I’m slowly finishing Gibson’s The Peripheral, and re-reading Catch-22. I started Hannah Arendt’s On the Rise of Totalitatiranism, but felt sick every time I picked it up. I got a signed copy of John Darnielle’s new book, but with my husband working a lot of late nights, our night time routine of reading in bed with tea and bourbon is a little shattered. It’s hard to finish things lately.
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Down Among The Sticks And Bones by Seanan McGuire and We Have No Idea by Jorge Cham ( PhD comics) and Daniel Whiteson. I like to mix fiction and non-fiction.
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I started Hampton Hawes’ autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, yesterday. Couldn’t sleep well tonight and got to page 100 or so in one sitting.
I recently reread Up The Down Staircase. It’s 55 years old by this point, but still relevant to Trump’s America and its crumbling infrastructure.
I’m currently reading this book of Martin Gardner essays I found on my way to work:
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I’m about halfway through Elizabeth Moon’s The Serrano Legacy, which the cover blurb describes as “an action-packed SF epic” but the pacing is weird (and mostly slow). The action is very loosely packed. For too long it’s mostly just spoiled rich people being assholes, plus fox hunting (but I repeat myself)… IIIIIIN SPAAAACE. And then there’s some treachery and villainy and survival and whatnot, but with long interludes of yacht redecoration and people managing their portfolios and bluebloods disapproving of each other.
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Bonus points for making it look like the tree on the cover is growing out of your index finger. 
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I did what?
Can’t unsee.
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Have you ever read The Speed Of Dark? Interesting Elizabeth Moon book about autism. Not sure what to make of it. I think it’s interesting, but also misses the point.
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A pretty good (if somewhat jargony) engagement with the concept of neo-liberalism and what is actually means:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/undoing-demos
Brown is a political theorist, so that informs her work pretty strongly.
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I got halfway through Doughnut Economics before the library loan expired (couldn’t renew because there’s so many holds on it). It hangs neoliberalism out to dry as well, showing the fallacies behind its models. I was really enjoying it, and plan to get back in the holds queue to finish it.
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Things finished recently: Mieville’s short story collection,Three Moments of an Explosion, Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, Gruber’s The Return, Beagle’s Summerlong, and Takeda’s Monstress.
Reading Mieville’s This Census Taker, Galbraith’s The End of Normal, and had a little start on Sitaraman’s The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution.
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Nope, I don’t think I’ve read any other stuff by Moon. I might have to check it out though – I’ve gotten to a much more lively point in the story and am glad I stuck with it.
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How is that? Is it like a “best of” collecting from Scientific American and his books, or does it contain stuff I’m not as familiar with?
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Mostly Scientific American stuff.
I’m reading in dribs and drabs, and I’ve gotten through the sections on physical science, social science, and pseudoscience. Math, philosophy, arts, and religion are next to go.
The thing about Martin Gardner is that he doesn’t firehose you with information, but leaves just enough to tantalize and get you curious about learning more.
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Oh and volume one of Drive, by Dave Kellett (I have a hard copy), but if you want to read it all for free (and past volume 1), go to
http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/090815.html
and get started.
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I’m assuming you mean the journal, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. I’m currently boycotting Scientific American because my negotiations with that publisher are close to making my head pop off. I’m clearly off topic here, so I should likely create another topic: How publishers gouge libraries? This is, by no means, a fair statement, but when one has sat on one side of the negotiation table for many years across from many, many publishers and content providers, the vagaries of economics tend to fade in the face of unadulterated greed.
ETA: Forgive me, I probably should have added to Fuck Today, rather than here. It happened today and was too visceral.
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I’d read the hell out of those rants.
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Maybe some day, after I’m out of the business. I’ve likely said too much already, but it’s the epitome of worlds colliding: Libraries really are our last bastion of hope for freely available information, and when that slams into economies of publishing, it’s not pretty.
Anyway, as to what I’ve been reading: A Canticle for Leibowitz. I’m trying to work my way through sci-fci/dystopian classics.
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I hear that. I’ve spent some time working in/for/with a university library, (Teaching Librarians to know how to connect to the WiFi? Madness!!) and you see (and read of) some of this happening. It’s… not good.
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I’ve just finished the latest Charlie Stross Laundry novel and it was really good. It tied together the events of the last couple of books and managed to move the story forward in a radically different direction.
I would hightly recommend reading everything Stross has done, even the stuff I’ve not read yet, because he’s shaping up to be one of the UK’s premier sci-fi authors up alongside the likes of Iain M Banks.
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