#author: mark haddon

[haveyoureadthispoll]

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

[thedirtbetweenyourtoes]

im so fucking sick of the curious incident of the dog in the night time. We're reading it in class, its our annual fall play. I fucking hate it. Its not a good book. Its not a neurodivergent rights anthem. Its a white man stereotyping an entire community.

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

♾️ Books for World Autism Month + Neurodiversity Celebration Week

♾️ The last week of March was Neurodiversity Celebration Week. My post is (obviously) late, but April is also World Autism Month (beginning with World Autism Awareness Day on April 2). To generate additional awareness, here are a few books by autistic authors and/or about autistic characters. On the last slide, you'll also find books with additional neurodiversity rep (including characters with ADHD, dyslexia, and OCD).

✨ The Bride Test - Helen Hoang ✨ Daniel, Deconstructed - James Ramos ✨ Tonight We Rule the World - Zack Smedley ✨ Paige Not Found - Jen Wilde ✨ Something More - Jackie Khalilieh ✨ Uncomfortable Labels - Laura Kate Dale ✨ The Luis Ortega Survival Club - Sonora Reyes ✨ Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl - Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum ✨ The Spirit Bares Its Teeth - Andrew Joseph White ✨ The Brightsiders - Jen Wilde ✨ The Boys in the Back Row - Mike Jung ✨ Hating Jesse Harmon - Robin Mimna

✨ Queens of Geek - Jen Wilde ✨ The Maid - Nita Prose ✨ The Heart Principle - Helen Hoang ✨ The Girl Who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson ✨ Even If We Break - Marieke Nijkamp ✨ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon ✨ Unseelie - Ivelisse Housman ✨ This Could Be Us - Kennedy Ryan ✨ Act Your Age, Eve Brown - Talia Hibbert ✨ The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang ✨ On the Edge of Gone - Corinne Duyvis ✨ Against the Stars - Christopher Hartland

✨ Tell Me How It Ends - Quinton Li ✨ Izzy at the End of the World - K.A. Reynolds ✨ Late Bloomer - Mazey Eddings ✨ Fake It Till You Bake It - Jamie Wesley ✨ Whatever Happens - Micalea Smeltzer ✨ Gimmicks and Glamour - Lauren Melissa Ellzey ✨ Last Call at the Local - Sarah Grunder Ruiz ✨ Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling - Elise Bryant ✨ The Charm Offensive - Alison Cochrun ✨ A Prayer for Vengeance - Leanne Schwartz ✨ Tilly in Technicolor - Mazey Eddings ✨ If Only You - Chloe Liese

[the-modern-typewriter]

Yo, I've seen your book rec posts on and off for a while, and I was wondering if you could (if you have time ^.^ if not, that's cool too) throw up a list of your favorite lgbt/neurodivergent/unique protagonist books? I don't think I've ever read a book outside of fanfiction where the lead/s weren't just some form of 'normal' or straight or whatever. Also, since you're one of my favorite authors I feel like I'd be more inclined to give one of them a go lol ^.^'

There are an increasing number of diverse books out there!

Here are some of my personal favourites in no particular order, by which I mean I have rated them 4 stars (I really liked it) or 5 stars (it was amazing) and then curated the list some more on top of that. E.g. I might have thought it was amazing at the time, but if I can't tell you anything that happened in the story years after reading it, it's not on the list. That doesn't mean it's not worth reading, just that I have a bad memory so if I remember it definitely did something right!)

You can find more books I've read on my Goodreads. There are books that fit what you've asked for on there, it just doesn't fit my personal curated favourites list!

LGBTQ books

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (m/m)

If We Were Villains by M.L Rio (m/m)

Girls Made of Snow and Glass and Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand (f/f + ace)

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (f/f - non fiction)

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield (f/f)

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (m/m)

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (f/f - though be warned, this is a weird one! Rated highly more because I can't get it out of my head than that I liked it)

Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (f/f)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Peter Darling by Austin Chant (m/m, trans)

The Binding by Bridget Collins (m/m)

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J Klune (m/m)

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth (f/f)

The Greenhollow duology by Emily Tesh (m/m)

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever (m/m)

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston (f/f)

(Obligatory read MY BOOK The God Key (m/m) here!) Obviously, this is my favourite ;)

Unique/Interesting protagonists:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire (Her Wayward Children series is also great and has a lot of LGBTQ rep!)

