Rated And the Ass Saw the Angel 2/10
Life is too short too completely finish a book you're hating, even if it is for book club. I'll stick to his songs, thanks.
book
Rated Sea of Tranquility 10/10
<div>Loved this. It has a relationship to her previous book, The Glass Hotel, in sort of the same way David Mitchell's Slade House is related to The Bone Clocks. It's interesting to see the first "pandemic-era" books start to come out now, and though this story doesn't directly have much to do with our current pandemic, it's interesting to watch an author who had previously written a pandemic book grapple with that now. I completely understand the urge to want to involve time travel and moon colonies and all that to convey the strangeness of it all.</div>
Rated They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us 10/10
<div>The day I'm not 5 starring Hanif Abdurraqib, I've probably perished. Anyway, this book, like every single other thing of his I've read, is great. I listened to the audiobook of the newer edition, read by the author, which I recommend.<br><br>I will say that, although I tend to be interested in anything he wants to write about because of the way he writes about it, hearing him talk about the recording of Rumours was a particular treat.</div>
Edited 32d ago
Rated Doctor Who: The Guardian of the Solar System 10/10
As much as I love the Eighth Doctor audio adventures, this (along with its first 2 parts) is the best storyline I've heard from Big Finish... And not just because of my undying love for Jean Marsh. The writing is great, the sound, all of it. Beyond recommend all three for any Doctor Who fan.
Rated The Man Who Fell to Earth 9/10
<div>I was surprised by how much I loved this. I have a free month of Audible, so I listened to the audiobook that was available without having to use a credit mostly because I'd seen both the movie and the TV show, and I thought, "Well, why not complete it?" But this mostly holds up as both a product of its time and as a story that's still relevant today (alas), all while remaining innovative and interesting.</div>
Wants to read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1
Rated Those Who Walk Away 8/10
<div>Ok, so it's a little light on plot — other than "these two guys hate each other" — but yeah of course I'm going to enjoy a Patricia Highsmith book where people make bad decisions in Venice.</div>
Rated Frankenstein: By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley : Illustrated & Unabridged 8/10
A fascinating book to read for the first time, because it has an enormous pop-cultural footprint that is in many ways independent of and different from the book itself. Basically all of horror and science fiction is downstream of <i>Frankenstein</i>; the book has an interesting structure with embedded narratives and flows quickly despite the elaborate, heightened language of its era. It's composed of a couple of different horror-movie nightmare scenarios. The first, affecting the doctor, is the classic "you've done something terribly wrong and it's putting you and people you love in danger"; the second, narrated by the erudite creature himself, is "you're thrust into a world where everyone seems to hate and fear you and you're not sure why." The first-person narrative style foregrounds the subjective emotional experience, the suspense and grief and self-loathing, rather than the plot, which is actually pretty simple. Although it's about big questions and themes, takes place over a big geographical scale, and is considered a monumental work, it's very intimate, with very few named characters. It's also much more horror-y and not very science-y; absent is the focus on the "how" you usually get in subsequent sci-fi (I was surprised, for instance, that there's no *process* described, and no lightning-and-dials-and-switches "it's alive!" scene). It remains a rewarding read two centuries after it was written.
Rated The Inferno of Dante Alighieri 10/10
Feels weird to give a classic of the Western canon a star rating, but it’s my first time with it and I think the translation and commentary Ciardi offers is very good.<br/><br/>An inspiration to petty people everywhere: you can create something enduring, resonant, widely beloved and taken seriously for centuries and still have it basically be a burn book to settle a bunch of esoteric political and personal scores. <br/><br/>It’s not going to be a surprise that so much of Western culture is downstream of this, from religious imagery to fantasy literature to heavy metal lyrics, but it’s interesting as always to be able to see the well-worn references and images in their original context. And if there’s anything I want to explore in more detail I certainly don’t need to wonder if there’s an explanatory essay I could read. There’s seven centuries’ worth! <br/><br/>Glad I read this, and it’s more engaging and less chore-y than I expected.
Wants to read The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus
Rated A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) by George R. R. Martin (2-May-2006) Paperback 8/10
GRR Martin blazes new trails in introducing you to characters, getting you to identify with and root for them, getting you invested in their plans, and then messily thwarting those plans. He also enjoys tormenting you with having characters act upon information you know to be untrue, or fail to discover information that you know would help them. <br/><br/>Great fun, really.
Rated How Did You Get This Number: Essays 6/10
Very nicely written, and Crosley is charming and a great observer, though these essays don't quite close the deal for themselves - you might be left asking "so what?" A quick and pleasant read.
Rated Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity 8/10
Very striking - journalism that reads like a novel. A few years in the lives of families living at the edge of subsistence in a slum in Mumbai, right behind the airport and luxury hotels that symbolize a rising global upper class. Boo, the author, mostly removes herself from the story and narrates from the perspectives of her protagonists as they deal with poverty, corruption, religious conflict and their efforts to carve out a space for themselves. Beautifully done.
Wants to read The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth
Rated A Dance with Dragons 8/10
a blast, although it suffers a little from the fact that it's (a) interminable thanks to a lot of GRRM's writing quirks (b) overshadowed by the knowledge that even though it's interminable, it still won't actually *end*, and the next book is who knows how far off.<br/><br/>