Steve's (swynn) thread for 2025

I'm Steve, 55, a technical services librarian at a medium-sized private university in Oklahoma, where I live with my wife, my son, and my running partner Buddy. This is my 15th year with the 75ers.

My reading follows my whims, but is heaviest with science fiction and fantasy. I also read mysteries, thrillers, and horror. I don't read enough non-fiction, but when I do it covers a range of subjects including history, language, popular science, mathematics, running, library science, and shiny stuff.

Projects

(A) The DAWs

For several years now, I've been reading through the catalog of DAW, the first American imprint exclusively devoted to science fiction & fantasy publishing. It launched in 1972 under the editorship of Donald A. Wollheim (hence the name), and continues today, publishing new books at a rate faster than I'm catching up. Last year I read 14; this year I hope to aim for about one a week but realistically I think I can get 30.

DAWs so far: 0
Next up: Slave Girl of Gor by John Norman

(B) RC2Me

Inspired by other LTers who have "book-a-year" lists going back to their birthdate, or to 1900, or earlier, I've set myself a goal of reading at least one book published each year since Robinson Crusoe in 1719. My list is full from the late 19th century forward, but is increasingly spotty the farther back you get from about 1880. I want to read at least one book a month on this project, generally but not strictly moving forward from 1719. Currently I'm in the 1730's and here's what I have so far for that decade:

1730 Le nouveau Gulliver by Pierre Desfontaines
1731 Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost
1732 The Happy-Unfortunate by Elizabeth Boyd
1733 Memoirs of the Twentieth Century by Samuel Madden

Reserved for the list.

** The Perry Rhodan Post **

Perry Rhodans so far: 0
Next Up: #251 Die Armee der Biospalter by William Voltz

For those who have never encountered it: Perry Rhodan is the hero of a weekly German science-fiction serial that is marketed as the world's largest science fiction series. I don't know whether that claim is true -- no doubt it depends on how one measures "large." Measured by words in print, PR has few if any competitors, certainly neither the Star Wars nor Star Trek franchises, which are relatively puny. A few years ago in All of the Marvels, Douglas Wolk stated without proof that the Marvel superhero comic books, regarded collectively as a single continuous story, comprise the longest work of fiction ever created. I am 100% certain that he didn't run the numbers on Perry Rhodan before making this claim. The main series has been continuously published since September 1961 in weekly novella-length adventures. The current issue is number 3306. The English translations of these episodes ran to about 100 pages per, so we're talking about a story 330,000 pages long and growing. And that's just the main series. Besides the main series there have been over 400 standalone paperback novels, not to mention spinoffs (the spinoff series Atlan ran for 850 episodes), reboots (the reboot series Perry Rhodan NEO appears biweekly and is currently in its 321st episode), miniseries, video games, comic books, and one comically awful movie.

* Why am I reading this?

I first encountered the series as an exchange student to West Germany in 1986. I fell in love with everything about the series: the complicated backstory, the cheesy plots, the lurid covers, even the cheap newsprint. At that time I had access only to the latest issues and random back issues as I discovered them at flea markets so plots were frequently opaque to me, which actually added to the series's appeal. A couple of years ago I discovered that digitized back issues could be bought in packages online: I started from issue number 1, and all of that love came back.

So my reasons for reading are multiple and personal. It's about nostalgia, maintaining language skills, and feeding my inner middle-schooler. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the series except in small doses for curiosity's sake. But neither will I apologize: I love this crap even (maybe especially) when Perry Rhodan is an asshole. Which, actually, is most of the time.

* The Story So Far

Each episode is a standalone story, but the narrative is organized into story arcs, mostly running to 50 or 100 episodes. The arcs are usually separated by significant chronological gaps, which serve the marketing function of making the beginning of a story arc a good entry point for new readers.

Episodes 1-49: The Third Power (1971-1984)

The series begins with the first manned lunar mission in 1971. On the moon, Perry Rhodan and his crew discover a foundered spacecraft of the Arkonide Empire. In exchange for medical assistance, the Arkonides provide Rhodan with revolutionary technology. On his return to Earth, Rhodan eliminates cold-war hostilities, establishes a Terran government capable of dealing with extraterrestrial threats, builds bases through the solar system, and assembles a team of superpowered mutants (*ahem* predating the X-Men by two years). He also meets IT, a disembodied benevolent superintelligence that offers Perry and other Terrans some perspective and an anti-aging treatment.

Episodes 50-99: Atlan and Arkon (2040-2045)

The Terrans face multiple threats: the powerful interplanetary Arkonide Empire; the "Springers," a society of galactic merchants; the "Aras," a race of unscrupulous physicans, and the Druuf, invaders from a parallel universe that temporarily overlaps ours. Perry also meets Atlan, a practically immortal Arkonide who has been living on Earth since prehistory waiting for an opportunity to go home.

Episodes 100-149: The Posbis (2102-2112)

A united Terran/Arkonide empire faces new challenges. First, Terrans discover Arkon's progenitors the Akons, who regard both Arkonides and Terrans as inferiors. Then, the Milky Way galaxy is attacked by two extragalactic invaders: the Posbis, machine/biological hybrids hostile to all biological life; and the Laurins, invisible warriors hostile to the Posbis and anyone else who gets in their way.

Episodes 150-199: The Second Empire (2326-2329)

The superintelligence IT flees the galaxy in order to avoid some looming danger. Since it will no longer offer the anti-aging treatment for the foreseeable future, IT scatters 25 immortality devices around the Milky Way galaxy. The search for the immortality devices brings Terrans into contact with two new threats: Schreckworms, whose ravenous fast-reproducing larvae can eat a planet smooth as a billiard ball within weeks; and the Blues, rulers of a second interplanetary empire on the "east side" of the galaxy who are allied with the Schreckworms. Following a war with the Blues, Perry Rhodan is kidnapped by a would-be usurper from a Terran colony world. In his absence, the uneasy peace with the Blues and Akons deteriorate and the alliance with Arkon falls apart.

Episodes 200-299: Masters of the Island (2400-2406)

Searching for the lost planet Kahalo near the galaxy's center, Terran astronauts discover a configuration of six stars that function as a transporter to a twin-sun solar system located deep in interstellar space between the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies. After surviving a series of challenges, traps, and hostile opponents such as the Maahks, a race of Andromedan warriors who very nearly conquered the Milky Way galaxy thousands of years ago before being defeated by the Arkonides in a closely-fought war. All of the difficulties seems to be coordinated by Andromedan beings known only as the "Masters of the Island." As we pick up the story midway through this story cycle, the Terrans have tentatively established bases near the Andromeda Galaxy as they plan their next move toward the Masters of the Island.

Happy 2025, Steve

Hoping for this in 2025 for us all.

Welcome back, Steve!

>5 PaulCranswick:
>6 richardderus:
>7 drneutron:

Thanks for the welcome, Paul. Richard, and Jim!

Happy New Year, Steve. I hope 2025 is a great year for you and yours.

Happy new year and happy reading!

>10 thornton37814: Thanks Lori and same to you!

Happy new year, Steve! Looking forward to following your 2025 reads.

>12 bell7: Welcome Mary, and happy new year to you too!

I'm now going over to your thread to drop a star.

Happy to see you back again, Steve!

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread, Steve, I look forward to many good books with you.
And thank you for bringing back Perry Rhodan to my attention.

>14 MickyFine:
>15 SirThomas:

Welcome Micky and Thomas!

This year I plan to comment on Perry Rhodan adventures as I read them; the last few years I've tried to do them in batch but always fall behind. So PR should be a more regular presence on this thread.

Happy New Year, Steve!

Perry Rhodan 251: Die Armee der Biospalter = The Army of the Bio-splitters by William Voltz
Date: 1966

We join the Terrans as they prepare for a final push into the Andromeda Galaxy, which they know is ruled by mysterious and powerful beings called the "Masters of the Island." In episode 250 they met a future ally: the "cosmic engineer" Kalak, who operates a flying shipyard. At this stage of their relationship, they are still negotiating how Kalak can help them and what he expects in return.

The negotiations are interrupted when three ships make uncontrolled landings onto the shipyard. The new arrivals, miraculously arising from the wreckage, appear to be no threat: they are scrawny little gnomes with weapons technology the Terrans left behind centuries ago. The spaceships, even before the crashes, had been primitive and poorly-maintained. The creatures swarm toward the CREST III, many of them dying when they run straight into the ultra-battleship's defensive shields. Perry takes pity on them: judging the things to be harmless he orders the shields dropped and the CREST opened so that the little creatures can learn that it is far beyond their ability to control or to defend against.

Right -- let the brand-new creatures of the week, who are clearly hostile to Terrans, have unfettered access to the fleet's flagship. What could go wrong?

What goes wrong is this: when the creatures die, they decompose rapidly into a goo, from which a new version of the creature regenerates (hence "Biospalter", roughly "bio-splitters" or "bio-decomposers"). The regeneration process releases a gas that creates a state of confusion among the humans. Add to that, the Biospalter have natural powers of hypnosis which they use to direct the Terran crew to fly the CREST to the Biospalters' home planet.

It's a fun development that falters on Perry's uncharacteristically stupid judgment call.

1) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Date: 1984

This is a collection of very short pieces -- "vignettes" seems to be the preferred term in other reviews, the pieces include stories, character sketches, and prose experiments -- about a girl and her family, friends, and neighbors in a Chicago neighborhood. I liked it pretty well: the pieces are tight, packed, and carefully phrased: the effect is more of a volume of poetry than of short stories. I picked it up for a group read, and am looking forward to hearing others' reactions.

Hi Steve! Happy new year.

>2 swynn: Your second project seems quite the challenge. I can imagine it’s hard to fill in the blanks in the earlier years. Interesting!

>19 swynn: Sounds like a good one.

2) Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson
Date: 2017

Six years ago, a white family's baby died while in the care of a "curchgoing Black lady" and her 9-year-old daughter Mary. The blame fell on Mary, who has just been released from 6 years in "baby jail" to a group home. But changes in Mary's life and realities about her options make Mary reconsider what she wants to share about events six years ago. Mixed feelings about this: it has multiple strengths but ultimately didn't work for me due to a gimmicky resolution. OTOH, the audiobook is read by Bahni Turpin, who is always a pleasure to hear.

>20 EllaTim: Welcome Ella!

Yes, some of those RC2Me slots have little competition, especially in the early 1700's. I'm mostly interested in long-form fiction and the market for long-form fiction in the early 18th century was ... complicated. There was a stronger market for printed plays, so there are usually multiple plays to choose from in any given year -- so far I haven't chosen a play to fill a slot, but I may soon.

I'm currently working on Charles Johnson's A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. for 1734, but the going is slow enough that I may just read Don Quixote in England to fill the blank.

I loved The House on Mango Street, great comments.

>23 BLBera: Thanks, Beth!

3) This World is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Date: 2024

A sapphic couple fleeing family disapproval and their own failures of trust arrive on the remote colony world Belaforme. But the planet where they hope to make a new start has its own way of making new starts: it is home to a blob-like phenomenon that occasionally targets entire species for annihilation. The colonists believe that by living carefully, so as not to upset the planet's ecology, that "The Gray" will probably leave them alone -- at least until they can figure out how it works and maybe how to deal with it. Their plans are complicated by a rival colony on the same planet who doesn't seem to want to play by the same rules. You all know how this ends and it's no spoiler to tell you that you're right, it ends in space horror. What you may not expect (I didn't) is that the lead-up to apocalypse is less full of ominous warnings than plain relationship drama. The couple deals both with unprocessed past pain and also new offenses because they can't seem to get their communication right while the colony forces them into tough situations and impossible decisions. Mixed feelings about this one: as you might guess, I came for the space horror and not for the soap opera and for me the two never really integrated well. It felt like an old-fashioned mashup of two very different stories that weren't made with each other in mind. Once The Gray got going, though, it kept my attention nicely.

Finally getting over here to check in on you, Steve! Looks like your reading year is off to a good start.

>26 alcottacre: Welcome Stasia!

>25 swynn: mmmm

On balance, no.

TYVBM for the warning. Sorry it landed on you to do the lifting.

>28 richardderus: You're welcome, Richard!

I think Ashing-Giwa is an author to watch, even if this one didn't quite work for me.

4) Starry Messenger by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Date: 2022

NdGT discusses many subjects that aren't astrophysics, arguing that many questions of public policy could be enlightened by viewing through the lens of scientific training. And ... I think he's not wrong, but I also strongly suspect "scientific thinking" is not the potential panacea he seems to claim it is. I picked this up on the recommendation of a humanist friend who likes Tyson's nonsectarian approach to controversial issues. I am very sympathetic to nonsectarian approaches to controversial issues -- I want to think I'm even a little more hostile than NdGT to religious answers to public policy questions. But I'm also a little leery of the "My answer is better because it's Scientific" crowd. Because history, man. To be fair, Tyson acknowledges past problems, noting for example the "scientific" discipline of Eugenics and the pathologization (until very recently) of same-sex relationships. Tyson insists, though, that "scientific thinking" has a built-in capacity for self-correction that other approaches do not. He is more optimistic than I about the blessings of self-correctability when applied to human lives and well-being. Which is not to say that deGrasse Tyson is wrong: I agree with him more often than not, and any one of his opinions is head and shoulders above the least-insane utterances of MAGA Jesus. It's just that skills in laboratory science don't exactly overlay skills in public policy.

I love Tyson's appearances as an expert in astronomy, cosmology, physics and cetera, but the farther he wanders from astrophysics the more he's just another smart dude with Opinions. They are (mostly) considered, defensible positions. But there's also a lot of room to disagree with them without deserving the charge of "unscientific thinking." Or even, if it happens to be true, that being a bad thing.

Thank you for another BB in your last thread, Steve.
Miss Merkel was a nice little diversion and I think I will come back to the series...

>31 SirThomas: You're welcome for the BB! I see you've already read the next -- I plan to do so also, soon.

>30 swynn: One-size-fits-all solutions are so very prone to failure under any stress. I'd love Science to be the equal of Logic and Philosophy among the tools routinely used to solve the big problems we face.

Depressingly uncommon to see them all used together, as they should be.

5) Trail of the Serpent by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Date: 1861

Mary Elizabeth Braddon's first novel is both a mess and also great fun. It's the story of archvillain Jabez North -- foundling, fraudster, murderer, genius -- and the efforts by Jabez's victims to bring him to justice. It's very busy, takes unnecessary detours, and depends on unlikely coincidences -- the original title "Three Times Dead" apparently refers to that number of unexpected returns from the dead so take that, All My Children. After it careers from one melodramatic impossibility to another for about 400 pages, it wraps abruptly in a crowded finale that tries to resolve all the loose subplots with handwavey exposition. (Though I'm inclined to cut the ending some slack: Braddon explains in a prologue that the novel was originally published in installments in a magazine whose publisher, after the story was well underway but not increasing circulation as much as hoped, requested that the number of installments be cut in half.) And yet as messes go it's a hot one: for all its silliness I liked it much and the prose, despite its nonstop flirting with a thesaurus, kept me smiling.



6) All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie
Date: 2022

It's a historical fantasy set in the ninth century, following the travels of an Icelander across Europe as he looks for horses to bring back to Iceland. Author Tolmie is a medievalist, and brings her knowledge of the time and its literary forms to the story. I am not a medievalist, but can say she delivers a mesmerizing story that feels authentic with themes of ambition, social change, and (of course) horses.



