Wants to read Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream
book
Rated The Trees 9/10
<div>A near-perfect collection of short stories in a pleasingly compact package. There were so many instances where I thought, "Wow, what a sentence!" that I'm glad that the translator, Robin Myers, also gets proper billing on the cover. I have not seen this work in its original Spanish, nor is my Spanish good enough to where I could fluently read it, but I know that translation is its own work of art.<br><br>These short stories are full of beautiful descriptions, human difficulty, and a different way of looking at the stories of the natural world. I definitely recommend it.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Adventures, Volume 5 8/10
<div>Pretty solid set! I don't know if I'm 100% on Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor, though he's fine enough, but Jon Culshaw as the Brig is great.</div>
Rated The War Master: Rage of the Time Lords 8/10
Poor Eighth Doctor. His brain is like a shredded sponge with all this memory mischief, ha. But this was good.
Rated The Wire in the Blood 8/10
<div>A few plot points were a little convenient, but this was a good one. A lot more gross, details-wise, than some of her others. Maybe that's just how this particular series is though, which is fine.</div>
Rated Sea of Tranquility 10/10
<div>Loved this. It has a relationship to her previous book, The Glass Hotel, in sort of the same way David Mitchell's Slade House is related to The Bone Clocks. It's interesting to see the first "pandemic-era" books start to come out now, and though this story doesn't directly have much to do with our current pandemic, it's interesting to watch an author who had previously written a pandemic book grapple with that now. I completely understand the urge to want to involve time travel and moon colonies and all that to convey the strangeness of it all.</div>
Rated 100 Love Sonnets 8/10
Soneto XVII is my jam.<br><br>(A [much more] full review appears on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2013/02/100-love-sonnets-cien-sonetos-de-amor.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)
Rated Lincoln in the Bardo 10/10
This is an amazing feat of a book made all the better by the exceptionally well-done audiobook, which is how I read it. This might be the best book I've read so far this year.
Rated The Payback 10/10
<div>Set in the near-future where people who are behind on student loans risk a beatdown from the Debt Police, <em>The Payback</em> begins with a lazy shift at an LA mall and increasingly amps up the pace. I loved reading from a retail store employee's perspective. An underutilized profession in novels! More "Mall Novels," please, even if only half of this book takes place in one.<br><br>And then it all turns into a heist? One of my favorite genres? Yes, of course I loved this book.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: Myths and Legends 6/10
This is a deeply nerdy book that I enjoyed, though I did not love. It fills in some of the blanks as to how certain stories came out, or the in-between times, explaining how the Doctor might be familiar with other planets/aliens based on the Time Lords' history. There are a lot of good callbacks, but if one is not as familiar with Classic Who, this isn't going to be the book for them. I got most references, but I felt like I was maybe missing a few things. The writing is just okay, and the myths/legends themselves are mostly interesting, but this isn't going to be a book for a casual fan.
Rated And the Ass Saw the Angel 2/10
Life is too short too completely finish a book you're hating, even if it is for book club. I'll stick to his songs, thanks.
Rated Doctor Who: A Town Called Fortune 6/10
<div>Love Evelyn, but this story was just ok.</div>
Rated The Twenty Days of Turin 6/10
I think I would have liked this more if I were more familiar with the time period/location (1970s Italy) to which this story alludes, and also if I'd read more of it while not drowsy. However! It's a good book with pleasantly unsettling elements, and plenty of other people should get more out of it than I did.
Rated Doctor Who: The Holy Terror 8/10
I feel like I've watched/listened to so much Doctor Who that the reveal at the end did not come as much of a surprise, but this was still quite enjoyable. I am always entertained by Frobisher. All hail the big talking bird, etc.
Rated The Chronology of Water 10/10
The thought that most often occurred to me while reading was that <i>The Chronology of Water</i> is perhaps the truest thing I’ve ever read. Even if I have not personally experienced the same things, I know many who have, and in the parts where Yuknavitch and I overlap, her words feel so true that they hurt in the same way a massaged, sore muscle does. I wince for a moment, then think, <i>Please keep going</i>. And within all the turmoil, I find a certain amount of peace. <br><br>(My full review appears at <a href="http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/2012/10/swimming-away-chronology-of-water-by.html">The Quivering Pen</a>.)
Rated Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution 8/10
<div>The updated version of this book was published in 2017, and while it ends with a sense of apprehension about what's to come in the first Trump administration, it is heartbreaking to now know how much progress has been undone in the decade since. Still, as Stryker reminds us, the arc of moral justice is long, and there is still much work to be done. <br><br>I knew some of the history talked about here, but I also learned a lot. It does not go much into Native American trans people, but otherwise covers a pretty wide American history. The writing is very straightforward, fair-minded, and readable. If you haven't seen Stryker's documentary, <em>Screaming Queens</em>, about the Compton's Cafeteria riot, I definitely recommend. I also liked the questions for the reader at the end. A lot of leftie book groups could stand to read this history.</div>
Rated Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers 6/10
This was ok. I liked the sections dealing with taking your work and your family seriously, but when she got into tattoos being detrimental to the souls of one's children, she lost me a bit. It's a lovely tribute to her grandmothers, but not all of it is practical advice.<br><br>(My full review can be found on <a href="http://persephonemagazine.com/2012/07/06/book-review-dont-sing-at-the-table-by-adriana-trigiani/">Persephone Magazine</a>.)