Tor.com has a book club where you can download a free ebook every month and this book was one of their selections last year. Even though I grew up reading a lot of classic science fiction, I am sometimes wary of it because it isn’t necessarily that compelling. For instance, reading something like the Foundation books by Asimov, where it’s a lot of ideas hitting you left and right but no characters to really anchor the story. While Spin has its roots in that sort […]
Jodi Picoult Does Racism
Jodi Picoult is one of those authors I think of as “easy reading.” Her books are written in a way where thing are pretty well laid out for the reader. She does tackle topics that can be controversial or morally ambiguous but does it in a gentle way where she’s not alienating most readers. I found out that my mom’s book club was reading this book and purchased a copy for her, and figured I would read it myself. The book is the story of […]
A Giant Woman Should Be More Exciting
I picked up a free copy of this book at Worldcon last year. I find free copies tend to be hit and miss, usually it’s a book that a publisher really wants to promote. The last one I had read was Red Rising which was just awful, so I was a bit nervous about this one. But the cover was very appealing. I know they say you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, but who hasn’t picked up a book thinking it was going to […]
Good Concept That Didn’t Pan Out
This book was recommended to me by a bookclub friend. “Lesbian scientists!” she said. “There’s a drug that makes people see God (or Gods or G-d),” she said. It sounded like a cool idea, reminding me a little of Nexus by Ramez Naam or some post-William Gibson kind of thing about our modern technology gone just a little too far. My overall experience of reading this book was just “meh.” The concept did sound pretty interesting and it begins with a character who is a […]