7) The Klingon Gambit by Robert E. Vardeman
Date: 1981

The Enterprise is called to the planet Alnath, into a situation involving a mysterious archaeological dig, a Klingon dreadnought in orbit, and a shipful of dead Vulcan scientists. Shortly after arrival, the crew begins behaving in out-of-character, impulsive ways. The story's okay, except for bits that haven't aged well (though Kirk and Scotty admiring a junior officer's ass must have already been a little cringey even in 1981, surely?)

>33 richardderus: Depressingly uncommon to see them all used together, as they should be.

Yes. And all three seem to be personae non gratae in our current moment.

NdGT is out of his depth when he gets away from astrophysics. I'll just leave it with Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

>36 drneutron: Yes. One annoying recurring tic in this book was a story of the type, "I posted this claim to my Twitter feed and the Internet Freaked Out." It was always the unthinking masses responding unreasonably to an innocent tweet. He told several of those stories, but rarely did get a sense of the kind of self reflection that involves wondering whether his critics may have a point. Which is what I'd prefer to see in the stories of someone who insists their approach is attentive to its errors and self-corrects.

8) The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown
Date: 2023

Alien invasion aboard a failing generation ship. It's atmospheric and plot-driven, and I loved the adventure. The aliens feel derivative of the baddies from the Alien franchise, but I didn't mind that nearly as much as a last-minute twist that felt inconsistent to the rest of the piece. So I'm just going to pretend the last few pages didn't happen and hope whoever makes the movie they oughtta make of this leaves them out.

The Tyson book sounds like it might be frustrating. All the Horses in Iceland sounds like one I might like. Great comments, very enticing.

>38 swynn: That has the virtue of being Black-authored. It's like every story ever told, derivative; but derives from the best story in the genre.

>39 BLBera: I'll be interested in your thoughts if you get around to it, Beth. (It's short, if that is an incentive.)

>40 richardderus: Yes, one of several reasons why I picked it up. And I'd read another from her. Apparently she has written a Warhammer story, but that's a mythology I know nothing about, and I suspect it's not the right entry point.

9) Some Memoirs of the Life of Job : the Son of Solomon the High Priest of Boonda in Africa by Thomas Bluett
Date: 1734

This is an account of "Job," an enslaved man from West Africa, is one of the earliest American slavery narratives and interesting on several points. Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was the son of a West African Muslim cleric. Diallo was captured by rivals ("Mandingoes, who live upon plunder") and sold into the Atlantic slave trade. Before Diallo's father could arrange for his redemption, he was taken to North America, where he enslaved by a Maryland merchant, escaped, then captured and jailed. While in jail, he came to the attention of author Bluett, a British judge in Maryland:

Upon our Talking and making Signs to him, he wrote a Line or two before us, and when he read it, pronounced the Words Allah and Mahommed; by which, and his refusing a Glass of Wine we offered him, we perceived he was a Mahometan, but could not imagine of what Country he was, or how he got thither; for by his affable Carriage, and the easy Composure of his Countenance, we could perceive he was no common Slave.

Bluett and his friends eventually communicate with "Job" through the services of a Wolof-speaking Black man "in the Neighbourhood." With Bluett's assistance, Diallo traveled to England where he became something of a celebrity known for his charm and scholarship, and he was able to raise money to return home. His return home was successful, a sequel not covered in Bluett's book, but which we know from the travel memoir of Francis Moore, a merchant for the Royal African Company of England, published 1738. In his memoir, Moore reports meeting Diallo restored to his family in Africa.

It's a fascinating story, an uncharacteristically fortunate one, and frankly a perplexing one. One suspects Bluett of carefully navigating a political minefield: Diallo's experience of slavery lacks the violence we know of from other slavery narratives. When Diallo first arrives in Maryland he shows no aptitude for physical labor, so his enslaver puts him on light work with ample time to wander the woods and pray, and eventually escape. When Bluett takes up his cause, English gentry treat Diallo as the royalty he is. As slavery narratives go, Diallo seems to be a sort of Mary Sue. My own sympathy for Diallo is complicated by the detail that he was abducted as he was returning home from having sold two men into slavery for his own family's profit. We don't know about, and Bluett/Diallo express no interest in, the fate of the men Diallo enslaved. One gets the impression that for Diallo and Bluett the problem is not slavery itself but that the system incorrectly swallows up humans who are not properly slaves along with (one infers) all those humans who are. This may be unfair -- after all, Diallo's perspective is filtered through Bluett, who is intent on Diallo's story of injustice and for whatever reason does not draw broader conclusions about the institution of slavery. On the other hand, history tells us that this book was used by abolitionists to attack the slavery industry, so there may be a more subtle argument I just dont see. In any case it's an interesting work that doesn't neatly fit into genres I thought I knew.

10) People Like Them by Samira Sedira
Date: 2021

Here's a tight crime novella about a father in rural France who, in a near-inexplicable fit of rage, killed a neighboring family of five. Based on a real case, it's a hard look at the kind of disappointments, jealousies, and resentments that contribute to violence. Not an easy read -- TW for violence against children -- or the kind of thing one "enjoys", but also not easy to set aside or forget.

11) DAW #232: Slave Girl of Gor by John Norman
Date: 1977

The Gor series is basically Barsoom for incels and readers with a particular BDSM kink. I'm not a fan but then I'm not exactly the target audience. Good news is, the next few reads in the DAW project promise to be much better.

>43 swynn: I'll avoid the difficulty of forgetting it by nor encountering it further. *shudder*

>45 richardderus: Yeah. I may have done the same if had understood what I was in for.

12) Mind of my Mind by Octavia Butler
Date: 1977

A body-hopping immortal spends centuries breeding a new psychically gifted and socially stunted master race. But his plan depends on maintaining control of his descendants, and his control is challenged when a daughter matures into an unexpectedly powerful telepath. It's a meditation on power, race, and trauma. It's not always clear to me where Butler is going with it, but I think that's because I want there to be a clear struggle for justice with oppressors on one side and freedom fighters on the other, and here the the freedom-fighting daughter is herself coercive toward the people she needs to achieve her own goals. The dynamics of oppression, it turns out, are more complex than I want them to be, which is not news but an evergreen disillusionment. I understand later books add useful context.

Perry Rhodan 252: Die Welt der Regenerierten = "World of the Regenerated" by William Voltz
Date: 1966

In episode no. 251, the Terrans' flagship CREST III was hijacked by “biosplitters“: cute little aliens that seem perfectly harmless until they hypnotize the crew of your most powerful superbattleship and fly off to their dinosaur-infested home planet with it, leaving you with no choice but to follow and try to get it back. Perry, Atlan, Gucky, and their new friend Kalak follow the CREST III and try to get it back.

>47 swynn: The oppositional capitalist paradigm is seductive. Your childhood was spent deep in its most evil toils, convincing you that there is a Divine Judge making your future Hell unless you...etc etc etc. The need for dichotomies is powerfully reinforced in every way by our cultural roots.

It's insidious, isn't it, that it's even made it into your aesthetics.

>47 swynn: I've wanted to read more by Butler. I loved Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Kindred.

>50 BLBera: Me too, and I'm low-key working my way through them. I was familiar with Kindred, Parable of the Sower, and Dawn, have thought for a long time that I should read more, and am finally fixing that.

Just popping in to wish you a wonderful weekend, Steve.

>52 SirThomas: Thanks Thomas!

13) Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
Date: 2024

I am a late convert to "cozy" fantasy and SF, but I appreciate the things it tries to do. My own tastes were sharpened on plot-driven stories with clear and constant conflict -- I remember reading Becky Chamber's Small Angry Planet and thinking these people were all so insufferably nice. So I just figured cozy F&SF wasn't for me and groused about it occasionally until someone pointed out, in context of my complaining about The House in the Cerulean Sea that people being nice to each other isn't such a bad thing and some readers like to see it represented. Some young readers especially *need* to see it modeled. Well shut me up. That provided a change of perspective. Chambers and Klune still feel to me like they're walking a tightrope close above a saccharine sea but to the extent I'm going to get it, I get it, and I've stopped wishing they were doing something else.

Anyway, I liked the THITCS okay, and even better after the change in perspective. For me, SBTS is a consistent continuation of the story. I'm puzzled by reviews that say "I liked the first but this one feels preachy," because this one is not "preachier" than the first (which in my recollection set a high bar). I suspect that many who liked the developing romance in the first book missed a similar plot here. If anything, I preferred the plot here, of a found family fighting to stay together. In terms of tone and characterization this follow-up is about as faithful as I could have asked for. It made me smile.

14) Unboxing of a Black Girl by Angela Shanté
Date: 2024

This book of poetry was nominated for a National Book Award in the "Young People's Literature" category. The poems explore ways in which Black girls and young women are put in boxes -- sexual, racial, economic, political -- and celebrate refusing the boxes. I'm not much a reader of poetry and this read won't change my habits, but I can't help respect and admiration for the author's open heart, sharp understanding, and skillful phrasing.

“I want to live in a world where Black girls get to be free.“

So do I, poet.

>54 swynn: The Klunes never worked for me, though Chambers series was oddly addictive. I bought them with my very own United States dollars so they're ineligible for review. Niceness isn't always awful to my 34-the-Felonious-Yam trained sensibilities.

15) The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Date: 1950

I picked this one up for a classic-sf group read on another site. I read it repeatedly in Junior high and high school, but it's been maybe thirty years since my last visit. The stories have lost some charm: apart from the issues you'd expect with mid-twentieth-century gender roles, Bradbury's fondness for small-town life is a faith I no longer share. The idea of colonists recreating Mayberry life on Mars now feels more disturbing than nostalgic. On the other hand, the collection's theme of living on the brink of self-annihilation still resonates, and the theme of colonization as rapine resonates even more. "There will come soft rains" still packs a punch and "Mars is heaven"/"The third expedition" still creeps out. I was also intrigued by my response to "And the moon be still as bright": it's a story about a Mars expedition in which one member, "Spender," becomes convinced that humans will ruin Mars and so turns on his own team members. I remember reading Spender as a sympathetic villain but he now strikes me as a hero. So ... a little creakier, but also still rewarding.

>56 richardderus: Even after the perspective change, I can take or leave Chambers' Wayferers series, though I've stopped complaining about it and have even recommended it on occasion. Her "Monk & Robot" series, though, hits a sweet spot for me -- I'm very fond of those guys and hope that she is too, enough to write another.

>58 swynn: I'm pretty confident you will get your wish. The series seems to be very successful in sales terms, and that helps whet authors' interest in a series. Until book thirty, that is...Poirot got on Dame Agatha's nerves something fierce.

75 years of The Martian Chronicles, quite an achievement. Same age as my oldest living sister.

Not seen you around for two months, Steve.

Hope all is well dear fellow.

>60 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul! I'm still around, and mostly okay. Everything's fine except for ... (waves at everything)

I've been spending way too much time doomscrolling and despairing about the rapid disassembly of our handbasket. Not that it helps.

>61 swynn: What can help? Mostly we're confined to making our personal world as much a bastion of good, kind, helpful-to-others stuff as is possible.

>62 richardderus: That sums it up nicely Richard.

>57 swynn: I read this one last year, Steve. I enjoy Bradbury quite a bit.

Hope all is well with you!

>63 RBeffa: It's the only way open to ordinary people to combat this plague of nastiness.

>62 richardderus:
>63 RBeffa:
>65 richardderus:

Hi Richard & Ron! I agree in principle, and in practice still find the worries an irresistible indulgence.

I've also been a bit glib: doomscrolling and despair certainly take time and emotional energy that would be available for something else if only the nation weren't being run off a cliff by a drunk driver trying to blame the passengers. But for balance, I am also enjoying other activities that weren't available when I lived in rural Missouri: I'm becoming more active in a church (put away the holy water, it's a UU congregation with a focus on social justice), have regular weekend outings with my son (we now have a zoo membership, which for some reason carries a different meaning to "we are members of the zoo", but read it how you will), and have started guitar lessons. And I am still reading -- it's just the reflecting & reporting stages that are getting crowded out by other things. Which means that some weekend soon I'll probably dump a bunch of comments all at once -- if I can stay off the damn phone.

>64 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! I was a huge fan of Bradbury when I was younger, and still like his best work very much. For me, he is a model of craftsmanship in a genre that didn't necessarily require it. I read him more critically now, and have soured on some of his favorite themes, but this re-read was a good one.

>66 swynn: Glad to know you're alive and well and deeply gruntled and contented with our country's bigly strategy-genius Dear Leader.

/facetiousness

>68 richardderus: Thanks, Richard. It's ... well, it's 2025. Hope we make it to 2026.

16) DAW#233: The Weird of the White Wolf by Michael Moorcock
Date: 1977, from stories originally published 1961-1969

Third or fourth of the Elric books, depending on what you count and how, it's actually a collection that includes the two earliest Elric stories. This is a darker version of Elric than the first two volumes. He's less relatable here, more volatile and self-destructive, emphasizing the “anti“ in antihero. But for that he's also more interesting.

The Dream of Earl Aubec (1964)
Only a couple of dozen pages, this is pre-history and maybe a sort of creation myth for the Elric saga, a surreal story about a hero who challenges a villain at the edge of reality and wins the ability to extend reality by shaping order from chaos.

The Dreaming City (1961)
This was Moorcock's first Elric story, not to be confused with the first book in the series, Elric of Melniboné, which has sometimes been published as "The Dreaming City" because of course it was. It's the darkest point of the book and also of the series so far, in which Elric's throne and lover have been stolen so he gathers a fleet to attack his home city in hopes of reclaiming the one and rescuing the other. He fails spectacularly.

While the Gods Laugh (1961)
The story goes that Moorcock had intended Elric to be a one-and-done hero, but the readers of "Science Fantasy" magazine responded so well to "The Dreaming City" that the magazine's editor asked him for a sequel. Moorcock delivered this somewhat more formulaic story about Elric and some companions seeking a lost book of the Gods. Elric spends the quest brooding.

The Singing Citadel (1967)
Elric is recruited by a queen to investigate a citadel which is drawing away her subjects by means of hypnotic music.

>70 swynn: Omigawsh, I've actually read this collection! They're all fine, but I wasn't interested in "The Singing Citadel" so sorta-kinda skimmed it. Wow...I'd totally forgotten it until I saw "The Dream of Earl Aubec" which I recall really liking a lot for being so midcentury modern.

Not that I mentally used that term....

>71 richardderus: "Midcentury modern" is not a phrase that occurred to me, probably because I have only the vaguest idea of what it means with reference to architecture and design. What features struck you as midcentury modern?

>72 swynn: Moorcock's midcentury-modern era has...heightened...adjectival choices in visually starkly shadowed spaces; Elric is the decorative center of the stories, like a statement clock above the wood-paneling fireplace in 1959 Prairie-School knockoff tract houses.

I like it, but it dates the stories instantly, like it does me!

Weekend orisons.

>73 richardderus: Ah, yes I can see that. Thanks for the clarification!

17) Plague Ship by Andre Norton
Date: 1956

Second in the author's “Solar Queen“ series, which follows the adventures of an independent trading spaceship. In this one, the Queen's crew deal with claim jumpers and then, en route back home, with a mysterious illness that incapacitates most of the crew. The plot has them defying quarantine regulations in ways that sometimes made me cringe, but the adventure is solid and the pace steady.

