Ben's bookshelf: all

Ben's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 23 Feb 2025 19:37:09 -0800 60 Ben's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Galactic Empires: An Anthology Of Way Back When Futures]]> 78838 338 Brian W. Aldiss 0297771086 Ben 0 to-read 4.18 1976

Galactic Empires: An Anthology Of Way Back When Futures

author: Brian W. Aldiss
name: Ben
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Trapped Tigers (Latin American Literature)]]> 223455 487 Guillermo Cabrera Infante 1564783790 Ben 0 eventually, to-read 3.96 2008

Three Trapped Tigers (Latin American Literature)

author: Guillermo Cabrera Infante
name: Ben
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: eventually, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)]]> 50548197
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) �� until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate�� or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.]]> 320 Naomi Novik 0593128486 Ben 0 3.93 2020 A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)

A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)

author: Naomi Novik
name: Ben
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: currently-reading, putasidefornow
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 117942 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 160 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0451523105 Ben 4 2009 3.92 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Ben
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/26
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves: 2009
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spoon River Anthology (Penguin Classics)]]> 2554483
A literary sensation when it appeared in 1915, Spoon River Anthology earned Edgar Lee Masters comparisons to T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. The characters who speak here tarnish the pure image of their Midwestern hamlet by holding forth from the grave with tales of illicit love affairs, betrayed confidences, political corruption, and miserable marriages. The first serious work of psychological naturalism, this artful indictment of small-town hypocrisy influenced Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, and other luminaries.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 294 Edgar Lee Masters 0143105159 Ben 4 2008
Makes me want to re-read Wolfe's Peace.]]> 3.95 1915 Spoon River Anthology (Penguin Classics)

Spoon River Anthology (Penguin Classics)

author: Edgar Lee Masters
name: Ben
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2008/08/04
date added: 2023/11/04
shelves: 2008
review:
Very good.

Makes me want to re-read Wolfe's Peace.
]]> <![CDATA[A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)]]> 226004 A Fire Upon The Deep, this is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar trading fleet of the Queng Ho. The Queng Ho and the Emergents are orbiting the dormant planet Arachna, which is about to wake up to technology, but the Emergents' plans are sinister.]]> 775 Vernor Vinge 0812536355 Ben 3 2010 4.31 1999 A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

author: Vernor Vinge
name: Ben
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2010/09/06
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions]]> 604025
Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.’s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.’s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world’s most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.]]> 257 Ben Mezrich 0743249992 Ben 0 to-read 3.88 2002 Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

author: Ben Mezrich
name: Ben
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Grey Area and Other Stories 138721 287 Will Self 0871136732 Ben 0 to-read 3.66 1994

author: Will Self
name: Ben
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bug 138805
In 1984, at the dawn of the personal-computer era, Roberta Walton, a novice software tester at a SiliconValley start-up, stumbles across a bug. She brings it to its inadvertent creator, Ethan Levin, a longtime programmer who is working at the limits of his knowledge and abilities. Both believe this is a bug like any other to be found and fixed and crossed off the list. But no matter how obsessively Ethan combs through the depths of the code, he can't find its cause. Roberta runs test after test but can't make the bug appear at will. Meanwhile, the bug, living up to its name, "The Jester," shows itself only at the least opportune times and jeopardizes the fate of the company.

Under the pressures of his obsession with the bug and his rapidly deteriorating personal life, Ethan begins to unravel. Roberta, on the other hand, is drawn to the challenge. Forced to learn how to program, she comes to appreciate the intense intimacy of speaking the computer's language.

As she did in Close to the Machine , Ellen Ullman brilliantly limns the space between human beings and computers–a space we all occupy every day as we peer into our monitors. Ullman has been a computer programmer for more than twenty years, and having switched from code to prose, she has shown herself to be a unique, revelatory writer. She is the insider who can articulate the realities of the technical world, taking readers to emotional and intellectual places fiction has never brought them before. With The Bug , Ullman proves she is not only a remarkable essayist but also a master storyteller.

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 368 Ellen Ullman 1400032350 Ben 2 3.67 2004 The Bug

author: Ellen Ullman
name: Ben
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/07/23
shelves:
review:

]]> The Mansion 756498 The Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.]]> 448 William Faulkner Ben 0 maybe-never, to-read 5.00 The Mansion

author: William Faulkner
name: Ben
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/29
shelves: maybe-never, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Infinite Blacktop (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #3)]]> 38532150
More sure of herself than of the police, Claire follows the clues on a 52-hour odyssey through shimmering Las Vegas and the shabby surrounding desert to find out who wants her dead. But in order to save herself, Claire will have to revisit her own complicated past as she navigates the present: a past of childhood obsessions, rival detectives, lost friends, and mysteries mostly—but not always—solved.

Three intertwining stories illuminate three eras of Claire’s life: her early years as an ambitious girl detective in Brooklyn (before it was gentrified), which ended when her best friend and partner in crime-solving disappeared; a case of an unexplained death in the art world of late-1990s Los Angeles, when, devastated by the demise of her mentor in New Orleans, Claire was forced to start again; and her current quest to save her own life from a determined assassin.

As the connections between the stories come into focus, the truth becomes clear. But Claire, battered and bruised, will never quit her search for the answer to the biggest mystery of all: how can anyone survive in a world so clearly designed to break our hearts?]]> 290 Sara Gran 1501165712 Ben 4 2022 3.88 2018 The Infinite Blacktop (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #3)

The Infinite Blacktop (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #3)

author: Sara Gran
name: Ben
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/03/31
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #2)]]> 15814401
With the help of her new assistant, Claude, Claire follows the clues, finding hints to Paul’s fate in her other cases—especially that of a missing girl in the gritty 1980s East Village and a modern-day miniature horse theft in Marin. As visions of the past reveal the secrets of the present, Claire begins to understand the words of the enigmatic French detective Jacques Silette: “The detective won’t know what he is capable of until he encounters a mystery that pierces his own heart.�� And love, in all its forms, is the greatest mystery of all—at least to the world’s greatest PI.

An addictive new adventure featuring an irresistible heroine.]]> 280 Sara Gran 0547429339 Ben 3 2022 3.77 2013 Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #2)

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #2)

author: Sara Gran
name: Ben
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/03/31
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #1)]]> 9231999 ��é�ٱ𳦳پ��ǲ� inspired Claire’s unusual practices. Claire also has deep roots in New Orleans, where she was mentored by Silette’s student the brilliant Constance Darling—until Darling was murdered. When a respected DA goes missing she returns to the hurricane-ravaged city to find out why.]]> 273 Sara Gran 0547428499 Ben 3 2022 3.68 2011 Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #1)

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #1)

author: Sara Gran
name: Ben
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/03/31
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack]]> 49496785
Wolf 21 and Wolf 42 were attracted to each other the moment they met in Yellowstone Park--but Wolf 42's jealous sister hindered their relationship. After an explosive insurrection within the pack, the two wolves came together at last as alpha male and alpha female of the Druids, which, under their benevolent leadership, became the most successful wolf pack in Yellowstone history. Renowned wolf expert and Yellowstone's first-ever wolf interpreter Rick McIntyre recounts their fascinating lives with compassion and a keen eye for detail, drawing on his more than twenty-five years of experience observing Yellowstone wolves in the wild.

