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How implausible that I would read this, noir about 9/11? The power of a good review from someone you trust.

A first retrospective collection at 10 years, her notes before each story are sharp and advancing even for otherwise tangent tales. And then it ends fiercely with the kicks of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and "The Day Before The Revolution".

Such a promising disturbing start, At The Mountains of Madness vibes with new layers, and then goes on somewhere that's fine but not there.

It seems everyone read this when I lived in Chicago except me, but the true crime hook turned me off then. Turns out it's mostly about architecture and temporary facades of respectability, and engagingly told as popular history. Satisfyingly travel-back-in-time-to-Chicago.

Or, "Are we smart enough to change our behavior from a path of ecological destruction, recounting a small intellectual gathering on cybernetics in 1968”

Where I am right now, after an overlapping decades-long journey through computability, animal and ecological intelligence, finding human humility after capitalism's techno-categorizing-hubris. Seeking an answer to how technology, how participation in understanding, should adapt to a collaborative-multiple-perspective de-centering of humanity and our binary truths. This sticks to a deep middle, the claims Bridle makes for "opening up to the more-than-human world" are broad, pointed in good directions, and avoid anger or hopelessness while staying critical. My recommendations for adjacent reading would be Frans de Waal's "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are", Emma Marris' "Wild Souls", Richard Power's "The Overstory", and a lot of Ursula K LeGuin, but the bibliography has a whole stack of new reading lined up for me too.

Nice to be reminded that Chambers can weave her deeply attentive human and social reflections into compelling longer form, and live up to high expectations for unconventionally but quite comfortably answering what matters in a story or a culture.

Witty low stakes riff, not so noir - the vibe is more 5th Element romp given the cruise ship setting, and the mystery bends to suit - but true to the original in prominent stiff drinks, and comfortably egalitarian in gender roles.

@quaad @cblgh aye, I don't consider myself a fast reader, but I slowly gave up video time for reading, and about a ¼ of my reading is audiobooks, substituting for what used to be more music and podcasts while working in the kitchen or yard. And I'm always in the middle of several books, so that something always sounds good to read.

This is such a satisfying wondrous summation of my last decade of reading, I love how many diverse threads are in the bibliography and new encounters in the text suggest a good year's reading project could be just to read through the rest of the bibliography. Possible overlapping new highlights there: Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Donna J Haraway, Eva Meijer, Andrea Wulf, Alexis Pauline Gumbs.