Finished I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com, by Kimberly Lemming, and True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color–from Azure to Zinc Pink, by Kory Stamper. I enjoyed both. These books were much funnier than I expected, too.
Next up: Ailien Minds: Advice About (and for) Our Natural, AI & Hybrid Heirs, by David Brin; and Extremity, by Nicholas Binge.
How to Mars David Ebenbach
A group of six scientists are the first humans on Mars. The catch is that they are on a one way mission, and are being filmed for a reality TV show. (According to the author’s notes, the setup was inspired a real world proposal called Mars One)
Then one of the Mars explorers becomes pregnant. Hilarity ensues. Well, not hilarity, although there is a fair amount of humor in the book. But various things do happen, driven by the diverse characters.
There are also various flashbacks and sections from the fictional Mars Handbook that the astronauts are given.
Enjoyable book.
hat tip to @Dendarii_Dame who mentioned this book in an earlier thread. I get a lot of my reading suggetions from these threads, and am too scatterbrained to keep track of them all, but I try to give credit when I can.
I’m in total agreement with @ShadowFacts and @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness about Titanium Noir, it’s great.
The sequel likewise, and I’ve been on a bit of a Nick Harkaway tear as a result. They’re all good so far:
Angelmaker is a steampunk-y adventure involving apocalyptic clockwork bees which is also a Bond pastiche, a crime caper and a belated coming of age story.
Tigerman is a fun lone-wolf-and-cub/crime-fighter tale which is also a critique of post-9/11 neo-colonialism.
But the masterpiece is Gnomon, a series of thematically linked and overlapping tales concerning: a 5th Century BC alchemist, former lover of Augustine of Hippo, investigating a locked-room murder; a modern-day Greek financial whizz-kid making money with the aid of shark-goddess; a retired Ethiopian avant-garde artist who once walked through the walls of his torture cell; a hive-mind entity called Gnomon who will commit any crime necessary to save the universe. All of which tales may or may not be simultaneously taking place in the mind of either or both of the future cop investigating the life of a deceased radical author.
Just making all that coherent is an incredible feat, but it is also very well written and is all on in service of a bigger theme which is treated with seriousness and passion.
On a completely different note, I’ve also finished Middlemarch in a belated attempt to engage with the classics and the cliche “classic for a reason” applies here. It is tremendous. None of the conceptual fireworks above; this is a very simple tale about ordinary people living their lives but Eliot is a very sympathetic while also clear-eyed observer of humanity, and the various characters are more fully realised than I think I’ve read anywhere else. Characters whose actions are by turns vain, capricious, complacent, arrogant, hypocritical, naive, or deluded are revealed to be no more or less than simply people with inner lives as rich and complex as ours and whom you cannot help but eventually sympathise with and wish the best for, even while recognsing their flaws.
It’s also very funny in places, and almost post-modern in its commentary on the workings of itself as a novel. In short, turns out that the book people have been raving about for the last 150 years is in fact quite good.
Finished Ailien Minds: Advice About (and for) Our Natural, AI & Hybrid Heirs, by David Brin, which was interesting but overly repetitive; and Extremity, by Nicholas Binge, which was okay. I would’ve liked it more except that it had a flaw I’ve been seeing a number of times lately: a character who should not have survived did, and it felt like that happened because the author liked that person too much to have the plot make sense.
Next up: Out of the Clouds: The Unlikely Horseman and the Unwanted Colt Who Conquered the Sport of Kings, by Linda Carroll and David Rosner; and 1901, by Robert Conroy.
I gave up on Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. 40% completed, and it was far too confusing to continue.
Now I’m going to listen to Faceoff, an anthology edited by David Baldacci which features short stories where famous series characters from different authors team up. For instance, Lincoln Rhyme and Lucas Davenport work together to solve a series of homicides; the story was written by Jeffery Deaver and John Sandford.
I had to take a short break from my current thick book to read this other one which is overdue at the library.
It’s a beautiful little object, with gilded cover designs, sprayed edges, and ribbon bookmarks sewn in. And the stories for the most part merit the presentation. Recommended!
Interesting! added to the TBR list 
Apparently it’s part of the Flame Tree Beyond and Within series. I’m going to search out some more of these!
I finished Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie and ummmmm wow the racism was heavy in this one. I realize it’s a product of it’s time but wow still. Other than that I enjoyed the mystery and the killer reveal completely blindsided me.
Cutting Back: My appreticeship in the gardens of Kyoto Leslie Buck
An American landscape designer signs on with a Japanese gardening company to work in the famous parks of Kyoto, Japan. She navigates cross cultural challenges and difficult working conditions and shares the lessons she learns along the way.
Pleasant book
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel, who wrote Station Eleven. This is her new release.
