Rated Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (and Not So Possible) Tomorrows 8/10
cleverly executed and thought-provoking.
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Finished reading Sing, Unburied, Sing
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.
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 A Reason to See You Again
Rated The City We Became 8/10
Inventive and energetic.
Rated The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer 8/10
A good set of short stories, each stylistically different and linked by being set in a mystical dystopian future with a mind-controlling police state called New Dawn.
Rated The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears 8/10
A brief and touching book about a lonely Ethiopian immigrant living in DC. An interesting snapshot of history, both of the Ethiopian political upheaval of the 1970s and 80s and the gentrification of DC in the late 90s.
Rated Interior Chinatown 8/10
A really fascinating book - ostensibly about an aspiring actor named Willis Wu and his Taiwanese immigrant parents, it blurs the line between the roles they perform on tv and the roles they perform in life as it explores, in semi-screenplay form, the roles Asian people have been put into in American popular culture and American life. The “interior” refers to the screenplay-style setup of the story but also the interiority of Willis’ perspective. A quick read and a rewarding one.
Rated The Donut Legion: A Novel 8/10
A very silly, enjoyable beach read. Breezy and clever with a little sex and violence, some twists and turns, and a lot of down-homey similes.
Rated Blood Colony 6/10
A generally enjoyable sci-fi-ish adventure. It's a twist on the vampire concept: the premise is that there's an ancient sect of immortals from Ethiopia, except the world is out for *their* blood. Detailed, plot-heavy, and pretty compelling, if a little corny and pulpy at times; it's the third in a series and I don't know how much that was clunky about it comes of picking up a series partway through and how much is inherent to the writing. The shifts between the characters' perspectives - especially as some of them can telepathically connect to others - are well-handled and subtle; the efforts to make the book grimdark and "topical" are less so. I liked it but don't know that I'm super-inxlined to seek out the rest of the series.
Rated The Sparrow 8/10
wild-ass book - a unique take on the first contact story. Bleak and weirdly compelling
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
Edited 86d ago
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.