en-US Sat, 10 May 2025 07:40:38 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 63051209 A sharp-witted, high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival - all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree.

It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.
It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is�� you.
Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed.
But as he realizes that nothing �� from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess �� is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all �� who does he want to be?
Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.]]> 344 Caitlin Rozakis 1803365471 Adam 0 3.66 2024
author: Caitlin Rozakis
name: Adam
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: read-in-2025, currently-reading
review:

]]> 59414094 Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…]]> 419 Grady Hendrix 0593201264 Adam 3 3.65 2023
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Adam
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/10
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: horror, ny-times, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 34890015 Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends��what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. ]]> 342 Hans Rosling 1473637465 Adam 5 4.34 2018
author: Hans Rosling
name: Adam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/03
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: nonfiction, read-in-2022, sociology
review:

]]> 49426056
And while the war takes its toll as Lazarus fights Lazarus, the next Forever Carlyle--the 14-year-old known as "Eight" who is being groomed for service--finds herself in a life-or-death struggle of a different kind. The secrets are taking their toll, and when they come out, the results will be shattering.

Collects LAZARUS: RISEN #1-3]]> 152 Greg Rucka 1534308423 Adam 5 4.07 2020
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: dystopia, graphic-novels, read-in-2020, sf, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 35989494
Collects all six issues of the LAZARUS: +66 miniseries.
]]> 168 Greg Rucka 1534304886 Adam 4 3.90 2018
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: dystopia, graphic-novels, read-in-2018, sf, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 31387196 ]]> 128 Greg Rucka 1534300244 Adam 5 4.26 2017
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: dystopia, graphic-novels, sf, read-in-2017, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 25263481
Collects LAZARUS #16-21]]> 160 Greg Rucka 1632155230 Adam 5 4.22 2016
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: graphic-novels, read-in-2016, sf, read-in-2025, re-read
review:

]]> 23440067

Collecting issues #10-15 of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling series and the third story arc, "Conclave."]]> 144 Greg Rucka 1632152258 Adam 5 4.22 2015
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: graphic-novels, read-in-2015, sf, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 20299674
At the same time, the Barrets, a family of "Waste," lose their home and land, and must pursue their only chance for a better life - a 500-mile journey to Denver in the hope that one of their family will be noticed by the Carlyles and "lifted" to Serf status.

Collecting LAZARUS #5-9]]> 104 Greg Rucka 1607068710 Adam 5 4.08 2014
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: graphic-novels, read-in-2015, read-in-2016, sf, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 208433108 136 Patton Oswalt 1506739563 Adam 4 3.72
author: Patton Oswalt
name: Adam
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/06
date added: 2025/05/06
shelves: graphic-novels, read-in-2025, superhero
review:

]]> 7870457 128 John Layman 1607062607 Adam 4 4.09 2010
author: John Layman
name: Adam
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: read-in-2012, graphic-novels, crime, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 6839093
Collects CHEW issues #1-5.]]> 128 John Layman 1607061597 Adam 4 3.95 2009
author: John Layman
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: read-in-2012, graphic-novels, read-in-2014, sf, fantasy, crime, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 18259637
In a dystopian near-future, government is a quaint concept, resources are coveted, and possession is 100% of the law. A handful of Families rule, jealously guarding what they have and exploiting the Waste who struggle to survive in their domains. Forever Carlyle defends her family's holdings through deception and force as their protector, their Lazarus. Shot dead defending the family home, Forever's day goes downhill from there...

Collects LAZARUS #1-4 and previously only-available-online, four-page short, "Family: Prelude."]]> 106 Greg Rucka 1607068095 Adam 4 3.94 2013
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: av-club, graphic-novels, read-in-2014, read-in-2015, read-in-2016, sf, read-in-2017, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 477 264 Joseph A. Tainter 052138673X Adam 0 to-read, nonfiction, blsky 4.13 1988
author: Joseph A. Tainter
name: Adam
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, blsky
review:

]]> 182506390 Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.]]> 310 John Wiswell 0756418852 Adam 4 3.97 2024
author: John Wiswell
name: Adam
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: blsky, horror, read-in-2025, fantasy, lgbtq, romantic
review:

]]> 201978334
Fixing the carnage on our roadways requires a change in mindset and a dramatic transformation of transportation. This goes for traffic engineers in particular because they are still the ones in charge of our streets.

In Killed by a Traffic Engineer, civil engineering professor Wes Marshall shines a spotlight on how little science there is behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. While traffic engineers are not trying to cause deliberate harm to anyone, he explains, they are guilty of creating a transportation system whose designs remain largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.

Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, Killed by a Traffic Engineer shows how traffic engineering “research�� is outdated and unexamined (at its best) and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety, quality of life, equality, and planetary health. Marshall examines our need for speed and how traffic engineers disconnected it from safety, the focus on capacity and how it influences design, blaming human error, relying on faulty data, how liability drives reporting, measuring road safety outcomes, and the education (and reeducation) of traffic engineers.

Killed by a Traffic Engineer is ultimately hopeful about what is possible once we shift our thinking and demand streets engineered for the safety of people, both outside and inside of cars. It will make you look at your city and streets—and traffic engineers�� in a new light and inspire you to take action.]]> 412 Wes Marshall 1642833304 Adam 2 nonfiction, read-in-2025
Main takeaway: traffic engineering optimizes for capacity rather than safety. Safety is not measured. Traffic engineers can do better.]]> 4.28 2024
author: Wes Marshall
name: Adam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: nonfiction, read-in-2025
review:
This book frustrated me to no end. There's an important message in here, but the writing does it no favours. There are about 80 chapters of 3 to 4 pages each. It feels like a collection of thematically related mini essays rather than a coherent nonfiction book. Information is repeated, rephrased, and repeated again. A good editor would have rearranged this into more focused chapters and improved the arguments.

