Ursula K. Le Guin is the queen of short stories,* yo. Nobody does it better. The first six stories in the book are part of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle,** the seventh may be, and the eighth isn’t. In the first story, Le Guin returns to the world of her novel, The Left Hand of Darkness. It is a planet populated by androgynes, who only have gender once a month, when they go into kemmer and can become either female or male. They spend a couple […]
Take On Me
I’ve been hearing about this one forever, and when my favorite reading friend lent me her copy it moved to the top of my TBR (because that’s what happens when your favorite reading buddy hands you something!). She was right, this was a lot of fun. Wade lives in the near future in the poverty and despair that seems to be gripping much of the nation. He spends most of his time as Parzival, his avatar in the Oasis, a vast virtual reality created by brilliant […]
I had so much fun listening to this. Sometimes you just need nerd fluff.
Martin Banks is a jackass. That’s all I kept thinking during the first half or so of this book. To be clear, my thinking the main character was a jackass in no way hindered my enjoyment of the story. In fact, I’m fairly certain the book encouraged that opinion. See, one day Martin is sitting at home being lazy, hacking websites just for the fun of it (he sees himself as a benevolent hacker, because he doesn’t cause any harm–he just likes doing it) when […]
It’s mighty morphin’ dolphin time.
The Message is our first Cassie book, and that means it’s time to question the morality of our actions. Hurray. In all honesty, when I was a kid, sometimes Cassie’s books frustrated me a little bit. I thought she was a wet blanket and her hair was boring. I could never understand why she was always questioning everything, like, shouldn’t it just be obvious what’s right and wrong? Why are you so upset all the time, girl? Calm down and just enjoy turning into a […]