#kelly mcmasters

[writerly-ramblings]

Books Read in July:

1). Directions to Myself: A Memoir of Four Years (Heidi Julavits)

2). Bluets (Maggie Nelson)

3). Essays in Love: A Novel (Alain de Botton)

4). The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (Maggie Nelson)

5). Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Alexa Hagerty)

6). Margot (Wendell Steavenson)

7). An Alphabet for Gourmets (M.F.K. Fisher)

8). My Documents (Alejandro Zambra)

9). Planet of Clay (Samar Yazbek)

10). The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays (Kelly McMasters)

11). Offshore (Penelope Fitzgerald)

12). Encounter (Milan Kundera)

13). Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)

14). Gingerbread (Helen Oyeyemi)

15). A Small Place (Jamaica Kincaid)

16). Where I Was From (Joan Didion)

[alfvaen]

Novel Score

It's sometime around the beginning of a month, which apparently means these days that it's time for me to do a roundup post of the books I read in the preceding month--in this case, January 2024. Once again have been keeping on top of it during the month which helps me actually produce it in a timely manner. Because I started this back in November/December, doing monthly book posts isn't a New Year's resolution, unless the resolution was just "keep doing it". I'm keeping doing it.

Book list under the cut, book-related ramblings may include spoilers for Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Martha Wells's Murderbot series, Kelly Meding's Dreg City series, and maybe others. You have been warned.

Ashok Banker: Siege of Mithila, completed January 6

As mentioned previously, I am rapidly running out of books by male "diversity" slot authors in my collection. I read the first Ashok Banker book, Prince of Ayodhya, a few years earlier, and was kind of meh on it, so I wasn't sure if I would continue. But I did pick up the other one as a library discard (ah, the days when I got books and CDs as library discards…back when they used to have a sale rack in the local branch all the time, instead of saving them up for periodic bulk sales…) so I hadn't entirely given up on it. So, in not quite desperation, I turned to Siege of Mithila as my next diversity read.

The series is apparently a retelling of the Ramayana, which is some kind of important epic in India, though I can't judge if it's like "the Bible" or "King Arthur" or "The Iliad" or what, but I assume it's somewhere on that level, at least among certain cultures. My brief skimming of the Wikipedia article on the Ramayana implies that Banker is following the story pretty closely, which means that sometimes it gets a little weird plotwise, but is perhaps more revealing culturally or something. And sometimes it's a wee bit problematic…like the way that the main adversary for the first two books is Ravana, lord of the Asuras (basically demons), who rules over the southern island kingdom of Lanka (like…"Sri Lanka"?), which is populated entirely by Asuras. Which is about like if there was a fantasy series set in England where they had to fight evil demons from the western island kingdom of Eire or something. (Wait…do they have those?) One wonders if this series (or the original Ramayana) are quite as popular in Sri Lanka, then…

Anyway, we mostly follow Rama, the titular Prince of Ayodhya from the first book, and his half-brother Lakshman, but a lot of this book is also set back in the palace in Ayodhya following Rama's father the Maharaja, his three wives, and the evil (and hunchbacked--oh look, it's equating deformity with wickedness, that's awesome) witch Manthara as she and Ravana try to sabotage the kingdom from within. Rama and Lakshman end up going to Mithila instead of back to Ayodhya, and foiling a big Asura attack on the city, which comes unbelievably close to the end of the book and is not quite solved by deus ex machina, but doesn't feel particularly satisfying.

One element of the series is that some of the characters are just like ridiculously powerful sages who were like "I've been meditating for 5000 years so I'm really wise and can do anything, though I guess I should let Rama solve a few things on his own to gain some of his own wisdom". Not that this is all that different from, say, Gandalf or Merlin, of course... There are also some odd storytelling choices, like switching to a different set of characters just at a dramatic point in a different storyline, or, in one major side-quest, just skipping the ending of it and coming back to it a couple of chapters later in flashbacks. Also, one character is given important advice by a ghost which he then completely ignores (luckily other people overrule him, but it bugged me).

The book kind of feels like the second book of a trilogy, but not quite, which makes sense because apparently there are eight other books in the series, so it's not just about fighting Ravana and the Asuras. I'm on the bubble about the series, as you may have gathered, so I don't know offhand if I'll be going on.

T. Kingfisher: Clockwork Boys, completed January 9

I paced myself going through Siege of Mithila, taking seven days for it (I started on December 31st to get a little head start), so it put me a bit behind on my Goodreads challenge (100 books for the year, again). This means, time to read some shorter things! I haven't read any T. Kingfisher yet (though I have read, like, the webcomic "Digger" under her real name, Ursula Vernon, if nothing else), so I let my wife, who has read a lot of them, suggest which one I should start with, and this was the one she chose (at the time; it may have been a couple of years ago). We have it as an ebook from Kobo, which sometimes makes it a little hard to tell how long the book actually is in pages, but Goodreads claimed it was under 300 pages, so it seemed a possible three-day read.

I was, I guess, vaguely expecting a steampunk story involving two boys who were made of clockwork or something, but apparently it's more straight fantasy (not too similar to the Ramayana was far as I can tell, though, which is good because I like consecutive reads to vary in genre if at all possible) where the Clockwork Boys are the bad guys. Also, apparently this is the first of a duology, a "long book split in two" duology as opposed to "book and a sequel featuring the same characters" duology.

The characters seem somewhat interesting, though I'm not sure I'm 100% won over. Sir Caliban for some reason reminds me of both Sanderson's Kaladin and Bujold's Cazaril, but maybe it's just the similarity of names enhancing certain similarities of character. And the demons also made me think of Bujold's Penric books. Maybe the tone is a little light for me on this one. We've got the second one as an ebook too, so I'll finish it off at some point and then maybe take a look at Nettle & Bone or something.

Kelly Meding: The Night Before Dead, completed January 12

As I may have also mentioned previously, I've tried a whole lot of urban fantasy series. Many of them, my wife has enjoyed more than I have, and is all caught up on them, but most of those I'm only a few books in. (I've given up on relatively few--Jennifer Estep and Jess Haines, among others.) For whatever reason, my wife didn't like the first book in Kelly Meding's "Dreg City" series, Three Days To Dead, and this time, to be actually clever about it, I decided to read the book myself and decide if I wanted to continue on in the series before it went out of print. As it turned out, I did like the first book, and I kept reading it on my own. When the series got dropped by the publisher after four books, I even went and bought the last two books (self-published, probably print on demand) to finish the series.

So this is the last one, which is supposed to wrap up the main conflict. Our main character, Evy Stone, started out the series waking up after death in a newly-vacated body; she was part of a group that worked to deal with paranormal threats. This world has beast-form shapeshifters named "Theria", vampires, and lots of types of fey--mostly pretty usual when it comes to urban fantasy--and their existence is unknown to world at large, etc.

Thie book does seem to wrap things up well enough, at least for the main characters, though it's hard to say if all the resolutions are satisfying. Still, it was enjoyable enough. She does have a couple of other, shorter series which I can try next, since we do actually own them. (And maybe some stuff under a different name?)

Lois McMaster Bujold: Brothers In Arms, completed January 15

Next (chronologically) in the reread order, this is the one where Miles goes to Earth and discovers the existence of his clone-brother Mark (spoilers). It starts up with a level of frustration--why does Miles have to stay at the embassy, and why aren't his mercenaries getting paid?--but things mostly work out in the end. Ivan shows up again (by authorial fiat--it's a bit too much of a coincidence, really), we meet recurring character Duv Galeni, and of course Mark, as mentioned already. It's not a particular favourite, but it's pretty good. And without it, how would we get Mirror Dance, and thus Memory?

I feel like I should be able to say more about it, but I've already talked about the Vorkosigan series a lot in previous posts, and, like I said, it's not a particular favourite. I guess I could mention how the first time through the series I read them in publication order, and so this was before The Vor Game and Cetaganda… Also, although we don't see much of Earth outside of London, we do get a good look at the gigantic dikes being used to hold back the ocean, because in the intervening mumble-mumble centuries the sea levels have risen. So presumably the icecaps have melted or something, though it doesn't seem like the Gulf Stream has shut down or anything, so maybe they have managed to mitigate things somewhat. An interesting view of future Earth, anyway, without going too overboard on covering the vast majority of the planet not relevant to our immediate plot.

Seth Dickinson: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, completed January 20

Taking another book from my list of authors to try (currently stored on my pool table); I picked this one because apparently the author has a new book coming out, and I do see people talking about the character from time to time, so clearly this is a book/series that has had some staying power and cultural impact, as opposed to something obscure that apparently sank without a trace. But this is a book that my wife tried, and either didn't finish or didn't want to continue the series.

And, having finished it, I can see why. I wouldn't say that it's a bad book…but I didn't, in the end, like it. I read it all the way to the end, and I've decided I'll leave it there and not try to continue the series. And probably I won't look for other books by Dickinson either. Like Ian McDonald's Desolation Road, which I read last year, I felt, as I was reading it, that this was a book I would have liked a lot better when I was younger, but these days it just doesn't do it for me.