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang (MC has Asperger's)

A Spindle Splintered by Alix.E. Harrow (terminally ill MC, also f/f)

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

House of Leaves by Mark.Z. Danielewski

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon (Autistic MC)

Disfigured: On Fairytales, Disability and Making Space by Amanda Leduc (nonfiction)

[sluttypatrickstar]

i have been volunteering in a secondhand bookshop for almost a year, and in this time, i have not been collecting any data at all but i do have some Vaguely Recollected Observations. i present to you all: books i am sick of seeing (and other stories)

any crime or thriller novel. any and all of them. i loathe crime and thriller and for no actual reason other than that we have so, so many crime/thriller books. there are always too many. we can build a tower out of all the books we have. we can make entire one-author displays out of certain crime authors.

particular crime books of note: the thursday murder club by richard osman, we always have that; the millennium trilogy by stieg larsson, we have like 5+ copies of the whole trilogy

there are always at least 4 eleanor oliphants in the bookshop at any given time

we get a lot of jeremy clarkson books. these seem to stay in the back forever, because nobody ever seems to shelve them, and i think this is very funny and based

i only ever see 2 different mark haddon books, but based on the frequency with which we get those two alone, i would like him to never write another book again thanks

no reader is reading the reader (it gets donated a lot)

NOBODY DONATES SCI FI

on the rare occasion that somebody does donate sci-fi, they always donate an absolutely massive collection. we still haven't shifted our massive collection of classic star trek novels. if these weren't on the shelf i think it would be empty

nobody buys romance, but everybody donates it

What Are These Vague Historical Looking Books About Girls And What Genre Are They? im obsessed with how little i know about the shipyard girls and yet they are always with us

sometimes you think a book is too weird to be sold. this is never true

when no-one else is looking, i toss scott adams books into the recycling. im not supposed to do this, our personal feelings about some books/authors aren't supposed to get in the way of things and usually books by People I Hate don't get sold anyway, but im not giving the dilbert guy a chance

fantasy is close to sci-fi in being a genre we Struggle to get donations for, but we have so much george rr martin that it keeps the shelves pretty full. thanks george!

some volunteers do not know the difference between young adult and children's

i cannot distinguish sometimes between general fantasy and young adult fantasy. i am always DMing people being like, is this YA?? do you know?? ?help

we never get enough chuck palahniuk

one time we got like 16 signed val mcdermid books and all of them were dedicated to mary and i don't know if mary died or if she had a breakup with val mcdermid's books

you can tell a lot about a person from the books being donated. sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad (especially when there's a lot of self-help books on a specific subject, i hope they got the help they needed), but a lot of the time it's fascinating

as per the above, you can never tell based on appearance what kind of books somebody is about to donate to you. it is always a surprise

i hate it when we have a whole series and somebody buys book 1 because then we're stuck with like. books 2-5 forevermore :(

that one time someone donated their entire massive full metal alchemist manga collection except it was missing volume 3

you can tell what books were either award-winning or popular based on what books you see the most of

WE'VE ONLY EVER HAD ONE COPY OF SPARE BY PRINCE HARRY CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE IT???

[marimeiastories]

Seven books about mental health

I want to share positive books, which talk about improvement and positive outcomes, hoping that these books can bring you comfort.

1. It’s Kind of a Funny story by Ned Vizzini

Craig is a 16-year-old teenager who struggles with depression and anxiety. Because of this, he decides to be admitted in the psychiatric ward of his neighbourhood, and there he meets people and lives situations which will make him think more positively about the future.

This is a hilarious book full of fun interchanges between the patients of the ward, but it also touches deep topics, like depression related effects and stories of people who are trying their best to get better, in a down to earth matter. It was made into movie, which I recommend too.

2. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor is a middle aged woman who is used to be alone and does not seek company, as she knows that the moment she will create meaningful connections it will be the moment in which she will get hurt. She frequently talks with her mum, altough the latter treats her coldly and constantly judges Eleanor’s actions and beliefs.

This is a novel about a person who numbed her emotions after going through trauma. It talks about post-traumatic stress disorder and the inheritance of creating meaningful connections despite the uneasiness felt in doing it.

3. Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig

A book in which the author writes abour his own approach to his suffering from depression and anxiety. Through his journey he gathered some reasons for which it is worth to live in spite of a mental health condition, and he writes them in this book to invite others to reflect and help them in their own journey.

4. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Although in this book there’s no mental health condition specified, this is a real story of a person who mentally hit rock bottom after a divorce and picked herself up. The author opens up completely about days spent crying, her seeing no happy future for herself. Through a journey that will take her through three countries, she finds herself again. There is also a movie on this, but, in my opinion, it does not reflect the depth of the book.

