Space Station Mir

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Top Ten  Five Books On My Spring TBR It doesn't feel like spring, since it's sleeting and icing and hailing today, but I'm enjoying my most recent library finds with my extra time off today, so I can't complain! 1. The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder I remember starting this in a bookstore, and I found it again at the library, so I checked it out. So far, it reminds me a lot of The Nest, except less poetic and fewer, less compelling characters. Also, although it's also a dysfunctional family drama centered on siblings, it's building up to a wedding, and I've been obsessed with stories about weddings since I got married last year. 2. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler I read and loved Parable of the Sower a while ago, so when I saw this at the library, I thought, maybe it's time. I've been putting it off both because there is a dwindling amount of Butler's oeu...

Followed up some awesome library reads with some sitting TBRs: David Lebovitz still makes me laugh out loud, although instead of a humorous tour through The Sweet Life in Paris ,  L'Appart  chronicles some serious disasters with creating his Paris home. A less determined Americáin would have walked away, but Lebovitz makes croissants aux amandes (day-old croissants, rebaked and filled with almond paste). I read The Gatekeepers to read a Jen Lancaster novel. After reading her memoirs, I can hear her voice in each of the characters: "Ask me how I know" is Lancaster's refrain, and one of her character's. I prefer the memoirs, but I appreciate the subject of teen suicide in high academic pressure communities. I grew up in a community like that, and it seems like it's only gotten worse since. I hope more people read the book, and it deserves a new edition without the numerous typos. Crimes Against a Book Club has a clever twist and headings a...

This is my third Kameron Hurley book, and my first where I thought OMG, OMG, THIS IS AWESOME, the whole time I was reading it. I wanted to like The Mirror Empire, but although I liked elements of it, it felt too dense.  The Stars Are Legion  explores similar constructs (female societies, multiple worlds, situation-dependent identities) more urgently. I also read Hurley's collection of essays, The Geek Feminist Revolution, and The Stars Are Legion pulls the philosophy behind her essays into vivid, pulsing coherence.  The Stars Are Legion   embodies  the Geek Feminist Revolution, and without the essays,  I wouldn't have understood that. But knowing Hurley's history as a student of revolution, the nightmarish cycles of failure the protagonists undergo becomes clear as the only possible precursor to freedom. The history of revolution is typically the history of failure and repetition. The only way out is to truly change ourselves, and that is only possible...