(1977) Originally serialized in Blue Book magazine in 1937, this is less a novel than a collection of 6 short adventures featuring Chester's Tarzan-ish character Kioga the Snow-Hawk in the lost world Nato'wa, a sort of Native American homeland above the Arctic circle. Like Tarzan, there's excellent adventure here but it's difficult to read uncritically today, with its language of "civilized" and "savage" and valorization of whiteness.

(2006) It's a horror novel of the kind I call "magic psycho," where no supernatural element is obviously intended, but the monster is a psychopath for whom the usual laws of common sense and physics are relaxed without explanation, as if being crazy were a superpower. I dislike magic psycho books, so am not a reliable judge of whether this is a good one. YMMV.

This was a #ReadYourKindle book for July.

(1994) Unpopular opinion, but it didn't work for me: too slow, too bloated, too many subplots that go nowhere. It's a legal drama following the legal maneuvers of an unpleasant old bigot and his lawyer grandson who represents him, as they await his execution for a terrorist bombing. It's an extended meditation on Southern history and on the death penalty.Grisham is against it. So am I and for similar reasons, but I just found the book exhausting

The decision to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

(1955) in need of a job, Ted Benteley pledges his fealty to the Quizmaster, the most powerful man on the planet. Right afterward, he learns that his new employer is the *former* Quizmaster and his first task is deposing the new one. But that makes the plot sound straightforward when really it's a surreal mix of speculative civics, game theory, telepathy, body switching, drugs, and a lost philosopher in space. It's an exuberant mess, and I dug it.

(1966) "Distress Calls From the Void"

The Terrans' work to establish a base in Andro-Beta is interrupted by a psychic cry of pain, so strong that it overwhelms the telepaths. It turns out the distress signals come from a planet in intergalactic space, whose surface is covered by a massive bioplasma under attack by robotic enemies. It's an interlude to the current story arc that revisits an old one ("The Posbis") and I'm here for it.

With the #readYourKindle picks, I can fill out my #BookSpinBingo card for July. Pretty sure I see my first bingo already.

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

Here's are my #readYourKindle picks for July.

Thanks @CBee !

My #BookSpin and #DoubleSpin reads. Space opera serial, legal thriller bestseller ... July looks like frothy fun.

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

And here's my #ReadYourKindle list for July: 20 roughly random picks from Unread Kindle Mountain

Thanks for hosting @CBee !

And here's my #BookSpin #DoubleSpin #BookSpinBingo list for July.

Good luck everybody! And thanks for hosting @TheAromaofBooks

My reading month still wasn't as productive as Is have liked, but I decided I was going to get a dingdang #BookSpinBingo even if I only read 5 things in June.

Mission accomplished, and ready for July.

@TheAromaofBooks

(1960) The 13th adventure in the "3 Investigators" series of juvenile mysteries has Jupiter, Pete, and Bob visit a carnival with a disturbing streak of bad luck, investigate a suspicious man obsessed with acquiring stuffed cats, and stumble across an unsolved bank robbery. It delivers pretty much what you want from a T3I mystery.

(2015) Here's a collection of interconnected stories by indie authors, all set in the same mid-apocalyptic world where a genetically engineered plague rages. The stories are just fine, without any real standouts. But I love where it comes from: it's produced by "Band of Dystopia" an online community of writers and readers who seem lovely, and it seems to be a labor more of passion than commerce. For that I'll call it a pick

#ReadYourKindle

(1961) Cal Truent is a soldier in Earth's interplanetary military service, when he is involved in a combat encounter that leaves him wounded and with no memory of what happened. Discharged from military service, he joins the Contact Service, charged with building peaceful relations with former enemies. It's an interesting response to Starship Troopers, but an over-earnest, unengaging one -- too bad, because I'm sympathetic to the message.

(2022) Sometime in the near future a plague kills all human males. Sometime later women have created new social structures more peaceful, just, and sustainable than before. Then without explanation a man appears on a London Street, lost and disoriented. It's an interesting premise but Vázquez spends so much of her limited space on relationship drama between the protagonist and her wife, that too many questions are left unanswered and even unasked

(1991) Second in Cornwell's series featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. The mystery is okay, but Kay's police partner is a homophobic bigot with a heart of gold, which I guess you could get away with in 1991 but is now just .... no. I understand the author herself came out in the 2000s, so I'm curious about her motivation for writing such a character as a hero, but not curious enough to read another.