5. The Choice by Edith Eger

This is my absolute favourite. Edith Eger is one of the survivors of the Holocaust, and she tells the story of how her childhood was stolen by being deported in a concentration camp. But the book does not stop here, and Edith goes on describing her recovery from the traumatic experience and her willingness to become useful to others in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. She describes how she saw hell and from it she learnt how to use her pain to serve others by becoming a psychologist. She’s a great, inspirational woman.

TW: being the Holocaust the subject of this book, the story contains some crude scenes.

Have a look at Edith Eger website: 

6. The girl who dated herself by Susannah Shakespeare

This is a novel about a girl who learns to love herself after a breakup. After the separation, she realises she never loved herself the way she deserved and starts doing things alone, from going to the cinema to having a fancy dinner.

This is a book about self-love and how it is good and healthy to want to spend some time alone.

7. The curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

This is a novel about a boy on the spectrum of autism and how he deals with it through seeing the world as a mathematical problem that needs to be solved. In the story, he finds himself involved in a mystery to solve, which starts with a dog found dead in the neighbour’s garden.

This book describes well the struggles of someone with autism and how their vision of the world is different, but this doesn’t mean worse.

Please let me know if you have any book recommendation for me, I'd love to hear your suggestions!

Marimeia :)

[spider-sense-and-sensibility]

I know I wasn't tagged but I wanted to think about this - thank you @ladyaj-13 for asking anyone to participate! :)

Rules: List ten books that have stayed with you in some way, don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you.

here we go! I literally just made a list of the first 10 14 books I thought of (and then whittled)

'A Prayer for Owen Meany' by John Irving

I read this in school and it really really struck me - I like things to have meaning, for puzzle pieces to slot together, for metaphors to hit home, and to hear a whole life story, and this book really told the whole story of Owen Meany. That so many things had to happen for the climax of the book to succeed is just so many things slotting together in a satisfying (and sad) way. I've read it a few times since and it means something different each time.

'The Hunger Games Trilogy' by Suzanne Collins

I have never before nor since felt like I visualized a book so thoroughly and completely that I actively set out to do costume plates for all the characters when I first read them. Like I researched stuff and made figure base drawings for all of them and got about 30% through and then the movie came out and I lost it. But truly I saw this so clearly in my mind so kudos to Suzanne for describing stuff so in tune with my brain.

'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I never had to read this in school, and so it was the first "classic literature" book I read of my own accord. The imagery really does hit you and I can still picture moments in the book as well as the ever present billboard looming over it all.

'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' by Mark Haddon

I still think about the way the inner commentary in this book is laid out and how it felt like the way I thought sometimes and yet sometimes so differently. I have a brother on the spectrum and we talked about it and it really just put some stuff into perspective,both in things it got right (for him) and not. Not to mention just being a great mystery book.

'The Princess Bride' by William Goldman

I think this may be the book I have laughed or smiled the most while reading. It is just so funny and the commentary he gives on this "abridged" version of this "famous novel" is just great. And while the story is similar to the movie they are totally different experiences and both excellent in their respective formats.

'Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames' by Laura Maiklem

I love London. I love social history. I love the history of everyday people and objects. I love collections. I love little treasures of all kinds. I love bodies of water. And this book manages to mix all of those in a wonderful meander down the Thames, telling the history of Londoners as well as the author along the way. I have also mudlarked myself (before it got as complicated as it is today) and it is truly just wild to reach down on the shore of a river and just find pieces of Victorian pottery or Roman roof tiles or animal bones from the 18th century.

'Calvin and Hobbes' by Bill Watterson

Along with reading the strip every Sunday in the paper, we had the collections of comics in our house growing up and I would POUR over them constantly. I think a lot of my humor and some of my social consciousness even stems from reading Calvin and Hobbes.

'The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales' by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

I enjoy stories that take familiar tropes or tales and twists them in clever ways, and I think that was born with this book. I loved it as a child. There was humor and silliness threaded throughout - in the endpapers, in the commentary, written really small and really large and it is just such a fun book to read.

'The Lovely Bones' by Alice Sebold

This was a really intriguing look at the afterlife and what it could be, and what it could mean, and the sense of watching life move on without you. I've read it on 3 different plane rides for some reason because it does really draw you in and I still can picture so many little moments from the novel.

