8/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Philip K. Dick Award Nominee
Entertaining far-future adventure with genetically engineered animal/human hybrids, AIs bonded to human hosts and used as weapons, and schemes spanning tens of thousands of years.
Books
I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.
📚 Bug by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall
7/2022 – ⭐️⭐️ Philip K. Dick Award Nominee
Unfortunately, this one just did not work for me. The main character is a 10-year-old deaf (and, I believe, possibly autistic) child, and it’s narrated in a first-person, nearly stream-of-consciousness style, which (in-universe) is the child dictating in sign language to a caretaker who translates what he says. In actuality, the book was originally written in Italian, and has been translated to English. So there are multiple levels of abstraction and translation, and I’m at a loss as to how much of the final writing style and choices were the character’s, an artifact of the in-universe translation from sign language, the author’s, an artifact of the real-world translation from Italian, or some combination of all of those. The end result was that I just didn’t enjoy it.
📚 Defekt by Nino Cipri
6/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Darker and weirder than Finna, complete with elements of body horror, but just as fun to read, and still with the same optimistic current to it. Liked this one a lot; a strong start to this year’s PKD lineup.
📚 Finna by Nino Cipri
5/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Navigating working with someone after breaking up with them is hard enough. Doing that while also navigating a multidimensional IKEA isn’t easier…but can be surprisingly helpful. A quick, funny, and fun read.
PKD Award 📚 Nominees
This year’s stack of Philip K. Dick Award nominees have arrived! (Actually, nominees plus one — Finna is the precursor to Defekt, and I don’t like starting in the middle of a series.) As usual, this looks like a strong selection of books; of note for me is Far From the Light of Heaven, as this is Tade Thompson’s second time as a nominee, and I enjoyed all of his Wormwood trilogy, the third book of which was the earlier nominated work.
Time to get reading! (And if you’re interested, I’ve created a PKD reading challenge on StoryGraph that you’re welcome to join!)
📚 Unlocking the Magic edited by Vivian Caethe
4/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
An anthology of people living with mental illnesses and magic. Not the old tropes of magic being a sign or cause, but magic as a tool to help cope with the struggles. Definitely some dark moments, but overall, a thread of hope runs through all of the stories.
📚 The Case of the Colonist’s Corpse: A Sam Cogley Mystery by Bob Ingersoll and Tony Isabella
3/2022 – ⭐️⭐️
A somewhat amusing murder mystery and courtroom drama; basically Law & Order: TOS starring Samuel Cogley. Unfortunately, the poor treatment of the two primary female characters (one an overly stereotypical shallow, bitter wife; the other bitter at past events who fares badly) marred my enjoyment.
📚 A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
2/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A recommendation from my 10-year-old niece (V.E. Schwab is her favorite author), this was a fun fantasy adventure through multiple magical Londons. Neat worldbuilding and magic rules and styles; perhaps a bit more violent than I would have expected from a pre-teen’s recommendation (apparently Schwab also writes YA books, which is how my niece came across her, but this is one of her adult novels), but her parents also read and enjoyed it, she’s none the worse for reading it, and I’ve certainly read far worse.
📚 Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
1/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Near-future technothriller in Stephenson’s trademark “neat stuff infodump” style. Weird to read something so new that it references both Covid and the Jan. 6th insurrection.
TBR Pile Reading Challenge 📚
A reading challenge I just might try to do this year: Your TBR Reduction Book Challenge:
January – New Beginnings
1 – I give you permission to read the most recent book you got on top of your TBR. For many this is one we only get to read eventually but for now I want you to pick up the newest book in Mount TBR and read it. Can you remember the last time you did that?
Stretch Goal – Read the oldest book in Mount TBR it has waited long enough