Some Books I Loved

 **Calling him one of the greatest short story writers ever is damning him with faint praise.  One of the greatest artists to ever put pen to paper, period** If you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose a favorite author, there's a very real chance I'd select Jorge Luis Borges.  Erm, or William Gibson.  Oh, Ursula K. Le Guin, obviously.  Or modern torchbearers like Ken Liu and Ted Chiang.  Or obviously Nghi Vo, can't forget her, wow she's amazing.  Or . . . I mean, if you're actually putting a gun to my head, you'd better be prepared to either pull the trigger or have patience for a long debate.  Bring a snack, or something But yes, if there were a shortlist of authors I consider my absolute favorites, Borges would be very near the top What do I love about Borges?  Other than everything, of course.  Well to start, Borges truly mastered the art of the short story.  His entire writing philosophy was basically, "if you can't say...

 **What is there to say about basically one of the most perfect novellas ever written?** (note:  I read the first English-language translation, by Gregory Rabassa.  I don't know if there are more contemporary translations out there, if anyone has a rec of a particularly good one I'd be interested) I actually studied this book in my high school English class (my teacher was Alec Duxbury, great teacher and pretty solid electric guitar player too).  It was senior year, so first semester was obviously spent working on college essays.  But by second semester, most of us were done with college applications and pretty checked out, so we just read a bunch of fun books and talked about them in class (others included "The Alchemist", "Equus", and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead") On the first day we were supposed to be talking about "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", we arrived at class to find that Dux wasn't there.  Confused, we took our...

*A wonderful and personal novel about returning to your childhood home and maybe searching for some of the magic that was once there* Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape Moreno-Garcia is the current darling of the Hispanic specfic scene, and for good reason. Her world-building is great, she does an amazing job of drawing on Latin American culture and bringing it to Western audiences. For me personally she’s a bit hit and miss, I actually thought that “Mexican Gothic” didn’t quite click for me, whereas “Certain Dark Things” I absolutely adored. As for “Signal to Noise”? Easily my favorite work of hers so far (amusingly, it's her first novel--more on that later) This is the story of Meche, a woman who left her hometown of Mexico City basically as soon as she was old enough to do so.  She's back in town for her father's funeral, and in a series of flashbacks we learn the story of exactly why she left town (I'm a sucker for a ...

Hispanic Heritage Month starts today!  This one was tough to pare down, I tried to get not only a range of themes and types of books, but also a range in every other sense.  Some of these were written in English, some were translated from Spanish.  Some are classics of the genre, others are modern works dealing with issues like ICE in the United States.  I'm looking forward to this month, hope I learn something * * * "Tender is the Flesh" by Agustina Bazterrica (trans. Sarah Moss), 2017 (2020) I know, I know, everyone has read this one except for me.  I'm on it!  Visceral horror and terrible dystopia, really I should have read this long long ago "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño (trans. Natasha Wimmer), 1998 (2007) A modern classic (let . . . let me pretend that 1998 still counts as "modern".  Please.  Let me have this), one that's been near the top of my to-read for ages.  A book about the beautify of Latin American literat...

 **Chubby nerd becomes secret agent, hilarity ensues; basically "Chuck" but with scifi and aliens and amusing historical Easter Eggs** Ok so, the setup is that there are aliens called Quasing that have inhabited this planet for millennia upon millennia.  Unable to survive in Earth's atmosphere, they must inhabit living creatures as "hosts", and in this capacity (speaking to their hosts) they have secretly guided all of human history.  Like, actually, all of human history, at one point a Quasing remarks, "To this day, an argument still rages about whether the Neanderthal or the Cro-Magnon was worthier of being raised."  The endgame of course is to get humanity up to the level of interstellar travel, so that the Quasing can finally go home During the Middle Ages (the exact incident is a plot point, I won't spoil it), the Quasing split into two factions:  The Genjix (bad guys) who believe in the Conflict Doctrine, the idea that manipulating humanity i...

 **The author attempted to write a fun, silly 'what if fantasy adventurers were like rock stars?' novel, but accidentally wrote a surprisingly thoughtful story about aging and mortality amidst a fantastic adventure world.  But also, to be clear, it's a pretty solid fantasy adventure** WHEN WE SEEK TO RULE ONLY OURSELVES, WE ARE EACH OF US KINGS. (an epitaph, from the grave of fallen heroes) At its core, this is a pretty simple book--not in a bad way, it's a tried-and-true formula.  The narrative is a solid "getting the band back together" story, where a legendary band of heroes reunites for one final job.  Their adventure will take them across a magical and dangerous land, post-Tolkien/DnD in flavor with the right amount of original twists (some cool new monster ideas, and a great mythology backstory that ends up being more important than we think, no spoilers) to make it fun.  We've got some great villains, a few solid betrayals, and a ton of badass actio...