November Book Log
Can it be that we have actually made it as far as December in this weird, sad, seemingly interminable year? Can that really be true?
I guess it must be, since November does seem to be over. And November being over means it is time to post the November book log. Kind of a mixed bag of books this time out, but I guess that's something that's true more often than not, really.
99. Battle Ground by Jim Butcher
This is the continuation of the story that began with Butcher's previous Harry Dresden novel, Peace Talks. I've heard that the author originally wanted them to be released as one volume, and I have to say, I think that would have been a good idea, even if it would have resulted in a much longer-than-usual installment of the series. Neither book stands on its own, and releasing it separately really didn't do Peace Talks any favors, as the whole thing just felt like a lot of not terribly interesting setup followed by an out-of-nowhere cliffhanger.
Whereas this half of the story was a lot more interesting. It's mostly one big, long battle between powerful supernatural forces, and it's genuinely kind of epic. I often get bored of fight scenes, or find them hard to follow, but I stayed engaged and interested all the way through, even when it was mostly just one fight scene after another. The well-timed touches of Harry Dresden's usual smartass humor helped with that, too.
Mind you, it wasn't flawless. There's a plot development or two here I'm not super thrilled about, just on general principle. And emphasizing how the events happening here are going to make it harder for the world to ignore the supernatural only serves to remind me how hard I find it to swallow the "people ignore the supernatural stuff all around them because they don't want to believe in it" trope at the best of times.
Overall, though, it was enjoyable, and I remain interested in finding out where things might go next.
Rating: 4/5
100. Star Trek: 50 Artists 50 Years
This volume was published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek in 2016, and, as the title suggests, it features Trek-themed art work, in a variety of different styles and media, by fifty different artists. It also includes very short interviews with each of the authors, in which they were asked about the creation of their pieces and their relationship with Star Trek. Honestly, I didn't find most of the interviews all that interesting (although a few of them were fun), but the art itself was delightful. There's lots of big, bold creative stuff here, much of it with wonderful touches of whimsy, and the oversized format of the book shows them off to excellent effect.
I think characters from pretty much every Trek series get a look-in here, but the focus is mostly on the original series, and, to a lesser extent, the Next Generation. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of Spock, in particular. Because who doesn't love Spock? And many of the artists mention having heard the news of Leonard Nimoy's death while in the process of working on their pieces, so in addition to a celebration of Star Trek as a whole, there's also a feeling that much of the book stands in tribute to him, as well.
Some artists here have chosen to depict as many characters, major and minor, as they can possibly squeeze in -- and I have to say, I could happily stare at those all day, taking in all of the little details -- or to capture the feeling of the series as a whole in some fashion or other. Others have chose to focus on particular characters, episodes, scenes, or moments. (Kirk fighting the Gorn, it turns out, is a very popular subject.) But they're all tons of fun, and the collection as a whole is very, very cool. Definitely recommended for anyone who is or has been a fan of classic Star Trek.
Rating: 4.5/5
101. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
David Mitchell's latest novel tells the story of an English folk/blues/psychedelic rock band from the 1960s, and gives us glimpses into the lives and minds of each its five motley bandmates (and, to a lesser extent, their manager).
It's impossible, I'm afraid, to resist the urge to compare this with Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & the Six, which I read just a couple of months ago, although I don't know how fair that is to either book. They have a lot of similarities, as they both follow a band from its formation through its rise to stardom, and both do some interesting things with structure (an "oral history" format in Daisy Jones' case, and a non-linear narrative for each chapter in the case of Utopia Avenue). But Daisy Jones, I'd say, is a zippier and more emotionally satisfying read, whereas Utopia Avenue is more complex and contemplative, with more flashes of literary brilliance (and, sorry Ms. Reid, better song lyrics). But it's also a lot more flawed, in ways I find all the more frustrating because it was also so good in so many ways.
My biggest problem with it is in the part of the story that focuses on bassist Jasper de Zoet, which probably forms the closest thing to a plot the novel has. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jasper seems to have some kind of ghost buried in his mind trying to possess him, and the truly weird supernatural shenanigans surrounding said ghost just feel deeply, deeply out of place in this otherwise realistic novel. I like supernatural shenanigans a lot, in the right context, but this was absolutely not it. And while you can maybe try to chalk Jasper's hauntings up to psychosis instead of treating them as real, that fails to work, either, for a whole host of reasons. It also doesn't help that Jasper's story is clearly meant to tie in with a couple of Mitchell's other novels, which I have not yet read. (I have them on my ridiculously overfull TBR shelves, but I felt I ought to read this one first, since I got a free review copy and needed to, well, review it. Silly me, I didn't thank that would be a problem!) But while I probably would have gotten a bit more out of those story elements if I had read the earlier books, I very much doubt it would have helped all that much. And it's a bit sad, really, because Jasper is a good character and I can't help feeling he deserved a story I could actually believe in.
