Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.
Book 46 of 2026: Accessibility: The Illustrated Guide by Nandita Gupta and Rachel Grossman-Kahn.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: An excellent (and cute) introduction to digital accessibility; less of a detailed “how to” than a good “here’s what to think about and why” starting point. While there wasn’t much new for me, a refresher is never a bad thing, and it’s always good to see how other people explain and convey the concepts and to think about how I do the same and what I might want to adjust in my work.
Book 45 of 2026: More Beautiful Than Death by David Mack.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Reading a Trek novel set in the Kelvin universe is…weird. I was curious about that when I started, as to whether the characters would feel like their Kelvinverse incarnations, or whether this would be your basic Trek adventure with different cover art. To Mack’s credit, the characters do seem to match with their Kelvinverse interpretations, particularly Kirk’s younger, less focused brashness and Spock’s less controlled self (McCoy is McCoy, thanks to the first Kelvin film’s writers and Urban’s performance). The “A plot” adventure is pretty standard Trek adventure, while the “B plot” storyline is more of a direct offshoot of the particular dynamics of the Kelvin universe, even bringing in a key character we never saw in the films. A decent read, but definitely feels a bit off compared to other Trek novels, but that’s likely just as it was meant to be. (It was probably an interesting exercise for Mack as well.)
Compounding the off-kilter feeling is that all this would have been odd enough if the book had been released and I’d read it back when the Kelvinverse was still an active thing. But to be reading it now, when I also have the DIS/SNW versions of Spock, Kirk, Uhura, and Scotty front and center in my mind makes it even weirder. My mental images of the characters kept shifting among their various on-screen presentations. Definitely a little bizarre — similar to reading some of the earliest Trek fiction, actually, from before there as any real oversight of the books and authors (sometimes coming out of the early fanfic communities) were taking some real wild swings at the characters.
Book 44 of 2026: Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry.
⭐️⭐️: I picked this (and its first two sequels) up at the local library book sale a while ago on a whim, as cheesy urban fantasy set in Seattle sounded amusing. Finally got around to reading this one, and it will be going right into the donate pile, along with the next two (still unread). It’s not nearly as funny as it wants to think it is, the plot meanders and gets frequently sidetracked, none of the characters are all that interesting or likable, and there are far too many instances of miss-used commas, the r-slur, fatphobia, and casual transphobia. The highlights were the occasional playlists; if nothing else, the author does at least seem to have decent taste in music.
Book 43 of 2026: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: The Making of the Classic Film by John and Maria Jose Tenuto.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Another good entry in the Tenutos’ series of “making of” books for the Star Trek films, now covering the “Genesis trilogy” of films II-IV. The same coffee table book style, with lots of photos and interviews throughout. This one features an introduction by Kirk Thatcher (the punk on the bus), and I particularly appreciated the chapter looking at matte paintings and the artists behind them. Books like this always make me a little sad that today’s computer effects mean that so much of this physical artistry has gone by the wayside.
Book 42 of 2026: The City and The City by China Miéville. 2010 Hugo Best Novel winner (tied with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl).
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Mostly a crime noir, but set in two cities that share the same physical space but do not interact. The crime novel part is a good mystery; the setting itself is fascinating and has me looking at the spaces I live in differently.
Absolutely baffled that this tied with The Windup Girl, which I gave one star and was sorely tempted not to finish. What was up with the Hugo voters in 2010?
Book 41 of 2026: The Death of Princes by John Peel.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Solidly average, most notable for the number of overt A-Team references given to Barclay.
Book 40 of 2026: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Pratchett takes on religion, belief, godhood, corruption, holy wars, goodness, and compassion, and does it all with style, humor, and heart. The Turtle moves.
Book 39 of 2026: Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: A Discworld look at stories, fairy tales, and what happens when someone is a little too intent on making sure they go just the way they should.
Book 38 of 2026: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Death gets fired, and explores life as a mortal being (more or less), while the rest of the Discworld has to figure out what’s going on when Death isn’t doing Death’s job anymore. It’s easy to see why Death is a favorite character in the Discworld series, as Pratchett continues to do a masterful job of using the character to look at life and make death (the concept) a bit less intimidating.
Book 37 of 2026: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. 2010 Hugo Best Novel winner (tied with China Miéville’s The City and The City).
⭐️: Actively disliked this one; a rare instance where I came very close to bailing out and DNF’ing, and only stuck it out because it’s part of my Hugo Best Novel reading project.
A dystopic future where fossil fuels have run out (and, apparently, renewable options like wind (except for sailing ships), solar, hydro, etc. just…aren’t a thing? anywhere? for no discernible reason?) and power comes through kinetic energy stored in ‘kink springs’, and the resulting societal collapse combined with ecological change has devastated food supplies worldwide. The overall background is basically colonialism; substitute genetic engineering agriculture companies for the East India Tea Company and Thailand for India, and you’ve got the gist. Genetic engineering has progressed enough that there are now “New People”; genetically created intelligent artificial life that is genetically encoded to be servile.
One of these New People is the titular “windup girl” (who isn’t actually windup, but New People are intentionally given a way of moving that mimics stop motion/clockwork creations), a sex slave who is repeatedly abused over the course of the story, with some of these instances being explicitly detailed across multiple pages of the story. The first instance within the first few chapters was more than enough for me, having it happen again and in greater detail and length later on was when I almost bailed out of the book entirely. Instead, I just skimmed past and kept skimming through the rest of the book just to get it done with.
Obviously enough people liked it and found it worthwhile for it to win a Best Novel Hugo award, but I can’t recommend it.
