In a fitting end to the garbage fire year that is 2020, my browser ate my 75% complete post and I had to start over. Symbolic. I think I am not alone in feeling Zoomed out, and screen-timed out in general this year, which meant I kept turning to non-screen entertainment. Through no deliberate effort, …
Category: Books
Books, December 2020
See ya 2020, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Book of the month: Piranesi, Susanna Clarke There is very little that I can say about the plot of Piranesi without ruining the point of the story, which is to experience the slow unfolding of the truth and meaning of the world …
Books, November 2020
Remember last month that I said I was up to something and that was why I was actually publishing on time, instead of vaguely in the middle of the month like I usually do? Well, what I was up to was... Drumroll.... Winning National Novel Writing Month! Yay, me! Participants are challenged to write 50,000 …
Books, October 2020
How odd, I am actually done at the beginning of the month! Return in a month to find out why. Book of the month: The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal I previously crowned the prior two Lady Astronaut books as my 2018 series of the year, and I am delighted that Relentless only makes the …
Books, September 2020
Look, October 2020 is an entire Molotov cocktail thrown onto the already blazing dumpster fire that is this year, and it's only the 4th of the month. Allow me to offer a completely bonkers balm for your tired soul: experimental online science fiction piece 17776, released in 2017, and its sequel 20020, releasing M-W-F through …
Books, August 2020
Blackout! A lot of my books this month were ones I would have read anyway but got bumped up the queue to fit a square. The bingo deadline was officially September 8, so come back next month to read about the last few that made the count. Book of the month: This is How You …
Books, July 2020
I use a somewhat idiosyncratic system for sorting the genres of the books that I read, which also has shifted over time. I am also currently working on going back through old posts to fix those inconsistencies, starting from the beginning. (Early 2016 me is so much less cynical and less verbose than mid-2020 me.) …
Books, June 2020 and halfway through the year
The first half of 2020 has lasted six months and also FIVE MILLION YEARS. In that five million years since January, for the first time since 2015 (the era of me keeping track of the books I read) I am on track to - dare I jinx it - crack 100 books in a year. …
Continue reading Books, June 2020 and halfway through the year
Books, May 2020
As you very well know, 2020 sucks. For so many black Americans, things have always sucked, and many white Americans have historically been really good at denying or ignoring that, not to mention causing it. I struggled over whether I even wanted to write this month, since we should all be reading black writers right …
Books, April 2020
Seattle Public Library book bingo is here! I already picked books off my shelf (and ebook... shelf?) for 18 of the 24 squares. Dilemma: support local bookstores or finally make a dent in the book pile at home? Solution: BOTH. READ EXTRA BOOKS. Book of the month: The Library Book, Susan Orlean The central branch …