I also had problems with the ending, which I felt was abrupt, contrived, and unsatisfying, as well as some lesser issues, such as the way many of the celebrity cameos felt a little too awkwardly wink-wink to me.
And yet, despite all that, I can't help feeling this was a good book. It engaged me. I liked the characters, and found their world and their lives and their personalities interesting and worth spending time with. Mitchell's writing is often beautiful and insightful and emotionally resonant. But god damn, do I wish I could read the book it seems like it could have been, instead.
Rating: I'm giving this 4/5. Because it's a truly excellent novel burdened with some maddening flaws, which I guess knocks it down to just "good." And four stars works for "good." But I feel like there ought to be some kind of asterisk on that rating.
(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)
102. Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney
The reasons why I felt this 2017 book on the influenza pandemic of 1918 and its impact on the world was relevant to read in 2020 are... Well, probably they're pretty obvious. Although I'm not sure it gave me a whole lot of new perspective on our current, non-flu pandemic, other than to reinforce in my mind that old saw about those who don't learn from history being doomed to repeat it.
Overall, I can't say it was quite what I was hoping for in a book on this subject. Spinney tries to take a truly global approach, which is good. But I think she dwells a little too much on random details at times when I would have preferred a clearer sense of the bigger picture. And her brief attempt to analyze the impact of the pandemic on art and literature is just odd, as it seems to be based on nothing but the thinnest excuse for speculation. The sections on our medical understanding of the virus, then and now, are good, though, very clear and informative.
And I did find it interesting enough, overall. If nothing else, it's done a very good job of bringing home to me just how staggering a toll this disease took. Which maybe seems like it could be something of a comfort at the moment -- hey, look, it could be worse! -- but is mostly just terrifying, really.
Rating: 3.5/5
103. Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale
A Doctor Who novel featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha, in which our heroes wander into a tiny English village looking for a spot of tea and end up having to deal with an alien monster that lives under the town's historic wishing well.
This one was... okay. The first hundred pages or so, honestly, were pretty dull. Way too many of them seemed to consist largely of people standing around talking about how great this well is and what a wonderful tourist attraction it's going to make, and, come on, guys. It's a well. Minus the monster, it's really just not that interesting. And there's a lot of focus on the guest characters, who also aren't quite as interesting as the author thinks they are, either, but who are, y'know. Okay.
We do get a decent bit of mild creepiness, though, when the Doctor finally gets himself down that well (which you know he's going to). And the confrontations with the monster towards the end have some fun or slightly dramatic moments, in ways that do feel much like an episode of the show, only maybe with better special effects on the page than we might have gotten on screen.
Still, none of it is particularly memorable or anything. If it was an episode of the show, I suspect it wouldn't be one I'd bother re-watching much, although it wouldn't be one I'd go off and complain about on the internet, either.
Rating: 3/5
104. The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
This mystery/thriller/ghost story is told in two alternating narrative streams. One, set in 2017, features a young woman named Carly who has come to a small town in upstate New York looking for answers about the mysterious disappearance of her aunt Vivian during a night shift at the seedy Sun Down Motel, 35 years before. The other, set in 1982, tells the story of Vivian herself as she investigates the murders of several other women, one of whom is still around in the form of a ghost haunting the motel.
It's a fairly clever structure, with the two linked stories unspooling simultaneously, and the ultimate answer to the mystery of what happened to Vivian is better than I expected it to be. But despite all that, I still feel a bit meh about the novel as a whole. The writing is readable, but not great, and there's just something about it all that I found unconvincing. Not the plot, which was decent enough, and not the ghosts, which I was happy to suspend my disbelief for (although they were never quite as spooky as I might have liked). No, it has more to do with the way the author clearly wants all her characters to be complex, rounded people with their own motivations, and yet they all somehow end up feeling like they exist solely to hand out relevant clues at the most appropriate times.