Main takeaway: traffic engineering optimizes for capacity rather than safety. Safety is not measured. Traffic engineers can do better.
]]> 58863528 A Brightness Long Ago and Children of Earth and Sky, international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay deploys his signature ‘quarter turn to the fantastic�� to tell a story of vengeance, power, and love.

On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small.

One of those arriving at that beach is a woman abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude. Having escaped, she is trying to chart her own course �� and is bent upon revenge. Another is a seafaring merchant who still remembers being exiled as a child with his family from their home, for their faith, a moment that never leaves him. In what follows, through a story both intimate and epic, unforgettable characters are immersed in the fierce and deadly struggles that define their time.

All the Seas of the World is a page-turning drama that also offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives �� in the past, and today.

]]> 528 Guy Gavriel Kay 0593441044 Adam 4 fantasy, read-in-2025 4.06 2022
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: Adam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 201750794
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Adam 4 fantasy, read-in-2025 3.93 2024
author: Lev Grossman
name: Adam
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2025
review:
4.5 stars. Some slow bits, but it finishes strong.
]]> 206777707 In this fresh-yet-familiar gothic tale―part historical fantasy, part puzzle-box mystery―the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes collide in a thrilling exploration of feminine power.

At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realizes how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of monsters: a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris―or have her thrown into an asylum.

Sam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners�� mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews. Is trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game?]]> 375 Susan J. Morris 1959411640 Adam 4 fantasy, horror, read-in-2025 A lot of fun. 3.89 2024
author: Susan J. Morris
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: fantasy, horror, read-in-2025
review:
A lot of fun.
]]> 201626991
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.

So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.]]> 435 Sarah Rees Brennan 0316568716 Adam 4 blsky, fantasy, read-in-2025 3.87 2024
author: Sarah Rees Brennan
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: blsky, fantasy, read-in-2025
review:
Not at all what I was expecting. It took me a bit to get into the vibe, but I enjoyed it in the end.
]]> 7280651 191 Ryū Murakami 039333841X Adam 3 read-in-2013, crime, horror 3.42 1997
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Adam
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2013/06/19
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: read-in-2013, crime, horror
review:
Pretty decent. Unfortunately, I had a pretty good idea of how things would turn out (based on peripheral knowledge of the movie), so I wasn't exactly shocked by the ending.
]]> 194985531
Mary the Multi-Monster! The Tripper! Crab Louie! Kid Curious! Persona! These offbeat b-list superheroes, formerly known as The Alternates , seemingly sacrificed themselves to stop an invasion from another dimension. Instead they were transported to a mirror reality where they lived complex lives in a more four-dimensional existence—expanding both their powers and consciousness.

Five years later they've returned to Twilight City, struggling to reacclimate to their old lives in a traditional two-dimensional superhero world—in withdrawal from the vivid ones they left behind. When elements from this alternate reality turn up as a dangerous new street drug, some of the heroes band together to destroy it, while others succumb to its temptation.

Illustrated by Tess Fowler ( Rat Queens ) and Christopher Mitten ( Hellboy, 30 Days of Night ) and featuring pinups by Fabio Moon, Tony Fleecs, Ryan Browne, Martin Simmonds, and more!

Collects The Alternates #1��#4.]]> 136 Patton Oswalt 1506739547 Adam 3 3.59
author: Patton Oswalt
name: Adam
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: graphic-novels, read-in-2025, superhero
review:
3.5 stars. I enjoyed it more than Minor Threats Vol 1, since I felt the story held together better. However, I still found it tried to cram too much in: a weird psychedelic mystery, with a whole world and different superpowered individuals you've never heard of, and then changing the POV character in every issue? There's no time for any of it to breathe.
]]> 18713259
The story, titled Worm, takes the form of a web serial, posted in bite-sized reads in much the same way that authors such as Mark Twain would release their works one chapter at a time in the days before full-fledged novels. Worm started in June 2011, updating twice a week, and finished in late November, 2013. It totals roughly 1,750,000 words; roughly 26 typical novels in length (or 10-11 very thick novels).]]> 6680 Wildbow Adam 5 4.61 2013
author: Wildbow
name: Adam
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: read-in-2014, read-in-2015, read-in-2016, re-read, sf, crime, read-in-2017, read-in-2025
review:
This was my second reread. I chose to stop at the end of chapter 22, prior to the time skip and big changes in the status quo. I don't dislike the rest of the serial, but unlike the first two thirds there are no events I'm eager to revisit.
]]> 212808273 Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in the sexual tension between two young women and gothic romance.

In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, teenaged Laura leads a solitary life with only her father, attendant and tutor for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest—the beautiful Carmilla.

So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her entrancing new companion, one defined by mysterious happenings and infused with an implicit but undeniable eroticism. As Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...]]> 160 J. Sheridan Le Fanu 1805332120 Adam 0 to-read 3.89 1872
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 531818
In this first collection of short pieces, including two novella-length works, since his western anthology Tonto Woman, Leonard demonstrates the superb characterization, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plotting that have made him a household name.

Sparks
Hanging out at the Buena Vista
Chickasaw Charlie Hoke
When the women come out to dance
Fire in the hole
Karen makes out
Hurrah to Capt. Early
The Tonto woman
Tenkiller]]> 228 Elmore Leonard 0060083972 Adam 3 short-stories, crime 3.77 2001
author: Elmore Leonard
name: Adam
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: short-stories, crime
review:

]]> 63900265
The psychotic Stickman has done the unthinkable and murdered Kid Dusk, sidekick to Twilight City’s premier crime-fighter, The Insomniac. The Insomniac’s teammates, The Continuum, are tearing Twilight apart, turning it into a terrifying police state—desperate to capture the Stickman and stop the Insomniac from “crossing that final line�� in which he may never come back from.