'The Poisoner's Handbook' by Deborah Blum

This was a fascinating look at the exponential growth of forensics in 1920s New York, as well as Prohibition and crime in the city and the lives of working people. I never realized just how much literal poison people were willing to put in their bodies to get drunk (although the alcohol we drink today is also technically poison...) and also how much corruption existed (exists) in New York politics. I like true crime to some degree and this was a great story about poisons but also about the two dudes creating and running the forensic laboratory.

Phew! Honorable mention goes to the Baby-Sitters Club for being my personality for a few years, the Series That Shall Not Be Named that was a huge part of me and my siblings lives growing up, a Danielle Steele novel that I read secretly at 11 where the *imagery* realllllly stuck with me, and Sherlock Holmes, where I couldn't pick a favorite but I just like to imagine that Vincent Starrett poem "Here dwell together still two men of note / Who never lived and so can never die...Here, though the world explode, these two survive / And it is always eighteen ninety-five". Also to The Martian and The Perks of Being a Wallflower for being two books I read in one sitting that I can remember at this moment. Books are awesome!

(I'm not a good tagger because I get self conscious but feel free to do this yourself!! Anyone who wants to!)

[otherpplnation]

943. Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon is the author of the story collection Dogs and Monsters, available from Doubleday. It is the official October pick of the Otherppl Book Club.

Haddon is the author of the novels The Porpoise, The Red House and A Spot of Bother, as well as the short story collection, The Pier Falls. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award-winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children's books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

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[ev-bell-logbook]

Critical & Cultural // Seminar // Theory // Sem 1 // Week 2

08/10/24

We started the seminar with a group discussion to help us get to know each other a bit more in a much smaller group setting. Then we went over our homework from the theory lecture the week before. We were given the task to read Roland Barthes's 'The Death of The Author.' and to create some lists on a list of plays, and a list of cultural events. I made my lists on 'plays I knew' & 'plays I don't know.' Then 'events that took place before I was born' & 'after I was born.' We shared these lists in groups of four and were told to come up with new lists that were important to us. I took 'us' as in us as an individual, not as a collective since we all have different experiences and different plays & events that have helped us form our personalities. My group's list of plays is as follows:

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

Jerusalem - Jez Butterworth

Yerma - Simon Stone

This House - James Graham

Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare

We each chose a singular play that was relevant/important to us, then collectively agreed on one that we all had an opinion on. I chose Curious, because when I watched and studied this play I was at a time in my life where I was struggling with my identity. The protagonist of the play is an autistic boy. I really related to Christopher and it helped me make this self-discovery in that I am also autistic. We collectively chose Midsummer Night's Dream because Shakespeare is drilled into our brains as being a genius, and this play was a common favourite.

The list of cultural events is as follows:

Covid 19 pandemic

Margaret Thatcher's time in parliment

Industrial revolution

AIDs crisis

Climate crisis

We all submitted cultural events as they, or their knock-on effects, impacted each of us in my group.

We ran out of time to discuss 'The Death of The Author' within the seminar. I really struggled to read it myself, so I made all of my notes on video summaries. From what I gather, it triggered a shift from structuralism to post structuralism. It questioned things like, if meaning comes from cultural ideas, events, desires - is the individual who wrote the book/play/media actually the author? Texts are a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings (none truly original) mix and clash. The author is only a chef adding more and more ingredients to the soup that is writing. We search for meaning from the author who created it, as if they are confiding in us and presenting parts of themself through their media. We can never truly discern if they're being truthful, or if it's just commentary on current cultures, or if it's just a device, or if it's got 'no meaning.' Do cultural texts have a true meaning at all? Roland Barthes doesn't propose the death of the author, but more the birth of the reader. There is no singular way to discern meaning, meaning that different readers can have different perspectives and understandings of a text. A text can have an open meaning.

[ancestorsalive]

Image: Blandowski and the aborigines. Reproduced with permission from The Haddon Library, University of Cambridge, UK.

Wilhelm Blandowski

a Prussian émigré, arrived in Australia in 1849 with hopes of exploring and documenting the natural history of this still relatively scientifically naiive colony. After several years travelling, surveying and mining gold, he became the first government zoologist at the infant National Museum of Victoria and was a key player in the burgeoning scientific establishment. Chosen to lead a collecting expedition to the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers in 1856, Blandowski and his faithful companion Gerard Krefft brought back a wealth of new material, including many species of undescribed freshwater fishes. Unfortunately, Blandowski's attempts to 'honour' members of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria backfired and a scandal ensued. A disillusioned Blandowski left Australia just ten years after his arrival. A reanalysis of his descriptions of the fish and comparison with a contemporary work suggests that Blandowski deserves recognition as one of pioneers in the natural history of Australian freshwater fish. The loss of taxonomic authority for eight fish species by this energetic, imaginative, but stubborn scientist, left the way open for future workers to make their mark, whereas Blandowski's name and achievements remain obscure.

