Rob's bookshelf: read

Rob's bookshelf: read en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 17:37:11 -0700 60 Rob's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Rabbits (Rabbits, #1) 55481226 Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.

It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air��4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th��4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.]]> 422 Terry Miles 1984819658 Rob 0 2025, currently-reading 3.60 2021 Rabbits (Rabbits, #1)

author: Terry Miles
name: Rob
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: 2025, currently-reading
review:

]]> Hamnet 57004691 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.]]> 13 Maggie O'Farrell 0593212142 Rob 0 4.01 2020 Hamnet

author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Rob
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading, 2025, roman-a-clef
review:

]]> A Confederacy Of Dunces 983196 14 John Kennedy Toole 0786129166 Rob 4 2025 3.22 1980

author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Rob
average rating: 3.22
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> All Fours 199213701
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> Miranda July Rob 2 abandoned, 2025 3.37 2024 All Fours

author: Miranda July
name: Rob
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: abandoned, 2025
review:

]]> Embassytown 16636896
Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.]]> 13 China Miéville Rob 3 one of his novels. It's all there: the weird landscapes that are intimately, almost erotically detailed; how the landscape collapses singularity-like onto one pivotal city that is populated by the most bizarre people and things that he can funnel from his imagination into yours; how those weird people from beyond the far reaches of you imagination are enmeshed in grand and bizarre plots that are these rude combinations of the political and/or the social and/or the epistemological and/or the aesthetic and/or... He takes all of these things and uses them to frame these peculiar philosophical tangents that he seems to be the only author brave enough (or weird enough) to embark upon.

And in that way, Embassytown is pitch-perfect Miéville. And also in that way, did I experience my "Murakami moment" [1] for Miéville. [2]

To delve specifically into Embassytown though, we have an interesting, if (slightly?) self-undermining novel. On the surface, we have a science fiction novel with some interstellar [3] political intrigue happening: Embassytown is a human city on the planet Arieka, on the frontier's edge of the Bremen empire [4] as it looks to expand its spheres of trade and influence. Human beings and other "exots" have lived in relative harmony with the indigenous Ariekei for generations, even if their relationships are largely opaque and mediated through genetically-engineered and highly-trained linguists called "Ambassadors". Then Bremen sends an Ambassador of its own which radically upsets the balance of power in Embassytown and causes an upheaval of inexpressible proportions. At the heart of this is our narrator, Avice Benner Cho, a living simile for the Ariekei--whose language lacks signification and is thus strictly literal by nature--who becomes a focal point for the events of the novel.

And though the novel works its narrative through Avice, it is not about her. The narrative is very clearly about the Ariekei--"the Hosts"--or, perhaps more accurately, about their Language and their pursuit of a kind of... anti-ontology.

First, about Language:

The Ariekei Language is a language but only inasmuch as it has a vocabulary and a grammar. Capital "L" Language has no literary tradition. It has structure, but no beyond that which is literal. This is not to say that the Language of the Ariekei has no symbols or "figures of speech", but those symbols--those similes and examples, etc.--must be "real" to have any meaning. We are introduced very early in the text to the (what we would see as) extremes required for this to be true: for the Ariekei to incorporate a simile into their Language, it must actually have happened--and they are not above staging the event in order for it to be "true".

Which brings me to my assertion that the Ariekei, throughout the course of the narrative, become obsessed with a kind of anti-ontology. If "ontology" is the study of the nature of being, the pursuit of truth through comprehension of that which is "real", then the whole foundation of "native" Ariekei thought is grounded by this, since they are only able to process the world around them in literal terms. They are biologically incapable of symbol substitution (e.g., symbolism, metaphorical comparison). Meanwhile, after they meet human beings (and especially after they encounter Ambassador EzRa), they become acquainted with the notion of lies and of lying, of using things which are not strictly or literally true to tell the truth. The Ariekei call it lying, where by "it" I mean any form of language/Language which does not immediately correspond to some absolute truth. The trivial figures of speech that you an I use every day are anomalous and baffling to them. We might not call a metaphor a "lie", but to the Ariekei it is something so unsettling that they cannot even hear such speech.

Even the most casual student of science fiction will recognize the trope that is embedded in "Language". You are probably jumping out of your chair right now to point to the obvious [5] example: "They're like Star Trek's Vulcans, right?" And you would not be strictly wrong, but the Vulcans don't lie because of a strict embedded morality; they can lie, [6] and that they do not is because that behavior is so deeply entrenched in their culture and their shared belief system that it is as though they cannot. Meanwhile, the Ariekei are biologically incapable of lying; they simply do not have the neural circuitry required to produce or even consume figurative sign systems. Lying is not just an extreme anathema, it is effectively an impossibility.

That a species might develop language that is completely devoid of lies may seem like a utopian vision, but even a cursory read would reveal otherwise. The Ariekei are largely alienated from the other "exot" species (not just the humans). Several times in the text, they discuss how the Language of the Ariekei is unique among the exot species of the Out; all other species seem capable of (with some effort) "hearing" and "speaking" each others' languages, of processing each others' figures of speech, of detecting each others' falsehoods. But the Ariekei cannot. They are largely alienated from other species. And (but?) it is questionable whether they perceive that alienation as such, or if they treat these other species with the kind of detached curiosity that we usually reserve for animals or climate patterns. [7]

Presumably this is where Miéville turns that utopian vision of a lie-less Language on its head: that the Ariekei have a "pure" and literal language, unclouded by confusing figures of speech, a cultural history that is unsullied by wars predicated on intrigue and double-dealing--this should be a Good Thing. But instead we have a species that is simultaneously advanced (see also: the biorigging) and primitive (see also: they are not an immer/space-faring race), a species that is "trapped" in the domain of the literal. But here is also where the text begin to undo its own success: the suggestion (and in some cases outright declaration) that the Ariekei are "trapped" in the realm of the literal, that they are caged in the prison of Language, makes the text begin to seem rather... Homo sapiens-centric? I thought of Peter Watts' Blindsight , of the Scramblers and of Rorschach and of his deep-dive into the notion that consciousness was not a pre-requisite for intelligence. And here: the Ariekei are clearly conscious, but they follow the kind of linguistic literalism that we popularly associate with Asperger's. How does that undo the text? It turns the alienness of the Ariekei on its head--it suggests that for them to "advance", that they must engage in symbolic thinking. [8]

The narrative has the Ariekei rather distinctly reacting to their own lack of symbolic thinking as a deficiency. The early attention given to how they must enforce a simile's "reality" before deploying it as a figure of speech seems a foreshadowing of this: that they are capable of having vague notions that can coalesce through guided stagecraft. This lapses into the text as a kind of foregone conclusion for many pages before we return to it via the Festival of Lies, and Surl tesh-escher, and the other Ariekei in the Liars Club. We discover that there are many Ariekei who have become obsessed with the notion that one might make revealing, even illuminating statements about something--and not by making flat and clearly literal statements about it, but by colorfully embossing it with similes, metaphors, synecdoches... The become obsessed with "truth" as it is manifested through untruth, through language which is not strictly true. Hence: Surl tesh-escher's assertion that the Ariekei "did not speak" before the humans arrived. More so than any other character in the novel, he creates and aligns himself with this anti-ontological metaphysics: that "speaking" is not merely reflecting upon what is, but by probing reality through what could be, by drawing disparate items together for unique insights, by reveling in the majesty of language for its own sake, for its own beauty, and not for what factual "truth" it might bestow upon the listener. [9]

All that business about EzRa (and later, EzCal) manipulating the Ariekei through the "god-drug" speech? That is all merely secondary to the notion that Ariekei seek to burst into some new phase of existence that includes symbolic thought, right down to the capacity to lie.

That is where I disjunct ever so slightly. Did Miéville give us a happy ending? It is (thankfully?) ambiguous: a whole lot of idle speculation about "what next", on Avice's part. Nothing in that final chapter seemed set in stone. But the Ariekei had changed, and they had changed fundamentally. Were they changed for the better? Perhaps our own sense of symbolism is being used against (?) us here: perhaps the story stands as its own allegory for colonialism? or perhaps the take-away is that we must concede absolutism for ambiguity in order to achieve cooperation? The covers close with some discomfort, and without easy answers.

------

[1] The phrase "Murakami moment" is one that has its roots in a conversation that I had with a friend of mine. To summarize: in discussing Haruki Murakami with this particular friend, he emoted: "I love Murakami's style, and don't get me wrong, he's a great author, but it just seems like... I don't know: like all his book are the same somehow." This spiraled into a good half-hour discussion that put William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Ernest Hemingway, Dave Eggers, and Chuck Palahniuk (to name a few) all under the microscope; to varying degrees, we concluded, all authors suffer from this tendency to "write the same story", either by leaning on familiar plots, familiar themes, and/or familiar characters and settings. Murakami, unfortunately, is the one that has become synonymous with this "tendency". Thus do I deploy it here.

[2] Yes, I think this might be a little unfair.

[3] At least, I assume it's interstellar. The narration about travel "to the Out" "through the immer" could just as easily have our narrator catapulted through parallel universes. This is, however, largely irrelevant to the plot, and thus a question of strictly academic interest.

[4] The specific governmental and political configuration of Bremen is left, I believe, more/less purposefully oblique. That Embassytown is referred to in the text as a "colony" is sufficient enough for me to go ahead and call Bremen an "empire".

[5] Most famous?

[6] The fact that Spock is half-human has nothing to do with it.

[7] There is some evidence in the text to support both arguments. There are a few direct references to how the Ariekei are basically indifferent to the humans of Embassytown. But then there's the whole messy business with the Festival of Lies and the virtuoso liars, etc. that just has you nodding your head that yes indeed, at least some of the Hosts feel some kind of absence by not being able to communicate.

[8] Which I believe is what the whole sub-plot with Scile was about. (I know I haven't mentioned Scile but...) In a way, Scile's presence in the narrative serves first as an excuse to get back Avice back to Embassytown; then he winds up as a means of illustrating this question of "Do the Ariekei really need to change Language to 'advance' as a species? What was wrong with them before?" But that Scile is painted as a villain clearly orients the text in favor of "symbolic processing as advanced thinking". And of course, Scile et al.'s whole "what was wrong with them before Similes and Lies?" argument also pretty clearly harkens to the whole notion of "the noble savage".

[9] And in that way, perhaps what the Ariekei are after is the birth of their own aesthetics?

------

Original "short version" review:

Miéville's anti-ontological novel? Most of his work seems to involve inventing personages and things that are so alien (and then setting them in an intimately, almost erotically detailed locale) that they're almost unrecognizable, that they become symbols unto only themselves to examine concepts you had not really considered examining. And here it's taken to almost parodic extreme? If it's difficult to identify with the characters, it's because they're almost unidentifiable.

Almost four-stars, and if you're patient enough, maybe it could be for you.

------

See also:
�� at Tor.com]]> 3.75 2011 Embassytown

author: China Miéville
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: 2012, science-fiction, to-re-read, 2025
review:
If you are acquainted with China Miéville's work, there will not be too many surprises for you when you read this novel. Which is not to imply that it is predictable or formulaic, but that it quintessentially one of his novels. It's all there: the weird landscapes that are intimately, almost erotically detailed; how the landscape collapses singularity-like onto one pivotal city that is populated by the most bizarre people and things that he can funnel from his imagination into yours; how those weird people from beyond the far reaches of you imagination are enmeshed in grand and bizarre plots that are these rude combinations of the political and/or the social and/or the epistemological and/or the aesthetic and/or... He takes all of these things and uses them to frame these peculiar philosophical tangents that he seems to be the only author brave enough (or weird enough) to embark upon.

