More books
May. 27th, 2026 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretOf Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
This sort of read to me as A Night in the Lonesome October meets Murderbot. Weird spooky shit is happening and some people understand why, but our narrator is trying to get through it while being stuck behind an extremely limited perspective as an AI with budget sensors and programmed limitations on perception.
One For the Money by Janet Evanovich
This was a lot of fun, but not deep. I could see myself reading more of this series, about an incompetent bounty hunter in 1990s New Jersey.
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
Defector did a readalong of this book, which they touted as possibly the funniest book of all time, this fall. I didn't manage to read it in time but I finished it recently and it was a blast to read.
Ray Midge, a loser writing ad copy in Little Rock, has his shabby life rocked when his wife leaves him for a co-worker. They steal his car and head off for a new life, and Ray decides to follow them... not, he insists flimsy, to get back his wife, but simply to retrieve his car. The chase takes him through Mexico and into British Honduras. Along the way he meets a series of con artists and dreamers, each stranger than the last, and with alarming equanimity endures a string of disasters.
It is a very funny book, though calling it the funniest book of all time feels like overselling. Portis's language takes you up and down and across the garden path, never quite going where you expected it to go.
The Cemeteries of Amalo Trilogy by Katherine Addison
Most of the time the point of murder mysteries is the detective investigates and in search of motive, they discover not only the dark secrets of the killer, but also a variety of other dark secrets.
But in these three Graftonesque fantasy mystery novels, Thara Celehar pursues truth and justice and, it seemed to me, more often than not discovers secret kindnesses. The kind we don't speak of because they are, in some very literal sense, unremarkable.
This is the glue of these books and I found it really affecting.
This sort of read to me as A Night in the Lonesome October meets Murderbot. Weird spooky shit is happening and some people understand why, but our narrator is trying to get through it while being stuck behind an extremely limited perspective as an AI with budget sensors and programmed limitations on perception.
One For the Money by Janet Evanovich
This was a lot of fun, but not deep. I could see myself reading more of this series, about an incompetent bounty hunter in 1990s New Jersey.
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
Defector did a readalong of this book, which they touted as possibly the funniest book of all time, this fall. I didn't manage to read it in time but I finished it recently and it was a blast to read.
Ray Midge, a loser writing ad copy in Little Rock, has his shabby life rocked when his wife leaves him for a co-worker. They steal his car and head off for a new life, and Ray decides to follow them... not, he insists flimsy, to get back his wife, but simply to retrieve his car. The chase takes him through Mexico and into British Honduras. Along the way he meets a series of con artists and dreamers, each stranger than the last, and with alarming equanimity endures a string of disasters.
It is a very funny book, though calling it the funniest book of all time feels like overselling. Portis's language takes you up and down and across the garden path, never quite going where you expected it to go.
The Cemeteries of Amalo Trilogy by Katherine Addison
Most of the time the point of murder mysteries is the detective investigates and in search of motive, they discover not only the dark secrets of the killer, but also a variety of other dark secrets.
But in these three Graftonesque fantasy mystery novels, Thara Celehar pursues truth and justice and, it seemed to me, more often than not discovers secret kindnesses. The kind we don't speak of because they are, in some very literal sense, unremarkable.
This is the glue of these books and I found it really affecting.