Kind of a slow start with only 5 books this month, and only two novels in the bunch. The Howard collection has about 500 pages of stories and I had been reading it by my bed for more than a couple of months. The LEGO book is heavily illustrated.
Operation Storm City by Joshua Mowll is the third book in that series. It has the brother and sister team running about 1920's Asia on a quest in search of their parents. It's another book presented in MoleSkiene notebook style that is heavily illustrated by the writer. I was recently disappointed to find that the Moleskiene books aren't actually covered with moleskin. It's always something. Operation Storm City didn't disappoint, there's lots of action, some comedy and big explosions.
The Cult Of LEGO by John Baichtal and Joe Meno is a big illustrated book about the hobby and the fans. It's a fairly shallow study of it with short chapters and lots of pictures that's already heavily dated. It's more for the starting fan or the curious. I'm not a fan of the design of the book. The cover is nice but the page layouts often don't appeal to me. Others might not care or find it pleasing, you never know. There are more than a couple of annoying bits in the writing but I'll keep the book anyway. Mostly for the pictures and it's place in the mythology it's helping to create.
The Secret Of Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene is another of the Applewood reprints of the original novels. Nancy goes with several girlfriends to a failing ranch in Arizona. She solves a mystery or two and rides a horse. Nancy even carries a gun and kills a mountain lion. Better than the others I have read in the Nancy Drew series.
The Horror Stories Of Robert E Howard is a collection of Howard's horror stories. Duh, huh. It's part of a larger series of Howard reprints. Sadly they reprint some of the stories from those other collections. There's a Conan story and a Solomon Kane story. I don't find these stories very horrible or anything. I was reading them at bed time and they didn't keep me awake at night. Some of them were better than others and there are some nice illustrations in the book. It would be a good sampling of the types of horror stories that Howard wrote. I'm planning to plow my way through the Howard books I have but I got a few new books that are going to the top of the pile. Funny how that can change at a moment's notice.
Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine is a writing guide for kids. It's pretty slight and might have some good advice. I like most of Levine's books but this just isn't that interesting to me. I kind of started skimming about the last quarter.
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