Rating: 3/5
105. Space 2069: After Apollo: Back to the Moon, to Mars, and Beyond by David Whitehouse
This is a book, more or less, about where the next fifty years of space exploration may go. Space is a topic of perennial interest to me, but I have to say I found this one a bit disappointing. It feels very... unfocused. And the things it ends up concentrating on turn out to not be the things I was expecting or hoping it would.
Things it does include, at various lengths: a list of all the changes in the direction of US space policy with new presidential administrations since Apollo, detailed descriptions of what various places on the moon look like through a telescope, a look at of some of the engineering possibilities for building a base on the moon, a discussion of the medical difficulties of a mission to Mars, a vaguely imagined fictional crewed Mars mission of the future that the author occasionally throws in references to at odd moments, a thorough (if oddly judgmental) accounting of all the real spacecraft that have so far been sent to explore Mars, and a survey of the various other interesting places to visit in the solar system (none of which we are, however, likely to be visiting with humans in the next fifty years).
Things I was hoping and expecting it to include, but which it does not, at least not in any satisfying depth: the current state of the Artemis moon program, what steps have already been taken towards its crewed moon-landing goal, how realistic the time frames that have been talked about for it actually are, and what it will actually look like if and when it happens.
Rating: 3/5
(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)
106. Monstress, Volume Four: The Chosen by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
This fourth collection of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's lush, violent dark fantasy/horror comic Monstress features a number of reunions, family and otherwise, and a looming war that may well result in truly unimaginable destruction.
I don't know that I have much to say about this volume that I haven't already said about the previous three. It's absolutely gorgeous, visually. The world-building is deep and rich. And the plot is complex and intricate enough that I suspect it might take real care to be able to follow it completely even if weren't for my fallible memory. I'm sure there are things I'm missing, or half-understanding, or losing the full impact of, just because I've forgotten far too many important details in the gaps between volumes. And yet, even given that fact, I'm still finding it pretty compelling.
Well, at least I am reaping a benefit from the fact that I was extra-slow to get to volume 4, because I already have volume 5 in my hands. Time to read that one while I'm still fresh from this one!
Rating: I'm giving this a 4/5, but if I ever do what I really should do, and go back and read the whole story in one go once it's complete, I strongly suspect my ratings of it all will go up.
107. Monstress, Volume Five: Warchild by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Volume 5 of the collected Monstress comics. This one has a lot of fighting, with a desperate attempt to defend a city under attack. It's brutal, and complex, with moments of horror and poignancy, and a few more revelations about the past for good measure. I'm still not sure I'm even following all the intricacies of the plot, but I'm still kind of fascinated by it, anyway.
Rating: 4/5
108. The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
I've been a longtime listener of the 99% Invisible podcast, which explores odd and sometimes surprising stories about the human-built world around us and how it got that way. So, of course, I had to pick up this book, and I'm pleased to report that it did not disappoint! It's full of bite-sized tidbits about all kinds of weird, quirky, important, and overlooked stuff to be found in and around cities and roads. False building facades concealing ventilation shafts, skyscrapers with extra-high towers at the top just so they could claim to be the world's tallest building for a brief moment, coded signs in Hollywood that point to movie shooting locations, brick thieves in St. Louis, spikes on sidewalks to keep homeless people away, parking spaces repurposed into mini-parks... And on and on and on.
The whole thing is engaging and fun to read, whether you want to dip in and out or read it straight through, and whether you actually live in a city or not. And the book itself is a nice, solid, rather attractive physical object. With the holiday season coming up, it occurs to me that it might make a really nice gift for the sort of person who likes non-fiction books that make you want to go around saying, "Hey, did you know...?" to people.
Admittedly, a fair amount of it was already familiar to me from the podcast -- more than I was expecting, to be honest -- but I found I didn't particularly mind. It's still interesting the second time, and they're never just transcribing stories verbatim from the podcast. Plus, there's plenty that was new to me, too.
My only dissatisfaction with it is that I really wish it had photographs. There are lots of black-and-white line drawings, which have a certain charm, and which do help to illustrate some of the things that need illustrating, but it was occasionally frustrating not to be able to just see real examples of the things the book was describing.
Rating: 4/5
109. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
This is the fourth novella in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series. As with the previous installments, I thought the action-y plot was okay, but not especially memorable, and in this case it really only gets at all exciting towards the end. But, oh, the main character just owns my heart. I love that awkward, sarcastic, violent, TV-loving sweetheart of a cyborg to pieces, and every time they experience a nascent stirring of emotion or a human connection they're not sure what to do with, I find myself grinning like an idiot.
