Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:28 JST Jessamyn

   Book 1: System Collapse. I'd been eagerly awaiting this book. I enjoyed it but it wasn't quite the Murderbot book I was expecting. May have been a me problem, it was a long time since I'd read the last one and I had to re-learn who the characters were and this novel seemed short on "get to know the characters" stuff. A lot of Murderbot's inner mind, some of their relationship with ART, the usual clusterfuck on a remote planet. Last year's reading list https://glammr.us/@jessamyn/111666401754992583

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:45 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 46: The Mars House. So much going on in this book! A man immigrates to Mars as the Earth becomes uninhabitable. He learns that people who are "Earthstrong" (i.e. born on Earth with more muscle mass and adapted to more gravity) are in a weird class of "dangerous" people and treated accordingly. Mars natives live in a genderless society where they've been genetically adapted to a planet that is dusty and cold. Then there is some palace-intrigue type stuff. Also mammoths. Quite good.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:46 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 45: Those Beyond the Wall. I could not remember as much of the previous book as I'd thought but that was fine. This is a "some years later" version of the same world with much less multiversing and much more (by the author's own admission) rage. It's a poetic look at intense inequality as seen through the eyes of those who have less, as they interact (or remember, or try to make deals with) those who are more privileged and who have, perhaps, even less of a code of honor.

     Bill repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:47 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 44: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. This is the second in a series. Two woman, a detective and a scholar, wind up solving mysteries that take place on a gas giant planet (called "planet") which has a lot of fascinating world building as you might expect. So there's some really interesting description of how it all works, which is lovely, and a lot of tasty foods, but then one character is often anxiously ruminating about DTR which is less fun to read but maybe good for some?

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:48 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 43: Danger and Other Unknown Risks. A fun romp through adventure and friendship after the (sort of) end of the world. A adorable talking dog, some nice nostalgia trips, and a story that keeps on going in plausible but not terrible complicated ways. The illustration of North's story by Erica Henderson makes it all just that much more delightful.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:49 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 42: The Crossing Places. I heard people discussing this author when I was working at the library and took this book home on the strength of their enthusiasm. It's basically a Vera-like character (I had to check to make sure Griffiths didn't write those) except she's an archaeologist not a cop and it's the EAST of England and not the North but I liked it enough to probably try the second one. Some interesting archaeology history and not too gory or gruesome.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:50 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 40: A Crack in the Wall. An Argentine crime novel about a frustrated architect who is working in a dead end job with a few other co-workers. Over the course of the novel you realize they are bound together by a crime. I had thought the fact that this was a "crime novel" meant it was a mystery/cop story and this is not that. Ultimately I disliked the main character and the way he was objectifying the women around him. You're supposed to, but it still didn't work for me.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:50 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 41: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. A great story about the quest for a bombmaker in 1880's London, one who may have been a fancy watchmaker. And there are a few fancy watchmakers in town, one of whom is from a royal family in Japan and has some odd characteristics. Oh and Gilbert and Sullivan are nearby, and there is a clockwork octopus who steals socks. I'm not 100% sure I understood what was happening during this novel, but I enjoyed trying to figure it out.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:51 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 39: Dirt. When Logan subtitles this book "the ecstatic skin of the earth" he means it in more of a reverential way. He's an arborist and nature writer who wrote this gentle collection of essays reflecting on what we know about the soil we stand on, farm in, and walk through. Some of it contains lessons in history, some is more straightforward soil science, all of it is interesting to read and will make you look more at the world around you when you're outdoors.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:52 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 38: The Hunter. This is good like I thought it would be, the second in the Cal Hooper series about a retired American cop who moves to a small town in Ireland and learns about the ups and downs in a community of people who have all known each other forever. The last one began with a secret. This one starts out with a scam. Figuring out exactly what the scam is, and then what to do about it, as Cal's connection to the people and the land grows, is the trick. Oh and it's really hot out.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:53 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 37: Roaming. This is a graphic novel about three young women from Canada who visit New York City. They are all sort of friends. Two of them hook up, causing a bunch of weird feelings. Lessons get learned, maybe. The Tamakis, as always, do wonderful graphic novels. The illustrations of this one are gorgeous, really lush and interesting. At the same time, the vagaries of young people still figuring it out and being kind of shitty to one another can be a hard story to tell and also to read.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:54 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 36: Big Time. I've liked Winters' other books but this one (where all the narrative characters are female or nb) just fell flat for me. Great plot, interesting concept but the women just didn't feel like women, they felt like television's idea of women. Like, if you have a character who is a domestic abuse survivor and then she gets killed in an unrelated (and ugly) way, you've decided she is a plot device and that's a very specific authorial choice. Not my jam, this one.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:55 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 35: The Last Taxi Ride. Ranjit Singh is a taxi driver, a Sikh former Indian Army captain now working in New York City. He hopes to have his teenage daughter stay (and maybe live) with him. Then he gets wrapped in some shit with the boss from his other job, the hair importer. It has to do with a woman who was a Bollywood star and now lives in NY doing... something. He has to clear his name and make it all work out. Been trying to branch out in my crime-solver reading and this was a great one

