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Brian

brianary@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years ago

I'm a fairly slow reader, and have been reading more lately. Douglas Adams, Roger Zelazny, Fred Saberhagen were my favorites when I was younger (I still remember them fondly). My favorite series lately is Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club.

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finished reading The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (Thursday Murder Club, #5)

Richard Osman: The Impossible Fortune (Hardcover, Pamela Dorman Books)

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table …

Another wonderful read through a world that's so easy to love, even though the stakes seem so high after the previous book. Competent characters acting almost entirely in good faith, not a cartoonishly evil one among them. My only complaint with each book is that it has to end.

finished reading I'm Starting to Worry about This Black Box of Doom by David Wong

David Wong, Jason Pargin: I'm Starting to Worry about This Black Box of Doom (2024, St. Martin's Press)

Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a …

Kind of a shaggy dog story, I thought. It was obviously meant to facilitate some examination of online culture, but I'm not sure how successful it was.

reviewed Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty (The Midsolar Murders, #2)

Mur Lafferty: Chaos Terminal (Paperback, 2023, Ace)

Mallory Viridian would rather not be an amateur detective, and fled to outer space to …

Another fun exploration of Eternity

There is more world building and more of Mallory's backstory is visited upon her with the usual complications.

finished reading The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow: The Lost Cause (TOR)

It’s thirty years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But …

It was nice to read something positive and hopeful. It was also nice to read about solving problems as a group, using guerilla civil engineering.

finished reading The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club, #4)

Richard Osman: The Last Devil to Die (Hardcover, 2023, Penguin Random House)

You'd think you would be allowed to relax over Christmas, but not in the world …

This one was much more emotional than the previous books in the series, and a great deal of character development. The crime and resolution tend to take a back seat to this focus. It also seems to prepare for stories to come.

started reading Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson: Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (2020, William Morrow Paperbacks)

Estimated start date. Had to take a break after the part where they visited the Midwest that had been fully ceded to extremists. Just felt too real at the time. Just finished part five, which I enjoyed (it's good to see Enoch Root again, though I never finished The Baroque Cycle, so I don't know much more about him than what was in Cryptonomicon), though I've lost some of the thread in the interim. It's harder to find time for a book this big, so I'm taking another break from it.