Rating: 4/5
110. Dave Barry's Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides by Dave Barry
It's Black Friday, so clearly it's time to read a holiday shopping gift guide! Right? This one features items we're told are actually available to buy (or were in 1994 when the book was published) and which might mean you never need to have to worry about exchanging gifts again, because you'll be off everybody's list. Some of the selections here are genuinely, intriguingly bizarre. (A service that will pack your dead loved one's ashes into a bullet so their hunting buddies can shoot animals with them?!) Others are just ordinary and not especially interesting novelty gifts. (Reindeer antlers to put on your pet's head? You don't say?) Some just had me staring at them in honest confusion. (Was composting really so unheard of in the 90s that a book on the subject was considered that weird and mockable?)
It's sporadically amusing, but... Well, I sort of hate to say this, because I've been fond of Dave Barry since sometime in the 1980s, but overall this particular offering feels like a rather uninspired novelty item itself. Much like those "Old Fart" slippers that make farting noises when you walk.
Rating: an apologetic 2.5/5
111. The Odyssey: A Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds
I enjoyed Gareth Hinds' graphic novel adaptation of The Iliad, so I was looking forward to reading his version of The Odyssey as well. Especially as The Odyssey always seemed more like my kind of story. There's some really great character stuff in The Iliad, but, boy, do you have to read through a hell of a lot of fight scenes to get it. Whereas The Odyssey is full of gods and monsters and adventures and a hero who solves his problems by using his tricksy brain, all of which captures the imagination wonderfully well. Mind you, while reading this version I found myself remembering what I always seem to forget about The Odyssey, which is that there's actually way more stuff about those annoying suitors back home in Ithaca than there are cool seafaring adventures.
But, hey, those seafaring adventures are still pretty darned cool, and Hinds brings them to life nicely, with colorful artwork and some excellently monstrous designs on the monsters. Overall, it makes for a very nice way to revisit the story, when you're more in the mood to look at some pretty pictures than to read 400 pages of epic poetry.
Rating: 4/5
This entry was originally posted at https://astrogirl.dreamwidth.org/992060.html. Comment here or there, whichever you like.
I guess it must be, since November does seem to be over. And November being over means it is time to post the November book log. Kind of a mixed bag of books this time out, but I guess that's something that's true more often than not, really.
99. Battle Ground by Jim Butcher
This is the continuation of the story that began with Butcher's previous Harry Dresden novel, Peace Talks. I've heard that the author originally wanted them to be released as one volume, and I have to say, I think that would have been a good idea, even if it would have resulted in a much longer-than-usual installment of the series. Neither book stands on its own, and releasing it separately really didn't do Peace Talks any favors, as the whole thing just felt like a lot of not terribly interesting setup followed by an out-of-nowhere cliffhanger.
Whereas this half of the story was a lot more interesting. It's mostly one big, long battle between powerful supernatural forces, and it's genuinely kind of epic. I often get bored of fight scenes, or find them hard to follow, but I stayed engaged and interested all the way through, even when it was mostly just one fight scene after another. The well-timed touches of Harry Dresden's usual smartass humor helped with that, too.
Mind you, it wasn't flawless. There's a plot development or two here I'm not super thrilled about, just on general principle. And emphasizing how the events happening here are going to make it harder for the world to ignore the supernatural only serves to remind me how hard I find it to swallow the "people ignore the supernatural stuff all around them because they don't want to believe in it" trope at the best of times.
Overall, though, it was enjoyable, and I remain interested in finding out where things might go next.
Rating: 4/5
100. Star Trek: 50 Artists 50 Years
This volume was published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek in 2016, and, as the title suggests, it features Trek-themed art work, in a variety of different styles and media, by fifty different artists. It also includes very short interviews with each of the authors, in which they were asked about the creation of their pieces and their relationship with Star Trek. Honestly, I didn't find most of the interviews all that interesting (although a few of them were fun), but the art itself was delightful. There's lots of big, bold creative stuff here, much of it with wonderful touches of whimsy, and the oversized format of the book shows them off to excellent effect.
