That’s what two weeks of books looks like when I barely had time to read.

From top left: Gathering Blue, Messanger, The World Without Us, Trial of the Clone, Consider the Lobster, Fun Home, Kindred, The Rapture of the Nerds, The Two-Income Trap and Good Omens.

I kind of consider Gathering Blue and Messanger as cheating, but hey, they were even hardcovers.

Kindred was amazing - it’s a time travel story about a black woman who gets sent back to the South pre-Civil War, and it really turns most of modern fantasy/scifi’s assumptions about time travel on their head. Best book I’ve read so far. 

Good Omens didn’t really live up to my expectations, although that was probably a matter of severe overhype rather than anything else.

The Two Income Trap was interesting but repetitive, and the narrative style was strange. Elizabeth Warren and her daughter wrote it together, and when the text said “I” they had to identify which one of them was saying it, which just sounded strange.

The Rapture of the Nerds was too much wiz-bang Cory Doctorow and not enough Charles Stross (who actually thinks through the implications of what happens). 

Trial of Clone was perhaps the book I was most disappointed in. I love Zach Weiner’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal so much, and the book had none of the charm of the comic. The jokes were repetitive, not particularly new, and had none of the smarts that makes the comic worth reading. 

Consider the Lobster was great. I’m developing a real love for the non-fiction essay collection and for David Foster Wallace. 

Fun Home was depressing, but a perfect graphic novel. Definitely worth reading if you like Allison Bechdel.

And finally, The World Without Us was good, if disjointed in its style. The premise is “what would happen to the world if humans disappeared” but the author takes some strange turns to actually draw conclusions.