And in that way, Embassytown is pitch-perfect Miéville. And also in that way, did I experience my "Murakami moment" [1] for Miéville. [2]

To delve specifically into Embassytown though, we have an interesting, if (slightly?) self-undermining novel. On the surface, we have a science fiction novel with some interstellar [3] political intrigue happening: Embassytown is a human city on the planet Arieka, on the frontier's edge of the Bremen empire [4] as it looks to expand its spheres of trade and influence. Human beings and other "exots" have lived in relative harmony with the indigenous Ariekei for generations, even if their relationships are largely opaque and mediated through genetically-engineered and highly-trained linguists called "Ambassadors". Then Bremen sends an Ambassador of its own which radically upsets the balance of power in Embassytown and causes an upheaval of inexpressible proportions. At the heart of this is our narrator, Avice Benner Cho, a living simile for the Ariekei--whose language lacks signification and is thus strictly literal by nature--who becomes a focal point for the events of the novel.

And though the novel works its narrative through Avice, it is not about her. The narrative is very clearly about the Ariekei--"the Hosts"--or, perhaps more accurately, about their Language and their pursuit of a kind of... anti-ontology.

First, about Language:

The Ariekei Language is a language but only inasmuch as it has a vocabulary and a grammar. Capital "L" Language has no literary tradition. It has structure, but no beyond that which is literal. This is not to say that the Language of the Ariekei has no symbols or "figures of speech", but those symbols--those similes and examples, etc.--must be "real" to have any meaning. We are introduced very early in the text to the (what we would see as) extremes required for this to be true: for the Ariekei to incorporate a simile into their Language, it must actually have happened--and they are not above staging the event in order for it to be "true".

Which brings me to my assertion that the Ariekei, throughout the course of the narrative, become obsessed with a kind of anti-ontology. If "ontology" is the study of the nature of being, the pursuit of truth through comprehension of that which is "real", then the whole foundation of "native" Ariekei thought is grounded by this, since they are only able to process the world around them in literal terms. They are biologically incapable of symbol substitution (e.g., symbolism, metaphorical comparison). Meanwhile, after they meet human beings (and especially after they encounter Ambassador EzRa), they become acquainted with the notion of lies and of lying, of using things which are not strictly or literally true to tell the truth. The Ariekei call it lying, where by "it" I mean any form of language/Language which does not immediately correspond to some absolute truth. The trivial figures of speech that you an I use every day are anomalous and baffling to them. We might not call a metaphor a "lie", but to the Ariekei it is something so unsettling that they cannot even hear such speech.

Even the most casual student of science fiction will recognize the trope that is embedded in "Language". You are probably jumping out of your chair right now to point to the obvious [5] example: "They're like Star Trek's Vulcans, right?" And you would not be strictly wrong, but the Vulcans don't lie because of a strict embedded morality; they can lie, [6] and that they do not is because that behavior is so deeply entrenched in their culture and their shared belief system that it is as though they cannot. Meanwhile, the Ariekei are biologically incapable of lying; they simply do not have the neural circuitry required to produce or even consume figurative sign systems. Lying is not just an extreme anathema, it is effectively an impossibility.

That a species might develop language that is completely devoid of lies may seem like a utopian vision, but even a cursory read would reveal otherwise. The Ariekei are largely alienated from the other "exot" species (not just the humans). Several times in the text, they discuss how the Language of the Ariekei is unique among the exot species of the Out; all other species seem capable of (with some effort) "hearing" and "speaking" each others' languages, of processing each others' figures of speech, of detecting each others' falsehoods. But the Ariekei cannot. They are largely alienated from other species. And (but?) it is questionable whether they perceive that alienation as such, or if they treat these other species with the kind of detached curiosity that we usually reserve for animals or climate patterns. [7]

Presumably this is where Miéville turns that utopian vision of a lie-less Language on its head: that the Ariekei have a "pure" and literal language, unclouded by confusing figures of speech, a cultural history that is unsullied by wars predicated on intrigue and double-dealing--this should be a Good Thing. But instead we have a species that is simultaneously advanced (see also: the biorigging) and primitive (see also: they are not an immer/space-faring race), a species that is "trapped" in the domain of the literal. But here is also where the text begin to undo its own success: the suggestion (and in some cases outright declaration) that the Ariekei are "trapped" in the realm of the literal, that they are caged in the prison of Language, makes the text begin to seem rather... Homo sapiens-centric? I thought of Peter Watts' Blindsight , of the Scramblers and of Rorschach and of his deep-dive into the notion that consciousness was not a pre-requisite for intelligence. And here: the Ariekei are clearly conscious, but they follow the kind of linguistic literalism that we popularly associate with Asperger's. How does that undo the text? It turns the alienness of the Ariekei on its head--it suggests that for them to "advance", that they must engage in symbolic thinking. [8]

The narrative has the Ariekei rather distinctly reacting to their own lack of symbolic thinking as a deficiency. The early attention given to how they must enforce a simile's "reality" before deploying it as a figure of speech seems a foreshadowing of this: that they are capable of having vague notions that can coalesce through guided stagecraft. This lapses into the text as a kind of foregone conclusion for many pages before we return to it via the Festival of Lies, and Surl tesh-escher, and the other Ariekei in the Liars Club. We discover that there are many Ariekei who have become obsessed with the notion that one might make revealing, even illuminating statements about something--and not by making flat and clearly literal statements about it, but by colorfully embossing it with similes, metaphors, synecdoches... The become obsessed with "truth" as it is manifested through untruth, through language which is not strictly true. Hence: Surl tesh-escher's assertion that the Ariekei "did not speak" before the humans arrived. More so than any other character in the novel, he creates and aligns himself with this anti-ontological metaphysics: that "speaking" is not merely reflecting upon what is, but by probing reality through what could be, by drawing disparate items together for unique insights, by reveling in the majesty of language for its own sake, for its own beauty, and not for what factual "truth" it might bestow upon the listener. [9]

All that business about EzRa (and later, EzCal) manipulating the Ariekei through the "god-drug" speech? That is all merely secondary to the notion that Ariekei seek to burst into some new phase of existence that includes symbolic thought, right down to the capacity to lie.

That is where I disjunct ever so slightly. Did Miéville give us a happy ending? It is (thankfully?) ambiguous: a whole lot of idle speculation about "what next", on Avice's part. Nothing in that final chapter seemed set in stone. But the Ariekei had changed, and they had changed fundamentally. Were they changed for the better? Perhaps our own sense of symbolism is being used against (?) us here: perhaps the story stands as its own allegory for colonialism? or perhaps the take-away is that we must concede absolutism for ambiguity in order to achieve cooperation? The covers close with some discomfort, and without easy answers.

------

[1] The phrase "Murakami moment" is one that has its roots in a conversation that I had with a friend of mine. To summarize: in discussing Haruki Murakami with this particular friend, he emoted: "I love Murakami's style, and don't get me wrong, he's a great author, but it just seems like... I don't know: like all his book are the same somehow." This spiraled into a good half-hour discussion that put William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Ernest Hemingway, Dave Eggers, and Chuck Palahniuk (to name a few) all under the microscope; to varying degrees, we concluded, all authors suffer from this tendency to "write the same story", either by leaning on familiar plots, familiar themes, and/or familiar characters and settings. Murakami, unfortunately, is the one that has become synonymous with this "tendency". Thus do I deploy it here.

[2] Yes, I think this might be a little unfair.

[3] At least, I assume it's interstellar. The narration about travel "to the Out" "through the immer" could just as easily have our narrator catapulted through parallel universes. This is, however, largely irrelevant to the plot, and thus a question of strictly academic interest.

[4] The specific governmental and political configuration of Bremen is left, I believe, more/less purposefully oblique. That Embassytown is referred to in the text as a "colony" is sufficient enough for me to go ahead and call Bremen an "empire".

[5] Most famous?

[6] The fact that Spock is half-human has nothing to do with it.

[7] There is some evidence in the text to support both arguments. There are a few direct references to how the Ariekei are basically indifferent to the humans of Embassytown. But then there's the whole messy business with the Festival of Lies and the virtuoso liars, etc. that just has you nodding your head that yes indeed, at least some of the Hosts feel some kind of absence by not being able to communicate.

[8] Which I believe is what the whole sub-plot with Scile was about. (I know I haven't mentioned Scile but...) In a way, Scile's presence in the narrative serves first as an excuse to get back Avice back to Embassytown; then he winds up as a means of illustrating this question of "Do the Ariekei really need to change Language to 'advance' as a species? What was wrong with them before?" But that Scile is painted as a villain clearly orients the text in favor of "symbolic processing as advanced thinking". And of course, Scile et al.'s whole "what was wrong with them before Similes and Lies?" argument also pretty clearly harkens to the whole notion of "the noble savage".

[9] And in that way, perhaps what the Ariekei are after is the birth of their own aesthetics?

------

Original "short version" review:

Miéville's anti-ontological novel? Most of his work seems to involve inventing personages and things that are so alien (and then setting them in an intimately, almost erotically detailed locale) that they're almost unrecognizable, that they become symbols unto only themselves to examine concepts you had not really considered examining. And here it's taken to almost parodic extreme? If it's difficult to identify with the characters, it's because they're almost unidentifiable.

Almost four-stars, and if you're patient enough, maybe it could be for you.

------

See also:
�� at Tor.com
]]> The Personal Librarian 59110946 The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian--who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white--her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go--for the protection of her family and her legacy--to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> Marie Benedict Rob 4 2025 3.83 2021 The Personal Librarian

author: Marie Benedict
name: Rob
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions]]> 21413662 xkcd comic ask Munroe a lot of strange questions: What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by his signature xkcd comics. (They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.)

In celebration of 10 years of unusual insight, Randall Munroe has revised his classic blockbuster to ask what if? x 10. The result is 10x the adventure of scientific inquiry. Featuring brand-new 2-color annotations and illustrations, this special anniversary edition is far more than a book for geeks, What If? explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much smarter for having read.]]> 303 Randall Munroe 0544272994 Rob 4 2025 4.13 2014 What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

author: Randall Munroe
name: Rob
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Virgin Suicides 43297953 9 Jeffrey Eugenides 1436144019 Rob 4 2025 3.56 1993

author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Rob
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)]]> 37794149
Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.]]> 448 Arkady Martine 1529001587 Rob 0 4.08 2019 A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)

author: Arkady Martine
name: Rob
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: currently-reading, 2025, science-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Iron Council (New Crobuzon, #3)]]> 25131138 Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Miéville returns with his hugely anticipated Del Rey hardcover debut. With a fresh and fantastical band of characters, he carries us back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon—this time, decades later.

It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places.

In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope.

In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon’s most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the iron council. . . .

The bold originality that broke Miéville out as a new force of the genre is here once more in Iron Council: the voluminous, lyrical novel that is destined to seal his reputation as perhaps the edgiest mythmaker of the day.]]> 21 China Miéville 0553551299 Rob 3 short-list, 2025, fantasy 3.59 2004 Iron Council (New Crobuzon, #3)

author: China Miéville
name: Rob
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: short-list, 2025, fantasy
review:
Mixed feelings on this one. I was like 20-25% through before I really felt like there was momentum. (Almost abandoned it.) Feels a *little* over-long maybe, but ultimately I liked where it landed �� anti-climactic as it was, though that felt “right�� to end there and that way.
]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Rob 5 4.46 2024 James

author: Percival Everett
name: Rob
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: 2025, all-time-favorites, recommended
review:

]]> American Pastoral 59693405 Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]> Philip Roth Rob 5 time-all-time-100, 2025 3.86 1997 American Pastoral

author: Philip Roth
name: Rob
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: time-all-time-100, 2025
review:

]]> Naked Lunch 563798 Naked Lunch is the unnerving tale of a monumental descent into the hellish world of a narcotics addict as he travels from New York to Tangiers, then into Interzone, a nightmarish modern urban wasteland in which the forces of good and evil vie for control of the individual and all of humanity. By mixing the fantastic and the realistic with his own unmistakable vision and voice, Burroughs has created a unique masterpiece that is a classic of twentieth-century fiction.]]> 232 William S. Burroughs Rob 3 time-all-time-100, 1997 3.29 1959 Naked Lunch

author: William S. Burroughs
name: Rob
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at: 1997/01/01
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: time-all-time-100, 1997
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 178058471 From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah's Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.]]> 12 James McBride Rob 5 2025 3.74 2023

author: James McBride
name: Rob
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Rob 4 2013, science-fiction 4.14 2012

author: Hugh Howey
name: Rob
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/25
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 2013, science-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Bread: 125+ Recipes for Every Baker (A Cookbook)]]> 207595617 From the beloved baking authority, the most wide-ranging bread book to be published in a decade—with 125 recipes that meet you where you are, whether novice or bread-head, in a stunning package.

