Book Beat

Always up for Nerd Extreme Sports, this blog chronicles John Oak Dalton's attempt to read 50 books a year.

Sunday, May 12, 2024

#23: Hard By A Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili

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A young man sees both his father and then his brother go back to the country of Georgia in search of family; when he loses track of both of ...
Sunday, April 28, 2024

#22: Cold Victory by Karl Marlantes

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In post-war 1940s Finland, an idealistic American couple befriend a Russian couple, and inadvertently wreck the lives of everyone around the...
Saturday, April 20, 2024

#21: Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody

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On the tenth anniversary of her sister's disappearance, a woman's father commits suicide; the subsequent fallout finds that her fath...
Monday, April 8, 2024

#20: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

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A group of American Marines in Viet Nam set up a base, abandon it, then need to take it back, all at great cost, in Karl Marlantes' Matt...
Sunday, March 31, 2024

#19: Under the Storm by Christoffer Carlsson

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A burning house is found to have a murdered woman inside, and the boyfriend is promptly convicted; but twenty years later, an ex cop--and th...
Tuesday, March 26, 2024

#18: Bodies are Dust by PJ Woolfson

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A crooked cop navigates a bad old town in PJ Woolfson's jet-black noir, Bodies are Dust . This tough slab of noir has been rediscovered ...
Saturday, March 23, 2024

#17: Room Service by Alan Williams

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An affluent but cuckolded husband decides to get revenge by picking up a prostitute, only for it to have deadly consequences, in Alan Willia...
Friday, March 22, 2024

#16: Hellgate by William Colt MacDonald

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Railroad detective Gregory Quist hunts rail bandits who leave a string of corpses in their wake in William Colt MacDonald's Hellgate . M...
Thursday, March 14, 2024

#15: Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

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A space port in Tel Aviv provides the backdrop to a myriad group of characters, including a seller of ancient pulp paperbacks, a robot who p...
Friday, March 8, 2024

#14: Meet Me in Moredo by Marshall Grover

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Big Jim Rand is hunting his brother's killer, but gets distracted rescuing a woman from an arranged marriage, in Marshall Grover's ...
Wednesday, March 6, 2024

#13: Waste Tide by Chen Quifan

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In a bleak near future, a giant e-waste recycling area called Silicon Isle edges towards destruction brought on by class warfare and an inco...
Friday, March 1, 2024

#12: The Girl by the Bridge by Arnaldur Indridason

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A retired police detective, at the behest of a family friend, looks into a troubled young woman's death in Arnaldur Indridason's The...
Wednesday, February 21, 2024

#11: She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper

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A recent parolee finds himself on the wrong side of a prison gang with connections in the outside world, throwing the man's daughter in ...
Monday, February 19, 2024

#10: Syzygy by Michael G. Coney

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On an alien planet, a group of colonists react unexpectedly to a sudden alignment of six moons in Michael G. Coney's Syzygy .   The moon...
Monday, February 12, 2024

#9:The Vanishing KInd by Lavie Tidhar

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A b-movie screenwriter comes to a bombed-out London looking for an actress, only to find her wrapped up in a crime network, in Lavie Tidhar...
Saturday, February 10, 2024

#8: There Are No Happy Loves by Sergio Olguin

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An investigative journalist and her ex, a lawyer, stumble upon a network of organ traffickers and adoption fraud in Sergio Olguin's Ther...
Thursday, February 8, 2024

#7: The Border Jumpers by John Benteen

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Soldier of Fortune Neal Fargo aims to stop cattle rustling from the Mexican side of the border, but ends up in a double cross, in John Bente...
Friday, February 2, 2024

#6: Valley of the Lawless by Cole Shelton

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Two gun-hands help a town defeat a corrupt sheriff and a cold-hearted cattleman in Cole Shelton's Valley of the Lawless. Shelton is actu...
Tuesday, January 30, 2024

#5: How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier

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A hitman decides to finish one last job, only to find his life complicated after meeting a happy-go-lucky passerby, in Pascal Garnier's ...
Wednesday, January 24, 2024

#4: The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak

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A U.S. senator is assassinated, and a young agent is on the trail of the killers; but when her own father's name comes up in her search,...
Tuesday, January 23, 2024

#3: Our Friends from Frolix-8 by Philip K. Dick

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In a dystopian future run by telepaths and evolved humans, a lone dissenter reaches out to an alien force in Philip K. Dick's Our Friend...
Friday, January 12, 2024

#2: Blaze Me a Sun by Christoffer Carlsson

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A rural cop struggles to solve a series of rapes and murders, passing the obsession onto his son when he follows in his father's footste...
Saturday, January 6, 2024

#1: The Last Songbird by Daniel Weizmann

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A Lyft driver with songwriting dreams picks up a Stevie Nicks-like singer and strikes up a friendship; but when she is killed, he decides to...
Monday, January 1, 2024

Best of 2023

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This is the lowest reading total I have recorded since starting my book blog 15 years ago, but I struggled with depression this year as well...
Tuesday, December 26, 2023

#26: Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

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Same Bed Different Dreams is a decades-spanning, multi-layered novel with a manuscript featuring real and imagined Korean history at its co...
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