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Farsighted – Steven Johnson
This was read for book club in July. Join to get all the discussion on the book. While Johnson has some good ideas we can put into practice, he takes far too long telling us stories to get them across. This is a “glossy” book, much like Malcolm Gladwell writes, which gives us a high…
Style: Non-fiction -
A Witch’s Sin – Daniel B Greene
Welcome to a world of technology embedded in your body, where ads can blare at you at any time and an open window means you’ve granted permission for a drone to broadcast further ads into your personal living space. In this world we meet Taya, and learn that there are honest to goodness vampires. Taya…
Style: Fiction -
Temeraire – Naomi Novik
While this book was recommended to me (from a source I can’t remember) as an excellent fantasy novel that added dragons to the war between Britain and France during Napoleon’s time, I can’t continue that recommendation. The book is decently written if you want multiple pages on the etiquite difference between the Navy and the…
Genre: FantasyStyle: Fiction -
The Other Valley – Scott Alexander Howard
The story starts off slow and a bit sad as we follow 16-year-old Odile who is a lonely girl after her only friend moved to a different part of town. Her life starts to look up as she is befriended by Alain and Edme, but she also learns a secret by accident, one of them…
Genre: Time travelStyle: Fiction -
Limit of Vision – Linda Nagata
This book explores the evolution of human-kind as the combine with LOV’s, artificial brains designed by humans, in what at times appears to be a race to “beat” AI and at times feels like a slapped together concept that never really lands. For me the book felt rushed most of the time, like there was…
Genre: Science FictionStyle: Fiction -
The Burnout Society – Byung-Chul Han
While there are many great ideas to pique your interest, I couldn’t help but think that I needed to read all the other philosophy the author cites to fully make sense of his arguments. This is clearly a philosophy book focused on burnout and work, and it’s written as such with long complex arguments I…
Style: Non-fiction -
Wildwood Imperium – Colin Meloy
This is the third book in the Wildwood Chronicles and we pickup shortly after the events of the third book where Prue and the residents of Wildwood banded together to thwart the plans of the former Queen. Well a young girl dabbling in magic she doesn’t understand ends up reawakening her as a living ivy…
Genre: FantasyStyle: Fiction -
The Siren’s Call – Chris Hayes
The Siren’s Call looks at how the attention economy monopolizes our attention in ways that we don’t want. We don’t really want to doom scroll, but it’s hard to fight the generated content that gets put in front of us because it’s just compelling enough and provides just the right amount of dopamine hits to…
Style: Non-fiction -
Making it So – Patrick Steward
This was a wonderful look back at the career of Patrick Stewart. I love that he was comfortable enough to share many embarrassing stories, and reflect on how uptight he was in the beginning of his career wishing he could go back and get himself to lighten up a bit. I also loved the genuine…
Genre: MemoirStyle: Non-fiction -
Onyx Storm – Rebecca Yarros
This book is much slower for the first 2/3rds than the first two are. The world now knows about the real fight against Venin, and has some type of truce between formerly warring nations to push back the true enemy of all life, the Venin who steal magic directly from your body or the earth.…
Genre: FantasyStyle: Fiction