Six months of books, Part III

Here's a three-quel post to our January 2026 and July 2025 one-line book reports. This one covers our reading in the first half of 2026.

6:40 to Montreal, Eva Jurczyk - This Agatha Christie locked-room murder mystery set on a snowbound stranded train certainly seems like it should be a good book, but the execution (not to mention a ridiculous ending) is ultimately just too implausible.

The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty - This detailed account of the making of eight sci-fi/fantasy movies released in the core-memory summer of 1982 (including classics like Star Trek II and Poltergeist) is a delightful gift for Generation X sci-fi nerd movie buffs like us.

The Gone World, Tom Sweterlitsch - For the first 200 pages, this seems like the smart, complicated, epic time travel novel - with big doses of alien horror! - we all desperately need, but it never truly soars because of a tangled climax that gets too convoluted and artsy for its own good.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald - Yes, it's pretty good. And yes, to wring as much meaning and understanding out of the text as we could, we geeked out and actually bought and read the Cliff Notes version as well.

History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage - A fascinating way to examine world history using popular beverages (starting with beer and ending with Coca-Cola) to explore civilization's economic and cultural evolution.

The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar - This dull book about a man who can see a few seconds into the future which leads to all kinds of trouble with government forces - and which we most definitely did not finish - proves that there's more to a good novel than a great premise.

Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown - This erudite thriller featuring The Da Vinci Code's symbologist Robert Langdon stumbling into yet another deadly conspiracy is talky and tedious, especially the final 100 pages that feels like the world's longest epilogue, but it more or less works.

She Kills, Skip Hollandsworth - A reprinting of some of the author's best true-life crime articles (some are more engrossing than others) from Texas Monthly magazine works as a literary equivalent to those sordid Netflix documentaries Mrs. Cheese Fry loves so much.

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien - A haunting, somber collection of interconnected Vietnam War short stories - written by a veteran of that conflict - that we're grateful landed in our book pile after our 11th grader read it for English class.

Tweet

Starlight Rollercade Memories

We were amazed that Google image search dug up this image of the dearly departed Starlight Rollercade that resided on a stretch of Harry Hines Boulevard that was already pretty seedy in the early 1980s.  Judging by the pristine look of the building and the fins on the cars in the parking lot, this photo looks like it came from an advertisement postcard from the 1960s.  But we remember well those glass doors leading to the cashier alcove - that entrance remained wholly unchanged through the early 1980s.

The Cheese Fry didn't spend a lot of time at Starlight, which is probably what made a trip there so special.  A few birthday parties, some church youth group excursions, an end-of-sixth-grade celebration.  Going there was an event, people.  The smelly, unnaturally heavy rental skates.  The dark and dank vibe in the concourse around the edge of the rink, contrasted by the harsh fluorescents of the in-house pizza joint.  The feel of rolling off the sluggish worn-out carpet and onto the fast and shiny wooden rink floor. 

But the reason we even came up with this blog post subject was the music, played by an actual deejay (likely spinning actual records in dual turntables) from a far corner of the rink, sitting up high like a judge presiding over a courtroom of pre-teen, PG-rated fun.

To this day, we cannot hear these songs without being transported to the twinkling disco ball flashes of the Starlight Rollercade and those exhilarating moments of skating so fast that the wind whipped our hair, trying hard to look cool as we struggled desperately to not wipe out.

"Break My Stride" by Matthew Wilder (1983)
"Driving My Life Away" by Eddie Rabbit (1980)
"Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant (1982)
"Funkytown" by Lipps, Inc. (1979)
"Magic" by Olivia Newton-John (1980)
"Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton (1983)

There's a roller rink still in operation in a suburb not too far from here.  It's the only one know of - and for a few years there, it was a popular destination for our kids' friends' birthday parties.  Going there was fascinating because it reminded us of Starlight in so many ways, but at the same time it was also so very different.  Like a sort of funhouse mirror version of the roller rink of our youth -- too clean, too bright, too new.  And they didn't play any early-1980s music.

Tweet