Authoritative and accessible, The King Arthur Baking Company’s Big Book of Bread is exceptional for its the 125 recipes for yeasted and naturally leavened breads are designed to appeal to novices and advanced bakers alike, as well as those who are deep into sourdough.

Everything you want to know about how to make a perfect loaf is from techniques for folding and shaping, to information about flour, yeast, and temperature, along with key tips such as how to work with temperamental dough and best practices for storing different breads. Each recipe is accompanied by a gorgeous four-color photo, and the instructional information includes step-by-step photography along with QR codes throughout that direct you to how-to videos. The book also includes an elegant ribbon marker.

At the heart of The King Arthur Company’s Bread for Everyone is the most expansive and inclusive list of any bread-baking book, and it boasts new and classic recipes such as the
- Focaccia, Naan, Pita, Scallion Pancake, Lavash, Seedy Crackers
-Pan Everyday Bread, English Muffin Toasting Bread, Tiger Milk Bread
- Baguette, Sandwich Bread, Cinnamon Swirl
-Hearth Classic Miche, Chocolate Levain, Sesame Whole Wheat Loaf
-Buns, Bagels, and Conchas, Bolo Bao, Jerusalem Bagels, Buttermilk Buns
-“Fancy�� Basic Babka, Big Sticky Bun, Stollen
-Things to Make with Cheddar Kimchi Strata, Sourdough Lasagna, Migas

The King Arthur Company’s Bread for Everyone demystifies bread baking and will make any newbie a confident baker while expanding the skill and repertoire of experienced bakers.]]> 399 King Arthur Baking Company 1668009757 Rob 0 4.62 The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Bread: 125+ Recipes for Every Baker (A Cookbook)

The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Bread: 125+ Recipes for Every Baker (A Cookbook)

author: King Arthur Baking Company
name: Rob
average rating: 4.62
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: currently-reading, 2025, bread, project, cookbook, on-going
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition - Hardcover by Hugh Johnson]]> 135993916 Brand New 416 Hugh Johnson Rob 0 4.86

The World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition - Hardcover by Hugh Johnson

author: Hugh Johnson
name: Rob
average rating: 4.86
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: currently-reading, 2025, on-going, project, wine
review:

]]> Holidays on Ice 4136 Us and Them); the difficulties of explaining the Easter Bunny to the French (Jesus Shaves); what to do when you've been locked out in a snowstorm (Let It Snow); the puzzling Christmas traditions of other nations (Six to Eight Black Men); what Halloween at the medical examiner's looks like (The Monster Mash); and a barnyard secret Santa scheme gone awry (Cow and Turkey).]]> 176 David Sedaris 0316191299 Rob 4 2024, 2025 3.92 1997 Holidays on Ice

author: David Sedaris
name: Rob
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: 2024, 2025
review:
Worth it for "SantaLand Diaries" alone, but they're all worthwhile -- as if you needed someone to tell you that.
]]> <![CDATA[The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection]]> 59138629 The Three-Body Problem, was the first translated work of SF ever to win the Hugo Award.

Here is the first collection of his short fiction: eleven stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award-winners, form a blazingly original ode to planet earth, its pasts and its futures.]]> 15 Liu Cixin 1250819024 Rob 4 4.23 2000 The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection

The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection

author: Liu Cixin
name: Rob
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: 2024, science-fiction, collection, 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Beer Year: Adventures with Hop Farmers, Craft Brewers, Chefs, Beer Sommeliers, and Fanatical Drinkers as a Beer Master in Training]]> 28815045
As a journalist spurred by curiosity and thirst, Lucy Burningham made it her career to write about craft beer, traveling to hop farms, attending rare beer tasting parties, and visiting as many taprooms, breweries, and festivals as possible. With this as her introduction, Lucy decided to take her relationship with beer to the next to become a certified beer expert. As Lucy studies and sips her way to becoming a Certified Cicerone, she meets an eclectic cast of characters, including brewers, hop farmers, beer sommeliers, pub owners, and fanatical beer drinkers. Her journey into the world of beer is by turns educational, social, and personal—just as enjoying a good beer should be.]]> 288 Lucy Burningham 1611802717 Rob 5
(A little extra context here: I read this while I was about two-thirds of the way through my own beer quest -- to become a certified BJCP judge. So yeah... this story was super-relevant for my interests.)

FOOTNOTE: Her editor missed a couple of spots where a word was missing or transposed. No biggie -- you can still decipher the sentences just... something I noticed.

---

2024 UPDATE: Having now gone through my own journey on the road to Cicerone, I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried a little bit at the end when she got her results and couldn't believe that she'd passed. It's A LOT of material to learn (beyond what I needed to learn for BJCP's Certified or even National exams) and the exam itself is a crucible.]]> 3.86 2016 My Beer Year: Adventures with Hop Farmers, Craft Brewers, Chefs, Beer Sommeliers, and Fanatical Drinkers as a Beer Master in Training

My Beer Year: Adventures with Hop Farmers, Craft Brewers, Chefs, Beer Sommeliers, and Fanatical Drinkers as a Beer Master in Training

author: Lucy Burningham
name: Rob
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: 2017, brewing, 2018, cicerone, 2024
review:
Lucy Burningham's tale of her journey to become a Certified Cicerone is as engaging and relatable a story as any out there in the beer-reading world. Her prose is conversational, detailed, and evocative. She's a great storyteller, and uses that skill well to tell not only about beer, but about the feelings and thoughts that lead us to quests like these, and the work we put in to achieve those goals.

(A little extra context here: I read this while I was about two-thirds of the way through my own beer quest -- to become a certified BJCP judge. So yeah... this story was super-relevant for my interests.)

FOOTNOTE: Her editor missed a couple of spots where a word was missing or transposed. No biggie -- you can still decipher the sentences just... something I noticed.

---

2024 UPDATE: Having now gone through my own journey on the road to Cicerone, I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried a little bit at the end when she got her results and couldn't believe that she'd passed. It's A LOT of material to learn (beyond what I needed to learn for BJCP's Certified or even National exams) and the exam itself is a crucible.
]]> <![CDATA[We Have Always Lived in the Castle]]> 9392808 Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

]]> 5 Shirley Jackson 1441734317 Rob 3 2024 3.62 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle

author: Shirley Jackson
name: Rob
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The City & the City 4703581
Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.]]> 312 China Miéville 0345497511 Rob 5

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

Which isn't too bad. I'd put it more like:

It's like John le Carre finishing a Raymond Chandler manuscript by getting Jorge Luis Borges to scribble suggestions in the margins.

The Orwellian and Dickian overtones are there (i.e., all that paranoia and eldritch metaphysics), but that seems too easy. You need the post-Cold War declining-Eastern Europe feel, you need the pulp noir, you need the librarian surrealism--you need all those things to capture this one. And even then you're only capturing a grainy snapshot of it.

Miéville navigates in an interesting psychic space with this novel.

And with that, three extremely short essays:

1.)

Once, while discussing writing (and in particular, a novel-in-progress of my own) with a close friend, I mentioned "the murder mystery" aspect of my own particular plot. That (for better or worse) such a hook is easy to digest, and can easily lend some armature to other plot or thematic points, to things that you want to explore in your narrative but may not stand on their own. Now, striking and ignoring the sidebar here wherein we discuss how this implies that we may simply be lazy for tacking on a murder mystery to provide form to what is otherwise a philosophical exercise, my friend described murder mysteries as ultimately dissatisfying--that there is "a troubling let-down of the knowable". And in a way, he's right. Pulp noir works for two reasons: 1st because it's pulp and was arguably never really meant to be High Art/Lit and/but 2nd because the gritty anti-heroism of pulp noir's narrators comes out in front of any convoluted whodunit-ness going on around or through their narrative actions. And while I wouldn't go so far as to describe Borlú (the novel's narrator) as a gritty anti-hero, we manage to dodge the "troubling let-down of the knowable" at least a little bit by watching the finale (arguably) undermine the very plot thread that pulls the narrative to climax.

2.)

While I was reading this one, I kept searching for people to discuss it with. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found no one else in my grosstopical peer group who'd read it. And with apologies to them, I would then proceed to gush about it and to try to describe it. And invariably I would get: "So a bit like East and West Berlin?" Which... of course it seems natural to think that. But how to explain my smile? How to explain that so much of the novel's early exposition is to drive home that the two cities aren't "like East and West Berlin"? So much so that there's even a passage where two Besźel cops shudder with disgust at that very same analogy?

3.)

Maybe what I should have said earlier was that The City & the City is like Mark Z. Danielewski finishing a Chandler manuscript, only to have it linearized and cleaned up by... Well: I suppose the editor doesn't matter as much. You're getting the picture, right? Though the mental (psychic?) effects of The City & the City weren't nearly as strong, it felt like a younger sibling or cousin of House of Leaves. Minus some of the pretentious footnoting and typesetting tricks and general layout fuckery. But there's that same spirit there: of allowing the narrative to move into some (unexplored?) psychic space, and of slowly but surely fully occupying it, touching its every boundary and the epiphenomena of breaking through to how you thus perceive your own world.]]> 3.90 2009 The City & the City

author: China Miéville
name: Rob
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: 2011, dystopia, mind-bending, surreal, recommended, all-time-favorites, 2024
review:
The book jacket reads:

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

Which isn't too bad. I'd put it more like:

It's like John le Carre finishing a Raymond Chandler manuscript by getting Jorge Luis Borges to scribble suggestions in the margins.

author: Anne Rampling
name: Rob
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: 1996
review:

]]> The Silent Patient 43210826 Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....]]> 9 Alex Michaelides Rob 4 short-list, 2024 3.82 2019 The Silent Patient

author: Alex Michaelides
name: Rob
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: short-list, 2024
review:

]]> Blackheart Man 199798012
Veycosi, a scholar of folklore, hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light and thus secure a spot for himself on Cynchin’s Colloquium. However, unexpected events prevent that from happening. Fifteen Ymisen galleons arrive in the harbor to force a trade agreement on Cynchin. Veycosi is put in charge of the situation, but quickly finds himself in way over his head.

Bad turns to worse when malign forces start stirring. Pickens (children) are disappearing and an ancient invading army, long frozen into piche (tar) statues by island witches is stirring to life—led by the fearsome demon known as the Blackheart Man. Veycosi has problems in his polyamorous personal life, too. How much trouble can a poor scholar take? Or cause all by himself?]]> 384 Nalo Hopkinson 1668005107 Rob 4 2024, fantasy 3.70 2024

author: Nalo Hopkinson
name: Rob
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: 2024, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)]]> 11510533
“I just love the world of Patrick Rothfuss.�� —Lin-Manuel Miranda

DAY THE WISE MAN’S FEAR
��
“There are three things all wise men the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.��
��
My name is Kvothe. You may have heard of me.
��
So begins a tale told from his own point of view—a story unequaled in fantasy literature. Now in The Wise Man’s Fear , Day Two of The Kingkiller Chronicle, an escalating rivalry with a powerful member of the nobility forces Kvothe to leave the University and seek his fortune abroad. Adrift, penniless, and alone, he travels to Vintas, where he quickly becomes entangled in the politics of courtly society. While attempting to curry favor with a powerful noble, Kvothe uncovers an assassination attempt, comes into conflict with a rival arcanist, and leads a group of mercenaries into the wild, in an attempt to solve the mystery of who (or what) is waylaying travelers on the King's Road.��

All the while, Kvothe searches for answers, attempting to uncover the truth about the mysterious Amyr, the Chandrian, and the death of his parents.��In The Wise Man's Fear , Kvothe takes his first steps on the path of the hero and learns how difficult life can be when a man becomes a legend in his own time.]]> 1000 Patrick Rothfuss 0756407125 Rob 4 2012, 2014, fantasy, 2024 and fully foreign, and weirdly inter-textual in ways that tickled my inner liberal arts lit nerd.

