Blurt! — Sben

Blurt! — Sben
pile.org

Finished reading Mordew by Alex Pheby; I finished the story about a week ago actually, but I’ve been slowly picking my way through the apocrypha at the end of the book. I picked it up solely for its Feiffer-esque front cover and the description on the back. It was Weird, grotesque, such that after I started reading it at bedtime, I had bizarre dreams inspired by book imagery, and thus banished it from the bedroom. Was it good, did I enjoy it? I’m not sure, but it was definitely compelling, and I’ll probably read his next book after some time detoxing from this one.

Also

Finished reading The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden, followup to The Bear and the Nightingale. I enjoyed this one, too, and it had more consistent drive than the first, but Arden relied on a particular plot contrivance trope a little too often for my taste.

— 2/4/2025 7:45am ∞
Finished reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. This book managed the neat trick of being, simultaneously, a sci-fi novel, a thriller, and a romance novel, and pretty good at all three.

Sometimes I entertain myself by explaining today’s world to Samuel Pepys. This book has taken some of that work off my shoulders, for a little while.

— 1/29/2025 11:09pm ∞
Finished reading The Wordhord by Hana Videen. This was a fun amble through some Old English vocabulary, not especially deep or challenging, but fun and interesting.

— 1/27/2025 8:12pm ∞
Finished reading Polostan by Neal Stephenson. Even though I was warned that it was a surprisingly-normal-sized book, I was surprised by its very normal size. That turns out to be a bit deceptive though: The story is very clearly unfinished at the end of the book (though many parts are wrapped up nicely). Two more of these and it’ll feel like a more typical Stephenson opus.

— 1/11/2025 7:30pm ∞
The annual reading report.

— 12/31/2024 3:38pm ∞