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:56 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 34: Freshman Year. I grabbed this despite knowing I do not really enjoy the memoirs of awkward young women. This was on me. This is a well done rendition of an awkward young woman talking about her freshman year of college, a year in which nothing momentous really happens (by her own admission) and she talks about how it felt to her.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:57 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 33: The Book of Doors. What if any door were every door? A compelling story about a world mostly like ours except there is a set of magical books that have special powers for those who have them. The Book of Pain, the Book of Joy, the Book of Memories &c. Cassie gets given the Book of Doors and discovers that there is a huge shady underworld of people who want these books and will spare no expense to get them. And of course there is a hidden library. Just the right amount of sentiment.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:58 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 32: The Third Person. This is a HUGE (900+ pages) graphic novel about the author's experience getting therapy in anticipation of gender affirming treatment. During the course of therapy she found she had dissociative identity disorder and so her therapist postponed treatment while they worked that out. Her main therapist comes off pretty bad in this retelling (some pretty unethical stuff) and while things work out, it's tough sledding as a read, though well told.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:48:59 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 31: Exit Black. A "back on my bullshit" kind of book, a space thriller about a luxury hotel on a space station and things that go terribly wrong. Mainly taking place during a very tense 24 hours. I really liked the ideas in it. However, a lot of the explication was predicated on the idea of you understanding the layout of this place. Despite the book's map, it never really clicked for me so it was confusing and also stressful, felt macho despite the female lead. Good for someone else?