Caught in the middle are the small-time C-list villains, finding it impossible to pull jobs or even walk down the street without being harassed by these heroes. With a bounty on the Stickman’s head, former villain Playtime decides to put together a ragtag team of equally disgruntled supervillains to take down the Stickman and kill him themselves, leading her on a dark journey into the criminal underbelly she’s tried so hard to escape.

This graphic crime drama is about superheroes and villains and the last gasp of the colorful, innocent days of the silver and bronze age...before they’re dragged into the grit-soaked modern era.]]> 136 Patton Oswalt 1506729991 Adam 3 graphic-novels, read-in-2025 4.01 2023
author: Patton Oswalt
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: graphic-novels, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 26114416
In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.]]> 86 Ben Lerner 0865478201 Adam 4 3.82 2016
author: Ben Lerner
name: Adam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: essays, nonfiction, read-in-2025, youtube-recommended
review:

]]> 268437 368 John M. Ford Adam 5 3.76 1983
author: John M. Ford
name: Adam
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/31
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2022, alt-history
review:
That was really something. Alternate history where Christianity never became more than a mystery cult, Byzantium never fell to the Turks, and Richard III might not die at Bosworth field. Also, vampires.
]]> 6584405 Criminal and Sleeper: Ed Brubaker (The Death of Captain America), Sean Phillips (Marvel Zombies), Val Staples on colors.

Collecting: Incognito 1-6]]> 166 Ed Brubaker 0785139796 Adam 5 4.00 2009
author: Ed Brubaker
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: read-in-2012, re-read, read-in-2013, graphic-novels, read-in-2015, sf, crime, read-in-2017, read-in-2021, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 183740
Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married �� happily �� to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates.

But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts�� and looking beyond the obvious.
As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out �� a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.]]> 319 Jo Walton 0765314215 Adam 5 3.79 2006
author: Jo Walton
name: Adam
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: crime, read-in-2025, alt-history
review:

]]> 107007 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, and the skies over England are filled with flaming rockets as Mars launches the first salvo of an invasion. Only our stalwart adventurers Allan Quatermain, Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, Hawley Griffin, and Mr. Edward Hyde can save mother England and the very Earth itself. But there are many startling revelations along the way, including the blossoming of love and the uncovering of a traitor in their midst!]]> 228 Alan Moore 1401201180 Adam 4 3.93 2003
author: Alan Moore
name: Adam
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: graphic-novels, re-read, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 52661162
Then a local boy appeals to him for help. His brother is missing, and no one in the village, least of all the police, seems to care. And once again, Cal feels that restless itch.

Something is wrong in this community, and he must find out what, even if it brings trouble to his door.]]> 451 Tana French 073522465X Adam 3 crime, read-in-2025 3.70 2020
author: Tana French
name: Adam
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: crime, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 8614946
A wide-ranging cultural and political history that will forever redefine a misunderstood decade, Stayin�� Alive is prizewinning historian Jefferson Cowie’s remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s. In this edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American music, film and television lore—Cowie, with “an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech�� ( Cleveland Plain Dealer ), reveals America’s fascinating path from rising incomes and optimism of the New Deal to the widening economic inequalities and dampened expectations of the present.]]> 488 Jefferson R. Cowie 1565848756 Adam 4 4.12 2010
author: Jefferson R. Cowie
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: blsky, finance, history, nonfiction, read-in-2025
review:
4.5 stars. A well-written history of the economic, political, and social factors that caused the labor movement to fizzle out by the end of the decade.
]]> 34640834
Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.]]> 338 Kate Manne 0190604980 Adam 0 to-read 4.22 2017
author: Kate Manne
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 399136
Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.

This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the develpment of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.]]> 224 Benedict Anderson 0860915468 Adam 0 4.13 1983
author: Benedict Anderson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read, blsky, history, nonfiction
review:

]]> 89469179 368 Matson Browning 1728276624 Adam 0 4.06 2023
author: Matson Browning
name: Adam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read, friend-recommended, memoir, nonfiction
review:

]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells Adam 5 4.38 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: sf, read-in-2020, novella, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 35519101
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

]]> 158 Martha Wells 1250191785 Adam 4 4.21 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: read-in-2019, sf, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past �� one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A�� stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells Adam 4 That was fun. 4.5 stars. 4.23 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: read-in-2019, sf, novella, read-in-2025
review:
That was fun. 4.5 stars.
]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.�� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Adam 4 4.10 2017
author: Martha Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: read-in-2019, sf, read-in-2024, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 177186086
Scales is the best at what she does. She is an enforcer who keeps the peace in Ashtown; a rough, climate-ravaged desert town. But that fragile peace is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed within Ash's borders, right in front of Scales's eyes. Even more incomprehensible is that there was seemingly no murderer.

When more mutilated bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause—and putting an end to it. She teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist in order to uncover the truth, delving into both worlds to track down the invisible killer. But what they find points to something bigger��and more corrupt than they could've ever foreseen—and it could spell doom for the entire world.]]> 373 Micaiah Johnson 0593497503 Adam 4 read-in-2024, sf 4.02 2024
author: Micaiah Johnson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: read-in-2024, sf
review:

]]> 204350947
Matt Matheny teaches during the day, drinks at night, and barely hides his functioning alcoholism from his veterinarian ex-wife, Lucy, and his six-year-old son, Mikey. His world spirals out of control when a former student is killed, and he's left with her dog, Conehead. But something isn't right with Conehead. A dark presence follows him, and very soon, people around him die. Matt realizes the only way to protect his son is to sober up and work with Lucy to expose the dog’s mysterious past and face a secret so shocking—an evil so relentless—that it threatens to unleash hell on an entire town.

