#birty

I decided to try for ✨🐞BIRTY🐞✨

She’s so CUTE!!!

ADOPTED!!! (He says the art is so cute!!! XD)

* = Re-read

* = Re-read

Check out past years: 2012, 2013 (skipped), 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018,  2019, and 2020. Follow me on Goodreads to get these reviews as they happen. 1)  Extreme Cities: Climate Chaos and the Urban Future by Ashley Dawson I found the first half of the book was a lot of "IT BAD" when what I was looking for was more of the back half, an exploration of why some solutions fail and others are more the way to go. I think as time goes forward we really need books that are entirely about solutions because good lord most of us understand IT BAD. 2) Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moorcock Aka The Silver Warriors 3) The Deep by Rivers Solomon A+ premise, but the execution didn't really grab me? Perhaps a case of something just not being for me (a white guy with no ancestral trauma or lack of access to his people's history). 4) The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance If you only like reading books about nice people who change, this is not for you. Cugel is a sonnuvabitch who learns nothing, ever...but once you accept this, the book is a tremendous amount of fun as you follow his forever trying to get ahead in a fantastic, colorful world. Piles of inspiration for your RPG sessions, too. 5) The Ministry Of The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson 6) I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom 7) Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price  A great book if you want to learn greater empathy for yourself and others. 8) Adulthood Rites by Octavia E. Butler 9) No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood 10) The Weird of the White Wolf by Michael Moorcock 11) Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby, Greg Campbell 12) Imago by Octavia Butler 13) Tales from the Magician's Skull #5, Edited by Howard Andrew Jones 14) Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor  15) Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton, Robert K. Oermann Aside from a handful of them, I find Dolly herself a lot more interesting than her songs and I still got a great deal from reading this book. 16) The Bane of the Black Sword by Michael Moorcock You want some more Elric? Sure, here's some more Elric. It's all good, but nothing truly stood out to me except the "Epilogue", which was a slightly-edited-into-continuity story of Rackhir the Red that had been lifted from THE SINGING CITADEL. It features a great take on the plane of Law and is great RPG fodder. 17) Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh 18) Cugel’s Saga by Jack Vance Basically part two of a story begun nearly twenty years earlier with Eyes Of The Overworld, it's almost entirely a sequence of variations on the same thing: Cugel arrives at, or is passing through, the next stage of his journey and has to earn money &/or passage. This involves bullshitting and general scoundrel behavior, as well as perhaps learning a trade. Things end poorly, usually leaving Cugel broke but sometimes in possession of a thing he needs for the next bit, rinse-wash-repeat. And then it scares the living hell out of you for the last seven pages or so. And you're laughing pretty frequently, or at least I was, in the long run-up to those seven pages, laughing and/or marveling at the fun in the world-building. Heckuva read! Definitely read Eyes Of The Overworld first! 19) Rhialto the Marvellous by Jack Vance While Rhialto is indeed the protagonist, this triad of stories is really about the most wonderful and awful members-only club imaginable. A strong contrast to the preceding Cugel mega-saga, it's definitely worth a read. 20) The Red Man and Others by Angeline B. Adams, Remco van Straten In short, it’s great. A longer, more thoughtful review I wrote can be found over on Sword & Sorcery Magazine. 20) The Mask of Cthulhu by August Derleth I actually discussed this book, and many related topics, on the Appendix N Podcast! 21) The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd 22) The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker 23) The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert J. Sawyer 24) Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome by Douglas Boin 25) Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer 26) Terminal Boredom: Stories by Izumi Suzuki 27) No Police = Know Future: Stories of Alternative Futures of Alternative Justice, Edited by James Beamon 28) The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh *29) The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin 30) The Religion by Tim Willocks 31) Imaro by Charles Saunders 32) Future Feeling by Joss Lake 33)  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino A curious artifact, which couldn't have more clearly been written by someone whose whole writing career thus far has been screenplays, and which supplies a much sweeter ending, one I kinda wish they'd used in the film instead of what was there. 34) Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy #1 by Lin Carter It's four novellas collected together with genuinely enjoyable historically grounded introductions by a very different Lin Carter than you encounter in the Conan paperbacks. Hard to sum up, but I will say it's worth it if only for The Maker of Moons by Robert Chambers, a direct influence on Lovecraft, and the overall opportunity to read some fantasy fiction you're unlikely to just trip over anywhere else. 35) Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran 36) Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 37)  Rogues in the House: Volume 1 by L.D. Whitney , Matthew John, Alexander James 38) Three Against the Witch World by Andre Norton 39) Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner 40)  Sword and Sorceress IV Edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley 41) The Score by Richard Stark 42) Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler Good stuff, for sure! Interesting to read this after having finished the Xenogensis trilogy earlier in the year. Octavia definitely had a knack for quickly setting something up that makes you deeply uncomfortable yet also compelled to keep reading, a rare and difficult move. I enjoyed it, and wonder if it would have gone on to be a series if she hadn't tragically died not too long after publication. 43) On Downtime and Demesnes by Courtney C. Campbell 44) Artifices, Deceptions, & Dilemmas by Courtney C. Campbell 45) The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey by Lawrence Osborne 46) Dark Crusade by Karl Edward Wagner 47) Tales from the Magician's Skull #6  Edited by Howard Andrew Jones 48) The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie 49) Castle Bash: A Record of the Most Unfortunate Doings at Castle Bash - As Told by an Unnamed Poet who was Never Seen Again by Julian Bernick, David M. Persinger (Illustrator) I interviewed Julian about his book, and a great deal more, over on my podcast. 50) Darkness Weaves by Karl Edward Wagner 51) Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie 52) Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie *53) A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin 54) All Systems Red by Martha Wells  55) Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne 56) The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy 57) Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses A great work for helping you reconsider even the most basic terms of craft, and how we teach it. 58) Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages by Patrick J. Geary Exactly what it says on the tin, a highly readable text on relic theft in the central middle ages. It finds that sweet spot between "informative but inscrutable", and "easy to read but not much substance". 59) The Adventures of Alyx by Joanna Russ Overall I really enjoyed this highly unique read, but my review has some spoilers so I’ll link to it here.

60) Blood Child by Octavia E. Butler

* = Re-read

Check out past years: 2012, 2013 (skipped), 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Follow me on Goodreads to get these reviews as they happen. 1) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction: With Introduction by Donna Haraway by Ursula K. Le Guin, Donna J. Haraway (Introduction), Lee Bul (Illustrations) 2) Underland by Robert Macfarlane 3) Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard, Charlotte Mandell (Translation) 4) Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, #2) by Fritz Leiber Leiber really nails lighthearted camaraderie, humor, and adventure without blunting the weird & horrifying elements in his stories. 5) The Art of Ian Miller by Ian Miller, Tom Whyte, Brian Sibley (Foreword) 6) No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler (Introduction) 7) Broadswords and Blasters Issue 11: Pulp Magazine with Modern Sensibilities (Volume 3) by Matthew Gomez, J.C. Pillard, C.J. Casey, Erin K. Wagner, Gary Robbe, James Kane, Aaron Emmel, Erica Ruppert , Kevin Folliard, Benjamin Chandler 8) I Become a Delight to My Enemies by Sara Peters *9) Normal by Warren Ellis 10) The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith 11) Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer 12) Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber This contains my favourite Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story so far, Lean Times in Lahnkmar. Genuinely had me laughing...out...get this....loud. 13) Agency by William Gibson 14) The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout 15) The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells  16) The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by J.A. Cuddon Using this as a reference while writing papers in school is one thing. Reading through it as a writer another, very rewarding thing! Like sifting through a large toolbox or paint set. Definitely recommend it, even if a significant percentage of entries are terms for every conceivable poetic arrangement of syllables you could ever imagine - which itself may be of interest to poets, as opposed to novelists like myself. 17) The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror by Thomas Ligotti Utterly joyless pedants who are convinced they've got one over on the entire human race, but for maybe a few other utterly joyless pedants who think closely enough to how they do, aren't generally people you want to have a conversation with, let alone read a book by. But Utterly joyless pedants often have the stamina to butt their heads against the same problem until they finally break through to something new & interesting. Because of this, and some suggested similarities to the marvelous main conceit of Peter Watt's BLINDSIGHT, I figured I'd give it a read in the hopes I might find some interesting stuff for my own horror fiction. The book was a mixed bag. When it discussed writing and literary history I found it really enjoyable, even if some was a revisit of material from my undergraduate years. However that made up maybe thirty percent of the book. The vast majority is finely splitting the hair that is ye olde "Free will is an illusion, mankind is a mistake, death is preferable to life" routine and while some interesting images & ideas come from this...it gets direly repetitious, and is as falsely profound as another old chestnut, the "what if we're all living in a simulation...man?" routine. I hear Thomas Ligotti is a fantastic horror author. I couldn't get thirty pages into one of his more celebrated works, written as it was by an utterly joyless pedant with a misplaced sense of what is profound. However I read all the way through this text, and would recommend it to students of the genre. That said, you'll find a far superior mixture of philosophy & horror in IN THE DUST OF THIS PLANET by Eugene Thacker. 