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Old Lovegood Girls by Gail Godwin

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Started: 8/2/20
Finished: 8/6/20

I thought about putting this down shortly after starting it.  Not because it was bad, it’s very much not bad, but because it wasn’t grabbing me.  I wasn’t positive I was in the right mood for it.  But I kept reading, and I kept reading, and I kept reading, and I couldn’t stop reading, and I stayed up late two nights running because I couldn’t stop reading, and then it ended, and I’m a little sad.  It’s about two women who meet in college and then separate and how their lives went on.

Dark Light by Jodi Taylor

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Started: 7/26/20
Finished: 7/29/20

SO DISAPPOINTING.  I mean, it was enjoyable enough, but I was expecting a completely different story since this is supposed to be a sequel to the White Silence AND it picks up right after the other ended.  It went in completely different directions (more than once!) and seemed to have nothing to do with the plot of the first book (which had not been resolved), and when it did pick up the plot of the first book (sort of), it resolved unsatisfactorily.  Meh.  Also, the writing felt more amateurish than the first book and both books felt like that compared to her other books.  I don’t understand how that could be, but there it is.

White Silence by Jodi Taylor

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Started: 7/23/20
Finished: 7/26/20

This book, or at least parts of it, scared both Corey and Mel, so I went into it gingerly.  If it was dark outside and I thought it was going in a scary direction, I put it down until the next day.  Maybe that’s why the parts that scared them didn’t scare me.  Regardless, I liked it.  Weird sinister things kept happening to the character, and I REALLY wanted to know what was going on.  Super glad there was a second book.

And Now His Lordship Is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas

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Started: 7/22/20
Finished: 7/22/20

SO GOOD.  It’s fantasy, it’s horror (even though I heard on a horror panel that the author doesn’t think of it as horror, so maybe I should just say it has an element that depending on what you’re afraid of, you could absoLUTEly think it’s scary), it’s historical fiction, and it’s emotional (I cried).  SO.  GOOD.

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

Sarah Pinsker can do no wrong.  This story was a roller coaster, speeding downhill, all fun and great, and then BAM we ran into a wall and fell into pieces and then what?  And no.  No!  Oh god no!  It’s fantastic and you should read it.  Except not you, Mom.  Or Margaret.

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye

The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

I don’t think I fully understood this story.  I mean, I get the overall plot and everything, I understand what happened and what the characters learned, but the details of the big tech thing and how (or why) things get erased…I spent too much time (for a novelette I finished in less than an hour) puzzling over it.  Don’t dazzle me – just tell the story.

Omphalos by Ted Chiang

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

I liked the style of this story more than the content, I think.  It’s about an archaeologist who reads about an astronomical discovery that upends her views on everything.  The setting is an alternate reality where the science really does uphold the beliefs of the young-earth creationists, so that’s the accepted view of the world and physics and everything.  The story is told from her perspective as she relates her days and thoughts to God, via prayers that feel like letters or diary entries.

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

Fascinating near-future story with tech that allows you to communicate with yourself in a parallel universe, which is really cool, but it’s about free will and how people use that tech to make decisions, to justify their actions.  The tech is just the next thing (but it’s a very cool next thing to consider).

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes

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Started: 7/18/20
Finished: 7/19/20

This novella was inspired by the song The Deep (by clipping.), which I haven’t listened to yet.  The premise is that the pregnant and going-into-labor slaves who were thrown overboard midocean (true) gave birth to mer-people (probably not true) who built a whole civilization and society around a historian who remembers everything so that the rest of them don’t have to.  The story is mostly about the current historian who is having difficulties with this burden, but it also goes back into the memories.  It’s very good.