What I’ve been reading in 2023

Following up from 2023 in books, where I focused on what the changes to my reading habits did to the statistics, this journal entry is more about what I’ve been reading. In particular, those I consider most worth mentioning 😁.

Best books I’ve read in 2023

The number one best book I’ve read this year, is definitely part one of the Dark Lord of the Farmstead. It’s a relatively wholesome and romantic story that tugs at the ol’ heartstrings while making you laugh. I literally binge read it in like two nights or something. I laughed a lot, smiled a lot, and it almost made me cry. It was great.

The next best book that I’ve read is arguably Holdouts, or part two of The Vixen War Bride Series. In part two, we see the paths of our hero and heroine cross and intersect wonderfully as “Maybe it’ll be peaceful” turns into the opportunity for a tragedy. What made this the best in the series for me, is Ramirez and Alzoria. These are both supporting characters whose capture kicks the story into gear for the main characters, and quite frankly I love that Ramirez is very much true to himself no matter the situation they find themselves in. Part two is his moment to shine.

Honorable mention also goes to Dead Tired, which made me laugh so much that if I would include it under “Best books …” if I had the inclination to pick a third best book and somehow didn’t pick another from The Vixen War Bride series. Dead Tired isn’t likely to be the most memorable book ever, but I laughed a lot and I appreciate the main character’s sense of humor. Therefore, it was one of the best books I’ve read this year because I rolled on the floor laughing my ass off (^_^).

Best series I’ve read in 2023

Definitely The Vixen War Bride series. When I came across the series in search of fresh books to read, I figured it could be an interesting read. Well, I ended up binge reading most of the books in the series. The author seems to be more well versed in American military history than most, with nods both to occupied Japan and Afghanistan. I found the characters most often the best part of the entire story. I absolutely loved the comedy caused by cultural misunderstandings and that the Va’Shen world isn’t quite like ours. As a story, there are plenty of opportunities for the plot to go in different ways and above all, I think how it plays out is based on the notion that we can indeed get along if we try to understand each other rather than fear the differences or feed our hate.

Plus, if my spirit animal was an alien fox woman: it would definitely be Sho’Nan — my favorite character. The sassy chef is one of the heroines closest friends and a rather unique personality, one that we don’t tend to see often enough in literature IMHO. Now, go read the series, shoo, shoo πŸ˜›

Most binged series I’ve started in 2023

I’ve ended up reading quite a few light novels, between my existing taste in isekai anime and fantasy I suppose that was natural. But the series that I binged the hardest on this year was The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary.

After his mercenary outfit is wiped out, Lorin finds himself becoming an adventurer and, as a side effect of being a decent guy placed in a horrible situation when his temporary party is wiped out by goblins, ends up indebted to the demonic priest Lapis. The misadventures of Lorin and Lapis are so entertaining that I basically binge read every volume I could get my hands on, and I quite enjoyed the colorful characters as well as the antics they get involved in.

The print version of volume 9 is expected in June, which means I’ll likely be groaning until at least then, wanting the Kindle version to receive a release target date.

Series I’m most looking forward to continue in 2024

There are plenty of series that I’ve been reading over the past couple years as new volumes are released or as I cycle back and return to reading the next volume. But aside from the most binged series above 😁, there’s a few that I’ve started this year and look forward to continuing in the new year. But one of these stands out a bit higher than the rest.

The Calamitous Bob was a book that I had bought, started the first few chapters, and drifted off for some months. When I came back to it again and actually started to read it, I found its whacky sense of humor grew on me. Viviane ends up in an undead holocaust zone after her soul is transmuted into another world, thanks to a deity who cheated on his goddess and needed to find another world to hide in until the rage passes.

So we end up with poor Viv, stuck in the relic of a long dead empire with barely the hair on her head and undead horrors lumbering all about the destroyed imperial city. If she doesn’t find water, she’ll die. If she doesn’t find a way out of the dead zone, she’ll die. There’s a lot of problems to overcome. Combine this with an experimental strike Golem who christens her the last heir to the empire to subvert his programming to save them both, and the pronunciation problems of a language that doesn’t have sounds for “Vivienne”, she becomes the Princess Bob and sets out across the dead lands in search of survival and a means to heal her injured soul.