The story of Wolf 42 and Wolf 21 is a remarkable work of science writing, offering unparalleled insight into wolf behavior and Yellowstone's famed wolf reintroduction project. It's also a heart-wrenching love story with a cathartic ending, providing further evidence that the lives of wolves are as eventful--and important--as our own.]]> 272 Rick McIntyre 1771645245 Ben 0 2021, putasidefornow, to-read 4.32 2020 The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack

The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack

author: Rick McIntyre
name: Ben
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/14
shelves: 2021, putasidefornow, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)]]> 50892360 The first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.]]> 454 Rebecca Roanhorse 1534437673 Ben 3 2021 4.17 2020 Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)

author: Rebecca Roanhorse
name: Ben
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/09/14
shelves: 2021
review:

]]> Remote Control 34215764 The new book by Nebula and Hugo Award-winner, Nnedi Okorafor.

"She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own."

The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa--a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.

Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks--alone, except for her fox companion--searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.

But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?]]> 156 Nnedi Okorafor Ben 4 2021 3.86 2021 Remote Control

author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Ben
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/09/14
shelves: 2021
review:

]]> The Marrow Thieves 34649348 234 Cherie Dimaline 1770864865 Ben 4 2021 3.94 2017

author: Cherie Dimaline
name: Ben
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2021/07/21
date added: 2021/07/21
shelves: 2021
review:

]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Ben 3 2021 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Ben
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/07/11
shelves: 2021
review:
Surprisingly superficial for Ishiguro. A shame, though still pretty enjoyable all the same.
]]> <![CDATA[The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness, #2)]]> 40701777 Peace is just another kind of battlefield...

Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way.

For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye... before it kills her.

The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply.

The old ways are swept aside, and the old leaders with them, but those who would seize the reins of power will find no alliance, no friendship, and no peace, lasts forever.]]> 506 Joe Abercrombie 0575095911 Ben 5 Abercrombie doesn't miss. 4.59 2020 The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness, #2)

The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness, #2)

author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Ben
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/06/25
shelves:
review:
Abercrombie doesn't miss.
]]> <![CDATA[A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)]]> 45154547 WINNER OF THE 2022 HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
Now a USA Today bestseller!
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2021
Amazon's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021
Bookpage's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021
ŷ�� Choice Awards Nominee for Best Science Fiction Book of 2021

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.

In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.

Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction—and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.

Or it might create something far stranger . . .
]]> 496 Arkady Martine 125018648X Ben 4 2021 4.31 2021 A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

author: Arkady Martine
name: Ben
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/06/07
shelves: 2021
review:
Loved it, if not quite as much as the first. Excited to see where the story goes from here.
]]> <![CDATA[The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds, #1)]]> 43301353 An outsider who can travel between worlds discovers a secret that threatens her new home and her fragile place in it, in a stunning sci-fi debut that’s both a cross-dimensional adventure and a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging.

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.

On this Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now she has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works—and shamelessly flirts—with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security.

But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.]]> 336 Micaiah Johnson Ben 2 2021 3.90 2020 The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds, #1)

The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds, #1)

author: Micaiah Johnson
name: Ben
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/06/07
shelves: 2021
review:

]]> The Echo Wife 52379735 I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married.

It took me so long to hate him.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be.

And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.

Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up.

Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.]]> 256 Sarah Gailey 125017466X Ben 4 2021 3.59 2021 The Echo Wife

author: Sarah Gailey
name: Ben
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/06/07
shelves: 2021
review:
Flawed but fascinating and full of good ideas. I appreciate the way Gailey creates a generally unlikable, unpleasant protagonist, shows you exactly what made her that way, but doesn't shame you for finding her off-putting. Some of the plot mechanics don't make a ton of sense, but as the afterword makes clear this is more metaphor than traditional thriller.
]]> <![CDATA[Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)]]> 32802595
Tessa chose to stay home when her brother Ashby left for the stars, but has to question that decision when her position in the Fleet is threatened.

Kip, a reluctant young apprentice, itches for change but doesn't know where to find it.

Sawyer, a lost and lonely newcomer, is just looking for a place to belong.

When a disaster rocks this already fragile community, those Exodans who still call the Fleet their home can no longer avoid the inescapable question:

What is the purpose of a ship that has reached its destination?]]> 359 Becky Chambers 1473647606 Ben 3 2021 4.10 2018 Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

author: Becky Chambers
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/07
shelves: 2021
review:
Enjoyed reading it, appreciated its optimistic view of humanity, but couldn't help feeling it was a little too placid for its own good. The one bit of tragedy felt too obviously placed, like a box checked for box-checking's sake.
]]> <![CDATA[First Person Singular: Stories]]> 54614599 A riveting new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami.

The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like With the Beatles, Cream and On a Stone Pillow ) are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood--Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, Carnaval, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey and the stunning title story. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Haruki himself is present, as in The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. The stories all touch beautifully on love and loss, childhood and death . . . all with a signature Murakami twist.']]> 245 Haruki Murakami 0593318072 Ben 3 2021 3.58 2020 First Person Singular: Stories

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Ben
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/07
shelves: 2021
review:
Big misses and a few quasi-hits. The only standouts to me were the autobiographical Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection and the uncomfortable but fascinating Carnaval. The title story was also a clever little vignette, but I wish it had a little more meat on its bones. Otherwise pleasant but largely forgettable.
]]> The Only Good Indians 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 Ben 2 2021 3.69 2020 The Only Good Indians

author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Ben
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2021/04/07
date added: 2021/04/07
shelves: 2021
review:

]]> Killing Commendatore 38820047
In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby��Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.]]> 681 Haruki Murakami 052552004X Ben 2 2021 Breasts. 3.88 2017

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Ben
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/04/02
shelves: 2021
review:
Breasts.
]]> Sourdough 33916024
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?]]> 259 Robin Sloan 0374203105 Ben 3 2021 3.73 2017 Sourdough

author: Robin Sloan
name: Ben
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2021/02/24
date added: 2021/02/25
shelves: 2021
review:
Mostly enjoyed this, but it somehow didn't really grab me, despite the fact that I'm precisely the target market for a book like this (I bake sourdough all the time, work in the tech industry, enjoy weird metaphysical fiction). I dunno, it was fine. Just slightly lifeless.
]]> Earthlings 50269327
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]> 247 Sayaka Murata 1783785675 Ben 2 2021 3.59 2018 Earthlings

author: Sayaka Murata
name: Ben
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2021/02/10
date added: 2021/02/11
shelves: 2021
review:
I wasn't bothered by the disturbing story elements, but the overly simplistic writing style and worldview that was charming in Convenience Store Woman wore out its welcome here.
]]> Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Ben 5 2021 4.22 2020

author: Susanna Clarke
name: Ben
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/03
date added: 2021/02/03
shelves: 2021
review:
Not quite as disquietingly brilliant and mysterious as the first half made me hope, but still more satisfying than anything I've read in a long time. Echoes of The Magus, numerous Gene Wolfe stories, and of course Clarke's own previous work.
]]> Convenience Store Woman 38357895
A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata Ben 4 2021 3.70 2016 Convenience Store Woman

author: Sayaka Murata
name: Ben
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: 2021
review:
Not often I can finish a book in an hour.
]]> <![CDATA[Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures]]> 52668915
Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.

