Rated Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside 8/10
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Rated Summerland 6/10
<div>I liked it well enough to keep reading all 500 pages, but how others may feel about it depends on one's feelings about baseball. If you know nothing about the literal rules of baseball, best of luck. If you love baseball, you will love or hate the magical elements here, depending on how much this story's rules grate against your own "magic of baseball" feelings. I am a person who will go to a minor league ball game every once in a while, and someone who badly played Little League, but I almost never watch it on TV, so I suppose it's not surprising that my feelings fall somewhere in the middle.<br><br>The attempts at having certain characters speak in dialect has... mixed results. The book is from 2002, so maybe different choices would be made today.</div>
Rated Doctor Who and the Pirates 8/10
<div>This is a mostly very silly one that reminded me a little bit of that episode of The X-Files with the vampires (and Luke Wilson), though this involves pirates. Part 3 is a Gilbert & Sullivan-style musical, but there are touching moments throughout, including the ending. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn remain a great pair.</div>
Rated Motherwell: A Girlhood 8/10
<div>Sometimes the freshness of the wounds Orr still felt over her childhood cloud her perspective, but also it's understandable how she wrote this to say, "Hey, I am my own person, and here's what I've learned after a life trying to please others who imposed their own narrative about me." It is definitely also worth reading if one is looking to read about a specific time and place, '70s semi-industrial Scotland.</div>
Rated Wuthering Heights 6/10
<div>Audible threw me another free month, and I saw this available to stream, so I thought I'd finally give it a go. I've previously had luck with finally getting around to various classics via audiobooks, but I think maybe I would've found reading this a bit easier in print because of all the similar names. This is no slight on Joanne Froggatt, who narrates it very well. I was just having my own moments of "Wait, now WHO are we talking about?" so I had to consult the Wikipedia page to refresh my memory. Ymmv!<br><br>That said, this is a grim tale with some interesting bits, some less so, but I'm not sorry I listened.</div>
Rated The Chronology of Water 10/10
The thought that most often occurred to me while reading was that <i>The Chronology of Water</i> is perhaps the truest thing I’ve ever read. Even if I have not personally experienced the same things, I know many who have, and in the parts where Yuknavitch and I overlap, her words feel so true that they hurt in the same way a massaged, sore muscle does. I wince for a moment, then think, <i>Please keep going</i>. And within all the turmoil, I find a certain amount of peace. <br><br>(My full review appears at <a href="http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/2012/10/swimming-away-chronology-of-water-by.html">The Quivering Pen</a>.)
Rated Emma 10/10
<div>Dare I say that this is my favorite Austen I've listened to this year? I listened to the version available through <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55873397.The_Jane_Austen_Collection_An_Audible_Original_Drama"><strong>The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama</strong></a>, narrated by Emma Thompson and other actors doing much of the dialogue, and it's great. I also think this might be one of the books for which I've only seen one adaptation — not the Gwyneth Paltrow one, but the Romola Garai/Jonny Lee Miller BBC miniseries — unless we're also counting Clueless, which I do. (Much like I also count 10 Things I Hate About You as a Taming of The Shrew adaptation, which is probably the best one for that story.)<br><br>But yes, Emma's great. Funny, knowing, and at times, cutting. Not that the other books aren't, but this one is also paired with a little less "What will people think?!" Emma considers herself an expert in most everything until she's reminded otherwise, and it's fun to read that process of her figuring out how to be a better friend.</div>
Rated Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution 8/10
<div>The updated version of this book was published in 2017, and while it ends with a sense of apprehension about what's to come in the first Trump administration, it is heartbreaking to now know how much progress has been undone in the decade since. Still, as Stryker reminds us, the arc of moral justice is long, and there is still much work to be done. <br><br>I knew some of the history talked about here, but I also learned a lot. It does not go much into Native American trans people, but otherwise covers a pretty wide American history. The writing is very straightforward, fair-minded, and readable. If you haven't seen Stryker's documentary, <em>Screaming Queens</em>, about the Compton's Cafeteria riot, I definitely recommend. I also liked the questions for the reader at the end. A lot of leftie book groups could stand to read this history.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: Myths and Legends 6/10
This is a deeply nerdy book that I enjoyed, though I did not love. It fills in some of the blanks as to how certain stories came out, or the in-between times, explaining how the Doctor might be familiar with other planets/aliens based on the Time Lords' history. There are a lot of good callbacks, but if one is not as familiar with Classic Who, this isn't going to be the book for them. I got most references, but I felt like I was maybe missing a few things. The writing is just okay, and the myths/legends themselves are mostly interesting, but this isn't going to be a book for a casual fan.
Rated The Way the World Ends 10/10
What a great (long) short story. I had recently wondered if Jess Walter had any new material out, and how great to find this.
Rated Legs Get Led Astray 8/10
Chloe Caldwell's personal essays have a way of making me dissect my own life, whether I want to or not. I say 'me' instead of 'you' (though I bet it would be true for you too), and I am disregarding the editorial 'we.' Reading Legs Get Led Astray is not an abstraction — it is her voice and my brain having a conversation through the page. And though at times what I remembered through her past made me uncomfortable, it was only because I knew the feelings to be true. I enjoyed <i>Legs Get Led Astray</i> in the same way a song can hurt so good. Love, lust and loneliness — Over and over I say that is what I want to read and what I want to write, and this book makes me want to write.<br><br>Wrapped up in music and smells and drugs and strewn pieces of clothing, Caldwell writes from a place of longing for connection, while also yearning for distraction. Release. If you gathered all the songs she mentions throughout the book, you'd have a really good playlist. She is unafraid to admit when she's been fearful, when she's been the fuck-up, or when she judged too soon. But she also loves wholeheartedly, generously, and it's endearing. None of her stories come across like, "Hey, look at me shocking my audience!" No. She is writing to someone.<br><br>Is it you?<br><br>(My full review appears on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2012/04/legs-get-led-astray-essays-by-chloe.html">Glorified Love Letters.</a>)
Edited 32d ago
Rated Doctor Who: The Deviant Strain 8/10
This was an excellent story that would have been great on screen too (though with later series' budgets), but the sentence fragments during moments of action were frustratingly bad.
Rated The Worlds of Big Finish 9/10
<div>I do like a Big Finish crossover and this one is better than most.</div>
Rated The Payback 10/10
<div>Set in the near-future where people who are behind on student loans risk a beatdown from the Debt Police, <em>The Payback</em> begins with a lazy shift at an LA mall and increasingly amps up the pace. I loved reading from a retail store employee's perspective. An underutilized profession in novels! More "Mall Novels," please, even if only half of this book takes place in one.<br><br>And then it all turns into a heist? One of my favorite genres? Yes, of course I loved this book.</div>
Rated Silver Nitrate 8/10
<div>This was really good. Spooky old cinema magic? Yes, please.</div>