This horror novel pays homage to Stephen King’s Cujo, and films like It Follows and The Strangers. It is a haunting and suspenseful exploration of the unseen and the supernatural, set against the seemingly tranquil backdrop of rural West Virginia. Nick Roberts masterfully builds tension and atmosphere, creating a sense of impending doom with meticulous detailing and vivid imagery. The psychological exploration elevates the narrative, making Mean Spirited a compelling read for those who seek a blend of horror, mystery, and emotional depth.

Whether you are a seasoned fan of the genre or a curious newcomer, Mean Spirited promises a gripping and thought-provoking journey into the realms of the supernatural.]]> 325 Nick Roberts Adam 3 blsky, horror, read-in-2024 4.22 2024
author: Nick Roberts
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: blsky, horror, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 60035241 Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet...and markedly devoid of homicide.

But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board…]]> 457 Mur Lafferty 0593098110 Adam 3 crime, read-in-2024, sf 3.62 2022
author: Mur Lafferty
name: Adam
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: crime, read-in-2024, sf
review:

]]> 125937631
The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls “the ethereal world”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.

In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic��journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.

Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn��raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new the ground up.]]> 512 Ed Conway 0593534344 Adam 4 4.48 2023
author: Ed Conway
name: Adam
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: blsky, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 211003762 Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell.

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex�� Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies�� most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.]]> 557 Leigh Bardugo 1250378060 Adam 0 to-read 4.15 2023
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Adam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197063361
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms �� what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency.

Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars,��In Ascension��is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how �� no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope �� we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.]]> 496 Martin MacInnes 0802163467 Adam 4 blsky, sf, read-in-2024 3.69 2023
author: Martin MacInnes
name: Adam
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: blsky, sf, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 39325106 Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth, and Alecto the Ninth—is an epic science fantasy that blends necromantic theory and thrilling swordplay with a wicked, sacrilegious sense of humor; a modern mix of Dune, Riddick, and Gormenghast.]]> Tamsyn Muir Adam 0 to-read 4.42
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Adam
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 297627
In this amazingly imaginative tale, literary figures from throughout time and various bodies of work are brought together to face any and all threats to Britain. Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man, form a remarkable legion of intellectual aptitude and physical prowess: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.]]> 192 Alan Moore 1563898586 Adam 5 3.95 2000
author: Alan Moore
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: fantasy, re-read, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 28186015 But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process.]]> 259 Cathy O'Neil 0553418815 Adam 4
The good: the author does a decent job describing how mathematical models work, and the difference between relatively benign models (relatively transparent, directly measure what they are trying to model, incorporate feedback loops) and "Weapons of Math Destruction" (opaque, indirectly measure using proxy data, no feedback or other mechanisms to ensure the results are accurate). A lot of the harm caused by these algorithms appears to be unintentional: governments and businesses try to improve the bottom line, and fail to notice things like (1) their models incorporate stereotypes that further marginalize the poor or minorities; (2) without proper feedback, they have no mechanism to discover that the model is just picking up random noise.

The bad: the multiple case studies start to run together. Also, as a math/computer kind of guy, I'd be interested in getting a more in depth view of the algorithms.]]> 3.86 2016
author: Cathy O'Neil
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/30
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: nonfiction, math, read-in-2016, technology
review:
3.5 stars.

The good: the author does a decent job describing how mathematical models work, and the difference between relatively benign models (relatively transparent, directly measure what they are trying to model, incorporate feedback loops) and "Weapons of Math Destruction" (opaque, indirectly measure using proxy data, no feedback or other mechanisms to ensure the results are accurate). A lot of the harm caused by these algorithms appears to be unintentional: governments and businesses try to improve the bottom line, and fail to notice things like (1) their models incorporate stereotypes that further marginalize the poor or minorities; (2) without proper feedback, they have no mechanism to discover that the model is just picking up random noise.

The bad: the multiple case studies start to run together. Also, as a math/computer kind of guy, I'd be interested in getting a more in depth view of the algorithms.
]]> 198972718 Mae Catt Adam 3 fantasy, read-in-2024 4.07
author: Mae Catt
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 198972723 Kendra Wells Adam 4 fantasy, read-in-2024 4.51 2024
author: Kendra Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 60332399 What strange events created Mollymauk Tealeaf?

Entertainer, fighter, and performer, "Molly" has a knack for hiding his true self behind the shifting color and shape of a personality he seems to wear like his singular coat. But as with every member of the Mighty Nein, his past will eventually catch up with him...and it's a strange one indeed.

Join Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins writer Jody Houser, artist extraordinaire Hunter Bonyun, and Critical Role's Matthew Mercer and Taliesin Jaffe as they reveal Mollymauk's evolution from empty shell to vibrant individual, and the dark corners of his past that even he is afraid to examine.
]]> 56 Jody Houser 1506723772 Adam 5 fantasy, read-in-2024 4.48 2023
author: Jody Houser
name: Adam
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 24886513
"This revealing, moving, and often surprising collection lets you go deep inside the lives of generations of porn stars and explicit performers. It’s an absolute must-read for anyone interested in sex industry politics, sex-positive culture, and porn studies �� and for anyone whose friend, lover, or family member has taken their pants off in front of a camera. One after the other, these memoirs add up to a powerful, if ironic, conclusion: Porn stigma is the biggest problem many adult performers face, and it is at least as likely to come from our feminist moms as from prudish conservatives. Once you’ve heard the clear, articulate voices of these porn stars, you’ll never look at a sex movie, or the people who make it happen, the same way again."
�� Carol Queen, PhD and author of Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture]]> 320 Jiz Lee 0990557162 Adam 0 4.03 2015
author: Jiz Lee
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: nonfiction, biographical, essays, lgbtq, read-in-2024, did-not-finish
review:

]]> 25614847 ��
Look for Under Pressure, the companion guide to coping with stress and anxiety among girls, available now.

