book, not an audiobook. I started Paul Tremblay's "The Cabin at the End of the World," but the narration was AWFUL. Going back to the list, I noticed "Devoluti...

My kids have been reading the Wings of Fire series, so I decided to pick up the first book and see how it was. Dragons are cool and I like high fantasy, so it seemed like a decent option in the young adult fiction realm. The general premise as described by the prophecy itself is that five dragons of destiny will come forward to end the war. It's maybe a little cliché, but I think high fantasy gets a pass for that in a lot of cases. A group of unlikely heroes bands together to do something that seems impossible. It's a concept we've heard countless times before, and the quality of the work comes down to the execution. One curiosity with Sutherland's presentation is the anthropomorphism of dragons and the  zoomorphism  (I had to look that one up) of humans. The dragons talk in plain English, they have cultures in a complex and nuanced society, they ARE the main characters. Humans (or "scavengers" as they are called in this book) appear in some capacity, usually ...

After a sequence of self-improvement and management books, I wanted a breather book; something that didn't take a lot of thought or attention to process, and ESPECIALLY something that didn't require input or response from me. I didn't really want to jump into a new series that would require me to continue with another few books for the full picture. In fact, I didn't want fiction at all. I looked into my library's catalogue of audiobooks for titles related to video games, just as a starting point. "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels" came up, and it seemed to fit all those conditions. The general formula of the book is that each chapter picks a video game, most of which are extremely well known and had significant market presence, and talk through some of the struggles the team went through during the planning and development process. On the tail end of the process, it's easy to think that creators KNEW what a success their game would be from beginning to end. H...

I've been going through manager training at work and for our next training session, we were asked to read 1 book from a list of options prepare three takeaways. I ended up reading "The First 90 Days," and it seemed like the best way to really internalize the content would be to write a book report about it. The list was standard fare management topics from well-known authors. Any one would have been adequate, and I could probably even have suggested " The Five Dysfunctions of a Team " or " Extreme Ownership " if I didn't want to read a new book, but I figured it would be more true to the spirit of the assignment to read something unfamiliar to me and try to gain new skills and understanding. From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership – Kevin Eikenberry The First Time Manager – Jim McCormick Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don’t – L. David Marquet Primed to Perform: How to Buil...

I tend to avoid trending books and BookTok recommendations, but I was drawn to "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher out of a contrarian mood. I read an article that South Carolina recently became the state with the greatest number of banned books. Always one to oppose the banning of books and support the reading of banned books, I decided to look up some of the most banned books in the United States. The full list is included at the end for posterity. If you're looking for something to read, it's a good place to start. The first on the list, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," seemed like a decent place to start but my local library didn't have it in circulation as an audio book. The second book (or rather, series) was "Captain Underpants." I'm not opposed to reading books intended for children , but I wasn't committing to an entire series, and the fact that "Captain Underpants" even made this list is frankly as...

In the wake of Pope Francis's passing, I decided to listen to one of his books in his memory. Like many of my reading decisions, I picked this one up because it was the only audiobook that my local library had available from Pope Francis. At just 5 hours, it seemed like a very digestible approach to the theology and thoughts of the most cultural-friendly Pope that I can remember. Ten-plus years ago, I probably wouldn't have even touched this book. I was much more hostile to Catholicism due to the influence of my church family at the time. In my old age, and having worked with several devout Catholics, I've changed my opinion substantially. You can't really have a theological discussion with someone if you don't actually know what they believe, and Catholicism is so closely related to Protestant Christianity, I was doing myself a disservice to not at least investigate at a cursory level. I won't get into the intricacies of Catholicism vs Protestantism, although t...