“The
rib from which I remake the world” by Ed Kurtz. This
one must have been recommended by Gemma Files, whose tastes align oddly well
with mine. I devoured it.
“vN:
the First Machine Dynasty” by Madeline Ashby. Somewhere I heard that
the opening is awesome and disturbing and full of robot cannibalism. What’s not
to like there! It was a fast read. Sometimes it felt too easy to get away from
the characters we weren’t interested in, while everyone who caught up was someone
we cared about.
“Devine
Fury: a History of Genius” by Darrin M. McMahon. The
first two chapters were pretty harrowing, because they were all about geniuses
with whom I am not familiar. Once it got to Mozart and Newton and the modern
chapters, it was a little better. The second half was better, though the book
seemed a little obsessed with Hitler’s genius, and there was about one woman
mentioned: Mary Shelley, who wrote a book about a genius in order to avoid having
another boring threesome with some other geniuses but whatever (this is not how
DMM wrote about it, but whatever).
Over dinner, while I was complaining about it, my family asked me
why I was reading this book (other than the obvious ‘finish what you start’
dictum). I often like histories that are of a specific thing, because they
provide a filter or a perspective. And it wasn’t too long.
“To
Hold the Bridge” by Garth Nix. Turns out short story
collections are great for when I don’t want to commit to an entire novel, like
when I’ll be picking up a library book in a day or two. This made some 2015
year’s best lists in Locus (I’m a little behind reading Loci), so I pulled it
out of the boy’s TBR pile.
GN’s voice in the old kingdom stories is so right. His other
things are good too, but for some reason these stories hit a sweet spot for me.