I’m late because my reviews were stuck behind the boat in the Suez Canal. The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune This absurdly charming story follows Linus, a social worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, in a world where magical beings live openly but under strict registration and regulation. Having caught …
Category: Books
Books, February 2021
Hey, spring is coming. Don’t let your covid guard down. Stay inside and read more books until the CDC says otherwise. East of Eden, John Steinbeck Where to start with Steinbeck’s sprawling epic? It’s anchored but far from bounded by the story of Adam Trask, and heavily features the stories of his family and friends …
Books, January 2021
Goal: read more books this year, especially books I already have, than I add to my shelves or wishlist. But looking back at my goals of the past... let’s just say my completion rate on books is higher than my completion rate of reading goals. Book of the month: The Daughters of Ys, MT Anderson …
A year in books, 2020
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, …
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.) …