So I was crushed that I needed to wait a year for the sequel to come out in paperback. [2]

Yesterday, I finished that sequel: The Wise Man's Fear.

The Wise Man's Fear did not immediately earn a place on the all-time-favorites list, but I was glad that it did not let me down, [3] even if it was also a little tedious in places.

There seemed to be two major themes running through this novel.

The first that appeared to me was one of Consequences. Poisons, harm from afar, side effects of all kinds. Symbolically speaking, the text of Kvothe's tale is beset on all sides by this stuff: sympathy and slippage; the harmful chemicals in the Fishery; grudges held over the wrong thing said to the wrong person at the wrong time... Dealing in consequences helps make the story move, but it also seemed to me to rather strongly inform the second major theme:

Common sense.

Yes, our bookish (and rakish) narrator manages to compromise himself repeatedly by simply not paying heed to what ought to be obvious. Sure, his feud with Ambrose is mostly a matter of spite and hubris [4] but after Kvothe et al. (covertly) set fire to Ambrose's room... Well: Elxa Dal was doing him a monumental favor by practically spelling it out for him: Take a leave of absence from the University and let the whole thing settle down.

Perhaps more illustrative of that theme, and a scene which informs my opinion of more/less the whole book: Master Elodin, in his class on Naming, tells his students (Kvothe among them) that he is going to throw a ball. He tells them to perform their calculations, to determine exactly where to place their hands such that they can intercept the ball at that exact moment that he throws it. They (the students) all scribble formulae furiously, working their way through it, damning him for this impossible task. With so many factors at work, who could possibly calculate such a thing--to say nothing of calculating it in just a few short minutes. Just as time is expiring, with these Re'lar level students griping, a young messenger boy arrives with something for Elodin. Just as the boy is about to leave, Elodin tosses the ball to the boy, who--without thinking at all--raises his hand and catches the ball mid-flight.

There's much to love in The Wise Man's Fear. And it's a worthy (if somewhat long-winded [5]) sequel. [6]

------

[1] Which is actually really fast. For me. Even if I was on vacation. Especially for an almost-700 page book. Stop looking at me like that.

[2] I'm a cheap bastard.

[3] Seriously: I had no expectation that it could possibly be as good as The Name of the Wind. That book is one of a kind, and special.

[4] Which (again): where's the common sense?

[5] But I blame his time in Severn for that.

[6] Post-script: I'll admit that I didn't really know what to write about this book. It's a good sequel to a phenomenal book, and I'm sure it has set us up nicely for #3. And the part I wrote about are mostly the parts I took notes about. But there was so much more, especially in the latter third of the book, that I didn't really get into. All the stuff with the Adem, and murdering the false Edema Ruh... But I didn't want to get too scholarly on what's otherwise something I was reading just for fun.]]> 4.52 2011 The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)

The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)

author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Rob
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: 2012, 2014, fantasy, 2024
review:
Last year I read Patrick Rothfuss' first novel, . I read it in about a week [1] and immediately added it as an . I had complicated feelings about this book. I don't generally like "fantasy", but here was a fantasy novel that blew me away. It was witty and clever, gripping, familiar and fully foreign, and weirdly inter-textual in ways that tickled my inner liberal arts lit nerd.

So I was crushed that I needed to wait a year for the sequel to come out in paperback. [2]

Yesterday, I finished that sequel: The Wise Man's Fear.

The Wise Man's Fear did not immediately earn a place on the all-time-favorites list, but I was glad that it did not let me down, [3] even if it was also a little tedious in places.

There seemed to be two major themes running through this novel.

The first that appeared to me was one of Consequences. Poisons, harm from afar, side effects of all kinds. Symbolically speaking, the text of Kvothe's tale is beset on all sides by this stuff: sympathy and slippage; the harmful chemicals in the Fishery; grudges held over the wrong thing said to the wrong person at the wrong time... Dealing in consequences helps make the story move, but it also seemed to me to rather strongly inform the second major theme:

Common sense.

Yes, our bookish (and rakish) narrator manages to compromise himself repeatedly by simply not paying heed to what ought to be obvious. Sure, his feud with Ambrose is mostly a matter of spite and hubris [4] but after Kvothe et al. (covertly) set fire to Ambrose's room... Well: Elxa Dal was doing him a monumental favor by practically spelling it out for him: Take a leave of absence from the University and let the whole thing settle down.

Perhaps more illustrative of that theme, and a scene which informs my opinion of more/less the whole book: Master Elodin, in his class on Naming, tells his students (Kvothe among them) that he is going to throw a ball. He tells them to perform their calculations, to determine exactly where to place their hands such that they can intercept the ball at that exact moment that he throws it. They (the students) all scribble formulae furiously, working their way through it, damning him for this impossible task. With so many factors at work, who could possibly calculate such a thing--to say nothing of calculating it in just a few short minutes. Just as time is expiring, with these Re'lar level students griping, a young messenger boy arrives with something for Elodin. Just as the boy is about to leave, Elodin tosses the ball to the boy, who--without thinking at all--raises his hand and catches the ball mid-flight.

There's much to love in The Wise Man's Fear. And it's a worthy (if somewhat long-winded [5]) sequel. [6]

------

[1] Which is actually really fast. For me. Even if I was on vacation. Especially for an almost-700 page book. Stop looking at me like that.

[2] I'm a cheap bastard.

[3] Seriously: I had no expectation that it could possibly be as good as The Name of the Wind. That book is one of a kind, and special.

[4] Which (again): where's the common sense?

[5] But I blame his time in Severn for that.

[6] Post-script: I'll admit that I didn't really know what to write about this book. It's a good sequel to a phenomenal book, and I'm sure it has set us up nicely for #3. And the part I wrote about are mostly the parts I took notes about. But there was so much more, especially in the latter third of the book, that I didn't really get into. All the stuff with the Adem, and murdering the false Edema Ruh... But I didn't want to get too scholarly on what's otherwise something I was reading just for fun.
]]> <![CDATA[Between the World and Me (One World Essentials)]]> 25360188
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 176 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0679645985 Rob 0 to-read, on-libby 4.46 2015 Between the World and Me (One World Essentials)

Between the World and Me (One World Essentials)

author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Rob
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read, on-libby
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Oxford Companion to Beer (Oxford Companion To... (Hardcover))]]> 10895489 The Oxford Companion to Beer is the first reference work to fully investigate the history and vast scope of beer, from the agricultural makeup of various beers to the technical elements of the brewing process, local effects of brewing on regions around the world, and social and political implications of sharing a beer. Entries not only define terms such as "spent grain" and "wort," but give fascinating details about how these and other ingredients affect a beer's taste, texture, and popularity. Cultural entries on such topics as drinking songs or beer gardens offer vivid accounts of how our drinking traditions have shifted through history, and how these traditions vary in different parts of the world, from Japan to Mexico, New Zealand, and Brazil, among many other countries. The pioneers of beer-making are the subjects of biographical entries; the legacies they left behind, in the forms of the world's most popular beers and breweries, are recurrent themes throughout the book.

Collectively the Companion has over 1,100 entries--written by 150 of the world's most prominent beer experts--as well as a foreword by renowned chef Tom Colicchio (star of television's Top Chef), thorough appendices, conversion tables, images throughout, and an index. Flipping through the book, readers will discover everything from why beer was first taxed to how drinkers throughout history have overcome temperance movements and how an "ale conner" determined the quality of a beer in the thirteenth century. (It involved sitting in a puddle of beer.)

The Companion is comprehensive, unprecedented, and of great value to anyone who has ever had a curiosity or appetite for beer.

]]> 960 Garrett Oliver 0195367138 Rob 5 2022, brewing, 2023, 2024 4.40 2011 The Oxford Companion to Beer (Oxford Companion To... (Hardcover))

author: Garrett Oliver
name: Rob
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/04
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: 2022, brewing, 2023, 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Marriage (Perfect, #1)]]> 56237189
Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. As a named partner at her firm, life is going exactly how she planned.

The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He's a struggling writer who has had little success in his career and he tires of his and Sarah’s relationship as she is constantly working.

Out in the secluded woods, at the couple’s lake house, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers.

Then, one morning everything changes. Kelly is found brutally stabbed to death and now, Sarah must take on her hardest case yet, defending her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress.

'THE PERFECT MARRIAGE' is a juicy, twisty, and utterly addictive thriller that will keep you reading all night long.

RUNNING TIME => 08:52:02]]> Jeneva Rose 1662046340 Rob 1 2024 3.49 2020 The Perfect Marriage (Perfect, #1)

author: Jeneva Rose
name: Rob
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)]]> 58975350 They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us.
Now we rise.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.]]> 18 Tomi Adeyemi Rob 3 2024 4.00 2018 Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)

author: Tomi Adeyemi
name: Rob
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)]]> 2495567 My name is Kvothe.

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me.

So begins a tale unequaled in fantasy literature--the story of a hero told in his own voice. It is a tale of sorrow, a tale of survival, a tale of one man's search for meaning in his universe, and how that search, and the indomitable will that drove it, gave birth to a legend.

]]> 722 Patrick Rothfuss 0756404746 Rob 5
"It's like a fantasy novel for people that don't like fantasy novels..."

(No, that's not quite right.)

"Rothfuss is to Tolkien as Gibson is to Verne..."

(No, that's not quite right either.)

There is a lot going on in here:

�� Re-purposing of familiar fantasy tropes; some of them left (mostly) alone, some of them turned on their heads;
�� Good use of his own recurring tropes to move the narrative (silence, fire, wind, poverty);
�� And a neat story-within-the-story-constituting-the-story (with a narrator telling his own story and very aware of how arrogant and impatient he sounds...)

I will definitely read this again.]]> 4.43 2007 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)

The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)

author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Rob
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: 2011, all-time-favorites, 100-paperbacks, 2014, 2016, recommended, fantasy, 2024
review:
I may need to re-read this one to get my head screwed on straight for a proper review; but in the meantime:

"It's like a fantasy novel for people that don't like fantasy novels..."

(No, that's not quite right.)

"Rothfuss is to Tolkien as Gibson is to Verne..."

(No, that's not quite right either.)

There is a lot going on in here:

�� Re-purposing of familiar fantasy tropes; some of them left (mostly) alone, some of them turned on their heads;
�� Good use of his own recurring tropes to move the narrative (silence, fire, wind, poverty);
�� And a neat story-within-the-story-constituting-the-story (with a narrator telling his own story and very aware of how arrogant and impatient he sounds...)

I will definitely read this again.
]]> How the Dead Live 964455 213 Derek Raymond 1852427981 Rob 0 to-read 3.92 1986

author: Derek Raymond
name: Rob
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch: A Full Cast Production]]> 42674558
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .]]> 14 Terry Pratchett 0062896954 Rob 4 2024, fantasy 4.12 1990 Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch: A Full Cast Production

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch: A Full Cast Production

author: Terry Pratchett
name: Rob
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: 2024, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Simple Homebrewing: Great Beer, Less Work, More Fun]]> 42255220 Drew and Denny’s mantra is “Brew the best beer possible, with the least effort possible, while having the most fun possible.�� Throughout, the focus is on helping you develop a simple, thoughtful process to make homebrewing more accessible and enjoyable. Wisdom is imparted in tones both reassuring and amusing, and the basics are broken down into easily remembered chunks. The authors also feature interviews with an eclectic group of brewers from the Americas, who add their own take on the brewing process and how they have made it work for them. Get a feel for recipe design by looking at a few handy templates for Pilsner, pale ale, IPA, double IPA, stout, tripel, and saison; or try your own bottom-up or top-down approach after reading Denny and Drew’s advice. Along the way you will find over 40 recipes, ranging from the simplest of pale ales, American lagers, tried and tested altbier recipes, and delicious rye IPAs, to Old and New World barleywine, quick tripels, Scotch ale mashed overnight, king cake ale, purple corn beer, and Catherina sour. Marvel at how mushrooms can be used in beer and tremble at the thought of a bourbon barrel–aged barleywine made with ghost pepper. Even experienced homebrewers can learn from this dynamic duo, as Simple Homebrewing features expert advice for brewers of all levels.]]> 250 Denny Conn 1938469593 Rob 5 2024, brewing
And this is very much the attitude that I'm here for. As someone trying to come back to homebrewing after a couple-years-long hiatus, it's refreshing to read something like this where they're basically saying: "Look, turn the volume down on your anxiety about this! Brew a three-gallon batch! Do it as BIAB on your stove top! Pitch dry yeast! Just have some fun!"