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:00 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 30: Summer of the Big Bachi. Picked this up because I like Hirahara's other books and there's one in this series that involves a Japanese baseball player who plays for a California team. This is the first in that series. Mas Arai is a Japanese American Hiroshima survivor who, no surprise, has seen some shit. He's settled into a quietish life as a gardener in Altadena with a set of friends and clients. It's a quiet life but trouble finds him and he needs to sort it out.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:01 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 29: Welcome to St Hell. This graphic novel discusses the author's journey for both himself and the people around him as he works through his feelings and takes the steps to get gender affirming care as a young adult in the UK. Everyone winds up being supportive, but it took a while for some. Those folks are shown in before/after ways. Some of the steps will be familiar (thoughts of "maybe I'm just a butch lesbian?" for example) and some are uniquely his. Really well drawn and well-told.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:02 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 28: Moon of the Turning Leaves. This is a decade-later sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, an exploration into what happened to a small Anishinaabe community in Northern Ontario when... the lights go out. Now it's ten years later, our crew have been hanging in there, but resources are getting scarcer and a few community members take a long journey to try to find an ancestral homeland they've never actually seen. A gentle story with a few terrifying moments. So happy there was a sequel.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:03 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 27: Two Cheers for Anarchism. A book I found in a little free library. I did not need to be convinced about some of the positive "ways of seeing" when you look at things through an anarchistic lens (mutual aid, direct action, skepticism of hierarchy) but it's fun to hear someone from Yale saying it. This book is a series of informal chapters using examples as a jumping off point. It's more about the negative qualities of the state than the positive qualities of anarchism but I'll take it.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:04 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 26: Lunar New Year Love Story. I'm a Yang completionist so I picked this up from my library shelf. It's a sweet story about a young Vietnamese woman who is trying to figure out her destiny w/r/t love as she also puzzles out the complicated history of her parents' relationship (having grown up without a mother). Along the way she grows up, learns to lion dance (in both Chinese and Korean styles) and figures out who she is and what she wants. Well told, lovely book.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:05 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 25: The Mimicking of Known Successes. A mystery/cop procedural novel, sort of, which takes place on a gas giant planet that has been loosely colonized. There's a lot of world building and a cop+scholar who must combine forces to figure out how a person disappeared from a transportation platform at the end of the world. But they have some history which also needs to maybe be resolved. I had a hard time visualizing some of this but I really enjoyed the story.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:06 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 24: No One Can Pronounce My Name. I picked this book up because of the riot of my favorite colors on the cover and it was a really well-done story about a few different Indian Americans, centered in Cleveland, and thinking about Indian American culture versus American culture and how people relate to one another and their own senses of self-identity both within cishet marriages and within gay culture. Starts off in a complex and conflicted place and smooths out over the course of the book.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:07 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 23: Do You Remember Being Born. If you'd like to read a novel about a human poet writing important poetry with a poetry-writing AI, this is probably a great novel to read. I had mixed feelings about it--it was extremely well written and the human poet was a great character with a story that was both quirky and felt real--because I just find "An AI wrote this!" aspects of our real world neither interesting nor cool (yet). I'll search out the author's other books.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:08 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 22: This Country. A poignant graphic novel about a young couple's move to a tiny house in Central Idaho. They run a local movie house. They garden a lot. They learn about birds and trees and nature. They meet their neighbors. Then they decide to have a baby and have a soul search about how while they are *visiting* this culture, their child will grow up with it being *their* culture. And they leave. As someone who was that kid, and whose parents didn't leave, I read it with fascination.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:09 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 21: Wrong Place Wrong Time. This book starts out dark and gradually gets less dark. It's about a woman who witnesses a crime involving a family member and winds up stuck in a series of backwards time loops trying to figure out how to stop it from happening. Each step helps her figure out a bit more. It's a roller coaster of a novel. I didn't really know where it was going to wind up until it was almost there. Very well done.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:10 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 20: The Art Thief. I have a few categories of books which I love and "Someone tells me more about art theft" is one of them. Finkel also wrote a really good book about the North Pond Hermit which was interesting while also not being tawdry or sensational. This book is about an audacious European art thief who lived in an attic at his mom's place surrounded by dozens of valuable artworks that he brazenly stole over the course of years. A lot of good research leads to this tale well-told.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:11 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 19: A Quantum Love Story. Don't remember how I found this book but I had enjoyed Chen's book about superheroes. This one is a "How do we get out of the time loop, but also we've grown closer while caught in the time loop...." sort of book. More romance than science, and plausible romance at that, but not really a romance novel per se. I really enjoyed reading this though I wish there was a little more wrap-up to the ending.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:12 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 18: Liberty's Daughter. A really engaging YA-ish novel about a young woman who grows up on a "seastead" an area in international waters that a bunch of libertarian types have grown their own societies in. It highlights a lot of the pitfalls of this sort of no-government+technology setup. You get a lot of what is essentially slavery along with gross things like skin farms and extreme class divides. Interesting without being too didactic. Cover didn't seem to be something actually in the book

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:13 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 17: The Tusks of Extinction. This novella by Ray Nayler will be hugely appreciated by folks who liked The Mountain in the Sea. That one looked at octopus consciousness, this one looks at (potential, possible?) mammoth consciousness and goes a bit into some of those "We're going to bring back mammoths from their old DNA" stories that have been shuttling around. Started off a bit confusing but went a bunch of places I enjoyed.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:14 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 16: The Undertaking. This is one of those lesser-known books about people who work in mortuary/funeral services. This one is by a guy who worked in the family funeral services growing up and now runs his own business in rural Michigan. He is also a poet, so it's a little more ornately written than others. I sent the guy an email about a typo on his website (and to say I liked the book) and got a charming email back from him. You'd probably like this if you like the genre generally.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:15 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 15: Radiomen. This was a book with a very interesting premise--aliens dispassionately walk among us trying to accomplish their own goals and one of them has to do with radio waves--which gets hampered by too many real-world analogues to things like Scientology and Art Bell's radio show. I enjoyed the book for what it was, I just felt it didn't need to hew so closely to things that already exist in the real world. A lot of cool dog characters, if that sort of thing is your thing.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:16 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 14: Long Past Dues. A sequel to another book from a slightly-magical world where people's jobs are to oversee that the magic doesn't get too out of control. Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby (that name!) is a new member of this Auditor group, keeping things stable in Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. A bunch of stuff goes wrong. There's a fair amount of "Our exhausted protagonist tries to hold on just a bit longer so that things don't go totally wrong." Liked, did not love.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:17 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 13: Duel. A YA graphic novel about two sisters who fence, and whose dad has died, and who are dealing with some complicated feelings that result in them having a fencing duel. A sweet story and I learned a lot about fencing. Well told and fun to read.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:18 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 12: Some Desperate Glory. This scifi book touches on some pretty dark topics like child soldiers, fascism, and eugenics. It has an interesting throughline story and framework that, combined with a lack of gory detail, make it a great way to engage with these topics, for me at least. It mostly takes place on a rebel microplanet as one group of teen soldiers graduates and receives their adult assignments continuing to fight for what amounts to human supremacy. But things don't go as planned.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:19 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 11: Empire of Deception. We all know about Ponzi. Fewer know about Koretz, who maintained a decades-long Ponzi-like scheme from Chicago, selling shares in a non-existent real estate and oil venture supposedly in Panama. I enjoyed this book, the author clearly did a lot of research. It suffers a bit from extensive quoting so it feels like every third sentence is in the voice of a different newspaper and some of the details feel extraneous-but-true (i.e. what people ate at a certain dinner)