[whitherwordswither]

What are some of the books you've been reading recently? I have just finished the following:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky

Norwegian Wood / Haruki Murakami

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time / Mark Haddon

Radio Silence / Alice Oseman

I enjoyed the letters-to-someone format of Wallflower. It gave the story a unique flow and kept me interested in what was happening. I had no idea what the main character had really gone through until it all came to a head at the end. Now I have The Smith's stuck in my head.

Norwegian Wood… What can I even begin to say about this book? It threw me in a well of emotions. Sadness. Pining. A yearning for something unknown. And then… the end came. It was so abrupt and left me reeling. I wanted more. But it hit hard, like life often does and without warning. I think this is one I will be coming back to in the future. I, unfortunately, still don't understand all the fuss with The Beatles. I guess they're just not my cup of tea.

The Curious Incident was a bit jarring for me and I struggled to get through it. Admittedly, I ended up skimming through much of the filler. It is written from the viewpoint of a 15 year old boy with Autism / Asperger's Syndrome. And it goes off on tangents. He will be telling the story and then. Here's a page or two of everything there is to know about This Particular Subject. Which at the same time was neat. The book would definitely be cut in half if all that was removed. And that unique perspective would be ruined. Haddon received some criticism for his portrayal of the main character, I'm finding, after the fact. I was a bit put off that the author didn't have first hand experience or anything like that. That made it feel wholly inauthentic to me. And I dislike that feeling.

Radio Silence I absolutely devoured. I don't know what it is about Oseman's writing but I just can't seem to get enough of it. Which is going to get real disappointing real quick because I have very nearly read everything she has put out. Radio Silence has me wanting to revisit my own podcast and start working on that again. It was such a wonderful read. The way she writes her characters is appealing to me and the story just kind of pulls you in. I tried to rank it with Solitaire and Loveless but they all hit different topics and they're all amazing books. So I guess they're all getting the #1 spot.

The next book I plan to dive in to is The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente.

I am bad at reviews. They can absolutely be boiled down to: "This made me feel things. I like it." And, "This did not make me feel things. I did not like it."

[alfvaen]

This will probably be partly spoilery for my May book roundup post, but whatevs.

1) Last book I read:

Honor's Knight by Rachel Bach, second book in that series, since I finished her (as Rachel Aaron) Eli Monpress series and wanted to read this series before going on to her other stuff.

2) A book I recommend:

Hellspark by Janet Kagan is a great book about linguistics, cultural differences, first contact, and sentience, with a great AI character and an alien ecosystem.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

It's very rare for me to start reading a book that I just bought, and the last time that happened was with The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Finished it in one day and lent it ton my dad, and haven't seen it since.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more)

So many of those, it's hard to choose...so I'll just pick an easy one, like The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold.

5) A book on my TBR

According to Goodreads I've got 185 of those, so it's hard to pick...screw it, let's try random. Looks like it's Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri, one of several books I put on to try new diverse authors.

6) A book I’ve put down

I used to do this very rarely, but in recent years I've given myself permission to do it with books from new authors that I'm giving a try. Though even from before that, I did not make it through Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. I found it alternately a little squicky and too much "things happening elsewhere that the POV character was only hearing about".

7) A book on my wish list

Not nearly as many of those these days, but I did enjoy the first book in Cecilia Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde series, and I'm looking for the second one, The Lady of The Sorrows.

8) A favourite book from childhood

I read Watership Down a lot a lot.

9) A book you would give a friend

Tricky. It should probably be one I could find a second copy of, you know, which can be a problem these days. I guess I could maybe give away my physical copy of The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein since I have all the other ones as digital...

10) The most books you own by a single author

I think the last time I checked it was probably C.J. Cherryh, since I have pretty much every book she's ever written. (Though I may not have kept some of the earliest ones.)

11) A nonfiction book you own

Tricky one, since quite frankly I've heard people talking shit about the authors of many of the books I've enjoyed (Yuval Noah Harari, Jared Diamond, Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, etc.) so I'm not sure what to say. I haven't heard anything against Ed Yong yet, though, so I guess I'll mention his I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us And A Grander View of Life.

