This week I reviewed:
My book hauling activities have been limited this week by the antithesis to book buying paradise – bills. Ugh! Next week is a big bill week as well so, unless something I’ve needed for a very long time has an unmissable sale, I’m going to have to restrain myself.
When I haven’t been reading this week I’ve been bingeing some TV series I have on loan from the library. I’ve fallen in love with Atypical and Doom Patrol.
I’ve also been for a few walks on the beach and managed to see some whales! They’re migrating north up the coast at the moment and one of the ones I saw a couple of days ago was closer to the shore than I’d ever seen before. I watched it do a fin slap and a whole pile of tail slaps. Now I want to visit the beach each day until the last whale has passed my part of the coastline.
Word of the Week: cognoscenti. I found this in the Ghostbusters book I read this week and loved it even before I knew what it meant – “People who are considered to be especially well informed about a particular subject.“ (from lexico.com)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: I found Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 on a one day sale so I broke my ‘I can’t buy any books this week’ pact with myself. If you’re going to break a promise to yourself, it might as well be for a good cause. 😃
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.
Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”
Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble – and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.
Berlin is Never Berlin by Marko Kloos
Khan only had one job: chauffeur and guard an American wealthy socialite and her friends. When his client Natalie Scuderi gets nabbed by the Georgian mafia, this joker-ace has no choice but to go underground and rescue her. “Losing the man’s daughter on the job would be a fatal black mark on his professional resume. Khan had never lost a client, and he wasn’t about to start a habit.”
Benjamin 2073 by Rjurik Davidson
In the year 2073, humanity is making progress toward restoring the environment and fixing the mistakes of the past. Ellie has spent the last ten years going even further by working to resurrect the thylacine, extinct since 1936. But with no results and increasingly impatient bureaucrats threatening to pull their funding, the thylacine’s future – and Ellie’s – is in danger of reaching the point of no return.
Beyond the Dragon’s Gate by Yoon Ha Lee
Former Academician Anna Kim’s research into AI cost her everything. Now, years later, the military has need of her expertise in order to prevent the destruction of their AI-powered fleet.
The Tourist by Alex Sherman
A young academic has been granted permission to travel to a mining outpost on a small planetoid far from the sun to study the culture of a small squatter population that lives in total darkness.
We’re Here, We’re Here by K.M. Szpara
Joining a boyband gave Tyler everything he ever dreamed of. A close-knit group of friends, the chance to model a beautiful masculinity, and a vocal implant that lets him sing even better than he did before transitioning. But deep on tour, Tyler realises he wants more from one of his bandmates, yearns for a love that would never fit the image that has been carefully crafted for him. His manager wants him to be the heartthrob: available, wholesome, and pure. And since his manager gave Tyler his voice, he can always take it away again.
Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker
Stella thought she’d made up a lie on the spot, asking her childhood friend if he remembered the strange public broadcast TV show with the unsettling host she and all the neighborhood kids appeared on years ago. But he does remember. And so does her mum. Why doesn’t Stella? The more she investigates the show and the grip it has on her hometown, the eerier the mystery grows.
The Night Soil Salvagers by Gregory Norman Bossert
The Night Soil Salvagers no longer need to perform the service they have provided for longer than memory can account for. Instead, they pass the nights in playful and profound acts of artistry, music, trickery, gardening, and honoring the city they know and belong to more so than anyone. Uncover the heart of this mysterious community through the tales they tell each other, the tales that others tell of them, and the scores of their Dadaesque nocturnes, as they strive to lessen the burden of the city on the Earth.
Schizanthus Nerd 