#radiolab

Listen to Radiolab here

Brief Description: "Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser." (via radiolab.org)

Listen to Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! here

Brief Description: "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is NPR's weekly hour-long quiz program. Each week on the radio you can test your knowledge against some of the best and brightest in the news and entertainment world while figuring out what's real news and what's made up." (via NPR.org)

I’m doing this again! These are things I read this year, not books that came out this year. They’re not in any particular order.

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross I read this book and the next from this series (the Laundry Files) this year and kind of fell in love. It’s about an agent and IT guy from a secret British agency in charge of stopping demons and other monstrosities summoned by computers from destroying the world. The horror has a very cosmic/eldritch vibe. I also find it quite funny with almost Pratchett-like dry humor, though with a pitch black coat of paint on it. Office politics is also a big part of the stories, but resolved in much more grisly ways than hopefully you’d find in your workplace. There are a lot of books in this series, so I have a lot to look forward to.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert Just finished this one. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. A lot of the book happens inside Paul’s head or through political conversations, but I felt the story still moved along well and had interesting twists and turns. The weirdness of the Dune universe also takes a big step forward which I appreciated here. You could leave the first book still debating if Paul still fits in the typical white savior narrative, and this book shatters that really effectively.

Erasure by Percival Everett I think I heard about this one from an interview with the author on the On the Media podcast. The basic premise is a Black author is critically well-received but not commercially because he writes experimental fiction that publishers and distributors find to be not reflective enough of the African-American experience (something that he’s not trying to write about). He hits a point when he needs money after tragedy hits his family and is frustrated by the market and writes a book about a young man in the hood full of stereotypes that he intends as a scathing parody of other books that are selling well. Minor spoilers, people love the book and take it as an authentic look at the African-American experience. This was more experimental than I was expecting—the entirety of the terrible book the character writes is in this novel—but I found it really compelling. The tension in the last scene had my heart hammering.

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller Another book that landed on my list by way of podcast a long time ago, this book is part biography of ichthyologist David Starr Jordan, part memoir, and part critical examination of taxonomy, eugenics, and the western obsession with classification and hierarchy. It’s a pretty beautiful work that I find myself thinking about and referencing quite often.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Want a fantasy book that’s about all rogues? This is that book. It’s a crime/heist thriller in a really well-built world. There’s a great mix of high highs and low lows in this book (warning, it gets dark), and it uses tension really well. The heisting and scheming is all really fun, the magic and monsters of the world are really cool balancing an overall pretty harrowing story.

Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus OK, like most of these I heard about on a podcast. Jamie Loftus has been one of the most common voices coming through my speakers/headphones this year and she narrates the audiobook for her book. This book is about hot dogs, told through a cross country hotdog tour. It’s also about the meat industry, COVID, a relationship at its end, and America’s relationship with consumption. It’s very well written and a good encapsulation of what I love about Jamie’s brand of journalism and storytelling.

Escape from Incel Island by Margaret Killjoy Margaret Killjoy is another favorite person to listen to/read. This book is a pretty short, pulpy romp about a future where all of the incels get tricked by the government into getting trapped on an island and a woman and a non-binary mercenary who are sent to the island and then have to escape. It’s violent, sometimes scary, but doesn’t take that side of itself too seriously. Woven through are some really compassionate and poignant examinations of gender, masculinity, and the complexity of people.

Reading Now/On the Shelf I’m currently reading Lessons in Birdwatching by Honey Watson and loving it. It’s a really cool far-future sci-fi book about research students stationed on a planet where the residents appear to experience time nonlinearly. It will probably be the first book I finish in 2025 and will show up on this list next year.