What a hell of a good read so far. I couldn’t put it down last night.
Without getting too spoilery, it’s a science fiction literary novel set in a post-democracy America, where everything has broken down into state factions and militias warring for territory. The book begins from the perspective of a woman who just got out of prison.
The premise hinges on a party that got very, very weird.
Like with Station Eleven, the chaotic environment and science fiction elements are the thematic context of a really thoughtful and intimate exploration of character. Not just character but life’s big, existential questions. And I love her prose. I love how her prose fits with plot fits with theme fits with character. So far it’s perfect.
Ooh, interesting! I enjoyed Station Eleven, and found Sea of Tranquility to be pretentious and self-indulgent and incoherent; but in both cases loved her prose. I might give this one a try!
For myself, I just finished The Subtle Art of Folding Space, by John Chu.
Star Trek peppers dialogue with “Enrich the dilithium crystals! Reverse the positronic field” and other technobabble, just enough to season the conversations and convey the impression that the people talking are smart and futuristic types.
Technobabble is a condiment, not a main ingredient. And that’s where “The Subtle Art of Folding Space” failed for me: almost every page was dilithium crystals and positronic fields. The characters and the plot were crowded out, two-dimensional and forgettable. I don’t care enough about the mechanics of the skunkworks and the quantum folding or whatever to devour a meal of it, but that’s what I got.
Other tastes, of course, might differ.
Next up: Katabasis. I read The Poppy War, by the same author, and loved the first 80% of it and loathed the ending. Kuang gets a second chance with me, but if it sucks, not a third chance. We’ll see how it goes.
Also, I’m excited: I just put three books on hold at the library, all by authors I love.
The Thrice-Bound Fool, by Christopher Bueuhlman. The first in the series, The Blacktongue Thief, is a wry, profane, horrific, hilarious adventure story, with the most appalling goblins in all literature. The prequel, The Daughter’s War, is more serious, more of a military fantasy, with an excellent voice for the main character and more completely wrong goblin action. I’m really excited for this sequel.
A Trade of Blood, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Ask yourself, do you want a fantasy set in a world with kaiju and mad botanists and Nero Wolfe is an elderly autistic savant who solves murder cases with the aid of her dyslexic assistant? Of course you do. Bennett writes solid fantasy: no great literature, no great experiments, just solid stories. This is also the third in a series.
Radiant Star, by Ann Leckie. Leckie’s Imperial Radch series is among the best space opera I’ve ever read–more confusing and more challenging than The Expanse, and better than everything else. This is a new story set in the same universe.
I read most of Babel because someone recommended it, and it wasn’t terrible, but it unfortunately became one of the countless books I never finished.
Finished Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon. A detective story set in NYC from 2001-02. Delicensed certified fraud examiner Maxine Tarnow investigates the doings of the billionaire owner of a computer security firm. Major themes are the 9/11 attacks and the growing influence of the Internet. The title is a term referring to emerging technologies whose potentials are as yet unrealized. It was okay, held my interest well enough, but kind of meh. I read this immediately after his previous novel, Inherent Vice, and that one I thought was much better. Along with Against the Day, Bleeding Edge was my third Pynchon and my least favorite of the three.
Next up, it’s back to Charles Dickens with Dombey and Son. But I can’t start it until next weekend, as my buddy from up in the Northeast will be staying with us for a few days, and we’ll be running around
A Trade of Blood is out? Time to update my own holds list.
So far I’m enjoying Katabasis. It’s very similar in tone and premise to Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education–brilliant girl at magical school and her love-hate relationship with the handsome and effortlessly smart male lead. There’s snark, there’s magic, there’s chemistry. I’m not sure it’s going to be as good as Novik, but I’m trying not to focus on that comparison and just enjoy it for what it is.
It’s out and it’s good!, I liked the first book of the series, disliked the second, but this one goes back to the quality of the first.
I finally finished Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I liked it, mostly, but I’ll be honest, I prefer his quirky fantastical works over the hard SF. KPS and Constituent Service are my two favorite works of his so far.
I do enjoy his imagination and creativity… and I admit to being a sucker for snarky narrators.
Thank you @Elendil_s_Heir for introducing me to John Perry and the Consu, I am intrigued to see how the Universe survises humans AND Consu in the same plain of existence.
I highly recommend John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints. It’s about a three-headed dragon dealing with the trauma of losing his fourth head and the quirky dragonrider who helps him heal. That sounds dull and dry, but Wiswell makes it hilarious. My favorite bit is how one gold coin makes the most comfortable bed the dragon’s ever laid on.
With that and Wearing the Lion, Wiswell has become one of those authors on my “yoink off the new releases shelf.” I need to find Someone You Can Build a Nest In to be a completist. (Helps that he’s only got three novels out for that goal.)