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. Also, 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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Two “paleonerds” embark on a roadtrip across the West in search of fossils.
The new …
I've been waiting for 2 years for this to come back in print, and I've just ordered the new edition from the artist's web site.
Robin Hearns has been kidnapped. Or murdered. Or kidnapped and murdered.
He isn’t sure.
What …
Robin wakes up in a cabin in a pastoral compound. He's been kidnapped by a hitman (Buki) who claims to disappear his victims instead of kill them like he's been contracted, because he doesn't like killing.
I loved this story because Thompson lets the reader discover what's happening as his characters discover it. Things are weird enough to be intriguing but not so out there that I couldn't make any sense of it.
The description on the Subterranean Press web site (where this ebook can be downloaded for free) is a bit too spoilery for me, so I'm glad I didn't read it before downloading.
A gripping page-turner from the celebrated author of book club favorite The Violin Conspiracy: Music …
I just couldn't get into the audiobook.
The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has …
I knew this would be awful. I was not wrong.
It's the same damn problem as the previous book in the series. Every character is too damn clever for their own good. Most characters are paper-thin schemers. The whole basis of the story is just predicting whether an incident will be a double cross or a triple cross or a quadruple cross. "Aha! I anticipated you would double cross so I have taken the liberty of triple crossing you!" Then there is the nature of some of the artificial intelligences that are characters. Specifically that these AI characters pepper every conversation with meta-discussion on the nature of their existence. "I, an AI, am sorry for your loss. Am I actually sorry or am I just programmed to say that? We must discuss the nature of this at every utterance of a pleasantry."
This series, particularly the second and third books, …
I knew this would be awful. I was not wrong.
It's the same damn problem as the previous book in the series. Every character is too damn clever for their own good. Most characters are paper-thin schemers. The whole basis of the story is just predicting whether an incident will be a double cross or a triple cross or a quadruple cross. "Aha! I anticipated you would double cross so I have taken the liberty of triple crossing you!" Then there is the nature of some of the artificial intelligences that are characters. Specifically that these AI characters pepper every conversation with meta-discussion on the nature of their existence. "I, an AI, am sorry for your loss. Am I actually sorry or am I just programmed to say that? We must discuss the nature of this at every utterance of a pleasantry."
This series, particularly the second and third books, have been so tedious.
The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has …
This book is really testing my desire to know how it ends.
Desiree feels the most at home with her clockwork creations, but Claude worries about all …
Remember back in the late aughts/early teens when steampunk was all the rage? This was published on Tor.com (with a free epub download) in October 2010.
Claude Stone is affianced to Desiree Southland, the mixed race daughter of an English lord. Claude's views are not so great: "I knew Lord Southland disapproved of me, although his antipathy puzzled me. If he hoped to marry off his mulatto daughter, I was his best prospect. Not many men were as free of prejudice as I was."
Desiree is enamored of building clockwork devices. Claude does not share her interest, but allows that he can indulge her fancies. However, Lord Tyndall is quite keen to see Desiree Southland's clockwork fairies.
Rambo really nails the personality of a certain type of performative ally in just a few words and pages.
The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has …
Thought the first book in the series was solid, but the second was dreck. However, I need to know how it ends so I'm going to put myself through this.
Hitching a ride to Virginia in a car with three strangers, Jack Reacher finds himself …
Set immediately after the caper in Worth Dying For, which was set immediately after the events of 61 Hours. Reacher tries to hitchhike to Virginia to meet with the agent whose voice he likes whose name I've forgotten. Except the people who pick him up are involved in some criminal conspiracy, which Reacher figures out pretty quickly. The FBI is behaving hinky too.
The setup makes very little sense. Half-assed conspiracies within half-assed conspiracies. About ⅔ of the way through (by the reckoning of my Kobo), the author stops trying to maintain the house of cards and just transitions into the end-game where it's mostly shooting.
The whole thing is very slapdash. Now I'm wondering if the series is slowly sliding toward craptasticness. I'm really hoping there's a bright spot or two or I'll have to find a new series for my palate cleansing.