18) The Hero of Numbani by Nicky Drayden
Date: 2020

It's a YA adventure set in the universe of the videogame Overwatch. When a super-powered villain threatens her city, a young genius roboticist scrambles to build and train a robot that can fight back. It is very YA: plucky teens, clueless adults, and lessons about friendship and perseverance. Not really my thing and my tepid response reflects that, but it feels like a perfectly fine example of the kind of thing that it is.

19) How We Learn to Be Brave by Mariann Edgar Budde
Date: 2023

Author Budde recently became Internet famous earlier this year when MAGA Jesus and his entourage showed up to an interfaith prayer service she was leading. Displaying more grace than I would ever muster, she adressed the resident directly and requested mercy on behalf of communities terrified that he might do exactly what it turns out he had in mind all along.

But the measured pushback was on brand for Rev. Budde. Back in 2020, she responded to one of his stunts in which he brandished an inverted Bible for a photo-op outside a church in her diocese. This 2023 book is in part a response to conversations around the 2020 event. It's an extended meditation on bravery, what it is, opportunities to exercise it, and how exercising bravery can become a habit. I liked it, and need to exercise its message more.

20) Les Memoires du Comte de Comminge by Madame de Tencin
Date: 1735

The young Count of Comminge and his first cousin accidentally fall in love. Alas, their fathers hate each other because of an old inheritance dispute. Complications ensue: the Count declares his devotion, the parents demand they be separated, the lovers meet in forbidden rendez-vous, they are separated again, and everyone cries buckets and bathtubs of tears at every setback. I understand this was wildly popular in its time and influenced early gothic novels, but to this modern reader the melodrama is a very much of very much.

21) The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Date: 1963

This is a slim book with two essays. The first, "My Dungeon Shook", takes the form of a letter to Baldwin's nephew about realities of race relations in the United States. It's maddening how relevant this still is, and demoralizing how furiously prevailing powers want to claw back what progress we've made. We didn't listen. We're not good at listening. The second essay has to do with race and religion, and features Baldwin's reflections on a conversation with Elijah Muhammad, which are insightful and relentlessly on point.

22) Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz
Date: 2021

Two very different women both arrive in NY on the same day, both escaping difficult relationships with damaged -- and damaging -- men. One woman is a victim of violence soon after her arrival; the other on a morning run finds the body of the first. The dead woman narrates as the survivor deals with trauma and the murder investigation. It's thriller enough thriller to keep you turning pages, but also an exploration of living and dying with misogyny.

23) The Covenant of the Crown by Howard Weinstein
Date: 1981

The Enterprise crew is charged with transporting the king and princess of a planet with rare mineral reserves. The king dies, Kirk goes hunting for the killer, and Spock and McCoy take the princess on a quest to retrieve a crown that will prove her legitimacy as the king's successor. Mixed feelings: there's a lot going on here, too much for its length really. But McCoy gets a spotlight that is not wasted, and the Spock/Bones dynamic feels about right.

24) Remedy by J.S. Brukelaar
Date: 2024

Nat and Jess are two of a handful of people around the world who feel like they are living in the *wrong* world. They remember being snatched out of their own world by a flying shadow monster with sharp claws and teeth, then waking up in scarred bodies in the middle of someone else's life, surrounded by people who tell them that they have just survived a serious accident it's no wonder they feel disoriented. Nat and Jess have adjusted differently but both are desperate for a way to put things back -- but when a stranger offers a remedy, how can they trust it? It's a creepy, deliberately paced, and ruminative story about trauma, family, identity, and monster-things with sharp teary-slashy parts.

25) Book of Doors by Gareth Brown
Date: 2024

It begins as a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a bookstore employee who comes into possession of a magical book that lets her go anywhere in the world by walking through a door. It turns darker when she learns there are other magical books, some owned and used by malicious people. By story's end, it's the kind of twisty plot-driven supernatural thriller where things don't make sense until they do. It's much fun.

26) The Zero Stone by Andre Norton
Date: 1968

This was a re-read for a group. It's an adventure story featuring Murdoc Jern, son of an interplanetary gem merchant with a shady past. When his father is assassinated, Murdoc finds himself shut out of the family business, so he sets out to seek his fortune taking with him his father's most prized item: the zero stone, a mysterious unlovely gem found in interplanetary space. Danger follows everywhere, but alongthe way Murdoc picks up a telepathic cat-creature as traveling companion. Nothing deep but fast-paced and great fun.

Alas, the group was not as entertained as I: most didn't finish and complained of boredom. Sigh.

27) Argren Blue by Ross Hightower and Deb Heim
Date: 2023

High fantasy story about a scrappy bunch of unlikely rebels fighting a colonizing empire. You know the story, so do the authors, and it's a perfectly fine example of it.

28) Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Date: 2016

The subtitle calls this a "definitive history of racist ideas in America", which is a bit broader than its actual project, which is to document the history of anti-Black racist ideas from colonial times forward. It is long, but packed and thorough, and reading took much longer than expected, partly from consuming in manageable chunks and partly from tracking down references. The effort has paid off -- I had several lightbulb moments while reading. Especially enlightening to me was Kendi's classification of racism into segregationist and assimilationist types, which helps to illuminate (for me) ways that rhetoric that seems to be opposed to racism actually can actually be grounded in its own variety. Sobering, challenging, rewarding. I'll seek out more by Kendi but I know I'll also return to this one

29) The Social Life of Books by Abigail Williams
Date: 2017

We think of reading as a solitary activity, but in eighteenth century England, reading was also a social one: families read together in the evening, friends read to one other, and readers formed clubs to read aloud to each other. The publishing industry fed these habits, with profitable trade in genres intended for oral reading: printed plays, sermons, and collections of excerpts from longer works selected for effective (and affective) reading. There was even a flourishing genre of handbooks instructing aspiring readers how to read more naturally. William's study discusses the why, where, who, how, and what of reading in company and it's a fascinating world with very different habits of literary consumption.

30) Uncharted Stars by Andre Norton
Date: 1969

I couldn't read The Zero Stone without also reading its sequel, in which loose ends are tied and questions answered. I like it a little less than the first book, but my loudest complaint is that there isn't a third book.

>84 swynn: "Mark me well, you were a duty child!" Hywel Jern could NOT pick women. The Salarika who knew Hywel that Murdoc and Eet later meet was also a stinker.

Your group didn't like it? Philistines!

Happy weekend-ahead's reads, Steve.

>89 richardderus: Yeah. In fairness, I bounced off every Andre Norton novel I tried until I was in my 20s. I think I probably tried the wrong ones. Goodness knows Norton can petrify a sentence, but The Zero Stone was one of the first where I said, "Oh I get it." Sad that it didn't work the same for others, but the gusty bus is not disputandable.

>90 swynn: Not even when its route terminates in Yokelheim? hmmm

31) Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Date: 2025

Zelu, a disabled Nigerian American with a habit of being her own worst enemy, writes a runaway bestseller about a posthuman world populated by robots. Suddenly Zelu has access to opportunities and technologies that give her freedom she didn't have before. Alternating with chapters about Zelu's development are chapters set among the robots of her novel. There is so much going on here, about family, identity, creativity, celebrity, technology, and the functions of story that I always had at least three different things to be thinking about, and the resolution left me wanting to start again. Enthusiastically recommended.

32) Kindred by Octavia Butler
Date: 1979

A modern Black woman comes unstuck in time, traveling unexpectedly and inexplicably to a plantation in antebellum Maryland. Though she bounces back and forth between the 19th-century American South and 20th-century Los Angeles, each visit becomes increasingly harrowing. It's a hard and uncompromising examination of race relations and Faulkner's dictum that the past is not even past. It was a re-read for me (after about 30 years), but hits even harder on the revisit.

33) DAW #234: Star Courier by A. Bertram Chandler
Date: 1977

John Grimes, exiled from space service after events of The Big Black Mark, starts an interplanetary mail business. His first job involves delivery of a package so sensitive that the local postmistress insists on accompanying him to ensure its safety. All well -- she's a healthy young woman after all -- but Grimes has barely finished seducing her when they are hijacked by bee-people. It's very 1970s, with sexual situations probably intended to be modern that now seem icky and misogynistic instead. We get past that to a serviceable but forgettable escape-and-revenge plot, but still not one of the series' highlights.

34) The Geometry of Love by Margert Visser
Date: 2000

Don't let the title fool you: there's disappointingly little math here. But it's interesting for what it is: Visser discusses a church, Sant'Agnese Fuori la mura near Rome, from as many perspectives as possible, ranging from architecture and art history to theology, hagiography, folklore, and personal response. A bit unfocused for me, but arguably that's the point. Also: I understand the lack of math but why no pictures?

35) The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
Date: 2000

A young magician unhappy with the pace of his lessons works a spell far above his training. Having been recently humiliated by a powerful magician, the student summon a demon to exact revenge. All the characters are dislikable except for the demon a little bit, but it's surprisingly fun.

>95 swynn: disappointingly little math
...it LOOKS like English but conveys no meaning. Imagine lack of math being "disappointing"! It is to laugh. Nay, it is to shriek with laughter.

Re-reading Kindred is something I hope I have the courage to do one day.

Before you Knew My Name and Death of an Author have grabbed my attention. You've managed some great reading lately. How is life in Oklahoma?

>92 swynn: Oooh, I'm glad to see this was one that really resonated with you. Death of the Author has been on my radar, but wasn't sure if/when I wanted to get to it since Okorafor's works can be somewhat hit or miss for me. I'll have to move it up the list.

>93 swynn: I haven't gotten to Kindred yet. I started with Parable of the Sower and do want to read the rest of Butler's works, though.

>96 swynn: I found these books really fun. Hope you continue to enjoy it if you read the rest of the trilogy.

>97 richardderus: There goes the gusty bus again. My comment is of course tongue in cheek but not entirely. I've had this on Kindle for a very long time and have no recollection of why I picked it up. (My order history says it was on sale for $1.99, but surely that's not the only explanation.) My best guess is that the title led me to believe there was some discussion of sacred geometry, which lies at the intersection of my interests in mathematics and history of religion. And ... there's not much. The author is interested in many things (one sympathizes), but math doesn't rank among them. So strange as it sounds, the disappointment was real.

>98 BLBera: Hi Beth! Oklahoma was the right move for us. I like Tulsa better this time around, now that I know what I was missing: the arts community, live music, liberal religion, and a population big enough to find your people. I think I'm gonna like it here. Amie connects with her family daily; last month we attended her niece's high school graduation, which was a joy. And my son and I are finding ways to spend time together out of the house, which was sometimes a challenge in rural Missouri. Hope you like the Okorafor and the Bublitz of you get around to them!

>99 bell7: Hi Mary! I know what you mean about Okorafor, though I have no idea whether our hits and misses are the same: I liked Who Fears Death, but Binti didn't sit well with me, even though I know others have loved it. So far, Death of the Author is my favorite.

I'm slowly working my way through Butler's oeuvre, and Kindred is easily the best so far. I haven't gotten yet to Parable of the Sower, though based in its reputation I'm looking forward to it.

I'll probably continue the Bartimaeus series, it's just a matter of getting my hands on the next volume.

>100 swynn: It's a very sad day when you're disappointed by a story. I'm pretty much against equations in my reading material, so I'd never make it a thing to look for as tolerance for *shudder*algebra*shudder* is low in my entire life.

So glad Tulsa is working out for y'all! I hope it stays welcoming and homelike.

I've added Death of the Author to my TBR.
I just read Kindred for the first time last year and it was harrowing. I haven't read anything else by Butler yet but certainly plan too.

>104 Deedledee: Hope you like Death of the Author, Dee!

On your Butler plans: oh, you have so much to look forward to!

36) The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Date: 2017

This was an audiobook for a long drive, and served nicely. It's an historical novel with dual timelines, one featuring a woman spy in WWI, and the other a young socialite searching for a friend lost in WWII. It's a nice combination of suspense and exploration of womens' evolving roles in society. I'd read another by the author.

37) Who Owns Objects? (edited by Eleanor Robson, Luke Treadwell, and Christopher Gosden
Date: 2006

Here is a collection of essays addressing issues of ownership and trade in cultural objects. Most of the conversations are in the context of the looting and illegal trade in Iraqi antiquities that flourished following the 2003 invasion. In that context there was widespread interest in drafting legislation to control the antiquities market. It turns out that it is very difficult to construct laws that discourage black or grey market trade without also placing objectionable burdens on legal trade. It is, on the other hand, pretty easy to write laws that sound Very Serious while also creating unintended incentives for the very activity the laws intend to prevent. Connected with that conversation are questions about cultural sensitivity and appropriation, suspicious provenance of many objects in museum collections, and the ethics of repatriation of cultural artefacts. Authors are museum professionals, dealers, a collector and an archaeologist, so multiple perspectives are represented and all are well stated. The context is a little dated, and the content is a little nerdy, but if you happen to be a library nerd then there is much here to ponder.

38) Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Date: 2025

It's a supernatural thriller set in a maternity home for pregnant teenagers in the 1970s. Forced by circumstances into a place where they have no control over their own lives or bodies, some of the girls are drawn to a darker path. And however unbearable the demands of the patriarchy, the alternative also demands more than some are willing to give. It moves right along, delivers the promised suspense, and wraps nicely. Recommended.

39) Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga
Date: 2020

It's a collection of five stories set in and around the Rwandan genocide. It's a gut-wrenching theme, Mukasonga's prose is graceful and restrained, and the stories will break your heart. The last story, "Grief," broke mine with its focus on a woman who attends funerals of strangers to compensate for being denied the chance to acknowledge losing her own family. I found it hard to take more than one or two at a time, but this is what stories are for.

40) Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water by Vylar Kaftan
Date: 2019

A telepath and her partner are trapped in the caves of a prison planet. She doesn't remember what she did to get there; her partner says it was mass murder, but she has no recollection -- and then she senses the presence of another person who may have a different explanation. It's fine, though it dwells more on relationship drama than I prefer. Others have loved it and I'm sure they're right.

41) Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson
Date: 1984

Three interconnected novellas about a failed revolution on Mars and what happens after, set in the 23rd-27th centuries. The "icehenge" of the title is a megalithic structure on Pluto, which may have been constructed by Martian rebels, or maybe by ancient aliens, or by more recent aliens, or maybe something else. I quite liked the premise and the epistemological themes, but found it difficult to engage with the story.

42) Nightmare King by Daka Hermon
Date: 2023

It's a middle-grades supernatural thriller about a basketball player who is recovering from a serious accident while dealing with a monster from his nightmares. I'm not the target audience, but it's fun for what it is.

I didn't know it when I picked it up from the library (great cover, no?) but it's the second in a series, after Hide and Seeker. I probably won't continue but if it looks interesting I recommend starting with the first book.

43) The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. Van Vogt
44) The Weapon Makers by A.E. Van Vogt

(TWSOI 1951, mashed up from stories originally published 1941-1949)
(TWM 1947)

I remember reading this in sixth or seventh grade, and remember liking it pretty well though the thing that stuck most with me was the idea of a secret store that could appear anywhere or anywhen and be particular about who it let through its doors. I've been thinking for years about revisiting, but put it off because I also remembered a libertarian/gun-rights theme that I'd now find ... irksome, let's say. So when it came up in a sf group read, I looked forward to it with interest and hesitation. And ...

... it's not bad. The libertarian stuff is there, but what strikes me more this time is its balance with the idea of a stable government. That a strong central authority is tempered -- and sometimes held in check -- by second-amendment libertarianism, but Van Vogt is just as enthusiastic about (and as suspicious of ) the central government as he is about its loyal opposition. This dualism especially comes out in the sequel, where the hero finds himself targeted by government and freedom fighters alike.

