Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Got this book for free from the Tor Ebook Club

This book is a refinement of many topics that Doctorow has broached in the past:

- uploading of consciounesses/backups and how that changes things
- living in Capitalism vs leaving capitalism behind
- the violence often used to maintain compliance, even in non-totalitarian countries
- contractors involved in the above-mentioned violence inherent in the system

I had to change my wordpress username as it contained characters that were fine back when I started this blog in 2005, but didn’t work for federation. So this is a test to see if the post will properly federate now that I’ve changed the username. Here’s hoping!

Back in 2013 when I started using Fedora Core 1, I had no idea I’d still be on Fedora when it reached its 40th release 11 years later. Congrats to the team and here’s the official announcement.

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Description in one line? Cowboy Bebop meets Mass Effect with a Cuban protagonist.

I grew up in Miami, Florida so having a main character speak in “spanglish” brings me back to my childhood. The narrator also nails the voice of our main character, Eva. Overall, the narrator does a good job distinguishing the voices of all the main characters although a character we meet near the end - think this book’s version of the Ed character from Cowboy Bebop - doesn’t get an original enough of a voice to distinguish her in a few scenes.

Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking by Maangchi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a companion to Maangchi’s youtube channel. It teaches you how to cook the way she cooks. So it’s authentic to her even if it’s not what you’re used to from Korean BBQ. The recipes are a good jumping off point to tweak the flavors to match what you prefer.

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RELIGION: Ruining Everything Since 4004 BC by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m generally a fan of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (the source of these comics) and even though I would identify myself as a Christian, I’m not one of those easily-offended, book-banning types. I found lots of the jokes in here funny, even the ones a more self-serious person would find blasphemous. But all collected together, some of the jokes get a bit repetitious. There are several “why do good things happen to bad people” comics, a few “are you in heaven or in hell?” comics, and at least 2 “do animals go to heaven” comics. Weinersmith does also find some humor in Zen Buddhism, but even some of those are repetitious in theme. I think, really, it’s more the case that there aren’t really enough jokes to tell about religion to create a whole book without repeating yourself. (Even my review is starting to repeat itself!)

Happy Doomsday by David Sosnowski

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I got this for free from the Kindle First (or whatever it’s called now) program where Amazon Prime members get a free book each month.

It’s been a while since I disliked a book a much as I disliked this one. I kept reading in hopes of redemption because that has happened once or twice. But, alas, it was not meant to be.

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book. I lowered the rating from 5 to 4 stars mostly because 5 stars is “it was amazing” and 4 stars is “really liked it” so that’s a more honest assessment.

This is a book that I remembered fondly and, thankfully, the re-read did not reveal that the book had been visited by the Suck Fairy. In fact, I found it a bit more clever than I remembered. I still remembered the big twist - it’s a bit too big to forget, but I had forgotten how it was revealed.

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 137 by Nightmare Magazine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Cut Cares Not for the Flesh (George Sandison) - It was foreshadowed from the first paragraphs, but if one finds themselves in a horror story, it pays to read the contractual fine-print. I’ve read stories in a similar genre before, but I love the way this one focused more on the characters than the mechanisms behind the magic. Also, some interesting gender dynamics on this one.

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is definitely more political than the last non-fiction book I read, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, but that makes sense. The author’s entire thesis is not so much about butts in the abstract, but more specifically the female butt. As part of that explanation she also considers how the butt was used as one dimension across which to define the differences between European and African bodies. Since race as a concept is itself political (more or less emerging in the Age of Exploration), this causes the book to be more political. This isn’t a knock against it or for it. It just means it’s going to be a bit more contentious and, at times, opinionated than Eve, which was simply talking about science and how our bodies evolved.