(1966) "The Sphere From Time and Space"

Last ep. ended with the destruction of the Masters' of the Island base on Siren, after which the MotI's forces, including all Twonosers, fled the Andro-Beta cluster for Andromeda. Now Perry regroups his teams to begin setting up a new Terran base on Gleam, where he is visited by the superintelligence IT (missing since ep. 151) and Harno the Living Television, and fights off an army of survivors from Siren.

(1989, selections originally published 1937-1989)

I very much like Bloch's horror and suspense stories, though some have ethnic and gender references that interrupt the experience. But several stories here are humorous, of the broad kind I associate with Robert Scheckley: full of puns, Dad jokes, and randomness. A little of that goes a long way for me, and this collection has too much.

But "Floral Tribute" and "Killing in the Market" are great.

" ... the subtleties of the Perry Rhodan series ..."

You don't often find references in English to PR, but in 1976 Ace was publishing translations of the early episodes, and Robert Bloch makes a joke referencing them in "ETFF", a short story satirizing SF conventions. (The joke being that "subtleties" is a word that shouldn't co-sentence with "Perry Rhodan")

"I even read the first four pages of Dhalgren."

The #ClassicLSFBC group might relate.

(1966) "Space-scout 008"
Terrans now know that the Moby activity in Andro-Beta is directed by signals from Siren, moon of the planet Gleam. But events of the last two episodes have exposed the Terrans' presence: Siren is now surrounded by a Twonoser fleet. To disable the base on Siren, Terrans hatch a plan involving Gucky, the parasprinters and superbombs. But the entire scheme is threatened when Twonosers hijack a space-jet and crew...

With the #readyourkindle picks in, I can complete my #BookSpinBingo card for June. I can see my first bingo already ...

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

Thanks @Cbee for #readyourkindle picks! Here are my four for June.

(1966) "The Riddle of the Swamp Planet"

Captain Don Redhorse's task Force continues to search for the origin of an alien military signal on or near the swamp planet Gleam. They meet representatives of an indigenous group, who are at first excessively friendly and helpful -- but the Gleamors have their own agenda which does not benefit the Terran scouts. I'm not crazy about this one, as some motivations and actions seem random.

Here are my #Bookpin and #DoubleSpin read for June: an old Gordon Dickson I don't know much about, and a newer Spanish novella set in a world where all men have died -- and then start coming back to a world that has moved on without them.

Thanks for hosting @TheAromaofBooks !

And here's 20 random titles from my unread Kindle books for the June edition of #ReadYourKindle

I only finished one pick in May, and the next few days aren't likely to change that. Hoping to log at least 2 next month (and I kinda hope one of them is "Nunslinger")

May continued my April reading slump thanks to work and life. I'm hopeful things will pick up a little in June.

#BookSpin #DoubleSpin #BookSpinBingo
@TheAromaofBooks

(1966) The Terrans have fled the Andro-Beta star cluster to avoid increased attacks by Mobys, which are apparently sent by the mysterious and powerful Andromedan "Masters of the Island." From their new vantage point, the Terrans identify several signals that may be guiding the attacks, and Perry sends scout teams to investigate. One team tracks their signal to a monster-infested swamp planet and it wouldn't be Perry Rhodan if they didn't land...

(1976) This is a sequel to "Don't Bite the Sun," set in a city where all needs are met by machines, and youth spend their days in sex, drugs, and parties. In this one our narrator is exiled from the city for reviving dueling. But outside the city she thrives, and the city cannot tolerate her success.

Mixed feelings: The writing is engaging and the characters interesting, but the binary city = oppression, rural life = freedom feels false to me.

Los hombres comenzaron a morir.

"The men began to die."

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Litsy doesn't have an entry for this one and I won't add one. It's clearly a product of generative AI. Which is fine: I got it for free and that's a fair price. I'm only posting this blurb because it's one of my #ReadYourKindle picks this month. But while I'm here I'm genuinely curious: I assume one puts one's crappy AI thing on Amazon to Make Money Fast, but how does one make a profit by pricing the thing at $0? Does anyone know how this works?

(2020) It's the old noir trope about the guy who got out of the life, now forced back in to do one more job. It's an old song, but Cosby knows how to play it fresh all over again. It's sordid, it's violent, it's ruminative, it's so very noir, and it is good.

And here's my #BookSpinBingo card for May.

Thanks for hosting @TheAromaofBooks !

Here are my #ReadYourKindle picks for May.

Thanks @CBee !