It has the feeling of fantasy, in that it's set in a different world from our own, and there is none of the futuristic technology that would explain this as being a colony world…but there is also little or nothing in the way of magic. A little alchemy, maybe, but I don't know that it's out of line with what you could achieve with actual drugs. No wizards, and I don't think there were supernatural creatures either. But it's fantasy-coded, and maybe there's some minor thing I'm forgetting. It's not about magic, though. It's really about colonialism, and what happens when you're sucked into the colonizer's system so far that you think that the only way to help your people is by going along with that system. And Baru Cormorant is somewhat autistic-coded, perhaps--not only is she a savant, but she seems to have trouble figuring out the motives and feelings of others. Puts too much confidence in the ability to explain everything using economics (the character and possibly also the author, quite frankly), in a way which reminds me mostly of Dave Sim's deconstruction of faith and fantasy in Cerebus: Church And State. Not sure if it counts as grimdark, but it feels like the honorable are punished for their naivety like in "A Song of Ice And Fire". I lost sympathy for the main character partway through, and never got much for anyone else either. One character I liked and hoped to see more of was (gratuitously?) killed in the middle of the book. I was forewarned of the existence of a plot twist at the end of the book, and when it came, although I wasn't completely surprised, I was disappointed, and I didn't feel that it worked.

So, yeah. Your mileage may vary, but this book did not win me over.

Charles Stross: The Annihilation Score, completed January 25

I wanted something a bit more light-hearted after the previous book, but not, apparently, too much so. Charles Stross's "Laundry Files" series is set against a backdrop of cosmic horror and the looming end of the world, but also of British governmental bureaucracy, out of which he can usually pull of a fair amount of humour, as well as humanity. The main protagonist of the series is Bob Howard (named in honour of Robert E. Howard, inventor of Conan and friend of Lovecraft), computational demonologist, and the books in turn have paid tribute to a lot of different sources--James Bond, vampires, American evangelical megachurches, and--in this book--superheroes. But also, in this book, Bob is not our narrator; instead, we get his wife, Mo, in the fallout of a scene in the previous book (which we get from her POV here) with dire implications for their relationship…which has always been kind of a three-way between Bob, Mo, and Mo's soul-eating sentient violin, and this triangle has now come to a crisis. Plus there's superheroes.

Stross notes in the introduction that he never really read American superhero comics, so he had to pick a few brains about them, but the book really isn't about American superheroes either; he references the British superhero anthology series "Temps" (which I never did manage to read, since I only managed to find the second book, but now I feel like I should check out) as contrasted with the "Wild Cards" series.

All in all it's pretty decent, with lots of witty read-aloud bits, but the pacing is odd; there's a lot of plotlines, and some of them don't seem to progress for a long time. Some of them turn out to be red herrings, I guess, but overall it doesn't gel as well as it could. We don't see much of Bob (which makes sense since this isn't his book), though Mo is a perfectly fine protagonist. I'll be fine going back to Bob for the next book. If I can ever find it.

See, apparently this is the last book in the series I own right now, and probably the next one, The Nightmare Stacks, came and went while I was behind on reading it, and now it's out of print (and possibly never had a mass-market release at all, which is still my preferred format) and seems like it'll be hard to find in any physical format. I mean, I went on a site which allows you to search indie and second-hand bookstores, and the title didn't even come up on search. I have long been resisting switching wholeheartedly over to ebooks (a transition my wife has already made), but I can see that at some point I may have to get used to the fact that ebooks are just replacing mass-market paperbacks for the cheap release format. (I still can't manage to bring myself to spend as much as $8, let alone $12 or more, for an ebook, though. Like…what am I paying for? The publishing costs are minuscule compared to physical copies, and I expect that saving to be passed on to me. I guess I don't know if the extra is being passed on to the author in a non-self-published situation, but given our current corporate hellscape I'm gonna say probably not. Note: if you think this makes me a horrible person who hates writers to make money, please remember that I am married to a writer who I would love to make enough money that I don't have to work, but the publishing industry is horrible and they're the ones that actually have the capability to allow writers to make enough money to make a living, and they're not doing it, so I don't know what to tell you. I've bought thousands of books in my life, even if I don't go out of my way to buy the most expensive ones, because that's a good way to go broke. Get off my back, person I made up for this parenthetical aside.)

Martha Wells: System Collapse, completed January 28

I may be the last person in my house to have read Murderbot. My wife had already read some of Martha Wells earlier books (Raksura series, I want to say) before she read the Murderbot novells, and she loved them and read them to/got our kids to read them too. I eventually scheduled one in (novellas are good when I'm behind on my Goodreads challenge) and…it was okay, I guess? And I kept reading them because, well, more novellas. Last year I read the first novel-length story, Network Effect, and I liked it somewhat better than the novellas, for whatever reason.

I had been putting off the latest one for a little while, though, partly because of my Vorkosigan reread--I generally don't like books that are too close in genre too close together, and they're both kinda space opera-ish, though quite different kinds (Murderbot's future is more corporate-dominated), but next up I'm taking a break for a Dick Francis reread, so I thought I might as well put it in now. Though I've got to say that, since we have it as a physical hardcover as opposed to the digital novella ebooks, I'm really not a big fan of the texture of the dust jacket. Like, it is physically unpleasant to touch, being just a little bit rough. But not as bad as some I'd run across in the past few years, so I don't have to, like, take off the dust jacket to read it.

In the end I didn't like it as well as Network Effect, though I did like the middle bit where Murderbot becomes a Youtube influencer. The early part of the book, Murderbot is in a bit of a depressive state and not fun to read, like the first part of "Order of The Phoenix" or something. I guess if a character is too hypercompetent then nothing challenges them, but I wasn't a big fan of the emotional arc.

Dick Francis: Forfeit, completed January 31

I remember precisely where I was when I first heard of Dick Francis. See, I went to this convention in Edmonton in the summer of 1989, "ConText '89". It was an important convention--a reader-oriented rather than media-dominated SF/Fantasy convention, for one thing, and also it resulted in the formation of the first SF/Fantasy writer's organization in Canada, currently named SF Canada. Oh, and also, I met a cute girl there (Nicole, a YA author guest from northern Alberta), started dating, fell in love, got married, had three kids, and we're still married today.

I also saw this posting for a writing course out at a place called the Black Cat Guest Ranch, in the Rockies near Hinton, and decided to go. There I met Candas Jane Dorsey (who was the instructor for the course) and several other writers, and we later formed a writers' group called The Cult of Pain which is still going to this day. Anyway, I went out for a second course there, with Nicole coming along this time (though we may not have technically been dating and didn't share a room)--I think it was in mid-February sometime--and one evening we were all hanging out in the outdoor hot tub, watching snowflakes melt over our heads, and talking about books. And Candas and Nicole started rhapsodizing about this guy named Dick Francis. I said, "Who?" And they both told me I had to go read him, like, right away.

Dick Francis, apparently, was a former steeplechase jockey turned mystery/thriller writer. Now, mysteries and thrillers were not really my thing--I was into the SF & fantasy--but I supposed I was willing to try it. I was in university and trying to read other stuff outside my comfort zone, like Thomas Hardy and The Brothers Karamazov and William S. Burroughs, so why not. Plus, I wanted my girlfriend to like me. And the first one I picked up was one that one of my roommates had lying around, called Forfeit. It was pretty decent, and I went on to others--Nicole had a copy of Nerve, and I soon started to pick up more--and eventually read almost all of them (a few proved elusive, but I tracked down a copy of Smokescreen not long ago…).

Every book was concerned in some way with horse racing, but there was a wide variety--sometimes the main character was a jockey, but sometimes that was just their side hustle, and they had another profession, or sometimes they did something else like train horses or transport horses, or paint pictures of horses, or they didn't do anything about horses but the romantic interest did… He covered a lot of different professions over his books, they were usually quite interesting, and his characters were always very well-drawn. After his wife Mary (apparently an uncredited frequent collaborator and researcher) died, there was a gap of a few years before he started writing them with his son Felix. I think I read all of those ones, but after he died and Felix started writing solo novels, I haven't really kept up on those ones.

Instead, a few years ago I decided I was going to reread all the books, in publication order, interspersed with my series rereads as I was already doing with Discworld and Star Trek books. Forfeit is his seventh published book…and when I went to look for it on my shelf, I discovered that I actually didn't own a copy, and probably never had. I had just borrowed it from my roommate, and then given it back (a rookie mistake). Was it in print? Of course not, don't be silly. I had managed to find a used copy of Smokescreen online, as I mentioned, but for Forfeit there was only more expensive trade paperbacks, or $8 ebooks. They didn't even have it at the library! Except, well, they did…but I'd have to interlibrary loan it. I went back on forth on which to try to do, and eventually went ILL, and it came in for me at the library on the 20th. So there, overpriced ebooks. (And person I made up for the earlier parenthetical aside.)

Dick Francis novels have turned to be pretty rereadable, because they're not primarily mysteries of the sort where you don't remember which of the suspects is guilty; they're mysteries where the main character has to figure out who's behind the crimes and then avoid getting killed by them. Some of it is competency porn as they use their special skills to solve problems. And some of it just because of the engaging characters, which are maybe not quite all the way there in the earlier books (the ones I've reread so far are still books from the 60s, so the female characters could be more nuanced). In Forfeit what I recalled from that first read (some 34 years ago) was that the main character was a sportswriter, it started with one of his colleagues killing himself, and his wife was disabled and bedridden. (And one exciting scene in the middle of the book in which spoilers.) Though it turned out I was conflating two suicide openings (Nerve also starts with one, a gunshot suicide on the first page, whereas Forfeit's is more falling out of a window), and the exciting scene is missing an element I was sure was there.

