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Favourite Books of 2023-ish
Ah, another year in which I kept a vanity URL functional, yet failed to exercise any writing aptitude outside of work. Welp, here’s some books. Truth be told, it was a bit of a down year for me in terms of quantity (good, but not as many as I’d like) and quality (for fiction in…
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21 in 10, Part II: Non-Fiction
Reign of Terror (2021) Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror is not a blow-by-blow account of any particular battle or war that comprises the War on Terror, nor does it offer gritty or poetic on-the-ground reportage. For that kind of thing, there are some wonderful books like Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living or Elliot Ackerman’s Places and…
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21 in 10, Part I: Fiction
It wasn’t a banner year for fiction reads for me. For whatever reason, a lot of what I tried just didn’t quite click, and I didn’t find as many trending/hot novels that I loved. With that being said, I haven’t gotten to many of the critic’s choice reads of the year, and still found plenty…
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The Glut.
Caveat: frivolous #firstworldproblems in the wake of everything else happening across the globe. A pal tweeted this the other day, and it’s stuck with me: Every day is a battle between re-watching/re-playing/re-reading/re-listening to the same things vs. Trying new stuff. — Colin Chisholm (@ColinHantsCo) February 3, 2021 I’ve been living with post-concussion symptoms for about…
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20 for 20, Part II: Fiction
Hench, Natalie Zina Walschots (2020) “Hench” is a refreshing take on the superhero genre that has proper reverence while also appropriately taking the piss out of it. Toronto-based writer and poet Walschots puts a Millennial gig economy spin on things by following some put-upon contract workers struggling to make it as temps and entry-level professionals…
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20 for 20, Part I: Non-fiction
Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller (2020)A satisfying, brisk read that–in audiobook form–feels like a jumbo-sized Invisibilia or Radiolab episode in all the right ways. The story includes a few jarring and well-earned twists, and true to her science reporting pedigree, Miller turns the braided biographies of David Starr Jordan and herself into some questions…
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The Kindler, Gentler Web?
In the midst of configuring their new desktop, my parents decided we should embark on that most perilous of quests: sifting through the e-waste and detritus that tends to sneakily accrue when you’ve used the same computer desk since the 386 era. Amidst the usual outdated instruction manuals, deprecated cable connectors, irrelevant media formats, and…
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Apocalyptica Brittanica
Oddly, I read barely any new-for-2019 fiction over the course of the year. For me, it was mostly a year of nonfiction and on catching up on some recent novels available as Kindle Daily Deals. However, I did dig into a pair of cracking post-apocalyptic reads: “The Wall” by John Lanchester Long story short: in…
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9 for ’19
The best? Maybe, maybe not. Some of the most impactful nonfiction reads of the year, according to Grant: The Unhabitable Earth: Life After Warming Neither a ponderous science tome or a weepy ode to Mother Earth, David Wallace-Wells offers a devastating, very sharp, and relatively concise summary of “OK, this is how badly we’re screwed.”…