But I also feel like expressing it that way gives the texts credit for a philosophical weight they just can't bear. Van Vogt isn't able to keep his attention on political philosophy or anything else really for very long. For me, The Weapon Shops is peak Van Vogt: so packed with ideas it can't be bothered with things like consistency, craft or common sense: a hot mess that tips “hot“ enough to be enjoyable still, and it's hard to stay irked for long at something so bonkers. The Weapon Makers is more controlled -- after all, it was originally conceived as a novel instead of stitched together from different stories -- but only in comparison to TWS. It also struggles to stay on track.

>113 swynn: I think I read these first in ~1972. I remember nothing except disliking them at this distance in time, and doing so with sufficient fervor never to've read another van Vogt. I can understand why, rewarding your assessment!

>114 richardderus: VV's writing hasn't aged well, but then it was never all that good even in its youth. The appeal of VV (for me anyway) is the high-pressure stream of ideas he can sometimes open wide. Everything else -- prose, characters, structure, continuity -- peaks at good enough. For me, the Isher books hit that peak, so I expect that if you didn't like the Isher stories it's unlikely that some other VV book would improve your opinion.

>115 swynn: I suspect I was reading SF for other kinds of ideas and didn't see these stories as possessing them, as it's always been a pretty hit-or-miss proposition to rely on the genre for top-flight characterization.

We change as readers All our lives long while forgetting that writers do the same. The Culture℠ shifts and most who endure shift with it. A few lead it. Van Vogt was not (and didn't seem to aspire to be) one of those.

45) Die beliebtesten Märchen von Wilhelm Hauff (= "The Best-Loved Fairy Tales of Wilhelm Hauff")

Looks like LT doesn't have this collection exactly. Not surprising, since it's a low-cost electronic edition of works now in the public domain. But there are other collections of his works in LT Here's the one that goes with the lovely cover above.

The story goes that after graduating University, Hauff became a tutor to a baron's children for whose entertainment he wrote fairy tales. From 1826 to 1828, he published annual collections of fairy tales, chiefly his own but including works of other authors to fill a volume. Each collection has a Canterbury-Tales-ish frame story in which a collection of characters each tells a fairy tale. This collection includes Hauff's stories from the "Fairy Tale Almanacs," including the frame stories. They are of their time: orientalist and antisemitic stereotypes are thick. But when Hauff keeps his settings and characters to his own Black Forest, the stories are charming. My favorite is “The Cold Heart,“ in which a young man makes foolish bargains with spirits of the forest in hope of riches.

46) Listen to your Sister / Neena Viel

(2025) Here's one of the better horror stories I've read in a while, about a sister and two brothers in a difficult family situation. When one brother gets into trouble with the law, they escape to a cabin in the woods where family history, present reality, and the sister's nightmares blur together. It's a suspenseful, surreal, and very smart story about family trust and family trauma.

47) Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke / Eric LaRocca
Date: 2021

Two young women develop a weird codependent relationship when one proposes that the other demonstrate her love by slavishly obeying her every order, and the orders become increasingly destructive. Others have loved it, but my response was more complicated. It wants to explore desire and power in a toxic relationship, but to me it felt more like an exercise in gross-out cruelty.

48) The Great Passage / Shion Miura
Date: 2011, English translation 2017

This was a delight. It's an understated story about the relationships and preoccupations of a publishing team as they prepare a new dictionary. The project is ambitious, and complicated by business realities: new dictionaries are risky and the team must spend most of their time preparing new editions of existing dictionaries for which the demand is known. But the editor has a vision for a new sort of dictionary and devotes what resources he can to it. Caught up in his project are a quirky cast of characters uniquely suited to it: people sensitive to words and their nuances. The pace is leisurely, with detours into the fine differences in meaning between slightly different words -- and although the words are Japanese, the shades of meaning are universal. I can't imagine a word nerd finding this anything less than charming, regardless of their native language. Recommended.

>120 swynn: There's something universal about a love for words and language that I really enjoyed about this one as well.

>121 bell7: Yes. I'd love an entire genre of books with this aesthetic.

49) Despatches / Lee Murray
(2023)

Cosmic horror at Gallipoli, mostly told through dispatches from an embedded journalist, all tangled up with ponderings about truth-telling, secrets, and information control. The horror works, and the themes speak to my own information-science preoccupations.

50) Autocracy, Inc. / Anne Applebaum
(2024)

This is a very scary account of how autocratic governments around the world work together to stifle dissent and promote antidemocratic movements worldwide. It's not just Trump -- in fact, I'm increasingly convinced that Trump is little more than a tool for forces much smarter, much more dangerous, and (damn it) much younger than he is.

>124 swynn: This sounds scary. I suppose I should read it...It is scary right now. It seems like there is no rule of law anymore.

>124 swynn: He is not the problem. The problem is much, much deeper. It's been going on in the background while we were being distracted by a useful idiot.

The issue is not politics, it's tech scum, and they're untouchable.

>126 richardderus: Tech scum and rich reptiles. And the next election almost certainly won't reach the core of the problem even in the best case.

>127 swynn: Distinction without difference, my friend. No election can touch the core of the problem facing the world. They are, of necessity, part of The System℠.

51) Wild Seed / Octavia Butler
Date: 1980

On an equally depressing note I give you Wild Seed. It tells the relationship between two superpowered characters: Doro, who can jump from one body to another, killing his target's personality when he arrives and their body when he leaves; and Anyanwu, who has a gift for healing and doesn't seem to age. Both Doro and Anyanwu are immortal, though Doro maintains his existence through killing others and Anyanwu hers through healing. Both Doro and Anyanwu accumulate followers, though Doro does so through violence and demanding allegiance; while Anyanwu builds her community through mutual care and support. They meet in Africa during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, and follow one another into contemporary times, sometimes lovers sometimes enemies but always with an inseparable connection/codependence. Doro has a vision of creating a new, more powerful, race of humans by breeding and interbreeding other superpowered humans; but he regards others as disposable objects for building his dream. Anyanwu can see his brokenness, but cannot fix him nor can she always protect the people she cares for from his destructive plans. It's a hard read: the story is not satisfying in any conventional way, and the resolution is anything but resolving. But the questions it poses about power are as unignorable as they are uncomfortable.

52) How to Survive a Horror Movie / Seth Grahame-Smith
Date: 2019

This isn't the book I thought it was -- I'd intended to pick up Craig Dilouie's How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive -- but it's pretty fun for what it is. It's a humorous love letter to horror films in the form of a handbook for readers who think they might be in a horror movie, with guidance on whether deciding you are in a horror movie, what sort of movie you might be in, and what to do in case you are. It's a simultaneous criticism and celebration of horror-movie tropes and cliches and I expect that it would appeal most to horror fans -- not so much that others won't get the joke but that they'll find it wears out very fast. But I dug it, and if you enjoyed the Scream series for its meta commentary, or Cabin in the Woods for any reason at all then you may like this one too.

53) Black Beauty / Anna Sewell
Date: 1877

I think this was my first time through Black Beauty in its entirety, though I do remember reading adaptations and excerpts when I was younger. What I would not have appreciated at that age was its revolutionary sympathy for the emotional life of animals and its rhetorical place in a nascent animal rights movement. I understand this was one of the first books to use first-person perspective of an animal viewpoint, and that choice is brilliant for Sewell's project. It won't be among my favorites -- too plotless and polemic and I'm probably just too old -- but I admire Sewell's aim and, considering how her contemporaries wrote, her clean efficient prose. I get why it's a classic.

Excellent reviews, Steve. I'm contemplating adding The Great Passage to the list, so thanks for putting it on my radar.

>132 MickyFine: Thanks MIcky! I think you'll like The Great Passage if you get to it.

54) Lamekis / Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy
Date: 1738, English translation 2011

Charles de Fieux was a soldier, journalist, and novelist. At one time he was an employee of Voltaire's, hired (among other things) to applaud at perfomances of Voltaire's plays. His bio introduced me to the term "claqueur" which was, I guess, a Thing. As a novelist, Fieux wrote fast and voluminously and if Lamekis serves as an example, with a strong impression of making things up only a few words ahead of his pen. He has been largely ignored in the English market: despite its interesting qualities, Lamekis was first translated into English in 2011, for Black Coat Press's series of classic French science fiction. Lamekis has been called the first "hollow Earth" novel, but that seems a stretch to me: much of the action is set in a large subterranean world, but I don't see any kind of grand geographical premise as in Journey to the Center of the Earth.

The plot is baroque, and has the 18th-century habit of launching subplots that don't so much supplement the central plot as temporarily replace it. We open in ancient Egypt with the story of Lamekis père, a high priest of "the god whom they worship in Egypt," and an intermediary between Queen Semiramis and the vast underground city where religious ceremonies are performed. When Semiramis falls in love with him, Lamekis flees with his family through the underground city, which Semiramis floods in revenge. Escaping to sea in a small craft, Lamekis and family endure thirst and starvation until they wash up on the shore of an unknown land. At this point, the focus shifts briefly to Lamekis fils, who is rescued by a stranger who tells Lamekis (Jr.) that he alone has survived. The narrative then centers on this stranger, Motacoa, and his backstory which involves love, jealously, betrayal and banishment to another vast underground world. And so on it goes, with sudden shifts in characters, plots, and worlds, including an aerial world of sylphs where characters are offered a purification ritual that requires being tortured to death, and an underground civilization of warmongering worm-people. Perhaps most interesting to modern metafictional interests, there is an interlude in which the author himself appears on stage, and meets with several characters who complain that he has misrepresented their stories. (He is also offered the purification ritual, which he declines.)

If de Fieux's intent is just to keep stuff happening then he succeeds marvelously, and for much of the story I loved its imaginative exuberance. But the lack of continuity and narrative development also becomes wearing over time. As the end approaches and de Fieux attempts to weave his many story threads into a single fabric, it's too late to make sense of it all. The overall impression is a hot surreal mess of great ideas in severe need of craftsmanship. Still, as a hot mess ... it's pretty hot. More fun than not.

Just a quick note: 64 years ago today (1961/09/08), the first issue of the Perry Rhodan series was published.
Have a wonderful day, Steve.

>135 SirThomas: Thanks for the note, Thomas!

Happy birthday, Perry Rhodan!

>136 swynn: ...I'm older than Perry Rhodan...*broken sobbing*

>137 richardderus: Only in real years. The latest episodes take place in a calendar that works out to 5836 CE, so Perry is about 3,900 years old now.

55) Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
Date: 1953

Here's one I didn't read when I was a kid, and don't know why it took so long to get around to it. Maybe it's just as well I didn't read it sooner, because I think younger-me may have struggled to engage with the very loose plot, flat characters, and wooden dialog. OTOH maybe I would have loved the big-picture speculation about humanity's nature, future, and our place in the universe(s?). I'll never know, but now-me found it a rewarding.

56) Adventures of Eovaai, princess of Ijaveo by Eliza Haywood
Date: 1736

Set in a time before the world was remade for Adam's arrival, this is the story of a princess who is raised by her father to rule to kingdom of Ijaveo when he passes. But Eovaai is deceived by an evil counselor who uses magic to disguise himself and his intentions, and so she loses her kingdom and very nearly her Virtue. It's a strange book that lurches from utopian treatise to Arabian Nights pastiche to amatory-fiction shenanigans, with occasional flashes of brilliance and humor (both intentional and un-) and a generous serving of WTF?!?

57) The Prometheus Design by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
Date: 1982)

The Enterprise investigates an epidemic of irrational violence on the planet Helvan. An away team including Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beams down to them planet, but during their visit Kirk disappears. Eventually he is recovered, but with no memory of what happened and with heightened hostile emotions. A visiting high-ranking Vulcan Starfleet officer determines that Kirk may be compromised and therefore puts Spock in command of the Enterprise. Also -- and this is where the plot jumps the shark -- despite concerns about Kirk's mental state, he is given Spock's role of First Officer because .... well, because the authors really wanted a story about Kirk and Spock trading places I guess. I'm not sure whether the trading-places gimmick was intended for dramatic contrast or erotic tension, but the effect is mostly intense cringe: Captain Spock turns into a tyrant and Kirk turns into a toddler learning the boundaries of “no.“ Why the visiting officer didn't just stop the Enterprise right there by the side of the road and turn off the engine and air conditioning and move not another inch until the kids can stop pestering each other and keep their hands to themselves is a mystery I could not solve.

>138 swynn: The way I feel right now I'm not giving log odds that I'm not that old, too, at least psychically.

>142 richardderus: I recognize the feeling. This last week has been a tough year.

>143 swynn: Absoblinkinlutely.

I don't know if there is a list of the things you least want to see when you step out of the library for lunch, but "Yet another sign of the ongoing apocalypse" has to rank up there somewhere:

>145 swynn: IJBOL

That was unexpected, I'm sure, and a wee bit...unnerving....

58) The Brides of High Hill / Nghi Vo
Date: 2024

Fifth in the author's series about the wandering cleric and folklorist Chih. In this one, Chih accompanies a young woman and her family as they travel to the country estate of Lord Guo, who is to be the young woman's future husband. But Guo has secrets: his previous wives have met mysterious fates, a mad son, and rumors of supernatural goings-on. This is a nice addition to the stories, with the trademark thoughts on stories and how they work, and a nicely executed resolution. Looking forward to the next.

59) Mechanical Failure / Joe Zieja
Date: 2016

After 200 years of peace, the Space Navy has become more of a social club than a fighting force. Ex-Sergeant Roger Rogers has done his time in the service thank you very much, and now prefers more profitable activities that are not in polite terms exactly legal. When his latest scam goes bust, Rogers is forced to reenlist. He expects hours of unprofitable time-wasting, and indeed the ship's discipline and effectiveness has only gotten worse. But when an actual crisis looms, Rogers discovers that he'll have to take his job seriously if he ever expects to return to shady capitalism (but I repeat myself). The comedy is a little broad for my taste--too many body-function jokes--but the satire of bureaucracy is frequently sharp. There are two more in the series, but I think I probably won't continue.

>145 swynn: I'm not sure whether to be terrified or delighted. Did you meet the driver?

>149 bell7: The answer of course is both: delight and (mock) terror. (Really, Steve, you're just pretending. Just pretending. Just ...)

Unfortunately I did not meet the driver, and have no idea about the purpose of its visit. Probably to show it off to someone(s) on campus -- goodness knows I would of it were mine. Although me, I'd be strongly disinclined to leave it unattended ...

>150 swynn: Oh, update. It turns out that the Ghostmobile was on campus for a student film. A coworker told me they saw three student actors in ghostbusting gear running from the library to the car, or the other way around. Too bad I missed that.

>151 swynn: oh how fun! Will you get to see the final product or is it for a class? Very creative, in any case!

No idea, but I plan to ask coworkers for updates!

60) Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in her Head by Warsan Shire
Date: 2022

Sharp poems on hard subjects, by a Somali-British poet. These poems touch on the refugee experience, domestic violence, and complicated family relationships. They will break your heart.

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. The boy you went to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body. You only leave home when home won't let you stay.

61) The Starless Crown by James Rollins
Date: 2021

Book one of an epic high-fantasy/dying-earth series, set on a tidally-locked world, maybe a distant future Earth, whose single moon is falling out of orbit and soon will fall into the planet. A motley band of heroes sets out to avert this catastrophe, as happens in this sort of story. It's a sort that appeals to me, and this hit the right notes well enough that I wanted to continue.

