Note: I received this — and here comes some important information, so pay attention — NEWLY REISSUED EDITION OF DEEP SECRET from the publisher for review consideration. I led with the most important information, but I’ll mention it again, just in case: The speculative fiction publisher Tor has put Deep Secret back in print for the first time in years! And for the first time in even longer, we have an American edition of this book that doesn’t take out all the swear words! Huzzah! If you are one of the (gloriously many!) people who has asked me what Diana…
14 CommentsReading the End Posts
I love publisher catalogs, y’all. I can’t describe how much I love them. It’s because I judge books by their covers, and publishers’ catalogs offer me the opportunity to do that on a grand scale. So here are a few of the books from 2015 for which I am excited, in no particular order. Flood of Fire, the last in Amitav Ghosh’s wonderful Ibis trilogy, appears in August, and then I can at last set about getting matching copies of all three. Sea of Poppies was one of my favorite books of its year, and while River of Smoke was…
31 CommentsHow Freedom and Necessity was described to me by Anastasia: An epistolary novel set in Victorian times, with magic! What I pictured: Sorcery and Cecelia The primary topic of the first forty pages of Freedom and Necessity: Hegel, I swear to God. You know, the philosopher. And his concepts of idealism. So, yeah. Me and Freedom and Necessity got off to a bumpy start. Luckily, I was on the bus and had nothing else of interest for my eyes to rest on for the duration of the bus ride, which meant that perforce I read past the first 40 pages…
17 CommentsWithout You There Is No Us is a read for Nonfiction November, hosted by the marvelous Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Leslie (Regular Rumination), Katie (Doing Dewey), and Rebecca (I’m Lost in Books). Rebecca’s the host for this week, so head on over to her blog to see the nonfiction other bloggers have been reading and recommending! North Korea is an improbable circumstance, isn’t it? Whenever I think about North Korea, I’m surprised all over again. I’m like the grandmother in Emily Climbs who keeps insisting that a child can’t be lost in the nineteenth century. How can there be, in this…
24 CommentsWhat time is it? It’s time for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex Awards! Huzzah! The only sad thing is that apparently Patrick Ness (in an uncharacteristically curmudgeonly turn) opposes the Bad Sex Awards. He thinks they’ll have a chilling effect on people writing sex scenes. Maybe they will have a chilling effect on people writing bad sex scenes. If you enjoyed the Sims Friends from my last links round-up, you’ll love this article about a woman determined to seduce the Sims Grim Reaper, a goal she pursued by repeatedly murdering her Sims in order to get the Grim Reaper…
25 CommentsHere it is the middle of November, and I have to accept that I am never going to get full posts written on some of these books before the end of the year. So I am doing a small batch edition. First up, Max Brooks and Canaan White’s comic The Harlem Hellfighters, which I received from the publisher for review consideration, and am (eek!) reviewing rather belatedly. The Harlem Hellfighters were an all-black infantry regiment in World War I; they never lost a man through capture or gave up a foot of ground to the enemy. Rather touchingly, Max Brooks…
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