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Nevada by Imogen Binnie
Frustrated by her current relationship, trans lesbian Maria Griffiths decides to change her life by making some brash decisions and …
colin finished reading Bring up the bodies by Hilary Mantel
colin reviewed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen
Insulting
1 star
Honestly found this book insulting to its readers. The author loves sentence fragments and will make a point in a single sentence then pad it with half a dozen fragments from a batch of their favorite phrases. I don't think you need to work very hard to find a reasonably plausible scenario for an actual nuclear exchange, but the scenario in this book appears to be "the unnamed leader of North Korea decided to launch a decapitation strike against the USA for funsies". At one point the author has a sentence along the lines of "We don't know why NK launched this attack" -- MOTHERFUCKER YOU WROTE THE BOOK! YOU PUT THE IDEA IN THEIR HEAD!
There's random math errors that probably aren't important but are certainly confusing. There's a lot of arbitrary twists and turns to ensure the worst case outcome. Also, there's a lot of talk about EMP …
Honestly found this book insulting to its readers. The author loves sentence fragments and will make a point in a single sentence then pad it with half a dozen fragments from a batch of their favorite phrases. I don't think you need to work very hard to find a reasonably plausible scenario for an actual nuclear exchange, but the scenario in this book appears to be "the unnamed leader of North Korea decided to launch a decapitation strike against the USA for funsies". At one point the author has a sentence along the lines of "We don't know why NK launched this attack" -- MOTHERFUCKER YOU WROTE THE BOOK! YOU PUT THE IDEA IN THEIR HEAD!
There's random math errors that probably aren't important but are certainly confusing. There's a lot of arbitrary twists and turns to ensure the worst case outcome. Also, there's a lot of talk about EMP attacks in this book. It might actually be the bulk of the content here. This is particularly noteworthy because the author is largely (and directly) echoing right-wing talking points from the Newt Gingrich EMP people. We don't even know if an EMP would work at all, but in this book NK manages to get one off so successfully that it's unclear why they decided a nuke was required at all.
Editing this to mention that the President of the United States parachutes out of Marine One for some reason.
Anyway, you shouldn't waste your time with this. There's a pile of better options available to you if you'd like to be scared out of your wits about nuclear weapons. Read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, or just go watch The Day After.
colin commented on How to Blow up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm
Been thinking about this book a lot this past week, how it somehow threads the needle between being seemingly vital and absolutely not up to the task of actually dealing with the current situation. So frustrating.
colin reviewed Ocean of Sound by David Toop
colin reviewed M : Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati
Slogged through it
3 stars
This book definitely intends to be antifascist, but by essentially making Mussolini the protagonist of the novel (at the very least, centering everything around him) it falls into the trap of trying to make him way too much of a sympathetic character. Between that and the weird use of citations at the ends of chapters that repeat something a character often just said verbatim, I found it to be a bit of a slog.
colin stopped reading On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
colin started reading London rules by Mick Herron (Slough House, #5)
colin rated Having and Being Had: 5 stars

Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
"My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts," Eula Biss writes, "the time before I owned a washing …
colin rated Becoming a Man: 4 stars

Becoming a Man by Paul Monette
A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, "perfect Paul" earns straight A's and shines in social …
colin finished reading Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant

Gravitas by Amy Berkowitz
Frank, conversational, and darkly funny, Gravitas examines the tendency of MFA programs to teach women that their lives aren’t worth …
colin rated Remains of the Day: 5 stars

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day won the 1989 Booker Prize and cemented Kazuo Ishiguro's place as one of the world's …