So that's eight books in one month, which is basically enough to keep up on my Goodreads challenge, but I also managed to squeeze in a couple more on the side track. First of all, there was my brother's book, Paths of Pollen, which came out last year; my mom went to the book launch in Toronto and brought back a signed copy for me. As one might expect, it talks about honeybees (and the time he was working on our stepfather's apiary), but covers a lot of pollen details I didn't know, about all the other bees, beetles, butterflies, insects, and other animals that also do pollination. It's a sobering look at how plants reproduce and how we're screwing it up in a lot of cases. (I hadn't realized before how much insects use pollen as food…somehow I thought they were nectar-eaters and they just picked up pollen because the plants forced them too, but I guess it makes sense that they also eat it.)

Then there was another one of the Love & Rockets ebook bundle that I've been going through. This volume, Esperanza, is around the latest stuff I read in the Love & Rockets Vol. 2 comics (which I have only read once or twice), so it's fairly unfamiliar to me. Despite it being named after Esperanza "Hopey" Glass, most of the book seems to revolve around Vivian, a.k.a. Frogmouth, a hot, buxom woman with an unfortunate voice, who both Maggie and Ray are lusting after, despite her problematic relationships with some violent criminals. Ray and Maggie do meet up again briefly; Maggie's working as an apartment superintendent, Hopey's working in a bar but trying to get into a teaching assistant job, surreal things happen with Izzy, Doyle's around as well, and we see brief glimpses of Maggie's sister Esther. It was interesting but I didn't find it altogether compelling.

With ten books for January, that means I'm really read up to 36.5 days into the year, or February 5th, so I'm a little bit ahead. I'll be taking advantage of this to start off February with a longer book, for my female diversity slot--Fonda Lee's Jade Legacy, to wrap up that series. More about that next month, of course…

[just-a-bookish-reader]

Upcoming Posts

Review of In These Hallowed Halls (ARC) (⭐⭐⭐)

Review of Murder Your Employer (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Readathons (each will get their own dedicated post)

Up next tbr

Books I'm excited for (coming out 2023-2024)

Academia related novels/series I plan to read around August-end of September

Spooky/Gothic/Horror/Dark Fantasy/Other Halloween Vibes books I plan to read around September-end of October

Cozy books I plan to read after December 16 (I graduate my undergrad then so I probably won't have any list for November)

These posts won't necessarily come out in this order nor soon (ie: spooky gothic list will probably come out closer to september) and I will try to remember to update this post as needed with others!

[cardinalcringe]

(And in case you don’t have a NYT subscription, here they all are):

“We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” - Mark Milley

“The president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.” - Richard Spencer

“President trump and other officials have repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.” - HR McMaster

“Donald trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people- does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.” - James Mattis

“ I have a lot of concerns about Donald trump. I have said that he’s a threat to democracy.” - Mark Esper

“ a person who admires autocrats and murderers dictators. A person who has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”- John Kelly

“ I think the events of the capital, however, they occurred, were shocking. And it was something that, as I mentioned in my statement, I cannot put aside.”- Elaine Chao

“Unfortunately, the actions and rhetoric following the election, especially during this past week, threaten to tarnish these and other historical legacies of this administration. The attacks on the Capital were an assault on our democracy, and on the tradition of peaceful transitions of power of the United States of America, brought to the world.”- Alex Azar

“Moron.” - Rex Tillerson (re: trump, repeatedly)

“It’s more than just a bunch of papers and what big deal is this and so forth. Lives can be lost.” - Dan Coats

“I didn’t feel he did what he needed to do to stop what was happening.” -Betsy DeVos (a stupid bitch overall, but still right)

“It will always be, ‘Oh, yeah, you work for the guy who tried to overtake the government.’” - Mick Mulvaney

“The fact of the matter is he is a consummate, narcissist, and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk.” -Bill Barr

“By the time I left the White House, I was convinced he was not fit to be president… I think it is a danger for the United States if he gets a second term.” -John Bolton

“We need more seriousness, less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood.” - Mike Pompeo

“He asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution, and I always will.” - Mike Pence

“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” - Nikki Haley

Stupid. Selfish. Divisive. Authoritarian. Unserious. Tyrant. Professional Victim. Insurrectionist. Narcissist. Dangerous. Moron.

Trump’s best people sum him up.

[tomoleary]

Kelly Freas (1922-2005) “Labyrinth” by Lois McMaster Bujold Science Fiction Analog cover (August 1989) Source

“Illustrates the 4-armed musician character Nicol”

[the-psudo]

Trump's People

“The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution. … Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” — Mike Pence, Trump's vice president

“Someone who engaged in that kind of bullying about a process that is fundamental to our system and to our self-government shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.” — Bill Barr, Trump's 2nd attorney general

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.” — James Mattis, Trump's 1st secretary of defense

“I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.” — Mark Esper, Trump's 2nd secretary of defense

“We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America – and we’re willing to die to protect it.” — retired Gen. Mark Milley, Trump's chairman of the joint chiefs

“(Trump’s) understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of US history was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this.” — Rex Tillerson, Trump's secretary of state

“He used to be good on foreign policy and now he has started to walk it back and get weak in the knees when it comes to Ukraine. A terrible thing happened on January 6, and he called it a beautiful day.” — Nikki Haley, Trump's 1st ambassador to the United Nations

“Someone who I would argue now is just out for himself.” — Chris Christie, Trump's presidential transition vice-chairman

“We saw the absence of leadership, really anti-leadership, and what that can do to our country.” — HR McMaster, Trump's 2nd national security adviser

“I believe (foreign leaders) think he is a laughing fool.” — John Bolton, Trump's 3rd national security adviser

“A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.” — John Kelly, Trump's 2nd chief of staff

“I quit because I think he failed at being the president when we needed him to be that.” — Mick Mulvaney, Trump's acting chief of staff and US special envoy to Ireland, resigned after January 6th, 2021

“He is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century.” — Anthony Scaramucci, one of Trump's former communications directors

“I am terrified of him running in 2024.” — Stephanie Grisham, another former communications director

“When I saw what was happening on January 6 and didn’t see the president step in and do what he could have done to turn it back or slow it down or really address the situation, it was just obvious to me that I couldn’t continue.” — Betsy DeVos, Trump's secretary of education, resigned after January 6th, 2021

“At a particular point the events were such that it was impossible for me to continue, given my personal values and my philosophy." — Elaine Chao, Trump's secretary of Transportation, resigned after January 6th, 2021

“…the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.” — Richard Spencer, Trump's 1st secretary of the Navy

“The President undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, he’s culpable for this siege, and an utter disgrace.” — Tom Bossert, Trump's 1st homeland security adviser

“Donald’s an idiot.” — Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer

“Trump relentlessly puts forth claims that are not true.” — Ty Cobb, Trump's White House lawyer

“We can stand by the policies, but at this point we cannot stand by the man.” — Alyssa Farah Griffin, one of Trump's directors of strategic communications, now a CNN political commentator

“Donald Trump, who would attack civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would go after grieving black widows, who would say there were good people on both sides, who endorsed an accused child molester; Donald Trump, and his decisions and his behavior, was harming the country. I could no longer be a part of this madness.” — Omarosa Manigault Newman, a top aide in charge of Trump's outreach to African Americans

“I thought that he did do a lot of good during his four years. I think that his actions on January 6 and the lead-up to it, the way that he’s acted in the aftermath, and his continuation of pushing this lie that the election is stolen has made him wholly unfit to hold office every again.” — Sarah Matthews, one of Trump's deputy press secretaries, resigned after January 6th, 2021

“I think that Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.” — Cassidy Hutchinson, Trump's final chief of staff’s aide

[mariacallous]

NATO has safeguarded U.S. and trans-Atlantic security for 75 years, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. Could NATO survive a second Donald Trump administration? Most likely not—at least not with the United States as a committed ally and alliance leader. That would pose serious challenges for the European part of the alliance.

Trump’s skepticism about NATO

Trump’s skepticism of allies and alliances dates back well more than three decades. He believes they impose an outsized budgetary burden on the United States, for which it is not “paid.” Further, he believes allies use their defense savings to bolster their industries, out-compete the United States in trade, and take American jobs.

Trump’s views seemed to change little when he assumed the responsibilities of the presidency. At his first NATO meeting in 2017, he complained that allies did not devote 2% of their gross domestic product to defense, a goal NATO leaders had set as a target to meet by 2024 (more than two-thirds of allies will hit that target this year). At a 2018 alliance summit, Trump reportedly asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton: “Should we make history here and pull out of NATO?”

Trump did not endorse Article 5 of NATO’s 1949 Washington Treaty, also known as the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack against one “shall be considered an attack against them all.” Reaffirming Article 5 is something American presidents ritualistically do, in part because Article 5 does not commit allies to a specific action. However, American presidents other than Trump made clear the United States would come to the aid of an attacked ally with U.S. military force. That bolsters deterrence.

Trump has signaled something very different. In February, he told a campaign rally that he had warned allies that, if they did not pay up, he would “absolutely not” defend them, adding “I would encourage [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want.”

Trump does not appear to share other presidents’ view that the United States has a vital national interest in a stable and secure Europe, which NATO helps to ensure. Further, bases in Europe allow the U.S. military to forward-deploy forces closer to hot spots in the Middle East and Africa (United States Africa Command, for example, is headquartered in Germany). And NATO has invoked Article 5 only once in its history: in defense of the United States after 9/11. More than 1,000 NATO troops died in Afghanistan fighting alongside their American comrades. They were there only because they were U.S. allies.

