Rated The Island of Missing Trees 8/10
A very sweet, lyrical and sad story about an expatriate family from Cyprus living in London and the past that brought them there.
book
Wants to read The Lions of Al-Rassan
Finished reading Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
Rated T. rex and the Crater of Doom 8/10
A brief and fun work of popular science that’s partly about its subject matter - the discovery of the impact that killed the dinosaurs - and partly about the process of science generally, showing the long, unsteady process of collaboration across countries and disciplines that led to the solution of one of the great mysteries. I very much remember “what happened to the dinosaurs?” as a live and possibly unsolvable problem when I was a kid and it’s remarkable that we learned the answer during my lifetime.
Reading Katabasis
Wants to read Parable of the Talents
Rated Corvus 10/10
So great to get back to this series and what a terrific character Kloos has given us in Alex Archer. White knuckles indeed, as she ends up in a serious pickle.
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 Cartoon Guide to Statistics 8/10
There’s really only so far you can go simplifying statistics, which by its nature involves a lot of formulas and calculus, but you can get a pretty good gist of the how and why of probability and statistics along with some helpful examples - starting with coin flips and dice, but also health, consumer products, and politics. From the 90s so it’s a little dated both in sociocultural outlook and technology but if you want to be a little bit more literate on the basics it’s pretty well done.
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 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 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 Automatic Noodle 8/10
Very SF SF, and fun. I had a problem keeping the cast of robots in my head (which one is the octopus and how does that work again?) but that might just be because my head is really old.
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