62) The Darkness Below by Barbara Cottrell
Date: 2023

First in a Lovecraftian dark urban fantasy series featuring a professor and a student at Miskatonic University. In this one they battle Chthonians, with a showdown in an abandoned mine; and face their own pasts, with drama to be played out as the series develops. Mixed feelings: the story is fine, but I'm not comfortable with the blossoming student-teacher romance. That, and nitpicky copy-editing gripes, mean I probably won't continue.

63) Gesucht wird Psychonaut (= "In Search of Psychonaut") by Alec Brändle
Date: 1971

Space detective Ralf “Psychonaut“ Burkard goes missing while investigating a murder. Burkard's friend and wannabe-detective Fred Wieler sets out to answer the open questions: what happened to Burkard? Where is his body? And who committed the murder he was investigating? Forgettable but just fine and pleasantly short.

64) Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Date: 1740

Fifteen-year-old Pamela is a servant who is pressured by her employer, Mr. B---, for sexual favors. When Pamela refuses, Mr. B. kidnaps, assaults and almost rapes her. When all else fails Mr. B. proposes marriage, which Pamela accepts. Overnight Mr. B. goes from the horriblest monstrousest master to the bestest husbandest master ever and they live happily et cetera. The transition from peril to bliss is as jarring and unsatisfying as the distance between servant and spouse is negligible, but it found an enthusiastic audience in 1740. Pamela was ridiculously popular, and inspired controversy, unauthorized sequels, criticism and satires, a couple of which I hope to read soon.

Reading it today is complicated, in the way that watching Birth of a Nation is complicated: you recognize the work's importance in the history of its genre, and you even find yourself occasionally drawn in by its technique, even as you find the entire project objectionable. For myself, I was surprised at how engaging I found the first half, through which Pamela'a autonomy (such as it is) is increasingly threatened. Pamela's obsession with virtue and dread of ruination doesn't resonate the way it must have used to do, but the drama still works as a dynamic of compulsion and consent. Other things don't work as well: Pamela is exasperatingly twee, and the villain-turned-protoromantic-hero deserves a prison sentence not a happily-ever-after. The dramatic tension mostly disappears about halfway through, when Pamela accept's Mr. B.'s proposal of marriage, which is also when the social moralizing and relationship advice takes off -- which is cringey but also fascinating in the way of a train derailment. On balance, I didn't find it the tedious slog I had expected, though I expect the magic of very low expectations was at work.

>145 swynn: That is hilarious.

>158 swynn: You are very generous. I did find it a tedious slog although there were funny parts.

>155 swynn: I'd entirely missed this news! Glad to see Rollins branching out genre-wise.

>158 swynn: On balance, I didn't find it the tedious slog I had expected

...better man than I, you...

I expect the magic of very low expectations was at work.

I could not set my expectations any lower. It might also have something to do with my hearing "Mr. B---" being addressed in Shirley Booth's voice (she played a maid to a man she called that) from the sitcom Hazel from my youth. Hard to take anything seriously after that got lodged in my head.

Wonderful week-ahead's reads!

I got this interesting post from Joyce Chng on Strange Horizons this morning: Rebooting The Future: On Perry Rhodan, Perry Rhodan NEO, and Two Plots Alike in Dignity

https://wordpress.com/reader/blogs/118787414/posts/54107

>145 swynn: Ha! The library scene in the original movie is my favorite! "Listen...do you smell something?"

>158 swynn:
I didn't find it the tedious slog I had expected, though I expect the magic of very low expectations was at work.

Same.

>159 BLBera: "Funny" in an unintentional way, yes? Because it felt so *earnest* to me.

>160 richardderus: I'm two (of so far three) books in now and enjoying it. I stumbled across it at my local library, thinking that three books meant it was finished. But no, a fourth is planned, fortunately scheduled for March 2026 so the wait won't be long, as long as Rollins doesn't do a Martin/Rothfuss/Gerrold .... I haven't read his other work. What would you recommend other than this?

>161 richardderus: I had to look up Hazel. Fortunately there are episodes available on YouTube. And yeah, I can see how her "Mr B" would persist.

>162 richardderus: >162 richardderus: Thanks for that link! I haven't read the NEO series, but author Tam's description matches my understanding of what it tries to do: tell a very similar backstory but with more contemporary sensibilities.

I have quibbles with her strategy of saying that NEO is more like Star Trek than "classic" Perry Rhodan. I think the comparison works fine for the point she wants to make, but also hides the evolution of the Star Trek franchise. True, Star Trek never imagined the Federation as a utopia ruled by a benevolent dictator the way Perry Rhodan does. And yes, that is significant. But Star Trek has also frequently failed to live up to its best intentions, often in ways parallel to early "classic" Perry Rhodan. I think "classic" Perry Rhodan is more like ST:TOS than ST:TOS is like ST:Picard or -- I say without having yet read NEO -- like PR:NEO. And the stories of how both franchises got from where they began to where they are now, would be fascinating reading.

>163 scaifea: It was such a nice surprise. BTW, if you're tempted to move on to Pamela in Her Exalted Condition, I'll warn you that so far it's meeting my low expectations. I don't know whether I'll finish.

65) Authors and Owners by Mark Rose
Date: 1993

This is a short but dense discussion of how the early 18th century gave us ideas about authorship and intellectual property that are foundational to IP laws today, even as the media landscape makes these ideas increasingly complicated. Prior to the 18th century, ideas about rights to printing and distribution were various: sometimes a government would give a printer express permission to publish a work, and punish anyone who violated the law. But mostly, and specifically in England, "rights" were maintained and enforced within the industry itself: London printers kept lists of who printed what and mostly respected each other's claimed territory. But there was no formal legal enforcement, and Scottish printers were notorious for printing cheaper copies of popular works. In any case, the system primarily benefited printers while authors were generally paid a flat fee at the first printing and not paid again no matter who did the printing. Very few writers made a living through writing alone and those who did, did it by writing a hell of a lot. Then, in the mid-18th century a series of lawsuits spelled out the legal theory for copyright law. Rose's account is academic and not exactly riveting: I had to take it a few pages at a time, sometimes pausing to track down a citation or to ask Wikipedia about things the author assumed I already knew. But the story is fascinating, and its closing chapter points out some places where the premises of copyright law don't really apply well to modern disputes. And this was pre-Internet Archive, never mind artificial intelligence. An update would be interesting, but also beside the point: author Rose's purpose is to describe the birth of copyright in the Enlightenment, and at that he excels.

>166 swynn: Ooof, I think I'll give it a hard pass, then.

>164 swynn: I read All his Sigma Force books while locked up during the collapse...I don't think the five first books are necessarily super good but of those, I'd say start with #2: Map of Bones. But don't buy any until you know if you're into the Reacher-meets-Mission Impossible vibe. They were exactly what I needed then. Like the Aunt Bessie mystery books, they have just enough real substance and just enough fluff for certain times.

Shirley Booth was a trip in that show.

>165 swynn: The Strange Horizons newsletter is one I rely on as much as Reactor.com for my deep-enough analyses.

I can see, based on your examples and what the article says, what you mean about PR vs PR:NEO and ST and sequels not mapping neatly onto each other. It's a study for some PhD to make regarding the fears of the times.

>169 richardderus: So much external criticism of Perry Rhodan focuses on the very early stories, rarely going past the first 100 episodes. Which to be fair is already a lot: 10,000-ish pages, and unless you read German you can't go much farther anyway, so I won't blame anyone for stopping. But I think it's worth noting that the Terran empire collapses at the close of the "Second Empire" story cycle (episodes 150-199), leading to some reflection on the ethics of empires and their life cycles. Through the "Masters of the Island" story cycle (episodes 200-299), Perry and Atlan have a recurring conversation about the differences between the Terran style of expansion (with a preference for diplomacy) and the Arkonide style (which prefers military coersion). There is very little reflection yet about the ethics of expansion itself -- probably because it never occurred to the authors that maybe we shouldn't. Of course, PR is an action series where all pondering takes a back seat to explosions, so I don't want to exaggerate the importance of these themes. But PR's politics are more complicated than the impression you get from the first hundred episodes.

>170 swynn: It started when I was a year old, I think we cut the authors some slack for being products of their time...and now we have NEO, so our great-grands will have PR to tut over for its foolishness about {thing}. I have confidence in The Formula℠.

>171 richardderus: Agreed.

66) Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
Date: 2022

A space crew working their last mission on the edge of developed space pick up a distress signal an unknown craft. Investigating, they discover a derelict luxury spaceliner that disappeared without explanation a generation ago. The crew decides to salvage the ghost ship, perhaps because none of them has ever seen a single horror movie, ever. For readers who *have* seen a horror movie or two, what happens next is no surprise but a welcome formula. The pace is good and there's enough novelty to keep things interesting. I'll read more Barnes.

67) Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
Date: 2025

Facebook, ugh.

This is a memoir by a former director of public policy at Facebook. The leadership and corporate culture she describes is even worse than you'd expect, even if you dislike Facebook as much as I do. The only thing that doesn't ring quite true is the author's pose of persistent idealism even while collaborating with awful people on their awful goals. Still, I'm grateful for the story and hope the telling helps her conscience.

68) Immemorial by Lauren Markham
Date: 2025

The author gazes on Arctic and mountain ice that she knows will be gone in a few short years, and longs for a word to describe her sense of loss over something that is not lost yet, a word for the urge to memorialize a climate that is not yet only a memory. From this departure point she muses about memory, memorials, monuments, language, responsibility, and the climate crisis. I recognize her feelings, and am grateful for her voicing them

69) Time Traders by Andre Norton
Date: 1958

Ross Murdock is a young man fallen on the wrong side of the law, and his latest offense leaves him with a choice: he can go to a rehabilitation program -- details of which are vague but scary -- or volunteer for a secret government project that has specifically requested Ross's recruitment. The choice is as much as no choice at all, and soon Ross finds himself transported to a prehistoric arctic wilderness, attached to a team of agents (scientists?) (adventurers?) (foot soldiers?) of the free world deep in the middle of a cold war against Soviet Russia over alien technology, in which preliterate human tribes are being used as pawns. Despite the Soviets-versus-free-world setup, there's very little reflection on politics or other abstractions. It's plot-driven, undemanding, and fun.

>174 swynn: I hope it assuages her guilt, too, but culpable in the US we find ourselves within, she definitely is and always will be.

>175 swynn: One I...enjoyed, no, appreciated! appreciated as well.

>176 swynn: I always wonder what Miss Norton would make of felonious yam.

Good weekend, Steve!

>173 swynn: The crew decides to salvage the ghost ship, perhaps because none of them has ever seen a single horror movie, ever. *SNORK!*

Adding that one to the list.

>177 richardderus: Facebook looks increasingly ugly to me, and SWW certainly does not extricate herself from sharing responsibility for its faults the way she hopes.

>178 scaifea: Hope you like it!

70) Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick
Date: 1969

Joe Fernwright is a pot-healer -- which sounds like something countercultural but just means that he repairs pottery in a way that removes all evidence that the pottery had ever been broken -- in a future world where most pots worth healing have been healed already. His business wanes while inflation skyrockets and Joe wonders whether his skills will ever be needed. Then Joe is recruited by the Glimmung, a near-godlike being, to join a project on a distant planet. The Glimmung wants to raise a sunken cathedral and expects to find many broken pots inside: hence the job offer. Shortly after Joe arrives on the planet, Joe learns that not all is as the Glimmung represented It's a strange, surreal story, rich with literary and musical allusions (many of which were lost on me), that riffs on themes of transformation and imperfect information. It's fascinating and sometimes bewildering, in the way of an alchemical allegory.

71) Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
Date: 2012

Second in the urban fantasy/romance series about a witch who stumbles across an old manuscript containing a secret about the origins of magical beings, and the vampire she falls in love with. In this one, Diana and Matthew travel to 16th century London in an attempt to trace the manuscript's origins, to explore Matthew's origins, and to play in the sandbox of the author, who is a historian by profession. The first in the series was a mild pick several years ago, but didn't continue into the second book right away. Turns out I forgot much of the plot of book 1, so thank goodness for the television adaptation on Netflix for prodding my memory. This one was *really* not my thing (too romancey, too little forward momentum) but I did finish. I do have the third also unread, but am taking a breather -- probably one just long enough to forget what's going on. Again.

72) Giant Thief by David Tallerman
Date: 2012

First in a light high-fantasy series featuring thief Easie Damasco. In this one Easie finds himself impressed into a warlord's army, from which he escapes by stealing the warlord's battle-giant. It's fine, though Easie comes off neither as a trickster nor as a rogue with a heart of gold but more as an asshole who thinks his sense of humor redeems him -- which might have worked better if he were as funny as he thinks he is.

73) Crown Thief by David Tallerman
Date: 2012

Second in Tallerman's humorous high-fantasy series featuring thief Easie Damasco. My response to the first was lukewarm, but the second was already on my Kindle so ...

This one follows on the heels of the first: Easie and (friends? Nah, let's call them) associates return from the giant's homeland, carrying a crown which came into their possession during previous adventures. Though the war is over, the political maneuverings continue and Easie has to deal with assassins, insurrection, and the personal animosity of a King. I'm not sure whether Tallerman's storytelling improved, or my mood matched the product, or (most likely) it's just the magic of realistic expectations, but I found this one more engaging.

>183 swynn: Lots of us appear to be tidying up our unreads these days. I wonder if it's something in the zeitgeist or if it's just everyone I know is getting on in years....

>184 richardderus: Oh, that's interesting. I confess I haven't noticed the trend, but I certainly have been more conscientious about picking up my long-unread ebooks. I'm also thinking of how to attack my long-unread paperback collection with an eye to reduction, which hasn't been a concern for me until very recently. I hadn't noticed others doing it more than usual, so that's interesting. On my part, awareness of mortality is part of it, which is almost certainly connected to grim feelings in the Zeitgeist, so I wonder if others are feeling it too.

>185 swynn: I suspect none of us would be pay *that* much attention to mortality were it not for *gestures* Things As They Are.

I see it also on my Goodreads friend roster, so my sample size is more than just the 75ers. Maybe that's why it smacked me.

>181 swynn: I remember liking The Discovery of Witches, so I picked up the second, but could hardly get through it. I ended my reading there. I think there are four or five now? I'll let you read them and I will look for your comments. :)

>187 BLBera: :). Five now, with a sixth forthcoming. (Yay for series finding their audience!) I don't know when I'll get to the third, but if & when I do that will probably be the last of them for me, because that's all I have on Kindle and no strong desire to seek out more.

74) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
Date: 2010

I ear-read this one on a long car ride. It's number 6 in Penny's Three Pines/Inspector Gamache series, and I probably should have "read" it sooner because episode 5 left me peeved. This one picks up the loose threads left by book 5, and weaves them into a more satisfying resolution (though one which her characters may not recognize as satisfying). It also introduces a new mystery, involving the murder of an "independent scholar" (in the sense of "conspiracy-chasing crank") who has been investigating an historical mystery with roots in the founding of Quebec. And also: Inspector Gamache reminesces at length about an investigation gone wrong which left several Quebec police injured or dead. If that sounds like a lot, well: it's a lot. And for me the busy-ness of so many plot points at so many time points was disorienting and distracting (especially, no doubt, while audiobooking, which for me is preferable only to sitting with no book at all for ten hours). Still: I liked it, and will read the next.

