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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2672 KP) rated Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Books

Aug 27, 2025  
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Don Bruns | 2010 | Mystery
5
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Finding Danger at a Pop Up Carnival
Best friends James Lessor and Skip Moore are spending the weekend at a traveling carnival so that James can get a feel for it in his new job as their marketing director. Then the owner asks them to put their new PI license to use finding out who is sabotaging the rides. There have been injuries and one death due to these accidents. Will the two get the help from the carnies they need to solve things?

My love/hate relationship with this series continues. I do like the characters and want to see them succeed. But I also wish they were a little smarter and that Skip would stand up for himself. The mystery was good, but the ending could have been stronger. The suspects were interesting. Do keep in mind that these books aren’t cozies and are just old enough for the technology to be dated. I’m hoping some growth we saw here carries over to further books, but I’ll find out when I get to the next book.
  
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David McK (3929 KP) rated Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) in Books

Jan 28, 2019 (Updated May 26, 2026)  
Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6)
Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6)
Terry Pratchett | 2002 | Fiction & Poetry
8
9.5 (8 Ratings)
Book Rating
2026 update: read in May as that's when it's mainly set!

2018 update: "Truth! Justice! Reasonably-priced love! And a hard-boiled egg!"

2016 update: Following (Sir) Terry Pratchett's death in 2015 to his 'Embuggerance', I recently came across a blog where the author of said blog was reading all of the Discworld books in order from the first to the last. One of the last entries in the said blog was when he rated the books, from his most to least favourite, and then asked his readers to do the same and later published those responses.

In both cases, 'Night Watch' - which, I think, was one of the last before Pratchett was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's - was in the top 10, so I decided to go back and re-read it ...

<original thoughts below>

One of Terry Pratchett's more recent Discworld novel, in which he makes use of the good old time-travel sci-fi trope to move Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch back in time to an earlier portion of his life-time.
  
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Cori June (3033 KP) rated The Dragonstone (Mithgar, #1) in Books

Dec 3, 2018 (Updated Dec 8, 2018)  
TD
The Dragonstone (Mithgar, #1)
Dennis L. McKiernan | 1996 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The book follows our heroines and heroes hoping to avert a possible disaster by finding the jade egg and defeating a wizard. Their only real map a puzzle of a prophecy that they have to figure out. It does use a lot of what I call "old or high" language where the meanings have changed from today's usage and there are a lot of thee and thine. As well as a peppering of what I think is Japanese and possibly French words. He also really likes the word whelm. The Dragonstone is philosophical inclined and many discussions about free will vs. predestination are inside.

Technically, I rate this book as 7 1/2 stars (I'm not sure how to do a half rating & enjoyed it enough to round up). I received over half of his books over ten years ago about the same time as the LOTR movies came out. Yes, they are very similar. You can tell he is a LOTR fan. Like a lot of his books, this story starts in the middle and builds through flashbacks. One of my favorite things about this books series is that you get multiple p.o.v. And you can read the series all hodgepodge with few as "true" sequels or trilogies- most of those are contained as one book now.