Everything (of substance) that I read in May, June, and July.

A very late, very garbled list, due to a surgery, a hard drive failure, and other life circumstances. Annotations are absent for this period, except for a few I wrote back in May, because I just want to get this list posted. I may add some at a later date!

A ⌛︎ before a title indicates that I have not finished reading it.

• Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells (novella)
• Exit Strategy by Martha Wells (novella)
• “The Future of Work: Compulsory” by Martha Wells (short story, published in WIRED)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré (novel)
• Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff and the Quest for the Missing Spoon by Andrew Hussie, KC Green, & Dril (graphic novel)
• “When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery” by Phil Salvador (essay in The Obscuritory)
• “Twilight of the Mentors: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love my gatekeeper” by Anna E. Clark (essay, in The New Inquiry)
• Blindsight by Peter Watts (novel)
• Homestuck^2 Chapter 10 (webcomic chapter)
• “The Scruggsdale Organizer #3: The Life Of Euronymous K. Scruggs” by Natalie Ironside (short story)
• “Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop” by Officer A. Cab (essay)
• Books & Bone by Victoria Corva (novel)
• “Familiar & Flame” by Victoria Corva (short story)
• “Tinker & Terror” by Victoria Corva (short story)
• “Making Friends” by Victoria Corva (short story)
• “Disaster Act: Puerto Rico’s uprising and the instrumentalization of Lin-Manuel Miranda” by Shellyne Rodriguez, Iris Dipini and Comité por la Defensa Antillana (essay, in The New Inquiry)
• “Beyond the “Murder Hornet” Panic” by Samuel Klee (article, in Edge Effects)
• “How Normie Minimalism and Farmhouse Chic Took Over Contemporary Design” by Kate Wagner (essay, in Hyperallergic)
• “The Hacker Aesthetic of Minimalist Code” by Daniel Temkin (essay, in Hyperallergic)
• “Getting to Noh: Myths of Japanese Minimalism” by Glenn Adamson (essay, in Hyperallergic)
• My Friends And I Were Granted Three Wishes By A Cat Goddess And I Swear I Got Distracted When My Turn Came Around by Alex Zandra (light novel)
• My Friend Took Me To A Feline Therapy Place For My Anxiety And I’m Starting To Wonder Where The Cats Are? by Alex Zandra (light novel)
• I Signed Up To Be The Substitute Familiar Of A Struggling Witch To Pay My Bills And I'm Just Now Realizing What I Got Myself Into by Alex Zandra (light novel)
• Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey (novel)
• The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks (novel)
• Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro (novel)
• “Miranda in Milan” by Katherine Duckett (short story, in In Our Own Worlds #2)
• “Every Heart a Doorway” by Seanan McGuire (short story, in In Our Own Worlds #2)
• “Sisters of the Vast Black” by Lina Rather (short story, in In Our Own Worlds #2)
• “The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps” by Kai Ashante Wilson (short story, in In Our Own Worlds #2)
• Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (novel)
• Mr. Justice Raffles by E.W. Hornung (novel)
• ⌛︎ Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• ⌛︎ Highway Blossoms (visual novel)
• The Three Sigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (novel)
• ⌛︎ Shardik by Richard Adams (novel)
• Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh (novel)
• Echopraxia by Peter Watts (novel)
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (novel)
• The Stand by Stephen King (novel, reread)
• Starfish by Peter Watts (novel)
• Invader by C.J. Cherryh (novel)
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut (novel)
• ⌛︎ Empire by Clifford D. Simak
• The Shining by Stephen King (novel)
• ⌛︎ The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison (novel)

Total: 17 novels, 2 novellas, 1 graphic novel, 3 light novels, 9 short stories, 7 essays and articles, and 1 webcomic chapter

Notes

Murderbot

I read all of the Murderbot stories by Martha Wells in one long binge (excepting the new novel release) and they are a new favorite. The narratorial voice is excellent and really helps develop the main character, and Murderbot's struggles with human/machine identity and trauma are written in such a queer/trans way. This is honestly the most relatable robot protagonist I've read.

John Le Carré

This is my third John Le Carré novel and I continue to love the moral ambiguity in his stories, and I'm always happy to revisit his bleak Cold War settings. I was not expecting the ending of this one to be as horrible and depressing as it was. A funny quote: “They have given you a potato. You must have a lover in the kitchen.” An ouch quote: “...they wanted a decent little club, nice and revolutionary and no fuss.”

Blindsight

I decided to check out Peter Watts after seeing a recommendation online, and it turns out he offers several of his books for free on his website. Blindsight was very hard for me to get into (I had several abortive attempts) but once I decided to actually start reading it I was hooked. It's about a crew in deep space sent to investigate a potential alien threat, and it's also largely about intelligence/sentience and what it means to be human. Every crew member is transhuman in some way; our viewpoint character had a hemispherectomy in childhood and is emotionally detached; another voluntarily induced multiple personalities in themself; several others have varying cybernetic interfaces; and the leader is a literal vampire (explained, of course, with science). The hard science writing verges into horror at times. I wasn't a fan of the author's use of the word “autistic”, but I really liked the viewpoint character and would recommend the book despite my misgivings.

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