I’m about halfway through Obscura by Joe Hart, the only book on my hundreds-of-books-long TBR list that seems to qualify for the regular mode center square for bingo. It’s a fast read, as one would hope for a scifi thriller, but the badly done science keeps making me grumble and put it down.

I also started A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith, which is fun so far.

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Finished Call for the Dead by John le Carré (Cold War spy murder mystery) | bingo: different continent, war, motion picture, short, political

When a routine security interview results in suicide, a secret service agent investigates the death with the help of a retired inspector.

Le Carré’s debut novel. I found it a little clunky and poorly aged in a couple of places, but thoroughly enjoyable overall. Smiley’s just fun to read, I think.

Nice!

I always have trouble picking favorites, so here are the three I most enjoyed:

• The Crows by C.M. Rosens - 90s chick lit crossed with eldritch horror: a young woman buys a house in a seaside town, unaware that some of the townsfolk are secretly eldritch monstrosities, or that the house is more than it seems. Suffers a little bit from self-published editing in places, but the awfulness + fluff combo works surprisingly well; I devoured this.
• Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko - dark academia fantasy with cosmic horror elements: a teenager is coerced into attending a mysterious institute, where the main coursework is incomprehensible, and nobody will explain what the students are learning. Despite this being much too slowly paced for me and not my typical subgenre, the magic system was fascinating.
• Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm - short story collection focusing on scifi technology. I’m not a huge short story fan, but I read a few collections for bingo, and this is the only one I liked as a whole.

What kinds of things do you enjoy reading? I’d rather recommend stuff you’re actually interested in.

Without being able to see it (and I’m no expert anyway), it’s hard to recommend anything specific, but whatever you end up using (glue, tape, etc.), make sure it’s labeled “archival”. That’ll ensure it won’t discolor or whatever down the line.

I’m between books again.

Finished Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold (fantasy, novella) | bingo: creature, short, steppin’ up HM

The youngest son of a minor noble house unwittingly becomes host to a long-lived magical being.

Set in the same universe as The Curse of Chalion. I’m not sure I’m interested in reading the rest of the series, but it was enjoyable, well paced, and managed to cram a good amount of story into its short page length.

Currently reading Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m glad I’m reading it after The Curse of Chalion, since that provides a lot of context the novella format doesn’t have space for.

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Finished The Ways of Khrem by D. Nathan Hilliard (secondary world urban fantasy mystery adventure novella collection) | bingo: short HM, x of y, steppin’ up HM

A master thief turned honest bookseller is strongarmed into helping a Captain of the Watch solve cases.

At first I was kind of whelmed by this, as the world and characters felt very generic (maybe a nod to classic stuff I haven’t read?); nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed it by the end. I would have put a sequel on my TBR, except there isn’t one. D:

Tesseract is my favorite UI; thank you for continuing to work on it!

I spent most of the week craving a specific vibe, so I tried and put down a bunch of things that weren’t quite it. Ended up settling on The Ways of Khrem by D. Nathan Hilliard, even though it’s not what I wanted either; it’s holding my interest, though, so I’m satisfied.

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Finished The Secret Servant by Gavin Lyall (Cold War thriller) | bingo: different continent, motion picture, war, alliterative, steppin’ up HM, political

An Army Major is seconded to the Prime Minister’s office, where he’s directed to look into rumors surrounding a new member of the nuclear advisement committee.

Outside of the unusual premise, which I liked, this felt pretty bog-standard old-school spy thriller. Some chapters near the end could have been condensed into a few paragraphs, and a couple of bits haven’t aged super well (but no slurs, for a change!). Overall, I found this ‘fine’, but nothing I’d recommend.

If you’re not familiar with the creators, you’ve probably heard of their shows:

• Rebecca Sugar - Steven Universe
• Ian Jones-Quartey - OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes (I hadn’t heard of this one, but apparently he also wrote around half the episodes of Steven Universe)
• Pendleton Ward - Adventure Time
• Patrick McHale - Over the Garden Wall

Should be wrapping up The Secret Servant by Gavin Lyall tonight.