On the other hand, Trump seems to have an affinity for autocrats, and for Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular. He has rarely criticized Putin, whose war on Ukraine has blown up Europe’s security.

The fact that the Trump administration nevertheless bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe and increased sanctions on Russia should offer little assurances. As president, Trump showed a weak grasp of how the U.S. government works and of how to turn his views into policy. Moreover, advisors such as retired generals John Kelly (White House chief of staff), H.R. McMaster (national security advisor), and Jim Mattis (secretary of defense) worked to soften his worst impulses.

Policy and players in a second Trump administration

Things would almost certainly play out differently in a second term in which Trump’s instinctive skepticism about NATO, affinity for Putin, and disdain for Ukraine would take charge. His campaign website says the United States should “finish the process we began under my Administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” That is oddly timed when Moscow has launched the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II, and NATO is as important as ever for deterring and containing Russia.

Plans have been developed to translate Trump’s views into policy. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 section on Europe offers three visions for dealing with Russia1, two of which would appear to lessen the U.S. commitment to NATO, and leaves it to the president to decide. Trump almost certainly would choose one of those two.

A briefing paper that reportedly got attention in Trump’s inner circle argued that the United States should adopt a “dormant NATO” policy. That would mean shifting the primary defense burden to European allies while America served as an offshore “balancer of last resort.” That diminution of the U.S. role in NATO appears to mesh well with Trump’s thinking.

Lists are being prepared of potential officials to implement those policies. The lists will not include the likes of Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis, but people such as Richard Grenell and Elbridge Colby. Grenell, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, has been described as transactional and isolationist; in 2020, he pushed for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Germany because the Germans had not met the 2% defense spending target, a target that NATO had agreed should be met by 2024 (and which Germany hit this year). Colby argues for a China-first policy that would leave little room for the U.S. commitment to NATO.

Moreover, today’s Republican Party is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan and John McCain. While some Republican senators and members of Congress support a strong U.S. presence in NATO, few have shown any readiness to challenge Trump, who has firmly locked down his position as GOP leader. In fact, quite the opposite. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has consistently supported NATO and Ukraine, recently penned an op-ed entitled “We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s.” However, he has endorsed Trump, whose America First views echo precisely those mistakes. In any case, McConnell will step down from his leadership position in November.

Bolton has flatly predicted: “In a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from NATO.” The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision requiring two-thirds Senate approval for a decision to leave NATO. However, it is not clear that would survive a legal challenge. Even if Trump did not formally withdraw, he could draw down U.S. forces in Europe and, if it came to it, simply ignore Article 5.

Views of NATO allies in Europe

Allied leaders already have reason to doubt Trump’s commitment to the alliance. If Trump wins in November and Putin shares that doubt, the security risk for Europe would grow significantly.

NATO leaders understandably view the prospect of Trump’s return with trepidation and privately talk of “Trump-proofing” the alliance while considering ways to persuade the former president of NATO’s value. That trepidation is a factor that has helped boost defense spending by European NATO members—as a way to demonstrate that Europe is taking on a greater share of the burden but also as a hedge against a Trump decision to downgrade the U.S. commitment to the alliance. Some European officials have reached out to Trump; those efforts have not had an evident effect.

Were Trump to win in November and then reduce the U.S. commitment, a number of challenges would confront European NATO members. First, Ukraine. Trump recently reiterated that he would end U.S. support. That would mean a greater financial burden on Europe, but Europe alone lacks the defense industrial capacity to meet Ukraine’s needs, at least in the near term.

Second, Russia. NATO’s European members collectively have an economy many times larger than Russia’s. They would need time, however, to turn that into hard military power and would face a particular struggle making up for enablers now provided by the U.S. military, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets; heavy airlift; and long-range strike capabilities such as conventionally-armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles.

Third, the nuclear dimension. Were Trump to fold the nuclear umbrella the United States extends over NATO, could the nuclear forces of Britain and France suffice to protect all European members of the alliance? The possible end of the American extended deterrent has even prompted a discussion in Berlin about a German need for nuclear arms.

Fourth, NATO leadership on major questions traditionally has come from Washington. If the United States under Trump were to withdraw, as Bolton predicted, or just dramatically cut back its role, who would take up the leadership mantle?

European members of the alliance must further build their militaries and continue to take on a greater share of the defense burden for Europe, particularly as the United States has to deal with a rising China in the Indo-Pacific region. That shift is already well underway: non-U.S. members of NATO (European members plus Canada) accounted for about 27% of total NATO member defense spending in 2014; in 2024, that figure had risen to about 36%. The problem is that even that kind of increase likely would not prove enough for Trump—who has suggested that allies devote 4% of GDP to defense—and that, if reelected, he would move abruptly to scale back the U.S. role in the alliance. NATO absent a strong U.S. commitment in a second Trump administration would be a very different—and considerably weaker—organization.

There is a small chance that Trump, who often seems uninterested in specific policies, might leave NATO alone. Even in that event, however, could Europe count on the mercurial and unpredictable former president when the chips were down? It would not appear to be a good bet.

[audikatia]

I'll be honest, it was a lot of rereads this year because 1) I love rereading favs and 2) so many of the new books I read this year were just eh.

Total list with ratings below:

Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage by Nathalia Holt ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Maid by Nita Prose ⭐️⭐️

Book Lovers by Emily Henry ⭐️⭐️

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Beauty, British Spy by Damien Lewis ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Pallbearer’s Club by Paul Tremblay ⭐️⭐️

Harry Potter and the Art of Spying by Lynn M. Boughey ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Golden Boys by Phil Stamper ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Adam Sass ⭐️

Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Teen Titans: Robin by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bad Gays: a Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han ⭐️⭐️

It’s Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han ⭐️⭐️

We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han ⭐️⭐️

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Seige and Storm by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rise and Ruin by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks by Patrick Raddon Keefe ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dead End Girls by Wendy Heard ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Afterglow by Phil Stamper ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As Good as Dead by Holly Jackson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World by David K. Randall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Five Survive by Holly Jackson ⭐️⭐️

Spell Bound by F.T. Lukens ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Something Wild and Wonderful by Anita Kelly ⭐️⭐️

Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Only One Left by Riley Sager ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Opal by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️���️

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So This is Ever After by F.T. Lukens ⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of Us is Next by Karen M. McManus ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of Us is Back by Karen M. McManus ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Liar City by Allie Therin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Seriously, Murder? by Monica Hoopes ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Awakening by Kate Chopin ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Drift by C. J. Tudor ⭐️⭐️

Scones and Scofflaws by Jane Gorman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune ⭐️⭐️

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ten Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wolfsong by TJ Klune ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman ⭐️⭐️

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix ⭐️⭐️

Small Favors by Erin A. Craig ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Raven King by Nora Sakavic ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

All the King’s Men by Nora Sakavic ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Christine by Stephen King ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Male Gazed by Manuel Betancourt ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro ⭐️⭐️

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Nine by Maureen Johnson ⭐️⭐️

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon ⭐️⭐️

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Gwen and Art are Not in Love by Lex Croucher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When Crack was King by Donovan X. Ramsey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Slippery Creatures by K. J. Charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Sugared Game by K. J. Charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Subtle Blood by K. J. Charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Monsters by Claire Dederer ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Allergic by Theresa McPhail ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[accidentalspaceexplorer]

December Monthly Recap

I read more in December than I did in November, a good indicator of the holiday break and also my better mood and stress levels. My favorite book I read this month was A City on Mars, which was a really fascinating and intriguing nonfiction book about space travel and space settlement. My least favorite was A Night to Surrender, although it had a lot of competition (not the best reading month quality wise).

A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith: 5/5

A Delicate Deception by Cat Sebastian: 3/5

The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord: 2.5/5

The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold: 4.25/5

Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 11 by Kamome Shirahama: 4.5/5

Vicious by V.E. Schwab: 4/5

Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone: 4.75/5

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros: 4.5/5

The Secret, Book, and Scone Society by Ellery Adams: 2.75/5

The Fiancee Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur: 5/5

A Night to Surrender by Tessa Dare: 2/5, dnf

Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl by Hettie Bell: 2.5/5

All the Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows: 4.5/5

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer: 4/5

And my final stats for my goals below the cut, although I'll talk about them again when I reflect on how they went:

23 in 2023: 18 [+1]

Read 100 books: 188/100 [+14]

Translated works: 5 [+1]

Physical TBR: 16 [+2]

Top of TBR: 8 [+1]

Books in Spanish: 7 [+0]

Read 40% AOC: 22.2% [-0.5%]

Discworld Books: 3 [+0]

Series: 32 started vs. 36 caught up/finished [+0/+5]

Storygraph recs: 2 | avg. 3.25/5 [+0]

Indigenous authors: 3 [+0]

[monkeyjaw]

Year in Review (by way of books) 2023

Books and Comics/Graphic Novels 2023

January

The Doubtful Guest – Edward Gorey (illustrated book/graphic novel)

The Promised Neverland: Volume 6 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu(manga)

The City and the City – China Mieville

Sandman Volume 6: Fables and Reflections – Neil Gaiman, various artists (graphic novel)

Sandman Volume 7: Brief Lives – Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson, Vince Locke (graphic novel)

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas – Frederick Douglas, read by Charles Turner

The Sandman Volume 8: World’s End – Neil Gaiman, various artists (graphic novel)

