Sorry I've been a little quiet on the blogging front. Work is still crazy and I still can't find much time to read. BUT I'M LEARNING ABOUT BOOKS and that's almost as good, right??
THE BOOKS
Out Already
ADD TO GOODREADS
Two hundred years after civilization ended in an event known as the Blast, Benedikt isn’t one to complain. He’s got a job—transcribing old books and presenting them as the words of the great new leader, Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe—and though he doesn’t enjoy the privileged status of a Murza, at least he’s not a serf or a half-human four-legged Degenerator harnessed to a troika. He has a house, too, with enough mice to cook up a tasty meal, and he’s happily free of mutations: no extra fingers, no gills, no cockscombs sprouting from his eyelids. And he’s managed—at least so far—to steer clear of the ever-vigilant Saniturions, who track down anyone who manifests the slightest sign of Freethinking, and the legendary screeching Slynx that waits in the wilderness beyond.
I'd never heard of this until I shelved it the other day and um YES.
Damnificados by J.J. Amaworo WilsonADD TO GOODREADS
Damnificados is loosely based on the real-life occupation of a half-completed skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela, the Tower of David. In this fictional version, 600 “damnificados”—vagabonds and misfits—take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a rag-tag defensive militia. Their always heroic (and often hilarious) struggle for survival and dignity pits them against corrupt police, the brutal military, and the tyrannical “owners.” Taking place in an unnamed country at an unspecified time, the novel has elements of magical realism: avenging wolves, biblical floods, massacres involving multilingual ghosts, arrow showers falling to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth, and a trash truck acting as a Trojan horse.
Perhaps not exactly what I'd typically read, but I've got to say it sounds pretty interesting.
Seeing Red by Lina MeruaneADD TO GOODREADS
This powerful, profound autobiographical novel describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke, leaving her blind and increasingly dependent on those closest to her. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships.
I like me some fiction and autobiography combos.
THE LINKS
This poem written in response to Orlando moved me to tears: All The Dead Boys Look Like Me by Christopher Soto
From Panels: America, Bunker, and LGBTQ+/Latinx Visibility: Affirmation in Tragedy
Barnes and Noble put together a cool list of 6 of the Strangest Political Systems in SFF.
33 Ways To Have a More Bookish Summer is p cute, I have to say. Let's also throw in BOTNS Book Bingo, though.
What books did you hear about this week?