Did I mention that she tames a young dragon and becomes a mage specializing in black mana? Yep. From a French combat medic to the unexpected leader of a city state bordering the dead lands, it’s a wild, whacky, and amusing adventure well suited to the long form serial. I’m also pretty sure the author is a little crazy, but the story makes me go squeee.

Most likely, I’ll be starting both part 3 of Dark Lord of the Farmstead and book 4 of The Calamitous Bob before the year is out, but may not finish them until January. Perhaps also Dead Tired II, which was just released. Hmm.

2023 in books

Since November, I’ve been loosely tracking my Kindle reading based on three metrics: books purchased, read, and started. Partly, because I’ve wanted to see how my habits changing has influenced my reading.

This year’s goal, has been read a little something every day; for which reading insights currently gives me a street of 351 days in a row of reading since January, which isn’t too shabby on the 364th day of the year; I’ve missed one day since 2023-01-01 according the insights, thus the streak count.

Amazon’s reading insights view, shows me has having read 67 titles this year and my spreadsheet has 64. I’ll probably finish another book or two before January 1st. Last year when I started reading a little something every day, Amazon shows me as having read 44 titles in 2022, which is way up from a few years prior.

Here’s the summary from Reading Insights:

  • 2023 -> 67 titles read
  • 2022 -> 44 titles read
  • 2021 -> 7 titles read
  • 2020 -> 5 titles read
  • 2019 -> 10 titles read

As you can see, the change from reading whenever it crosses my mind to always read something, has made a significant impact upon my reading habits in terms of how many books I finish reading.

Part of what has fueled this has been another change in my habits. Classically, I was a sequential reader. I would read one book from start to finish before moving onto the next, and I still often do when it’s particularly enjoyable. But this year and last, I have tried having a small handful of books to switch between as I care. I might read a few chapters of one then another, or I might read one for a few nights and then switch to another book. I find that this has removed the bottleneck that sometimes, there will be a lull in reading because I don’t feel like reading that right now.

Amazon’s insights do not track books that I’ve started reading but never finished. My spreadsheet tries to, which gives me 15 books, one of which is likely to be finished by the end of the year. That goes to show that there are books, that sometimes fall off my multi-book reading habit and some that I just lose interest in. Looking at the list of started but not finished, a large portion are whatever volume I left off at in some long running serial.

Which brings me to the topic of what I’ve been reading, but I think that will be a subject for a separate journal entry, as this one is getting rather lengthly.

One more number for the statistics before I go: the number of books purchased. There’s two points of value there, one is how much I’ve spent on books, which frankly I refuse to do the math. Between Kindle Rewards Beta and my credit card’s rewards points, it would be a chore to compute and honestly I’ll leave it at my wild estimate, and say it’s likely the most I’ve spent on books since I ran out of bookshelves as a teenager :P.

The other point of value, i.e., my reason for recording this stat: is how many books did I buy, but never read? And how many books did I buy but never finish? That third metric is necessary to use the former two to answer those questions.

My spreadsheet shows me 106 books purchased, which is at least one out of date because I didn’t notice a pre-order landing two weeks ago. And I’ve kinda stopped noting pre-orders on the spread sheet, because the remaining ones are all due next year.

  • Books purchased: 106
  • Books read: 64 (spreadsheet), 67 (reading insights)
  • Books started: 15

From this I can tell that when I’ve bought a book this year, there was about a 60% to 65% chance that I went on to finish reading it. Not great, not terrible, unless you’ve ever seen my Netflix watchlist :P. Now combine the books started: there was a 75% to 78% chance that I started reading a book that I purchased instead of it getting lost in my library view.

Scanning at the list, something that makes it less concerning is the contents of that list. Yes, there are some books that I started reading and just lost interest in. But most of the started and didn’t finish? These are mostly volume ‘n’ of some long running serial, some epic that takes longer than a trilogy or two to read, and the occasional non-fiction that’s less a read it cover to cover and more a read chapters you care about.

But let’s save that for the next entry ^_^.

Catching up with Tensura

It’s taken a while to pivot from Baldur’s Gate 3 marathoning to other things, like cleaning and organizing my garage πŸ˜…. But one of those pivots has been ripping the Blu-rays I bought for Christmas and feeding them through Handbrake after MakeMKV is complete. Two of the things I bought for Christmas was season 2 of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (aka Tensura) parts 1 and 2, and The Sleepy Princess of Demon Castle. The former being a series I’m especially fond of and the latter a series that I find especially amusing.