The Bartimaeus Trilogy 2: The Golem’s Eye – Jonathan Stroud

The Man Who Fell To Earth – Dan Watters, Dev Pramanik (graphic novel)

The Carpet People – Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs

Hikaru no Go Volume 15: Sayanara – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Hikaru no Go Volume 16: The Chinese Go Association – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Witch Hat Atelier Volume 1 – Kamome Shirahama (manga)

February

The Sandman Volume 9: The Kindly Ones – Neil Gaiman, Marc Hemple, various artists (graphic novel)

Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake, read by Simon Vance

Paper Girls Volume 3 – Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang (graphic novel)

Beastars Volume 1 – Paru Itagaki (manga)

Revenge of the Librarians – Tom Gauld (graphic novel)

Lucifer Volume 1: Devil in the Gateway – Mike Carey, Peter Gross (graphic novel)

Saint Young Men Volume 1 – Hikaru Nakamura (manga)

The Sandman Volume 10: The Wake – Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, Jon Muth, Charles Vess (graphic novel)

Hikaru no Go Volume 17: A Familiar Face – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson

Beastars Volume 2 – Paru Itagaki (manga)

Woman World – Aminder Dhaliwal (graphic novel)

Black Paradox – Junji Ito (manga)

Beastars Volume 3 – Paru Itagaki (manga)

March

Lucifer Volume 2: Children & Monsters – Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly (graphic novel)

Doomsday Book – Connie Willis, read by Jenny Sterlin

Moonshadow – J.M. DeMatteis, Jon J. Muth, Kent Williams (graphic novel)

The Magic Fish – Trung Le Nguyen (graphic novel)

Sleepless Volume 2 – Sarah Vaughn, Leila Del Luca (graphic novel)

The Monkey Prince Volume 1: Enter the Monkey – Gene Luen Yang, Bernard Chang (graphic novel)

Unbroken – Lauren Hillenbrand, read by Edward Hermann

Thrawn: Ascendancy 2: The Greater Good – Timothy Zahn, read by Marc Thompson

Thud! – Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs

April

Operation Mincemeat – Ben McIntyre

Beastars Volume 4 – Paru Itagaki (manga)

Parasyte Volume 2 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson

The Promised Neverland Volume 7 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

Parasyte Volume 3 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

The Wheel of Time Bk 4: The Shadow Rising – Robert Jordan

Twig – Skottie Young, Skyle Strahm (graphic novel)

Spring Rain: a graphic memoir – Andy Warner (graphic novel)

The Multiversity – Grant Morrison, various artists (graphic novel)

The Promised Neverland Volume 8 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

Goldie Vance Volume 2 – Hope Larson, Jackie Ball, Brittney Williams (graphic novel)

Team of Rivals (Abridged) – Doris Kearns Goodwin, read by Richard Thomas

Stretching the Heavens – Terry L. Givens

May

The Promised Neverland Volume 9 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

Parasyte Volume 4 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

Parasyte Volume 5 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

Conan Volume 1 – Robert E. Howard, L. Sprage De Camp, Lin Carter

Parasyte Volume 6 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

The Promised Neverland Volume 10 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

Penric’s Demon – Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grove Gardner

Kamen Rider: The Classic Manga Collection - Shōtarō Ishinomori, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian (manga)

 Parasyte Volume 7 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

Shuna’s Journey – Hayao Miyazaki, translated by Alex Dudok de Wit (manga)

Parasyte Volume 8 – Hitoshi Iwaaki (manga)

Maggy Garrison – Lewis Trondheim, Stephane Oiry (graphic novel)

Double Cross – Ben McIntyre

The Promised Neverland Volume 11 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

June

The Promised Neverland Volume 12 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

The Promised Neverland Volume 13 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

My Hero Academia Volume 1 – Kohei Horikoshi (manga)

Think Again – Adam Grant

Adventure Game Comics Volume 1: Leviathan – Jason Shiga (graphic novel)

Ranma ½ Volume 35 – Rumiko Takahashi (manga)

Ranma ½ Volume 36 – Rumiko Takahashi (manga)

The Promised Neverland Volume 14 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

Thrawn Ascendancy Volume 3: Lesser Evil – Timothy Zahn, read by Marc Thompson

Leviathan Wakes – James S.A. Corey

The Man Without Talent – Yoshitsaru Tsuge (manga)

July

A Bride’s Story Volume 3 – Kaoru Mori (manga)

The Promised Neverland Volume 15 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

The Promised Neverland Volume 16 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu (manga)

Almost American Girl – Robin Ha (graphic novel)

The Woman Who Smashed Codes – Jason Fagone

The Swamp – Yoshiharu Tsuge (manga)

The Wheel of Time Book 5: The Fires of Heaven – Robert Jordan

A Bride’s Story Volume 4 – Kaoru Mori (manga)

Pulp – Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips (graphic novel)

Locke & Key: Small World – Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez (graphic novel)

Breaking Cat News – Georgia Dunn (graphic novel)

August

Labyrinth Coronation Vol 1 – Ryan Ferrier, Simon Spurrier, Daniel Bayliss (graphic novel)

A Bride’s Story Volume 5 – Kaoru Mori (manga)

Worst Journey In the World Volume 1 – Sara Airress (graphic novel)

Best American Comics 2016 – various artists, writers, edited by Roz Chast (graphic novel)

Labyrinth Coronation Volume 2 – Ryan Ferrier, Simon Spurrier, Daniel Bayliss (graphic novel)

Hikaru no Go Volume 19: One Step Forward! – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Hikaru no Go Volume 20: The Young Lions – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Thirsty Mermaids – Kat Leyh (graphic novel)

Criminal: Coward – Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips (graphic novel)

Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler, read by Lynne Thigpen

Hikaru no Go Volume 21: Great Expectations – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Hikaru no Go Volume 22: China vs. Japan – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Hikaru no Go Volume 23: Endgame – Takeshi Obata, Yumi Hotta (manga)

Dead Boy Detectives Vol. 1: Schoolboy Terrors – Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham, Gary Erskine (graphic novel)

Dead Boy Detectives Vol 2: Ghost Snow – Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham, Gary Erskine (graphic novel)

Seek You – Kristen Radtke (graphic novel)

John Constantinte Hellblazer Volume 2: The Devil You Know – Jamie Delano, David Lloyd, Richard Piers Rayner (graphic novel)

September

Once & Future Volume 5: The Wasteland – Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora (graphic novel)

The Once and Future Witches – Alix Harrow

The Sandman Presents: The Deadboy Detectives – Ed Brubaker, Bryan Talbot, Steve Leialoha (graphic novel)

Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham – Mike Mignola, Richard Pace, Troy Nixey, Dennis Janke (graphic novel)

Free Country: A Tale of the Children’s Crusade – Neil Gaiman, various writers, artists (graphic novel)

Man’s Search For Meaning – Victor E. Frankl, read by Simon Vance

John Constantine Hellblazer Volume 1: Original Sins – Jamie Delano, Mark Buckingham, Richard Piers Rayner (graphic novel)

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? – Roz Chast (graphic novel)

Edge of Spider-Verse – Dan Slott, Jason Latour, various artists/writers (graphic novel)

Spider-Gwen Volume 1: Greater Power – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

John Constatine Hellblazer Volume 3: The Fear Machine – Jamie Delano, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Buckingham, Mike Hoffman (graphic novel)

Cosmic Odyssey – Jim Starlin, Mike Mignola, Carlos Garzon (graphic novel)

October

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. –edited by Clayborne Carson, read by LeVar Burton

Spider-Women – Robbie Thompson, Jason Latour, various artists (graphic novel)

Spider-Gwen Volume 2: Weapon of Choice – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

Gender Queer – Maia Kubata (graphic novel)

Black Orchid Book 1 – Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean (graphic novel)

Black Orchid Book 2 – Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean (graphic novel)

Black Orchid Book 3 – Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean (graphic novel)

Tombs – Junji Ito (manga)

Locke & Key: The Golden Age – Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez (graphic novel)

Wraith – Joe Hill, Charles Paul Wilson III (graphic novel)

A Great and Terrible King – Marc Morris, read by Ralph Lister

The Birds and Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier, read by Peter Capaldi

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness – Nagata Kabi (manga)

Spider-Gwen Volume 3: Long-Distance – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

The Birds & Other Stories – Daphne du Maurier

November

John Constantine Hellblazer Volume 4: The Family Man – Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, various artists (graphic novel)

The Feng Shui Detective Agency – Nury Vittachi

Delicious in Dungeon Volume 1 – Ryoko Kui (manga)

The Saga of Swamp Thing Volume 1 – Alan Moore, Stephen Bisette, John Totleben (graphic novel)

Spider-Verse – Dan Slott, various writers/artists (graphic novel)

Breakfast With Socrates – Robert Rowland Smith

Harleen – Stjepan Sejic (graphic novel)

Spider-Gwen Volume 4: Predators – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

Spider-Gwen Volume 5: Gwenom – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

Flipped – Wendelin Van Draanen

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer – Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin, read by Jeff Cummings

Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen: Sitting in a Tree – Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Latour, Sara Pichelli, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

December

John Constantine Hellblazer Volume 5: Dangerous Habits – Garth Ennis, Jamie Delano, various artists (graphic novel)

My Solo Exchange Diary Volume 1 – Nagata Kabi (manga)

Birds of Prey Volume 1 – Chuck Dixon, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, various artists (graphic novel)

My Solo Exchange Diary Volume 2 – Nagata Kabi (manga)

Shuna’s Journey – Hayao Miyazaki, translated by Alex Dudok de Wit (manga)

When Stars Are Scattered – Victoria Jemison, Omar Mohamed (graphic novel)

My Alcoholic Escape From Reality – Nagata Kabi (manga)

Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert, read by Simon Vance, Euan Morton, Scott Brick, Katherine Kellgren

Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson #12)  - Patricia Briggs

Lore Olympus Volume 1 – Rachel Smythe (graphic novel)

Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank, read by Selma Blair

Lore Olympus Volume 2 – Rachel Smythe (graphic novel)

Spider-Gwen Volume 6: The Life of Gwen Stacy – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez (graphic novel)

Hungry Ghosts – Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose, various artists (graphic novel)

I read 156 books and graphic novels in 2023. 119 graphic novels, 37 books. 25 non-fiction, 131 fiction. 69 graphic novels, 50 graphic mangas. 15 re-reads.