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Finished All Systems Red by Martha Wells (comfy scfi) | bingo: motion picture, short, award HM, steppin’ up HM, late to the party HM

A secretly self-aware android must protect a team of scientists against an unexpected threat.

Especially considering its novella length, this is very well-plotted, well-paced, well-characterized, and well-ended. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t grab me enough to want to immediately add the next entry to my TBR (blasphemy, I know).

My headcanon Murderbot also leans toward the feminine, so you’re not alone. It would’ve been cool if the show had cast someone super androgynous (although I’m not surprised they didn’t).

I’m about 2/3 of the way through All Systems Red by Martha Wells, the first Murderbot story. I can see why it’s so well-liked.

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Finished:

Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi (historical fiction with elements of myth) | bingo: minority author, based on folklore, steppin’ up, political

A lowly blacksmith adjusts to her new life as the future bride of a powerful ruler.

According to the blurb, this is based on the myth of Persephone, but even clarifying that as “loosely” is generous. That said, outside of a couple of minor quibbles, I enjoyed this, and now I feel like I know a tiny bit about traditional West African culture. There is a brief glossary in the back, but I spent some time on Wikipedia, too.

Dead Cert by Dick Francis (mystery thriller) | bingo: different continent, motion picture, saddle up, game

A jockey investigates the death of his friend.

First in a series. Lots of horse racing, has that 1960s-era writing feel. This was decent, although the romance wasn’t great, and it hasn’t aged well in a couple of places (an understatement in one case).

It may have been because I chose to make ‘horror’ a subcategory of ‘suspenseful’, since there’s plenty of horror that doesn’t have speculative elements.

Probably (except without the “fiction” part). I feel like there was a reason I didn’t call it that, but I don’t remember why. I’ll make a note!

‘Fantastical’ includes pretty much anything with a speculative element, so fantasy, scifi, post-apocalyptic stuff, magical realism, cli-fi, mythology, supernatural stuff, etc. (Note to self: design the tags diagram more clearly next time.) It’s kind of a big lump of a tag (suggestions welcome for next year!), but when I tried making the top-level categories more specific, it got significantly harder to classify a work into just a couple tags or figure out where subcategories belonged.

Agreed, Roadside Picnic is great!

Here are some highlights from my reads of the past few months:

• The Thief by Claire North: Book 2 in a trilogy of stories framed by the Gameshouse, a mysterious club where gamblers can bet memories, abilities, years of their lives, health, etc. and participate in games that use places and people for their boards and pieces. Each story focuses on a single player in a single one of these games; this one was hide and seek in Thailand in the 1930s. I didn’t love the writing in this one, but I like the concept, and both this and the first book (The Serpent) have been interesting reads.
• The Crows by C.M. Rosens: This, if you can believe it, is eldritch horror crossed with 90s chick lit. I found it entertaining, despite some quibbles with the editing. The first sequel (Thirteenth) replaces the chick lit vibe with family drama (and some different PoVs), which I enjoyed less, but enough to put the third book on my TBR. It’s obviously not gonna be everyone’s thing, but if the genre mashup sounds fun to you, I recommend it.
• The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes: Picked this up because I liked Leech. The blurb for it, while accurate, is also super misleading; it’s much less one guy hunting a giant bug, and more a sweeping epic of change in a city with some fantastic/weird/horror elements, from two major points of view. It’s a little slow (for my taste), and a little long, but I enjoyed it.
• Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm: I’m not really a short story person, but I liked There Is No Antimemetics Division, so I gave this a shot. It was great! Most of the focus was on scifi concepts rather than characters or plot, which helped, I think. Recommended!

The Blair Witch Project, but 1) I really hadn’t seen much horror at that point (not too long after it came out), and 2) it made me really motion sick, so I’m not sure how much that affected things. I stayed clear of the woods for a week or two afterwards, though.

Aww, that’s very kind! I like sorting through data, so it was actually pretty fun.

I haven’t read the newly-released revised edition (mainstream published, de-SCPed), but I did enjoy the original (still available on the SCP wiki as the parts listed in the description).