Month: October 2022

Embassytown by China Miéville

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 48 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts get published with some lag. I’m trying to be more punctual, though, and this one’s very recent. I’ve had the audiobook for Embassytown in my Audible account for quite a long time now, but I’ve been off audiobooks for quite a long time. These days, I’ve driving more than I used to, so I’ve had the chance to listen to a few. I’m not sure this is the best medium for the novel—it has a lot of neologisms, and I didn’t catch the implied meaning of a few of them—but …

Continue Reading

The Planetbreaker’s Son by Nick Mamatas

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 41 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with earlier posts in this series, I’m publishing this some time after reading the book.  The Planetbreaker’s Son is another of the PM Press Outspoken Authors series. As I’ve said before, that series hasn’t let me down before.  Mamatas’ contribution to the series contains the usual mix of fiction and nonfiction plus an interview by Terry Bisson.  “The Planetbreaker’s Son” is a wild story of life, well, “life,” in a post-Singularity spaceship with a bunch of digital personalities: some uploaded, some rebuilt simulacra based on the memories of the uploaded, and some generated onboard. Except it’s really about family …

Continue Reading

The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer by Ron Pattison

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 40 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this a while after actually finishing the book. Supposedly, I read this book a few years ago… but I don’t really remember doing so. Perhaps that’s the result of sleep-deprivation, since the time when I (supposedly) read it, my son was very young. In any case, I thought I’d get a refresher on English beers, and this fall I might brew up a few of them.  I’m without the two brewing books I used to find most useful and/or inspiring while planning out my brewing, what that was a more frequent pursuit: Ray Daniels’ Designing Great …

Continue Reading

Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 39 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this a while after actually finishing the book. Mammoths of the Great Plains is a volume from PM Press’s wonderful Outspoken Authors series, of which I’ve read a few others—and have at least one or two more waiting to be read. Everything else I’ve read from the series has been excellent, and I really enjoyed Arnason’s Hidden Folk, plus my friend Justin praised it a few years back, so I was eager to give it a try.  The book contains three pieces, and only one of them (the title story) is fiction. That story is one …

Continue Reading