#102 The Uplift War by David Brin

This happens to be a reread for me for my book club. I could remember the highlights and how it ends but rereading it was a lot of fun. Good SF read and I can't wait to go ahead and read the rest of the books in 2012 and those will all be new reads for me. 

 

Not too bad for me for the year

I read 108 books and only 5  books behind reviewing for my blog. I think that is a new record for me. As usual I will be post dating them in the LJ and I will pop a note up for anyone to hop back to them if they are so inclined. 

#103 Down These Strange Streets by George R.R. Martin (Editor), Gardner R. Dozois(Editor)

A really nice short story anthology that doesn't seem to have all the usual suspects that you find in a lot of urban fantasy collections. I thought this gave a really good sampling of lots of good writers. 

#104 Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich

I admit I read this hoping against hope that Stephanie would finally decide Ranger or Joe. What the reader gets is an off book Hawaii vacation that had crazy things happen and the story only gets slowly doled out to the reader as she deals with the fallout of her trip. Of course there is no final decision and it just has to come to a decision sometime soon. 

                             

#105 Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

I liked this one just as much as the first one in the series. You really feel like he is in London and the action for the most part stays in the main part of the series. Peter does the usual noir mystery mistake in this book and falls for the wrong woman but he survives to tell the tale in the end. I can't wait for the next book that should be coming out shortly. 

 

#106 Black Night by Christina Henry

I read this back in October but since the title is almost the same as the first book I didn't log it in here on LJ. I only noticed it missing once I realized my numbers were not jiving up to what GoodReads had listed. 

I liked the book and will keep my eye out for the next one. The story arc started in the first book is continued along and of course there is no answer to all the love interests that Maddie has thanks in part to being who she is descended from. Good fun light read. 

#107 Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

I had gotten an ARC of this and actually got to meet the author way back in the year and even reading the first few pages I didn't get back to it until the holidays. I will warn readers upfront that this is the first of several books. I was a bit irked that it ended with a to be continued. His version of Hell is a bit different and after a while I really didn't care for the protagonist all that much since she seemed to handle finding herself in Hell fairly easy to deal with. 

I might read the rest of the story after all the books come out but if I don't I will not feel too bad about it. 

 

#108 The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

The full title is The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum. I had taken this out of the library several times but never started it. I finally got to sit down and read this in almost one complete sitting and wow was it great. It made me miss chemistry since she goes into detail of the tests that they devise to find the poisons that killed the various victims. Also due to NYC's chief medical examiner's crusade against Prohibition because of the methyl alcohol deaths you get a lot of the politics of the day and the politics of  Prohibition tossed in for good measure. A very interesting read and well researched with lots of footnotes to the source material.