book

Rated Blacktop Wasteland 8/10

A classic One Last Job crime thriller about a getaway driver-turned-mechanic. Zippy, mean, compelling, cinematic, and extremely readable.

Wants to read She Who Knows

Rated Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (and Not So Possible) Tomorrows 8/10

cleverly executed and thought-provoking.

Rated A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History 10/10

An important book; an excellent and scathing look at the fable version of US civil rights history and a reality check about the real version - a story of radical vision, long-ranging organizing, incomplete victories, brutal nationwide opposition, youth mobilization, true disruption, and, critically, hope. An extension of Theoharis’ terrific Rosa Parks biography. If I had one critique it’s that it can be a little rhetorically repetitive, but the point is so vital that it’s worth restating: the civil rights movement is not an inevitable and complete victory by a few noble heroes, it’s an unfinished mass movement. Would love to see an update someday that adds a chapter on the George Floyd protests and the “anti-woke” racist backlash.

Rated World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music 8/10

This is fun - breezy and modest, building on Tweedy’s skill as a storyteller and passionate fandom about music. Like a conversation with a friend in a bar when a good one comes on the radio.

Rated A Closed and Common Orbit 10/10

Brilliant plotting. I think I was three quarters of the way through it, maybe farther before the great big penny dropped. Not a surprise coming from Becky Chambers: this is a wonderful space opera about friendship, family and love.

Rated Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation 10/10

Rated Cold Magic 10/10

Finished reading How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Reading Katabasis

Rated The Interestings 8/10

the third book I’ve read this year in the “intense friends formed in childhood between sensitive creative people, played out over decades” genre, and a solid example - well done shifts in perspective, decisions and their impacts seen from different angles, conflicts planted early and revealing themselves over time. A very quick read.

Wants to read Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Wants to read X-Men: Days of Future Past

Wants to read Come and Get It

Rated The City We Became 8/10

Inventive and energetic.

Wants to read The Friend

Wants to read Lying Low

Wants to read Railsea

Rated The Devourers 8/10

Wild and rich and unsettling. A young professor in Kolkata meets a mysterious stranger who claims to be half-werewolf and gives him two old documents to transcribe, revealing a secret world of demonic shape-shifters. It's not super long but the writing is so dense and lyrical that I found myself taking a lot of time with it. Absorbing.

Rated Lord of Light 8/10

Finished reading The House of the Spirits

Rated Batgirl and the Birds of Prey, Vol. 2: Source Code 10/10

Rated The Daughter of Time 8/10

A curious, talky little mystery in which a convalescing policeman considers the very very cold case of Richard III and his purported murder of his nephews.

Wants to read The Shadow of the Wind

Rated Crooked Kingdom 8/10

I enjoyed [b:Six of Crows|23437156|Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)|Leigh Bardugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1651710803l/23437156._SY75_.jpg|42077459] a lot, but was annoyed at how abrupt of a cliffhanger it ended on. All is forgiven because this one is even better. Fun, engaging, rich, a quick and compelling read, and aspirationally, the kind of thing I'd like to be able to write. You *do* need to read Six of Crows first, but they're both well worth it.