I was in a bit of a reading slump. I didn’t exactly avoid cracking the spine of the long, long autobiography I’d been carefully wading through; I’d find other things I needed to do instead. When laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and a trip to the Swedish furniture superstore/newly-discovered 10th circle of Dante’s hell were all excuses NOT to read it, though, it was obvious that I needed a break. I had to find another (very specific) book. My search for a literary boost—the book to […]
No amount of redistribution or reorganisation of rotten meat will make a dead body more palatable.
Quarter Cannonball achievement unlocked! I am a huge fan of Mary Shelley and the Frankenstein story, so I was super intrigued by Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi. I wasn’t disappointed by this retelling, some of it told from the monster’s point of view, but I’ll admit there were parts of the story that just didn’t grab me. Frankenstein in Baghdad is a darkly comic story of life in Baghdad during the years just after the US invasion of Iraq. It’s an English translation from the original Arabic, so I’m […]
Who Else Would Be Canny Enough to Try and Do Their World-Building Backwards?
Once again, I am going to try (perhaps unwisely) to review a book without reviewing its predecessors in the series! So be warned, I haven’t been able to do this without touching on some spoilers for earlier books. I guess this is what you get by making ´This Is The End’ a bingo square. As far as authors go, Yoon Ha Lee can be a bit of a cruel master. The way he treats his readers throughout the earlier books in his Machineries […]
Wonder Woman
I found this on a list of the Best Wonder Woman comics. https://www.ranker.com/list/best-wonder-woman-comics-storylines/ranker-comics There are many such lists out there. The idea of reading a Wonder Woman comic written by a woman sounded good to me. I wanted to read some of her stories after seeing the amazing movie last year. The problem, of course, is she’s been a comics character since 1941! So every point you “jump into” has a giant back story you don’t know. Not to mention the fact that every 25 […]