I think characters from pretty much every Trek series get a look-in here, but the focus is mostly on the original series, and, to a lesser extent, the Next Generation. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of Spock, in particular. Because who doesn't love Spock? And many of the artists mention having heard the news of Leonard Nimoy's death while in the process of working on their pieces, so in addition to a celebration of Star Trek as a whole, there's also a feeling that much of the book stands in tribute to him, as well.
Some artists here have chosen to depict as many characters, major and minor, as they can possibly squeeze in -- and I have to say, I could happily stare at those all day, taking in all of the little details -- or to capture the feeling of the series as a whole in some fashion or other. Others have chose to focus on particular characters, episodes, scenes, or moments. (Kirk fighting the Gorn, it turns out, is a very popular subject.) But they're all tons of fun, and the collection as a whole is very, very cool. Definitely recommended for anyone who is or has been a fan of classic Star Trek.
Rating: 4.5/5
101. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
David Mitchell's latest novel tells the story of an English folk/blues/psychedelic rock band from the 1960s, and gives us glimpses into the lives and minds of each its five motley bandmates (and, to a lesser extent, their manager).
It's impossible, I'm afraid, to resist the urge to compare this with Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & the Six, which I read just a couple of months ago, although I don't know how fair that is to either book. They have a lot of similarities, as they both follow a band from its formation through its rise to stardom, and both do some interesting things with structure (an "oral history" format in Daisy Jones' case, and a non-linear narrative for each chapter in the case of Utopia Avenue). But Daisy Jones, I'd say, is a zippier and more emotionally satisfying read, whereas Utopia Avenue is more complex and contemplative, with more flashes of literary brilliance (and, sorry Ms. Reid, better song lyrics). But it's also a lot more flawed, in ways I find all the more frustrating because it was also so good in so many ways.
My biggest problem with it is in the part of the story that focuses on bassist Jasper de Zoet, which probably forms the closest thing to a plot the novel has. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jasper seems to have some kind of ghost buried in his mind trying to possess him, and the truly weird supernatural shenanigans surrounding said ghost just feel deeply, deeply out of place in this otherwise realistic novel. I like supernatural shenanigans a lot, in the right context, but this was absolutely not it. And while you can maybe try to chalk Jasper's hauntings up to psychosis instead of treating them as real, that fails to work, either, for a whole host of reasons. It also doesn't help that Jasper's story is clearly meant to tie in with a couple of Mitchell's other novels, which I have not yet read. (I have them on my ridiculously overfull TBR shelves, but I felt I ought to read this one first, since I got a free review copy and needed to, well, review it. Silly me, I didn't thank that would be a problem!) But while I probably would have gotten a bit more out of those story elements if I had read the earlier books, I very much doubt it would have helped all that much. And it's a bit sad, really, because Jasper is a good character and I can't help feeling he deserved a story I could actually believe in.
I also had problems with the ending, which I felt was abrupt, contrived, and unsatisfying, as well as some lesser issues, such as the way many of the celebrity cameos felt a little too awkwardly wink-wink to me.
And yet, despite all that, I can't help feeling this was a good book. It engaged me. I liked the characters, and found their world and their lives and their personalities interesting and worth spending time with. Mitchell's writing is often beautiful and insightful and emotionally resonant. But god damn, do I wish I could read the book it seems like it could have been, instead.
Rating: I'm giving this 4/5. Because it's a truly excellent novel burdened with some maddening flaws, which I guess knocks it down to just "good." And four stars works for "good." But I feel like there ought to be some kind of asterisk on that rating.
(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)
102. Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney
The reasons why I felt this 2017 book on the influenza pandemic of 1918 and its impact on the world was relevant to read in 2020 are... Well, probably they're pretty obvious. Although I'm not sure it gave me a whole lot of new perspective on our current, non-flu pandemic, other than to reinforce in my mind that old saw about those who don't learn from history being doomed to repeat it.
Overall, I can't say it was quite what I was hoping for in a book on this subject. Spinney tries to take a truly global approach, which is good. But I think she dwells a little too much on random details at times when I would have preferred a clearer sense of the bigger picture. And her brief attempt to analyze the impact of the pandemic on art and literature is just odd, as it seems to be based on nothing but the thinnest excuse for speculation. The sections on our medical understanding of the virus, then and now, are good, though, very clear and informative.
And I did find it interesting enough, overall. If nothing else, it's done a very good job of bringing home to me just how staggering a toll this disease took. Which maybe seems like it could be something of a comfort at the moment -- hey, look, it could be worse! -- but is mostly just terrifying, really.
