Phil in SF wants to read When Driving Is Not an Option by Anna Letitia Zivarts
One third of people living in the United States do not have a driver license. …
Looking forward to reading this.
Reviews and Comments
aka @kingrat@sfba.social. I'm following a lot of bookwyrm accounts, since that seems to be the only way to get reviews from larger servers to this small server. I make a lot of Bookwyrm lists. I will like & boost a lot of reviews that come across my feed. I will follow most bookwyrm accounts back if they review & comment. Social reading should be social.
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Phil in SF rated Assassin's Apprentice: 4 stars
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy, #1)
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by …
Phil in SF reviewed New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
Mixed, like most anthologies
3 stars
I most enjoyed the Santlofer, Morrow and Arellano stories.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"Too Near Real", Jonathan Safran Foer
protagonist is some sort of sex pest put out to pasture by his university and retreats into the virtual world of Google Street View.
"Excavation", Edmund White & Michael Carroll
Dita's much younger husband Scott goes missing, so she has his former writing teacher and mentor come to Asbury Park to "help find him". But mostly she just wants someone to tell her she didn't do anything wrong.
"Run Kiss Daddy", Joyce Carol Oates
Reno brings his new, much younger wife Marlena and her two kids Devra and Kevin to Paraquarry Lake where he renovates a cabin and ruminates on his previous failed marriage and family.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"A Bag For Nicholas", Hirsh Sawhney
Shezad Ansari gets a call from his ex-wife that he can have a job as a musician for a movie if he can make an audition. But Shez decides to make a weed delivery. So many things conspire to make getting to the audition an ordeal.
"Glass Eels", Jeffrey Ford
Len & Marty know a good spot to harvest eels for the black market. They figure a good score will ease their lives.
"Meadowlands Spike", Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini
A low level mobster decides to come clean about how he killed Jimmy Hoffa and got away with it.
"Kettle Run", Robert Arellano
Ernie and his friend Pervert drive to a secluded place to smoke weed. Keith & Tull, Ernie's dealers, show up looking for missing weed. Interspersed with bits of story about how Ernie got himself into the situation.
Really enjoyed this …
"A Bag For Nicholas", Hirsh Sawhney
Shezad Ansari gets a call from his ex-wife that he can have a job as a musician for a movie if he can make an audition. But Shez decides to make a weed delivery. So many things conspire to make getting to the audition an ordeal.
"Glass Eels", Jeffrey Ford
Len & Marty know a good spot to harvest eels for the black market. They figure a good score will ease their lives.
"Meadowlands Spike", Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini
A low level mobster decides to come clean about how he killed Jimmy Hoffa and got away with it.
"Kettle Run", Robert Arellano
Ernie and his friend Pervert drive to a secluded place to smoke weed. Keith & Tull, Ernie's dealers, show up looking for missing weed. Interspersed with bits of story about how Ernie got himself into the situation.
Really enjoyed this story too.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"Wunderlich" Sheila Kohler
An elderly suburban wife finds that the massages from Gabriel Wunderlich spawn a renaissance in her life. The cost?
"Atlantis", Richard Burgin
After his restless girlfriend nags him to plan for them to leave the house, druggie Stacy thinks it would be a good idea for them to visit Atlantic City, where both of them have history.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"The Enigma Of Grover's Mill", Bradford Morrow
Wyatt grows up in Grover's Mill, the city of H.G. Wells and Orson Welles' War Of The Worlds. His father, a Great War veteran, can't face another war and kills himself rather than fight aliens. Soon his mother and grandfather die. Wyatt is convinced that Franklin, a boarder who comes to live with his grandmother and him, is an alien who survived when his s side lost the invasion.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"Lola", Jonathan Santlofer
A stalker starts obsessing about Lola, a woman who bumped into him on PATH, follows her, paints her, spies on her. obsessively. Told from his point of view. It's noir. he doesn't get redeemed.
best story so far.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"New Day Newark", S.J. Rozan
86 year old Miss Crawford wants to help the new mayor clean up the city, and there are two drug dealers on her block. Who are no match for her.
"Newark Black: 1940-1954", C.K. Williams
Poem about the black things in Newark, and a bit about the Black people in Newark.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"Soul Anatomy", Lou Manfredo
a rookie cop, the son of a US Attorney, shoots and kills a Black squatter. He tells his union attorney the story, and he's pretty messed up about it, but not in a way I'd expect.
Phil in SF commented on New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
"Live For Today" by S.A. Solomon.
An addict gets a job as a morgue technician, where she works primarily with the bodies of dead junkies.
Phil in SF started reading New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates (Akashic Noir)
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn …
Been a while since I read an anthology.
Phil in SF reviewed The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. …
Delightful character arc
4 stars
Content warning revelation of Linus Baker's character arc may reveal the gist of the plot
Linus Baker evaluates orphanages that house magical children. For some reason, the department he works for is extremely rigid and controlling for their workers (they issue demerits to workers??!). But he's given the assignment to investigate one orphanage by Extremely Upper Management. For reasons I never quite understood, this orphanage is different. Extremely Upper Management pays special attention to them, and nearby residents fear the magical children extra vehemently.
Despite a premise that doesn't quite hold together, a delightful story emerges during Linus Baker's 4 week visit to the orhpanage. The children are kooky! The headmaster, Arthur Parnassus, and Linus Baker develop a friendship. Linus gets to learn that maintaining a distance and objectivity limits him, and he gets to break out of a decades long deference to authority and fear of connection.
If you listen to the audiobook as I did, Daniel Henning does a wonderful job of voicing a multitude of characters that gets to the essence of each of the children and adults. I often find it hard to follow audiobooks with lots of characters, but Henning's narration does such a great job of making each of them distinct and memorable that I had no problems.
Phil in SF reviewed Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji
On a generation ship bound for a distant star, one engineer-in-training must discover the secrets …
Action packed and enjoyable
4 stars
Ravinder "Ravi" Mcleod is training to be an officer on a generation ship going from Earth to Tau Ceti. While not strictly speaking a heredity based society, officers tend to be children of officers & crew tend to be children of crew. The ship (one of three in a fleet) is coming up on Braking Day, the point in the trip where the ship flips around, then fires its engines to begin decelerating. A.k.a., Braking Day from the title.
There's lots of plain drama just from keeping a ship in good shape and heading toward its destination. There's lots of drama because of the hierarchical society that dominates the ship. And there's lot of drama because Ravi starts seeing visions of a girl whose only words Ravi can understand are "help us".
This is a very young adult themed book, though I don't know if it was officially marketed as …
Ravinder "Ravi" Mcleod is training to be an officer on a generation ship going from Earth to Tau Ceti. While not strictly speaking a heredity based society, officers tend to be children of officers & crew tend to be children of crew. The ship (one of three in a fleet) is coming up on Braking Day, the point in the trip where the ship flips around, then fires its engines to begin decelerating. A.k.a., Braking Day from the title.
There's lots of plain drama just from keeping a ship in good shape and heading toward its destination. There's lots of drama because of the hierarchical society that dominates the ship. And there's lot of drama because Ravi starts seeing visions of a girl whose only words Ravi can understand are "help us".
This is a very young adult themed book, though I don't know if it was officially marketed as such. All the spotlight characters are coming of age. Pretty much anything an adult does is either off screen, or an authority figure in opposition to Ravi and his friends. As such, don't expect much in the way of adult motivations.
Phil in SF started reading Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy, #1)
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow …
This year, I've vowed to read some of the books that I've had on my shelves for a while. This one has been on my shelf since 2009 at least.