Started: 3/25/22
Finished: 3/29/22
I enjoyed this book – it’s a really cute queer YA love story about a teenager in a bakery. It’s set in Austin, and the Austin-love felt a little much in the beginning, but either it settled down or I let it go – not sure which. Anyway, I will NOT return this book to the library until I have copied out nearly every recipe. They sound really really good, and I want to try them.
Started: 3/23/22
Gave up: 3/25/22
I just couldn’t with this book. I read an article by the author, and her description of this book was intriguing, but it didn’t work for me. We see alternate futures for this woman, all starting from one moment in time, as she makes minor changes in that moment for every iteration. Fascinating! I love Sliding Doors-type stories! Why only nine? I don’t know. I didn’t make it through all nine because the story was about a married couple who, when they got together and then married, always agreed they didn’t want kids. The woman had NEVER wanted kids. Then the husband changed his mind and basically bullied her into trying. The decision point (very beginning) is when he finds a full bottle of prenatal vitamins, vitamins he bullied her into taking, and proof she’s not taking them and not trying to get pregnant. How she reacts, in major and minor ways, drives each one of the lives.
To start, that’s infuriating. Her reasons for not wanting kids are valid and thought-out, and she has to defend her decisions to EVERYONE. That felt real, legitimate. But THEN – hang on.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
In at least two of the lives, she has a baby and never looks back, thinks to herself “how could I ever not want this baby?”, never thinks she should have stuck to her principles.
INFURIATING!
So I gave it up. Maybe she sticks to her principles in lives I didn’t get to, but I stopped caring. I don’t need to read books that make me angry.
Started: 11/18/21
Finished: 11/18/21
If only this were a true story! Link: https://www.tor.com/2020/04/08/little-free-library-naomi-kritzer/
Started: 11/17/21
Finished: 11/18/21
What do you do when you’re about to have a baby but the zombies are attracted to the smell of blood? Isolate and hope you survive! Link: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/badass-moms-in-the-zombie-apocalypse/
Started: 11/17/21
Finished: 11/17/21
Creepy and interesting, like many of her short stories. Link: https://www.tor.com/2020/06/17/two-truths-and-a-lie-sarah-pinsker/
Started: 11/17/21
Finished: 11/17/21
Aw, even haunted houses want to be loved. Cute story. Link: https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-64a-open-house-on-haunted-hill-by-john-wiswell/
Started: 11/17/21
Finished: 11/17/21
A retelling of Hansel and Gretel where the kids are sentient machines in space, and the witch is a larger sentient machine. Fascinatingly weird, like the author (whose Hugo winner speech was about slime molds).
Started: 11/16/21
Finished: 11/17/21
A really interesting take on the trans experience, using a meme to start with and providing a nuanced view of it. Not my favorite short story, but still a good one. (The internet exploded on the author, and the internet was wrong, from what I can tell.)
Started: 11/16/21
Finished: 11/16/21
Cool, calculating, GOOD. She writes GOOD stories. I haven’t read one of hers yet that I didn’t love. Here’s the link: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_20/
Started: 11/15/21
Finished: 11/16/21
This story knocked me down. It was SO good, about a future where there’s a miracle “cure” for obesity, and it’s dark and real and really good.
Started: 11/14/21
Finished: 11/15/21
I like good stories about someone realizing they had underestimated someone, or completely misunderstood who they were in the first place. Particularly when EVERYONE was wrong. Good stuff.
Started: 11/12/21
Finished: 11/14/21
Maybe I just don’t like stories set in Ikea-like stores. I almost put this one down, but it’s a Hugo-nominated novella, so I powered through. And it was interesting – aftermath of a failed relationship, alternate universes – but something about the fake Ikea setting put me off. I gave up on the only other book I’ve read with a similar setting, too.
Started: 11/8/21
Finished: 11/12/21
Next in the Wayward Children series, nominated for a Hugo like all the others because, well, it’s good. This wasn’t my favorite, but I’m happy to see the series move forward. I like the installments that serve as backstories to characters we’ve met, too, but knowing there’s a big picture arc is satisfying to me.
Started: 10/28/21
Finished: 11/7/21
First in a series, YA, some of it was predictable, and some of it was very not predictable, and I liked it a lot.
The only thing I wasn’t crazy about it a thing that a lot of YA books do: the characters, teenagers all, never act like teenagers. Or, not never, but even kids faced with a ton of responsibility are still going to act like kids sometimes. I don’t think these kids did. So I was occasionally taken out of the story when I remembered that, hey, this character who said he made a super-serious decision “years ago” is only 18 right now, and then it turns out he made this super-serious decision when he was 12. Uh huh.
That aside, I really liked it, and I LOVED where it took the plot.
Started: 10/28/21
Finished: 10/28/21
I read this one several years ago, cried, emailed the author. I read it again, cried, almost emailed the author. Good story, and I love that she was inspired to write the Lady Astronaut series.
Started: 10/27/21
Finished: 10/27/21
Ah, laughs, action, love, all in a short story about robots. I should read short stories other than just the Hugo-nominated ones. I like them.
Started: 10/26/21
Gave up: 10/27/21
I really liked the short story I read of his last year set in Cairo with a possessed tram car, and there’s a whole series there I’m excited to read, so I was bummed when I couldn’t get into this one. Mashing up Jim Crow and Klansmen with Lovecraftian monsters is a brilliant idea, but I’m a little leery of Lovecraft-related stories, and this one didn’t land for me.
Started: 10/25/21
Finished: 10/26/21
Recommended to me as fantasy and manners, in a series called Regency Faerie Tales, and how could I not love it?
Started: 10/20/21
Finished: 10/24/21
Slow start, but that’s based more on the formatting than the story/writing. It’s not .mobi, so the formatting isn’t perfect. Annoying!
SO EASY to get past the formatting after just a bit. Really good story, totally sucked me in, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.
Started: 10/16/21
Finished: 10/20/21
Sarah Gailey LOVED this book, and Tor.com praised it, so I figured I’d try it. It’s a romance that falls into science fiction because there’s a time loop/stuck in time trope involved. The characters are good, the story is good, there’s nothing not to like, and yet I’m a little meh about it. There was a little too much ending.