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:20 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 10: Yellowface. My library had two copies of this and I got one. It is both an amazing piece of writing and a painful read. We follow the story (of post-mortem plagiarism, and the snowballing mess it creates) from the inside of the head of an unlikable character who is just self-aware enough to know what she is doing is wrong but not wise enough to stop digging. And she's a white lady so it's wincey watching more things work out for her than they should, the support network of awfulness.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:21 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 9: Aurora. I pretty much know what I am getting into with KSR novels. This one was about a massive generation ship and the issues they face seven generations in when it turns out the planetary system they are aiming for isn't what they'd hoped.

     It's basically three novels in one and, to my read, they don't cohere great and the one in the middle is mostly a stream-of-consciousness from an AI which I could have done without. Odd ending but still good reading.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:22 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 8: The Talk. Bell grew up with a White mom who was always getting mad at people who were racist to her son, and a Black dad who didn't really talk to him about racism. He experienced a lot of shitty treatment from classmates, cops, and authority figures and discusses how he grew up learning to stick up for himself but also trying to determine what the "right" way was to deal with racism and awful people, how that affected his professional and personal life, and how he talked to his own kids

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:23 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 7: Angelopolis. The sequel to Angelology, taking us a little further in to that story. However, it was more of a thriller and maybe trying to do too much? We didn't get to know any of the characters much better and while the plot was complex and fascinating, a lot of it was told with one of the characters monologuing to the other characters who are often injured or tired or in a hurry. I liked it but was not surprised it didn't have a sequel despite an ending that implied one was coming.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:24 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 6: Reading the Forested Landscape. I am not great at tree identification. I mentioned this to a friend. She suggested this book which is so much more than just tree id-ing, it's more like "Can you tell what went on in this forest before you got here?" puzzles which come with a lot of explanations about forest ecology. You learn about things like blowdowns and pest invasions, fire damage and beaver signs. I'm not sure my tree ID will be any better but I feel like I know the forest better.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:25 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 5: Off To Be The Wizard. A cute, fun romp predicated on the idea "What if all the parameters that run our lives are in a big shell script somewhere and could be adjusted?" This includes things like not only where you are, but when. You can probably see where this is going. It's a fun doesn't-take-itself-too-seriously story about wizardry and Medieval England. Despite almost no female characters (the one that is prominent is badass) I really enjoyed this. Fun and funny.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:26 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 3: Broken Homes. Another book in the Rivers of London series, this one had to do with a large council high rise and some weird goings on with some of the earlier characters you've grown to like. The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger which I did not mind since I am enjoying this series. Am curious to see how, or if, they resolve it.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:26 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 4: The Suitcase Clone. This was a slender book which I finished late at night (sorry for blurry image). It's a fun short romp that readers of Sourdough will likely enjoy. I picked it up because someone said they'd enjoyed "Sloan's latest" and I think maybe this wasn't it but I was glad I read it anyhow.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:49:27 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 2: How Infrastructure Works. Deb doesn't just understand infrastructure--how it works, how it got built, what it needs, why it's important--but she has VISION. This not only a book about what we have, it's a book about where, if we care about a more just world for everyone, we can go.

     She positions herself as both an engineering professor but also a woman of color, living in a world where many people don't have her level of privilege and access. It's a surprisingly hopeful take. Read it.