In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct—and absolutely normal—developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions, including

�� My thirteen-year-old rolls her eyes when I try to talk to her, and only does it more when I get angry with her about it. How should I respond?
�� Do I tell my teen daughter that I’m checking her phone?
�� My daughter suffers from test anxiety. What can I do to help her?
�� Where’s the line between healthy eating and having an eating disorder?
�� My teenage daughter wants to know why I’m against pot when it’s legal in some states. What should I say?
�� My daughter’s friend is cutting herself. Do I call the girl’s mother to let her know?

Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow with their daughters. When parents know what makes their daughter tick, they can embrace and enjoy the challenge of raising a healthy, happy young woman.

BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD WINNER

“Finally, there’s some good news for puzzled parents of adolescent girls, and psychologist Lisa Damour is the bearer of that happy news. [ Untangled ] is the most down-to-earth, readable parenting book I’ve come across in a long time.�� �� The Washington Post

“Anna Freud wrote in 1958, ‘There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.�� In the intervening decades, the transition doesn’t appear to have gotten any easier which makes Untangled such a welcome new resource.�� �� The Boston Globe]]> 352 Lisa Damour 0553393057 Adam 5 4.52 2016
author: Lisa Damour
name: Adam
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: nonfiction, parenting, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 49203368 368 Tom O'Donnell 006287215X Adam 0 to-read 4.00 2019
author: Tom O'Donnell
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203931568 HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY��is a riveting horror thrill ride from bestselling creators ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS, the award-winning team behind��CRIMINAL��(soon to be a TV series on Amazon Prime),��RECKLESS,��NIGHT FEVER,��and��WHERE THE BODY WAS.]]> 144 Ed Brubaker 1534327428 Adam 3 3.59 2024
author: Ed Brubaker
name: Adam
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: graphic-novels, horror, read-in-2024, religion
review:

]]> 31944679 “What’s your name?��

��ٱ����Ա�.��

“Serena?�� Elliot asked.

“Serene,�� said Serene. “My full name is Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle.��

Elliot’s mouth fell open. “That is badass.��

The Borderlands aren’t like anywhere else. Don’t try to smuggle a phone or any other piece of technology over the wall that marks the Border—unless you enjoy a fireworks display in your backpack. (Ballpoint pens are okay.) There are elves, harpies, and—best of all as far as Elliot is concerned—mermaids.

Elliot? Who’s Elliot? Elliot is thirteen years old. He’s smart and just a tiny bit obnoxious. Sometimes more than a tiny bit. When his class goes on a field trip and he can see a wall that no one else can see, he is given the chance to go to school in the Borderlands.

It turns out that on the other side of the wall, classes involve a lot more weaponry and fitness training and fewer mermaids than he expected. On the other hand, there’s Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elven warrior who is more beautiful than anyone Elliot has ever seen, and then there’s her human friend Luke: sunny, blond, and annoyingly likeable. There are lots of interesting books. There’s even the chance Elliot might be able to change the world.]]> 441 Sarah Rees Brennan 1618731203 Adam 5 4.35 2017
author: Sarah Rees Brennan
name: Adam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024, ya, lgbtq, romantic
review:

]]> 52591842 For readers of VE Schwab and The Witcher, science and magic clash in atmospheric gaslight-era Prague.

In the quiet streets of Prague all manner of otherworldly creatures lurk in the shadows. Unbeknownst to its citizens, their only hope against the tide of predators are the dauntless lamplighters - a secret elite of monster hunters whose light staves off the darkness each night. Domek Myska leads a life teeming with fraught encounters with the worst kind of evil: pijavice, bloodthirsty and soulless vampiric creatures. Despite this, Domek find solace in his moments spent in the company of his friend, the clever and beautiful Lady Ora Fischerová-- a widow with secrets of her own.

When Domek finds himself stalked by the spirit of the White Lady - a ghost who haunts the baroque halls of Prague castle - he stumbles across the sentient essence of a will-o'-the-wisp, a mischievous spirit known to lead lost travellers to their death, but who, once captured, are bound to serve the desires of their owners.

After discovering a conspiracy amongst the pijavice that could see them unleash terror on the daylight world, Domek finds himself in a race against those who aim to twist alchemical science for their own dangerous gain.]]> 413 Nicole Jarvis 1789093945 Adam 0 to-read, blsky 3.65 2021
author: Nicole Jarvis
name: Adam
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read, blsky
review:

]]> 194803864
Contrary to what your friends may have grumbled in high school math class, trigonometry is perhaps the most essential concept humans have ever devised. The simple yet versatile triangle allows us to map the world, launch ships into space, and send cat gifs. Trigonometry also makes it possible to play the piano so that it sounds like a human voice and was crucial to prosecuting the balloon trip company that caused a pig stampede.

In Love Triangle ,��Matt Parker shares plenty of relevant and irreverent reasons we should all show a lot more love for the triangles in our lives. He tells extraordinary and entertaining stories of mathematicians, philosophers, and engineers—starting with Pythagoras—who dared to take triangles seriously. Humans have been using triangles for thousands of years to measure the earth and build structures. But trigonometry also underpins all modern data technology and is the essential component of GPS—without triangles, we’d still be at the gas station asking for directions.

