New year, new books. Also, old books. Also, books that are actually plays. Book of the month: The Detroit Project - Paradise Blue, Detroit '67, Skeleton Crew, Dominique Morrisseau * The Detroit Project is a trilogy of plays spaced through arc of Detroit and its citizens in 1949, 1967, and 2008. I had vaguely had …
Category: Books
A year in books, 2018
Last year I was proud of reducing my books owned but not read yet to 23. This year, I had to get a new bookshelf, and I still can't fit all the to-reads onto a single shelf. Oops. It's been a bountiful year. Picks of the year I am bad at picking a single favorite, …
Books, December 2018
WordPress installed a bunch of new stuff last month and I'm finally learning how to use it. Please enjoy some shiny new formatting! Pick of the month: Binti trilogy (Binti, Home, The Night Masquerade), Nnedi Okorafor Binti is the first from her people, and one of only a few from Earth at all, to be …
Books, November 2018
It's the time of year where I'm starting to think on my best-of picks for the year, and as usual, I have some late-coming strong contenders. I sure hope it's not just a recency effect. Featured book of the month: To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis Time travel stories are notoriously fussy. One …
Books, October 2018
I learned a new word this week: tsundoku. It's a Japanese word that translates as the practice of buying more books than you can read, purely for the joy of never running out of things to read. Have you ever heard a word that specifically names the core of your being? Because my 200+ title …
Books, September 2018
I listened to a delightful episode of a delightful podcast today about the positive mental health effects of regular reading. I had sort of subconsciously known this but it really brought to the forefront how when I'm most stressed or tightly wound or overextended, I tend to read much less, but that's precisely the time …
Books, August 2018
It's another month of series! Joe Turner's Come and Gone, King Hedley II, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, August Wilson * The logical order for approaching Wilson's ten Century (or Pittsburgh) plays would be chronologically through either publication time or setting time. That said, I'm reading them in the order I happen to find them, …
Books, July 2018
Six out of my seven titles this month were installments in a series. (Two pairs came from the same series!) I will sing to you the praises of a series: long-term investment in characters and story stakes, themes that emerge only over the course of telling multiple discrete but linked stories, and most of all, …
Books, June 2018 + halfway through the year
Somehow, the first half of 2018 simultaneously lasted 3 days and 12 years. In six months, I brought to you 7357 pages of 24 books, for an average of about a book a week. Periodic Tales, Hugh Aldersey-Williams While the conceit of brief essays each delving into the history and practical uses of different elements …
Continue reading Books, June 2018 + halfway through the year
Books, May 2018
I didn't get a whole lot of reading in this month but I had the BEST excuse. A Darker Shade of Magic, VE Schwab I read a heck of a lot of novels in fantasy settings, so I don't often have the pleasure of encountering a plot/world element that's genuinely new to me. The structure …
