Wants to read Whiteout Volume 2: Melt – The Definitive Edition
book
Rated Torchwood: The Lost Files 8/10
Really great set of three Torchwood stories. John Barrowman's acting weaknesses are more apparent when you can't see him interacting with others, or aren't distracted by his loveliness, but I'm glad I gave this a listen.
Rated Unfollowers 8/10
<div>Having female characters make unlikable decisions, as well as adding depth to complex male friendships — without resorting to caricature for anyone — is something I will always be a fan of. The subjects of doubt and colonization are handled in a way that seems believable for these characters, though some of the supporting cast seems to be there only so our main people can see their own reflection. Which is realistic in its own way, but not always necessary. I also wished some of the queerness in certain characters was less danced around, even for characters who don't quite know what to do with such feelings. Still, there's a lot about this book I liked.</div>
Rated Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome 8/10
<div>I'd had this novella kicking around on my kindle for a long time, and it did make me interested in the novel that follows. Weirdly, I've followed John Scalzi on Twitter and now Bluesky, but I hadn't actually read anything by him until now. He writes about a pandemic in a way that we now know, 10 years after this came out, is not unlike how people would behave in real life. </div>
Rated Villager 7/10
<div>I think I enjoy Tom Cox's non-fiction more than his fiction, but I still liked this weird, sprawling look at the fictional (though Dartmoor-inspired) area of Underhill. He jumps around in time through past centuries and our future, occasionally dips into both folk-horror and music journalism, and we meet a lot of different voices along the way. Some I liked more than others, but I respect the scope and strangeness of it all. I'll always want to read what he does next.</div>
Rated We Travel the Spaceways 10/10
<div>A really excellent short story, and definitely worth listening to the audio version.</div>
Wants to read Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys
Rated Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail 10/10
This book is as amazing as everyone says that it is. There has been and likely will be a lot of hype surrounding this book, and the more contrary among you might want to resist the hype and not seek out <i>Wild</i>. Resist your contrary nature, just this once. The hype is well-deserved. Cheryl Strayed has written an outstanding book, one that is now easily counted among my favorites. Get thee to a bookstore or your library and soak it in. And then tell others to do the same.<br><br>(My full review can be found on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2012/03/wild-from-lost-to-found-on-pacific.html">Glorified Love Letters.</a>)
Wants to read What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher
Rated Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear 6/10
<div>Too many similes for my taste, as though the author's anxieties included being unclear, saying the wrong thing. Her admissions of childhood exaggeration seems to inform adulthood catastrophe imagining, which makes sense in a book examining fear, even if I found some parts naive. There are also many good insights, and some of those similes are quite apt. This is more memoir than wolf study, which is preferable for me, but ymmv. Lots to like, but it wasn't love.</div>
Rated World Takes 6/10
(I'd give it 3.5 stars, were that an option, but...)<br><br>Grasping at little bits of happiness wherever they can be found, the characters in Timmy Waldron’s short stories inhabit the space between hope and hopelessness. World Takes is a satisfying, slim collection of tales that are familiar, yet also windows into an unknown universe.<br><br>Perhaps Waldron’s greatest strengths are his first sentences. Writing teachers and advice articles always talk about that “hook” one needs to draw in the reader. The hook should not be gimmicky, of course, but enough to make the reader not just want to continue, but feel required to do so.<br><br>Overall, amusing in a dark humor sort of way.<br><br>(Full review can be found on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/09/world-takes-by-timmy-waldron.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>)
Full review at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-we-need-love-by-simon-van-booy.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.
Rated Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters 10/10
<div>This is an outstandingly good collection of essays on ("Big Mama") Willie Mae Thornton's life and career. I knew a little about her before reading, but not much, and some of that is because this is only the second biography written about her. Massively influential to early rock n roll, Thornton had a full blues career that spanned from the 1940s until her death in the 1980s. If one of the goals of the book is to make people want to investigate her music further, then consider it a success.</div>
Finished reading The Thursday Murder Club
Edited 34d ago
Rated Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities 6/10
I might have been more drawn in, had I been reading the print version of this book, to fully appreciate the illustrations, but this was just fine for me. Probably a very fascinating introduction to poisonous plants for someone else. I did learn a fair amount.