Deciding to splurge on the special edition of Tensura season 2, I decided to finally thumb through the booklet that came with the part 2 disc set. I had gone through the art cards on Christmas, but filed the booklet for later. Concept art, information, interviews, etc. Quite a nice value add IMHO.

The part that surprised me most however was the interview at the end with Fuse sensei, the author of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Much to my surprise, he had a different plan for the demon lord awaking arc that became featured in season two of the anime. A vital part of Rimuru’s evolution into a demon lord, revolves around Falmouth’s attack on Tempest killing a hundred of his people, including his secretary Shion who died defending their people. Having a roughly 3.14 percent chance of resurrecting them is what leads to Rimuru becoming a demon lord, and quite frankly, Shion is integral to the entire story arc. Doubtless, Rimuru would still do anything to save his people but it’s Shion’s death that makes the resurrection business so compelling as a story.

From having browsed the wiki, I had learned of Shion’s fate well in advance of reaching that part of the novels, or even season two of the anime. Otherwise I would likely have been very pissed at that leaping off point in the anime’s air dates. What I didn’t know, is Fuse had different plans for what was to follow. Apparently, people were to become mistrustful of Rimuru leading to a bad end to the series where Shion is killed again. But thanks to reader feedback (and the knowledge that he would be called a demon :D), Fuse sensei apparently decided to take a different tack and that’s part of why Tensura carries on considerably longer.

As much as I’ve enjoyed the series’ many arcs, and found Shion’s return to be one of the better “Serious” sides of the series. I think, if Fuse sensei had gone with his original direction, he would have found a lot of anger — I sure as hell would be pissed, and quite frankly, I’ve tried not to grok at what lays too much further ahead in the series, because there’s a whole lot of novels to catch up on!

On the flip side, this makes me think about Team Reborn, or the Purple Victory Team made up of the one hundred resurrectees. Kind of like a royal guard under the command of Rimuru’s Number One Secretary and Personal Body Guard, aka Shion. I kind of imagine if we lost Shion again for a bad end to the series…well, a bunch of people in purple would be quite upset with our dear author. My thought at reading about this in the booklet’s end interview was, “I’d throw a sock at him” πŸ˜‚ and being very glad that Fuse sensei apparently considers reader feedback.

To say that Shion is my favorite character in Tensura would be fair. I’ve now named four devices after characters in the series (Rimuru – a demon lord class desktop, Veldora – it’s stronger big bro, Benimaru – a red iPhone, and most recently, Shion my laptop). In naming my laptop Shion, there were kind of three factors to that. One of course, is the favorite character meets most used devices factor. Another is that my laptop kind of functions much like a secretary to my desktop, which happened to be named Rimuru. And of course, thirdly there’s the fact that the “Midnight” shade of Apple’s M2 MacBook Air reminded me of Shion’s stylish purple business suit.

So, yeah, I’m quite fond of the character 😝

What harm ever came from reading a book?

Sometimes games are hilarious, even if unintentionally. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3, I managed to make three savings throws in a row (DC 10, 15, 20) without being cursed by the Necromancy of Thay….and the game crashed as I try to stuff the book into a storage backpack.

Last night, I had encountered coffins while exploring an apothecary’s cellar, and lo and behold behind a secret passage I found some coffins! Thinking it must be vampires, I swapped one of my party mates for our resident vampire and went to investigate thinking he might offer some insight or gain som inspiration. Nah, it wasn’t vampires.

Skeleton leapt out of the box and soon a whole bunch of skelemen go running around triggering coffins and marching around like some kind of romanized dragur and I’m like what the fuck. And then I found the contents of the last coffin, which included a rock with “Nut Buster” scratched on it in claw marks, a dagger named the poo scraper that has clearly seen worse things than the abyss, and a skull named friend that was creatively used for a Cast Away reference. Then after a visit to a magic mirror full of riddles, and maybe a Harry Potter reference, I found the necromancer’s lab. Complete with a very Necronomicon inspired book behind a locked and trapped door, and looked it up on the wiki. Apparently you read it and get a perm boon or cursed for like fifty rolls or something.

