Half-Cannonball? The books I read and didn’t review

I needed to write one more review to reach my goal of a half-cannonball, so here’s a roundup of the books I read and didn’t review this year. Does this still count?

Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. 3 stars. I enjoyed this one, reading it on a 7 hour plane journey. The love triangle was a bit irritating in that the end took a bit of a cop out so that it could be an element in later books, but overall it was still interesting. I’ve heard mixed reviews about the author’s books but I’ll probably get the second one.

On Writing, by Stephen King. 5 stars.
The one that really should have gotten a review. It was a great book, half memoir, half writing tips. A lot of the writing tips I didn’t like (“don’t plan your novels before you write them”) but in this mix of life story and advice is some excellent tips. My favourite is the idea that family should take precedence over your art–a “support system” for your art is I think what he calls it. I listened to the audiobook as well as reading the book, and the audiobook was good too (though I think an earlier edition than the book? Some of the agent stuff seemed outdated.) I linked to this one above because it was the best one.

The Lady Hardcastle Mysteries (A Quiet Life in the Country, In the Market for Murder, Death Around the Bend), by T. E. Kinsey. 2-3 stars.
I could tell that these were self-published/originally self-published (now Amazon publishing I think)–I don’t say this to be a snob or make it a value statement, just because it’s something I’m sort of interested in. Overall, they were fun, light summer fluff. I liked the characters, and the mysteries–though somewhat predictable–were still fun.

The Listerdale Mystery and Other Stories, by Agatha Christie. 2.5 stars.
Standard Christie fare. Some stories are more solid than others, but it’s nice to read some short-form mysteries once in a while.

The Queen’s Poisoner, by Jeff Wheeler. 2 stars.
The plot was fairly interesting–a sort of fantasy take on Richard III with a sympathetic ‘villain’–but the voice, told from the perspective of a young boy, got a bit boring and some of the characters were a bit over the top.