Posts in the Books category.
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January 23
Book: Becoming Duchess Goldblatt
"Part memoir and part joyful romp through the fields of imagination, the story behind a beloved pseudonymous Twitter account reveals how a writer deep in grief rebuilt a life worth living. Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is two stories: that of the reclusive real-life writer who created a fictional character out of loneliness and thin air, and that of the magical Duchess Goldblatt herself, a bright light in the darkness of social media."
Real But Also Not Real: An Excerpt From Becoming Duchess Goldblatt [more inside]
January 16
Book: Children of Ruin
Long ago, Earth's terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered. When the Old Empire fell, the scientists were on their own. [more inside]
Book: The Last Stone
On the morning of March 25, 1975, sisters Sheila and Kate Lyon left their home in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. to visit the local mall. Their mother Mary gave them firm instructions to be home by 4:00pm. When they weren't home by 7:00, the sisters' parents called the police. A massive search was launched. But after weeks and months of effort, there was no trace of them: the girls had disappeared into thin air. [more inside]
Book: Running with Sherman
The subtitle of the book is How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-Tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest race in America. [more inside]
January 9
Book: Children of Time
Humanity has started to spread among the stars, terraforming worlds and beginning uplift experiments. But their inner demons get the best of them and the crowning achievement of Doctor Avrana Kern is sabotaged. What will emerge from the wreckage and how will she keep tabs on her work? [more inside]
January 4
Book: Swords in the Mist
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser discuss the tension between wage labor and freedom. Fafhrd finds religion. The Mouser tries his hand at career a in organized crime and gets bumped up into a supervisory role. They make a detour from Nehwon to explore the Levant. They see more of Ningauble's ocular organs than anyone should be comfortable with. [more inside]
January 3
Book: The Tombs of Atuan
Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, and everything is taken from her—home, family, possessions, even her name. She is now known only as Arha, the Eaten One, and guards the shadowy, labyrinthine Tombs of Atuan. Then a wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs’ greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. Tenar’s duty is to protect the Ring, but Ged possesses the light of magic and tales of a world that Tenar has never known. Will Tenar risk everything to escape from the darkness that has become her domain? (Book 2 of the Earthsea cycle) [more inside]
December 14, 2020
Book: Mrs. Caliban
n the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a monster who has just escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research… [more inside]
December 10, 2020
Book: "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat," by Aubrey Gordon
From Your Fat Friend, a book about the need for "fat justice."
This book diverges from the well-trod path when it comes to fatness and fat people. In it, you’ll find a mix of memoir, research, and cultural criticism all focused on unearthing our social and cultural attitudes toward fat people, along with the impacts those attitudes can have on fat people, ourselves. Where our cultural conversation focuses relentlessly on personal responsibility and the perceived failures of fat people, this book seeks to zoom out, offering personal stories while simultaneously identifying the macro-level social, institutional, and political forces that powerfully shape the way each of us thinks of fat people, both in general and in particular.
December 8, 2020
Book: "Shit, Actually" by Lindy West
I love making fun of movies. I love turning a piece of criticism into a piece of entertainment. I love pointing out a plot hole that makes a superfan write me an angry e-mail. I love turning my unsophistication into a tool. I love being hyperbolically, cathartically angry for no reason. I love being flippant and careless and earnest and meticulous all at once. Shit, Actually is inspired by a series of essays I started at Jezebel, in which I’d rewatch successful movies from the past to see how they hold up to our shifting modern sensibilities... What do we do now with beloved cultural works that don’t hold up?
December 6, 2020
Book: Swords Against Death
In this collection of early Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, the pair return to Lankmahr some years after the ill-fated night of their first meeting. The pair search for treasure and meddle with things better left undisturbed. Mouser enjoys shopping and bathing. Fafhrd fails to adhere to proper concussion protocol. The team demonstrates how real estate scams work when performed by heroes instead of accountants. [more inside]
December 4, 2020
Book: A Wizard of Earthsea
Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance. (Book 1 of the Earthsea cycle) [more inside]
December 3, 2020
Book: Indians on Vacation
"My wife loves to travel. It's one of her great treats and it's one of my abject horrors." ... "I always wondered what I was going to be able to do with all the travel that my wife drags me off on. And so I decided, well, I'll write a book about that. And so I did." So said Thomas King, in discussing his novel about Bird and Mimi and their vacation. [more inside]
December 1, 2020
Book: "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America," by Ijeoma Oluo
"I am not arguing that every white man is mediocre. I do not believe that nay race or gender is predisposed to mediocrity. What I'm saying is that white male mediocrity is a baseline, the dominant narrative, and that everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent."
November 30, 2020
Book: The Ministry for the Future
A fictional future history of solving climate change over the next thirty years, from classic science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. Recently the subject of discussion on the blue: Imagining the End of Capitalism. [more inside]
Book: Fargo
From bestselling, Edgar Award-winning author Noah Hawley comes the perfect collector's item to the hit TV show based on the Coen brothers film "Fargo." This companion to the first three seasons of the series is packed with script selections-including all three pilots-candid, behind-the-scenes photography, exclusive interviews with cast and crew, and more.
November 29, 2020
Book: Swords and Deviltry
We learn the early history of the legendary fantasy pair: The reader is introduced to a young Fafhrd and a young, as yet untitled, Gray Mouser. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are introduced to each other. Everyone is introduced to the great city of Lankhmar. [more inside]
November 21, 2020
Book: Weapons of Math Destruction
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules.
But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination—propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process. Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.
October 31, 2020
Book: The Twisted Ones
When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be?
Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself.
Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale.
October 28, 2020
Book: Return of the Thief
The thrilling, twenty-years-in-the-making conclusion to the New York Times–bestselling Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. [more inside]
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