At that point, I said screw it and decided to go to bed. Because I’m not such a fool as to ignore an obvious Evil Dead reference after what happened with the skeletons! And turns out, after a bit more of questing this morning it was worth while to go battle the spider to get the key to the book. Because who doesn’t want to fight teleporting, poison spewing spiders the size of Grog and their matriarch the size of a semi who summons swarms of spiders the size of small dogs!?! But compared to when I found their lair on my way to the goblin camp the first time, it was more “What the fuck did we just fight through” and less sucidal thanks to the level progression.

Having taken a lunch break and time to do other things, I eventually headed back to my various quest antics. And decided as I start wrapping up for the night to make a save point and try the book. When the game crashed, I laughed. When it asked to verify files because it crashed so hard, I really, really laughed πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€

New record or maybe just another notch

The real problem with reading at night, is sometimes you read for a few minutes and fall asleep and sometimes you read a 235 page book in one sitting and realize you forgot to sleep πŸ˜…

Attrition in charging

Recently, I found myself with a fair bit of rewards points at a certain electronics store and they’re expiring. But the only thing in that price range that I’d typically acquire there, is an Alexa. Which, to be honest I may get another one someday just to have one in my study. But not planning on that.

Tonight, I’ve found an unexpected solution that takes out two birds with one stone. See, I have basically two things floating around that use MicroUSB-B as the method of charging. Maybe three if I’m forgetting something. And let’s be honest, one of those things is a plant shaped lamp that I bought for decoration, not lighting, lol.

Four years ago when I last needed a pair of headphones, I opted to go wireless and my only complaint over time has been the MicroUSB charging. At the time, this was a negative but for the price I was willing to put up with the older charger cable. These are now that “Dang it, go fetch a cable” kind of device in my USB-C based world, and after several years the battery surely isn’t lasting any longer than when it was brand new.

Combination: rewards points plus sale price equal: 16 dollars for a decent pair of Sony headphones. Conveniently with USB-C charging. The one thing that my old MPow pair lacks. And ya know what? For $16, it’s worth it to just not need to go fetch a MicroUSB cable anymore!

Books are like a queue

Remind me, to never go looking at the suggested reading. Especially when I’ve worked through most of my immediate reading set :-/.

Perhaps it’s actually worse with the Kindle Rewards Beta program. In the sense, that I had enough rewards that one of the books I’ve added to my queue was almost free, and the others, well, just half refilled my rewards points ^_^.

One of my little side projects, has been building a spreadsheet of books that I’ve bought, read, or started this year. Reading Insights shows I’m about 25 pages away from having read 60 books this year, which is one off from my spreadsheet. Somewhat scarier may be how fast my queue drains, especially when stumbling onto a series that I enjoy, since books are rarely one off.

I’m not sure how much detail I’ll add to my journal when I get to the year end version of my spreadsheet. But so far, I find it interesting. For every 3 books that I’ve bought this year (including pre-orders from last year that released this year), on average I’ve read 2 of them. Of those I haven’t finished, half I started to read. Most of those unfinished books are entries in long-running series that I will likely cycle back to between now and this coming summer, and a few are more specialized; epics you don’t read quickly and informational books you read most of but don’t always care to finish.

In the long run though, I want to take a year end review of my reading for 2023. Both to see how my goals of reading something every day has affected my habits, and because I’m curious to see how the higher influx of serialized fiction has had an effect. The thing that I refuse to put in the spreadsheet however, is how much I’ve spent on books this year…lol

Normalization ftw

There’s several upsides on standardizing on cables and devices when possible. In my case, that’s been braided (i.e., tangle free) USB-C cables rated for 100W charging when the cables are long and comparable 10 Gbit/s or faster rated cables when they’re short.

One of these upsides is “Ahh, it’ll charge a laptop!” when paring a suitable charger with any of my longer cables. These cables are usually poor on data speed but superb at power delivery, which is often what I want when the desired cable is measured in meters, which is also when I really want tangle free….lol.

Another is knowing that when I grab a smaller cable, it’s going to be good enough to feed I/O devices like a NVMe based SSD or any SATA thing I’ve still got handy. Aptly, most of these short cables either came with NVMe enclosures rated for 10 Gbit/s USB connectivity or are in fact Thunderbolt 3/4 cables rated for both 40 Gbit/s connectivity and 100W charging.

