Valerie
I don't know if I would have made it through reading a book like this if it weren't written by Douglas Adams. The loss of his wit and wordplay was a huge one for this world. This book, written 30 years ago, details mayhem-filled journeys to track down some of the then rarest species in the world. What's heart-breaking is to look up the species today and see which ones are still around. Some are better (Good on you, New Zealand) and some are gone entirely (Get your shit together, China!). The success stories are minimal and the book stresses exactly how many species we just don't know are going extinct all the time because we are blundering through fragile economies and setting predatory rats loose everywhere. Adams, journeying around as a 6'5” Englishman through 1980s travel mayhem, provides a great travel journal that balances out the serious issues we humans really need to deal with because it's already too late for so many. I'm curious to read his zoologist co-writer's update to this book as well. The tone is hopeful, but that hope is founded in work.
Some books make me angry because they reveal the darkest parts of humanity. And some books make me angry because they are written by 19 year old wunderkinds experiencing all of the success I just assumed I would have as a 19 year old non-wunderkind. This book is both. It's a fascinating fantasy coating over some of the darkest periods of Chinese history that my privileged, Western self has never even heard of. It has intense depth of character development, a tight and twisty plot, and a stunning mythology. Also, while Rin has deep relationships with a lot of men during this book, none of them are sexual because WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A BRUTAL WAR AND DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR SUCH THINGS! I can't tell you how much I appreciate this take on the situation.
The book is brutal, not for anyone with violence triggers. But if you can handle it, it is well worth the read. I definitely need a break before picking up the sequel, though.
I loved the Ancillary Series, and I thought Provenance was fun but not quite up to the tightly wound social commentary that Ancillary was. The Raven Tower is Leckie back to her roots, weaving a complex mystery around a diverse cast. It was recommended to me as middle ages Hamlet, and while the parallels are quite clear, it's much richer than just a Shakespearean retelling. I'm an absolute devotee of the gods among us trope, and the gods Leckie imagines are so unique, so perfectly Other. Also, I read this in Ireland where I stayed in a medieval tower while hunting neolithic standing stones, so perfect mood book.
I've never read Carrie Vaughn before, but I met her at Denver Pop Culture Con this year, and she liked my costume. We took pictures. I'm really happy that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. In a world where dystopian fiction is at peak saturation, this was a totally different kind of story. It's really more of a small town murder mystery set against a dystopian backdrop. The telling of Enid's story in alternating flashback and present day scenes really worked, and kept the action quietly building. I really love quiet genre fiction, and that's exactly where this fit. I also like that in any other dystopian story Enid would undoubtedly be the villain, and I kept expecting her to uncover something dark about her society, but the end left me feeling hopeful and very convinced in the power of birth control. You maybe have to suspend your disbelief a bit to believe that society essentially chooses to live medievally except for solar cars and the world's greatest birth control ever invented, but you know what, I'll roll with it.
I burned through this whole series so fast. I think the limitations of the structure are a little more clear in this one because there is a lot less time spent in-robot where everything is being recorded and a lot of our great record-keepers are no longer with us. It's a little more like reading a movie script than a book at this point, but that didn't really bother me.
At the end of this series, I am left in rather profound pessimism for the state of our world. Neuvel paints a devastating picture of what first contact looks like without the aliens, and it's... just a little close to home. I can hear Fox News blaming the Muslims for it even before it happens. The ending isn't completely dark, but it does feel a little too little too late. At the end of the day, this seems to be a series about power and fear of losing that power. The things humans will do to maintain the illusion of control. It's a timely theme, and I recommend this series to people who want to explore it and also love giant robots.
Solid follow-up to Sleeping Giants. Neuvel's style is fast-paced and reads like a high stakes disaster movie, this one even more so than the previous. And yet, it doesn't have the characterization issues often faced by disaster movies and other popcorn type entertainment. It's a solid story, and while the narrative occasionally suffers from everything having to be a transcript or a journal entry, overall, it works.
I got this book as a freebie a year ago, and I'm a little sad it took me this long to get around to reading it. It's written exclusively as transcripts and journal entries which makes it very fast-paced and suspenseful, keeping a lot of mystery going all through the book. Despite being so sparse with words, Neuvel still develops his characters thoroughly and makes a pretty silly premise into a gripping thriller. Plus, giant robots. I do enjoy giant robots. If you are a fan of World War Z style writing and mecha, you will probably like this series, and I bought the next book right away.
This was my homework book, and I more or less agree with everything it had to say. That said, it's message for application is basically: analyze, reflect, analyze, reflect and keep repeating until you are good at being culturally responsive. There isn't much in the way of specific strategies, but there's a lot of really good brain research to back up making changes in your classroom. The information in here is all fairly obvious when you're reading the book, but less obvious in the heat of the moment in a hectic school with deadlines and testing, so I think it's important to read books like it to remind ourselves as educators what the actual best practices are.
