What I've Been Reading: October 2021
October 26, 2021, 10:41 AM Halloween, Horror, Originality, Reading, Review PermalinkStephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indian has kept popping
up, algorithmically recommended to me on Amazon, Goodreads, social media, and
you name it. However, anytime I considered it, mixed reviews pushed me in
another direction. However, after the book won Horror Writers Association's
Bram Stoker Award for best novel earlier this year, I decided I'd give it a try. I, for one,
enjoyed the book
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What I've Been Reading: August 2021
August 6, 2021, 09:57 AM Reading, Sci-fi PermalinkFugitive Telemetry (Wells, 2021) - This is the 6th installment in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series. Each book is a novella centered on the life of a sentient combat, security android. I've been along for the ride through the first 5 books, and they are fast reads, so I gave Fugitive Telemetry a try. One aspect that endears these books and this character to readers is the unique main
What I've Been Reading: Oct 2020
October 27, 2020, 10:20 PM mystery, Reading, Review, Sci-fi PermalinkAfter being delighted with the Lovecraft Country series, (see my Oct watching post) which is based on a novel of the same name by Matt Ruff, I rushed online to look up the author. I considered grabbing the book, but I noticed Ruff had a new novel, recently released called 88 Names, and decided to try that instead.88 Names is not horror, but instead part cyberpunk, part mystery, and part spy thriller.
What I've Been Reading: Sept 2020
September 15, 2020, 03:44 PM Horror, Reading Permalink Devolution - Max BrooksI'm a fan of World War Z. I thought the epistolary story structure was exciting and a refreshing take for the zombie subgenre. I also appreciated that it was more of a collection of social case studies rather than frantic horror. In Devolution, Max Brooks turns his eye to sasquatch or bigfoot. Still, the book has a similar structure as WWZ, telling the story through
What I've Been Reading: July 2020
July 31, 2020, 10:31 PM Reading, Review Permalink How to Be an Antiracist - Ibram X. KendiThis book was challenging, enlightening, maddening, discouraging, inspiring, hopeful, and occasionally humorous all at the same time. If that sounds a little manic for your tastes, I'd argue that it is symptomatic of the topic and having a serious conversation about it. There are symptoms of racism which are horrible, but also advances that give hope and
What I've Been Reading: June 2020
June 30, 2020, 02:36 PM Criticism, Reading, Review, Sci-fi PermalinkTo date, I had read all four novellas in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series. I mostly enjoyed them. They definitely have a unique protagonist in the form of a rogue AI, but not just any bot, a security behemoth. As sci-fi classically has taught us, if we have anything to fear from AI turning sentient, it's the Terminator-like killbots that will be our undoing. Yet Wells asks us to empathize with