In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence��, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web��, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.]]> 352 Merlin Sheldrake 0525510311 Ben 0 2020, putasidefornow, to-read 4.34 2020 Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

author: Merlin Sheldrake
name: Ben
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: 2020, putasidefornow, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #3)]]> 52379336 656 Seth Dickinson 0765380765 Ben 4 2021 4.31 2020

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #3)

author: Seth Dickinson
name: Ben
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/31
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: 2021
review:
Love this series, even if I constantly feel like I'm not quite in tune with the characters. It's really nice to find a fantasy novel with something to say. RIYL Too Like the Lightning.
]]> Antkind 45013049 Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.

B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, film-maker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he's convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius.

All that's left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to recreate the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of "likes" and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bete noire and his raison d'etre.

A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.]]> 720 Charlie Kaufman Ben 0 3.74 2020 Antkind

author: Charlie Kaufman
name: Ben
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/07
shelves: 2020, putasidefornow, to-read, 2021
review:

]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Ben 4 2021 4.10 2018 The Overstory

author: Richard Powers
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/01/07
shelves: 2021
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)]]> 45857086 The exciting end to The Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect.

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead.��

Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.��

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?��]]> 622 R.F. Kuang 0008339147 Ben 4 2020 4.29 2020 The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)

author: R.F. Kuang
name: Ben
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/01/03
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> Utopia Avenue 52597312 The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet, and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968.

David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue; of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?]]> 574 David Mitchell 0812997433 Ben 3 2020 3.94 2020 Utopia Avenue

author: David Mitchell
name: Ben
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/12/20
shelves: 2020
review:
Probably Mitchell's weakest novel. He writes well, but there's nothing new here plot/story-wise, characters behave like 2020 people jammed into the 60s, the connections to his other novels feel more forced than usual, and there's some pretty lazy stereotyping going on (Italians, Native Americans). I didn't hate reading it, but I was pretty unsatisfied at the end.
]]> Tell the Machine Goodnight 36435424
Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett—but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job—not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.

Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about relationships and the ways that they can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes and technology. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.]]> 287 Katie Williams 0525533125 Ben 4 2020 3.44 2018 Tell the Machine Goodnight

author: Katie Williams
name: Ben
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/20
date added: 2020/12/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> Anna Karenina 151
«Nos capítulos iniciais de Anna Karénina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. Há efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelúdio Oblonski�� (o acidente na estação ferroviária, a zombadora discussão sobre o divórcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O método de Tolstoi é polifónico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As técnicas musicais e linguísticas não podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderíamos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princípio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna Karénina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literária existe algo da Fénix imortal. Através das vidas perduráveis das suas personagens, a própria existência de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 838 Leo Tolstoy 0143035002 Ben 0 maybe-never, to-read 4.10 1878 Anna Karenina

author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1878
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/29
shelves: maybe-never, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West]]> 28715 Blood Meridian is an epic tale of the violence and corruption that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the “Wild West.�� Its wounded hero, the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean, must confront the extraordinary brutality of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians. Seeming to preside over this nightmarish world is the diabolical Judge Holden, one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction.

Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian represents a genius vision of the historical West, one whose stature has only grown in the twenty-five years since its publication.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy 0679641041 Ben 4 2007 4.25 1985 Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Ben
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/11/13
shelves: 2007
review:

]]> <![CDATA[And Shall Machines Surrender (Machine Mandate, #1)]]> 46156880
Doctor Orfea Leung has come here to escape her past of mercenary violence. Krissana Khongtip has come here to reinvent herself from haunted spy to holy cyborg. But the utopian peace of Shenzhen is shattered when the haruspices begin committing suicide, and the pair are called upon to solve the mystery—and survive the silent war between machines . . .]]> 87 Benjanun Sriduangkaew 1607015331 Ben 0 to-read 3.82 2019 And Shall Machines Surrender (Machine Mandate, #1)

And Shall Machines Surrender (Machine Mandate, #1)

author: Benjanun Sriduangkaew
name: Ben
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Secret History (The Book of Ash, #1)]]> 445023 There Is More Than One History Of The World...

In the mid-fifteenth century there was Burgundy, the jewel of Europe - opulant and powerful, the undisputed center of an uncivilized world.

In an epoch of war and madness there was Ash. A girl born in mud and dung, she slew her first men while only eight. Scarred and ravaged, but still beautiful, she rose up to lead a great mercenary army before the age of twenty - and followed a sacred voice wise in the bloody ways of battle to a pinnacle unattainable to even the most potent of legends.

In a time when empires and alliances shifted like sand - when Mithras the bull was worshiped freely alongside the Christ - a great cloud arose out of Africa to darken the sun. The Visgoths came with their terrible machines - powered by magic or a science unknown to this day - and aimed their irresistible might toward the rich Burgundian prize, wrenching the wheel of civilization in an unknown and unexpected direction. And with their coming, one incomparable warrior raised on Destiny's ash heap became more than anyone thought one woman could be.]]> 424 Mary Gentle 0380788691 Ben 0 to-read 3.64 1999 A Secret History (The Book of Ash, #1)

author: Mary Gentle
name: Ben
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)]]> 42074525
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.]]> 437 N.K. Jemisin Ben 0 2020, putasidefornow, to-read 3.83 2020 The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)

author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Ben
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/25
shelves: 2020, putasidefornow, to-read
review:

]]> Engine Summer 1335568 209 John Crowley 0553131990 Ben 4 2007, 2020
Read again in 2020. Still hallucinatory and still unexpected. That ending. Dang.]]> 4.10 1979

author: John Crowley
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/25
date added: 2020/09/25
shelves: 2007, 2020
review:
Hallucinatory and unexpected. Worth reading.

Read again in 2020. Still hallucinatory and still unexpected. That ending. Dang.
]]> Severance 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Ben 4 2020 3.90 2018

author: Ling Ma
name: Ben
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/14
date added: 2020/09/15
shelves: 2020
review:
Bizarre to read this during COVID. Highly recommended.
]]> <![CDATA[Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester]]> 317642
Read about the sweet-natured young man whose phenomenal good luck turns out to be disastrous for the rest of humanity. Find out why tourists are flocking to a hellish little town in a post-nuclear Kansas. Meet a warlock who practices on Park Avenue and whose potions comply with the Pure Food and Drug Act. Make a deal with the Devil—but not without calling your agent. Dazzling, effervescent, sexy, and sardonic, Virtual Unrealities is a historic collection from one of science fiction's true pathbreakers.

