Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
I will admit that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has been a bit of white whale for me for a while–it’s just hard for me to get into the book, even though I want to read it and I want to like it! Plus it was gifted to me by a friend, which means I feel bad for not reading it? (side bar: giving books as gifts is so fraught) So you can imagine my trepidation to try another of Clarke’s works, even though this […]
I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories by Bo-Young Kim, Sophie Bowman (Translator), Sung Ryu (Translator)
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories This is a three star book because I liked “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way” much more than I liked “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life.” “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way” take the concepts/consequences of faster-than-light travel and take them to their logical, inevitable ends (and, when I say end, I really mean end). Apparently written as a commission for man to use to propose to his female partner, this story […]
Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I unfortunately don’t remember too much of this book, but I enjoyed reading it so 3 stars it is. This is a stylized noir, with MacGuffins we never see, dames who’ll do you dead, gangsters with guns jumping out of cars, and a vague sense that no matter what happens to our little hill of beans the larger tale won’t skip a beat. Perhaps it’s part of the genre, but I enjoyed that our view into the whole dramatic tale was Maite, a 30-something secretary […]
Force Multiplied by Greg Rucka, Leandro Fernández
Man I wanted to wait until, like, Netflix came out with Old Guard 2: 2 Old 2 Guard but I just couldn’t. And now I have to wait until Rucka comes out with Old Guard 3 before I can figure out where this story will go! The characters remain engaging and vivid and visceral in a way that beautiful actors on screen can’t be–in particular, Booker has this exaggeratedly sad face, all drawn jowls and drooping nose and sagging cheeks which adds additional pathos to […]
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
While my friend Aileen though this was too literary and pretentious for her, it was 100% in my wheelhouse–gimme ALL the literary pretention, that’s my jam through and through. I thought this book was hilarious, maybe not in the laughing out loud type way but definitely in a “I was mentally chuckling throughout” sort of way. Jacob is every character trait I have ever despised boiled into one character and luckily you’re not supposed to like him! Now when I say every character trait I […]
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Issacson
Humble Pi: A Comedy of Math Errors by Matt Parker
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race These are usually the only types of non-fiction that I will read: non-fiction about science or math or healthcare, doubling down on my nerdy persona. This book in particular was recommended to me by a colleague who mentioned reading it during a meeting. This is a long book, and as another colleague said, it might not be his best. My rationale for why is this: I think that the combination of […]