   • Embed this notice
     powersoffour (powersoffour@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2024 08:39:53 JST powersoffour

     in reply to

     @jessamyn Thanks for this recommendation. I'm about 2/3 through it (my library bought it after I requested!) and I'm really enjoying it.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2024 08:39:54 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 51: Catchpenny. Reminiscent of Rabbits and another book I can't remember that used travel-through-mirrors (Rajaniemi?) as a device. This tale is told mainly through the eyes of an unreliable narrator about what might be the end of the world but might also just be a video game or a social media jape. I enjoyed where this book took me and liked the way the tale was told. People who don't want a plot that has aspects of suicide cults, steer super clear of this one.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2024 08:39:55 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 50: Marooned in Realtime. The book that was suggested to me that Book 49 was the sequel to (and I missed a novella in-between them). I liked the concept, that there are these stasis bubbles you can be in where the world ages around you but you remain the same age. People bop around "through" time by letting it pass on outside the bubbles, strategically. This is more of a cop story than the last one which was more post-apocalyptic in some ways. Liked it in places, it dragged in others.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2024 08:39:56 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 49: The Peace War. Had to go back and read this one so that I could read the second one (which I started before noticing it was second). This is a classic novel from my high school years which has that adorable almost-there social sensibility (i.e. talks about racism but still employs things that are clearly now racist tropes, similar with sexism) surrounding a tale about what is essentially peace-through-facism and the ones who fought it. A little sleepy but a good read.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2024 08:39:57 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 48: Hard to talk about this book without discussing where it does or does not go but I will say I was expecting it to be one sort of book and it turned out to be another. Great plot, super uneven pacing with some expository devices which I didn't really enjoy but maybe they're right for a different type of person. It nearly entirely takes place at CERN and there's a lot of fun Swiss stuff and science-y stuff in it.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2024 08:39:58 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 47: The Perfect Vehicle. Got this book from a local Little Free Bookshelf and it reminded me pleasantly of the brief period of time when I had a motorcycle and also of the positive and negative aspects of motorcycle ownership. I also did not know that the author had been married to an acquaintance of mine, so that was an odd little surprise. A lot of fun motorcycle stories, a little bit floridly told. If you like Moto Guzzis, this is the book for you.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:10 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 90: The Spell Shop. Not my usual read but it has a librarian in it so I figured "Why not?" Her library was sacked and burned in a governmental coup. She took as many books as she could carry and went back to the island home she hadn't been to since she was a child, a community suffering from a lack of magic. She brings a talking spider plant and opens a jam shop. She meets a man who knew her when she was a child. A very cozy cottagecore romantasy I guess? I was surprised how much I liked it

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:11 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 89: Just Another Story. The author's cousin came to the US illegally, via a long and harrowing trip that he took with his mother from El Salvador when he was a teen. He never talked about it. A conversation about the journey when they are both adults is the basis for this story. It's one of those situations where everyone (or most people) has to make many tough/bad choices. The story is well told and drawn but the illustrations have a blurry edge to them that is maybe not intentional.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:12 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 88: The Fan Who Knew Too Much. I don't know how this wound up on my list but it may have been the cover which has nothing at all to do with the book. The main protagonist is a very nerdy awkward woman who is a "professional fan" (goes to cons, gets paid to write about them etc) who has a friend-of-sort-of-friends get murdered and she and the sort-of-friends try to figure it all out by staging a sort-of con of their own. Definitely the type of story I was in the mood for.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:13 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 87: This Great Hemisphere. I knew this book would be a difficult read and it was. It's a distant future novel about a post-technological world in which some people are invisible and there is huge social stratification between visible and non-visible people. As you'd expect, it's a commentary on extreme racial injustices and prejudices and just how evil people in power can get, in ways even they themselves might not expect. It's brutal and full of trauma and some moments of great joy.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:14 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 86: Nicked. I knew M. T. Anderson from the book Feed and now he writes books for adults. This promised to be a book about grave robbing and a pox epidemic that takes place in *checks notes* 1087! If you're one of those "Likes to think about ancient Rome" people and that synopsis sounds appealing, then this is the book for you. I liked but did not love it. It had a lot of new words, many of which felt a little extra. The basic story line is solid with some fun queer overtones. Few women.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:15 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 85: The Comfort of Ghosts. This book is the LAST in an eighteen book series so it has the sort of "wrap up" quality you might expect in a book like this: a lot of nostalgia; a lot of retreading old story lines and some new facts about them; a decently happy ending even given the setting which is in and around London just after WWII when stuff was still a mess. I was happy this series wrapped up right around when I was getting tired of it as being maybe a bit too precious and fairy tale.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:16 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 84: Bellewether. Don't know how this book wound up with me, it's definitely more normie than what I usually read. It's a tale about a house on Long Island in the 1700s and the family that lives there, juxtaposed against the same house which is now a historical museum in modern times. Some nice historical research, a tale of French and British soldiers, and possibly a ghost. You get glimpses of Manhattan. Schmaltzy but not in an entirely bad way, a happier ending than I'm used to.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:17 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 83: Labyrinths of Iron, A History of the World's Subways. was hoping for a MUCH better book. Written in 1981, it was largely the history of the NY, Paris and UK systems. Two chapters at the end devoted to others. I enjoyed the details and especially the description of the diplomacy necessary to make early subways work. Too much details in places, not enough in others. Reissued 10 years later newly subtitled "Subways in History, Myth, Art, Technology, and War" Suspect it was someone's thesis