CONTENTS:
Disappearing Act
Oddy and Id
Star Light, Star Bright (1953)
5,271,009 (1954)
Fondly Fahrenheit (1954)
Hobson's Choice (1952)
Of Time and Third Avenue (1952)
Time is the Traitor (1953)
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed (1958)
The Pi Man (1959)
They Don't Make Life Like They Used To (1963)
Will You Wait? (1959)
The Flowered Thundermug (1964)
Adam and No Eve (1941)
And 3 1/2 to Go
Galatea Galante (1979)
The Devil Without Glasses]]> 384 Alfred Bester 0679767835 Ben 0 2017, to-read 3.96 1997 Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

author: Alfred Bester
name: Ben
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/15
shelves: 2017, to-read
review:

]]> Exhalation 41160292
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.]]> 368 Ted Chiang Ben 4 2020 4.27 2019

author: Ted Chiang
name: Ben
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/08/15
date added: 2020/08/15
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> The Institute 43798285
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King's gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good versus evil in a world where the good guys don't always win.
--front flap]]> 561 Stephen King Ben 4 2020 4.17 2019

author: Stephen King
name: Ben
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/08/06
date added: 2020/08/06
shelves: 2020
review:
One of King's better recent efforts��3.5 stars and rounding up. The ending is a bit handwavey, in classic King fashion, but not as air-out-of-the-balloon as, say The Outsider. The kids don't talk like kids, but when have they ever in a King novel? Seemed to be pulling quite a lot from recent pop culture phenomena (Stranger Things and The Cabin in the Woods were the ones that stuck out to me). He's still a heck of a storyteller.
]]> Foe 37490868 I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

We don’t get visitors. Not out here. We never have.

In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming news: Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company.

Told in Reid’s sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.]]> 5 Iain Reid 1508245304 Ben 4 2020 3.61 2018 Foe

author: Iain Reid
name: Ben
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/28
date added: 2020/07/29
shelves: 2020
review:
Not spectacularly well-written, but a neat idea well-executed. Guessing the (first) twist didn't ruin it for me, either, which is rare. I particularly enjoyed reading a SF novel that's less about the plot/tech than it is about the people. Ultimately, this is a book about a character's internal journey (and it's not even the ostensible main character). Interested to see what Reid does next.
]]> A Song for a New Day 43401925 In this captivating science fiction novel from an award-winning author, public gatherings are illegal making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music, and for one chance at human connection.

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world—her music, her purpose—is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery—no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve.��But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.]]> 384 Sarah Pinsker 1984802593 Ben 4 2020 3.95 2019 A Song for a New Day

author: Sarah Pinsker
name: Ben
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> The Vanished Birds 45422268
"This is when your life begins."

Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A boy, broken by his past.

The scarred child does not speak, his only form of communication the beautiful and haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Captured by his songs and their strange, immediate connection, Nia decides to take the boy in. And over years of starlit travel, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself.

For both of them, a family.

But Nia is not the only one who wants the boy. The past hungers for him, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.]]> 391 Simon Jimenez 0593128982 Ben 4 2020 4.05 2020 The Vanished Birds

author: Simon Jimenez
name: Ben
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)]]> 41118857
With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.

But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance.

The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.]]> 658 R.F. Kuang Ben 3 2020 4.36 2019 The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)

author: R.F. Kuang
name: Ben
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)]]> 35068705
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.]]> 545 R.F. Kuang 0062662597 Ben 4 2019 4.16 2018 The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)

author: R.F. Kuang
name: Ben
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> The Sky Is Yours 34837145 464 Chandler Klang Smith 0451496264 Ben 0 2019, putasidefornow 3.25 2018

author: Chandler Klang Smith
name: Ben
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019, putasidefornow
review:

]]> The Only Harmless Great Thing 34659272
These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.]]> 93 Brooke Bolander 1250169488 Ben 4 2019 3.80 2018 The Only Harmless Great Thing

author: Brooke Bolander
name: Ben
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> Space Opera (Space Opera, #1) 24100285
A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.

This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.

A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.]]> 294 Catherynne M. Valente 1472115074 Ben 1 2019 3.45 2018 Space Opera (Space Opera, #1)

author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Ben
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Ben 4 2020 3.87 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War

author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Ben
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)]]> 37794149
Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.]]> 448 Arkady Martine 1529001587 Ben 4 2019 4.08 2019 A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)

author: Arkady Martine
name: Ben
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cabin at the End of the World]]> 36381091
One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."]]> 272 Paul Tremblay 0062679104 Ben 4 2020 3.31 2018 The Cabin at the End of the World

author: Paul Tremblay
name: Ben
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Her Body and Other Parties: Stories]]> 33375622 Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

The husband stitch --
Inventory --
Mothers --
Especially heinous --
Real women have bodies --
Eight bites --
The resident --
Difficult at parties]]> 248 Carmen Maria Machado 155597788X Ben 0 2017, to-read, putasidefornow 3.85 2017 Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Ben
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2017, to-read, putasidefornow
review:

]]> Kindred 60931 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 288 Octavia E. Butler 0807083690 Ben 0 2017, putasidefornow, to-read 4.30 1979 Kindred

author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Ben
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2017, putasidefornow, to-read
review:

]]> Universal Harvester 29939268
Jeremy works at the counter of Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It’s a small town—the first “a�� in the name is pronounced ay—smack in the center of the state. This is the late 1990s, pre-DVD, and the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut. But there are regular customers, a predictable rush in the late afternoon. It’s good enough for Jeremy: It’s a job; it’s quiet and regular; he gets to watch movies; he likes the owner, Sarah Jane; it gets him out of the house, where he and his dad try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.

But when Stephanie Parsons, a local schoolteacher, comes in to return her copy of Targets, starring Boris Karloff—an old movie, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store—she has an odd complaint: “There’s something on it,�� she says, but doesn’t elaborate. Two days later, Lindsey Redinius brings back She’s All That, a new release, and complains that there’s something wrong with it: “There’s another movie on this tape.��

So Jeremy takes a look. And indeed, in the middle of the movie the screen blinks dark for a moment and She’s All That is replaced by a black-and-white scene, shot in a barn, with only the faint sounds of someone breathing. Four minutes later, She’s All That is back. But there is something profoundly disturbing about that scene; Jeremy’s compelled to watch it three or four times. The scenes recorded onto Targets are similar, undoubtedly created by the same hand. Creepy. And the barn looks a lot like a barn just outside of town.

Jeremy doesn’t want to be curious. In truth, it freaks him out, deeply. This has gone far enough, maybe too far already. But Stephanie is pushing, and once Sarah Jane takes a look and becomes obsessed, there’s no more ignoring the disturbing scenes on the videos. And all of a sudden, what had once been the placid, regular old Iowa fields and farmhouses now feels haunted and threatening, imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. For Jeremy, and all those around him, life will never be the same . . .]]> 214 John Darnielle 0374282102 Ben 0 2017, to-read, putasidefornow 3.18 2017 Universal Harvester

author: John Darnielle
name: Ben
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2017, to-read, putasidefornow
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mote in God's Eye (Moties, #1)]]> 100365 596 Larry Niven 156865054X Ben 0 2017, to-read, putasidefornow 4.08 1974

author: Larry Niven
name: Ben
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2017, to-read, putasidefornow
review:

]]> White Teeth 3711 White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.]]> 448 Zadie Smith 0375703861 Ben 3 2007
Smith does many things well. She has a serious ear for dialogue and accent, she knows how to manage the flow and pacing of a story, and she's quite skilled at employing large concepts (genetic manipulation, immigrant psychology, the concept of history itself) both as fact and as metaphor. Her cast of characters is varied and nearly every one of them comes off as a fully flesh and blood human being. However, it's in terms of these personalities that I feel she makes her biggest misstep.