So who is this for? It's not for the beginner, though I guess I would say that beginners are welcome, too. Who I *really* think it's for:

(1) homebrewers who have "lapsed" for a couple years and want to get back into it but are feeling overwhelmed

(2) homebrewers that are still "new-ish" and have been at it for a bit and are stepping up their game but either (a) find that part intimidating or else (b) have found that their brew quality got WORSE somehow

(3) homebrewers that are maybe a little full of themselves (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)

Highly recommended.]]> 4.38 Simple Homebrewing: Great Beer, Less Work, More Fun

Simple Homebrewing: Great Beer, Less Work, More Fun

author: Denny Conn
name: Rob
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: 2024, brewing
review:
I don't know quite how to describe this book, and (frankly) that's a good thing. It isn't a book for homebrewing beginners, but it definitely features a "beginner mindset" in that it questions "but why?" on every bit of conventional wisdom out there. Not because they're contrarians (though maybe they kind of are?) and not because they think the conventional wisdom is wrong (though sometimes it is) but because they're seeking to help you find the simplest way to brew the beer you love while having fun with it.

And this is very much the attitude that I'm here for. As someone trying to come back to homebrewing after a couple-years-long hiatus, it's refreshing to read something like this where they're basically saying: "Look, turn the volume down on your anxiety about this! Brew a three-gallon batch! Do it as BIAB on your stove top! Pitch dry yeast! Just have some fun!"

So who is this for? It's not for the beginner, though I guess I would say that beginners are welcome, too. Who I *really* think it's for:

(1) homebrewers who have "lapsed" for a couple years and want to get back into it but are feeling overwhelmed

(2) homebrewers that are still "new-ish" and have been at it for a bit and are stepping up their game but either (a) find that part intimidating or else (b) have found that their brew quality got WORSE somehow

(3) homebrewers that are maybe a little full of themselves (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)

Highly recommended.
]]> <![CDATA[Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction]]> 51091199 Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We're Wrong?

A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. Four old friends are joined at their local bar by a stranger who seems to know everything about them. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song "Blizzard of Summer" becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian's rabies vaccination.

Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers.]]> Chuck Klosterman 1984888919 Rob 5 2024 3.80 2019 Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction

Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction

author: Chuck Klosterman
name: Rob
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Lottery 6219656
“The Lottery�� stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery�� has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.
]]> 30 Shirley Jackson 1563127873 Rob 5 high-school, 1995 4.08 1948

author: Shirley Jackson
name: Rob
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1948
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: high-school, 1995
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Not Without Peril: 150 Years of Misadventure on the Presidential Range of New Hampshire]]> 19280673 Recognized by the Boston Globe as one of the 100 Essential New England Books, the first edition of Not Without Peril garnered acclaim from the Banff Mountain Book Festival for its gripping tales of exploration and tragedy. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new afterword from author Nicholas Howe, who offers a personal account of an evening spent at the Mount Washington Observatory while 160-mile-per-hour winds raged outside.
]]> 310 Nicholas Howe 1934028517 Rob 4 2024, history, hiking 4.28 2000 Not Without Peril: 150 Years of Misadventure on the Presidential Range of New Hampshire

Not Without Peril: 150 Years of Misadventure on the Presidential Range of New Hampshire

author: Nicholas Howe
name: Rob
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: 2024, history, hiking
review:

]]> Woman on the Edge of Time 53133798 Marge Piercy 1515929736 Rob 4 2024, science-fiction �� ]]> 3.75 1976

author: Marge Piercy
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: 2024, science-fiction
review:
See also:
��
]]> <![CDATA[The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History]]> 33864783 An incredible true tale of espionage and engineering set at the height of the Cold War—a mix between The Hunt for Red October and Argo—about how the CIA, the U.S. Navy, and a crazy billionaire spent six years and nearly a billion dollars to steal the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine K-129 after it had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean; all while the Russians were watching.

In the early hours of February 25, 1968, a Russian submarine armed with three nuclear ballistic missiles set sail from its base in Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. It never arrived.

As the Soviet Navy searched in vain for the lost vessel, a top-secret American operation using sophisticated deep-sea spy equipment found it—wrecked on the sea floor at a depth of 16,800 feet, far beyond the capabilities of any salvage that existed. But the potential intelligence assets onboard the ship—the nuclear warheads, battle orders, and cryptological machines—justified going to extreme lengths to find a way to raise the submarine.

So began Project Azorian, a top-secret mission that took six years, cost an estimated $800 million, and would become the largest and most daring covert operation in CIA history.

After the U.S. Navy declared retrieving the sub “impossible,�� the mission fell to the CIA's burgeoning Directorate of Science and Technology, the little-known division responsible for the legendary U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Working with Global Marine Systems, the country's foremost maker of exotic, deep-sea drill ships, the CIA commissioned the most expensive ship ever built and told the world that it belonged to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who would use the mammoth vessel to mine rare minerals from the ocean floor. In reality, a complex network of spies, scientists, and politicians attempted a project even crazier than Hughes’s reputation: raising the sub directly under the watchful eyes of the Russians.

The Taking of K-129 is a riveting, almost unbelievable true-life tale of military history, engineering genius, and high-stakes spy-craft set during the height of the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was a constant fear, and the opportunity to gain even the slightest advantage over your enemy was worth massive risk.]]> 384 Josh Dean 1101984430 Rob 0 to-read, on-libby 4.13 2017 The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History

The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History

author: Josh Dean
name: Rob
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read, on-libby
review:

]]> <![CDATA[River of Gods (India 2047, #1)]]> 278280
In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.

River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures--one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.]]> 597 Ian McDonald 1591024366 Rob 4
I won’t go on at length about the Indian-post-cyberpunk-scifi-omg-wtf-how-awesome-is-that?-ness that you might have seen elsewhere. I’ll keep it at this: it was well-chosen, well-developed, and in the end made sense. (Which is to say that putting it in India... excuse me: Bharat didn’t feel like some cloying, waste-of-time, you’re-just-doing-this-to-be-cute gimmick.)

While I wouldn’t say that it was totally new or ground-breaking fiction, McDonald moves this piece along efficiently and engages you with some well-developed characters. The “like an Indian Neuromancer�� comparisons floating around out there are not far off. That being said, it’s a more mature, more sophisticated Neuromancer. The text wants for nothing and (I would say) achieves its goals quite well. McDonald’s treatment of “the Singularity�� here is delivered in a palpable, sympathetic way: You invent your own doom.

If this novel is indicative of the quality of McDonald’s other work: I’m there.

original: []]]> 3.92 2004 River of Gods (India 2047, #1)

author: Ian McDonald
name: Rob
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: singularity, science-fiction, 2007, recommended, 2023
review:
When you pick this up and hold the hard cover in your hands, its heft is a little intimidating. When you put it down 597 pages later, you’ll wonder how he managed to keep it so focused, how he kept it from wandering all over the place. Not that it doesn’t have a tremendous scope (borders on “epic�� but I feel I must reserve that adjective for a space opera review) but McDonald keeps it moving at an aggressive pace. Every back alley detour and out-of-town foray is very deliberate and very much part of the storytelling.

I won’t go on at length about the Indian-post-cyberpunk-scifi-omg-wtf-how-awesome-is-that?-ness that you might have seen elsewhere. I’ll keep it at this: it was well-chosen, well-developed, and in the end made sense. (Which is to say that putting it in India... excuse me: Bharat didn’t feel like some cloying, waste-of-time, you’re-just-doing-this-to-be-cute gimmick.)

While I wouldn’t say that it was totally new or ground-breaking fiction, McDonald moves this piece along efficiently and engages you with some well-developed characters. The “like an Indian Neuromancer�� comparisons floating around out there are not far off. That being said, it’s a more mature, more sophisticated Neuromancer. The text wants for nothing and (I would say) achieves its goals quite well. McDonald’s treatment of “the Singularity�� here is delivered in a palpable, sympathetic way: You invent your own doom.

If this novel is indicative of the quality of McDonald’s other work: I’m there.

original: []
]]> The Candy House 58485496 From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an "inventive, effervescent" (Oprah Daily) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection.

The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis." Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, "Own Your Unconscious" �� which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others �� has seduced multitudes.

In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,�� those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles �� from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love.]]> Jennifer Egan 1797128418 Rob 5 2024, recommended 3.37 2022

author: Jennifer Egan
name: Rob
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: 2024, recommended
review:

]]> <![CDATA[He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory Series #1)]]> 13130482
Murders are a dime a dozen in Margaret Thatcher's London, and when it comes to the brutal killing of a middle-aged alcoholic found dumped outside of town, Scotland Yard has more important cases to deal with.

Instead it's a job for the Department of Unexplained Deaths and its head Detective Sergeant. With only a box of cassette-tape diaries as evidence the rogue detective has no chouce but to listen to the haunting voice of the victim for clues to his gruesome end.

The first book in Derek Raymond's acclaimed Factory Series is an unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a city plagued by poverty and perversion, and a policeman who may be the only one who cares about the "people who don't matter and who never did."]]> 226 Derek Raymond 1612190138 Rob 4 2023, mystery, noir 3.69 1984 He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory Series #1)

He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory Series #1)

author: Derek Raymond
name: Rob
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/28
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: 2023, mystery, noir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation]]> 8339659 Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.

Includes introduction, a preface to each book, explanatory notes, and an index of people, gods, and places

]]> 769 Ovid 1101160543 Rob 0 abandoned, 2023 Galatea 2.2)]]> 4.00 8 Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation

author: Ovid
name: Rob
average rating: 4.00
book published: 8
rating: 0
read at: 2023/03/27
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: abandoned, 2023
review:
(This one seems to be coming up all over the place lately...) (and then AGAIN in Powers' Galatea 2.2)
]]> Super Sad True Love Story 16372739 11 Gary Shteyngart 1456114700 Rob 3 2024 �� ]]> 3.40 2010

author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Rob
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: 2024
review:
See also:
��
]]> <![CDATA[IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale]]> 16067040 350 Mitch Steele 1938469003 Rob 4 2018, brewing, 2024
And really: who better to tell the story of the IPA than Mitch Steele?]]> 4.10 2012 IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale

IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale

author: Mitch Steele
name: Rob
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: 2018, brewing, 2024
review:
Equal parts history and technical, the book goes through all the things an IPA is (and a few things it isn’t). Steele’s treatment of the subject is clearly reverent, but not without a certain practical stance (as should be the case from anyone whose livelihood depends on making and selling beer). I appreciate that he acknowledges so many myths about the style, but appreciate more that he did the legwork to bust those myths.

And really: who better to tell the story of the IPA than Mitch Steele?
]]> <![CDATA[Where Cool Waters Flow: Four Seasons with a Master Maine Guide]]> 7115812 316 Randy Spencer 1934031283 Rob 4 2024, maine 4.11 2009

Where Cool Waters Flow: Four Seasons with a Master Maine Guide

author: Randy Spencer
name: Rob
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/14
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: 2024, maine
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink]]> 30648738
Beer may be the common beverage of the people, but it is far from simple. With 10,000 years of history, more than 900 identified flavors, dozens of styles, and thousands of breweries around the world, beer is as complex as its grape-based neighbors in the liquor stores. It is an artistic creation, brewed from dozens of possible ingredients and processed in hundreds of different ways. Mosher guides readers to a better understanding of how every batch of beer is affected by each of the brewmaster's choices �� recipe formulation, brewhouse procedures, yeasts, fermentations, carbonation, filtration, packaging, and much more.

