Starter Villain, John Scalzi
I can’t believe I’ve never read a book by John Scalzi before. His writing is right up my alley – funny, cheeky, sarcastic. Just look at this amazing list of titles! “Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas”, “Old Man’s War”, “The Book of Dumb”, “You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop”, “Virtue Signaling and Other Heresies”. Seriously, my TBR just jumped by about 20 titles!
In Starter Villain, our protagonist Charlie inherits a boatload of money from a long lost uncle (ah, dreams) as well as a thriving supervillain business. Charlie has to learn the business “tout suite”, while finding out his pet cats are actually super-intelligent spy cats who can communication with humans, and dealing with labour unrest among the super-intelligent dolphins that protect his secret volcano lair. But honestly, the most far=fetched part of this book is a secret society of the 12 riches people (men) on earth who interfere with world progress by subtly nudging things like governments and technology in the direction they want them to go. AS IS a bunch of rich people (men) all working together in a secret society would be subtle! Puh-lease!!! They would ALL be launching stupid-ass things like cars into space, building stupid-ass clocks that tick once a year, and buying entire social media platforms just to drive it into the stupid-ass ground for no good reason. But that’s why we love books, right? For the fantasy.
The Absolution (Book 3 of Children’s House), by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
I found this book at a library sale at the local Ameliasburgh Fall Fair and it’s really one of the most county things you could do to visit this village fair, unless it’s to visit the Milford Fall Fair! Unbeknownst to me, this is book 3 in a series of crime-fighting murder mysteries and there was definitely some important history between the key members of the crime-fighting p0lice force. I hindsight, I might better have elected to read this series in order.
Pretty quickly you figure out that The Absolution is a revenge story set around the theme of cyber-bullying and I have to say, it makes me extremely happy that I did not grow up in a world with no borders to bullying. In my day (which, really, how old does that expression make me sound?), it was possible to escape the presence of bullies by simply walking away from them. Home from school? No bullying! Except of course for the case where some doofus “friend” decided it would be fun to prank-call our house 35 times a day (this is not an exaggeration), but we just didn’t answer the phone. In fact, in one moment of sweet satisfaction, I got the loudest whistle known to mankind in a Christmas cracker and I started answering the phone and immediately blowing the whistle as loud as I could into the receiver, and what fun that was hahaha!!! Stupid bully. I can’t even imagine life today, with cyber-bullies dogging you every minute of every day everywhere you go. The book does a fine job of showing just how inadequately we, as a society, are prepared to deal with this kind of thing. But honestly, hasn’t it been long enough to at least start to figure it out? Also, eff-you, social media companies. (Now that I think about it, maybe all the rich people SHOULD just buy social media companies and burn them to the ground with their hubris.)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
This book is a love story. It’s a love story about gaming (although you don’t have to be a gamer to love the book, me being a case in point. The last computer game I avidly played was Zork – what I remember being called ‘Adventure’. That’s right, you read that right.) It’s a love story about story-telling within computer game creation. It’s a love story about the game two gamers collaborate to create together. And in a strange and unusual twist, it’s a love story about a boy and girl who are friends, collaborators, roommates, partners, but never lovers. What a refreshing change! They have ups and downs, fights, breakups, makeups, boyfriends and girlfriends (with other people) but they, in the long run, are just best friends.
Apeirogon, by Colum McCann
Two fathers, a Palestinian and an Israeli, lose their daughters in acts of war – one shot by an Israeli soldier, and one a victim of Palestinian suicide bombers. Eventually they meet and travel the world together advocating mutual understanding and peace. Based on a true story and told through fragmented chapters, the book reveals nuances about the conflict that make it difficult to “pick a side”.
I admit to massive lack of knowledge about the history of the conflict in this area and it feels like something we are not supposed to have an opinion on. Politicians and governments tell us how to feel, and if we express dissent, we are bigoted in some way. But from what I read in this (one and only) book, it seems like Palestinians live in a land occupied by Israel. And it seems like Israel is creating settlements inside the occupied land, an action that is, I think, illegal. In fairness, the origins all seems traceable back to British colonization, another notch of their bedpost of ignorant and careless actions resulting in decades of bloody conflict. At any rate, I am interested in reading more about the history of this area, if you happen to have a recommendation please leave a comment.