Zadie Smith is what I'd call an Ironist. I don't mean this in the Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Jon Stewart sense. I don't mean that she's a comedian. I mean it in the sense that the territory she stands on--that her narrator in White Teeth stands on--is one whose boundaries are staked out in terms of what she is not. My friend Brandon commented below that Smith shows "blatant contempt for every character except the one who is clearly based on the author." While I understand where he's coming from, I don't think it's contempt per se. On the contrary, I think Smith has deep feelings for most of her characters--even the more despicable ones like Crispin and Millat. I think that what Brandon interprets as contempt is something far more ambiguous: let's call it detached superiority.

The Ironist defines herself through the process of over-defining others. Every character in this novel is over-defined, over-drawn. While this provides us with a great, at times excruciating level of detail, it also paints each of them into a kind of cage wherein all of their actions are predictable. Each of them has a sort of "final vocabulary" (cf. Rorty) that defines the limits of what they might do or say--the doctrines of Islam and the Watchtower Society, of PETA or clinical science. In the worst cases, their adherence to these vocabularies allows Smith to slip them into easy "types" (see: Mr. Topps, Crispin, Joshua, Marcus, the various members of FATE). Smith creates her authorial/narrative identity--what's called a metastable personality--by passively proving that she is not limited by such a final vocabulary, and that in escaping their confines she has a broader, more comprehensive view of the social workings of the world. This is, generally speaking, the goal of any omniscient narrator, but the way that Smith goes about writing this one in particular imparts a certain sense of smugness (the parenthetical asides to the reader, the knowing winks, the jokes at the expense of easy targets) that isn't always present.

The metastable personality is the natural reaction to uncomfortability with final vocabularies, but it itself is of course just as self-defining as any of them (albeit in the opposite direction). It instinctually yearns for instability, but prefers to admire chaos from afar rather than living in it. The metastable personality knows that in order to maintain coherence it must remain stable, and that the only way to remain stable is to balance itself on the disbelief of all known final vocabularies. Smith writes off worldview after worldview, but is of course unable to articulate her own because her own is simply the absence of adherence to any such worldview.

This isn't so much a criticism of Smith's work as it is an explanation of why it is the way it is, and why it can be read as contempt.]]> 3.80 2000 White Teeth

author: Zadie Smith
name: Ben
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2007
review:
White Teeth is an expansive, detailed, and beautifully written attempt to encapsulate the social chaos that blossoms at the bridging of generational, national and sexual mindsets. It reminds me very much of the freeflowing histories written by Marquez and Allende, as well as Salman Rushdie's strange little one-off treatise on cultural alienation, Fury. (Samad, in particular, reminds me quite a bit of Fury's Malik Solanka.)

Smith does many things well. She has a serious ear for dialogue and accent, she knows how to manage the flow and pacing of a story, and she's quite skilled at employing large concepts (genetic manipulation, immigrant psychology, the concept of history itself) both as fact and as metaphor. Her cast of characters is varied and nearly every one of them comes off as a fully flesh and blood human being. However, it's in terms of these personalities that I feel she makes her biggest misstep.

Zadie Smith is what I'd call an Ironist. I don't mean this in the Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Jon Stewart sense. I don't mean that she's a comedian. I mean it in the sense that the territory she stands on--that her narrator in White Teeth stands on--is one whose boundaries are staked out in terms of what she is not. My friend Brandon commented below that Smith shows "blatant contempt for every character except the one who is clearly based on the author." While I understand where he's coming from, I don't think it's contempt per se. On the contrary, I think Smith has deep feelings for most of her characters--even the more despicable ones like Crispin and Millat. I think that what Brandon interprets as contempt is something far more ambiguous: let's call it detached superiority.

The Ironist defines herself through the process of over-defining others. Every character in this novel is over-defined, over-drawn. While this provides us with a great, at times excruciating level of detail, it also paints each of them into a kind of cage wherein all of their actions are predictable. Each of them has a sort of "final vocabulary" (cf. Rorty) that defines the limits of what they might do or say--the doctrines of Islam and the Watchtower Society, of PETA or clinical science. In the worst cases, their adherence to these vocabularies allows Smith to slip them into easy "types" (see: Mr. Topps, Crispin, Joshua, Marcus, the various members of FATE). Smith creates her authorial/narrative identity--what's called a metastable personality--by passively proving that she is not limited by such a final vocabulary, and that in escaping their confines she has a broader, more comprehensive view of the social workings of the world. This is, generally speaking, the goal of any omniscient narrator, but the way that Smith goes about writing this one in particular imparts a certain sense of smugness (the parenthetical asides to the reader, the knowing winks, the jokes at the expense of easy targets) that isn't always present.

The metastable personality is the natural reaction to uncomfortability with final vocabularies, but it itself is of course just as self-defining as any of them (albeit in the opposite direction). It instinctually yearns for instability, but prefers to admire chaos from afar rather than living in it. The metastable personality knows that in order to maintain coherence it must remain stable, and that the only way to remain stable is to balance itself on the disbelief of all known final vocabularies. Smith writes off worldview after worldview, but is of course unable to articulate her own because her own is simply the absence of adherence to any such worldview.

This isn't so much a criticism of Smith's work as it is an explanation of why it is the way it is, and why it can be read as contempt.
]]> <![CDATA[Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)]]> 42036538
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.]]> 448 Tamsyn Muir 1250313198 Ben 0 2020, putasidefornow 4.19 2019 Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Ben
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020, putasidefornow
review:

]]> Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) 43263680
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs�� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]> 461 Leigh Bardugo 1250313074 Ben 3 2020 4.00 2019 Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)

author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Ben
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> Recursion 42046112 Memory makes reality.

That's what NYC cop Barry Sutton is learning, as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.

That's what neuroscientist Helena Smith believes. It's why she's dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face to face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds, but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.

But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?

At once a relentless pageturner and an intricate science-fiction puzzlebox about time, identity, and memory, Recursion is a thriller as only Blake Crouch could imagine it—and his most ambitious, mind-boggling, irresistible work to date.]]> 326 Blake Crouch 1524759783 Ben 4 2020 4.15 2019

author: Blake Crouch
name: Ben
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> The Memory Police 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 Ben 4 2020 3.72 1994

author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Ben
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing]]> 52452453 400 Lars Marius Garshol 1938469550 Ben 0 currently-reading 4.69

Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing

author: Lars Marius Garshol
name: Ben
average rating: 4.69
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Vienna Lager 54462653 220 Andreas Krennmair Ben 0 currently-reading, 2020 4.23

author: Andreas Krennmair
name: Ben
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: currently-reading, 2020
review:

]]> The Oracle Year 40733836 This Book Is Full of Spiders and Welcome to Night Vale.

Knowledge is power. So when an unassuming Manhattan bassist named Will Dando awakens from a dream one morning with 108 predictions about the future in his head, he rapidly finds himself the most powerful man in the world. Protecting his anonymity by calling himself the Oracle, he sets up a heavily guarded Web site with the help of his friend Hamza to selectively announce his revelations. In no time, global corporations are offering him millions for exclusive access, eager to profit from his prophecies.

He's also making a lot of high-powered enemies, from the President of the United States and a nationally prominent televangelist to a warlord with a nuclear missile and an assassin grandmother. Legions of cyber spies are unleashed to hack the Site—as it's come to be called—and the best manhunters money can buy are deployed not only to unmask the Oracle but to take him out of the game entirely. With only a handful of people he can trust—including a beautiful journalist—it's all Will can do to simply survive, elude exposure, and protect those he loves long enough to use his knowledge to save the world.

