Latest reads

 The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester. This was my SIL's choice for family book club. From the '50s and obvious. Women lesser. Males the best. "The stars" barely even came up. Not as bad as some recent "classic" re-reads (I liked it better than any of the Heinlein I re-read recently), but still: won't be rereading this...ever.

The Ferryman, by Justin Cronin. Read this author's The Passage recently, which was a great take on vampirism. This one is pretty good. Imagine, if you will (spoilers hence), you are in a ship which will take hundreds of years to get to a planet you have targeted for landing. Well, what do you dream about in cryo-sleep? This book tackles this question. About 100 pages too long, but otherwise pretty good. 

The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds. Continuing on my Revelation Space reading (chronological). I had read this many years ago, and barely remembered it, till certain areas came up. Really good, like all Reynolds (so far). Right after this, I read the next story in the sequence, "Open and Shut." This story is not published anywhere, but is available from the publisher here. Next up is Elysium Fire, which I read back in 2019. Reread it or just move on?

Started my wife's choice for the family book club, Thursday Murder Club. Good so far.

Middle Egyptian still on-going. Fun language. 

August 2023

 Books read. Looks like a lot, but it's not. The Corey was short (38 pp) and the Wells was really short (8 pp). Also not computed are the novellas in the Revelation Space series that I read in August (~250 pp):

• Squiggly Lines, by Mark Lattanzi. Put Mark's instruction to use this past weekend! 
• Snowblind, by Ragnar Jonasson. OK.
• How it Unfolds, by James S.A. Corey. Great! No, not in the Expanse universe.
• A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine. Will continue to read her.
• Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros. For the family book club. As mentioned, I'm not the audience.
• A Cold Red Sunrise, by Stuart Kaminsky. Can't wait to read the next one in the series.
• Compulsory, by Martha Wells. 

Books bought:

• The Subversive Copy Editor, by Carol Fisher Saller. $2 Kindle deal. 
• The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Besser. Bought for the family book club. $6.99.
• A Cold Red Sunrise. The only one I've not been able to find on Kindle deals, so paid full price for this one (worth it): $9.
• Fourth Wing. $14.99. Bleh.
• Compulsory. A buck. 
• Cacti and Succulents for Cold Climates, by Leo Chance. $37, the best price I'd seen in a long time. Had to get this book. I love these plants and would like to have some that can stay outside for the entire year.

56 books read this year so far. 

Cursed Bunny, by Bora Chung (tr. Anton Hur)

 What a great book of short stories! This book has been popping up on book blogs for a while now so I put in a hold at my local library and lo and behold, it came in! I loved this book from cover to cover. 

First off, there are 10 stories in this book, in 247 pages. The font is large and the pages are small, so you could read this book in a day or two. 

Spoilers, some:

OK, let's start with The Head. Holy shit. Scatological but with an interesting ending. Is there a moral there? "The Embodiment." Is the author saying something about men and their responsibility? Or, dare I? Women and their responsibility for the possible result of sex? The eponymous story was a good ol' curse story. "The Frozen Finger" is a good old-fashioned ghost story, with a twist. "Snare" is very much like the goose that laid the golden egg. "Scars" was probably my favorite, a combo Grecian myth and gladiator story. I want more. "Home Sweet Home" another ghost story. Good, but the "Finger" one was better. "Ruler of the Winds and Sands" is another old fashioned mythic story, a la Aladdin. Loved it. "Reunion" was definitely autobiographical. The author, talk about unique, is a Korean woman who earned a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University, who teaches Russian language and lit and science fiction at Yonsei University and (because all the aforementioned is not enough) translates Russian and Polish works into Korean. Damn! 

Spoilers 스포일러가 완료되었습니다

Read this book. This was so much fun. Plus it is a translated book, so now I'm at 3 more to go (out of 10) for Linguist level in the Books in Translation challenge.