As a #russian I’ve read this book hoping to understand the current situation better. It is affecting me emotionally in the ways I am not ready to share, but the most important thing is, it shows how people are not that different anywhere and how decisions are driven by personal loyalties, family dynamics and personal experiences more often than by commitment to ideals/ideologies good or ill
10 out of 10. THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride is my favorite book of 2023 so far. It's a saga, a mystery, & a tale about racism and ableism. From Penguin Random House on August 8. #ewgc@ewgc#bookstodon@bookstodon
Modern fantasy/Indigenous Futurism with themes of climate change, family, colonialism, and language and history loss. I thought this was a beautiful book, I give it 🎲5
I saw some of his art online and thought it looked like “Invisible Hands” from Liquid Television, which I LOVED. Same artist! This didn’t have quite the same level of twisted, creepiness as that animated series, but I was so happy to find his work in comic form. There’s more too.
Does well making up for the first book’s faults: less tortured metaphors of an embodied NYC, more story and world building. Still, none of the five boroughs/characters has a chance to really develop. I’d rather just a low key hang with them all rather than the multiversal drama. I love Jemisin, but this series is my least favorite. She really did rescue it with this second installment though.
I love Southern literature (American South)—almost specialized in it in grad school. Something in its sensibility reminds me of Caribbean lit. Almost every page of this novel-within-a-novel CRACKED. ME. UP.
Make sure to read this edition. It requires you to flip the book over & around to read the intertwined stories: a really cool tactile mechanic that brings new layers of meaning to the experience. Really is book art.
This was on a list of #DarkAcademia recommendations. And with POC? I borrowed it from the library with a quickness. But I kept waiting for the magic and instead got a #GossipGirl vibe. I watched the original TV show, so I'm not hating. This book just wasn't what I expected.
Which is a shame because I would normally be into a story about the only two Black kids at a private school. Categorize 👏🏽 books 👏🏽 properly 👏🏽
I went through a brief love affair with Doctorow. But the sweetly clunky how-to-do-X-techie-thing-to-bring-down-Y-bad-guy-slash-system got too clunky for me. And repetitive too.
These short stories were OK though. Maybe he's gotten better, or maybe it's been long enough between my readings. Either way in all his writing, I still don't understand how encryption and private/public keys work (not asking for an explanation).
Cool premise that the author doesn't carry all the way through. The story unfolds through several POV characters, but there's always the one (or more) that you're bored with, or there's a boring stretch for one you do like. So I often felt unsatisfied.
The conceit that the book itself is written by a man in a matriarchal world is fascinating. It only bookends the novel with "research" interspersed—I wished there was more.
Part of the SF Masterworks Collection. Despite being nearly 60 years old the narrative around the manipulation of the truth feels incredibly prescient. Wondering whether David Whitaker had read it before he came up with #DoctorWho story The Enemy of the World. #Books#Bookstodon#SciFi#PhilipKDick
Behind on this list due to struggling to get logged-in for a while so will update to where I have got to.
I often struggle to get as engaged in a collection of short stories as I do in a novel, but there is unsurprisingly some very good stuff in this collection from Greene.
I enjoy Ustinov’s prose and there is some good satirical stuff in there. It’s not laugh out loud funny (but then I find novels rarely are), but it raises a smile often enough. The plotting loses its way at times, but enjoyable enough.
Can’t imagine there will ever be a more definitive book covering the latter stages of the Blair and Brown governments. It’s a weighty tome, but extremely readable.
Really wasn’t sure whether I would particularly enjoy it before I started, but I really loved it. I’ve never actually seen any of the adaptations in full just little snippets that have entered into popular culture so the story was mostly all new to me. A real unexpected delight.
Bleak, dark and deliberately unpleasant satire of the music industry. The bleakness and unpleasantness of practically every character and the extreme violence got a bit much at times and it’s very influenced by American Psycho, but I sped through it and it’s successful at what it is trying to do.
I’m weirdly fascinated by Suez and so have read many books on the subject. This was interesting as it’s the first I’ve read written from the American viewpoint of the crisis.
Bringing me back up-to-date with my most recent finished read. Enjoyed it in the most part although the ever escalating plot had lost me a little by the end.
#BooksOf2023 #1: #KeeperOfTheLosCities #3: Everblaze. My kids have enjoyed getting into a new series after we finished the #WingsOfFire books last year. These magical adventure books are perfect for our next series together. 📚 📕
@bookstadon#BooksOf2023#10: Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music. This was a great dive into the history - and present - of how Country music has a much deeper Black history than many people realize. It’s an excellent companion to Marissa R. Moss’ fabulous Her Country.
@bookstadon#BooksOf2023#11: Keeper Of The Lost Cities #6: Nightfall. This series keeps developing and my kids have really enjoyed each of the books so far. They also keep getting bigger with this book hitting 790 pages and the next hitting 845.
@bookstadon#BooksOf2023#12: The Good Enough Job by Simone Stolzoff. This was an excellent read all about modern work and how having a “good enough” job that you can do well, but also gives you space to live your life.
@bookstadon#BooksOf2023#13: American Whitelash by Wesley Lowery. This was an excellent book detailing where our country has turned over the past 15 years and relates it to America’s racist past.