Parker convincingly makes the case that trigonometry is vital, fun, and deeply useful. Its rules are the hidden pattern beneath the surface of just about everything we encounter, and we wouldn’t exist without them. Luckily, it’s never too late to learn!]]> 352 Matt Parker 0593418107 Adam 4 3.95 2024
author: Matt Parker
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: math, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 203163978 In the tradition of Argo, The Wizard of Lies, and The Smartest Guys in the Room, a book that expands upon the HBO docuseries, McMillion$, with new, exclusive interviews and stories that couldn't make it into the series. In March of 2001, Federal prosecutor Mark Devereaux cold-called Rob Holm, the head of security for McDonald's Corporation. Without explanation, Devereaux asked that Holm and several other McDonald's senior executives plan a visit to the Jacksonville, Florida, FBI, and tell no one about their intended destination. It wasn't up for discussion. Upon their arrival, Devereaux watched them closely, looking at body language, checking for tells. To him, they were all potential suspects. Once they were seated in an unremarkable conference room, sealed away in the hyper-secure FBI building, Devereaux began to lay out a shocking conspiracy, one that ran deep into McDonald's most beloved the Monopoly game. From 1989 to 2001, not a single winner of a high-value prize was legitimate. Instead, all were the courtesy of one man who brilliantly crafted a near-infallible nationwide conspiracy for fraud. Expanded from the wildly popular HBO docuseries with major new interviews, MCMILLIONS traces this massive crime, the intricate web of lies that bolstered it, and the tireless work of the FBI agents that unraveled it all. It is a story littered with families torn apart, betrayals, financial ruin, and one suspicious car crash. Yet, there are bright spots in the hijinks of the FBI agents and their co-conspirators. Ultimately, it is a story of what happens when the American dream goes very wrong.]]> 336 James Lee Hernandez 1538720116 Adam 3 3.87
author: James Lee Hernandez
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: blsky, crime, finance, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 125084292
Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon’s Peaks of Eternal Light—and what happens if you’re left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what’s the legal status of space cannibalism?

With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary.

Get in, we’re going to Mars.]]> 448 Kelly Weinersmith 1984881736 Adam 5 4.04 2023
author: Kelly Weinersmith
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: blsky, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 209543060 Rising star New York Times technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac tell for the first time the full and shocking inside story of Elon Musk’s unprecedented hostile takeover of Twitter and the forty-four-billion-dollar deal’s seismic political, social, and financial fallout
The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media—where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business.
Musk joined the platform in 2010 and, by 2022, had become one of the site’s most influential users, hooking over 80 million followers with a mix of provocations, promotion of his companies, and attacks on his enemies. To Musk, Twitter—once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech—had badly lost its way. He blamed it for the proliferation of what he called the “woke mind virus�� and claimed that the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the site. In January of 2022, Musk began secretly accumulating Twitter stock. By April, he was its largest shareholder, and soon after, made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for the unimaginable sum of $44 billion dollars. Backed into a corner, Twitter’s board accepted his offer—but Musk quickly changed his mind, forcing Twitter to sue him to close the deal in October. The richest man on earth controlled one of the most powerful media platforms in the world—but at what price? Before long Twitter would be gone for good, replaced by something radically different, as Musk remade the company in his own image from the ground up.
The story of the showdown between Musk and Twitter and his eventual takeover of the company is unlike anything in business or media that has come before. In vivid, cinematic detail, Conger and Mac follow the inner workings of the company as Musk lays siege to it, first from the outside as one of its most vocal users, and then finally from within as a contentious and mercurial leader. Musk has shared some of his version of events, but Conger and Mac have uncovered the full story through exclusive interviews, unreported documents, and internal recordings at Twitter following the billionaire’s takeover. With unparalleled sources from within and around the company, they provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers.
This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?]]> 480 Kate Conger 059365613X Adam 4 4.26 2024
author: Kate Conger
name: Adam
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: blsky, finance, nonfiction, biographical, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 23701100 The End of Days, by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five “books,�� each leading to a different death of the same unnamed female protagonist. How could it all have gone differently?—the narrator asks in the intermezzos. The first chapter begins with the death of a baby in the early twentieth-century Hapsburg Empire. In the next chapter, the same girl grows up in Vienna after World War I, but a pact she makes with a young man leads to a second death. In the next scenario, she survives adolescence and moves to Russia with her husband. Both are dedicated Communists, yet our heroine ends up in a labor camp. But her fate does not end there��.

A novel of incredible breadth and amazing concision, The End of Days offers a unique overview of the twentieth century.]]> 320 Jenny Erpenbeck 0811221938 Adam 0 to-read 3.83 2012
author: Jenny Erpenbeck
name: Adam
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38605195 321 Dan Davies Adam 4 4.5 stars. Excellent 3.98 2018
author: Dan Davies
name: Adam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/14
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: crime, finance, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
4.5 stars. Excellent
]]> 195790571
The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men.

They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war.

Now, our daughters take up arms.

Galva �� Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill �� has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted �� not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.]]> 416 Christopher Buehlman 1250887674 Adam 5 fantasy, read-in-2024 4.23 2024
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: Adam
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 352774 310 Jack McDevitt 0441012175 Adam 0 to-read, blsky, sf 3.76 1989
author: Jack McDevitt
name: Adam
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read, blsky, sf
review:

]]> 62919847 A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida
June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.]]> 576 Tananarive Due 1982188340 Adam 0 to-read, blsky, horror, poc 4.44 2023
author: Tananarive Due
name: Adam
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read, blsky, horror, poc
review:

]]> 109986

Ogre Company is the legion's dumping ground--a motley, undisciplined group of monsters whose leaders tend to die under somewhat questionable circumstances. That's where Ned's rather unique talents come in. As Ogre Company's newly appointed commander, Ned finds himself in charge of such fine examples of military prowess as a moonstruck Amazon, a very big (and very polite) two-headed ogre, a seductively scaly siren, a blind oracle who can hear (and smell) the future, a suicidal goblin daredevil pilot, a walking tree with a chip on its shoulder, and a suspiciously goblinesque orc.