Delivering fast-paced adventure on a global scale as well as sharp-witted satire on our concepts of power and faith, Marvel writer Charles Soule's audacious debut novel takes readers on a rollicking ride where it's impossible to predict what will happen next.

��

��

��

��]]> 416 Charles Soule Ben 3 2020 3.70 2018 The Oracle Year

author: Charles Soule
name: Ben
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> I'm Thinking of Ending Things 40605223 Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why��

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.��

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 241 Iain Reid Ben 3 2020 3.53 2016 I'm Thinking of Ending Things

author: Iain Reid
name: Ben
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy, #2)]]> 45309582 As a magical revolution remakes a city, an ancient evil is awakened in a brilliant new novel from the Hugo-nominated author of��Foundryside and the Divine Cities trilogy
��
Having narrowly saved the metropolis of Tevanne from destruction, Sancia Grado and her allies have turned to their next task: sowing the seeds of a full-on magical-industrial revolution. If they succeed, the secrets behind scriving—the art of imbuing everyday objects with sentience—will be accessible to all of Tevanne’s citizens, much to the displeasure of the robber-barons who’ve hoarded this knowledge for themselves. ��
��
But one of Sancia’s enemies has embarked on a desperate gambit, an attempt to resurrect a figure straight out of legend—an immortal being known as a heirophant. Long ago, the heirophant was an ordinary man, but he’s used scriving to transform himself into something closer to a god. Once awakened, he’ll stop at nothing to remake the world in his horrifying image.
��
And if Sancia can’t stop this ancient power from returning? Well, the only way to fight a god…is with another god.]]> 493 Robert Jackson Bennett 1524760390 Ben 0 currently-reading, 2020 4.02 2020 Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy, #2)

author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Ben
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: currently-reading, 2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business]]> 36258655
Goose Island opened as a family-owned Chicago brewpub in the late 1980s, and it soon became one of the most inventive breweries in the world. In the golden age of light, bland and cheap beers, John Hall and his son Greg brought European flavors to America. With distribution in two dozen states, two brewpubs and status as one of the 20 biggest breweries in the United States, Goose Island became an American success story and was a champion of craft beer. Then, on March 28, 2011, the Halls sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch InBev, maker of Budweiser, the least craft-like beer imaginable. The sale forced the industry to reckon with craft beer’s mainstream appeal and a popularity few envisioned. Josh Noel broke the news of the sale in the Chicago Tribune , and he covered the resulting backlash from Chicagoans and beer fanatics across the country as the discussion escalated into an intellectual craft beer war. Anheuser-Busch has since bought nine other craft breweries, and from among the outcry rises a question that Noel addresses through personal anecdotes from industry how should a brewery grow?]]> 400 Josh Noel 1613737211 Ben 4 2019 4.35 Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business

Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business

author: Josh Noel
name: Ben
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/20
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #2)]]> 38117105 Game of Thrones, The Monster Baru Cormorant is the long-anticipated sequel to Seth Dickinson gut-wrenching debut, The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

Baru Cormormant's world was shattered by the Empire of Masks. To exact her revenge, she has clawed her way up razor-edged rungs of betrayal, sacrifice, and compromise, becoming the very thing she seeks to destroy.

Now she strides in the Masquerade's halls of power. To save the world, she must tear it asunder...and with it, all that remains of her soul.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 464 Seth Dickinson 1466875135 Ben 3 2019 3.89 2018 The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #2)

The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #2)

author: Seth Dickinson
name: Ben
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2020/07/20
date added: 2020/07/20
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> Neuromancer 14770 SPECIAL 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION —THE MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE PAST TWO DECADES

Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene—it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.

Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society. Neuromancer's virtual reality has become real. And yet, William Gibson's gritty, sophisticated vision still manages to inspire the minds that lead mankind ever further into the future.]]> 384 William Gibson 0441012035 Ben 5 3.82 1984 Neuromancer

author: William Gibson
name: Ben
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/03/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1)]]> 235845 here.

It's 1959 and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, one-time high-school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he flees his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, 'after you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate'.]]> 280 John Updike Ben 0 eventually, to-read 3.46 1960 Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1)

author: John Updike
name: Ben
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/18
shelves: eventually, to-read
review:

]]> Notes from a Big Country 636915 Mail on Sunday's Night and Day magazine, Bill Bryson firmly turned him down. So firm was he, in fact, that gathered here are nineteen months' worth of his popular columns about the strangest of phenomena -- the American way of life. Whether discussing the dazzling efficiency of the garbage disposal unit, the mind-boggling plethora of methods by which to shop, the exoticism of having your groceries bagged for you, or the jaw-slackening direness of American TV, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on the world's richest and craziest country.]]> 368 Bill Bryson 0385258224 Ben 0 to-read 3.89 1998 Notes from a Big Country

author: Bill Bryson
name: Ben
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)]]> 37173847
But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.]]> 501 Robert Jackson Bennett 1524760374 Ben 3 2019
I'm a big RJB fan. Mostly loved The Divine Cities, think American Elsewhere is rad as hell. Foundryside, for me, was his least interesting book thus far, but still features plenty of his tantalizing worldbuilding and well-orchestrated action sequences. In a way, his worldbuilding reminds me of JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof. Those guys have a way of making you feel like you're right on the cusp of understanding some incredibly huge secret, and it's an exhilarating feeling. The problem is, once it's revealed, the secret never lives up to the anticipation. Bennett delivers better than Abrams and Lindelof, but there's still a sense that his build-up is better than his execution.

The other issue is that for all his storytelling ability (and it really is considerable), Bennett isn't a great wordsmith. I read Foundryside between Scott Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant and The Monster Baru Cormorant, and Foundryside makes those books look like... I don't know... Blood Meridian? At least in terms of the author's ability to put a compelling sentence together. Bennett's prose is definitely on the lightweight side. It doesn't get in the way of the action, but it doesn't give much pleasure, either.

This makes it sound like I hated Foundryside, but in reality I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the sequel.]]> 4.16 2018 Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)

author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Ben
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/02/14
shelves: 2019
review:
Really more like a 3.5.

I'm a big RJB fan. Mostly loved The Divine Cities, think American Elsewhere is rad as hell. Foundryside, for me, was his least interesting book thus far, but still features plenty of his tantalizing worldbuilding and well-orchestrated action sequences. In a way, his worldbuilding reminds me of JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof. Those guys have a way of making you feel like you're right on the cusp of understanding some incredibly huge secret, and it's an exhilarating feeling. The problem is, once it's revealed, the secret never lives up to the anticipation. Bennett delivers better than Abrams and Lindelof, but there's still a sense that his build-up is better than his execution.

The other issue is that for all his storytelling ability (and it really is considerable), Bennett isn't a great wordsmith. I read Foundryside between Scott Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant and The Monster Baru Cormorant, and Foundryside makes those books look like... I don't know... Blood Meridian? At least in terms of the author's ability to put a compelling sentence together. Bennett's prose is definitely on the lightweight side. It doesn't get in the way of the action, but it doesn't give much pleasure, either.