Increasingly, when the cables are short I’m aiming for 40 Gbit/s + 100W unless they’re packaged with something. The downside is that Thunderbolt cables are costly and have limited cable lengths, but generally are sufficient for ‘all the USB things’ once you’ve groaned at the bill. If I find myself buying a short cable these days, I’ll save up for a Thunderbolt for future proofing because more and more of my devices support either Thunderbolt or USB at 40 Gbit/s.

For devices in general, I’ve been swinging for USB-C 10 Gbit/s for a while now. Things like motherboards, drive enclosures and external drives, USB hubs and PCI-E expansion cards are chosen based on this. This choice was made based on the rise of the NVMe external drive, and the fact that such a cable will be no problemo when pared with my older gear that maxes out at USB 3.0 or SATA speeds.

Similarly for chargers, the rare time that I buy a charger, I’ve generally aimed for the 90~100W scenario. In the sense that most of my devices will happily charge from a 45W or 65W charger, and the hungriest ship with a 90W charger.

Is this excessive? Not really. Why? Well, let’s see… my primary machine has 40G ports, my gaming machine has 10G ports and a card with 40G ports. SteamDeck has a 10G port and my file server has an expansion card with 10G ports.

Much like USB-A and MicroUSB-B has become relegated to specialized and rare things around here over the past decade, so has 5 Gbit/s connectivity begun to age out of the herd ;).

A most satisfying conclusion

Last night, I almost finished reading The Dark Ones and was very tempted to just skip sleeping in order to finish it in one sitting. This afternoon/evening, I managed to finish it.

The conclusion to The Vixen War Bride series is a very satisfying one, and I almost busted a gut laughing my ass off in the middle of the finale’s finale. Coincidentally, book two in the series is one of the best books I’ve read all year, but that’s the subject of a later journal entry.

During the series, it’s suggestively hinted more and more that the humans are not the “Dark Ones” that the Va’Shen believed them to be, and in the final entry, of course the dark ones actually show up! The prologue with the Neil Armstrong was superb, but much of novel deals with the resulting fall out as the Dark Ones make landfall. As human forces gather to counter an unknown enemy that’s been making like a hot knife through butter, our hero Ben is effectively left with his finger in the dam when his Rangers are tasked with channeling the ancient Spartans at Thermopylae to buy the combined joint task force the hours needed to gather their forces.

But far, far better than this is the aftermath of it all. See, our poor hero, Ben was supposed to be separating from the army as part of Reduction In Force, i.e., too many bodies, war is over, you’re done pal. When the Dark Ones show up and refugees start streaming into the village, that goes out the window, since no one is going anywhere until the Over the Rainbow arrives. After waking up in the hospital, Ben finds himself in the unique position of having somehow survived but still getting crapped on by red tape. The situation was so dire that Rangers and Va’Shen commando ended up fighting side by side, and our hero may have managed to experience what it’s like to be fed through an alien nutcracker and bombed off the map but there is always red tape.

Fortuitously, Alacea his native wife and our heroine, has her own role in the finale. Seriously, part of the woman’s job is to argue her community’s case before the Va’shen’s gods — the Va’Sh imperial court and the CJTF’s general ain’t gonna win that argument (^_^).

The imperial official’s internal thoughts, are especially hilarious during the meeting between the emperor’s representative and the human general, and it is a beautiful twisting of Va’Shen honor and their saving face that has caused the emperor to declare Ben a Va’Sh citizen and other virtues for having Just Saved All Their Asses. Which leads to Ben also having to export a certain general officer who May Have Fucked Up Big Time ™ into letting him be out processed there on Va’Sh, saving the U.S. government the few billion dollars it would take too ship him home for the rubber stamping only for Ben to have to fight his way back to Va’Sh and Alacea.

Sho’Nan, the sassy chef, “The one who feeds,” continues to be her awesome self when Ben Gibson returns the village and needs to speak to the chieftain Kasshas and the Na’Sha Alacea about joining the community, and Sho’Nan introduces him to the whole council as some vagrant who can’t even speak properly 🀣. Without a doubt, Sho’Nan is my favorite character throughout the series along with John Ramirez, perhaps the two single most entertaining goons, I mean, supporting characters, in the entire series!

Needless to say, things get crazy when Ben comes before the council and Alacea looses her shit in excitement at her husband’s return, but we are treated to a superb finish as the two are finally reunited. It’s one of the more satisfying endings I’ve read to a sci-fi series.