Beer can be light, dark, mild, strong, flat, or fizzy. Hundreds of tastes can be detected in beer, from resin to toast, and from apple to smoke. Readers will learn how to identify the scents, colors, flavors, and mouth-feel of all the major beer styles. There are also chapters on proper serving and storage conditions, and classic beer and food pairings.

The second half of the book is a style-by-style compendium of the different brews within major beer families, including American craft brews, British lagers, German ales, and Belgian Dubbels. For each style there are historical and regional facts, taste and aroma characteristics, seasonal availability, food pairings, and a few terrific recommendations for readers to sample.]]> 376 Randy Mosher 1612127770 Rob 5 Tasting Beer. Mosher's love of this agricultural/culinary art form is manifest in every word and every figure of this book. He lovingly describes each style in visceral, sensuous detail. He illuminates the history of beer and beer-making (even the boring taxation aspects) with animation and spirit. He brings beer to life in a way only exceeded by actually literally pouring an effervescent and spirited Belgian tripel into a chalice and lifting it to you mouth.

If you know someone who loves beer, even if they have zero interest in ever making it, this is just about the perfect gift.]]> 4.62 2009 Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink

Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink

author: Randy Mosher
name: Rob
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/14
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: 2017, brewing, 2022, 2023, all-time-favorites, always-on-my-desk, on-going, recommended, 2024
review:
Since I started homebrewing a couple of years ago, I've read almost two dozen books on beer and brewing, and I'd estimate about a hundred blog posts and articles. Few of those have been anywhere near as delightful as Randy Mosher's Tasting Beer. Mosher's love of this agricultural/culinary art form is manifest in every word and every figure of this book. He lovingly describes each style in visceral, sensuous detail. He illuminates the history of beer and beer-making (even the boring taxation aspects) with animation and spirit. He brings beer to life in a way only exceeded by actually literally pouring an effervescent and spirited Belgian tripel into a chalice and lifting it to you mouth.

If you know someone who loves beer, even if they have zero interest in ever making it, this is just about the perfect gift.
]]> <![CDATA[Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)]]> 13538873
Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.

A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out�� obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.

He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers�� behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.]]> 288 Robin Sloan 0374214913 Rob 4 2024 3.71 2012 Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

author: Robin Sloan
name: Rob
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Shadow Divers 9530
For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.

But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.

No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.

Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.

Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.]]> 335 Robert Kurson Rob 0 to-read 4.34 2004

author: Robert Kurson
name: Rob
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1) 28954189 Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art�� of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

An alternate cover edition of ISBN: 9781442472426]]> 435 Neal Shusterman Rob 4 2024, young-adult 4.32 2016 Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)

author: Neal Shusterman
name: Rob
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: 2024, young-adult
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West]]> 34363154
Based on the best part of a decade's reporting, as well as extensive interviews with those closest to the events (including the murder suspects), and access to trial evidence, Luke Harding's A Very Expensive Poison is the definitive inside story of the life and death of Alexander Litvinenko. Harding traces the journey of the nuclear poison across London, from hotel room to nightclub, assassin to victim; it is a deadly trail that seemingly leads back to the Russian state itself.

Harding argues that Litvinenko's assassination marked the beginning of the deterioration of Moscow's relations with the west and a decade of geo-political disruptions--from the war in Ukraine, a civilian plane shot down, at least 7,000 dead, two million people displaced and a Russian president's defiant rejection of a law-based international order. With Russia's covert war in Ukraine and annexation of the Crimea, Europe and the US face a new Cold War, but with fewer certainties.

This is a shocking real-life revenge tragedy with corruption and subterfuge at every turn, and walk-on parts from Russian mafia, the KGB, MI6 agents, dedicated British coppers, Russian dissidents. At the heart of this all is an individual and his family torn apart by a ruthless crime.]]> Luke Harding Rob 5 2024 4.00 2016 A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West

A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West

author: Luke Harding
name: Rob
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Learning Go: An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming]]> 198340227 491 Jon Bodner 1098139291 Rob 0 4.35

Learning Go: An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming

author: Jon Bodner
name: Rob
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: currently-reading, 2024, technical, 2025
review:

]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,�� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist �� an informational topologist with half his mind gone �� as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Rob 4
And then he slowly unfurls idea after idea that link together into a shillelagh to bash your brain in. At one moment near the end, I glanced up from the page and said aloud: He’s saying that consciousness and self-awareness are metabolically expensive and that if we’re lucky, we’ll grow out of it. I had several jaw-dropping moments. Like I said, it’s a little bit “harder�� of a flavor of scifi than I usually get into but this novel just held my attention totally rapt; I was utterly engrossed. And I highly recommend it.

---

Second read: Still love it. Maybe more this time.

---

See also:
��
�� ]]> 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

author: Peter Watts
name: Rob
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/02
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: science-fiction, first-contact, 2007, 100-paperbacks, 2013, recommended, 2021, all-time-favorites
review:
...I absolutely tore through this book. An utterly fascinating read; well-done in both its science and its style. Watts makes some clever choices in structuring his narrator (and consequently, the narrative) without it coming across as a gimmick or some other bit of contrivance. So we have this faithful guide working in our favor and a good entry point for the story.

And then he slowly unfurls idea after idea that link together into a shillelagh to bash your brain in. At one moment near the end, I glanced up from the page and said aloud: He’s saying that consciousness and self-awareness are metabolically expensive and that if we’re lucky, we’ll grow out of it. I had several jaw-dropping moments. Like I said, it’s a little bit “harder�� of a flavor of scifi than I usually get into but this novel just held my attention totally rapt; I was utterly engrossed. And I highly recommend it.

---

Second read: Still love it. Maybe more this time.

---

See also:
��
��
]]> <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women �� and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—T�ܰ��Ա��
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Rob 3 high-school, collection 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Rob
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: high-school, collection
review:

]]> The Nightingale 21853621 Der Weltbestseller �� die Nr. 1 aus den USA.
Zwei Schwestern im von den Deutschen besetzten Während Vianne ums Überleben ihrer Familie kämpft, schließt sich die jüngere Isabelle der Résistance an und sucht die Freiheit auf dem Pfad der Nachtigall, einem geheimen Fluchtweg über die Pyrenäen. Doch wie weit darf man gehen, um zu überleben? Und wie kann man die schützen, die man liebt?
In diesem epischen, kraftvollen und zutiefst berührenden Roman erzählt Kristin Hannah die Geschichte zweier Frauen, die ihr Schicksal auf ganz eigene Weise meistern.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Rob 4 2024 4.63 2015 The Nightingale

author: Kristin Hannah
name: Rob
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[TypeScript Cookbook: Real World Type-Level Programming]]> 142415226 419 Stefan Baumgartner 1098136659 Rob 4 2024, javascript, technical 4.19

TypeScript Cookbook: Real World Type-Level Programming

author: Stefan Baumgartner
name: Rob
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: 2024, javascript, technical
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Narrow Road Between Desires (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #0.6)]]> 157265081
From dawn to midnight over the course of a single day, follow the Kingkiller Chronicle's most charming fae as he schemes and sneaks, dancing into trouble and back out again with uncanny grace.

The Narrow Road Between Desires is Bast's story. In it he traces the old ways of making and breaking, following his heart even when doing so goes against his better judgement.

After all, what good is caution if it keeps him from danger and delight?]]> 240 Patrick Rothfuss 0756419182 Rob 5 2024 4.01 2023 The Narrow Road Between Desires (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #0.6)

The Narrow Road Between Desires (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #0.6)

author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Rob
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City and Its Uncertain Walls]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]> 449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Rob 0 to-read 3.72 2023

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Rob
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Navola 199927764
"You must be as sharp as a stilettotore’s dagger and as subtle as a fish beneath the waters. This is what it is to be Navolese, this is what it is to be di Regulai."

In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur—like the fossilized dragon eye in the family’s possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.

As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather , and Game of Thrones , Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.]]> 576 Paolo Bacigalupi 0593535057 Rob 0 to-read 3.80 2024 Navola

author: Paolo Bacigalupi
name: Rob
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Food Are Grown, Mines (Yes Mined), and Manipulated Into What America E: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Food Are Grown, Mines (Yes Mined), and Manip...]]> 32075224 Steve Ettlinger 1593163754 Rob 4 2024 4.17 2007 Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Food Are Grown, Mines (Yes Mined), and Manipulated Into What America E: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Food Are Grown, Mines (Yes Mined), and Manip...

Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Food Are Grown, Mines (Yes Mined), and Manipulated Into What America E: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Food Are Grown, Mines (Yes Mined), and Manip...

author: Steve Ettlinger
name: Rob
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Wild Land: Two Decades of Adventure as a Park Ranger in the Shadow of Katahdin]]> 206001028 As he grows from neophyte to old hand, the relationships that Vietze builds with his fellow rangers are illustrated as vibrantly as any attempt to save a lightning strike victim or raid on illegal campers. In This Wild Land, Vietze tells his story with humor, action, and an eye for the compelling details of life as a park ranger, making it the perfect read for outdoor and armchair adventurers alike.
“Eighteen years ago, Andrew Vietze did something many people dream of but few of us have the guts to do; he left a prestigious office job to take an entry-level position working in the Maine North Woods. This Wild Land records his adventures and misadventures as a ranger at Baxter State home to legendary Mount Katahdin, beloved by both Henry David Thoreau and Teddy Roosevelt, and arguably the last wild place in the Eastern US. Vietze's story is at once inspirational, frankly heartfelt, and endlessly entertaining. In other words, it has all the makings of a new Maine classic.”―Paul Doiron, author of The Poacher's Son and Dead by Dawn “When young people ask for advice about becoming a writer, my response is generally as write (and read) all the time. And get a real job. Usually, I recommend plumbing, because it's lucrative and also because there are always good stories to be found in kitchens and bathrooms…Having read Vietze's fine storytelling, I think I might recommend his path instead. Beginning as a magazine writer, Vietze found a real, and really wonderful, job, patrolling and protecting Baxter State Park. One of the most beautiful places on earth, Baxter also boasts Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The work of a Baxter ranger is varied, challenging and sometimes life-saving…and has provided Andrew Vietze with an abundance of good stories. He offers these with humor, verve, an eye for the telling detail and an infectious delight in this rugged corner of the natural world, and its human and non-human inhabitants.”―Kate Braestrup, New York Times bestselling author of Here if You Need Me
"The experience of reading This Wild Land�� floating in the eddies of Andrew Vietze's profoundly captivating and elegantly unpretentious prose, seeing through his eyes the natural world's quiet beauty and ruthless tragedy―offers an ideal escape from the unrelenting madness of modern life. Only an observant, gifted writer who has spent eighteen years working beneath the foreboding summit of Katahdin can achieve the humility to write such a perfect tribute to the magnificent park in the middle of Maine."―Michael Finkel, New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods]]> 207 Andrew Vietze 1628421320 Rob 5 2024, maine 4.26 This Wild Land: Two Decades of Adventure as a Park Ranger in the Shadow of Katahdin

This Wild Land: Two Decades of Adventure as a Park Ranger in the Shadow of Katahdin

author: Andrew Vietze
name: Rob
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: 2024, maine
review:

]]> Housekeeping 33140957 6 Marilynne Robinson 1427220646 Rob 3 time-all-time-100, 2024 3.46 1980

author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Rob
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves: time-all-time-100, 2024
review:

]]> The Catcher in the Rye 169183 277 J.D. Salinger 0241900972 Rob 5 * main conflict: maturity vs. youth
* climactic moment: the record shattering on the street
* Jane vs. Sally -or- Sally vs. Phoebe?

re: shelved as "Vermont"? -- a mere mention of the Green Mountain State is all it takes for me to put a book on my "Vermont" GoodReads shelf.]]> 3.74 1951 The Catcher in the Rye

author: J.D. Salinger
name: Rob
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at: 2008/03/27
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: all-time-favorites, high-school, vermont, 2008, time-all-time-100
review:
NOTES:
* main conflict: maturity vs. youth
* climactic moment: the record shattering on the street
* Jane vs. Sally -or- Sally vs. Phoebe?

re: shelved as "Vermont"? -- a mere mention of the Green Mountain State is all it takes for me to put a book on my "Vermont" GoodReads shelf.
]]> <![CDATA[Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization]]> 61884025 Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bestselling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time–war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, race, and tribalism–in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.

