by Sherman Alexie
★★★
Monthly archives: April 2020
Songs for the End of the World
by Saleema Nawaz
Broadcasting the photo of a possible patient zero is alarming and hopefully agreed upon as unethical. Owen has professor-equivalent status and conducts himself grossly with students throughout; the sympathy he gets, which is expressed literally, makes him come across as an author stand-in. The women characters revolve around … Read more
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
by Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi
★★★½
Rosewater
(The Wormwood Trilogy #1)
by Tade Thompson
It’s a shame that nearly all the authors who are paid homage are long dead white men. And having one character describe the protagonist as sexist isn’t enough. Why is alien telepathy more envisionable than gender equity in 2066?
Still Thompson has created an … Read more
Most Read Authors
| Author | Books | Total Pages | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leo Tolstoy | 15 | 5504 | 2.7 |
| Octavia E. Butler | 15 | 3745 | 3.9 |
| Anton Chekhov | 13 | 3462 | 3.3 |
| James Baldwin | 12 | 3033 | 4.0 |
| Jo Walton | 11 | 3300 | 3.9 |
| Roald Dahl | 10 | 1753 | 2.5 |
| C.S. Lewis | 8 | 1840 | 3.0 |
| Maya Angelou | 7 | 1726 | 4.1 |
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 5 | 3267 |
At the Mouth of the River of Bees
by Kij Johnson
★½
How Long ’til Black Future Month?
by N.K. Jemisin
I managed to finish six of the stories. Generally too on the nose and yielding to stock themes of science fiction. “Walking Awake” was the most engaging even with all the hand-holding, with allusions to Get Out and TNG’s “Conspiracy”.
So far Jemisin’s not for me.
Corregidora
by Gayl Jones
★½
A Song for a New Day
by Sarah Pinsker
Luce is a Mary Sue of a musician and the book doesn’t let up on the cheese factor, but its earnestness and apposite themes (a wide net is cast with terrorist bombings plus a pox-like epidemic leading to anti-congregation laws) make it well-aligned for lockdown reading.
Conversations with Octavia Butler
by Octavia E. Butler, Conseula Francis (Editor)
The interviewers are on the whole unimaginative so there is a lot of repetition.
Octavia remains inspirational as a feminist hermit visionary!
Pourin’ Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West
by Cheryl Foggo
★★★★½