75) The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
Date: 2004

Second in the author's “Bartimaeus“ trilogy, about a young magician and the demon he summons to do his bidding. I liked the first for its pace and sense of humor but found all characters dislikable. This one offers a similar recipe of snarky humor and morally vacant characters in a story of London besieged by a rampaging golem. The magical elite believe the golem attacks are organized by an underground resistance of nonmagical citizens. But our young magician hero Nathaniel finds that explanation suspicious, and forces the demon Bartimaeus to help him investigate. Since the first book, Nathaniel has risen in the ranks of London's magical government, gaining more respect and power but also gaining enemies and acquiring the governing class's ethics, which are barely ethics at all. Stroud balances Nathaniel's moral decline by raising the profile of Kitty, a character who had a minor role in book one. Kitty gets her own parallel plot in this one as she works with the underground to fight the magical oligarchy. I quite liked this one, and will finish the trilogy.

This was also an ear-read for a long drive.

>190 swynn: "Governing class" and "ethics" are not usually comfy plotfellows. Long drives for ear-reading will do the trick, so All the yay that these two succeeded.

76) Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Date: 2020

Epic fantasy inspired by precolumbian America, with political intrigue, prophecy, betrayal, revenge served cold, and dangling plot threads. I'll read the next soon.

77) Clay's Ark by Octavia Butler
Date: 1984

Third (or fourth or fifth depending on what & how you count) in Butler's Patternist series. This is the last published in the series, and seems only loosely connected to the others, and less by plot than by common themes: power, transformation, eugenics, toxic family relationships, and the struggle to be human in the midst of it all. (Oh and rape: big red flashing trigger warning for that, y'all.) In this one, the crew of a space mission are infected with a plague that gives its victims superhuman powers but also forces them to act in the alien's interest instead of their own. Their spacecraft (the "Clay's Ark") crashes upon its return to Earth, leaving a single survivor -- who realizes the only way to contain the plague is to kill himself. Not wanting to do that, he eases his conscience by trying to balance the alien's demands with measures intended to limit the disease's spread to as small a population as possible. Yes well: y'all have seen enough zombie movies to know how *that* is going to end. I'd been warned that Clay's Ark is the weakest in the series, but I found it uncomfortably powerful in the way it explores the kind of compromises we make to gain privilege in systems designed to bury us.

78) Die for Love by Elizabeth Peters
Date: 1984

Third in Peters's cozy mystery series featuring librarian Jacqueline Kirby. In this one Kirby solves a murder at a historical-romance convention. The mystery is not especially memorable, but the characters are so fun, the prose so sharp, and the jokes (many at the expense of the romance publishing industry, of which Peters seems to be an unfan) so frequent that the mystery barely matters.

79) The Dead by Mark E. Rogers
Date: 1989

A combination of cleaning-my-Kindle and Halloween read, this is an odd horror novel that mines end-times Christian mythology. After the rapture, the dead rise from their graves. The sinners left behind ponder the state of their souls while battling the zombie horde, which is led by angels given license to carry out God's wrath. Given the premise you might expect an evangelistic agenda, but nope: God is cleansing the earth with zombies and the angels are the monsters. There's more theological talk than you expect in the average monster novel, but it's neither tendentious nor even orthodox according to any eschatology I'm aware of. I love the idea, but like many another zombie novel this gets bogged down in a repetitive series of violent gross-out set pieces. Still it's fun enough to finish, and just right for the season.

Congrats on blowing past the goal!

Congrats on surpassing 75! I look forward to your thoughts on Ptolemy's Gate, and your review of Black Sun reminds me that I wanted to continue that trilogy, though I'd probably have to re-familiarize myself with book 1 at this point.

Congratulations on passing the magic goal, Steve!

Congratulations on reaching and exceeding the magic number!

>192 swynn: I have heard good things about the Roanhorse. Am I becoming a science fiction reader?!

I just read the most recent Penny. Overall, it's a good series. I like Three Pines and its characters even if things do get a little dramatic at times. I like the audiobooks as well; it gets me past the sentence fragments.

>196 drneutron:
>197 bell7:
>198 SirThomas:
>199 MickyFine:

Thanks for the congratulations! I have another long drive coming up this week, and so I may get to Ptolemy's Gate very soon -- though I'll be sharing the car with Mrs. swynn, so we'll see what we can enjoy together. The sequel to Black Sun is near the top of the Tower of Due, so I should get to that one soon.

>200 BLBera: Good to hear that the stories hold up. Three Pines will be another candidate for the long drive.

80) Shamela by Henry Fielding
Date: 1741

Henry Fielding had been a successful playwright with a talent for political satire, whose career came to an abrupt end in 1737 when the Licensing Act made all plays subject to government approval before production. Fielding got by for several years writing for periodicals while he studied for the bar and eventually became a judge, but I imagine him watching the spectacular success of Richardson's Pamela and thinking that if Richardson could make bank off *that*, well ...

In 1741, Fielding published Shamela, a short novel which directly parodies Pamela. The premise is that the letters included in Richardson's book are a carefully constructed fraud, and that Fielding came into possession of "Pamela's" original unedited letters, which he brings to light as a matter of public interest. According to these "true" letters, nothing about Pamela is as Richardson presented: even her name is a fraud since really she is "Shamela", a social climber and gold-digger with expensive tastes. Her employer Mr. B. (whose family name is revealed as "Booby"), also is not as Richardson presented: far from being a menacing predator, Mr. B is in fact a good-hearted but naive mark too willing to believe Shamela's lies.

Fielding is a better writer than Richardson and the contest is not even close: he is more clever, funnier, and less prone to moralizing detours. In fairness, Fielding is writing to entertain while Richardson wants to instruct, which is a barrier to me (as, I think, to most modern readers). But to me Fielding also feels meaner, more classist and more sexist: his project is to expose a lower-class character, who would not keep to her place, as a greedy temptress. It's the old story that if she'd behaved as Mr. B. expected she'd have been a whore but since she followed her own standards she's a tease and a fraud. This is punching down, it's incel energy, and doesn't sit well with me. I hope Fielding's work has more nuance in general, since I intend to read at least Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.

I thought Pamela was a slog, but the Fielding parody sounds like it might be fun.

>203 swynn: That's the thing: despite the bad taste it left, it *was* fun (with winces). If Pamela is good for one thing, it's giving the background for Fielding's references. (Plus -- and this is its very best contrast with Pamela -- it's *short*)

81) Anti-Pamela by Eliza Haywood
Date: 1741

I imagine Eliza Haywood reading Pamela and eye-rolling herself seasick. For twenty years Haywood had been writing stories about self-interested sexually assertive women, the polar opposite of Pamela's male-gazey virginal innocence. Sure, her heroines always had to be punished in the end (because patriarchy), but at least until the formulaic moral reckoning they lived on their own terms. Then along came Pamela: its insane success and a public appetite for more. It was the opposite of Haywood's oeuvre (really: is this the "anti-Pamela," or was Richardson the "anti-Haywood"?) but Haywood was not above writing to a controversy, and this is her contribution to the Pamela-adjacent literature of the early 1740s.

Syrena Tricksy is a beautiful young woman of limited means and fewer scruples who seeks a fortune through marriage. Syrena's mother is a former "Woman of Intrigue in her Youth" who failed to marry well, but retained enough lessons to pass them on to her daughter. After an early and abortive (in multiple senses) relationship with an army officer who turned out to have less fortune Syrena requires, her mother secures for her a position as a lady's maid to one Mrs. L.who lives with her husband and adult son. Syrena quickly captures the attention of both Mr. L. Sr. and Mr. L. Jr. and leads both along until she can decide which is the better prospect. She prefers the son because, well, old dudes ew, but only if she can be sure of a marriage. Unfortunately, Jr. cannot promise without approval of Sr., who is courting Syrena to be his own kept mistress. To break the impasse, Syrena and her mother hatch a plan to accuse the son of rape and force a wedding. The scheme very nearly succeeds until the family discovers a secret letter exposing the plot. Syrena is ejected from the estate, moves to the city to escape rumors, and begins all over again. In Greenwich she targets a young gentleman Mr. D. who is about to marry a socialite, and the cycle repeats: Syrena very nearly reaches a secure position when some accident ruins the relationship and she has to start over -- which she does, quickly and with minimal reflection. It's repetitive but entertaining, like a marathon of Coyote/Road Runner cartoons.

It's more fun than Pamela, as most things are, but also less venomous than Shamela. Haywood is certainly riffing on Pamela but she is much less interested in demolishing it than is Fielding. Syrena is not just a parody of Pamela but rather a trickster character in her own right. The closing of Anti-Pamela leaves room for more adventures, and if Haywood had ever written a sequel I'd read it.

82) What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Date: 2022

83) What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
Date: 2024

These are the first two entries in Kingfisher's "Sworn Soldier" series featuring Alex Easton, a wandering soldier of Ruritanian nationality, non-binary gender, expired duties, and lingering PTSD. The first volume is a retelling of "The Fall of the House of Usher" with creeping fungi. In the second, Easton returns to his ancestral home, where the caretaker for his family's hunting lodge has died under mysterious circumstances. These are both quite good: the atmosphere is creepy, and the characters are appealing.

84) Captives of the Flame by Samuel R. Delany
Date: 1963

This is Delany's second novel, first in his “Fall of the Towers“ trilogy. It's a Dying-Earth style pulp adventure that rolls along pretty much the way you expect from such a story, until we arrive at the climactic chapter in which the heroes pursue the villain across space under the influence of mutant moss. And thus our routine pulp adventure becomes surreal and, y'know, "counter-culture.". I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I'm up for more ...

>208 swynn: One I've never even heard of! Sounds like a rollicking good read indeed.

>173 swynn: I enjoyed this book quite a bit!!

>209 richardderus: It is. It's also part of my Kindle-cleaning: apparently I picked it up very inexpensively years ago. Unfortunately, the next entries in the series aren't individually available, so I'll have to get my hands on "The Fall of the Towers" someday.

>210 ocgreg34: Yay for Dead Silence love! I hope to get to Ghost Station sometime soon.

>211 swynn: I'm afraid to undertake that process of cleaning. I will never finish!

>213 richardderus: One principle of the effort should be: do not add books faster than you clean them out. Someday I will implement this principle.

>214 swynn:

Oh, you kid!

>215 richardderus: ... well, I expect that mortality will someday silence my clicky finger. But until then, yes, I'm afraid you're right.

>216 swynn: Absent an afterlife, it's likely one will assume room temperature with the unreads and unboughts about equal. If there's an afterlife and it's good, the files will still be readable; if not good I don't want to know in advance.

85) The Children's Hour by Douglas Clegg
Date: 1995

Here's another Kindle-mining read, this one for Halloween that dragged into November. It's about a writer who returns to his hometown, where years ago he and a childhood friend defeated an unspeakable evil -- vampires that are Not Vampires but are totally vampires -- and now have to defeat it all over again. If that sounds very Stephen-Kingy then you're in for few surprises. The premise may be too familiar, but the execution is entertaining enough.

86) The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
Date: 2024

It's a fantasy set in a Brothers-Grimm-style world, where the villagers have been subdued by a conquering Tyrant. When the Tyrant's children go missing in the enchanted forest, the job of retrieving them falls on Veris Thorn: the only person ever to enter the forest and return alive. Thorn has little motivation to return to the forest, and strong reasons not to, so the Tyrant threatens just enough violence to convince her to go anyway. This sets a theme: the compromises and bargains we strike with powers political and natural to survive and to shield the ones we must. Tense, surreal, atmospheric, recommended.

87) Pamela in Her Exalted Condition by Samuel Richardson
Date: 1741

A couple of months ago I opened Pamela with dread and determination and found it surprisingly engaging. This sequel, published by Richardson at the height of the Pamela mania, is pretty much the novel I feared Pamela would be: plotless, meandering, moralizing and dull. Intended, no doubt, to address criticisms and unauthorized sequels, Richardson seems determined to show that Pamela's and Mr.B.'s wedded bliss is simply the blissiest bliss that ever blissed: the first half of the novel is taken up with Pamela winning everyone over. The work is not hard: everyone who meets Pamela is so struck by her beauty and perfection that they simply adore her, or if they don't then Pamela talks at them until they do. (Mary Sue has nothing on Pamela B., I tell ya.) The most challenging conflict arrives about halfway through the book, when Pamela begins to suspect Mr. B. of having an affair (her suspicions arise when she hears from multiple sources that Mr. B. is having an affair). When she confronts Mr. B., he confesses to a Platonic relationship with a wealthy widowed countess that might have become an affair if it were allowed to continue but now that it's out in the open he hopes that all three can be friends. (Spoiler: all three can be friends.) Throughout, Pamela inserts long essays in her letters, expressing her views on various domestic issues, with perspectives and language that sound rather more like a fifty-something printer-turned-novelist than a teenaged former servant girl. No exaggeration: the last hundred pages contain "Pamela's" review and critique of John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education. It's occasionally interesting for its window on Enlightenment-era ideas and preoccupations, but as a novel it's a towering pile of please move on to the next thing Samuel.

Of course Samuel's next thing was Clarissa so perhaps one should be careful what one wishes for.

88) Star Born by Andre Norton
Date: 1957

Follow-up to 1954's The Stars Are Ours, in which scientists escape an Earth ruled by a corrupt antiscience populist government (ahem) in order to establish a colony on the distant planet Astra. Star Born takes place about a hundred years later, when the colony is well established and a threat from Astra's distant past reemerges -- at the same time explorers arrive from a very different Terra. Two young men -- one from Earth and one from Astra, whose respective cultures have diverged in different ways -- address the danger to the human colony. It's a good adventure, and also a light riff on themes of cultural evolution

>220 swynn: Your review had me cackling.

>207 swynn: The third, What Stalks the Deep came out recently. I've got it on reserve on Overdrive - can't wait to get it!

>220 swynn: Great comments. When I read this, I was hoping that Richardson would find another profession.

>222 MickyFine: Glad you liked it! I'll understand if you want to pass on its inspiration ...

>223 drneutron: My library hold came in this weekend, so I'm hoping to get to What Stalks the Deep this holiday weekend. Looking forward to your thoughts on it, Jim!

>224 BLBera: Definitely, he should have stuck to printing somebody else's novels. Alas, I'm not done with him yet: I'll almost certainly read Clarissa next year. Or at least give it an earnest try.

89) Galactic Derelict by Andre Norton
Date: 1959

Second in Norton's "Time Traders" series. Ross Murdock returns and a new Apache recruit, Travis Fox, joins the team. The agents travel 10,000 years into the past disguised as Folsom men to investigate a crashed alien spacecraft. When they arrive, they discover another craft, seemingly intact but with all of its alien crew dead. They arrange to send the newly-discovered craft through a time gate in order to study it in their relative present, but (because plot) they happen to be on board when the craft passes through the gate, and the gate unexpectedly energizes the craft and activates a return-to-home function sending the mysterious craft and all on board to distant worlds. This is a big-dumb-object adventure, in which the object is not only the object itself but the system that supports it: an abandoned fueling/maintenance station, and ultimately a destination planet no longer inhabited by the craft's builders. Through ingenuity and luck, the humans eventually return to their present-day Earth with many experiences but few explanations. This is sense-of-wonder stuff, and it speaks to the preoccupations of the kid in me that fell in love with science fiction; I'm hoping the series will continue to explore this intriguing setup.

90) Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud
Date: 2005

Third in Stroud's "Bartimaeus" series about the crafty and cynical djinni Bartimaeus, and Nathaniel, the wizard who summoned him. This series has grown on me, and this entry caps the trilogy very nicely. I am impressed, and next year sometime I think I'll try out the author's Lockwood series.

