Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 12/21/19

Hi!  Time once again for the Saturday Reading Wrap-up!  Yeah, probably not as exciting as it sounds, but I enjoy doing it and I hope you enjoy following along.

I picked up several new ebooks this week - a suspense, a romance, and a SF.  No new hardcopies.  After the blasts of used books I've gotten already this month, I should probably stay away from the thrift stores for a while.  But then I could miss something really awesome.  What if there's a copy of I, The Jury or The Big Sleep sitting there and someone else buys it??  Gah!  The trials of an old book hunter, I guess.  I wish I had an in with all the thrift stores so I could have first pick of their new donations.  :sigh: 

Books Read:

113) Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie (12/18/19) - Mystery Short Stories - 4 stars.  Not new or underappreciated.  50c at the thrift store.
No Review.
I shorted this one a star because it was short stories and some of them were kind of meh.

112) The Bug Hunter by Ken Davenport (12/17/19) - Technothriller*# - 5 stars.  New to me and underappreciated.  Picked up for free off the Reading Deals newsletter.
Review: "Pretty good technothriller. Not Crichton, obviously, but certainly hard to put down and definitely worthy of a read."

DNFs:

12/16/19 - mystery.  Free.  I should've been warned by the reviews, but I figured I'd give it a try anyway.  The reviews were right.  The writing on this one was not good.  He said, she said, the maid said, the dog said.  All saids, all the time, folks.  And it was loads of 'said sadly', 'said abysmally, 'said intuitively'.  My editor would've stabbed me with her pretty pink pen if I'd tossed that many adverbs and dialogue tags at her.

12/16/19 - I gave up on the Helen MacInnes.  It was dragging and I lost patience with it.  I thought maybe I'd try it again someday, but I'm running out of shelf space and keeping a book because I might maybe someday try reading it again when I already DNF'd it seems silly.  Maybe I don't need to collect Helen along with everything else I collect.

12/15/19 - not tellin' - paid full price.  Well, that was disappointing as hell.  I'd been waiting for this one to come out and it was going along pretty good.  And then it got weird.  So I flipped past the weird, which didn't seem necessary to the actual storyline, but then the actual storyline got lame and suddenly the characters became too stupid to live.  I tried to forge ahead, because I'd paid full price for this one and I hate to waste book budget money, but it didn't seem like it was going to get any better, so I gave up.  And no, I'm not going to ask for a refund.  To me, that's like wearing shoes for a week and then taking them back because I suddenly realized they were ugly and pinched my piggy toe.  Or eating part of a pizza and then demanding a refund because the sausage I ordered on it gave me heartburn.  I'll eat the cost and chalk it up to lesson learned.

This reminds me of why I don't put titles on DNF books.  I really don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or their sales with my opinions of books I don't finish.  Titles lead to Google alerts and authors stopping by to see what I might've said about their books.  Which could possibly lead to all kinds of blerg.  Don't want extra blerg.  Got enough already, thank you very much.

Currently reading... a military SF.  So far, so good on the story.  Loads of typos, though.  One character's name is Brian and there are several instances where it's spelled BRAIN.  (Note to self - never name a character Brian.)  And there are some misplaced quote marks on the dialogue that are making me stumble a little.  I'm still not having a problem with reading it, though, so I won't DNF it for that reason.  Here's hoping I don't find any other reasons.  I hate putting time into a book only to DNF it.

What fun and interesting (or not as the case may be) things did you read last week?