Ned has only six months to whip the Ogre Company into shape or face an even more hideous assignment, but that's not the worst of his problems. Because now that Ned has found out why he keeps returning from dead, he has to do everything he can to stay alive. . . .]]> 326 A. Lee Martinez 0765354578 Adam 3 3.92 2006
author: A. Lee Martinez
name: Adam
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: fantasy, friend-recommended, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 126918658 The first definitive book that names the massive social movement of people leaving the white evangelical church—the exvangelicals

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ��80s and ��90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and--most of the time--a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. McCammon also came to discover that she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts�� of their childhood.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including McCammon herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement--identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.]]> 310 Sarah McCammon 1250284481 Adam 3 4.20 2024
author: Sarah McCammon
name: Adam
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: memoir, nonfiction, read-in-2024, religion
review:

]]> 197716282 304 Dan Davies 1782839259 Adam 0 to-read, blsky 3.91 2024
author: Dan Davies
name: Adam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read, blsky
review:

]]> 212078448 The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.

To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.

Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.

Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.

Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.]]> 432 Robert Jackson Bennett 1399725424 Adam 0 to-read 4.59 2025
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Adam 5 4.28 2024
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: crime, fantasy, friend-recommended, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 1296333 944 Saki 0385053738 Adam 0 read-in-2015, did-not-finish 3.70
author: Saki
name: Adam
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: read-in-2015, did-not-finish
review:

]]> 32191885 My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two is the eagerly awaited conclusion to one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the past decade. Presented as the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes as she tries to solve the murder of her beloved and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. In Book Two, dark mysteries past and present continue to abound in the tumultuous and violent Chicago summer of 1968. Young Karen attends the Yippie-organized Festival of Life in Grant Park and finds herself swept up in a police stomping. Privately, she continues to investigate Anka’s recent death and discovers one last cassette tape that sheds light upon Anka's heroic activities in Nazi Germany. She wrestles with her own sexual identity, the death of her mother, and the secrets she suspects her brother Deez of hiding. Ferris’s exhilarating cast of characters experience revelations and epiphanies that both resolve and deepen the mysteries visited upon them earlier. Visually, the story is told in Ferris's inimitable style that breathtakingly and seamlessly combines panel-to-panel storytelling and cartoon montages filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster mag iconography. Full-color illustrations throughout]]> 304 Emil Ferris 168396019X Adam 4 4.23 2024
author: Emil Ferris
name: Adam
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: crime, graphic-novels, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 198919202 Hugo- and World Fantasy Award–winning writer G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel, Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy) and all-star artist Chris Wildgoose invite readers to experience love on the brink of extinction in their new ongoing high fantasy tour de force!

In a dying world, only humans and orcs remain—mortal enemies battling for territory and political advantage. But when a group of fearsome ancient humanoids known as the Vangol arrive from across the sea, the two struggling civilizations are forced into a fragile alliance to protect what they have built.

As a gesture of his commitment to the cause—and to the relief of his bride-to-be, Faran Stoneback—the most powerful orc overlord, Troth Icemane, sends his beloved cousin Tara, a high-ranking young healer, to fight alongside brash human commander Callum Battlechild and his company of warriors. With a crisis looming, the success of this unlikely pair’s partnership and the survival of their peoples will depend on their ability to unlearn a lifetime of antagonistic instincts toward one another…and rise above the sting of heartbreak.

Collects issues #1-6 of the critically acclaimed hit series.]]> 168 G. Willow Wilson Adam 4 4.16 2024
author: G. Willow Wilson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: fantasy, graphic-novels, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 29340182 260 Lindy West 0316348406 Adam 0 ny-times, to-read 4.16 2016
author: Lindy West
name: Adam
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: ny-times, to-read
review:

]]> 38362811 In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

THIS IS A WITCH HUNT.
WE’RE WITCHES,
AND WE’RE HUNTING YOU.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.��

We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.]]> 260 Lindy West 0316449881 Adam 5 4.10 2019
author: Lindy West
name: Adam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: essays, nonfiction, politics, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 52806923
But all that is about to end. When Johnny invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity.

From the oldest library in the world to the ruins of Nineveh, hunted at every turn, they will need to trust each other completely to survive

All the Birds in the Sky meets Lovecraft Country in this whimsical coming-of-age story about two kids in the middle of a war of eldritch horrors from outside spacetime.]]> 462 Premee Mohamed 1781087865 Adam 3 blsky, horror, read-in-2024 3.41 2020
author: Premee Mohamed
name: Adam
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: blsky, horror, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,�� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist �� an informational topologist with half his mind gone �� as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Adam 0 to-read 4.01 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 106042
Living in the shadows of the Dark Knight makes the detectives of Gotham's police force determined to prove that have what it takes to enforce the law in a city rife with criminals... with or without Batman's help.

Meet Commissioner Akins and his Major Crimes Unit commander Maggie Sawter (fresh from Metropolis). Keeping the streets safe are detectives Renee Montoya, Crispis Allen and others newly introduced to readers. The race is on to stop Mister Freeze while solving a crime before the Caped Crusader intervenes.

Collects issues #1-5.]]> 128 Greg Rucka 1401201997 Adam 4 4.19 2004
author: Greg Rucka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/10
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: read-in-2013, graphic-novels, crime
review:

]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile�� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 517 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Adam 4 read-in-2024, fantasy 4.56 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Adam
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: read-in-2024, fantasy
review:
4.5 stars. Thoroughly enjoyed most of it. I thought the final battle was a little much.
]]> 94510
Collecting 100 BULLETS #1-5]]> 128 Brian Azzarello 1563896451 Adam 4 3.86 1999
author: Brian Azzarello
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: read-in-2012, re-read, graphic-novels, read-in-2014, crime, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 11690
Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or–hü��ü����that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.

With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city.

Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges�� Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.]]> 356 Orhan Pamuk 1400033888 Adam 0 3.82 2003
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Adam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: blsky, history, nonfiction, memoir, biographical, read-in-2024, did-not-finish
review:

]]> 195790798 A palace the size of a city, ruled by giant Ladies of unknowable, eldritch origin. A land left to slow decay, drowning in the debris of generations. All this and more awaits you within The West Passage, a delightfully mysterious and intriguingly weird medieval fantasy unlike anything you've read before.