Summoned by Military Intelligence to Washington, D.C., Reacher is sent undercover. The assignment that awaits …
Someone is leaking specs for a new sniper rifle. Because of a highly contrived setup, the Army has to call Reacher in to wine and dine the 4 female suspects without them knowing he's undercover. A prequel story set before Reacher leaves the Army and becomes the drifter that moves through most of the books.
Roger Gale, a media-monitoring business owner nearing retirement, observes life in early 20th century New …
Roger Gale has three daughters, a traditional married homebody, a free spirit who gallavants around the world, and a driven professional. Most of His Family is Roger either thinking about his daughters and what they should do, or trying to talk them into doing what he thinks they should do. Only Deborah, the professional who wants to improve the lives of New York's tenement dwellers, is interesting. And there only when the story doesn't veer into the possibility of her getting married and living the more traditional life that Roger wants her to. Plodding and dreary.
Roger Gale, a media-monitoring business owner nearing retirement, observes life in early 20th century New …
First winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.
Girl trouble got you down? Do bigger guys kick sand in your face? You don’t …
A free short story ebook published by Subterranean Press from horror writer Joe Hill.
Seeking to feel better after his girlfriend Ashley breaks up with him, the narrator carves an Elder Sign into the palm of his hand. Because influencer Tristan Younger, seller of the Maximum Force/Masculine Luxury Lifestyle has a video that says to do it.
It gives him him uncontrollable dark powers. For example, when he plays a video game the monitor cracks open and cockroaches pour out.
One third of people living in the United States do not have a driver license. …
A couple of years ago, Anna Zivarts collected the experiences of nondrivers from each of Washington State's 49 legislative districts. This book is one result of that. She distilled those stories into a review of who nondrivers are, what the barriers are that they face when getting around, and what they need in the transportation realm.
Her effort was driven by the observation that 25% of Washington state residents do not have driver licenses. If you count the people who do have licenses but do not have reliable use of cars (elderly folk where safety is an issue, families with one car for the entire household, etc.), the number of nondrivers becomes even larger.
Well-written, well-organized, well-argued, to the point. There's an epilogue on "what you can do" but thankfully that's short. The target audience seems to be not individual do-gooders, but people involved in transportation planning and transportation organizers.
One third of people living in the United States do not have a driver license. …
Too much text to include as a quote, but I am extremely intrigued by Zivarts' discussion of a measurement called the Level Of Traffic Stress that indicates how stressful it is to be a pedestrian along a route. it's based on a previous measurement called the Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress. Washington State is using this on every state route to assess gaps. i.e. routes with high levels of pedestrian stress are gaps, which are then evaluated against safety, equity and potential user demand metrics.
From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt …
On August 12, 2022, a young radicalized Muslim man stabbed famed author Salman Rushdie some 15 times.
Rushdie explicitly disowns the idea of writing as therapy, but also says that he didn't feel like he could move on to write other work without first writing this book, a memoir of his experience. Much of it is a recounting of his journey to recover from his injuries at the hands of an amateur would-be assassin.
However, it very much veers into therapy during an extended chapter where Rushdie imagines conversations with his attacker in a jailhouse interrogation room over four days. That chapter is the most awkward of the book; it invents the workings of his assailant's mind from common tropes about radicalized Islamists, and then knocks those positions down handily.
The rest is engaging. Rushdie writes with humor and reveals enough of his emotions and frustrations that the experience is …
On August 12, 2022, a young radicalized Muslim man stabbed famed author Salman Rushdie some 15 times.
Rushdie explicitly disowns the idea of writing as therapy, but also says that he didn't feel like he could move on to write other work without first writing this book, a memoir of his experience. Much of it is a recounting of his journey to recover from his injuries at the hands of an amateur would-be assassin.
However, it very much veers into therapy during an extended chapter where Rushdie imagines conversations with his attacker in a jailhouse interrogation room over four days. That chapter is the most awkward of the book; it invents the workings of his assailant's mind from common tropes about radicalized Islamists, and then knocks those positions down handily.
The rest is engaging. Rushdie writes with humor and reveals enough of his emotions and frustrations that the experience is more than mere recitation. Rushdie is his own narrator in the audiobook, and has quite a talent for it. After this, I very much want to try again to read Midnight's Children, a book I've failed to progress beyond about 100 pages on multiple occasions.