This makes it sound like I hated Foundryside, but in reality I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
]]> The Violent Century 22545483
For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account...and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism, - a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields - to answer one last, impossible question:

What makes a hero?]]> 368 Lavie Tidhar 125006449X Ben 4 2019 3.70 2013 The Violent Century

author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Ben
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/28
date added: 2019/01/28
shelves: 2019
review:
Perhaps doesn't quite live up to the bombastic pull-quotes, but still a pretty spectacular read.
]]> 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3) 18626839 The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.�� A world that bears a question.�� Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame's and Tengo's narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell is Haruki Murakami's most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.]]> 1318 Haruki Murakami Ben 2 4.03 2009 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Ben
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2016/09/08
date added: 2019/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)]]> 23444482
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.

In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.

But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.

]]> 399 Seth Dickinson 0765380722 Ben 4 2019 4.04 2015 The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

author: Seth Dickinson
name: Ben
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/14
date added: 2019/01/16
shelves: 2019
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage]]> 41022133 A��New York Times��#1 Bestseller
A New York Times and Washington Post notable book, and one of the��Financial Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,��Slate,��Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, and BookPage's best books of the year

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage��is the long-awaited new novel—a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan—from the award-winning, internationally best-selling author Haruki Murakami.

Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.]]> 308 Haruki Murakami 0385352115 Ben 4 2019 3.93 2013 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Ben
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/08
date added: 2019/01/08
shelves: 2019
review:
Sort of a companion piece to Norwegian Wood, in that it's about teenage angst, love, and finding one's place in the world, and is one of the rare Murakami books that's virtually devoid of the supernatural/magical realism. It has some other similarities, too: a middle-aged protagonist thinking back on his life, and an obsession with a piece of music, and even a similar page count. Much less emo and more emotionally mature, though. An easy, quick, pleasant read.
]]> Unholy Land 39791736
Tirosh has returned to his homeland in East Africa. But Palestina—a Jewish state founded in the early 20th century—has grown dangerous. The government is building a vast border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in Ararat City is growing. And Tirosh’s childhood friend, trying to deliver a warning, has turned up dead in his hotel room. A state security officer has identified Tirosh as a suspect in a string of murders, and a rogue agent is stalking Tirosh through transdimensional rifts—possible futures that can only be prevented by avoiding the mistakes of the past.

From the bestselling author of Central Station comes an extraordinary new novel recalling China Miéville and Michael Chabon, entertaining and subversive in equal measures.]]> 288 Lavie Tidhar 1616963042 Ben 4 2019 3.60 2018 Unholy Land

author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Ben
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/04
date added: 2019/01/08
shelves: 2019
review:
Tidhar is rapidly becoming one of my favorite working authors. RIYL PKD/Wolfe/Kafka/Mieville.
]]> <![CDATA[The Stars Now Unclaimed (The Universe After #1)]]> 35612392 From Book 1:

Drew Williams's The Stars Now Unclaimed, the first volume of The Universe After series, is a fun, adventure-filled space opera set in a far-future galaxy.

"The only thing more fun than a bonkers space battle is a whole book packed with bonkers space battles. Come for the exploding spaceships, stay for the intriguing universe."��Becky Chambers, author of A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Jane Kamali is an agent for the Justified. Her mission: to recruit children with miraculous gifts in the hope that they might prevent the Pulse from once again sending countless worlds back to the dark ages.

Hot on her trail is the Pax--a collection of fascist zealots who believe they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy and who remain untouched by the Pulse.

Now Jane, a handful of comrades from her past, and a telekinetic girl called Esa must fight their way through a galaxy full of dangerous conflicts, remnants of ancient technology, and other hidden dangers.

And that's just the beginning . . .

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

]]> 447 Drew Williams 1250186110 Ben 1 2018 3.76 2018 The Stars Now Unclaimed (The Universe After #1)

author: Drew Williams
name: Ben
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2018/12/28
shelves: 2018
review:
Truly atrocious. Mind-numbingly repetitive action sequences, characters who speak nothing but exposition and all sound the same, every fifth word italicized for emphasis, and a pretty uninteresting world, all things considered. Steer clear.
]]> <![CDATA[The Invention of Morel and Other Stories, from La Trama Celeste]]> 142581
"In Memory of Pauline"
"The Future Kings"
"The Idol"
"The Celestial Plot"
"The Other Labyrinth"
"The Perjury of the Snow"

Also included is a prologue by Jorge Luis Borges and illustrations by Norah Borges de Torre, sister of Jorge Luis Borges.

Regarding the title novella: Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.]]> 237 Adolfo Bioy Casares 0292738404 Ben 4 2008 4.20 The Invention of Morel and Other Stories, from La Trama Celeste

The Invention of Morel and Other Stories, from La Trama Celeste

author: Adolfo Bioy Casares
name: Ben
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2008/03/24
date added: 2018/02/20
shelves: 2008
review:
I actually liked the short stories better than the novella. In particular the last two, "The Other Labyrinth" and "The Perjury of the Snow" were quite good and at times came near to the quality of Casares's friend Borges's own stories. I think that though never really achieves that quality, mostly because he's too engaged in telling a story and not engaged enough in his ideas. But that's alright. Not everyone can/should be Borges. Definitely worth reading.
]]> Borne (Borne, #1) 31451186
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.

Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.

Wick is a special kind of supplier, because the drug dealers in the city don’t sell the usual things. They sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear, and that release powerful memories of other people’s happier times or pull out forgotten memories from the user’s own mind—or just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.

Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,�� a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?]]> 323 Jeff VanderMeer 0374115249 Ben 4 2017 3.93 2017 Borne (Borne, #1)

author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Ben
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/12/25
shelves: 2017
review:
More focused than the Southern Reach, with less masturbatory rambling and more plot. I think this is where I like VanderMeer's voice best.
]]> <![CDATA[The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3)]]> 31817749
The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

The remarkable conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed trilogy that began with the multi-award-nominated The Fifth Season.]]> 416 N.K. Jemisin Ben 5 2017 4.32 2017 The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3)

author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Ben
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/12/25
shelves: 2017
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota, #2)]]> 28220647
In which automation now provides for everybody’s basic needs.
In which nobody living can remember an actual war.
In which it is illegal for three or more people to gather for the practice of religion—but ecumenical “sensayers�� minister in private, one-on-one.
In which gendered language is archaic, and to dress as strongly male or female is, if not exactly illegal, deeply taboo.
In which nationality is a fading memory, and most people identify instead with their choice of the seven global Hives, distinguished from one another by their different approaches to the big questions of life.

And it is a world in which, unknown to most, the entire social order is teetering on the edge of collapse.

Because even in utopia, humans will conspire. And also because something new has arisen: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to conscious life.]]> 365 Ada Palmer 0765378027 Ben 4 2017 4.20 2017 Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota, #2)

author: Ada Palmer
name: Ben
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/10/28
date added: 2017/10/28
shelves: 2017
review:
Doesn't quite stick the landing so exquisitely set up by Too Like the Lightning, but when it gets moving, it REALLY gets moving. Palmer's writing is eloquent, expressive, and incisive, even under all the period affectations, but there were definitely points where I started skimming over the excessive verbiage. Probably says more about me than the book.
]]> It 830502
It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.]]> 1184 Stephen King 0450411435 Ben 3 2017 4.28 1986

author: Stephen King
name: Ben
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1986
rating: 3
read at: 2017/10/27
date added: 2017/10/28
shelves: 2017
review:
Does some cool stuff, taps into some essential truths about being a kid, etc. But it's too damn long and convoluted, not scary enough, and King's hokey gee whiz-style 1950s Americanisms grate after a while. The ending is suitably apocalyptic, but I'm not sure it was worth the journey to get there. Every long King novel I read further convinces me that he's better in short format.
]]> <![CDATA[A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)]]> 29475447
Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet introduced readers to the incredible world of Rosemary Harper, a young woman with a restless soul and secrets to keep. When she joined the crew of the Wayfarer, an intergalactic ship, she got more than she bargained for - and learned to live with, and love, her rag-tag collection of crewmates.