In a time when our political and cultural perspectives feel more divisive than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin engines of enlightenment–a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science.

After thinking deeply about how a scientist views the world and about what Earth looks like from space, Tyson has found that terrestrial thoughts change as our brain resets and recalibrates life's priorities, along with the actions we might take in response. As a result, no outlook on culture, society, or civilisation remains untouched.]]> Neil deGrasse Tyson 0008543208 Rob 4 2024, science 4.06 2022 Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Rob
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/06/18
shelves: 2024, science
review:

]]> Lovecraft Country 42634492
Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.

A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of one black family, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.]]> 13 Matt Ruff 1504682874 Rob 4 2024 4.17 2016

author: Matt Ruff
name: Rob
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Middlesex 15733561 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 21 Jeffrey Eugenides 1593971044 Rob 5 4.04 2002

author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Rob
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: 100-howell-favorites, 2024, all-time-favorites, important, recommended
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 59616018
A delight for readers of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, this blockbuster debut set in 1960s California features the singular voice of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride��) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.]]> Bonnie Garmus 0593507533 Rob 3 2024 4.18 2022

author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Rob
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires]]> 100342499 Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, and the Metaverse. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created—a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies—and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. Instead of changing the people, he argues, we can change the program.

Read by the author.]]> 7 Douglas Rushkoff 1705079717 Rob 4 2024 3.55 2022 Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

author: Douglas Rushkoff
name: Rob
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> A Clockwork Orange 36064554 A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"]]> 7 Anthony Burgess Rob 5 �� ]]> 4.33 1962 A Clockwork Orange

author: Anthony Burgess
name: Rob
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: time-all-time-100, been-putting-off, 2024
review:
See also:
��
]]> <![CDATA[Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1, Book 1)]]> 45277 (back cover)]]> 456 Neal Stephenson 0060833165 Rob 3 2017, alternate-history
It’s by no means a bad book. I just feeling like I’ve visited this stylistic and thematic soil before.

TL;DR: how many times can you write a novel about the invention of the computer?]]> 4.15 2003 Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1, Book 1)

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1, Book 1)

author: Neal Stephenson
name: Rob
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2017/10/22
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: 2017, alternate-history
review:
I almost didn’t finish this novel. I believe if I had read it 10 years earlier, that would not have been the case. As is characteristic of a Stephenson novel, this one is delightfully tedious �� thoroughly researched, full of period stylistic flourishes, and oft labyrinthine prose. And there is totally a time and place for that. But at this point I’ve read enough of his novels to know better, to know what was happening (stylistically speaking) as it unfolded, and while this did make me smile, it was a nostalgic one. In many ways, the novel’s period setting becomes a clever (and, quite honestly, rather involved) conceit which provides the excuse for writing prose and dialogue with the peculiar spellings, oblique and veiled metaphors, &c.

It’s by no means a bad book. I just feeling like I’ve visited this stylistic and thematic soil before.

TL;DR: how many times can you write a novel about the invention of the computer?
]]> <![CDATA[The Hum and the Shiver (Tufa, #1)]]> 13623046
No one knows where the Tufa came from or how they ended up in the mountains of east Tennessee. When the first Europeans came to the Smoky Mountains, the Tufa were already there. Dark-haired and enigmatic, they live quietly in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, their origins lost to history. But there are clues in their music, hidden in the songs they have passed down for generations.

Private Bronwyn Hyatt, a true daughter of the Tufa, has returned from Iraq, wounded in body and spirit, but her troubles are far from over. Cryptic omens warn of impending tragedy, while a restless "haint" has followed her home from the war. Worse yet, Bronwyn has lost touch with herself and with the music that was once a part of her life. With death stalking her family, will she ever again join in the song of her people and let it lift her onto the night winds?]]> 10 Alex Bledsoe 1455114006 Rob 4 2004 3.54 2011 The Hum and the Shiver (Tufa, #1)

author: Alex Bledsoe
name: Rob
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: 2004
review:
via
]]> Cahokia Jazz 176501313 From “one of the most original minds in contemporary literature�� (Nick Hornby) the bestselling and award-winning author of Golden Hill delivers a noirish detective novel set in the 1920s that reimagines how American history would be different if, instead of being decimated, indigenous populations had thrived.

Like his earlier novel Golden Hill, Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly epic proportions, a troubled soul to fall in love with as you are swept along by a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot.

On a snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. Down below, streetcar bells ring, factory whistles blow, Americans drink in speakeasies and dance to the tempo of modern times. But this is Cahokia, the ancient indigenous city beside the Mississippi living on as a teeming industrial metropolis, filled with people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that corpse on the roof will spark a week of drama in which this altered world will spill its secrets and be brought, against a soundtrack of jazz clarinets and wailing streetcars, either to destruction or rebirth.]]> Francis Spufford 1797167928 Rob 5 2024, alternate-history 3.89 2023 Cahokia Jazz

author: Francis Spufford
name: Rob
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves: 2024, alternate-history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wire: The Complete Visual History]]> 60320843 Celebrate the greatest television show of all time with this definitive tribute to The Wire.

Twenty years after its debut, HBO’s��The Wire��is widely regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. This deluxe volume explores the creation and legacy of creator David Simon’s landmark series through exclusive interviews with Simon and his cast and crew, including Idris Elba, Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn, Andre Royo, Jamie Hector, George Pelecanos, Ed Burns, and many more. The book also features commentary and essays from notable writers including��New York Times��bestselling author D. Watkins (The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America). Illustrated with striking visuals from the show, including concept art and candid behind-the-scenes images,��The Wire: The Complete Visual History, is the essential companion to a stone-cold television classic.

HUNDREDS OF NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS: Discover an exclusive treasure trove of incredible photography and production art that tells the story of The Wire like never before.

INTERVIEWS WITH CAST AND CREATORS: The visual story of The Wire is narrated by all-new interviews with creator David Simon and key cast and crew members, including Idris Elba, Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn, Felicia Pearson, Ed Burns, and more.

EXCLUSIVE ESSAYS: Discover unique commentary on all five seasons of the show from leading commentators including Melanie McFarland, Eric Deggans, Siddhant Adlakha, and more.

THE ULTIMATE TRIBUTE: Comprehensive and unmatched in its depth, this prestige volume is the ultimate retrospective of the greatest television show of all time.]]> 244 D. Watkins 1647227739 Rob 5 2023, 2024, on-going 4.47 The Wire: The Complete Visual History

author: D. Watkins
name: Rob
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: 2023, 2024, on-going
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)]]> 17342374 A Fire Upon The Deep, this is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar trading fleet of the Queng Ho. The Queng Ho and the Emergents are orbiting the dormant planet Arachna, which is about to wake up to technology, but the Emergents' plans are sinister.]]> Vernor Vinge Rob 3 4.03 1999 A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

author: Vernor Vinge
name: Rob
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2024/05/07
shelves: 2024, science-fiction, first-contact
review:

]]> Gather 83823717 A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.

Ian Gray isn’t supposed to have a dog, but a lot of things that shouldn’t happen end up happening anyway. And Gather, Ian’s adopted pup, is good company now that Ian has to quit the basketball team, find a job, and take care of his mom as she tries to overcome her opioid addiction. Despite the obstacles thrown their way, Ian is determined to keep his family afloat no matter what it takes. And for a little while, things are looking Ian makes friends, and his fondness for the outdoors and for fixing things lands him work helping neighbors. But an unforeseen tragedy results in Ian and his dog taking off on the run, trying to evade a future that would mean leaving their house and their land. Even if the community comes together to help him, would Ian and Gather have a home to return to?

Told in a wry, cautious first-person voice that meanders like a dog circling to be sure it’s safe to lie down, Kenneth M. Cadow’s resonant debut brings an emotional and ultimately hopeful story of one teen’s resilience in the face of unthinkable hardships.]]> 337 Kenneth M. Cadow 1536234184 Rob 0 to-read, short-list 4.40 2023 Gather

author: Kenneth M. Cadow
name: Rob
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: to-read, short-list
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell]]> 28295735 33 Susanna Clarke 1427220700 Rob 3 2024, fantasy 3.58 2004

author: Susanna Clarke
name: Rob
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: 2024, fantasy
review:
Borderline 4 starts for me. It was entertaining, if a bit tedious at parts (although I get that the style affectation was to mimic the narratives of the period it’s set in). I’m also a sucker for footnotes, and they work so very well here. I appreciated that it didn’t “go steampunk�� and instead did it’s weird little faerypunk thing. Would recommend, but it’s not like I was all “I should have read this years ago!�� :)
]]> Fablehaven (Fablehaven, #1) 28964757 Librarian's Note: This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN13--9781416947202.

For centuries mystical creatures of all description were gathered into a hidden refuge called Fablehaven to prevent their extinction. The sanctuary survives today as one of the last strongholds of true magic. Enchanting? Absolutely. Exciting? You bet. Safe? Well, actually, quite the opposite.

Kendra and her brother, Seth, have no idea that their grandfather is the current caretaker of Fablehaven. Inside the gated woods, ancient laws keep relative order among greedy trolls, mischievous satyrs, plotting witches, spiteful imps, and jealous fairies. However, when the rules get broken -- Seth is a bit too curious and reckless for his own good -- powerful forces of evil are unleashed, and Kendra and her brother face the greatest challenge of their lives. To save their family, Fablehaven, and perhaps even the world, Kendra and Seth must find the courage to do what they fear most.]]> 351 Brandon Mull Rob 3 3.90 2006 Fablehaven (Fablehaven, #1)

author: Brandon Mull
name: Rob
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: 2024, fantasy, with-emery, young-adult
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 123010965
Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile�� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.]]> 0 Rebecca Yarros 1705085040 Rob 3 2024, fantasy 4.21 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Rob
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: 2024, fantasy
review:
Fun story. Very horny. Decent plot with some excellent world-building, though the writing in certain scenes was a little dodgy. (There's one part where the narrator says something about losing classmates "exponentially" but that makes NO SENSE mathematically, esp. given the numbers we start with.)
]]> <![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]> 41256865
The contest starts as sport, with McMurphy taking bets on the outcome, but soon it develops into a grim struggle for the minds and hearts of the men, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Big Nurse, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Big Nurse uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story's shocking climax.]]> Ken Kesey Rob 5 time-all-time-100, 2024 3.89 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

author: Ken Kesey
name: Rob
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: time-all-time-100, 2024
review:

]]> A Handful of Dust 531262 308 Evelyn Waugh 0316926051 Rob 0 3.91 1934

author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Rob
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: to-read, time-all-time-100, on-libby
review:

]]> Hello Beautiful 62234889
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes an emotionally layered and engrossing story of a family that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.

But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters�� unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.]]> 15 Ann Napolitano Rob 3 2024 3.96 2023

author: Ann Napolitano
name: Rob
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/26
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Plot (The Book Series, #1)]]> 57721481
Jean Hanff Korelitz’s 'THE PLOT' is a psychologically suspenseful novel about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written—let alone published—anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that - a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing�� of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?]]> Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250804876 Rob 3 2024 3.66 2021 The Plot (The Book Series, #1)

author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Rob
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)]]> 34733423
He is now Harry Dresden, Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. After Harry had no choice but to swear his fealty, Mab wasn’t about to let something as petty as death steal away the prize she had sought for so long. And now, her word is his command, no matter what she wants him to do, no matter where she wants him to go, and no matter who she wants him to kill.

