The Midnight Library was awesome. Normally stories like that, eh, I dunno, stories with a “point” I don’t like so much, but this one is just so well done. Maybe it was a message I needed.
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2020 took David Graeber, and I’d never heard of him until then (I live under a rock). Really enjoying Debt: The First 5000 Years
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I just loved this (The Necessary Beggar) to bits, as Jo Walton says - This is a book that could go terribly wrong. Palwick walks a tightrope here, avoiding sentimentality, cliche and appropriation but still winning through to a positive resolution - and i’d go along with that, it’s so deftly handled with the skill only the best writers can manage. It’s been a while since i read a book where i didn’t want to finish it and leave the characters i’d come to be very fond of but this was one of them.
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Carl Hiaasen still makes me laugh out loud with his stories about Florida. The latest, Squeeze Me involves giant pythons, the Orange Twatwaffle, a missing billionairess, and the usual round up of Florida Criminals.
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Thanks, adding that to the list
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The Vorrh (by Brian Catling): An epic surrealistic historical fantasy with a slight touch here and there of cyber-punk; a bow and arrows made from a lover’s remains; and a Cyclops (with that cementing Catling’s seeming obsession with such creatures).
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Dead Astronauts was… wow. I dunno, challenging. I would like to go back and read Borne, and then this, crossreferencing, because I think a lot of details leaked out of my memory in the year or so since I read it. Really wild worldbuilding. Difficult read, though. If you liked The Southern Reach Trilogy but want something more completely perplexing, this, and Borne, is it.
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That sounds awesome, adding it to my list.
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The first book of the trilogy is a lot more writerly than the other two, which were clearly written faster. The whole thing is worth reading but don’t get the impression that anything will ever be neatly tied up. This is in the genre of books “Found in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section but should have been in the Literature section of the bookstore”. Alan Moore’s Jerusalem and Delaney’s Dhalgren go in that genre as well.
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Catling’s prose (aside from being an artist, he’s also a poet) is a marvel. For some readers (not me) that was not enough to make up for the sometimes tenuous link between some of the characters and occurrences. The only way that I can explain the book is to describe the effect it’s having on me so far (I’m just a dozen or so pages from the end), and the best way to do that is to show here writers Iain Sinclair’s and Jeff Vandermeer’s reviews, respectively: “Few books rearrange the molecules of your being, turning the eyes inside out. The Vorrh is one of them.” “… reads like a long-lost classic of Decadent or Symbolist literature, with that same sense of timelessness. It’s peculiar, wildly imaginative, unafraid too transgress and get lost, and is unlike anything I’ve ever read.”
I’m reading a friend’s borrowed paperback. I already know that I’ll have to track down a hardcover for my permanent library and to re-read. This book is such an odd journey.
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That’s okay. The Vorrh seems, to me, so much about “environment” and pockets of doings and adventures. It’s like traveling to a foreign land and just experiencing it and with no expectation of a “typical” narrative. The full trilogy comes next for me.
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Yep, It’s delicious stuff if you are comfortable with ambiguity.
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I relish ambiguity. 
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Beneath the Rising… eh… it makes me so uncomfortable to be critical. I really enjoy Tim Powers and his whole mythos. It seems like this aspires to be something in that realm; a revelation of how all our history ties together with the ancient, magical gods, and underworld of supporters and those opposing their return, etc. etc. It lacks… I dunno, depth. There’s no sense of awe. It feels like a JJ Abrams re-imagining of Tim Powers material. I doubt I will read the sequel.
Next, a re-read of:
before taking up the new one 
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Ooh, good to see that sequel is out!
I think I’ve finally worn out any interest I’ve had in J.D. Robbs’ In Death series. The latest one has been feeling totally formulaic. You know what the characters will say, and wear and how they will look. The main character is a police officer who catches murderers, and in this book she has interviewed exactly one person, has barely spent time at the crime scene and has no forensic data, and she decides who her suspect is. Totally building a case from a gut feeling instead of evidence. If I thought there was any chance she would fall on her ass and have to admit it I might keep going, but that’s unlikely.
More pleasantly was discovering Robert Pobi, who has two thrillers out. His lead character is an astrophysicist with some savant talents about seeing physical spaces in terms of geometry, and finding patterns. Also, he is a multiple amputee who deals with prostheses. Nicely paced, retry good dialog. Worth a look.
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http://m.nautil.us/issue/98/mind/i-have-come-to-bury-ayn-rand
My father, Sloan Wilson, wrote novels that would help define 1950s America. I loved and admired him, but the prospect of following in the footsteps of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and A Summer Place was like being expected to climb Mount Everest. My love of nature provided an alternative path. I would become an ecologist, spending my days researching plants and animals, which fascinated me since the summers I spent as a boy at Lake George and a magical boarding school in the Adirondack mountains.
Little did I know that by heading away from the madding crowd of humanity and my father’s vocation, I would end up writing a sequel to another famous novel of the 1950s—Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged . But don’t get me wrong. I’m no Rand acolyte. I’m not here to praise her ideas but to bury them.
My sequel to Atlas Shrugged is titled Atlas Hugged and its protagonist is John Galt’s grandson. Ayn Rand was not a character in her novel, but since anything goes in fiction, I could transport her into mine as Ayn Rant, John I’s lover and John III’s grandmother. Rant’s son, John II, parlays her Objectivist philosophy into a world-destroying libertarian media empire. John III rebels against the evil empire by challenging his father to a duel of speeches. In the process, he brings about a worldwide transformation based on giving.
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Been blasting through some really long Elizabeth George mysteries. It’s been a while since I’ve wanted to just keep going through an 800 pager.
Also enjoyed Barbara Hambley’s latest Benjamin January story. They are good and meticulously researched, but they make me miss her fantasy stuff. Apparently it becomes hard for women to keep getting fantasy published after they reach “a certain age.”
Desolation Called Peace was awesome. Every bit as well done as A Memory called Empire, and even more interesting. I think it can stand proudly with the old masters of scifi.
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Veniss Underground: Yeesh. Very well written and miserably repulsive and uncomfortable. There’s usually a guilty romanticism to a dystopia that makes one want to watch as things go terribly wrong . I don’t even want to read about this place again. I will never see meerkats the same way again.
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Tore through all the Murderbot books. Really, really awesome stuff. It feels a lot like Andy Weir’s writing, conversational, comfortable and really fun to read. Great content and ideas, too. Looking forward to the new one in a few days.
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