12) what are you currently reading

One of the big thick fantasy books sitting on my TBR that I've been avoiding because of a perhaps misguided attempt to do a 100-book Goodreads challenge every year. And because I might have some sitting-around-reading time coming up this week. It's Forge of Darkness, first book of Steven Erikson's prequel Kharkanas Trilogy; it's been a few years since I finished the Malazan Book of The Fallen and I felt I needed a bit of a break, and I've also been reading the Ian Esslemont books set in the same world.

13) what are you planning on reading next?

I have a mildly systematic schedule, and the next book will be a reread...actualy, it won't really be a book, because I've been rereading the Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga and the last one was A Civil Campaign, so next will be the "Winterfair Gifts" novella. (Which may help me make up some time after the Steven Erikson book, ha!)

13 books tag game, tagged by @amemoryofwot

1) Last book I read:

Starter Villain by John Scalzi, in an effort to 1) get back on my Hugo nominee completionist bullshit and 2) give him a second go, since I was deeply unimpressed by the first one a few years ago. It was...you know the thing about how badly-written books can help you learn more about writing than well-written ones? That!

2) A book I recommend:

I am metaphorically grabbing everybody I know by the collar and telling them to read Some Desperate Glory, unless the subject matter isn't for them which is fair, but it's so good.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

I distinctly remember finishing Gideon the Ninth at like 11pm because I couldn't wait until morning, which must be seen in the context of me being asleep by 10pm every night of my life I get a choice in the matter.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more)

I went through a solid decade of reading Hogfather every Christmas and I've probably got a few more left in me.

5) A book on my TBR

I've got Mary Beard's latest book, Emperor of Rome, on reserve at the library.

6) A book I’ve put down

Tried The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart last year because it was blurbed well and I was in a fantasy mood, and got like...twenty pages in. It didn't leave enough of an impression for me to remember exactly why, just a general 'I don't care about these characters' vibe.

7) A book on my wish list

Kate Elliott is being very kind about progress updates in her newsletter and I want her to have the time she needs...but I am also chewing at the bit for Lady Chaos.

8) A favourite book from childhood

I was SO into Redwall as a kid. First fanfic I ever wrote.

9) A book you would give a friend

This is hard because I always want to rec specific books to specific people, I sincerely believe there's no generic book which is good for everybody. Um, maybe All Systems Red since Murderbot seems to resonate with a wide audience?

10) The most books you own by a single author

(Physical books only) An ACTUAL single author? Anne McCaffrey for sure. An alleged single author? I own 36 Trixie Belden Mysteries books.

11) A nonfiction book you own

Storm over Mono, which is a really interesting account of the fight to save Lake Mono in California, a scientifically interesting and historically and ecologically unique place.

12) what are you currently reading

Technically between books but I'm about to start The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older. I liked the first one fine but it didn't grab me grab me, so we'll see how it goes.

13) what are you planning on reading next?

My mostly-science book club is going retro and reading Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman which I have been putting off because I have Heard Things about Richard Feynman...but also I gotta gird my loins and get onto it.

I have not been around Tumblr enough lately to think of who to tag but with 100% sincerity, if you see this and it starts the wheels turning in your head about books you've read lately and so on, you're it!

[o-the-mts]

Book Review: Boom! by Mark Haddon

Author: Mark Haddon  Title: Boom! Narrator: Julian Rhind-Tutt Publication Info: Listening Library (2010) Other Books Read by the Same Author: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time A Spot of Bother Summary/Review:   Recommended books: Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper The Master by T. H.…

[joyffree]

Title: Desires Uncovered Series: Ardor Creek Book 3 Author: Ayla Asher Genre: Steamy Small Town Romance Cover Design: Angela Haddon Book Cover Design

It was supposed to be a casual affair…

Dr. Teresa Roe moved from the bustling city to small-town Pennsylvania, hoping the slower pace would help her focus on finding a partner and building a family. Unfortunately, life had other plans, and Teresa finds herself single in her mid-forties, unable to have the children she craves. Determined to focus on the positives, she builds her thriving therapy practice and joins a hook-up app looking for a fun, no-strings-attached affair.

Mark Lancaster has no time to date or cultivate a relationship, so meeting women on hook-up apps is perfect for his busy schedule. When he meets Teresa, he can’t believe his fortune at finding someone so smart, sexy, and funny. In fact, his casual affair with her quickly becomes the highlight of his hectic life.

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