I listened to this on audiobook during a long drive. Simon Jones's narration is delicious.

>226 swynn: Spoiler: It does.

>228 richardderus: Well dang I have The Defiant Agents right here and no reason not to read it next. Thanks for the nudge!

91) Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Date: 1862

When George Talboys returns home to London after striking in rich in the Australian gold fields, he is shocked and devastated to learn that his wife has died. (Never mind that he abandoned her and their infant son without warning three and a half years ago and that he has made no effort to contact them since. How dare they not pine away for them? Anyway.) He tries to track down details, but the stories about her death somehow don't add up. Meanwhile, Talboys renews a friendship with on old school friend, Robert Audley, who is something of a bachelor trust-fund baby with nothing better to do than take up Talboys's cause. He invites Talboys to the family estate, where his widower father Audley Pere has just remarried, this time to a London girl so young that she could easily have married a lad of their own age. When Talboys suddenly goes missing Audley devotes his ample leisure time to figuring out what happened to him, launching a search that has much of the structure of a mystery novel never mind that the genre hadn't been invented yet.

Multiple interesting things going on here, and it's been very interesting to read through the thread of the group read that Liz led a few years ago (at: https://www.librarything.com/topic/318457). I miss Liz.

This was another ear-read for a long drive. I listened to the Librivox version read by Elizabeth Klett, and found her narration quite good.

>225 swynn: Good luck with that!

I wish you a peaceful Christmas season with your family and friends and a good start to 2026 with lots of good books.

As y'all start to celebrate in your new home, remember:

>173 swynn: ...and thank you for another BB, Dead Silence was not available, but I enjoyed Cold Eternity.

>231 BLBera: Thanks, Beth!

>232 SirThomas:
>233 richardderus:
Thanks for the holiday wishes, even though I have been an inconsistent correspondent this year.

>234 SirThomas: Oh, good news! I'd like to read some more S.A. Barnes, so that sounds like a good one.

Next comes the annual year-end sprint to catch up on comments. The list is especially long this year, but i hope to finish by Jan 1.

My participation this year was complicated by settling in and figuring out how to do life in our new home and community. A new complicating issue this fall was that Mrs. Swynn was diagnosed with stage III cancer in November. She is being treated, and we have reasons to be optimistic, but it's been kind of a roller coaster the last few weeks, and probably will continue to be into the new year. Anyway, that's by way of explanation for my absence (on top of everything else). I hope to be more regular in 2026, but we'll see what life brings.

Anyway: on to the books!

Life never stops...it could not have been easy to deal with the stresses as they mounted. Better 2026 for all!

92) The Trees Grew Because I Bled There / Eric LaRocca
Date: 2023

I picked up this collection of stories shortly after finishing “Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke“ with a weird mixture of “WTF did I just read“ and “Is there more of that?“ And this delivers: body horror, with an aesthetic more of dread than splatter, about love and cruelty and impulses that must be resisted because what happens when you give in.

>237 richardderus: Thanks Richard, and best wishes for your 2026 also!

93) Foundation / Isaac Asimov
Date: 1951

This was a pick for a science fiction reading group, and a revisit to an old favorite. I first read the Foundation series forty (?!?) years ago, and enjoyed it much. Honestly I was not looking forward to the reread because I couldn't imagine that it held up very well. And sure enough, I don't like it as well as once I did: the central premise now seems, erm, improbable, and its demographics and relationships are very 1950s office-building. But given the premise and its milieu, it still works for me so the ride was a pleasant surprise.

94) Mandelbrot the Magnificent / Liz Ziemska
Date: 2017

Here's a quick delicious story about young Benoit Mandelbrot, hiding with his Jewish family in Vichy France from the mid-20th century Make Alemania Great Again crowd. It's a magic realist story in which math is magic -- which my math-loving heart knows to be true

95) Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame / Neon Yang
Date: 2025

It's a story about a dragon-slayer who faces a conflict between her professional and personal commitments. Lovely prose, engaging characters, and a perfect resolution make a tight and satisfying novella.

96 Crypt of the Moon Spider / Nathan Ballingrud
Date: 2024

It's 1924, and Veronica is being taken to an asylum on the moon, to be treated for "black spells" and neglecting her "wifely duties." And if that sounds weird then buckle up because the ride is about to recalibrate your weirdometer. It's "The Yellow Wallpaper" by way of Strange Tales: unsettling, disorienting, more than a little gross and also very good reading. There's a sequel now, which I hope to get to in 2026.

97) Zoo City / Lauren Beukes
Date: 2010

In an alternative Johannesberg, South Africa, criminal acts (or maybe feelings of guilt for criminal acts?) attract animal familiars, who sometimes bring superpowers with them. Zinzi December is such a guilty person, matched with a sloth and a talent for finding lost things. Usually the "things" are lost keys and wedding rings, but when Zinzi is offered a much-needed payday to find a missing pop star she ignores the red flags and takes the job. I loved the world and the character and the noir aesthetic.

This was one of the more satisfying reads of my dive into my unread Kindle archive.

98) The Technologists / Daniel Pearl
Date: 2012

Speaking of the Kindle archive: this one had been sitting unread on Kindle for 7 years, and in this case probably could have stayed there. In fact, I realized I wasn't having much fun at about 40% and abandoned it, only to find myself wondering how it all sorted out so picked it up again a few weeks later. A book that can do that demands respect, even if it's far from a favorite still.

It's a sort of historical technothriller set around the founding of MIT, with students at the new school investigating acts of technological terrorism. For me, the pacing was too leisurely for a thriller, and the author seemed more interested in connecting historical dots than in keeping stuff happening. I expect it works better for readers who are more fond of historical fiction, or even for myself in a different mood.

99) Bluebird, Bluebird / Attica Locke
Date: 2017

A black Texas Ranger in rural East Texas investigates the murders of a young white woman and a black stranger, uncovering a story of race, sex, class, love, ambition, and The Blues. It's quite good, and there are more in the series and I mean to continue, hopefully in 2026.

>241 swynn: *eeek*

*flees the math*

>247 richardderus: Fair. Ziemska knows that equations will frighten many away, so she keeps it pretty accessible. For me she hits a sweet spot between nontechnical and nonridiculous, but the location of such spots will be different for everybody.

100) Once More Upon a Time / Roshani Chokshi
Date: 2020

Here's a quick, cute fairy tale about a king and queen who fall out of love -- but a witch sends them on a quest that has them giving their relationship a second chance. The romance angle is not usually my kind of thing but I fell for the light humor and the clever banter. And for the cloak that thinks it's a horse: I'd read a sequel just about the horse-cloak.

101) Soultaker / Robert J. Duperre
Date: 2017

Another from the Kindle archive, this one is a post-apocalyptic adventure about three brothers who are sort of prophets, sort of musicians, and sort of mystical warriors. They carry out missions given to them in riddles, this time concerning a messianic figure who may be a hero or villain. There is plenty of action and the resolution is satisfying, but the world's rules rarely made sense to me and the brothers' interpersonal dynamics were frequently annoying. There's a follow up but I think I won't continue.

Best wishes to you and your family in the new year, Steve, especially Mrs. Swynn. Fingers crossed that the cancer treatment goes well.

102) Star Trek : the New Voyages
Date: 1976

This was the second officially sanctioned volume of original Star Trek fiction (i.e., not counting fictionalizations of the television episodes, and after James Blish's Spock Must Die). Curiously, every entry is written by a woman. According to the introduction, the stories herein had been written by and circulating among fans since the original series' cancellation: so, fanfic basically. As fanfic it's not bad: the characters are respected, and there's a dose of inside humor. But the crew takes so much shore leave you wonder when they work, and the Kirk/Spock relationship is frequently implied to be much closer than a more commercially-minded control on the canon would later admit.

I can't say what Beth said better, so just adding my ditto.

I'm glad the end of the Bartimaeus trilogy worked for you. I first discovered it on audio and agree about Jones' narration.

>251 BLBera: Thank you Beth!

>253 bell7: Thanks Mary!

103) Tecserion / Marie-Magdaleine Lubert
Date: 1737

Here's an odd one: it's a sort of amatory fairy-tale about the beautiful princess Belzamine who faces an arranged marriage to the wicked king Tecserion. We know Tecserion is wicked because he turns his subjects into ostriches whenever they fall in love. Belzmine doesn't particularly want to marry Tecserion but she doesn't particularly want to marry anybody so she has no specific objection to the Ostrich King. No objection, that is, until she meets Tecserion's handsome and charming nephew, after which complications ensue. It's very busy, with many transformations and a visit to -- I swear I am not making this up -- a libertine shepherds' colony on Venus. A little bonkers but also much fun, and accessible to my very basic French.

104) The Iron Council / China Miéville
Date: 2004

Third and so far last in Miéville's "New Crobuzon" series; I had heard this was the weakest of the three, but I adored Perdido Street Station (v.1) and loved The Scar (v.2), so I figured it could be relatively weaker and still very good and went in with high expectations. There's much to admire here: Miéville's imagination is fertile as ever, and the fantastical settings and creatures are terrific. But I also felt that the ratio of environmental detail to character and story was too large, and that the allegory for a Marxist revolution was too heavy-handed.

It's been a few months now since I read this though, and particular scenes stick with me in ways that make me think my lukewarm response might just be about expecting a different book. Sometime in the future I'd like to revisit this one with expectations more aligned to the book it actually is.

105) A Beautiful Work in Progress / Mirna Valerio
Date: 2017

This is a running memoir by an athlete who used to blog as “fatgirlrunner“, it has the usual mix of autobiographical anecdotes, race reports, and inspirational cheering. This one also includes insight on participating in sport as a plus-size athlete: the message is of inclusivity, that every body can be an athlete's body. Because of the volume of race reports, I expect this will appeal mostly to runners, but I liked it well enough.

106) Lord of Light / Roger Zelazny
Date: 1967

I've tried this one before and didn't get far, and even this time I found that it takes some time to get used to the premise and the world. But once it clicked -- for me it clicked in the third chapter -- it was a delight. It's humorous, intriguing, and sneakily serious about the role of religion in civilization. A potential future re-read for sure.

107) All the Water in the World / Eiren Caffall
Date: 2025

In a future climate apocalypse, Minor lives with her family and friends in a flooded Manhattan, on the roof of the Museum of Natural History. But when a superstorm forces them inland, they have to face the usual dangers of traveling a postapocalyptic dystopia. It's fine: the writing is lovely but the territory is familiar and the resolution is implausibly optimistic.

108) Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars / Ellen MacGregor
Date: 1951

Here's one that used to be on the shelves in my home when I was in elementary school. It's unlikely that this is the book that ignited my love of science fiction ... but then I can't remember when I didn't have a huge appetite for it, so who knows? It's almost certainly one of the first science fiction books I would have read, and a conversation with a friend put me in mind of it. Happily, it's freely available on the Internet Archive.

It's the first in a series about a strong-minded aunty who discovers a rocketship in her cow pasture. Upon investigation, she discovers that it is the vessel for an independent mission to Mars, and through misadventure she accidentally makes the trip in place of one of the crew. This has held up about as well you'd expect, but Miss Pickerell is still a hoot and I'm giving it a thumbs-up from elementary-school me.

 

109) Better World / Autumn Kalquist
110) Legacy Code / Autumn Kalquist
Date: 2014-2015

A couple more titles from the Kindle archive. These are novella-length stories set in a distant future where humanity has left Earth and survives on colony ships in deteriorating states of repair. Secrets, intrigue, relationship drama. There's one more book, and though this one was fun I won't continue for a couple of reasons: first, that it's a heavier on relationship drama than my personal preference; worse, that the next book was not intended to be last but will be such, due to the much-too-early passing of the author. Fucking cancer.

111) Signal to Noise / Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Date: 2015

Another Kindle archive read, and one of the better of that lot. Moreno-Garcia's debut novel is a YAish book about three high school kids in 1988 Mexico City who use music to work magic, in a dual timeline with a story about their adult selves reconnecting twenty years later. The 1988 story is appealing and its high school character dynamics ring true for me. It's less clear to me what the author intended with the later timeline, which for my taste could have been omitted. Still, I liked it well enough.

112) Cradle of Ice / James Rollins
Date: 2023

Second in Rollins's epic fantasy/dying Earth trilogy. I had some issues with the first, but liked it well enough to continue. My feelings continue mixed: some very cool new settings and a couple of appealing new characters, but some plot threads just seem to hit the same note over & over, and occasional anachronisms made me grit my teeth. I'll probably stop here: I picked up volume 3 and was annoyed enough that I bailed within 20 pages. If the unresolved plots bother me enough I might return eventually but there are so many characters and plot threads that by the time I do I'll probably have to start over to get back up to speed again.

113) Voodoo Planet / Andre Norton
Date: 1959

Third in Norton's series about the merchant spaceship Solar Queen. This is a novella-length adventure written for packaging with Plague Ship in an Ace Double. It's set on Khatka, a planet colonized by Black refugees of an African race war, and as you might guess, time has not been kind to it. Khatka is basically a safari planet, the villain is a “witch doctor“ and the white hunters prevail thanks to science. Yes, it's cringey, but I'm inclined to cut Norton some slack. In her defense, the racism is not overt and her black characters are rounded, no more caricatured than her white ones. And let's acknowledge that this is Norton in 1959 acknowledging that racial conflict is a problem not likely to be fixed soon by handwavey solutions. It feels more like a well-meaning white author trying to work out complicated issues.

114) A Strange Wilderness / Amir D. Aczel
Date: 2011

Here's a popular history of Western mathematics. It's fine, but very light on mathematical detail and heavy on biographical anecdotes. If you've read some other works on the history of math, then you've probably seen these stories already. Greatest hits include: the Cardano-Tartaglia and Newton-Leibniz feuds, Galois's stupid and romantic death at 20, the Bourbaki pranksters and Grothendieck's reclusiveness. I'd have liked more math, but that's not the kind of book this is.

And just after saying that I knew these stories, I'll add that I don't remember learning that d'Alembert's mother was Claudine de Tencin. Not that I would have remembered, because who the heck is Claudine de Tencin? Well, she's the author of Memoires du Comte de Comminges, that's who, which I discussed above at post 78, and of The Siege of Calais, with comments coming soon.

By Aczel's account, she was also a piece of work: not so much that she abandoned d'Alembert at birth (because that was pretty much expected of an unmarried society woman in early-18th-century Paris, so let's cut her some slack) but because she made no effort to establish a relationship with him until she learned that he had become a famous mathematician. Upon discovering his celebrity she pestered him relentlessly to frequent her salon. According to Aczel, d'Alembert also disliked her for that reason.

115) The Siege of Calais / Claudine de Tencin
Date: 1739 (English translation, 1740)

The subtitle says it's "an historical novel," but really it's more an amatory novel in historical setting. One man falls in love with a friend's wife after he and the wife accidentally have sex (Hey, it happens.) (I guess.) Another loves a woman who lacks a fortune, and unfortunately for him a fortune is the one quality his family demands. And an English soldier loves a French nun. There are buckets of tears and an occasional swoon. It's fine for the kind of thing it is, but it's very much that kind of thing.

The cover image above is for a French edition, but that's just decoration. I read the (uncredited) English translation of 1740 from Gale's "Eighteenth Century Collections" database. (Yay, working for an academic library!)