Starting in March with Unbroken, I started reading a number of books about World War II. I think I had, as ever a goal to read more non-fiction and since there are so many books on the 2 World Wars, they are often the ones that I’m able to check out from the library without a super long wait list. Then Oppenheimer came out this summer so I was more intrigued and decided to read the basis for the film (which is atypical for me outside of comics). Following Unbroken I read a few spy books, Operation Mincemeat and Double Cross in May by Ben McIntyre that were super interesting.

I had previously read The Confidence Men about 2 British POWs from WWI who escaped a Turkish POW camp by (among other things) a Ouija board. I had started reading The Diary of Anne Frank/Diary of a Young Girl sometime this past year I think and finally finished it near the end of the year and Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning in October. I started listening to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in November or December and read for my family’s book club The Woman Who Smashed Codes about Elizabeth Friedman and her husband who developed cryptology in the US between World War I and II and was treated pretty wretchedly by the US government for her efforts. This was in no small part due to J. Edgar Hoover, who seems to be more and more a villain every time I have the misfortune of encountering him in books and other media.

A manga series I had started last year, The Promised Neverland, I’m close to finishing (I believe there are 20 volumes, which isn’t super long for a manga series. Full Metal Alchemist is 20-something volumes if I remember correctly) and I finally finished Hikaru no Go about a teenager who accidentally finds himself competing in the Japanese game Go due to a haunted Go board in his grandfather’s attic. A web comic that my wife got me interested in, Lore Olympus, retells the story of Persephone and Hades with a combination of contemporary and antiquity culture. The comic is broken up into “seasons” and the second season was recently finished so I wanted to read up to that point while waiting for the end of the third season. Unfortunately, it was long enough ago that I had read up to the end of the first season I ended up having to start over. But this was good as there were a number of things I caught the second time through and appreciated more on a re-read.

      I also read the 4th and 5th Wheel of Time books for the second time this past year, which was an interesting experience. There were a lot of things I remembered incorrectly because of the 25ish years since I read them initially. I don’t think I’m going to read the entire series all the way through again, but I might read book 6. I finished re-reading The Sandman (partly due to the release of the Netflix series) and went on a kick of other Vertigo (an imprint of DC Comics that focused on non-superhero books, more adult and more creator-controlled that is now largely if not entirely defunct) titles (the Dead Boy Detectives, Hellblazer, Swamp Thing). Don’t know where I’ll go with that. Also read a decent amount of Spider-Verse comics (mostly Spider-Gwen but one big crossover book that was sort of the culmination of the Spider-Verse storylines (I think?)) that was interesting. Spider-Gwen is a great comic that has yet to lead to the frustration I felt with the later Miles Morales books.

      Nagata Kabi’s memoirs about self-esteem, her fraught relationship with her parents, alcoholism and eating problems is both interesting and very frustrating. I am very lucky to not have hardly any of her emotional, mental and health issues that are wound up together but reading her mangas it is hard not to want to shake her when she seems to recover from one life-threatening catastrophe only to work herself into another. I’m morbidly curious about her later volumes about pancreatitis.

      Lastly, there were some books on Arthur and some non-fiction or books by African-American authors that I had intended to start or finish that I’m dragging my heels on. We’ll see what happens in the next year with that.   

[thecryptidcottage]

@soliloquivm.

      ↳ ft. kelly + ( muse up to player! )              in the kitchen of kelly’s flat

          ❝ think of it like a game of... oh, come on, what’s that show called ? ❞ when he’d invited the other over to hang out for an impromptu dinner at his place, it had been with the expectation that he’d actually remember to stop at the market on the corner on his walk home from work. but while kelly mcmaster is known among his friends for many things, to his misfortune, his memory does not make the list. clearly. ❝ chopped ! that’s it, isn’t it ? the one with all the mystery ingredients you’ve got to put together to make some sort of michelin-star meal ? it’s like that. ❞ as he speaks, the musician meanders the space of a small, cramped kitchen, drifting from cabinet to cabinet and plucking out various ingredients on the sparse shelving that catch his eye. ❝ the prize for winning ? the satisfaction of a creative meal and a job well done. and, uh, ❞ he pulls a can from the shelf and wrinkles his nose at the expiry date before tossing it into the bin across the room, ❝ not getting botulism.❞ kelly swivels on his heels to face the other, flashing a bright grin. ❝ what do you say ? you in ? ❞

[alfvaen]

Heavy Novel

August was a heavy month. Bob Geldof said so, and it's hard to disagree. I read some books in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Potential spoilers within for Jo Clayton's diadem series, Tade Thompson's Rosewater/Wormwood series, Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series, and of course Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.

R.A. Salvatore: The Crystal Shard, completed August 5

Once again it was time to try a new author…a male author, and not one of the complete unknowns relegated to the pool table. I was ready for another epic fantasy, and for a while I was considering Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough, but then I was on Tumblr and saw a bunch of posts about Drizzt do'Urden and remembered that I had this book on the shelf as well. I've been hearing things about R.A. Salvatore for a while now, but I confess that I never got too deeply into D&D novels the way I did (at some point) into Star Trek. I did read the Dragonlance books pretty slavishly for a while, but to diminishing returns (I gave up after the first Richard Knaak one, I recall); I tried the first Forgotten Realms one, Azure Bonds, and was kind of meh. And at first what I heard about Drizzt (my fingers keep wanting to type "Drizzy", lol) sounded kind of cringe to my newly-sophisticated palate. (Heavy irony there--I was still reading Piers Anthony and Jack L. Chalker for years, and I now find them both relatively cringe.)

I elected to start with the first published book, rather than the first chronologically. This is not a simple decision; I've gone back and forth on this over the years. For instance, back when I was first trying out the Darkover series, I found a chronological list in one of the books and thus decided to start with Darkover Landfall, which was a bad call; I recall it as being so heavily infected with prequelitis as to be practically incomprehensible on its own. (Readers of Dragonsdawn will find this a familiar experience.) I also read the Deryni books starting with Camber rather than Kelson (though on reread the first Kelson trilogy was noticeably worse writing, so maybe I dodged a bullet there). But when I read the Vorkosigan series for the first time, I read in strict publication order, which I guess is not the worst way to read them but I certainly don't do it that way any more.

So with the Drizzt books, I did some research. It seemed like in this book, and its Icewind Dale trilogy, Drizzt was part of an ensemble cast, as opposed to the prequel trilogy where he was the main character. In the end I went for this one on the publication-order theory. Also apparently there are a total of 39(!) Drizzt books.

For the most part the book is…about what I would expect for a D&D book. Characters mostly seem pretty flat, combats are done decently well, evil is evil, plot is mostly pretty predictable but with occasional twists. It wasn't bad, and I read it all the way through to the end, but I might have enjoyed it more when I was 17. (Or younger, but I would have been 17 when it came out, so…) The book does not pass the Bechdel test, because I believe we only get two named female characters if you include Gwenhwyfar the panther, and I don't think Catti-Brie ever talks to her. (Nor does she even get a whole hell of a lot to do--even her potential romantic subplot is vestigial.) The setting is not bad--Icewind Dale and its Ten-Towns region, whose leaders tend to squabble a lot over petty grievances and fishing rights, practically rings the truest of anything.

So now I'm reconsidering my starting point and may actually want to try the prequel trilogy to see if they're any good, because Drizzt did seem the closest to being an actual character. Even if the renegade Dark Elf who turned against his evil race/culture toward the light is a cliché, it feels like Drizzt might be the reason it's a cliché. Not sure if I'm going to buying any more of the books right away, but it turns out my brother-in-law has the whole series and so maybe I'll just arrange to borrow some from him.

Jo Clayton: Shadowplay, completed August 9

Back to a female author next, probably not epic fantasy because of the Drizzt book, and it felt too soon for another urban fantasy as well, which usually means going to science fiction, or occasionally mainstream or something. When I don't have a strong indication of what to read next, I will often sort my to-read shelf chronologically, with the books that have been there longest at the top, and see what leaps out at me. This time I apparently settled on Jo Clayton.

