West of the Moon

personal

embassytown.

January 2012, #7: Embassytown, by China Mieville Avice Benner Cho grew up in Embassytown, a backwater colonial outpost that survives on the fringes of the embassy to an alien culture.  Like most kids from fringe backwater outposts, Avice desperately wants out; unlike most kids, she gets out, becoming an immerser, one of the rare people [...]

all-star.

Having just caught up on the last two episodes of Project Runway, I’m coming back my theory that Michael Costello has a mobbed-up uncle somewhere.

bright and shining parasites.

About a year and a half ago, we published a story at Strange Horizons called “The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu“.  (Part One, Part Two.)  It’s still one of my favorites–I know, I know, not supposed to have favorites, editorial mamas love all their children equally, but whatever, I really love this story.  Wannabe [...]

glory in death.

January 2012, #6: Glory in Death, by J.D. Robb. You know, I can’t swear to it, but I think part of the recent delay in updating (which has put me more than a week behind on the reading log, again) is because I didn’t want to admit that I was re-reading the In Death series. [...]

total immersion and kaaterskill falls.

January 2012, #4 and #5: Total Immersion and Kaaterskill Falls, by Allegra Goodman. A lot of the books I’m reading right now are coming from the Brooklyn Public Library, which is driving my reading list towards a kind of eclecticism I might not get otherwise.  Case in point: while browsing the new releases in the [...]

unclaimed.

I’m now more than a week behind on these.  Go me. January 2012, #3: Unclaimed, by Courtney Milan. Kraken was intense, so I switched over to a romance novel for the next book.  I read a handful of Courtney Milan books last fall (Unveiled, Proof by Seduction and Trial by Desire) and really enjoyed them–Trial [...]

kraken!

January 2012, #2: Kraken, by China Mieville. So, Kraken.  A preserved giant squid disappears from the Darwin Centre, and the mollusc specialist who first noticed the disappearance finds himself drawn into a vast magical underworld of squid cults, sorceror gangs, animal familiars, and competing visions of the end of the world. It’s kind of awesome. [...]

memorial.

At the entrance, we asked if there’d be somewhere inside where we could throw out our coffee cups.  It was nine o’clock on a Saturday morning–we all had coffee cups.  There was a Dunkin Box o’ Joe sitting in the baby’s stroller, that’s how much coffee we had. The guy at the entrance just shook [...]

grim tides.

(Small editorial preface: I am kind of interested in keeping better track of what I’m reading, so I’m going to try and document it more regularly.  As it stands, I seem lately to only blog about books when I’m cranky about them.  Like, I went on that big rant about how much I disliked Laura [...]

five hundred stories!

This week, Strange Horizons published its 500th piece of fiction.  500!  That’s a lot of stories! Story 500 is “MonitorBot and the King of Pop” by Jessica Barber.  ”It’s a symbolic gesture, she knows. She’s certain some low level government spook is keeping tabs on everything she does online, from porn to pie recipes, and [...]