pseudolibrary
I'm an eclectic reader.
SNOWPIERCER VOL. 1: THE ESCAPE
Take an apocalyptic ride on the Orient Express. Not much mystery, but lots of doom and a little bit of noir. The characters are rough around the edges and nobody's squeaky clean. Definitely going to keep reading, but I'm scared to watch the movie since the book is excellent!
The Last Stormlord
Nothing I haven't read before, but it's adventurous and imaginative. Fantasy worlds struggle with global warming too. Author handles tragedy with a level hand & the explaining of the world's religions, politics and economy never gets tiring or overly ridiculous.
Nowhere Men, Vol. 1: Fates Worse Than Death
Tons of pseudoscientific punk politics mixed with fake advertisements trying to be the Avengers. Was more interested in the team stuck on the space station than the Dade/Emerson/Simon mind games man-behind-the-curtain plot. May or may not read the next one. Feeling kind of meh about it. Also Susan = Cousin Itt.
Citizen: An American Lyric
This is awesome. Eye-opening. Multi-media engaged poetry. Pictures hammer home the injustice Rankine has to face every day, as a woman, as a black woman, as someone people don't expect her to be. She spends a lot of time on Serena Williams, tennis star, and I appreciate the way she inhabits the anger, explains it and stands up for Williams. The collection is leading me to explore the events and dates I did not recognize in the last section of her poems. This is Rankine with a social justice angle. There's still the sadness, the sighs, the inability to cope, but now it's placed in an immediate way onto the reader.
Wolf in White Van
This book is a more philosophical and less comical Ready Player One. It has everything you'd expect from Darnielle - parent trouble in particular. The real genius lies in the overlays between the game the main character creates after trying to shoot himself and his psychological quirks, his guilt, and his thoughts about the future. Darnielle takes the post-apocalyptic trend and asks where it comes from. It's still fun, still geeky, but it has real social concern lying behind the game. Why do I get sad? Why do I hurt other people? Darnielle must've spent a good deal of time in some sort of care, or someone close to him did, because it feels real. The way he's able to inhabit the main character's hermetic viewpoints is eerie. I want to put this book on my favorites shelf, but I'm kind of scared to because it's really dark. It ends in a dark place. It's also like Denis Johnson's Train Dreams in some ways, I guess in the starkness. The atmosphere the main character inhabits feels almost Western at times. He really is quite like the main character in The Shootist too. I hope Darnielle continues to write both songs and novellas.
Foundations of Library and Information Science, Third Edition
Library Science 101. If you haven't worked in libraries, it's a good overview of the structures, issues and values behind those who work for libraries. Even includes the history of the institution and the ways in which it will succeed and survive in the future.
The Secret Place
Boarding schools seem to be the next big thing after the vampire fad. I love Tana French's style and the Law & Order style buddy cop relationship she puts Moran and Conway in. I don't like the whole magic tangent - was that supposed to be an Irish culture thing? I missed the significance of that. It just made the novel seem too YA and less a murder mystery. The boarding school felt Hogwarts-y. Loved the descriptions of the common rooms. French made much of the intensity of being a teenager, glorifying the feelings and the mentality. It's almost a fantasy disguised as a murder mystery. I love her writing style and will continue to read the Dublin Murder Squad series.
Stone Mattress: Thirteen Tales
I loved "The Dead Hand Loves You" way more than I should've. I dig the old horror, just watched The Thing That Wouldn't Die last night. The tropes are amazing - the wide eyes, the unbridled lust! This collection is not a collection of short stories, it's a collection of smirks. Atwood is very smirky, but also touching. The last story is like a weird version of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, an old woman who's losing her sight trusts a bombastic fellow senior citizen to tell her the truth (while she hallucinates little fairy-like creatures). Some of the stories are interconnected, which ended up throwing me off, because I expected the rest of the collection to be like that. But what more could one want? Some familiar plot devices mixed in with the unexpected. Great public transit reading.
The Unwritten, Vol. 3: Dead Man's Knock
It's like Inception and Harry Potter invited a Choose Your Own Adventure book for a sleepover. I'm not completely sold on this series, mostly because it makes the reader do all the imaginative work. I also don't like the main character, so it's been tough for me to muddle through it all. Lizzie Hexam, who finally gets a little more story behind her in this one, is fascinating, but the fact that I find out more about her through a CYOA type storyline feels like a cheat. This series is clever, for sure. Is it too clever for its own good?
Sergeant Rex: The Unbreakable Bond Between a Marine and His Military Working Dog
It's not well written (present and past tense shifts around a bunch), but it's heart-warming and inspirational. Military working dogs should be able to get medals.
Manifest Destiny, Vol. 1
Plant zombies! Sacagawea kicking major evil tuckus! Lewis and Clark as a couple of bros on a paranormal mission with murderers and scaredy-cat soldiers. I'll read the next one for sure.
Its Good to Be Queen
I love art books. It sounds like this exhibition was hilarious and almost a piece of performance art. Reminded me of the weirdest dance piece I saw in Portland, OR at the Risk/Reward Festival. Dead birds, skeletons, weird pink fabric/fluid coming out of skulls, weirdly stained and embroidered pillows. Gorgeous and gothically twee. Would love to see the drying wall of tea.
The Principles of Information Ethics
A librarian at Marylhurst wrote this! So cool. Really smart author with readable content (the computer stuff is a little out-dated, but the author is forward thinking). I like how he separates morality from religion and seats ethics smack between morality and the law. I like how he indicates that the law isn't a solution for the underlying personal issues going on. The technological age removes the immediacy of consequences, making really big decisions seem unreal. Severson makes them real again.
Welcome to the Dark House
EVERYONE COUPLED UP SUPER FAST. The settings were cool. The nightmares and psychological wierdness were spot-on. Felt like a game of Clue met the SAW franchise.
The Massive, Vol. 1: Black Pacific
Like a sci-fi ecocentric version of THE CAINE MUTINY? I don't know. May read the next one, see what it's building to.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
PICK THIS BOOK UP NOW. First of all, the print copy is gorgeous. It's the perfect size for carrying with you. The jacket design is modern, mysterious and perfectly sums up the contents. It's great for quarter-life crisis meditation. Of course it's Murakami, so this NYT observation applies. I flew through the pages at an incredible pace. The aphorisms are not as quotable, there's more a pervasive feeling of sadness. Go into the book feeling good about yourself, for sure, 'cause Murakami books can be depressive. People who've been shy about starting to read Murakami might like to start with this book since its central problem deals with a group of 5 high school friends and then branches out into the philosophy and psychology of growing apart and becoming someone different because of events that are outside of your control. Really, it's a meditation on how forces in the world can make you become a different person, despite what you want and despite what you're growing towards.
Currently reading
Golden Son
Lumberjanes, Volume 1
Reference and Information Services: An Introduction, Fourth Edition