Rating: 3.5/5
103. Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale
A Doctor Who novel featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha, in which our heroes wander into a tiny English village looking for a spot of tea and end up having to deal with an alien monster that lives under the town's historic wishing well.
This one was... okay. The first hundred pages or so, honestly, were pretty dull. Way too many of them seemed to consist largely of people standing around talking about how great this well is and what a wonderful tourist attraction it's going to make, and, come on, guys. It's a well. Minus the monster, it's really just not that interesting. And there's a lot of focus on the guest characters, who also aren't quite as interesting as the author thinks they are, either, but who are, y'know. Okay.
We do get a decent bit of mild creepiness, though, when the Doctor finally gets himself down that well (which you know he's going to). And the confrontations with the monster towards the end have some fun or slightly dramatic moments, in ways that do feel much like an episode of the show, only maybe with better special effects on the page than we might have gotten on screen.
Still, none of it is particularly memorable or anything. If it was an episode of the show, I suspect it wouldn't be one I'd bother re-watching much, although it wouldn't be one I'd go off and complain about on the internet, either.
Rating: 3/5
104. The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
This mystery/thriller/ghost story is told in two alternating narrative streams. One, set in 2017, features a young woman named Carly who has come to a small town in upstate New York looking for answers about the mysterious disappearance of her aunt Vivian during a night shift at the seedy Sun Down Motel, 35 years before. The other, set in 1982, tells the story of Vivian herself as she investigates the murders of several other women, one of whom is still around in the form of a ghost haunting the motel.
It's a fairly clever structure, with the two linked stories unspooling simultaneously, and the ultimate answer to the mystery of what happened to Vivian is better than I expected it to be. But despite all that, I still feel a bit meh about the novel as a whole. The writing is readable, but not great, and there's just something about it all that I found unconvincing. Not the plot, which was decent enough, and not the ghosts, which I was happy to suspend my disbelief for (although they were never quite as spooky as I might have liked). No, it has more to do with the way the author clearly wants all her characters to be complex, rounded people with their own motivations, and yet they all somehow end up feeling like they exist solely to hand out relevant clues at the most appropriate times.
Rating: 3/5
105. Space 2069: After Apollo: Back to the Moon, to Mars, and Beyond by David Whitehouse
This is a book, more or less, about where the next fifty years of space exploration may go. Space is a topic of perennial interest to me, but I have to say I found this one a bit disappointing. It feels very... unfocused. And the things it ends up concentrating on turn out to not be the things I was expecting or hoping it would.
Things it does include, at various lengths: a list of all the changes in the direction of US space policy with new presidential administrations since Apollo, detailed descriptions of what various places on the moon look like through a telescope, a look at of some of the engineering possibilities for building a base on the moon, a discussion of the medical difficulties of a mission to Mars, a vaguely imagined fictional crewed Mars mission of the future that the author occasionally throws in references to at odd moments, a thorough (if oddly judgmental) accounting of all the real spacecraft that have so far been sent to explore Mars, and a survey of the various other interesting places to visit in the solar system (none of which we are, however, likely to be visiting with humans in the next fifty years).
Things I was hoping and expecting it to include, but which it does not, at least not in any satisfying depth: the current state of the Artemis moon program, what steps have already been taken towards its crewed moon-landing goal, how realistic the time frames that have been talked about for it actually are, and what it will actually look like if and when it happens.
Rating: 3/5
(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)
106. Monstress, Volume Four: The Chosen by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
This fourth collection of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's lush, violent dark fantasy/horror comic Monstress features a number of reunions, family and otherwise, and a looming war that may well result in truly unimaginable destruction.
I don't know that I have much to say about this volume that I haven't already said about the previous three. It's absolutely gorgeous, visually. The world-building is deep and rich. And the plot is complex and intricate enough that I suspect it might take real care to be able to follow it completely even if weren't for my fallible memory. I'm sure there are things I'm missing, or half-understanding, or losing the full impact of, just because I've forgotten far too many important details in the gaps between volumes. And yet, even given that fact, I'm still finding it pretty compelling.
Well, at least I am reaping a benefit from the fact that I was extra-slow to get to volume 4, because I already have volume 5 in my hands. Time to read that one while I'm still fresh from this one!
Rating: I'm giving this a 4/5, but if I ever do what I really should do, and go back and read the whole story in one go once it's complete, I strongly suspect my ratings of it all will go up.
