Wants to read The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
book
Rated 1984 10/10
Re-read this for obvious reasons. Striking things in this go-round: the frequent references to machine-made music, novels and even pornography; the preponderance of ugly little weirdos among Party members; the divestment in science that isn't weaponry- or surveillance-related.
Rated The Butcher of the Forest 8/10
really good - a concise and contained story (rare for the genre!) that suggests a rich larger world without burdening the tight little narrative with a ton of exposition or explanation. more like this please!
Rated Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream 10/10
Exceptional - well researched and reported, eye-opening, infuriating. As mad as you think you are at private equity, you can always be madder
Rated Devil House 8/10
a little bit less than the sum of its parts, but compelling and well-written
Rated Doomsday Book 8/10
Long but solidly readable; somehow I didn’t know until a little ways into the book that it was written in 1992 and takes place in a 2055 that’s heavily affected by a pandemic that takes place sometime in the intervening years. Also kind of fun to see what “the future” looked like 30-some years ago; the book posits a world with time travel and land-line phones. <br/><br/>It’s a little…distant, maybe—The character relationships aren’t well-developed—but as it builds it gets compelling.
Wants to read Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War
Rated The Cartographers 8/10
enjoyable, but takes a long time to get where it’s going.
Rated No One Is Talking About This 8/10
mixed feelings about this one, but hard to argue with how funny and weird the funny-weird parts are and how heartbreaking the sad parts are.
Rated Born to Run 8/10
long, but more compelling all the way through than a lot of showbiz biographies. You really get a lot of Bruce’s personality - complete with caps and exclamation points and self-consciously lyrical turns of phrase - and a lot of revealing insight into his life, including, strikingly, his struggles with depression. If you love Bruce this book will confirm it.