18) Tales from the Magician's Skull #3 by Goodman Games, feat. William King, John C. Hocking, James Enge, Violette Malan, Howard Andrew Jones, and Sarah Newton. Technically a magazine but one filled almost entirely with short fiction, so I’m counting it here. There’s also the noteworthy novelty of the back section featuring Dungeon Crawl Classic rule breakdowns & stats for the assorted monsters, spells, and artifacts featured in the preceding stories. Haven’t seen that before! 19) Conan the Wanderer by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter 20) The Light Years by R.W.W. Greene 21) Foxy: My Life in Three Acts by Pam Grier "Don't meet your heroes" can extend to "Don't always read their ghost-written autobiography". 22) A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Some fun ideas and tropes to play with in, say, a role-playing game but if there is evidence of Burroughs being a great writer...this isn't it. John Carter reads like kind of a man-child/psychopath, to be honest, especially later in the book when he keeps going on about all the people he'd happily kill to be with the alien princess he fell in love with for reasons that are hard to grasp other than "She cute". 23) Conan the Buccaneer by Lin Carter The introduction to this is kind of amazing and certainly more memorable than anything that comes after. Lin Carter basically swears up and down that there will be no godforsaken message, theme, or subtext to this story, nothing but pure, pure surface! He's right, so...good for him? Like the Zack Snyder Watchmen this short novel is a great illustration of how someone can be obsessed with the source material they are adapting or riffing off of while failing to understand anything about what makes it work, merely replicating the surface through their own personal lens. Thank goodness the next volume of this series, edited by Lin Carter (and Sprague De Camp), is pure Robert E. Howard. 24) Theory for the World to Come: Speculative Fiction and Apocalyptic Anthropology by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer A book, it feels, for authors (and anthropoligists) looking to create a story about where we're headed that isn't dystopia but also isn't a saccharine utopia or the like. Well, that's where I was coming from when I picked this up.I'll say this, it helped order a lot of my thoughts and while it doesn't necessarily provide The Answer, it certainly points you in a good direction to explore. Glad I got it. 25) The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019, edited by John Joseph Adams & Carmen Maria Machado  26) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway *27) Blindsight by Peter Watts  28) Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady Strugatsky There's some fun stuff in here, especially if you have any familiarity with Russian fairy tales, however it's not their strongest work. The main character is largely a blank slate with a pair of eyes through which to bear witness to a collection of short stories centered around an institute of magical studies. It is, however, a good example of the more playful, cheeky tone that dominates the brother's work outside their two most well known texts (Roadside Picnic and Hard to be a God). If the tone puts you off, you'd best stick to those two texts. 29) Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages by Jack Hartnell 30) Conan the Warrior by Robert E. Howard Now we're talkin'. Three solid Howard stories, no Carter or De Camp despite the credits on the cover (unless you count their italic continuity paragraphs...). Red Nails is the absolute favorite Conan story of a trusted friend of mine, and still ranks very highly with me though my heart still belongs to The People Of The Black Circle. This is one worth owning! 31) Conan the Usurper by Robert Howard, Lin Carter The first story is a great Howard beginning followed by more of Carter's Saturday Morning Cartoon buccaneer bullshit. The second is a decent half Howard, half Carter story that just sort of mentions Conan. So why give this book four stars out of five on Goodreads? The back end. You get literally the first ever Conan story, introducing him as King of Aquilonia, followed by another highly enjoyable King Conan story which demonstrates Howard's skill with the Weird. Bloody great and hey, if you've gone seven volumes into this series already then you'd be a fool not to read this one. 32) Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock As Conan is all barbarous vitality and forging your own destiny, so Elric is all decaying, decadent, civilization and wrestling with fate. Juggling multiple Faustian bargains is just a way of getting things done for this guy, and I’m here for it. *33) Conan by Robert E. Howard,  L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter 34) The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond Rarely does it take me 20 months to read a single book. Unlike COLLAPSE, this book is NOT a page-turner. It feels heavily padded and reads like a dull textbook most of the time, despite containing some very interesting facts. If someone had written a point-form summary of those facts I'd have been very grateful. 35) Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne by Pierre Riché 36) Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch 37) Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson To be honest, after reading a couple of Kim Staney Robinson's books I'd written him off as a guy with some okay ideas and mediocre prose. Having now read this, I realize I was a fool to do so. 38) The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck 39) Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener I devoured this in two day’s reading. That's gotta mean something. 40) The 1982 Annual World's Best SF by Donald A. Wollheim (Editor) 41) The Sailor On The Seas Of Fate by Michael Moorcock 42) Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It by Adam Savage 43) Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber, Harry Fischer (Contributor) One of the great ones, no doubt! Two longer stories, two very short, all with plenty to enjoy. Also it has the first positive queer character portrayals I've ever encountered in Appendix N content, while also suggesting bisexuality in of our two intrepid heroes. Definitely check this one out. 44) Weather by Jenny Offill One of those books that is so good it makes you a strange kind of mad and, if you write, can make you reconsider everything you're currently working on. 45) The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts 46) Elric at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock 47) Witch World by Andre Norton This was my first Andre Norton read and I think I lucked out. Like most Appendix N literature it moves fast, which helps paper over some coincidences and handwaves a more ponderous pace might have made stand out like a sore thumb. What I enjoyed most about this story was a progressive-for-the-time portrayal of gender, world-building that hinted at greater depths while still being satisfying in what it showed, and how this was an author clearly setting the stage for a series while remembering not to cheat the reader of a compelling story by doing so. Honestly, I'm pretty jazzed to read the next one. 48) The Swords of Lankhmar by Friz Leiber This was the most fun I've had reading in a while. Almost every page had something to make me laugh, grin, or nudge my partner so I could tell them about it. You don't have to have read the previous four books, the few continuity nods aren't vital, but it helps if you come into this having already developed an affection for the fellas. 49) Web of the Witch World by Andre Norton 50) Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson 51) Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock 52) Swords and Ice Magic by Fritz Leiber 53) The Knight and Knave of Swords by Fritz Leiber This series definitely peaked with book five...and yet, six and seven have a kind of charm to them. It's a nice change for a sword & sorcery series to mature its characters, to really have them reckon with the tension between wanting stability and not wanting to let go of youthful thrills, to cultivate a new main setting, to build a recurring cast... Mixed in with this charm and intriguing development is Old Man Horny Shit. The final story in particular has two sex farce scenes that, ah, sheesh. There's much bigger tragedy to his wife's death, however a minor, adjacent tragedy was the loss of her influence on his work, especially helping him write better women characters. Fafhrd & Grey Mouser's new partners they settle down with are mostly solid, not so much every other woman or girl, and Grey Mouser becomes a lot less likable thanks to his behavior around them. However, if you've read this far in the series and grown to love the characters as well as Leiber's writing style, you'll have a hard time stopping, especially because there is that charm, that intriguing development. Maybe you're like me and you've learned about Leiber's life as  well, which provides added depth to at least one part, in book six, when Fafhrd laments some of the lasting effects of his past loves on his present life, almost speaking words infused with Lieber's own grief over his dead wife. I'm unsure if the final story was meant as such at the time of writing, however it works as a finale. I felt like I'd been through something when I read to the end of this series, and am ultimately glad I did. 54) Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill 55) NW by Zadie Smith 56) The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison  57) Swing Time by Zadie Smith In some ways Swing Time feels like a page one rewrite of NW, which I read shortly before this. Like NW it follows two young women from girlhood friendship through to complicated adulthood, and even though they're both from estates you do get kind of a have and have-not division again as well, with one being naturally talented and the other rich in familial love (and, it seems, luck). But boy is this book different from NW. It has a much wider scope, deals more with nuance in identity (as far as I could tell), and I just straight up found the prose more engaging. If I were trying to get someone into Zadie Smith, the "right" book to give them would be White Teeth, however I think I'd actually give them this one. 58) Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore 59) Intimations by Zadie Smith 60) Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery by Brian Murphy Well structured, researched, and written, this is a great text for those who wish to write in the genre and those who've done some reading, but aren't sure about the best path to take in exploring it further. 