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:18 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 82: Unexploded Remnants. This was a short but enjoyable book about a future world where the Earth is only a memory and a collection of artifacts. Our protagonist is a trans woman who likes to track down information about other civilizations particularly her own. She discovers an ancient AI weapon whose purpose is unclear. There's a lot of zipping around and quick meetings of other people in other species. Would have liked this book to be longer and more fleshed out but definitely enjoyed it

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:19 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 81: The Kingdoms. I don't know if it's me or these books but I do find myself sometimes finishing a book and being like "OK I get the general gist of this but some of the nuance may be lost on me" This is a book which takes place in the 1790s and the 1890s and the beginning of the 1900s and seems to feature similar characters to Pulley's other novels which I have read. There's a lot of old tech and smoldering feelings and maybe not enough of a very central lighthouse. Plot skips around.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:20 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 80: The Stardust Grail. This takes place in a future where we have interstellar travel along with "gates" that go to entirely other parts of the galaxy. A woman who has formerly been a thief takes to the stars with her friend from an entirely other species to try to find an ancient artifact which is deeply meaningful to (at least) two entirely different groups of people who have vested interest in obtaining it. A bit all over the place but a fun space romp.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:21 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 79: Sacred Celebrations. A friend's partner who works as a life coach wrote this. I am someone who does very secular wedding ceremonies and thought I could use some tips along these directions. I have no personal sense of the sacred or the divine, just a tree-hugger. This book is at its strongest when it's offering ideas for occasions to mark, and ideas for doing those things, offering many people's stories. It can veer strongly into woo and unintentional hegemonic statements at times.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:22 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 78: The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands (rethreaded). This is a book named after a book that is in this book. It describes the world in 1899 where *something happened* and the area betw Moscow and Beijing, an odd mystery area that isn't hospitable to humans. But the Trans-Siberian Express still goes through there, on a fraught crossing with a lot of real and imagined perils. I enjoyed the train descriptions and the ultimate conclusion, some of the rest of it felt a little flat.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:23 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 77: A Natural History of Empty Lots. A lovely series of meditations about the edgelands between the built world and the unbuilt-feeling parts at its edges. Brown is a person you may know, he's written some scifi, has a terrific newsletter and has a funky house in an industrial part of Austin. He talks about the things he discovers, the way he thought and thinks about these spaces, how his thinking changed when he became a parent. Not just "I wish we were wild" nostalgia. Thinky and worth it

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:24 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 76: The Stars Too Fondly. There are 200+ missing spacefarers after a mysterious accident shuttered the space program designed to find a better planet after humans ruined this one. A near-future story about love and friendship and young idealistic people confronted with a conflict not of their making that may or may not affect the future of their world. Not a hard science book. It does talk about multidimensional universes but isn't distracting about it. A very human-centric sci fi novel.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:25 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 75: Mexikid. A fun graphic memoir about growing up in a Mexican American family with 8 siblings. The central event is the entire family going to Mexico in an RV and a pickup truck to fetch their grandfather and bring him back to live with them. The siblings mostly get along, the parents are mostly decent people and the kids are often tussling with one another about where they are going to spend their "strawberry [picking] money" (pop rocks? fireworks? candy?). A very warm and funny memoir.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:26 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 74: Moonbound. Sloan has written a few books which I have really liked and this is another good one. We're 13,000 years in the future, the enigmatic entity from Sourdough is back, there are talking beavers and some dragons who live on the moon and need a nap. There are a lot of delightful nods to other scifi worlds which was one of my favorite parts of this. It's a hero's journey, sort of, with a lot going on. Many worldbuilding novels are so serious, this one is less so, in a good way.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:27 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 73: Breathe. This is a book about healthy binding by Kobabe who you likely know from Genderqueer. It combines the lived experience stories of people's journeys that involve binding, scientific research, and some summarization and strategies at the end which can help people who are trying to figure out what binding path might work (or not work) for them. Kobabe's illustrations are excellent as always and this was a short and engaging read for anyone interested in the topic.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:28 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 72: Service Model. If you like Tchaikovsky, this is another book from him! A valet-model high end robot finds that he has killed his master. And then it turns out this appears to be part of some overall societal collapse. Finding answers isn't really part of the robot's programming, but not being able to find another human who he can serve is a problem. He goes out looking for another one and finds a lot of deep dysfunction (and maybe a friend) in this occasionally humorous dystopia.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:29 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 71: Escape from St. Hell. A follow-up graphic novel to the previous one which is all about the author's trans journey through high school in a smallish UK town. In this sequel he finally gets to leave the house, explore what it is to be a real man ("real man" as he phrases it) and find his own niche and place where he feels like himself. There are some good video game framing devices that are well-drawn and occasional visits from the author's future self saying it's going to be okay