Guess which Mab wants first?

Of course, it won’t be an ordinary, everyday assassination. Mab wants her newest minion to pull off the impossible: kill an immortal. No problem there, right? And to make matters worse, there exists a growing threat to an unfathomable source of magic that could land Harry in the sort of trouble that will make death look like a holiday.

Beset by enemies new and old, Harry must gather his friends and allies, prevent the annihilation of countless innocents, and find a way out of his eternal subservience before his newfound powers claim the only thing he has left to call his own��

His soul.

Audio (18.80 hours)]]> 19 Jim Butcher 1470338335 Rob 2 2024
It was a fun enough book, but certainly not what I was expecting. An entertaining diversion. I suspect I'd have enjoyed it more if I knew Chicago.]]> 3.98 2012 Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)

author: Jim Butcher
name: Rob
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: 2024
review:
I don't remember how this came to be on my to-read list. Judging by the title and the cover, I guess I thought it was noir? Maybe I was going through a phase of pulp noir? I can't remember.

It was a fun enough book, but certainly not what I was expecting. An entertaining diversion. I suspect I'd have enjoyed it more if I knew Chicago.
]]> <![CDATA[Martin the Warrior (Redwall, #6)]]> 839075 376 Brian Jacques 0399226702 Rob 0 4.19 1993

author: Brian Jacques
name: Rob
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2012/12/23
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves: 2012, with-holden, 2013, unfinished
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend]]> 17860373 This acclaimed New York Times bestselling biography of the legendary Sioux warrior Red Cloud, is ��a page-turner with remarkable immediacy…and the narrative sweep of a great Western�� (The Boston Globe).

Red Cloud was the only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army in a war, forcing the government to sue for peace on his terms. At the peak of Red Cloud’s powers the Sioux could claim control of one-fifth of the contiguous United States and the loyalty of thousands of fierce fighters. But the fog of history has left Red Cloud strangely obscured. Now, thanks to the rediscovery of a lost autobiography, and painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the nineteenth century’s most powerful and successful Indian warrior can finally be told.

In this astonishing untold story of the American West, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin restore Red Cloud to his rightful place in American history in a sweeping and dramatic narrative based on years of primary research. As they trace the events leading to Red Cloud’s War, they provide intimate portraits of the many lives Red Cloud touched—mountain men such as Jim Bridger; US generals like William Tecumseh Sherman, who were charged with annihilating the Sioux; fearless explorers, such as the dashing John Bozeman; and the memorable warriors whom Red Cloud groomed, like the legendary Crazy Horse. And at the center of the story is Red Cloud, fighting for the very existence of the Indian way of life.

“Unabashed, unbiased, and disturbingly honest, leaving no razor-sharp arrowhead unturned, no rifle trigger unpulled....a compelling and fiery narrative�� (USA TODAY), this is the definitive chronicle of the conflict between an expanding white civilization and the Plains Indians who stood in its way.]]> 400 Bob Drury 1442367504 Rob 4 2024, history 3.61 2013 The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend

The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend

author: Bob Drury
name: Rob
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/11
date added: 2024/03/12
shelves: 2024, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)]]> 16074292 Alice Hoffman's enchanting witch's brew of suspense, romance and magic -- now a major motion picture from Warner Bros.
When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers -- and as their own powers begin to surface -- the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society.
But both find that they cannot elude their magic-filled past. And when trouble strikes -- in the form of a menacing backyard ghost -- the sisters must not only reunite three generations of Owens women but embrace their magic as a gift -- and their key to a future of love and passion.
Funny, haunting, and shamelessly romantic, Practical Magic is bewitching entertainment -- Alice Hoffman at her spectacular best.]]> Alice Hoffman 1442362499 Rob 3 2024 3.38 1995 Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)

author: Alice Hoffman
name: Rob
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/06
date added: 2024/03/06
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fodor's Paris 2023 (Full-color Travel Guide)]]> 61424104 400 1640975330 Rob 4 2024 4.17

Fodor's Paris 2023 (Full-color Travel Guide)

author: Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.
name: Rob
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Silver Nitrate 193975089 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys�� club running the film industry in ��90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.]]> 13 Silvia Moreno-Garcia Rob 4 2024 3.55 2023 Silver Nitrate

author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Rob
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Heavy Weather 359386
Forty years from now, Earth's climate has been drastically changed by the greenhouse effect. Tornadoes of almost unimaginable force roam the open spaces of Texas. And on their trail are the Storm Troupers: a ragtag band of computer experts and atmospheric scientists who live to hack heavy weather -- to document it and spread the information as far as the digital networks will stretch, using virtual reality to explore the eye of the storm.

Although it's incredibly addictive, this is no game. The Troupers' computer models suggest that soon an "F-6" will strike -- a tornado of an intensity that exceeds any existing scale; a storm so devastating that it may never stop. And they're going to be there when all hell breaks loose.]]> 310 Bruce Sterling 055357292X Rob 0 to-read 3.69 1994 Heavy Weather

author: Bruce Sterling
name: Rob
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Scar (New Crobuzon, #2) 25102265 Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage - and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.
For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.
Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada's agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters - terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission.
China Miéville is a writer for a new era - and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.]]> 27 China Miéville Rob 3 2024 4.20 2002 The Scar (New Crobuzon, #2)

author: China Miéville
name: Rob
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself]]> 13526923 An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise.

Whether you’re deciding which smart phone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic, but here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us--but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.

Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them, but often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter--covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency--is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.

Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.]]> 9 David McRaney 1596593121 Rob 4 3.76 2011 You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

author: David McRaney
name: Rob
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: 2024, psychology, recommended, science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Burlington Brewing: A History of Craft Beer in the Queen City (American Palate)]]> 43546309 208 Jeff S. Baker II 1625859945 Rob 4 2024, brewing, vermont 3.50

Burlington Brewing: A History of Craft Beer in the Queen City (American Palate)

author: Jeff S. Baker II
name: Rob
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: 2024, brewing, vermont
review:

]]> The Overstory 44435047
In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There’s something you need to hear."]]> Richard Powers Rob 4 2024 3.90 2018 The Overstory

author: Richard Powers
name: Rob
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/04
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Today Will Be Different 31742955 7 Maria Semple 1478971932 Rob 3 2024, seattle 3.02 2016

author: Maria Semple
name: Rob
average rating: 3.02
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/01/23
shelves: 2024, seattle
review:

]]> Brave New World 10871905 8 Aldous Huxley 1602833826 Rob 4 Stranger in a Strange Land, as well as Too Like the Lightning and the other books in that series.

See also:
�� ]]> 3.38 1932

author: Aldous Huxley
name: Rob
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1932
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/01/18
shelves: 2024, 100-paperbacks, dystopia, important, science-fiction
review:
Jan. 18, 2024: I'm pretty sure that I've read this before (high school, perhaps?) but having definitely read it now, I can say that it's exactly as I remembered (imagined?) it -- and by extension, just as important vis-à-vis how it fits into the pantheon of 20th century literature, esp. w/r/t/ it as a foundational text for how we write about dystopias. (Although I could personally do without the assertion that one needs a monotheistic notion of religion and spirituality for personal fulfillment, but let's not get into that.) Re-reading has been useful here inasmuch as I'd forgotten about the overlap and parallels that it has with Stranger in a Strange Land, as well as Too Like the Lightning and the other books in that series.

See also:
��
]]> <![CDATA[Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?]]> 44769444
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this significantly prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, we find King's acute analysis of American race relations and the state of the movement after a decade of civil rights efforts. Here he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, powerfully asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.]]> 7 Martin Luther King Jr. 0807093211 Rob 5 2024, important, recommended 4.59 1966 Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

author: Martin Luther King Jr.
name: Rob
average rating: 4.59
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: 2024, important, recommended
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back (From a Certain Point of View, #2)]]> 55610776
On May 21, 1980, Star Wars became a true saga with the release of 'The Empire Strikes Back'. In honor of the fortieth anniversary, forty storytellers recreate an iconic scene from 'The Empire Strikes Back', through the eyes of a supporting character, from heroes and villains to droids and creatures. 'From a Certain Point of View' features contributions by bestselling authors and trendsetting artists:

��
AUSTIN WALKER explores the unlikely partnership of bounty hunters Dengar and IG-8 as they pursue Han Solo.
��
HANK GREEN chronicles the life of a naturalist caring for tauntauns on the frozen world of Hoth.
��
TRACY DEONN delves into the dark heart of the Dagobah cave where Luke confronts a terrifying vision.
��
MARTHA WELLS reveals the world of he Ugnaught clans who dwell in the depths of Cloud City.
��
MARK OSHIRO recounts the wampa's tragic tale of loss and survival.
��
SETH DICKINSON interrogates the cost of serving a ruthless empire aboard the bridge of a doomed Imperial starship.

PLUS MORE HILARIOUS, HEARTBREAKING, AND ASTONISHING TALES FROM:

Tom Angleberger, S.A. Chakraborty, Mike Chen, Adam Christopher, Zoraida Córdova, Deliliah S. Dawson, Alexander Freed, Jason Fry, Christie Golden, Rob Hart, E.K. Johnston, Lydia Kang, Michael Kogge, R.F. Kuang, C.B. Lee, Mackenzi Lee, John Jackson Miller, Michael Moreci, Daniel José Older, Amy Ratcliffe, Beth Revis, Lilliam Rivera, Cavan Scott, Emily Skrutskie, Karen Strong, Anne Toole, Catherynne M. Valente, Django Wexler, Kiersten White, Gary Whitta, Brittany N. Williams, Charles Yu, JIm Zub.

All participating authors have generously forgone any compensation for their stories. Instead, their proceeds will be donated to First Book - a leading nonprofit that provides new books, learning material, and other essentials to educators and organizations serving children in need. To further celebrate the launch of this book and both companies' longstanding relationships with First Book, Penguin Random House will donate $100,000 to First Book, and Disney/Lucasfilm will donate 100,000 children's books - valued at &1,00,000 - to support First Book and their mission of providing equal access to quality education.

READ BY:

Johnathan Davis, Sean Kenin, Elias-Reyes, Dion Graham, Jon Hamm, January LaVoy, Soneela Nankani, Marc Thompson, Sam Witwer, and Emily Woo Zeller.

RUNNING TIME => 18hrs.

©2020 Ballantine (P)2020 Random House Audio]]> 18 Elizabeth Schaefer 0593215419 Rob 4 2023, science-fiction, 2024 3.76 2020 From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back (From a Certain Point of View, #2)

From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back (From a Certain Point of View, #2)

author: Elizabeth Schaefer
name: Rob
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/09
date added: 2024/01/09
shelves: 2023, science-fiction, 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 6485602 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 143529226X Rob 3 high-school, 1996 3.56 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Rob
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 1996/03/31
date added: 2024/01/02
shelves: high-school, 1996
review:

]]> The Deluge 61271829 “This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.�� —Stephen King

From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.

From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.]]> 43 Stephen Markley 1797152947 Rob 5 The Handmaid’s Tale, but for the climate crisis. And written in a way that calls to mind David Foster Wallace and with certain pages recalling House of Leaves. A techno-political solarpunk horror story.]]> 4.11 2023 The Deluge

author: Stephen Markley
name: Rob
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/21
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves: 2023, recommended, all-time-favorites, dystopia, important, mind-bending
review:
The Handmaid’s Tale, but for the climate crisis. And written in a way that calls to mind David Foster Wallace and with certain pages recalling House of Leaves. A techno-political solarpunk horror story.
]]> The Hard Switch 60415020
The time is coming when the mineral that makes inter-system jumps possible runs out. When it does, the scattered inhabitants of the vast galaxy will be stuck where they are. Everything will be different . . . unless the discovery in the latest wreck Ada, Haika, and Mallic are scavenging can unlock a whole new kind of interstellar transit.]]> 100 Owen D. Pomery 1910395706 Rob 0 to-read 3.78 2023 The Hard Switch

author: Owen D. Pomery
name: Rob
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>