Books Read

40. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte (2018). Reviewed here.
41. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer (3rd edition 2004). First volume of VanderMeer’s Ambergris trilogy, which has just been released in a new one-volume edition. Deeply weird book full of squids and mushrooms; the back matter is even weirder, and marvellous, and probably not included in the omnibus, more’s the pity.
42. On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu (2021, forthcoming). Fabulist novel focusing on the experiences of an Afghan refugee family in Australia. I have mixed feelings about this book, which I will explain in a review closer to its publication date.
43. The Typewriter Revolution by Richard Polt (2015). Engaging look at the present-day typewriter enthusiast counterculture, exploring how the epitome of bureaucracy can become a subversive tool; plus lots of advice for people who want to acquire, use and maintain old manual typewriters.
44. Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear (2019). Fascinating space opera with engaging aliens and worldbuilding that is nonetheless not a fun read due to its unflinching focus on emotionally abusive relationships.
45. Where Do Camels Belong? by Ken Thompson (2014). Polemic challenging our assumptions about invasive species: what makes them invasive, whether invasive actually a problem, et cetera. About half of the points made are valid, or are valid in some contexts but not others. It depends, as usual.
46. Typewriters for Writers by Scott Schad (2014). A buying guide for writers who want to use typewriters, based on the writer’s own collection, experiences and opinions (he’s awfully exercised about the absence of the “1” key). Lots of photos result in a very large Kindle file size.
47. The Book on the Edge of Forever by Christopher Priest (1994). Reread occasioned by Straczinski’s announcement that The Last Dangerous Visions really, for sure, truly is coming out this time.
48. To the Letter by Simon Garfield (2013). Book about the art of letter-writing that spends rather more time than I expected on letter-collecting.

28. Driftwood by Marie Brennan (2020). Fixup collecting short stories about the place fantasy worlds go to die, and the enigmatic figure who helps people survive the wreck. Review in production.
29. Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe (2007). Time travel novel in which a young man from the near future is transported back in time to the Golden Age of Piracy. Replete with temporal paradoxes, vivid historical detail and, erm, Catholicism. Another Late Wolfe.
30. Kim Stanley Robinson by Robert Markley (2019). An entry in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series of monographs; this one (obviously) surveys Robinson’s work.
31. Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch (2019). Nonfiction by a linguist who explores how we talk online, from the proper punctuation of text messages, to emoji, to the deployment of memes.
32. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972), trans. William Weaver (1974).
33. Pardon This Intrusion by John Clute (2011). Another collection of reviews and critical essays. I should remember not to read Clute collections when trying to write reviews myself: his recondite word-tangles have a habit of infecting my own damn prose.
34. City Under the Stars by Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick (2020). Expansion and completion of their 1995 novella “The City of God,” which in turn was an expansion of Dozois’s uncompleted “Digger story” ca. 1970, said expansion cut short by Dozois’s untimely death in 2018. Swanwick’s completion is (understandably) truncated, its ending more personally satisfying, I think, than supported by the story. But some tremendously brilliant and affecting passages here all the same.
35. Being Gardner Dozois by Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick (2001). Rearead inspired by #34; book-length interview of Dozois by Swanwick discussing his stories and novels to date. I wanted to look at the genesis of “The City of God” and its contemporary stories.
36. Underground Cities by Mark Ovenden (2020). Reviewed at The Map Room.
37. Thunderer by Felix Gilman (2007). Epic fantasy; Gilman’s first novel, about gods, intrigue and revolution in an endless, unmappable city. First-rate worldbuilding and character work, not quite flawless technique.
38. Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi (2019). Literary fantasy about an immigrant family from a secluded Ruritanian nation and their history.
39. The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood (2020). Epic fantasy novel involving competing religions, gates between worlds, and young women who defy the altar to assert their own agencies. Liked it more than I expected to.

Reading kind of fell off a cliff these past few months, which should give you a clue as to how I’ve been doing lately.

36. Medallion Status by John Hodgman. Another collection of humorous personal essays from my favourite writer of humorous personal essays.
37. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders. Fascinating science fiction novel, set on a harsh alien world with a decaying human colony, that ends too abruptly.
38. Phantom Islands by Dirk Liesemer. Another book about islands that were later proved imaginary; review forthcoming.

31. Soundings by Hali Felt. Biography of ocean cartographer Marie Tharp. Reviewed at The Map Room.
32. Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. Lovecraftian novel; a Cold War-era sequel to The Shadow over Innsmouth that has lots to say about who the monsters are.
33. Atlas: A World of Maps from the British Library by Tom Harper. Reviewed at The Map Room.
34. A History of America in 100 Maps by Susan Schulten. Reviewed at The Map Room.
35. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander. Magnificent long novelette banging together the electrocution of Topsy the elephant, the radium girls, and the long-term storage of radioactive waste.
36. The Steerswoman’s Road by Rosemary Kirstein. Omnibus of The Steerswoman and The Outskirter’s Secret. I understand why people have proselytized this series. Sympathetic fearless female protagonists travel the world seeking and sharing knowledge; they think they’re in a fantasy world, but they aren’t. Strong recommend.
37. Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield. (Disclosure: she’s a friend.) Engaging time-travel novella in which a female highway robber is swept up by a time war.
38. The Writer’s Map edited by Huw Lewis-Jones. Reviewed at Tor.com.
39. The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken. (Disclosure: he’s a friend.) Ambitious hard sf novel that is simultanouesly a heist and a meditation on humanity and autonomy. Also features an interstellar empire run by Québécois Venusians.
40. Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee. Campbell and (to a lesser extent) Hubbard are the primary foci, and come off less well than Heinlein or Asimov: Hubbard comes across as a mythomaniacal liar, Campbell a mansplaining, bigoted opportunist. Delicious and readable book, disappointing literary icons.
41. All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey by Betsy Mason and Greg Miller. Reviewed at The Map Room.
42. Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire. Novella; third in the Wayward Children series. Less impactful than the first two; still good.

26. The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann. Uses Norman Borlaug and William Vogt as archetypes of two diametrically opposed approaches to solving global problems like hunger, energy and climate change: essentially, innovate versus reduce. Engrossing synthesis and a tour de force of even-handedness.
27. The Million by Karl Schroeder. Novella set in the same universe as Lockstep. Review forthcoming.
28. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber. An expansion of his 2013 essay, “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”; explores why a capitalist society ostensibly obsessed with efficiency and productivity would produce jobs that for all intents serve no purpose and should not exist, and the inverse relationship between usefulness and compensation.
29. The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth. A look at how we navigated before GPS came along. Review forthcoming.
30. Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose. A history of espionage activities around New York during the Revolutionary War, focusing on the Culper Ring. Fun fact: Abraham Woodhull is a relative of mine (he was my 4×-great-grandfather’s second cousin) so this is family history, as is the TV series based on it.