I loved the first 200 pages of this book. It was well-paced with great characters and a brutal look at PTSD. In some ways, it reminded me of Stephen King's “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.” In that book, the mundane story is more interesting than the monster. In this one, the actual struggles of Catherine are even more engaging than the alien subplot for a long time.
Which made it much more disappointing when the book approached the last third, and the ending was just devastatingly dull. Not to mention, there's a ham-fisted love plot that is supremely uninteresting. This book had a lot more potential than it ended up delivering on for me.
When I started this book, I initially thought, “Oh, it's X-Men.” And it kind of is. People with powers start popping up, old guy opens up a special school, they go public. What sets it apart and the reason I bumped it to four stars is that being written in 2018, it can do a lot of things X-men never could. X-men was always an allegory for marginalization, but most of the mutants are pretty white and even the gay/bisexual characters tend to get glossed over when adapted to big screen and such.
This book starts out from the point of view of a disabled, Jewish father of one of the children. The professor from the school is on older gay man who has lived through the gay rights movement from the beginning. Other characters include a Muslim lesbian woman, a transgender shapeshifter, and a mixed race teenager. Many of the characters are already one or two strikes as far as functioning in American society goes. This narrative accounts for and honors that without ever feeling pandering. It connects what is happening in the novel all to closely to what is happening in this world right now.
That said, the pacing was a real issue for me, and the ending just ... wasn't an ending. I always have an issue with books that are like “I am the first in a series! Don't you want to know what happens next?” And yeah, but I'd also rather there be a complete narrative in each individual book. This one left so many plot points unresolved that I just ended up feeling like I stopped in the middle. Plus, I got this as an ARC from the Del Rey booth at Denver Pop Culture Con, so it's not technically out yet and the sequel will be much farther out. I'm always sad when I know I'll probably forget most of the important bits by the time the sequel exists.
I got this book from Del Rey publishing at Denver Pop Culture Festival through their “Book Wizard” program. I was extremely excited to read it since the Divine Cities trilogy is one of my favorites. This series plays out very differently, but still has RBJ's skill for extremely tight plotting and world-building. Basically, this is a fantasy novel for coders. The entire magic system is basically divine coding, and I think it would be a great gift for anyone in IT. It's also a superbly plotted heist that really never stops and has a Divine Cities hint of the gods walking among us, which is always a favorite theme of mine.
That said, I didn't like it as much as Divine Cities, and part of that was the characters who just weren't as vibrant as in that novel. These feel a bit more stock, and there is an extremely ham-fisted lesbian romance just kinda thrown in. Granted, I'm happy that we've progressed as a society where ham-fisted romantic subplots can also be gay, but this felt very much like a straight white man throwing this into a book to prove he's inclusive, and it just didn't develop enough for me. I usually don't care for romance sub-plots, and this one was just no exception. When facing the end of the world, I just can't see getting a date as a the top priority.
I love RBJ and will probably continue on when Shorefall comes out next year, but yeah straight male writers, beware of token lesbian romance syndrome.
Patti LuPone is one of my favorite Broadway divas. Her memoir chronicles her first performance as Gypsy through her 2008 performance of Mama Rose including her time at Julliard, Evita, and all of the other moments we know about. It also chronicles a lot of the moments I knew nothing and was well worth the read as a fan. It confirmed my love of Stephen Sondheim and what a jerk Andrew Lloyd Webber can be. It has ghost stories, love stories, and (completely justified) diva tantrums. I love Patti LuPone and anyone else who loves her would enjoy this memoir.
All right nerd confession: this is actually the first time I've read Ray Bradbury. I know! Shame! I don't often enjoy older sci-fi, so it was pretty easy to not get around to reading any. That said, I'm glad the book club picked this one. While there are dated sections (only one woman left on Mars and she's fat!), there were also truly poignant and progressive sections. And Bradbury's prose is just as lush and beautiful as I've been told. It was progressive for the time, and really read more like philosophy than sci-fi often. I see why it's a classic, and I'm glad I finally read it.
I think I picked this up off a 2.99 sale just because it was Terry Jones. Since one of my reading goals this year is more nonfiction, I finally got around to reading it. It's a very quick read and yet full of trope-destroying information each chapter of which could fuel a unique novel in its own right. Did you know monastic orders forbid eating meat except in the infirmary, so all the monks started taking their meals in there? Did you know Shakespeare's Richard III is almost entirely drawn from Tudor propaganda? Maybe you did. Maybe you read about medieval history all the time. But if you don't and would like an easy to read dip in archaeological records of the middle ages, I definitely recommend this one.
This was a really useful book as a white educator in a diverse school. It's a well-researched look at how racism affects development across various developmental stages and life markers and what can be done to mitigate these effects. As a white person, I know a lot of microaggressions and small moments of discrimination go completely over my head, and this book has clear methods of active anti-racist actions that I can take to help combat this. While it is primarily about Black-White relationships, there are also a couple chapters about other people of color and multiracial families that are limited but good starting points here. It's a book for both POC's and allies, and I highly recommend it to educators specifically.