116) The Seedbearing Prince / DaVaun Sanders
Date: 2012

This is another from my Kindle archive. It's the first in a fantasy series about a farmer boy who longs for something other than farming, and by accident stumbles upon a relic that makes him a key player in a drama of universal importance. The story is familiar but the world is less so: a system of worlds separated by a "torrent" of rock and debris left over from the destruction of other worlds: travel between worlds is accomplished through acrobatic spidermannish rope-work, and our hero aspires to be one of the "coursers" who can do such work. The universe is threatened by "voidwalkers", monsters who move easily among the worlds and threaten to end the universe. The drama hits the right notes: I liked it and am inclined to continue, except that it was originally planned as a six- or seven-book series, of which only three have so far been published with the last in 2014. So I'll put off continuing, probably indefinitely.

117 The Left Hand of Darkness / Ursula K. LeGuin
Date: 1969

It's a story about culture clash and friendship on a world whose natives are sexually neuter for most of their lives, except once a month when they may become either male or female. I remember bouncing off this when I first encountered it in grade school; for years I've meant to pick it up again with older eyes. I was delighted to find it completely absorbing as a thought piece, as a story about cross-cultural friendship, and as an adventure yarn.

118) Joseph Andrews / Henry Fielding
Date: 1742

Fielding's Shamela offered a short and sharp parody of Richardson's novel Pamela but he wasn't finished with Richardson yet. The following year he published Joseph Andrews, which begins as a gender-swapped pastiche of Pamela: Joseph Andrews is in fact Pamela's older brother, employed as a servant by "Mr. B's" uncle Thomas Booby. Joseph fills several roles at the Booby estate, eventually becoming "footboy" to his master's wife. When Thomas Booby dies, the widow Booby makes overt advances on Joseph, which Joseph resists. In response to Joseph' refusals, Lady Booby dismisses him from service. A mock-epic journey follows as Joseph crosses the countryside accompanied by the Boobys' curate, in order to visit his true love Fanny Goodwill.

Compared to Shamela, Joseph Andrews has more structure, nuance, more satirical targets, and more than one joke. Of course jokes that worked for his audience often don't work for me, or even have the opposite of their intended effect: much of it is slapstick, some based on sexual harassment and even attempted rape. What remains engaging and admirable are the clever wordplay, and the humor of character and manners. On balance, I laughed more than I winced.

119) Accidental Saints / Nadia Bolz-Weber
Date: 2015

Author Bolz-Weber is a pastor with tattoos, anger issues, salty language, and a deep appreciation for human messiness. The stories and homilies she shares here are heavy on grace and forgiveness, light on exhortations and moralizing. I'm an ex-evangelical quasi-atheist, but this kind of humane reading of Christian tradition resonates with me still, and I am grateful for Bolz-Weber's expression of it.

120) Sacrificing Virgins / John Everson
Date: 2015 (selections originally published 1995-2014)

Another title retrieved from my Kindle archive, this is a collection of 25 horror short stories. They range from a sweet sad story about a man who befriends a ghost in his back yard (“She Found Spring“), to bizarre *WTF did I just read?!* stories (like “Grandma Wanda's Belly Jelly“), with a generous helping of erotic and body horror in between. Some stories lean too hard into sexual violence for my taste, but by and large they're well crafted, efficient and effective

121) The House of Pride, and Other Tales of Hawaii / Jack London
Date: 1912

Another Kindle archive title, this collects half a dozen of London's writings about Hawaii. London does not look away from the leprosy colonies, nor from native resistance to colonial erasures. Short and terrific (in multiple senses)

122) The White Tree / Edward W. Robertson
Date: 2011

First in an indie fantasy trilogy featuring a teenage magic user who acquires a powerful book written by the followers of an outlawed god. It's fine, but I'm over the "magic teenager" trope and the characters' banter just feels like bickering to me. Fortunately there's no cliffhanger ending so I don't feel compelled to continue.

123) Fevered Star / Rebecca Roanhorse
Date: 2022

Second in the trilogy beginning with “Black Sun,“ this is a fantasy set in a world inspired by pre-Columbian America. This entry develops the worldbuilding and the political maneuvering. It's a fun world, and this is a fun visit, but it also feels a little directionless to me, like moving people around for the sake of filling the book. Looking forward to a grand showdown in Book Three.

>273 swynn: I felt utterly alone in my admiration for London's Hawai'i work. Ah, the academic librarian's command of the resources whomps up the oddities again.

124) Before Sunrise / Rick Mofina
Date: 2016

Kindle archive read. Canadian Mountie Will Fortin accidentally shoots a child during a confrontation gone tragically wrong. The investigation absolves Will of wrongdoing, but he cannot forgive himself. His career falters and his marriage falls apart. A few years later, Will is assigned to transport a fugitive by air to Seattle. When the plane crashes in the Rockies, Will has to pull himself together to complete the job. I wasn't a fan of this one: the main storyline is kind of a sentimental mess, and there's a second storyline involving a child who needs an organ transplant. The joining of these two storylines felt heavy-handed and saccharine.

125) The History of Jonathan Wild the Great / Henry Fielding
Date: 1743

Jonathan Wild was a notorious criminal in early 18th-Century England, whose career was described more or less factually by Daniel Defoe and others. Wild first became known as a "thief-taker," a sort of independent lawman who would capture thieves and turn them over to authorities for trial and punishment. As a thief-taker Wild was one of the best, and counted the famous Jack Sheppard among his victims. But it became public eventually that Wild played both sides of the law, accepting rewards for solving crimes that he himself had organized and profited from.

Fielding's novel about Jonathan Wild is not even remotely interested in rehashing the details of Wild's biography. As usual, Fielding's interest is satire. His target is London's social and political life in general and “prime minister” Robert Walpole in particular. (Scare quotes because at the time there was officially no such office.) This wasn't the first time Fielding had targeted Walpole: in fact, his criticism of Walpole almost certainly ended Fielding's career as a playwright.

Apparently, Walpole was known as a "Great" man: i.e. a man like Alexander or Peter whose genius makes him a pivotal personality in world history. Such men do not follow rules; they make them. Walpole himself was famously corrupt, but also famously (or infamously, depending on your political leanings) effective at manipulating government for his own ends. The running joke in Jonathan Wild is that Wild (like Walpole) is a great man, driven to (in)famous deeds by ambition and avarice and untroubled by “vulgar” traits like honesty or loyalty. The plot does not follow the real Wild's biography at all, and almost certainly contains jokes that would be funnier, or at least more interesting, if I knew more about their contemporary references. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a critical edition that would supply some of this context. Even without the context, though, it's a dark but funny work, deeply cynical -- misanthropic, even -- and uncomfortably relevant.

126) The Defiant Agents / Andre Norton
Date: 1962

Book 3 of the "Time Traders" series is another Norton that has not aged well. In this series, Western nations are battling with Communist nations across time and space for ... eh, whatever it is that the West and the Communists battle for. In this episode, the premise is that the West wants to colonize a distant planet before the Commies can get to it, and to maximize chances for the colony's success they want to send colonists who are supposedly optimized for wilderness survival. So the West sends a team of Apaches; but not just any modern Apaches. Instead, they take a team of Apache colonists and psychologically regress the colonists "into prototypes of their ancestors" through a process called the Redax.

Cringey, but I think Norton gets at least a couple of things right. The (white) scientists who decide to use the Redax do not consult with the Apache colonists about the Redax, never mind asking their consent. That rings true. Mutatis mutandis, race-based scientific experimentation without consent was a contemporary fact at the time Norton was writing. When her characters learn about the Redax, their response is a justified sense of betrayal. The characters also observe a fundamental flaw in the premise of the Redax: that Apache history is somehow monolithic and that regression to a pre-Columbian history will yield some sort of primitive super-survivalist template. In reality, Apache history is rich and varied, so the Redax actually diversifies the colonists, with results depending on the historical period to which each colonist is regressed. (Unfortunately, Norton does not much explore this insight after briefly acknowledging it).

But wait, there's more. Upon arrival, the colonists discover an already-established human colony, consisting of Mongols who have been subjected to similar crimes by the Commies. After initial hostilities, the Apaches and Mongols figure out they have more in common with each other than with the manipulators who sent them to the planet. They then work together to face an alien threat. When the action starts happening, it's a pretty good adventure.

It is of its time. It wouldn't be written today, or at least not in just this way, but still has its interesting points.

127) The Plantation / Stella Fitzsimons
Date: 2012

Kindle archive read. This is the first entry in an indie YA dystopian series. It's set on a future Earth where humans have been enslaved by aliens. Young humans are corralled into plantations, where they stay until their late teens, when they are removed to locations which I imagine are revealed in later books. Our heroine is a member of a rebel group that liberates humans and plots to fight for freedom. It's very YA: the self-absorbed first-person narration, the very special narrator, and the love triangle. Not really my thing, and I won't continue.

128) Zuleika Dobson / Max Beerbohm
Date: 1911

Kindle archive read. This is a satire of Oxford life, an over-the-top mock epic about a young woman so beautiful and bewitching that she brings calamity upon the school. The star here is the language, and I loved the clever wordplay. I laughed through much of it, until it became clear that the plot's climax expects me to laugh about a mass suicide. The premise is ridiculous, but I can't quite bring myself to laugh about that event even in that absurd context, leaving my feelings mixed.

Adding my well wishes for Mrs. Swynn's treatments. Here's hoping 2026 brings you both lots of good things.

129) A Present for a Servant-Maid / Eliza Haywood
Date: 1743

Two years after “Anti-Pamela”, Eliza Haywood published this conduct manual for servant girls. Here she sounds more like Richardson, a fussy moralizing bore, than herself, noted author of lusty amatory fiction. In a section dealing with amorous employers, Haywood‘s advice could have been modeled after Pamela, never mind that she had satirized it only recently. Interesting for its glimpse into the period and another side of Haywood's career.

My favorite bit is where she warns her readers against the dangers of drinking tea:

"The Affectation of following your Mistress's Example, has corrupted but too many of you; you imagine it shows a Delicacy, and looks pretty in you, to be able to breakfast on nothing but Tea and Coffee, whereas both these Liquors, especially the former, diminish your Strength, waste your Time, and, for the most part, draw on a more pernicious Consequence, which is Dram-drinking. I have known several who have loath'd the very Smell of any spiritous Liquor, become at last to love them to their Ruin, meerly by drinking of Tea, which, by too much cooling and weakening of the Stomach, seems to render it necessary to have something warm. You begin with a little, and think you will never exceed a certain Bound, but by degrees increase the Proportion; you crave still for more, till by frequent Use it becomes too habitual to be refrained."

130) One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This / Omar El Akkad
Date: 2025

This is one of the more important books I've read this year, and it consolidates a lot of my own thoughts and misgivings about my country's place in the world. It's about Gaza, but not just about Gaza, more broadly about the many theaters where the current world order is based on dehumanization and violence against people whom it has found advantageous to think of as not-people. No comfortable read, but eye-opening and compelling.

The single complaint I have is that I'd have been happy to see more footnotes. El Akkad recites atrocities, but it's not always clear from context where a given war crime occurred. Given that the author is a journalist, I'm a little puzzled why he doesn't generously reference the work of his colleagues in documenting these events.

131) Witch Island / Daniel Bernstein
Date: 2014

Kindle archive read. It's a horror novel but really it's a dead-teenager slasher flick about a group of just-graduated high school friends who throw a graduation party on an As an example of the genre, though, it's fine, but I don't have the appetite for this sort of thing that I used to have.

132) Bright Red Fruit / Safia Elhillo
Date: 2024

This is a YA novel-in-verse about a Sudanese-American teenager who dreams of becoming a poet. Participating in online forums, she attracts the attention of an older male poet who steals her work and grooms her for a sexual relationship.

I picked this up after reading that it had been dropped from a reading bowl list in Georgia due to reconsideration requests. So let's be super-clear: there is no sex in the book, on- or off-page, though the villain is certainly aiming for some. So the complainers didn't like ... what ... suggesting that 25-year-old men sometimes hit on teenage girls? Would that information spoil somebody's pickup moves? Because I'm cool with that. Or maybe some MAGA moms didn't like the thought of their teens reading a book with a Sudanese-American protagonist for fear they might start thinking of immigrants as human beings? Whatever the reason, the controversy has a happy result: Georgia students complained about the removals, loudly and successfully. Happily, this and the other targeted books were reinstated and happily, this one is also pretty good.

133) Now Playing in Theater B
Date: 2016

Kindle archive read. This is an anthology of mostly horror stories published by the (defunct?) literary journal “A Murder of Storytellers.“ Quality is pretty good, with a few really memorable pieces and a few that provoked a “Well that was odd.“ My favorites were Timothy O'Leary's “Fake Girlfriend,“ about a man who invents an Internet persona for his imaginary girlfriend only to find the fake persona taking on a life of her own; and Donald Jacob Uitvlug's pensive “Café Shambleau“, about a space cafe that is hard to leave.

134) The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground / Ludvig Holberg
Date: 1741

A Norwegian college graduate descends into a cave near Bergen. When a rope breaks he falls through the earth and into its hollow center, where a second sun shines and a smaller Earth orbits it. Swiftian adventures follow in lands of walking talking trees, fashionista monkeys, sentient string basses and others, satirizing and commenting on 18th century European society. Holberg seems especially interested in the function of education, with frequent comments on the content of education in each of his underground societies, and how those systems compare to a European liberal arts education. Dry in parts, but fun and sometimes funny.

New Year greetings from Kuala Lumpur. My project is at least physically completed and an addition to the city scape.

Look forward to keeping up with you in 2026

135) DAW #235: Diadem from the Stars / Jo Clayton
Date: 1977

First in Clayton's "Diadem" series featuring a young woman bonded to an alien artifact that gives her superpowers, as she searches the stars for the mother who abandoned her as a child. This one sets up the premise, and it's fine. To me it's a little too much puttering about, resisting the quest that we all know she's going to begin; and seventies sexual edginess (TW for nonconsensual sex).

>289 PaulCranswick: Happy New Year to you too, Paul! Hopefully in 2026 I'll keep up better myself.

136) Lies of the Ajungo / Moses Ose Utomi
Date: 2023

Set in a desert where a water-poor town makes unimaginable sacrifices to survive, it's the story of a young man who sets out on a quest to find another way. It's a novella-length parable about truth and power and the need to question everything. It's also very good.

137) The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1

This is one of those collections of public-domain horror stories. There are 30 here, including familiar (and very familiar) ones, like "The Tell-Tale Heart", "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", and "The Dunwich Horror," but also some new-to-me ones like Oliver Onions's "The Beckoning Fair One" and Vernon Lee's "Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady."

This was another Kindle archive read, and I completed it a couple stories at a time over the course of several months. I don't remember any duds.

138) Redliners / David Drake
Date: 1996

Kindle archive read. A battle-hardened crew of space soldiers is assigned to provide security for settlers of a new colony world. What looks like a milk run turns into an endurance trial when the world turns out to be full of flora, fauna, and enemy combatants that want them all dead, colonists and soldiers and every one. The ending felt abrupt, but overall it's a good example of the kind of thing that David Drake does well. Not usually my sort of thing but I enjoyed this one.

Complete! (Really this time)

Stats for 2025

Books read: 138

Authors:
Not straight: 7 (5%)
Not white: 35 (25%)
Not male: 75 (54%)

Series started: 26
Series continued: 28
Series completed (or up-to-date): 8

I expect I'll set up shop in the 2026 space sometime tomorrow.