Read

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  Moonflower Murders

  by Anthony Horowitz

  Finished 2020-12-29

  I really enjoy Horowitz’s writing, and the Susan Ryeland series especially with its book-inside-a-book conceit. But I’m growing more uncomfortable with his relationship to homosexuality. He made Hawthorne, his meta detective written as nonfiction with Horowitz as the first-person narrator, a homophobe, and literally in his book said “I would not have chosen to write a character like this” but uh, he did. And with Alan Conway, whose sexuality is prominent through two books, we mostly get ugly caricatures as well. The eventual villain of this book turns out to be a former “rent boy,” who is apparently not actually gay but performed gay sex for money and is just disdainful of basically everyone around him. It looks like Horowitz once played devil’s advocate in a TV discussion, against gay marriage, despite purportedly not actually objecting to gay marriage himself. It’s not absolutely damning, but also, like, the devil doesn’t need an advocate. So it kind of fits this bill, where I don’t think he would see himself as homophobic but he’s certainly not doing himself or the LGBTQ community any favors.

  I feel like I missed an obvious clue (in retrospect) to JKR’s transphobia in the early Cormoran Strike books, and I’m worried I’ll be doing the same here if I continue reading these. I don’t know, though. We’ll see I guess.

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  Black Sun

  by Rebecca Roanhorse

  Finished 2020-12-03
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  The Queen of Raiders

  by Sarah Kozloff

  Finished 2020-11-15
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  One by One

  by Ruth Ware

  Finished 2020-10-24

• Daisy's Run (The Clockwork Chimera #1)

  by Scott Baron

  Finished 2020-10-15

  It was fine. My biggest annoyance is that about half the book is spent running from the obvious truth that the protagonist is misjudging the situation and she absolutely refuses to consider the possibility. That might be a spoiler I guess but it’s so, so obvious the whole time. I feel like it’s written that way intentionally. But then… it’s just annoying.

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  To Be Taught, If Fortunate

  by Becky Chambers

  Finished 2020-09-27
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  The Land: Founding

  by Aleron Kong

  Finished 2020-09-21

  I was really excited to check this series out. I enjoy the LitRPG genre as I understand it, and I was excited to see that the “founder” of the genre was from an underrepresented group, which I’m trying to make an effort to be mindful of in my reading.

  But only about two chapters in this book were particularly interesting or engaging.

  The early hours of playing a new RPG are often full of grind. Sometimes, that’s nice because it allows the brain to turn off, fall into a familiar pattern, get that dopamine rush from watching your stats rise. But if you were to simply describe this process to another person, even a fan of the genre, it’d be entirely mind-numbing. Sometimes, a good game spices up that process by adding unique lore, uncommon facets to the magic or other systems. Sometimes that can be enough to make the early hours more than a grind. It can add a layer of joyful discovery. But in this book, that wasn’t the case. Nothing particularly original seems to exist in this world so far. It’s all quite standard. What’s worse, the protagonist is supposedly very familiar with the world, from the game. Not everything is apparently like the game, but much of it is. So why spend so much time on piddling exposition? Few interesting characters are met; almost no world building. Much of it is taken up by actual reading of non-metaphorical repetitive dialog boxes and prompts. It’s truly like listening to someone describe their first ten hours in WoW. There’s not even much of the characteristic “modern Earth inhabitant meets fantasy world” wit of the LitRPG genre, besides like one “FML” reference.

  The story of the world and why the protagonist has been brought there is established in the prologue and then never mentioned again.

  The book has no thrust, no real climax, and ends suddenly and unexpectedly. We still have neither a short term goal (besides “level up village”) nor a long-term goal.

  The third act starts to introduce some characters and some conflict but it doesn’t do anything with it besides a quick skirmish and I guess a sub-boss?

  I dunno. I want to say I’ll give book two a chance because it’s a popular series and it’s possible the author learned a lot from book one, but this one was no fun and I listen while running so it actually meant I skipped my run for a while because I the book didn’t motivate me to return to it.

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  Through the Wall

  by Caroline Corcoran

  Finished 2020-08-31
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  Axiom's End

  by Lindsay Ellis

  Finished 2020-08-13

• Snowflakes

  by Ruth Ware

  Finished 2020-08-11
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  A Queen in Hiding

  by Sarah Kozloff, Imogene Church

  Finished 2020-07-29
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  Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race

  by Beverly Daniel Tatum

  Finished 2020-07-18
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  Please See Us

  by Caitlin Mullen

  Finished 2020-07-09
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  The End of Policing

  by Alex S. Vitale

  Finished 2020-07-03

  Honestly surprised at how moderate it felt. With such a bold title I expected more extreme stances. But it seemed pretty levelheaded and a lot of its points were not specifically related to abolition, but more to the problems faced and the things needed to fix the problem even partially. One could easily read this book and come away with a strong advocacy for reform, rather than abolition. But all the points combined certainly paint a picture of a situation that is very hard to fully address with reform (and in fact it points out a lot of the ways attempts at reform fail). Quick read, full of good (if depressing) examples of the problem we face. Recommended most for people who are new to these issues.

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  The Rage of Dragons

  by Evan Winter

  Finished 2020-06-19