Summer Reading List 2018

A stack of three books, with a small garden and white string lights in the background.

Welcome to Nuketown’s 11th summer reading list! As expected, this summer’s list features lots of space opera and a smattering of fantasy, but it also includes the unexpected in the form of non-fiction books related to project management and self-improvement. The spring hit me like a hammer (or maybe like a sack of hammers. Dump … Read more

Off the Bookshelf: Artemis, The Wrong Stars, Ready Player One

A shot of the darkened moon, the right edge lit by the sun.

My Winter Reading List got off to a strong start in December 2017 with Artemis (Andy Weir’s follow-up The Martian) and The Wrong Stars (Tim Pratt’s tale of ancient alien artifacts). My progress was hampered by breaking my ankle, but what really derailed it was my re-read of Ready Player One in anticipation of the … Read more

Building Nuketown’s 2018 Summer Reading List

A close up of starship wreckage.

After a winter spent recovering from a broken ankle, and a spring dominated by recovering from said broken ankle, summer is looking very appealing. So is my summer reading list, which I’ve been slowly compiling throughout the long, cold winter (and second winter, which is what we started calling spring in Pennsylvania). Nothing’s set in stone except … Read more

Top of the Pile: Inhumans vs. X-Men

Two teams of costumed superheroes confront each other, Inhumans on the left, X-men on the right.

Inhumans vs. X-Men, the fight brewing since Marvel’s two main timelines collapsed into one during 2015’s Secret Wars, finally happened. The story lacks the high-stakes punch of Avengers vs. X-Men but this gives it the flexibility to tell a better story. The catalyst is a massive cloud of terrigen mists unleashed by Black Bolt, former king of the … Read more

Nuketown’s Winter 2017 Reading List

A woman holds an enormous blade while standing against a fantastic, pillar-filed landscape.

Christmas vacation is coming up and bringing with it a glorious week filled with family, gifts, and lots of reading. I’ve compiled a winter reading list for the break, which is similar to my traditional summer reading lists except the list is shorter and my reading time runs from mid-December through mid-February. Like the summer … Read more

Off the Bookshelf: Project Nemesis, Strange Dogs, Valiant Dust

A planet emerges from a glowing halo of energy.

It’s been a slow couple of months for book reading as I’ve been focusing on knocking down my pile of comic books. Since my summer reading list ended back in September I’ve read two books and a novella, but the break gave me time to recharge and start contemplating my Winter 2017 reading list. Project Nemesis Project Nemesis (Amazon) … Read more

Top of the Pile: An Uncanny Holiday

The Avengers team stands ready for their next assignment.

My pile of unread comic books is huge. So huge that I spent the last two Thanksgiving breaks whittling it down to a reasonable size. Those efforts are working; after spending a good chunk of the long Thanksgiving weekend reading I’m within striking distance of the Inhumans vs. X-Men crossover event from Summer 2016. That … Read more

Off the Bookshelf: Summer’s End

A beautiful sunset filled with tinges of orange, red, and yellow. A baseball field appears in the foreground; a large tree is silhouetted off to the right in the background

The final third of my summer reading list proved to be more challenging than I expected, mostly because of the amount of time I spent on Kim Stanley Robinson’s dense-but-enjoyable 2312. The book dominated my August, and forced me to finish up the last book on my list, Forsaken Skies, after Labor Day. As for … Read more

Top of the Pile: Summer 2017

Covers of graphic novels from the B.P.R.D. and Hellboy series.

My Summer Reading List for 2017 included eight graphic novels drawn from the Hellboy universe. Hellboy and his friends have featured prominently in my summer reading list for the last decade, and I expect that to continue to be the case going forward. There’s nothing quite like reading a Hellboy or B.P.R.D. graphic novel by the camp fire on Lake Champlain, and … Read more

Off the Bookshelf: Mid-Summer 2017

Adirondack chairs gathered around a firepit near a lake.

I tore through the heart of my summer reading list in July, knocking out six novels in a month. Four of these were read during my family’s annual week-long vacation to Lake Champlain. I probably could have read more if we’d spent another day or two on the lake, but unfortunately reality beckoned us home. This was … Read more