Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum

8/10

I read this one a little over two weeks ago. And with this post, I am officially all caught up on posting the books that I have read. Some said it couldn't be done. It's been decades since I've been caught up. Hopefully, moving forward, I can post my book here as soon as I finish it. And maybe now I can make updates to my baseball stadiums blog. But back to the matter at hand. This was a fun book. Slocum details his solo trip around the world. The first person to ever sail around the world alone. He did this from 1895 to 1898. It was a very fascinating read. He departs from Massachusetts and crosses across the Atlantic to Gibraltar, with some stops here and there on islands along the way. Interestingly, he was planning to sail through the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez canal to the Red Sea and out into the Indian Ocean, but he got too worried about pirates and decided to reverse course entirely and cross back over the Atlantic and go around the world the other way through the Strait of Magellan at the bottom of Argentina, which seemed like the most dangerous part of the entire trip. He had some close calls with some natives down there, and interestingly had to re-enter it and try again when his first attempt to exit failed due to stormy seas. His ability and willpower to make on-the-fly adjustments and massive decisions is actually very impressive. He then crosses the Pacific, again stopping at some islands along the way, including the Robinson Crusoe island in the Juan Fernandez islands. He again changes plans and reverses course when he decides to not go around Australia to the south, but instead the north. He eventually makes his way around Cape Town South Africa, across the Atlantic again for the third time, and all the way back to the same spot where he first departed. It was interesting that much of the book is actually about his time spent on land at his various stops. Massive months' long trips across the seas are often covered in a few paragraphs or less. He had his tiny little boat so well built and prepared that it largely steered itself while he sat in the cabin and read books all day long. He is a good writer and quite funny at parts. He also wrote this book in such a way where none of it came off as boastful or arrogant, often going out of his way to draw attention to his mistakes, which made the book more enjoyable to read. A part of me is quite jealous of people like him who got to experience and see so much of the world. I knew nothing about this adventure, so I was very glad to have read this one.
 

The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray

 

7/10

I read this one a little over a month ago. It was my last book of 2025. It was decent. As I was reading, I kept feeling like there were earlier stories or a prior history that was being referenced but not explained. I was about 1/3 of the way into the book before realizing that it is the third book in a trilogy and I hadn't read the first two, so that stunk. But I feel like I got the gist of it for the most part. The majority of the story takes place on a falling space center that was sabotaged by the bad guys. And all the Jedi's were for some reason not able to connect with the force because of some mystical creature that was on the ship or something. We didn't really get an answer to why that was happening as far as I can recall. Not much really happens in this book. It's mostly a lot of discussing plans amongst each other and coming to terms with their feelings. I was waffling on giving it a lower rating, and it maybe should have gotten a 6/10 from me, but the story was interesting enough for me that the lack of action or forward progress with the storyline didn't bug me too, too much. The other complaint is that this huge space station isn't very well described. I'm wondering if it was described in the previous books so it wasn't entirely necessary to do that here? But I got the sense that it's this huge space station but it just felt tiny in reality based on the story and it seemed like there were only handfuls of people responsible for running the thing. This book was fine. Just not one to go out of your way for.

Star Wars book rankings:

1.  Lost Stars
2.  Aftermath: Life Debt
3.  A New Dawn
4.  Battlefront: Twilight Company
5.  The Fallen Star 
6.  Aftermath

 

Roughing It by Mark Twain

 

