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What I read: August 2022

 LHC #180: "The Red Wolf Conspiracy" by Robert V.S. Redick. Hard copy; the library doesn't even had this in digital. The first 50 pages were really confusing, but fortunately I don't usually give up until around p. 60, by which things were going great. But it never completely gelled for me, it felt sort of like reading someone's D&D campaign. 

LHC #181: "And then they came for me (Rosewater)" Maziar Bahari. After reading a few of these "trapped in an Iranian prison for dubious reasons" books I kind of get the idea: Iranian interrogators are idiots with no real goal of getting information. Unfortunately, my fictional character who spends time in an Iranian prison does not really get interrogated that much, he's a different kind of prisoner. 

LHC #182: "Burning down the house: essays on fiction" by Charles Baxter. eBook. Seemed kind of mean-spirited at times, but I did get some ideas for my current problem, which is endings. 

"Craft in the real world" by Matthew Salesses. Interesting to read just after the Baxter. I made a lot of notes about my current short story while I was reading. 

LHC #183: "Because Internet" by Gretchen McCulloch. Hard copy, the eBook version had a wait of about 8 weeks whereas the print edition was basically immediate, considering they had a copy at my branch anyway. It's really neat to read a history of something so recent! It's hard to believe we've had emojis for about 12 years. 😃 And that memes have evolved since it was published---three years ago. 

"When the tiger came down the mountain" by Nghi Vo. I was reading a review of a series-adjacent book (?) on Marissa Lingen's blog (where honestly a huge portion of my TBR list comes from) and thought, hey, didn't I read something in that series, and it was awesome? And I saw that back in 2020 I read book 1 of the series and said I couldn't wait for book 2. But then somehow I forgot. They're not that long so I just grabbed it. 

And then I started reading and it felt distressingly like I'd read it before. What was going on? I think I must have read a preview at the end of the previous one, which normally I don't do because then things like this happen. After two chapters I was in unfamiliar territory.💯

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