Shawn's Updates en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 12:44:01 -0700 60 Shawn's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Rating853130713 Thu, 01 May 2025 12:44:01 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn Jones liked a review]]> /
Shawn liked Lizz's review of Blood Standard (Isaiah Coleridge, #1):
Blood Standard by Laird Barron
"I dont write reviews.

And I don’t read ham-fisted, tough guy novels, but I must say, Barron did it well, (I think since I have nothing with which to compare it). He maintained my interest throughout. The story was chockful of strange customers, wise guys and all-round psychos. Knowing that the super weirdness is coming soon, strengthens my resolve to continue this series.

“Sweat peeled the duct tape from my mouth. The tape was a formality, stage dressing for a ritual as old as crime itself. That ritual concerning the purification of traitors. I could yell all I wanted. Nobody would hear me except the rest of the thugs keeping watch upstairs. We were in the underworld. That spot on the map marked with skulls and crossbones and dragons. Tape, pliers and ballpeen hammers were meant to satisfy tradition as much as anything else.�

Book 6 - Laird & I Will Follow: A Laird Barron Retrospective"
]]> Rating852835109 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:58:39 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn Jones liked a review]]> /
Shawn liked Curtis's review of Night Warriors (The Night Warriors Book 1):
Night Warriors by Graham Masterton
"Day Warriors... aaaa-AAAA-aa!
Fighter of the Night Warriors... aaaa-AAAA-aa!
Champion of the sun... "
]]> Rating852723266 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 09:34:20 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn Jones liked a review]]> /
Shawn liked Q Silver's review of Urchin and the Heartstone (The Mistmantle Chronicles, #2):
Urchin and the Heartstone by M.I. McAllister
"3.5. A solid sequel, but wasted potential—more of a “children’s story� than the utterly fantastic, all-time classic original."
]]> Review7516000378 Tue, 29 Apr 2025 13:50:55 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn added 'Earth Abides']]> /review/show/7516000378 Earth Abides by George R. Stewart Shawn gave 4 stars to Earth Abides (ebook) by George R. Stewart
This is a post-apocalypse novel that deals bluntly and seriously with the struggles that survivors would face. There are no vampires or mutants or zombies to speak of. The plague that swept the land swept it clean. This is a hard sci-fi look at the end of civilization as it stood and what would happen to the survivors.

Isherwood, the protagonist, is the kind of guy that would spring an IQ exam on his employees in order to keep them in line. He's an interesting sort of leader that only dimly at first perceives and later with clarity that shames him, how wrong his methods and beliefs were for the community he helped found. He feels like he knows what should be done but lacks the essential qualities of a leader. He can't seem to get the new generations to sit down and study, nor can he really justify why they should. Earth has hit the reset button for a purpose he can't fathom, and he rallies against it.

Stewart's writing is mostly flat, strewn with quotations and references when he's trying to get a more intangible idea across. He's clearly intelligent and the prose isn't dull, but this is a book where not a lot happens. When they do it's almost always major and it keeps things moving. The core cast of survivors all have a place and are given some differentiating characterizations, but this is not an ensemble. This is Isherwood's story and Isherwood's struggle till the very end.

Again, don't pick this up expecting a flashy page turner, but it is a very well-conceived book about a what-if scenario that keeps things practical.

]]> Rating852321323 Tue, 29 Apr 2025 05:55:34 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn Jones liked a review]]> /
Shawn liked Curtis's review of Dark Silence:
Dark Silence by Rick Hautala
"If your significant other suffers a crippling injury whose ramifications wind up significantly impacting your own personal happiness, you should be allowed to just break up with them without society acting like you're some sort of shithead. It's not like I'm the one who fell off that cliff--why should my social life be ruined, too?"
]]> Comment289964199 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 13:27:23 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn commented on Curtis's review of Anamnesis]]> /review/show/7488850279 Curtis's review of Anamnesis
by Caroline McManus

hippies are bad enough but what is an ass hippie? ]]> ReadStatus9348285635 Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:27:07 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn is currently reading 'Earth Abides']]> /review/show/7516000378 Earth Abides by George R. Stewart Shawn is currently reading Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
]]> Review7515984979 Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:22:32 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn added 'The Fire Next Time']]> /review/show/7515984979 The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Shawn gave 3 stars to The Fire Next Time (Paperback) by James Baldwin
Baldwin speaks hard truths, but ultimately his only solution is love. That hasn't happened yet in the decades since his publication and Baldwin himself in between the lines suggests its impossibility. But his passionate words ring true and are more of a desperate plea for action than inflammatory rhetoric.

But did he really have to call me out as someone "who reads not to learn, but only to find new attitudes to adopt?"

I know I'm dumb but now I really feel seen. ]]> Comment289840286 Thu, 24 Apr 2025 04:37:31 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn commented on Lizz's review of Ubik]]> /review/show/1567467380 Lizz's review of Ubik
by Philip K. Dick

I could not stand those clothing descriptions; it seriously hurt my opinion of the book. Imagining a future with outrageous fashion to depict a sense of decaying decadence is nothing new, but he was being too cartoonishly goofy with it. But what can frustrate one reader can fascinate another. ]]> Review7512901664 Wed, 23 Apr 2025 12:09:33 -0700 <![CDATA[Shawn added 'Lamb in his Bosom']]> /review/show/7512901664 Lamb in his Bosom by Caroline Miller Shawn gave 5 stars to Lamb in his Bosom (Paperback) by Caroline Miller
bookshelves: the-favorites
Some books have a richness and a glowing about them that every word flows like poetry even if it is describing something like backwoods Georgian planters in pre-Civil war Georgia. The story of the Carvers and the Smiths mainly centered and beginning on young Caen's wedding day is at once intimate and sprawling, laden with so many hardships, tragedies and scandals that one would think it impossible for such a small, isolated community to take on such a burden.

Miller lovingly crafted her characters and nimbly skips from one to the other to expand their thoughts and lay bare their secrets. And all of these characters secretly think they are all sinners, secrets or no, all struggling under the weight of simple piety working to fulfill their roles in God's plan. It's a world long ago lost in modern civilization, of the staggering idea that a person might be born and never see the ocean and know only the span of miles around their place of birth.

A warning: reading this may make you wonder why you've chosen to waste your life given all the modern ease and opportunities these folks never had. ]]>