Book 86: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

I found this bad boy at Goodwill before Halloween. I remember a lot of these from when I was little.  The stories are short and obviously for people much younger than me, but a couple still had a kick.  Of course the main reason to have this book is for the absolutely creepy artwork.  I don't know the full reason, but new versions do not use these same amazing drawings.  That's a shame.  Kids today don't know what they are missing.

Book 83: Super Human by Michael Carroll

In the near future, there are super heroes and super villains.  One group is trying to bring back a serious villain who died several thousand years ago.  They create a virus that wipes takes down any adults.  It's left up to a few teenage heroes (powered and not) to defeat the bad guys and save the adults.

Quick YA book.  My 10 year old actually read this at the same time.  He really enjoyed it.  I did too, but it's definitely aimed at that young reader demo.

Book 82: The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

I really liked this one.  Everyone in the town of Midwich falls into a deep sleep.  Anyone who enters the town borders also immediately passes out.  After a day or so, they wake up and all the women are pregnant.  After the initial shock they realize something odd is happening, and decide to go through everything as a community.  The children are all born, but they are strange.  The mothers feel little or no love for the kids who all seem to share their thoughts.  The book continues on revealing how the British government deals with the situation and how the children grow.

This is a pretty well known book.  It spawned a couple movie versions called Village of the Damned.  An easy read, it was published in 1957, so comes across as a pretty straightforward story.

Book 81: The House by Bentley Little

There is a house(s?) that protect our dimension from other freaky worlds.  People have to live in those houses to prevent leaks from coming through.  Some forces want this bleeding through to happen, so they try to keep people out.  Several adults lived in different versions of the house when they were children.  They all had traumatic things occur there and they all eventually blocked it from their memories and moved on with their lives.  They all get pulled back in and have to fight the forces that are trying to destroy everything.

I wasn't a huge fan of this book.  The main bad character is waaay too creepy/pervy/gross for me.  Maybe I'm mellowing out in my old age, but it just made me uncomfortable.  Bentley Little has that effect on me though.  All of his books have made me feel that weird unsettled feeling.

Book 75: The Black Company by Glen Cook

I had read this a few years ago and reread it on vacation this year.  A group of mercenaries ends up working for the "bad" guys in a fantasy setting.  The people they work for would typically be the villains in any other story, so it gives this an interesting twist.  The Black Company tries to do the job they are getting paid for and it can lead to interesting stories.  There are quite a few more stories involving this group.  I'll get to them eventually.

Book 74: The Affair by Lee Child

Typically awesome Jack Reacher.  You can't go wrong with these for simple escapist reading.

Book 73:Bad Billy by Jimmy Pudge

This is more of a short story, but it was pretty intense.  Billy is a messed up kid who ends up being raised in horrible conditions.  One day he breaks free from his home and goes on a rampage.  Then all kinds of bad stuff happens.  It's almost like the author had too many ideas in his head, so he put everything into this story.  It is a horror story so it does have some gore (well, a lot), but I really enjoyed it.

Book 72: To Ride Pegasus by Anne McCaffrey

This is a book of 4 stories all centered around the premise that certain people have psionic skills or Talents.  There are various talents and they can be measured and discovered by scientific means.  The books are about about what would happen then when these things were proven beyond a doubt to exist.  How would regular people react?  How would things like seeing visions that will come true effect the real world?  Can accidents be prevented if someone gets a brief flash a few hours before it will occur?  What if they don't stop the accident?  Is the person with the vision accountable for not preventing it then?

Apparently these stories have a couple of follow up books to form the Talents trilogy and somehow tie into the Tower and Hive series.  I haven't read any of those, but maybe someday.  You can really feel the late 60's sci-fi vibes while reading these books.  That can be cool, but it's not a hook for me here.  Actually, the only reason  I read this was because I was trying to find a book I remember from when I was young.  It involved people with psionic abilities like these folks.  There was a man and he showed his powers to a boy by killing some crows by thinking them dead.  I thought it was by McCaffrey and this seemed like the logical place where that scene would have happened, but it wasn't in this book.  Ah well, I'll find it someday.   

