Brian Richards, writer

The following were books I finished reading during the month of June.

So I was never an R.L. Stine guy, having been born about a decade late to really appreciate his books when I was the right age for them. I remember, however, the summer I worked at a Lutheran church camp near Hershey where the nine and ten year olds demanded that we read aloud from whichever Stine book they had brought along. The stories were like candy for these kids, and I remember some of them being pretty creepy. Fast-paced, interesting characters, and some twisty little weird tales. I picked up Red Rain just to see for myself if any of that good storytelling would translate into an adult book well, and holy shit did it work. Red Rain is not entirely predictable, and the thread of the story is fun to follow. The adults in the tale get up to adult business from time to time, and that added just the right nuance to the troubles they found themselves in. Loved it.

I love me some Chuck Wendig, by the way, but I was hesitant to try Zeroes because I am usually disappointed by any author's attempt at a hacker story. Even hackers. It's just too easy to build characters around media-driven lingo and imagery regarding misanthropic computer enthusiasts when the reality hacking is much more beige and driven by creative problem solving. It's also not so easy to generalize what hacking is in the real world, and I think that makes hacking in the real world much more interesting. Anyway, Zeroes really does a great job of highlighting realistic things about people who use computers for not-so-legal creative problem solving. And trolling. And simply making money. It's an exciting story and the people here are worth getting to know, so I quickly lost myself in the things that were going on rather than thinking that I was reading a book about hackers. Five stars. Would definitely read again.

Books June 2018