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:30 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 70: Anita De Monte Laughs Last. I will read any book with these colors on the cover. Got this from a Little Free Library. It's about two Latinx women (one from Cuba, one with Puerto Rican heritage) in two different decades who interact with the weird fustiness of the American art scene which tokenizes them. They each have disempowering relationships with disappointing white men and learn to find their own value (and values) as they work within a system that barely accommodates them.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:31 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 69: The Editors. If you would like to read a dramatized story about some editor feuds on a very Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia (I did!) then this book is for you. There's a teen admin, a Chinese American paid editor, a Uyghur, a journalist, and a social justice-motivated librarian. Oh and a crank who tried to take it all down. And a billionaire (of course). You might know the author, he's a journalist who has written a newsletter about Wikipedia stuff for a while and sent this to me.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:32 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 68: Escape Velocity. I need to get better at reading the CWs before diving in to books. It's hard to talk about this story--in the luxury space hotel subgenre, usually my jam--without giving too much of it away. It's one of those gradual-reveal plots that takes place in a nearish future where the world is burning and billionaires make deals and plans about who is worthy enough to move to the Mars Colonies. And there's a strong Upstairs Downstairs vibe with the majority-Filipino hotel staff

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:33 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 67: Americus. A very straightforward YA graphic novel about a small town in Oklahoma that is dealing with some parents who want the popular fantasy series banned because it promotes witchcraft and is "obscene." Spoiler alert: the book is not obscene. Even though the small town is not great for our protagonist, he finds some fellow travelers at the library and in places he doesn't expect. I enjoyed it, a quick read.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:34 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 66: Zodiac. A graphic memoir from Ai Weiwei which uses the structure of the Chinese zodiac to tell stories from the life of Ai Weiwei. If I did not already know about Ai, I am not sure this book would have helped me learn the facts about his life (though there are some) but it does really give you a sense of, for lack of a better word, why he has the vibes that he does. Gorgeously illustrated with fairly prosaic text, I still would have read this if it were 10x as long.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:35 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 65: Fight Me. It seems petty and a bit naive for me to say that this book had a few too many fight scenes. I loved Grossman's book Soon I Will Be Invincible and I very much liked this one but it felt a little tropey and norm-y and I'm used to more diverse stories nowadays. This was a fun superhero origin tale (here's when they're young and cool, here's where they're older and jaded) that hewed more towards more traditional superhero types of things.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:36 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 64: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Janzen left the church and got a higher ed degree and got married. Then it turned out her husband was a jerk with mental health issues who left her for a man from Gay.com. She moves back in with her family and re-immerses herself in the Mennonite world only this time as an outsider, somewhat. It's a gentle story, at times a bit funny and even as she's describing some of the odder statements or practices of her family, she does so with love.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:37 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 63: Alien Clay. If you like Tchaikovsky, or Van DerMeer, you'll like this. Taking place on a prison planet, it's an exploration of a whole new ecosystem where what we've come to know as "organisms" are true symbiotic colonies. Lots of ruminations about individuality vs. the whole and the concept of sell outs, takeover, and ultimately, revolution in the face of extreme resistance. A somewhat brutal book (it's a prison planet) but I liked the protagonist and enjoyed thinking about the science

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:38 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 62: Indian Burial Ground. This is a Native vampire tale. Sort of. It's about multiple generations of people in a small community--dealing with suicide and alcohol use disorder and all manner of bad things--who work on a way forward. Medina is a member of the Tunica Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. This story takes place in a fictional Louisiana tribe. I usually have a hard time with stories that have too much trauma in them but this one kept me reading. Mind the CW at the beginning, it's no joke.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:39 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 61: The Ministry of Time. Not so much a time travel novel as a novel of what it means to be out of place, not where you're meant to be, among your people. This is a stirringly poignant novel that hovered just on the edge of "too much" for me. It's got a lot of funny bits, can be a bit uneven but overall just a well-done story about a near-future earth where we can kidnap people from the past to try to solve current problems. Kind of.

