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What I read, September 2018


LHC #17: “Bitter Seeds” by Ian Tregellis. I’m back at the top of my library list working my way down, so I have no recollection of why I requested this. IT has quite the way with making his characters suffer, so much that I thought to myself about 200 pages in, “is this grimdark?” and then googled to find that, more or less, yes. The ending was such that I had to request the next in the series. 

LHC #18: “Urban Forests: a natural history of trees in the American Cityscape” by Jilll Jonnes. Starting this book, I was hoping it would talk about endothermic reactions. This is not that book. It’s more of a society pages of American trees. The organizational structure took a while to grok, but eventually I settled in. 

Sometimes this seemed like an endless list of names I didn’t know. At the same time, the sections about the civic response to epidemics was really enlightening. As was the way the different levels of government and the different NGOs dealt with things and interacted. When I was done, that stuck with me more than anything else – all politics ultimately is local politics, which with what’s going on in Ontario now is important to remember.

“The Coldest War” by Ian Tregillis. It’s interesting I’m getting sucked into more series. Normally I can stop after book 1. This did not seem like an afterthought, though. I guess I’ll request book 3 now…

LHC #20: “The buried Life” by Carrie Patel. The worldbuilding is cool, but I think police procedurals are not my bag.

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