61) The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson 62) Dawn by Octavia E. Butler It does everything you want a good book to do. Read it in two days and immediately ordered the rest of the trilogy. 63) Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure by Michael Chabon 64) Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Editor), Ejeris Dixon (Editor) 65) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 66) Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne, Dave King Pretty clear and useful advice. Even if you're already familiar with some of what they say, it's nice to have everything organized in one book, an editing process you can stitch together from the helpful checklists at the end of each chapter. 67) The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin 68) The High Crusade by Poul Anderson One amusing joke, told well in many ways over a short novel that was originally written in installments (which shows a bit). Not a big commitment, I read it in two sittings. 69) We Who Are About To... by Joanna Russ I think I would have given enjoyed this more in another year, as normally I'm very much on board for It's Not Going To Be Okay This Time stories. In 2020, not so much. 70) Tales from the Magician's Skull #1 by Howard Andrew Jones, Chris Willrich, James Enge, Bill Ward, C.L. Werner, John C. Hocking, Terry Olsen. 71) Walking on Lava: Selected Works for Uncivilised Times by The Dark Mountain Project 72) Tales from the Magician's Skull #4 by Howard Andrew Jones (Editor), John C. Hocking, Adrian Cole, James Enge, James Stoddard, C.L. Werner, Ryan Harvey, Tom Doyle, Milton Davis, Terry Olson

* = Re-read Check out past years: 2012, 2013 (skipped), 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Follow me on Goodreads to get these reviews as they happen. 1) The Right To Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier 2) Nollywood: The Making of a Film Empire by Emily Witt 3) The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi 4) My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh Reads like a more mature Chuck Palahniuk. 5) Of Dice and Men by ME I won't be a dink and give myself a star rating or glowing review, but I gotta get that credit for my annual reading challenge! I'll also say it's a richly rewarding experience to, after all the work of writing & editing & publishing & promoting, to re-read something you wrote and still feel all the strong, positive feelings it gave as you figured out the first draft. 6) Lagos Noir, edited by Chris Abani 7) The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair 8) The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi A really fun, cleverly written coming-of-age story with just the right period touches to it. I gobbled this thing down in a couple of days, having no problem seeing why Zadie Smith spoke highly of it in her latest book of essays. 9) Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice 10) America: The Farewell Tour  by Chris Hedges   TL:DR This book is not toilet paper, but it sure is shit-adjacent. It gave me strong feelings, which you can read on Goodreads. 11) The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death & the Ecstatic by Joanna Ebenstein Great introduction to the subject with fantastic photos & illustrations. My only frustration was the layout, which frequently breaks up the main text mid-sentence for two or even four pages of images with details captions to read or full page quotes, so it takes a bit more effort to read linearly. 12) The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany I found this through the ol' Appendix N reading list and it's not hard to see how this influenced D&D in many ways, but it has value well beyond that novelty. This is a wonderful fantasy tale in the vein of classic fairy tales, a welcome break from the kind of epics we mostly associate with the genre these days. By the final run up to the ending I was really immersed in what I was reading and I know I'll be looking up more of his books. 13) The Worst Is Yet to Come: A Post-Capitalist Survival Guide by Peter Fleming *14) A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.   The first third remains perfect. The middle third is better than I remember, which is to say very good indeed, despite the feeling of inevitability running through it. The final third remains a pretty obvious punchline stretched out over too many pages, something basically predicted by the ending of the middle story. But! Ah! That first third! 15) The Gods of Pegana by Edward John Moreton Dunsany In theory this was an influence on Lovecraft's Dreamlands cycle books. 16) Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution by Amber Tamblyn 17) Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa 18) 1985 by Anthony Burgess 19) Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan 20) Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler,  Kevin Vennemann (Afterword), Katy Derbyshire (Translation) 21) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport 22) How To Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck Edited by Jobe Bittman 23) The Immortal of World's End by Lin Carter 24) This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace 25) My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite *26) Idoru by Oliver Brackenbury 27) Conan by Robert E. Howard,  L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter 28) Heroes in the Wind: From Kull to Conan by Robert E. Howard 29) The Postman by David Brin Yes, this is that “The Postman”, the one which was adapted into a universally reviled Kevin Costner film in the mid-to-late nineties. It is, however, significantly different and far more enjoyable. It is an extremely White Straight Guy book with some curious ideas about gender in the back end, a "Rah rah, America!" through-line, and an obsession with describing horses as "steaming". It is also a well-crafted, clear, concise, quickly-moving story that avoids several obvious turns most authors would have plowed right into, and overall serves as a great exploration of the power of lies & myths. Plus, yeah, it is kind of heartwarming to imagine the concept of snail mail & the people who deliver it serving to re-unite us in the post-apocalypse. Unlike the movie, I'd honestly recommend this. Heck, I'm thinking I'll start exploring the rest of his catalog. 30) Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond  & Adam Horowitz If you're a fan, then you'll like this. If not? I dunno man! The whole thing feels like hearing stories from your favourite old high school buddies when they're at their most honest and interesting. Great stuff. 31) Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Raftery 32) Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea 33) Conan of Cimmeria by Robert E. Howard,  L. Sprague De Camp, and Lin Carter. As tends to be the case, the pure Howard stories are best. Carter and De Camp are mostly interested in arranging Howard's work into a larger, more coherent universe...which is fine, I guess, but it has a way of making Conan feel less a legend striding in and out of fantastic situations, more a man - a strong, interesting man, sure, yet still just a man. *34) The Hunter by Richard Stark *35) Beast by Paul Kingsnorth 36) The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline 37) It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office by Dale Beran 38) Planetes, Vol. 1-4 by Makoto Yukimura 39) The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan 40) Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines: Revitalizing Inuit Traditional Tattooing by Angela Hovak Johnston 41) Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq 42) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott Part life-as-a-writer therapy, part craft, this leans more toward the latter than Stephen King's ON WRITING and that's plenty fine.  A nice, light read that holds value for writers at all stages of their career, I reckon. 43) Conan The Freebooter by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp As tends to be the case with these collections, the pure Howard stories are best. That said, Lin Carter carries himself much better here than in some of the earlier volumes. There are no magical abstractions of good and evil arm-wrestling each other while Conan just stares at them... 44) The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie 45) The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft Pretty good stuff but, as was pointed out on the excellent Appendix N Podcast, this story would have been really something had it been edited down a bit. RACISM METER: Honestly, pretty okay, which is saying something for Lovecraft! No cats with awful names or race theory or any of that. Just a good wholesome story of madness and history. 46) Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad by Brett Martin 47) Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber 48) The Enchantress of World's End by Lin Carter 49) The Barbarian of World's End by Lin Carter These are not terribly good books....but I keep reading them for the goofy ideas and setting. Averaging 180 pages, they're not a big investment so hey why not? 50) The Giant of World’s End by Lin Carter The first is the best. I think because it was written as a complete story, not the literary equivalent of another episode of a Saturday morning cartoon, as the other World's End books read. As with the rest of the series it is enjoyed more on the merits of the wacky ideas than the quality of prose, including a part near the end who may well have been a source of inspiration for the Emperor of Mankind in the Warhammer 40K universe. Its main drawback is the classic scifi/fantasy failing of providing multiple asides to historical background meant to add depth to the world but which is ultimately meaningless to the reader as it has little if anything to do with the story - nevermind the characters! Heck, it's only 140 pages. It's fun. The ending actually got to me a little. It's a good place to pluck out ideas for tabletop roleplaying, if you're into that. Yup! 51) Wonder Tales: The Book of Wonder and Tales of Wonder by Lord Dunsany 52) Outcast of Redwall by Brian Jacques It's a fun little story, clearly intended for younger audiences, and I've no regrets having bought it second hand. BUT You could have clipped off nearly a hundred pages if the author didn't feel compelled to give you a highly detailed account of every single meal - including many feasts - had by characters big and small. Holy mother of God do you come out of this knowing a lot about the diets of the various woodland creatures, with their meadowberry pies and etc. 53) Björk's Homogenic by Emily MacKay 54) DCC RPG Annual Vol 1 by Steve Bean, Julian Bernick, Daniel Bishop, Jobe Bittman, Tim Callahan, Colin Chapman, Michael Curtis, Edgar Johnson, Brendan LaSalle, Stephen Newton, Terry Olson, and Harley Stroh 55) Conan the Avenger by Robert Howrd & L Sprague De Camp This is one of the better collections. Only the third story is a reconstruction from one of Howard's outlines, the rest are undiluted and glorious.That said, the back two stories are a bit cringey re: race, *especially* the reconstruction I mentioned. I'd say I don't know who looks at a Howard story and thinks "Ah, this needs more complex racial hierarchy nonsense!" but I do and that man's name is L. Sprague De Camp, apparently!The important thing is now I'm all caught up for the next episode of The Appendix N podcast, which I heartily recommend. 56) Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms by John Hodgman 57) Grand Union: Stories by Zadie Smith 58) The Singing Citadel by Michael Moorcock 59) White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo 60) The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson *61) Virtual Light by William Gibson 62) The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance *63) Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Ursula K. Le Guin (Foreword), Olena Bormashenko (Translator) *64) Bill, the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison A fun little dunk on Heinlein and his ilk. Very slapstick. 65) Gonzo by Hunter S. Thompson *66) McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh

* = Re-read Check out past years: 2012, 2013 (skipped), 2014, 2015, and 2016. Follow me on Goodreads to get these reviews as they happen. 1) This Is a Book About the Kids in the Hall by John Semley  2) Yes Please by Amy Poehler  3) Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion by Matt Zoller Seitz A great read that provides everything you'd want from a collection of detailed recaps. More than once I found myself stopping to circle a great observation, the kind of insights that can be used elsewhere. Well, everything except tight copyediting. I can accept that the reviews were originally written to stand alone, which explains the many footnotes made redundant when they're read consecutively, but more than a few of the Endnotes lead nowhere, are mis-numbered, or both. A minor quibble, but one that feels worth making about a book with such attention to detail in the rest of its contents. If you're a fan of the show, pick it up! 4) Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu 5) Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny 6) Anger by Robert A.F. Thurman  7) The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin 8) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea  by Jules Verne 9) My Fight / Your Fight by Ronda Rousey  *10) Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Boy howdy, and I say this with nothing but love, is this ever An Opinionated First Novel. Lots of essays masquerading as scenes, with a real shrug of an ending, and few glimpses of the twinned cynical optimism & loving humanism which would come to define Vonnegut's voice. But hey, it's still a very fun read that is no less relevant in our age of increasing automation than it was in his. *11) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley  Odds are high that if you’ve wanted to read this by now, you have. But to be considerate, I’ve hid my spoiler-y reaction to reading this for the first time since high school behind a link - THIS ONE. 12) Death's End by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu The escalation of big space & time ideas continues! Whereas THE DARK FOREST nearly sent me packing several times before killing it with a great ending, DEATH'S END held my interest all the way through...but at a lower intensity, perhaps, than the ending of FOREST or the entirety of THREE BODY PROBLEM. I think part of this is something almost inescapable from this kind of story - once you get that each new crazy physics idea will both solve an old problem and create a new one (that isn't seen right away) then it becomes a bit of a cycle, since there is precious little character work to switch up the rhythm or focus.Still, you have to give a great deal of credit to Liu Cixin for the sheer amount of research and outlining he had to have done. This certainly wasn't a story, or a series, that was slapped together over a weekend! Meanwhile there was at least one character filling in for Shi Qiang, the sole stand-out in the previous two books IMHO, and when a book is making so many leaps across such incredible periods of time it certainly poses a challenge to keeping more than a couple of characters around long enough for you to become invested in them. 13) The Castle of Llyr (The Chronicles of Prydain #3) by Lloyd Alexander  14) Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure by Ryan North Man, if you need me to tell you about this book NOW, then you have not been paying attention to the Internet. Me? I laughed, I loved, I lived. I really liked the format change with the art, eliminating the huge chunks of white space that inflated the physical object edition of To Be Or Not To Be. Having an un-lockable character was as cool as promised, and that's not the only fun feature. Ryan continues to make me smile and feel I'm having a good time in his company, as his writing has done for well over a decade now. Yup!  15) Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie Maybe I'm being a dummo, but I thought that it would have made more sense to use "they" instead of "she" as the universal pronoun in a society that doesn't care about gender. It was fun to imagine a scifi novel almost exclusively populated by women, but it didn't feel like the agender empire I'd been told about by advocates of the book. I think I'll have to do some follow-up research to better understand what the author was trying to accomplish.