(1966) "At the Brink of Hell"

Last episode's events attract a Twonoser fleet to the secret base on Arctis. But when the Twonosers fail to defeat the Terrans, their Andromedan overlords, the "Masters of the Island", send a space whale to destroy the entire system. I'm not sure what Doc Savage is doing on the cover, but the image seems to reference a subplot in which a Terran agent is blown into an overlapping universe at a different "energy level"

The #BookSpin fates are kind this month: after a reading-slumpy April, they grant me two short, punchy genre works I'm almost guaranteed to finish.

I'll wait to post my card until after @CBee 's #ReadYourKindle picks come out this weekend

Thanks for hosting, @TheAromaofBooks

And here's my #ReadYourKindle list for May, selected (mostly) randomly from my large and growing unread list

Work blew up early in April, and isn't likely to settle down soon, so my April #BookSpinBingo card is embarrassingly bare and the forecast for May isn't much more promising. But dang me if I'll go Bingocardless for that flimsy reason.

#BookSpin #DoubleSpin @TheAromaofBooks

(2015) Another read for April's #ReadYourKindle challenge. This one has been in my Kindle since 2015, when I picked it up for free (and with a different cover FWIW). It's not bad. Considering the stuff you get free on Kindle it's even quite good: a manic sorta-cyberpunk story about drugs, androids, kink, drugs, body switching, crime, and drugs. I probably won't continue the series-- it's a ride, but I think it's not mine.

(1728) A sailor caught in a whirlwind is carried away to the world on the moon, which is inhabited by furries (well: "Brutes and half Brutes" that "walk'd upright and spoke"). The sailor learns the Moon language by eating a dictionary, then has several encounters that satirize 18th century society. It's an imitation of 1726's "Gulliver's Travels," and a mostly entertaining one, aside from some cringey misogyny of a type that isn't unusual for 1728

(2013) One of my April #ReadYourKindle reads. The Enterprise is on a diplomatic mission when it receives a distress signal. When they respond, Kirk and crew discover a bunch of starships suspended in "folded space" -- and of course they must investigate, immediately and personally and with risk-maximizing strategies. Because TOS, I guess. It's fine, but also nothing special.

To satisfy a violent Inclination which I always had to see foreign Countries, and being incapacitated by my Circumstances to travel barely for the improvement of my Mind, I thought it most advisable to turn Sailor; and in Pursuance to my Design, I bound my self to one James Anderson, Master of the Runner, a Vessel of about 75 Tun (tho' the Custom-House had it but 70) belonging to Dublin, in the year 1718.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

(2014) Seventh in the "Kate Daniels" urban fantasy series. This one brings together multiple threads and characters from the beginning of the series. I was a little impatient with the last one, but this one delivers the action, characters, and humor I like about the series.

(1966) "World Under Hot Radiation"

The Terrans establish a base beneath the surface of the ice planet Arctis. The system has only one other planet: Destroy, a radioactive hellscape leveled by some planet-wide nuclear apocalypse hundreds of years ago. It appears lifeless, but Perry has an uneasy feeling so after settling into Arctis he leads a recon team to Destroy -- where they meet an old adversary and patch a plot hole.

(1963) Joining the #ClassicLSFBC this month, and I'm glad I did. I remember trying to read Way Station in my early teens and running out of interest early. And though I still see why -- there's little of the peril and rapid pacing that defined a good read for me then -- man, was I wrong about this. It's thoughtful and humane and just lovely, a sort of proto-cozy sf, and I wonder what else I've missed from Simak.

(1966) "Convoy into the Unknown"

The Terrans in the Andro-Beta star cluster regroup after events of the last few episodes. As Perry and the CREST were off adventuring, the crew of the Troja station scouted a potential base of operations. Next step is to move in without attracting notice -- but notice is attracted and space battles are fought. This one is exposition-heavy and serves mostly to recap the story thus far and set up future adventures.

Here are my #ReadYourKindle picks for April.

Thanks @cbee !

I love this moment of the #BookSpinBingo month when a blackout seems possible. All I have to do is read about a book a day, and I've read a book in a day before .... Reality will settle in another week or so, but it's looking like a tremendously fun and enlightening month right now.

Excuse me but I have a day to read a book in.

Thanks @TheAromaofBooks !

Thanks @thearomaofbooks

My #BookSpin and #DoubleSpin for April are an unlikely pair: in the one hand a literary novella about desperate lives in wartime, translated from Dutch; on the other, urban fantasy featuring demigods and shapeshifters and vampires and who knows what all else.

Looking forward to both of course. Thanks @TheAromaofBooks

And here's my #Bookspinbingo list for April.

@TheAromaofBooks