When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey Tower fed her to the crows and went back to their chores. No successor was named as Guardian, no one took up the fallen blade; the West Passage went unguarded.

Now, snow blankets Grey in the height of summer. Rats erupt from beneath the earth, fleeing that which comes. Crops fail. Hunger looms. And none stand ready to face the Beast, stirring beneath the poisoned soil.

The fate of all who live in the palace hangs on narrow shoulders. The too-young Mother of Grey House sets out to fix the seasons. The unnamed apprentice of the deceased Grey Guardian goes to warn Black Tower. Both their paths cross the West Passage, the ancient byway of the Beast. On their journeys they will meet schoolteachers and beekeepers, miracles and monsters, and very, very big Ladies. None can say if they'll reach their destinations, but one thing is for the world is about to change.]]> 373 Jared Pechaček 1250884837 Adam 0 to-read, blsky, fantasy 3.89 2024
author: Jared Pechaček
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: to-read, blsky, fantasy
review:

]]> 28765741
Their journey will be long, hard and fraught with danger. Allies will become enemies; enemies will become allies. And the Dark Lord will be waiting, always waiting��

Spiderlight is an exhilarating fantasy quest from Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of Guns at Dawn and the Shadows of the Apt series.]]> 298 Adrian Tchaikovsky 0765388359 Adam 4 fantasy, read-in-2024 4.14 2016
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 55843570
Bestselling crime noir masters Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are back with another new original graphic novel featuring troublemaker-for-hire Ethan Reckless.

It's 1985 and things in Ethan's life are going pretty well... until a missing woman shows up in the background of an old B-movie, and Ethan is drawn into Hollywood's secret occult underbelly as he hunts for her among the wreckage of the wild days of the '70s.

"No one does crime fic like Brubaker and Phillips, and their collaboration has never felt more new. Explosive. Vital. And yes... reckless." - Damon Lindelof (LOST, HBO's WATCHMEN)

Another hit graphic novel from the award-winning creators of PULP, MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES, CRIMINAL, and KILL OR BE KILLED -- a must-have for all Brubaker and Phillips fans!

And look for the next standalone book in the Reckless series in October!
]]> 134 Ed Brubaker 1534318364 Adam 4 4.31 2021
author: Ed Brubaker
name: Adam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: crime, graphic-novels, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 40961230
An instant international bestseller and indie bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru's longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe...

With his crooked tail—a sign of good fortune—and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.]]> 281 Hiro Arikawa 0735235244 Adam 4 4.5 stars. Very touching. 4.35 2012
author: Hiro Arikawa
name: Adam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves: blsky, read-in-2024, translated
review:
4.5 stars. Very touching.
]]> 26135825
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.]]> 232 Alison Bechdel 0618871713 Adam 0 to-read 4.07 2006
author: Alison Bechdel
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7170627 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography�� of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.��

The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.]]> 571 Siddhartha Mukherjee Adam 0 to-read 4.32 2010
author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
name: Adam
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36510722 The Mayan god of death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this one-of-a-kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore.

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.

Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525620754]]> 338 Silvia Moreno-Garcia Adam 0 to-read 3.87 2019
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53152636
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 320 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0525620788 Adam 4 horror, npr, read-in-2024 3.66 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Adam
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: horror, npr, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 59069071 Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.]]> 430 Kate Beaton 1770462899 Adam 5 4.41 2022
author: Kate Beaton
name: Adam
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: graphic-novels, memoir, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 16148208 Three Parts Dead.

On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren’t conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods—perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World. When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she’s grievously injured—then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear—which will crush her, if Kai can’t stop it first.]]> 382 Max Gladstone 0765335743 Adam 4 fantasy, read-in-2024 4.09 2014
author: Max Gladstone
name: Adam
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 86546624
Set in New Zealand in 1984 and 2014, and probing themes of racism and misogyny, Pet is an elegant and chilling psychological thriller by the bestselling author of The Wish Child, Remote Sympathy and The Axeman’s Carnival.]]> 352 Catherine Chidgey 1776920740 Adam 4 crime, ny-times, read-in-2024 3.99 2023
author: Catherine Chidgey
name: Adam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: crime, ny-times, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 897627
Nonplussed! pays special attention to problems from probability and statistics, areas where intuition can easily be wrong. These problems include the vagaries of tennis scoring, what can be deduced from tossing a needle, and disadvantageous games that form winning combinations. Other chapters address everything from the historically important Torricelli's Trumpet to the mind-warping implications of objects that live on high dimensions. Readers learn about the colorful history and people associated with many of these problems in addition to their mathematical proofs.

Nonplussed! will appeal to anyone with a calculus background who enjoys popular math books or puzzles.]]> 216 Julian Havil 0691120560 Adam 0 math 3.74 2007
author: Julian Havil
name: Adam
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: math
review:

]]> 1085931 Book by Marlowe, Derek 192 Derek Marlowe 0670288365 Adam 0 to-read, blsky, crime 4.00 1977
author: Derek Marlowe
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read, blsky, crime
review:

]]> 29901930
Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.]]> 266 John Langan 1939905214 Adam 0 to-read, blsky, horror 3.86 2016
author: John Langan
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: to-read, blsky, horror
review:

]]> 62064986
While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.

Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.

Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.]]> Katherine Addison Adam 0 to-read, fantasy 4.30 2025
author: Katherine Addison
name: Adam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves: to-read, fantasy
review:

]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Adam 4 read-in-2024, sf 4.19 2023
author: Martha Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: read-in-2024, sf
review:

]]> 195820708
Journey across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe.

Listen to the words of the Old Gods that ruled�� The Raven Tower.

Learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls.

And so much more, in��this masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.��]]> 403 Ann Leckie 0316553573 Adam 3 3.95 2024
author: Ann Leckie
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: fantasy, read-in-2024, sf, short-stories
review:

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