A Closed and Common Orbit is the stand-alone sequel to Becky Chambers' beloved debut novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and is perfect for fans of Firefly, Joss Whedon, Mass Effect and Star Wars.]]> 365 Becky Chambers 1473621445 Ben 3 2017 4.35 2016 A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)

A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)

author: Becky Chambers
name: Ben
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2017/06/06
date added: 2017/06/06
shelves: 2017
review:

]]> American Gods 30165203
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...]]> 635 Neil Gaiman Ben 4 2017 4.11 2001

author: Neil Gaiman
name: Ben
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2017/05/25
date added: 2017/06/03
shelves: 2017
review:
I enjoyed the world-building, the aimlessness (road trip feel), and the prose. It's the kind of book I would have gladly read for another couple thousand pages. Best thing I ever read? Certainly not, but consistently engaging, thoughtful, and intriguing. Will definitely read the sequel, whenever it arrives.
]]> The Stars Are Legion 29090844
On the outer rim of the universe, a galactic war has been waged for centuries upon hundreds of world-ships. But these worlds will continue to die through decay and constant war unless a desperate plan succeeds.

Anat, leader of the Katazyrna world-ship and the most fearsome raiding force on the Outer Rim, wants peace. To do so she offers the hand of her daughter, Jayd, to her rival. Jayd has dreamed about leading her mother’s armies to victory her whole life—but she has a unique ability, and that makes her leverage, not a leader. As Anat convinces her to spend the rest of her life wed to her family’s greatest enemy, it is up to Jayd’s sister Zan—with no stomach for war—to lead the cast off warriors she has banded together to victory and rescue Jayd. But the war does not go at all as planned��

In the tradition of The Fall of Hyperion and Dune, The Stars are Legion is an epic and thrilling tale about familial love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of the genre’s most imaginative new writers.]]> 512 Kameron Hurley Ben 3 3.66 2017

author: Kameron Hurley
name: Ben
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/05/12
date added: 2017/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> The Library at Mount Char 26892110
After all, she was a normal American herself, once.

That was a long time ago, of course—before the time she calls “adoption day,�� when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.

Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible.

In the years since Father took her in, Carolyn hasn't gotten out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient Pelapi customs. They've studied the books in his library and learned some of the secrets behind his equally ancient power.

Sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.

Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library—and with it, power over all of creation.

As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her.

But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price—because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human.]]> 390 Scott Hawkins 0553418629 Ben 5 2017
-John Dies at the End
-The Magicians
-American Elsewhere

...but without those books' (sometimes considerable) flaws.

There's also some Stephen King and Neil Gaiman in there.

Anyway, a truly original, mindbending read. Highly recommended.]]> 4.06 2015 The Library at Mount Char

author: Scott Hawkins
name: Ben
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2017/04/26
date added: 2017/04/26
shelves: 2017
review:
One of the best debuts I've read in a long time. Strongly reminded me of, in no particular order:

-John Dies at the End
-The Magicians
-American Elsewhere

...but without those books' (sometimes considerable) flaws.

There's also some Stephen King and Neil Gaiman in there.

Anyway, a truly original, mindbending read. Highly recommended.
]]> Six Wakes 28962996
It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently...]]> 361 Mur Lafferty 0316389684 Ben 3 2017 3.80 2017 Six Wakes

author: Mur Lafferty
name: Ben
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/04/03
date added: 2017/04/05
shelves: 2017
review:
Not very well-written, but an interesting/unusual enough plot to keep me going to the end. I like the world Lafferty developed here, but I wish it were a bit more believable and less sketched-in/cartoonish. I also wish the big reveal were, well, bigger. But oh well.
]]> Underground Airlines 23208397
As he works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines, tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraordinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child--who may be Victor's salvation.

Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost.

Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.]]> 336 Ben H. Winters 0316261246 Ben 4 2017 3.82 2016

author: Ben H. Winters
name: Ben
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2017/03/16
date added: 2017/03/16
shelves: 2017
review:
A solid thriller about systems of control, not just slavery. Not as deep as it wants to be, but the premise provides intriguing window dressing and taps into deep emotion without being offensive.
]]> <![CDATA[Way Down Dark (The Australia Trilogy, #1)]]> 25202767
There's one truth on Australia: You fight or you die. Usually both.

Seventeen-year-old Chan's ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.

The only life that Chan's ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.

But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness - a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead.

Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery - a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible danger.

And a safe return to Earth is by no means certain.]]> 288 J.P. Smythe 1444796321 Ben 3 2017 3.47 2015 Way Down Dark (The Australia Trilogy, #1)

Way Down Dark (The Australia Trilogy, #1)

author: J.P. Smythe
name: Ben
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2017/03/16
date added: 2017/03/16
shelves: 2017
review:
Interesting ideas and admirably(?) dark for a YA novel, but the action is repetitive and unimaginative. A lot more could have been done with the environment of the ship, and the big reveal is well-trodden ground. Reminded me a lot of Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop.
]]> The Sheltering Sky 243598 The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.]]> 342 Paul Bowles 0141023422 Ben 3 2017 3.92 1949 The Sheltering Sky

author: Paul Bowles
name: Ben
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1949
rating: 3
read at: 2017/03/14
date added: 2017/03/16
shelves: 2017
review:
Beautiful writing, but as much of a slog to read as it is for the characters themselves.
]]> Normal (Normal, #1-4) 20518817 A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer

Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.
There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.
For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the "abyss gaze" takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest.
When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Dearden uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future—and the past, and the now.]]> 148 Warren Ellis 0374534977 Ben 4 2017 3.61 2016 Normal (Normal, #1-4)

author: Warren Ellis
name: Ben
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2017/03/12
date added: 2017/03/12
shelves: 2017
review:
Quick, compact, and powerful. A perceptive look at futurism and the way it entraps us.
]]> <![CDATA[The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution]]> 16115194
Based on interviews with all of the biggest and most influential names in craft brewing since the 1970s—including brewers, critics, and marketers��The Audacity of Hops brims with charming, remarkable stories, which together weave a very American business tale, one of formidable odds and refreshing success.

The Audacity of Hops will be the holiday and birthday gift for every craft beer lover. Entertaining, informative, and accessible, this book is the first of its kind: the definitive history of the other American revolution.]]> 416 Tom Acitelli 1613743882 Ben 3 2017 3.86 2013 The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution

The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution

author: Tom Acitelli
name: Ben
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2017/02/14
date added: 2017/03/12
shelves: 2017
review:
Entertaining, informative, but lacking in structure and repetitive. Worth reading for beer nerds.
]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 50420 One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.]]> 458 Gabriel García Márquez 0060929790 Ben 0 to-read 4.10 1967

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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