Finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin. It was excellent–the best novel I’ve read this year so far.
Now I’m reading Restless Creatures: The Story of Life in Ten Movements, by Matt Wilkinson.
Please recommend your favorite book by each, or a good book for a first-time reader of each to get started with.
Took me a couple of weeks, but I just finished The Pursuit of William Abbey, Claire North’s latest.
Damn, this book is grim. It’s set in a hospital next to the trenches during World War I, but if that’s not grim enough, it’s full of flashbacks to British colonial rule in Southern Africa, as well as a host of other horrific locations. Like most of North’s books, it posits one supernatural phenomenon and explores how folks react to, use, and despair of this power.
The power, in case you’re curious (it’s revealed pretty quickly in the text, so this is just a spoiler for the first 50-70 pages):
There’s a curse you can get, in which the ghost of someone walks toward you, never stopping, no matter how far away you are. When they’re close to you–within a hundred miles or so–you can see the truth in the hearts of everyone around you. When they’re very close, you can’t help but babble that truth constantly. When they reach you, they enter your body and emerge from the heart of the person you love most, killing them, and beginning their walk toward you again.
She’s a very, very good writer, and just getting better. But we’re not talking uplifting books full of hope here.
I read your spoiler. Yeeesh, that’s spooky!
Triggered by Donald Trump Jr. Good book. Also, The Unholy Trinity by Matt Walsh, also great!
Finished Restless Creatures: The Story of Life in Ten Movements, by Matt Wilkinson.
Some of it was too technical for me to understand, but I still enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone interested in science, particularly evolution. My favorite parts were about how and why plants and animals evolved to live on land.
Now I’m reading Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya.
Finished Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya. Not recommended.
Now I’m reading Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, by Lawrence Weschler. (Note that this is not the book with a similar title, but by Anna Wiener, that was just published.)
Taking a break from Van Gogh - what a pushy, annoying pest of a man he often was to family and friends! - to start Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. It’s about a company, Theranos, which tried to develop a cutting-edge medical gadget to test patients’ blood from very small samples and then share the results wirelessly with doctors. Not a bad idea, but the tech eluded them and the CEO, who ran the company almost as a personality cult, resorted to ever-more-elaborate lies to keep venture capitalist dollars flowing.
I am between books - Lincoln & Childs’ “The Cabinet of Curiosities” and “Still Life with Crows”, which I am waiting for at my library. This all started when I bought their “Book of the Dead” at a used bookstore, as a gamble, having never heard of them before.
Anyway, what a freaking blast I’m having with this series. It’s a thriller, cop, mystery series that’s so over the top - sort of like Batman but without costumes. I highly recommend it.
Whew! Three weeks later, finally finished! (I have very little reading time but still). Anyway, 52 science fiction classics arranged in chronological order, and with short introductions for each one. It was really good. Some I had already read, but they were so good I read them again (such as Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit” and Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey”). I won’t try to pick a favorite, but just to mention one I really liked that I hadn’t read before: Sheckley’s “Specialist”.
I just finished* The One* by John <arrs and WOW. With an extra serving of Holy Sh*t! I was expecting a dystopian story and what I got was 5 romances, a serial killer, a psychopathic extortionist, cops, grieving parents, a couple of babies and a whole lot of laughs.
New Thread: In like a lion…
John Marrs, I tried editing but it didn’t work…
Finished Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, by Lawrence Weschler. Well-written essays on a variety of fascinating subjects.
Now I’m reading Naked Came the Florida Man, by Tim Dorsey. It’s the latest Serge Storms mystery.