107. Monstress, Volume Five: Warchild by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Volume 5 of the collected Monstress comics. This one has a lot of fighting, with a desperate attempt to defend a city under attack. It's brutal, and complex, with moments of horror and poignancy, and a few more revelations about the past for good measure. I'm still not sure I'm even following all the intricacies of the plot, but I'm still kind of fascinated by it, anyway.
Rating: 4/5
108. The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
I've been a longtime listener of the 99% Invisible podcast, which explores odd and sometimes surprising stories about the human-built world around us and how it got that way. So, of course, I had to pick up this book, and I'm pleased to report that it did not disappoint! It's full of bite-sized tidbits about all kinds of weird, quirky, important, and overlooked stuff to be found in and around cities and roads. False building facades concealing ventilation shafts, skyscrapers with extra-high towers at the top just so they could claim to be the world's tallest building for a brief moment, coded signs in Hollywood that point to movie shooting locations, brick thieves in St. Louis, spikes on sidewalks to keep homeless people away, parking spaces repurposed into mini-parks... And on and on and on.
The whole thing is engaging and fun to read, whether you want to dip in and out or read it straight through, and whether you actually live in a city or not. And the book itself is a nice, solid, rather attractive physical object. With the holiday season coming up, it occurs to me that it might make a really nice gift for the sort of person who likes non-fiction books that make you want to go around saying, "Hey, did you know...?" to people.
Admittedly, a fair amount of it was already familiar to me from the podcast -- more than I was expecting, to be honest -- but I found I didn't particularly mind. It's still interesting the second time, and they're never just transcribing stories verbatim from the podcast. Plus, there's plenty that was new to me, too.
My only dissatisfaction with it is that I really wish it had photographs. There are lots of black-and-white line drawings, which have a certain charm, and which do help to illustrate some of the things that need illustrating, but it was occasionally frustrating not to be able to just see real examples of the things the book was describing.
Rating: 4/5
109. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
This is the fourth novella in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series. As with the previous installments, I thought the action-y plot was okay, but not especially memorable, and in this case it really only gets at all exciting towards the end. But, oh, the main character just owns my heart. I love that awkward, sarcastic, violent, TV-loving sweetheart of a cyborg to pieces, and every time they experience a nascent stirring of emotion or a human connection they're not sure what to do with, I find myself grinning like an idiot.
Rating: 4/5
110. Dave Barry's Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides by Dave Barry
It's Black Friday, so clearly it's time to read a holiday shopping gift guide! Right? This one features items we're told are actually available to buy (or were in 1994 when the book was published) and which might mean you never need to have to worry about exchanging gifts again, because you'll be off everybody's list. Some of the selections here are genuinely, intriguingly bizarre. (A service that will pack your dead loved one's ashes into a bullet so their hunting buddies can shoot animals with them?!) Others are just ordinary and not especially interesting novelty gifts. (Reindeer antlers to put on your pet's head? You don't say?) Some just had me staring at them in honest confusion. (Was composting really so unheard of in the 90s that a book on the subject was considered that weird and mockable?)
It's sporadically amusing, but... Well, I sort of hate to say this, because I've been fond of Dave Barry since sometime in the 1980s, but overall this particular offering feels like a rather uninspired novelty item itself. Much like those "Old Fart" slippers that make farting noises when you walk.
Rating: an apologetic 2.5/5
111. The Odyssey: A Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds
I enjoyed Gareth Hinds' graphic novel adaptation of The Iliad, so I was looking forward to reading his version of The Odyssey as well. Especially as The Odyssey always seemed more like my kind of story. There's some really great character stuff in The Iliad, but, boy, do you have to read through a hell of a lot of fight scenes to get it. Whereas The Odyssey is full of gods and monsters and adventures and a hero who solves his problems by using his tricksy brain, all of which captures the imagination wonderfully well. Mind you, while reading this version I found myself remembering what I always seem to forget about The Odyssey, which is that there's actually way more stuff about those annoying suitors back home in Ithaca than there are cool seafaring adventures.
But, hey, those seafaring adventures are still pretty darned cool, and Hinds brings them to life nicely, with colorful artwork and some excellently monstrous designs on the monsters. Overall, it makes for a very nice way to revisit the story, when you're more in the mood to look at some pretty pictures than to read 400 pages of epic poetry.
Rating: 4/5
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