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mikerickson

mikerickson@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 9 months ago

Primarily a horror reader, but always down for some historical fiction and gay stuff.

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mikerickson's books

Cameron Abadi: Climate Radicals (2024, Columbia Global Reports)

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I feel like a lot of contemporary political books I read that aim to address why certain movements fail to generate results keep ending up the same way. I go into them thinking, "I wonder if there are more nuanced factors at play that I didn't realize and that it's not just leftist infighting and unrealistic purity tests again." But then I read it and the culprit is leftist infighting and unrealistic purity tests. This has happened like four times now.

The subject of climate change and how different countries respond to it does have unique problems though, like how addressing it is just a supercharged Tragedy of the Commons (countries who make no effort to curb emissions will still benefit if others do, so no one ends up wanting to go first). The "macro" portion of this book looking at the big picture honed in on how Western democracies …

John Langan: Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies (2021, Word Horde)

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You know that expression, "don't meet your heroes," because you're just setting yourself up for disappointment? I feel like I just ignored that advice... and it turned out okay anyway!

The Fisherman is one of my all-time favorite books. I'm talking in Top 3, easily. Because of that, I've ironically always been hesitant to visit any of John Langan's other works because I was convinced there was no way anything else could live up to it, and I'd just end up walking away let down, so why bother? I've owned this book for about three years before I finally decided to pick it up and give it a chance. And while I was right in that it wasn't life-changing, it was still extremely solid.

This was another situation where the author's note to the reader at the end of the book really colored my perception of what came before it …

Phillip B. Williams: Ours (2024, Penguin Publishing Group)

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This book will live in infamy in my book club because everyone uniformly hated it... except for me. Yes, the haters have many valid points, but I simply did not mind.

This is a long book that feels twice as long as it actually is (someone said reading it felt like clocking into work). There is a massive cast of characters to keep track of and new people continue to be introduced pretty much right up to the very end. There is no readily identifiable central plot or sequence of events one could point to as a conflict that rises and is then resolved after a climax. And that's all okay.

At the very end of the book is a note from the author who explains that he set out to create a new mythology of the African American experience that was not wholly centered around the experience of slavery, …

Jack Carr: Red Sky Mourning (2024, Atria/Emily Bestler Books)

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This must be how straight men feel when they accidentally stumble into a gay bar: just a confusing sense of growing unease culminating in a realization of, "oh, I don't belong here and this isn't for me."

I'll admit up front that this was a blind airport purchase and I did not realize this was the seventh book in a series going into it. And it's not meant to be a standalone; there are tons of references to events and now-deceased characters from previous entries that I knew were going over my head. Throwaway lines like, "just like that time in Israel!" meant nothing to me because I just got here, but I'm sure all the callbacks landed for longtime fans.

The premise of a clandestine plan for China to make a move on invading Taiwan depending on the result of a 2024 U.S. Presidential election intrigued me, and the …

Christopher de Bellaigue: Flying Green (2003, Columbia Global Reports)

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There's a certain irony around reading a book like this shortly before I make a transatlantic flight. Yeah I'm vegetarian, I own an EV, and recycle etc. etc., but I also know that a single long haul trip can completely offset the carbon emissions I'd otherwise save, which doesn't even account for the inevitable flight back.

What I appreciate here is that this book doesn't browbeat you into being a Luddite through guilt tripping (though it does mention and discuss other individuals and organizations that try to). Instead, it does acknowledge the necessities and positives of air travel and how it's made the world more connected and accessible. But that doesn't mean it's not without cost.

So is anyone doing anything about it? Turns out, yes, but the technology isn't there yet, and barring some unforeseeable breakthrough, it might never get there on the scale needed. There's specific foci on …