I originally listened to this on audio, and I highly recommend that as a way to read this book. The reader is phenomenal and lends a lot to the series with his voice. On reading it, I definitely felt a huge appreciation for the amount of details and set-up that Sullivan put into his world building. On the surface, this is a wild, high fantasy romp that makes good use of fantasy tropes. The action is fast-paced, the dialogue is snappy, and the characters are all great to spend time with. It also has great female characters, especially for European-based epic fantasy. I would say that this first book is a lot stronger than the second, but the series is worth continuing to the end to see where all the tiny threads eventually lead.
G. Willow Wilson is really a master at culture weaving. How many fantasy novels set in 1491 at the during the annexation of Muslim Granada into Catholic Spain featuring an Eastern European protagonists in a platonically romantic relationship with a gay Muslim protagonist and also a Djinn do you know? History and fantasy are woven together in a truly inspiring tale about self-worth, freedom, and love. If you enjoyed Alif the Unseen, there is a very important crossover character, but otherwise this contains the same emotional tones in an entirely different setting. I was lucky enough to see Wilson's book launch at the Boulder Book Store, and would also add she is a charming and fascinating human.
I stumbled across this in a bargain bin, and boy I do not know how it got there. I have been searching for some quiet, upmarket fantasy, and this ghost story really hits the spot. It packs so much into such a short book, dealing with grief, power, family, suicide, and all with a unique take on what ghosts are and why they linger. Highly recommended for people who want a soft, subtle, fantastical tale.
I'm an elementary school math teacher, and I picked this up hoping it would give me some good teaching ideas. It's definitely aimed at a higher level than my kiddos, but it's easy to read and made me feel like I could understand higher order math. That's not the same as I understand it, but Strogatz does a good job of simplifying big ideas for laypeople. It's funny, fast, and a good primer/reminder for those of us not using calculus in our daily life.
Everyone talks about how wonderful N.K. Jemisin is at writing brilliant speculative fiction that addresses all too prevalent issues of racism and classism still pervading modern society. Everyone knows she is a goddess of world-building and creates perfectly formed, minutely nuanced cultures and societies. What people don't talk about enough is how well Jemisin writes FOOD. This short story collection features multiple food fantasy stories and guys, they were so vivid I fell right off my diet. The collection also features shorts stories in the worlds of the Dreamblood Duology and the Broken Earth Trilogy which were amazing to revisit. My favorite is probably her response to LeGuin's “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It's stunning and brilliant and I really wish I'd written it. If you've never read Jemisin before, go ahead and read one of her novel series, but if you're already a fan, these works are bite-sized versions of her usual brilliance.
Did I enjoy this book? How can I know? I think I did, but did I enjoy it because it was an easy to read, interesting psychology book for the layman or because the green color reminded me of the laundry room paint in my condo? Or did I enjoy it because reading nonfiction makes me feel more intelligent and boosts my ego? After reading this book, you will doubt everything you think you know about why you make the decisions you make. It is interesting and also a bit disturbing, but a good book for your average person interested in how brains work.
This is a remarkably well-researched book. Reading it, I was deeply impressed by how it remains a character-driven narrative with (to my layman's eyes at least) spot-on science that never breaks the flow of the narrative. I feel like occasionally the marginalization of women and people of color got a little heavy-handed, but never inaccurate. It might be because it was told through the lens of a white woman that sometimes issues of race feel a little less natural, but Kowal does a good job of having Elma check her privilege often in a way that does feel mostly natural. Elma is a good example of a character who is not racist, who genuinely believes people are equal, but was raised in such a way that she forgets to consider other perspectives regularly. It happens a lot, which I think is accurate, but I'm not used to reading it which is why it maybe felt preachy to me.
I would also add that Elma and Nathaniel are maybe one of the best couples I've every read. Smart, supportive, open and understanding. Relationships don't have to be the drama!
I will probably continue on in this series because it is such a dramatic balance of science and story-telling.
I generally listen to Dresden books because James Marsters, so this is the first time I've actually read one. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of short story collections for novel series. Most of them read like slightly above average fan fiction, especially when it comes to vampire larps. It's fine, and the last novella, “Aftermath” is more in tune with the series style and I got pretty into it. It isn't necessary per se to the Dresden universe, but fans will likely enjoy it on that level.
I think I getting more used to the bananas world made this second volume a lot easier to handle than the first. I didn't spend the whole time just desperately trying to figure out what all these high concept science magic stuff was, and could enjoy the characters more. If you're on the fence about continuing this series, I would say go for it; it gets easier. The new characters are interesting, Jedao is still great, and without spoiling anything, I wasn't disappointed in the Cheris storyline either.