Jo Clayton's books were big mass-market books from the 1980s, and I saw them around all the time…through rarely in the right order. Like I'd look on the library paperback racks and see Changer's Moon (third in its trilogy) and Blue Magic (second in its trilogy). In her case I never tried to read them out of order, so sometimes it was a long time before I got to start them. But I did finish her Diadem series, nine books in all. In those books, we follow a woman named Aleytys who gets a mysterious diadem (high-tech because this is SF and totally not magical at all) and then gets sold into slavery or something? (It's been a while, so some of the details are vague.) After a few books she frees herself and joins the Star Hunters and then goes looking for justice (possibly against her mother, who may have been the one to sell her into slavery). The diadem contains the mental patterns of three other people, including Swardheld and Shadith, who have been trapped in there for decades or even centuries, and provide her aid and advice in her travels. Later in the series (spoilers!) she figures out how to extricate her helpers into physical bodies. Shadith ends up in the body of a teenage girl. And Shadowplay is the first book in her series.

Shadith is on her way to a university education (fitting for her young body, anyway) but in trying to evade a creepy and lecherous security guard at a transfer station, she ends up interrupting a kidnapping in progress and getting dragged along by the also-somewhat-creepy-but-at-least-not-lecherous leader of the kidnappers to a mysterious planet that seems to be in the middle of a period of unrest. It turns out the kidnapper is some sort of high-level snuff artist, who likes to instigate horrible events on innocent planets, film them with his tiny drone cameras, and then sell the footage to certain wealthy and jaded clients. Shadith and her fellow abductees are dropped in to play the roles of avatars of a particular trio of folklore figures from the planetary culture that turn up from time to time and trigger unrest. Luckily, Shadith and/or her current body have psionic abilities to to read and control the thoughts of others…though mostly she can't use it on sentients, so she limits it to animals, where it still frequently comes in handy.

It sounds interesting enough, but I don't think Clayton actually pulls it off. Shadith and her fellow "avatars", a hunter with two large cats and a falcon, and a reptilian fellow with some mind-clouding mental abilities of his own, keep trying to get off the planet without getting involved with the natives…which means that, as a reader, I didn't feel the need to get invested in the on-planet struggles until most of the way through the book. And I had trouble with the character and culture names, which may be a skill issue, but it was like they kept getting introduced in such a way that I didn't realize they'd be important later. Our trio keep escaping and getting recaptured, escaping and getting recaptured, until it feels less like try-fails to advance the plot and more like futile efforts to extricate themselves from it. And then, at the end, Aleytys shows up and rescues them, literally using the phrase "dea ex machina". Okay, it's true that Shadith had tried to contact her earlier and was hoping that she'd show up, but still, it felt like a bit of a cheat. Shadith does do some work to help in her own rescue, but it doesn't feel like enough.

At the end, our snuff-film director escapes, so presumably the rest of the trilogy is Shadith trying to hunt him down. I haven't quite given up on the series yet, but it'll probably be a while before I get around to reading Shadowspeer, the second book. (Hmmm…is that "shadow-speer", or "shadow's peer"? I'd always assume the former, whatever a "speer" was, but now I'm wondering. Echoes of Andrew Offutt's "Shadowspawn"…)

Naomi Novik: A Deadly Education, completed August 12

After the Jo Clayton I wanted something a little newer…but perhaps not an entirely new author. And there was this Naomi Novik book sitting there. I sometimes read books a little slower than other members of my family (which is still faster than most people, I imagine), and my wife and my eldest son at the very least, if not my younger son too, had already read this one. I took a little longer to finish the Temeraire series, which I thought was pretty good if not amazing, and then I decided to go through her two fairy-tale-esque standalones, Uprooted and Spinning Silver, which were both really good. This is the first book in the Scholomance series, which I keep conflating in my head with Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, which I also hadn't read yet, because my mind does that sometimes. (At least I'm pretty sure now that the Locked Tomb series is not written by Alix Harrow, though I have to look up the actual author every time still.)

I suspect that it would be accurate to say that this, a book about teenage wizards learning magic in a big magic school, might be vaguely Harry Potter-inspired. But if so, it's Harry Potter where Hogwarts has no actual professors, only spells that try to provide you with learning material and presumably somehow assess the assignments you submit. Oh, and there are "maleficaria", a.k.a. evil magic beasties, constantly trying to kill you if you let your guard down for even a second…and also you have to fight your way through a horde of them to graduate. Many wizards come from "enclaves", basically gated wizard communities intended to be defensible against maleficaria, though not all do; our protagonist, Galadriel, was raised by her mother in a commune after a "mal" killed her father, and she is apparently the subject of some prophecies that she will become a powerful force for evil. And she does have a talent for using "malia", which, unlike "mana" (which can be gained from a number of activites such as exercise, crocheting and other effortful exertions), is acquired by draining the life-force of other people, and is somewhat frowned upon.

Galadriel is in her junior year at the start of the book, trying her hardest not to give in to the ease of using malia, but she's an outsider in a place where being alone is a good way to get yourself killed by mals. And then New York enclave prodigy Orion Lake, who has the rare talent that he can gain mana by killing mals, bursts into her room to save her from a mal that she was planning to kill anyway, and keeps hanging around her because he's convinced she's going to turn evil. The whole thing annoys her, but she's not above using the perception that she and Orion are dating or something to weasel her way into some highly transactional relationships. Galadriel (or "El" as she prefers people call her) has built up quite a hard shell over the years, though, from a lot of childhood traumas that have taught her she can't rely on other people, particularly enclaves.

The book is a lot of fun, and really didn't make me think of Hogwarts all that much while I was reading; it is too much its own thing. Characters die, but overall the progression is towards hope. Highly looking forward to reading the other two books in the series. (The next book is called The Last Graduate and I'm already speculating as to what that might mean…)

Lois McMaster Bujold: CryoBurn, completed August 16

Almost done the Vorkosigan reread, and into the part that feels more like a slog, because this is probably one of my least favourite books in the series. I mean, most of the book is just meh, and the best part is really the post-denouement twist that hits with the last line of the book proper, and is then dealt with in a short epilogue. After maybe the first few pages Miles rarely feels like he's in jeopardy, and the tension just ratchets down throughout the book.

Probably what she is doing here is an attempt to explore some of the ramifications of cryofreezing the way she did many of the implications of the uterine replicator, so we go to a planet, New Hope a.k.a. Kibou-Daini, where people routinely get themselves frozen if they're ill or old, or feel like they might become ill or old in the future. The worst part of the whole setup is the fact that people who are frozen are allowed to assign a proxy to vote for them (since they're technically not dead), which ends up being the corporation who has custody of their frozen body. And with corporate mergers, those voting blocs have become intensely concentrated. Sure, that's fine. But I just couldn't get too invested in the plot.

Miles is on Kibou-Daini investigating a company that's trying to set up this scheme on Komarr, and through one of those series of coincidences that I don't care for, ends up meeting a runaway boy named Jin whose mother was frozen to stop her blowing the whistle on a particularly egregious corporate failure. The only part which is not an implausible coincidence is that it's a different company than the Komarr one. We get POV from Miles, Jin, and also Roic, and we get guest appearances from Mark, Kareen Koudelka, and Raven Durona. It has its moments, but it's very lightweight.

And then, yeah, there's a painful event at the very end and an epilogue in the form of five drabbles. (I'm not sure whether to give it away here or not, given what a gutpunch it was on first read, but it's also entirely the basis for the plot of Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen, so I won't be able to talk about that book without giving it away… I guess it can wait until I get there, though. Which will, by this point, be next month.)

Tade Thompson: The Rosewater Redemption, completed August 21

As I've mentioned before, I seem to have a harder time finding male authors for my diversity slot than I do female ones. Tade Thompson's Rosewater trilogy (well, Wormwood Trilogy, technically, but they all have "Rosewater" in the title) is something that would otherwise have been on the bubble, but I've kept going on it because of this particular scarcity, mostly from the library. For whatever reason (perhaps because I'm currently following Tade Thompson on Bluesky) I decided to go with this one, given that the book was available at the library and I requested it with enough lead time for it to come in promptly.

The Wormwood books are set in Nigeria, where a gigantic alien entity named Wormwood (hence the series title) has relocated after its initial appearance in London. It starts healing people who come to it, leading to the formation of a shanty town outside its boundaries called Rosewater (ironic name based on the fact that it stinks) (hence the book titles). The first book, Rosewater, is all from the POV of a man named Kaaro, who has some psychic abilities based on alien biotechnology; the second book, The Rosewater Insurrection, is a multi-POV book about Rosewater's growth as a power and its struggles against the Nigerian government, and Wormwood's real goals. This book also seems to be multi-POV, but one of them gets to be first-person, and is the mysterious "Bicycle Girl" who showed up in earlier books and whose backstory is now delved into.

Sadly, the plot of this one is a bit scattered; with all of the characters from the previous two books, it feels like we're just visiting them in random order, and few of them get much shrift. There is a resolution of sorts, in the end, but it's slow to manifest and frankly I'm not sure if anyone gets "redeemed" per se. As series conclusions go, I've seen worse (cough The Sacred Band cough), but it still doesn't pack the punch of eiher of the first two books.

Garth Nix: Sabriel, completed August 25

I picked this one up next mostly because it came up when my wife was helping me organize my to-read shelf. This is not just a virtual shelf on Goodreads, and it's not a single shelf of books. It's not even a single bookshelf. No, it's two small bookshelves and a overflow shelf. At some point I did just keep the books I was planning to read on the shelves with the rest of them, but at some point, probably when I was transitioning from "read books in a strict sequence" to "pick the next book from a shortlist" mode. Currently it is organized by gender (since that informs my current reading schedule), then more or less by genre, and then by title. But besides the physical shelf I do maintain a Goodreads shelf, and a spreadsheet where I can keep track of things like when the book was acquired and the like. And sometimes they get out of sync, so I was sitting in front of the spreadsheet while my wife was going over the physical shelves. She found some on the shelf that weren't in the spreadsheet, I found some that were in the spreadsheet but not on the shelf, and we reconciled them. But she quibbled with the placement of Sabriel with the adult epic fantasy novels rather than the YA novels, so I decided I'd read it soon and settle the matter to my satisfaction.

