Christopher’s Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2025

Year in Books

10,893

pages read

books read

Christopher

Shortest Book

pages

The Sixth Gun Omnibus Vol. 1 by Cullen Bunn

Longest Book

592

pages

Average book length in 2025

231

pages

Most Shelved

830,593

people also shelved

Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixte... by Helen C. White

Least Shelved

people also shelved

Christopher’s average rating for 2025

2.9

Highest Rated on Goodreads

4.59 average

Christopher’s first review of the year

really liked it

And now I've read this for the first time. Yes, I know it took my long enough to get to it, but it was sort of one of those "I'm waiting because I know it will be good" experiences along the Epicurean school of Literature lines. It was good, definitely, but not quite as grand as I probably thought it would be, not like King Lear was the first time I read that. Perhaps it was because I knew what was going to happen with Desdemona and Othello (thou ...more

CHRISTOPHER’S 2025 BOOKS

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

really liked it

The Battered Badge by Robert Goldsborough

Groucho Marx, Private Eye by Ron Goulart

really liked it

Vinland Saga Omnibus, Vol. 1 by Makoto Yukimura

The Sixth Gun Omnibus Vol. 2 by Cullen Bunn

The Sixth Gun Omnibus Vol. 3 by Cullen Bunn

Erasmus and the humanists, by Albert Hyma

The Place of St. Thomas More in English Literature and History by Raymond Wilson Chambers

Renaissance Thought by Paul Oskar Kristeller

really liked it

Elementary, My Dear Groucho by Ron Goulart

Humanism in the Renaissance by Sem Dresden

Citizen Thomas More and His Utopia - 1st Edition/1st Printing by Russell Ames

The English Church in the Sixteenth Century by Craig R. Thompson

The Renaissance and English Humanism by Douglas Bush

The Reformation Crisis by Joel Hurstfield

liked it

Studies in Classic American Literature by D.H. Lawrence

Death of an Art Collector by Robert Goldsborough

The Fate of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshak

liked it

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Man Who Saw Through Time by Loren Eiseley

it was ok

Christopher’s last review of the year

it was ok

Tolstoy was right: all ST Bantam books are terrible in their own way. This one features lengthy tendentious soliloquys from Mr. Gerrold about nonsensical Starfleet history, ludicrous episodes in Kirk's career, and page after page of utterly insane sciencey space science. Nothing can so easily ruin a potentially good science fiction book as an author's commitment to sciencey space science. This one also suffers from just being a bad book.

The epony Tolstoy was right: all ST Bantam books are terrible in their own way. This one features lengthy tendentious soliloquys from Mr. Gerrold about nonsensical Starfleet history, ludicrous episodes in Kirk's career, and page after page of utterly insane sciencey space science. Nothing can so easily ruin a potentially good science fiction book as an author's commitment to sciencey space science. This one also suffers from just being a bad book.

The eponymous character is not mentioned until over halfway through, and then it gets several nicknames including Polo's Bolos, which needs not be thought of ever again. Sure, two black holes on top of each other sounds pretty scary and dangerous, but you'd think someone would do something about it instead of just remembering it once in a while.

The main premise of whatever this is consists of our heroes coming across a derelict giganto ship that will eventually propel around a planet in a few years that will make it caroom into the path of the Interstellar Charybdis a few more years later. But because of sciencey space science, the ship has to start braking yesterday or it will be too late, because apparently it takes months to slow down ships with slower-than-light drives, and the Enterprise forgot to bring its tractor beam this trip. It is utterly nonsensical, even for a Star Trek book, and that's saying something. The nonsense can be seen in the post-plot conflict resolution epilogue, in which Chekhov comes up with the same solution the audience did 200 pages earlier, and ignores the "we needed to do this yesterday" thing by just using the tractor beam they remembered about and easily moves the ship to safety, making the entire 150 pages of plot-like story-ish middle unnecessary.

But at least our heroes charge in, overturn centuries of religious anti-science zealotry, and kill the badguys. How brave of Mr. Gerrold to make the badguys religious anti-science zealots. It's so brave and clever when science fiction writers do that every single time.

We should not forget about the derelict giganto space ship run by religious anti-science zealots. When our heroes discover it, while looking for a purported Klingon ship that never appears, neither the sensors, nor scanners, nor Mr. Spock recognize it. But then, behold, the ship's historian recognizes it instantly and gives our heroes a twenty-page detailed history of the most important thing in earth history, the creation of this ship, the first ship to go into space. The most important ship in pre-Starfleet history. And no one recognizes it, even Starfleet graduates. Are we really supposed to believe noone knows about this, even vaguely, before the historian gives an excruciatingly detailed history of literally centuries of Earth history leading up to the creation, launch, and loss of this most important vessel? Spock, who can easily recall 17th-century Moravian folklore or post-druidic Celtish sea shanties, does not recognize the most important inspiration for Starfleet's existence besides Zeffram Cochrane's ship? Piffle.

To add to the inanity, our heroes debate whether they should actually board the long-lost Earth ship that is doomed to get sucked into the Solar Vortex if they don't do something yesterday. The book establishes, painfully, this is Earth's property, Earth's responsibility, descendants of Earth doomed to die, and our heroes aren't sure if they should try to make contact. Starfleet's responsibility for cleaning up past Earth outer space whoopsies has already been well established in the series. What's to talk about?

Eventually they board and blah blah blah, teach benighted grammarless space wanderers about how science kicks religion's backside even though literally everyone aboard knows they are trapped in the grip of religious anti-science zealotry, and blah blah blah our heroes form alliances with the freemen wanderers in a wholly original way, storm the sanctuary with digipets and fireworks, and pretty much assassinate the badguys who deserve it for hating science.

And even though it's too late, Chekhov hits the "nevermind" button and all is well. Oh, and apparently this was a prequel to "Trouble with Tribbles" because Mr. Gerrold.

As with all Bantam ST books, only for completionists and surely only once. ...more

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