Otherwise, this was a fun, thoughtful read that I tore through pretty quickly. Sooner or later I will definitely finish this trilogy!

16) The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin 17) Superfandom by Zoe Fraade-Blanar  & Aaron M. Glazer Not bad! Kind of a sharp drop-off of an ending, but I did feel I learned some things. Plus it contains a killer Kelly Sue-DeConnick quote, "Women and girls started buying manga at $10 a pop[in the late 90's]. Those books were flying off the shelves. Those books were keeping bookstores in malls open. If you think about that for a moment, Japanese comics have to be read back-to-front. It was literally easier for these girls to learn to read backwards than it was for them to find a way into American comics." 18) Four Futures: Life after Capitalism by Peter Frase  19) Tales From The Loop by Free League 20) Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dyan Thuras, and Ella Morton Protip: Don't read this book the way you'd read a novel. Racing to get my copy back to the library, I found myself uttering things like "Yes yes, another lonely man who built a curious castle out of found crap." I think this is definitely one to buy, then dip in and out of. 21) what purpose did i serve in your life by Marie Calloway  *22) The Fall of Rome by R.A. Lafferty God damn, this is still a great book. Don't let a relatively dry title about a well-traveled subject throw you. This is a great *story*, an admittedly pseudo-fictional history, and one worth reading even if you changed all the names and places to pure fantasy. 23) Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood  There was no way in the seven hells I wasn't going to read a book by Patricia Lockwood. While there is plenty of the kind of humour and sentence slinging you'd expect after reading her poetry, Priestdaddy is more than that. It feels like an insightful look into a part of America almost everyone likes to write off as just so much nothing, garbage, or both. While there's no sugar-coating that I could see, I did feel that I came away with a more complete picture of America's religious, mid-western, working poor as told by one of their own. That I could gain that by reading such beautiful prose and laugh so hard in-between or even during some of the darker passages is something that will make this memoir stick with me well after I post this review. 24) Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Cornell Woolrich  Fun Fact: Cornell Woolrich wrote REAR WINDOW, which was adapted into a film you may have heard of. 25) Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American 1970s by Charles Taylor  Though it suffers from a bit of "Old man yells at cloud", especially in the wrap-up chapter, this is truly a great book. Each chapter tells you of a film, as well as a constellation of stories which provide context for the film within the world of American cinema. Taylor tells this so well that I never wanted to read more than one chapter at a time, as I was always left wanting to savor the lingering mood his powerful prose creates - kind of like how you feel after having seen a truly great film! And boy do I want to see many of the films discussed in this book, regardless of having been told several key moments etc. The couple of chapters on films I had already seen were plenty illuminating as well but, as he says at the introduction, it really doesn't matter if you've seen these films - odds are you haven't, as he is intentionally going for lesser known works. If you want to better understand the appeal of a classic period of cinema's "lowbrow" fare, and the America that produced it, you should definitely pick this up. 26) What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah  27) Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall 28) Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein 29) No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein A genuinely helpful read, whose ultimate message of "We need a positive alternative to the ideas that brought us this modern hellscape" is well delivered and *very* necessary. This is NOT just another hot take in book form. 30) Walkaway by Cory Doctorow  31) Beast by Paul Kingsnorth