I have read Garth Nix before, but mostly his middle-grade ones; I got them for my oldest son, starting with Mister Monday from the "Keys To The Kingdom" series, and he liked them, but I only got up to Sir Thursday before deciding I was tired of them. I had also read A Confusion of Princes, which had an interesting promotional campaign consistent of a Facebook game called "Imperial Galaxy" where you were an officer in a fleet ship. I was actually in Nix's own fleet, though my immediate commander was Arthur Slade; I enjoyed the game, but everyone else I tried to recruit to play it apparently didn't because I ended up with a bunch of inactive players in my fleet as dead weight. (Ah, Facebook games. They were their own particular thing.) Anyway, I had picked up Sabriel at some point, and I thought it was adult fantasy, so I decided to try it next.

But I guess perhaps it is actually young adult; at least, the main character is. The titular character is a girl whose mother died when she was born, and she herself was only saved from death when the mysterious Abhorsen (her father, apparently) showed up and ventured into the land of death to retrieve her. As a result of this experience, she is excessively pale and has a natural talent for necromancy. Oddly, this world is divided into the magic-laden Old Kingdom and the magic-poor Ancelstierre, and Sabriel grows up in a boarding school in a land of cars and guns (though no computers yet that I've seen), but close enough to the border wall that there is still some magic available for her to learn. When, in her Year Six, she receives a message that her father has gone missing, she has to leave school and return to the Old Kingdom to try to rescue him from the land of the dead.

It's a really good book, with some breakneck oh-my-god-please-let-her-rest sequences in it, a talking cat who is more than they seem, a nail-biting finale, intriguing worldbuilding, and barely a word wasted. One scene where she's listening to the people in the next room having sex makes it a little doubtful for YA but who knows, these days. And a little bit of head-hopping in one important scene, but it's probably fine. Apparently there are like five more books in the series? (And here I thought it was just a trilogy…) Apparently there's a reasonable-priced four-volume ebook omnibus available so probably we'll just do that. (Yes, my wife has read it now too, and my son probably will soon.)

Kim Harrison: Every Which Way But Dead, completed August 31

Between the YA-ish fantasy and the upcoming Vorkosigan reread, it seemed like the next book should probably be urban fantasy, with a female author. As I probably mentioned a little while ago when talking about the Faith Hunter series, I have started a lot of these series and have mostly not gotten super invested in any one of them to give it priority over the rest. Maybe the Tobey Daye (Seanan McGuire) and Kate Daniels (Ilona Andrew) are picking up a little, but mostly I can take or leave them. So I ended up just picking the "oldest" one of them which, now that I read a little further in the Faith Hunter series, is Kim Harrison's "Rachel Morgan/The Hollows" series.

Since I do read these books fairly well spaced apart, I do like a good recap game to remind me what happened previously. This book is mostly doing a decent job, though we start right out of the gate with a high-stress situation, Rachel having to confront the demon she made a bad deal with in the previous book to save people's lives and take a bag guy down. But we are quickly reacquainted with her vampire housemate and professional partner Ivy and other recurring characters.

The plot of the book seems to wander a lot, though. ("Every which way", like the title, perhaps?) Dealing with the demon's castoff, getting a contract from a famous musician for concert security, going on a date (with another vampire) which ends badly, meeting some of Ivy's family… She keeps shooting herself in the foot and endangering herself through sheer thoughtless stupidity. By halfway through the book it's not clear where it's going. And by the end, there have been some exciting scenes, but it feels like there's not much of a through-line. One job that Rachel was hired for didn't even happen in the book but was mentioned in the denouement like an afterthought.

I haven't quite given up on the series, but I am not inspired to speed up my reading pace.

So kind of a mixed month, with two great books and a handful of meh ones. Sometimes it do be that way.

I also finished the Dan Gardner Risk book. I quite appreciate what it has to say about how we fail to assess potential risks accurately. I feel more informed for reading it, which is to say that I'm probably in the state of thinking that I assess risks more accurately when I'm actually just as likely to make inaccurate estimates despite all my awareness of logical fallacies. I'd like to see an updated version of the book, or at least a discussion in the same vein, that deals with things like Covid-19, and whether the author still thinks of school shootings as an overblown risk.

I got An Immense World by Ed Yong as a birthday present, but I haven't started yet. Trying to read another month of comics on Marvel Unlimited instead (April 1994), though I spend a lot of time with the Simon Tatham's Puzzles app.

[perisscope2]

"An idiot" - Reince Preibus, White House Chief of Staff (Jan 2017 - July 2017)

"An idiot" - John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff (July 2017 to 2021)

"An idiot" - Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury (2017 to 2021)

"A moron" - Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State (2017 to 2018)

"A dope" - H.R. McMaster., National Security Advisor (2017 to 2018

"Dumb as shit" - Gary Cohn, Director of the National Economic Council (2017 to 2018

Who could they possibly be talking about?

[worldofwardcraft]

To know him is to loathe him.

January 25, 2024

Donald Trump loves nothing better than to insult, mock and otherwise attack his perceived enemies. Whether it's Democrats, the media, judges, prosecutors, the "deep state" or any of a host of others, he delights in blathering endlessly and annoyingly about his plans to wreak vengeance upon them.

But these are not the enemies Trump should be worrying about. On the contrary, the biggest threat to the traitorous career criminal are the people he once hired to work for him, who know him best, and have come to recognize him for the dangerous narcissistic sociopath he is. Consider these examples.

Former defense secretary Mark Esper: “He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country.”

Former chief of staff and national security advisor General John Kelly: "He is the most flawed person I know. The depths of his dishonesty are astounding.”

General James Mattis, Trump's first defense secretary: "He is more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.”

Another national security advisor, John Bolton: "He’s not fit to be president.”

Trump's second attorney general, Bill Barr: “Our country can't be a therapy session for a troubled man.”

General H.R. McMaster, yet another national security advisor: “President Trump [has] repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.”

Former assistant to Trump's chief of staff, Cassidy Hutchinson: “Clearly an irrational man.”

Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo: “We can’t be following celebrity leaders with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House Director of Strategic Communications: “A second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it.”

Plus, of course, Trump's own VP, Mike Pence: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States."

And this is only a partial list of those who have spoken out against the disgraced ex-president. Others include his former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen; his one-time secretary of state, Rex Tillerson; his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos; his secretary of labor, Elaine Chao; his transition manager, Chris Christie; his former communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and so many more that we risk running out of room.

Not only do his one-time friends invariably become two-timing foes, they also present the most danger to Trump personally. Because it's the testimony of people like these that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Which would be good news for the rest of us who also despise him.

[book-ramblings]

2023 IN BOOKS - A LONG POST

What I read last year, divided into a few categories. I didn't in the end feel like writing down all 80-ish books, so this is a selection.

1 Poetry - I'm trying to get into poetry, but I'm not a 'natural' poetry reader.

Aftonland - Pär Lagerkvist

Bluets - Maggie Nelson

Sonnets - William Shakespeare

Night Sky with Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong

If They Come for Us - Fatimah Asghar

Wild Embers - Nikita Gill

The Wild Iris - Louise Glück

Poems - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg

Sonnets from the Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Blue Horses - Mary Oliver

Love Letters to the World - Meia Geddes

Aún - Pablo Neruda

from Songs of Innocence and Experience - William Blake

Loose Woman - Sandra Cisneros

Bestiary - Donika Kelly

Winter Recipes from the Collective - Louise Glück

Selected Poems - Percy Bysshe Shelley

2 Short Stories and Novellas

Skördad - Anna Jakobsson Lund

The October Country and Other Stories - Ray Bradbury

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu

Burning Girls and Other Stories - Veronica Schanoes

Galatea - Madeline Miller

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang

3 For Work

Konsten att undervisa - Filippa Mannerheim

Poesi direkt - Daniel Boyacioglu

4 Comics and Graphic Novels

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

Nimona - N D Stevenson

Sandman vol 5 - Neil Gaiman

5 Rereads

The Fellowship of the Ring - J R R Tolkien

The Two Towers - J R R Tolkien

The Return of the King - J R R Tolkien

The Rook - Daniel O'Malley

Stiletto - Daniel O'Malley

Blitz - Daniel O'Malley

Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb

Assassin's Quest - Robin Hobb

How to Marry a Werewolf - Gail Carriger

6 Favourites

Toll the Hounds - Steven Erikson

Augustus - John Williams

Circe - Madeline Miller

This Is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Crippled God - Steven Erikson

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter - Theodora Goss

Infomocracy - Malka Older

Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey

+ The Paper Menagerie, Stories of Your Life and most rereads...

7 Other Noteworthy Reads

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

Falling Free - Lois McMaster Bujold

Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold

Barrayar - Lois McMaster Bujold

The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold

The Vor Game - Lois McMaster Bujold

Dust of Dreams - Steven Erikson

Women Talking - Miriam Toews

Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

An Inheritance of Magic - Benedict Jacka

The Power Naomi Alderman

Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss

Ice - Anna Kavan