3/10

I read this one a little less than two months ago. This was a very tedious read. I didn't hate the beginning about his journey out West and read with curiosity his impressions of the Mormons (spoiler alert: he's not a fan), but once he got to Nevada and the gold mining it was as far from enjoyable as you could get. It's clear that he's stretching the truth about his experiences throughout the book in an attempt to be humorous. But the same playful humor found in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer isn't found in this one which is neither playful or funny, other than one funny paragraph about ugly Mormon women which I'll share below. It was a long, boring read that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. If you are curious of his Mormon impressions, which were the most entertaining part of the book, then just read chapters 12-17 and thank me later that you didn't have to suffer through the rest of this book that is much longer than it needs to be. This is the book where you get the fairly well-known quotes about the Book of Mormon being "chloroform in print" and the line about if you removed 'And it came to pass' then the book would have only been a pamphlet, which are harmless, funny burns. But it seems that he thinks his serious criticisms are fatal but they're just flimsy and conclusory. For example, he says that every sentence or two, the language grows too modern (without citing any examples) and so Joseph Smith had to throw in scriptural sounding phrases, using "exceeding sore," "hid up," and "wherefore" as examples, which is ridiculous. Suddenly the fact that the word "wherefore" appears in the Book of Mormon is worth pointing to as an evidence that Joseph Smith made it up? Laughably weak criticism. He also quotes the entirety of the witnesses from the three and eight witnesses and only sarcastically points to how they "hefted" the plates as a reason why he is now convinced of the truth of their witness. Weird. Then he flat out lies and makes fun of how Nephi built the ship in a single day even though the text clearly states it took many days which could be months or even years. Making chloroform jokes is fine, but clear misleading lies are just lame. He concludes one chapter by calling it "stupid and tiresome to read, but there is nothing vicious in its teachings." The irony of saying this when the Book of Mormon is infinitely more interesting and entertaining than Twain's Roughing It which was a true slog to get through.

Some Mormon tidbits from Twain:

 "Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, level streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visible drunkards or noisy people... a grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and comfort, around and about and over the whole....intent faces and busy hands were to be seen wherever one looked."

"Salt Lake City was healthy - an extremely healthy city. They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was arrested every week regularly and held to answer under the vagrant act for having 'no visible means of support.'"

"Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had not time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here - until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly, and pathetically 'homely' creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No - the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure - and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'" 

I did like this insight during his gold digging time in Nevada, which, again ironically, reminds one of his negative judgment of the Mormon people from a few chapters earlier:

"Moralizing, I observed, then, that 'all that glitters is not gold.' Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my treasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that. 

Rankings of Mark Twain books I've read:

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
2. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
3. Roughing It 

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain by Charles Dickens

 

4/10

I read this one a little less than three months ago. I recently discovered that Dickens wrote five short Christmas story books. The first was the well-known A Christmas Carol, but the other four I had never heard about. The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain is the fifth of those five books. While there were some nice moments, it was far too disjointed and difficult to process. I was surprised that it was the last of the five books written because it feels like a book he may have written early in his career before honing his craft. I wouldn't recommend spending time on this one unless you want to read everything Dickens wrote.

I liked this moment and idea of God remembering us as his little children similar to how parents remember their grown children still as their little children:

    "'There is hope,' returned the old man, 'for all who are softened and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!' he exclaimed, clasping his hands and looking up, 'I was thankful, only yesterday, that I could remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child. But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even God himself has that remembrance of him!'

      ...

    "'Ah!' feebly moaned the man upon the bed. 'The waste since then, the waste of life since then!'

    "'But he was a child once,' said the old man. 'He played with children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor mother's knee. I have seen him do it, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, and kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to think of this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothing else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than the fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted by the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often seemed to cry to us!'" 

 

Another quote I liked: "'May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us, to remember wrong that has been done us?' ... 'That we may forgive it.'"

 

And finally, Dickens straight up preaching eternal families:

"Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy - it's a silly fancy, William - they have some way I don't know of, of feeling for my little child, and me, and understanding why their love is precious to me. If I have been quiet since, I have been more happy, William, in a hundred ways. Not least happy, dear, in this - that even when my little child was born and dead but a few days, and I was weak and sorrowful, and could not help grieving a little, the thought arose, that if I tried to lead a good life, I should meet in Heaven a bright creature, who would call me, Mother!"