     ETA: interesting Franklin Expedition connection too.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:40 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 60: Ocean's Godori. I enjoy a good sci-fi space romp that doesn't get bogged down in too many "But how does the spaceship take off/land?" physics details and this is a good one of those. The Alliance is a big Korean spacefaring concern. A ship takes off with a quirky assortment of misfits. There is some drama, a lot of interesting personalities interact, main character is female and charismatic in an odd way. The story seems to end somewhat in the middle, so hoping there's a sequel.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:41 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 59: Artificial. I did not like this author's first memoir so it's on me that I thought "Oh I wonder if this is about the synthesizer guy?" (yes, and also no) and still read it. It's a memoir about the nature of memory and what we know about someone who is no longer with us, and some looking into family history. Kurzweil's dad is a transhumanist, wrote a chatbot to talk to his own late dad. Many pages are just verbatim from interviews. Despite the cover: not really a love story. Not my jam.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:42 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 58: The Mighty Bite. I somehow picked this up thinking I might learn a bit about trilobites but this was actually a more standard kid graphic novel adventure story about a trilobite and his friend the walking whale as they try to... win a video contest? There is some good trilobite content at the end. It was a fun and well-illustrated read. I may be one of the few people who was not super familiar with Hale before this. Fun book.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:43 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 57: Welcome to Forever. This is a pretty ambitious book that mostly worked (for me). It's a story about memory in a near future where memory editing and storage is possible. At the center of it is a gay love story and some pretty deep thoughts about what it means to share a life with someone, and how much of that is your memories. Since the book is a lot about the life of the mind, there's a lot of thinky "in your head" stuff about longing and loss. Got murky occasionally, mostly great.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:44 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 56: The Lost Future of Pepperharrow. This is the second (and last) book in a series where I adored the first book. But where the first book had a decent amount of whimsy & things that are cool to look at and learn about, this book felt like one large slow-motion trolley problem with a pretty high degree of suffering and trauma throughout. I'm the first to admit that this is a me thing, but as much as I love Pulley and her writing, I felt like this book was almost something to be endured

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:45 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 55: What It's Like To Be a Bird. Sibley is a huge name in birding and this attractive book is a compendium of interesting bird facts as well as some details about various species. One of my favorite things about it besides the gorgeous illustrations is how much Sibley lets you know what the science says about birds and their behavior including some of the things we don't know (why some birds do dust bathing) or can only guess at. A great book for people who like bird facts.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:46 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 54: Marie Blythe. I've liked Mosher's other books and this one I had mixed feelings about. I loved the natural world descriptions of a place not far from where I live, I even liked some of the "just so stories" about how things (maybe) used to work in Vermont. I only sort of believed in the female character he created and I definitely didn't appreciate some of the casual racism in the book (anti-Roma in particular) which was just totally unnecessary and weird that it was included.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:48 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 53: Mauve. Probably an interesting story, told in a weird way. There are many popular history books out there where you can tell by reading them what references the author used to assemble their narrative. Long recitations of menu items is a tip-off. In this case there was a fancy well-documented 50th anniversary party feting the guy who created the color mauve. The book explains why it was a big deal but a lot of it is about the history of colors and dyes and him being forgotten by history

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:49 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     DNF: The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. I try to read most books that I notice which take place in a library. I got about 1/5 of the way into this book and just could not handle the relentless struggle and fear and pain that the main characters (who were also all young people, late teens or even younger in flashbacks) had to endure. I'm sure there is a great plot in there, and I'm not against ups and downs, but this was too much for me.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Oct-2024 23:44:50 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     Book 52: Floating Hotel. You hit a certain age, you've read many books and you can say "Another book in the luxury space hotel mystery genre." Turns out I like that genre a lot and this was a good example of it. People wind up on the floating hotel b/c they're escaping life circumstances in a dystopia where there's been one Emperor for 500 years and you're not allowed to even mention aliens. But... someone's speaking truth to power. And are they in the floating hotel? And how do you find them?