Book 71: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

I don't read a ton of non-fiction, but one day I was doing some wikipedia surfing and I stumbled across this page.  I rushed around to find this book and devoured it.  It's about a expedition to climb Mt. Everest in 1996 where a number of people got caught in a freak storm just as they were reaching the summit.  A terrible tragedy makes for a very engrossing book.  I have no real interest in mountaineering or climbing or whatever the proper terminology is, but the human-side of this whole mess is pretty captivating.

Book 70: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

I enjoyed this book, but it took me forever to finish it.  I kept finding break points and then I would put it down for a few weeks, but once I opened it again, I would read pretty steadily for a few days until I got to another good stopping point. Man finds a way to go back in time and is tasked with stopping the Kennedy assassination. Probably not surprising, but I really enjoyed the characters in this book, and actually preferred the romantic plot to the sci-fi one.  Definitely recommended.

Book 69.5: Second Son by Lee Child

A short Jack Reacher story.  It's set when Reacher is young and his family gets stationed in Japan.  He has to solve a couple of mysteries as well as prove to the other Army brats that he isn't someone to mess around with.

Book 69: Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Jack Reacher book 16 or so.  Jack stumbles onto a town where one family pretty much monopolizes everything.  He encounters a case of spousal abuse, gets involved and the mystery starts from there.  The creepy family has a creepy past and they do some creepy stuff.  Jack gets tangled up in it all and has to fix the problems because he's just that kind of a guy.  Typical, but man, I love these things.

Book 68: Hell House by Richard Matheson

This is probably my favorite haunted house book.  Some old dude pays a noted paranormal investigator to stay at the most famous haunted house in the country.  The investigator is your typical scientific skeptic who thinks it can all be explained away by science, not ghosts.  He brings along his wife who is pretty sheltered, a famous psychic lady, and another psychic who, when he was a boy was the only survivor of a previous attempt to study the house.  They get into your typical haunted house type of stuff where they learn about the history and who is haunting the house.  Some make it out and some don't.  Nothing earth shattering, but it's a good solid story by a good writer.

Book 67: The Mystery Knight by George RR Martin

This wasn't a full book, but I have to count something since my reading level has been so poor this year.  Another Dunk and Egg novella.  I almost prefer these stories because they are clean and each one resolves.  It's interesting to see some of the Westeros history.  This one tied into the Blackfyre rebellion and the aftermath.  It's also intriguing then to hear what happens to Duncan and Aegon in the main series.  Some sort of tragedy occurs to end the king's reign.  Hopefully it'll be revealed at some point how they got there and exactly what goes down. 

Book 66: A Dance With Dragons by George RR Martin

Finally, the continuation of A Song of Ice and Fire.  Took me a few months to read the whole thing.  Again it leaves everyone hanging on cliffhangers and with Mr. Martin's track record, who knows how long it'll be before the stories are picked up again?

But it's the same quality writing and almost everyone gets their stories moved forward (no Sansa?).  I was tempted to not read it since it had been 5 years since the last book and there are at least 2 more coming, but I caved.  It really is an awesome series, but the wait is hard to bear.

Book 65: Off Season by Jack Ketchum

This was written in 1980 or else I might have expected it was a result of someone copying the violence and gore from Hostel or Saw. Definitely a "torture porn" book.  Some friends get together and then are terrorized by inbred cannibals.  I hear it was pretty controversial when it was first released, but reading it for the first time in 2011, it's nothing I haven't seen before.  It was a pretty quick read, but I wouldn't read this one again.  Nothing really got me too engaged.

Book 64: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

The finale of the Hunger Games trilogy. I guess when you set up a big oppressive government for the people to hate, you have to get around to addressing the issue. I didn't think this was as strong as the other two, but it's where the story had to go, I suppose. The characters that you care about are either mangled or they turn into whiners and they get harder to root for. I could see myself rereading either of the first two books someday, but I need to remember to pass on this one.

Book 63: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I wasn't sure where she would go with this book, but she surprised me with another edition of the Hunger Games. I would say this one was just as good aa the first.

Book 62: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

After not reading much for six months, I burned through this entire trilogy in a little over a week. Very easy reading. This book does the world building and does it well. I was invested in seeing how the games would end.

Book 61: To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams

Resolution of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy. This is one of my favorite fantasy series of all time. It may be a little stock but it's done well and you get engaged with most of the characters. I'll reread this again in a few years because it's in my top ten books.