My updated rankings of Dickens books I've read:

1.  David Copperfield
2.  A Tale of Two Cities
3. Great Expectations
4. Oliver Twist
5. Bleak House
6. A Christmas Carol
7. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
8. The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin

8/10

I read this one a little less than three months ago. I ended up liking this much more than I thought I would. First, I have realized that I don't usually like short stories. And second, I thought it was going to be a lot like Katherine Mansfield where it would be a bunch of stories about nothing. I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed pretty much every story in this book. Chopin's writing style was great and kept me engaged even when the stories were slower paced. While the main story, The Awakening, is about a woman who is dissatisfied with her marriage and begins to pursue a love interest outside of that marriage, which is the kind of story I don't usually enjoy because the main character usually annoys me too much, Chopin wrote it in such a great way in describing the main character's thoughts and emotions that I quite enjoyed it. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I don't need to agree with a character's actions in order to appreciate and enjoy the story. The rest of the book is 13 short stories that are much shorter than the novella, The Awakening. The majority of the stories, while mostly common in theme, were also enjoyable mainly because I didn't get tired of Chopin's writing. One that stands out that was different than the others was "Elizabeth Stock's One Story" which was fantastic. But I think my favorite was "The Godmother" which had some Crime and Punishment vibes. Good stuff, Kate Chopin, I like your style.
 

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

9/10

I read this one about three and a half months ago. I really liked it. The only thing keeping it from a 10 out of 10 book for me is a few too many over-the-top sexual descriptions that were unnecessary/uncomfortable and didn't add anything to the story. It's the one thing I was worried about when starting the book based on what I had heard about the tv show, and for a while there I was thinking there really wasn't much of it at all, but the more we got into the Daenerys storyline, the more the creepy sexual descriptions would creep in. Getting that out of the way, I really did enjoy this book. I thought it was great world-building with numerous characters each with their own separate quests or storylines. Ever since I was a kid when I was introduced to The Hobbit, I have loved fantasy books with maps that you can continuously reference throughout the story to see where each separate adventure is taking place. I was a little confused about where Daenerys's story was taking place because I couldn't find any of the places on the map, but I figured out (I think?) that she's on some land across a sea, but I'm not sure why there wasn't any map to show where she was. It was an enjoyable book to read regardless of which storyline was being covered for the particular chapter. I'm most curious about the mystery of what is happening up North beyond the wall and hope the next book will get further into what's going on there. The Tyrion character seems to be the most fun and interesting one for me as he's on the "bad guy" team but doesn't seem to be a bad guy like the rest of his family. The most boring storyline for me so far is with Bran, a youngster who gets paralyzed early in the story, but we'll see where that goes. I am intrigued by most all of the characters that seem really flawed in various ways which makes for interesting reading. I was surprised to see that this book was written in 1996. I never heard of it until the tv show came out and didn't realize the book was written so much earlier. Looking forward to getting to the second book which I hopefully will read at some point in 2026.
 

Doctrine & Covenants Who's Who by Ed J. Pinegar and Richard J. Allen

 

7/10

I read this one a little over four months ago. It's another generous 7 out of 10 from me. I liked its comprehensiveness in including literally ever person possible and learning a bit more about various people who are in the D&C, but I wish it focused a touch more on those who were living in that time period rather than super long essays about the Holy Ghost, etc. The 8-pages dedicated to who the Holy Ghost is just seemed like they had a bunch of research previously performed about the Holy Ghost that they shoehorned into this book. Same with the 15-page description of Jesus. I appreciate the work put into it and all but I would have liked more paragraphs and pages dedicated to people from the D&C that I don't really know anything about. The Holy Ghost and Jesus portions could have been one paragraph summaries, in my opinion, to allow a greater focus on telling the reader about people that we don't know as much about. So that started to bug me the further I got into this book when I kept coming across very skimpy one-paragraph summaries of people I thought I would be learning more about in this book but realizing that I will have to go to other sources to learn more in-depth details about who many of these people were. Still was a nice book overall and a decent resource for looking up broad details about any person named in the D&C.