I like Heinlein a lot but I didn’t even finish this.
Finished A Memory Called Empire, thought the same thing. Perfect example of a book having raiders of the lost ark effect where the protagonist does nothing/accomplishes nothing and the plot would have worked out exactly the same if she hadn’t existed basically. IDK.
Also read This Is How You Lose the Time War which was more fun and also more or less devoid of content but at least its novella sized.
Wait a minute… lesbian sci fi romance…
A bunch of nerds got excited about the sex.
What do you like more about Heinlein, his political beliefs or his infatuation with incest?
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Where my Twilight fans at? I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE. Back in the day, I devoured New Moon with the speed of an imploding star.
Hampton: Yes, Meyer seems to think that accountability means addressing how toxic your behavior is and then continuing to do it anyway, but it’s fine now because you know it’s wrong.
Hampton: Can we talk about age here? Meyer did not do a good job of making their age difference seem any less creepy. It was one of the things that I was really searching for. There were a few throwaway lines on how Edward is still actually 17, or Bella growing bored with him as she got older. But then he would go and call her contemporaries children! You can’t have both, my guy!
Onion: You mean, when he was fantasizing about ripping them all limb from limb, to get at her sweet, sweet blood???
Hampton: Honestly, it just made me think about Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women , which is a book I didn’t actually enjoy, but one of the characters is groomed by her high school teacher through Twilight . It’s honestly stunning when you read it through that lens, the ways that Edward makes Bella feel like they’re equal enough for a relationship but not equal enough to make her own decisions.
Onion: Let me ask you this, did Midnight Sun still grab you the way the other books did? Because despite how annoying all of the different devices were—Edward reads minds! His sister Alice has visions! Sometimes Edward is reading a mind with visions!—I still couldn’t stop reading, especially when I was first diving into it, in the first 300 pages or so.
Hampton: Ugh, I want to say no, but I stayed up till 5 a.m. reading this in one go and though I want to blame that on having to prepare for this chat, there were definitely parts where I couldn’t stop smiling.
Hampton: On a slightly serious note, despite how irrevocably Twilight changed me—including by teaching me the word irrevocably — Midnight Sun mostly made me very happy that the YA space no longer looks like it does in 2005. Toxicity aside, I’m just glad that girls who aren’t white can find heroines that look like them .
Hampton: If I had to read how her skin is apricot and cream one more time, I was gonna throw my Kindle across the room. That does bring me to a final point, which is that if people are going to spend money on this book, they should spend some time reading up on the Quileute Tribe which “has been forced to negotiate the rights to their own oral histories, ancient regalia and mask designs, and even the sanctity of their cemetery” in the aftermath of Twilight .
Onion: Yes, you make an excellent point. Twilight was Not Good for a lot of people just forming their ideas about romance, but it was REALLY NOT GOOD in this other way.
Mexican Gothic
A solid tale, set in Mexico in the 1950s,that hits all the Gothic themes. Not awe inspiring but not terrible either. Like watching a good horror movie.
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I’m reading The Three Body Problem and loving it, but realizing that with all my history reading I know nothing about the cultural revolution. I’ve just never read anything about China, really. Any recommendations?
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It’s good for work in the office
Silvia is an excellent author Twitter follow 
https://twitter.com/silviamg/status/1320611684587839489?s=20
“There were phrases of Beethoven’s 9th symphony that still made Coe cry. He always thought it had to do with the circumstances of the composition itself. He imagined Beethoven, deaf and soul-sick, his heart broken, scribbling furiously while Death stood in the doorway, clipping his nails. Still, Coe thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry; it was killing him with its silence and loneliness, making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.”
- Ken Cosgrove, Mad Men “Signal 30”
https://twitter.com/Bookperk/status/1322909012753526784?s=20
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Mystery
A selection in Parade’s roundup of “25 Hottest Books of Summer 2018”
A Paste Magazine’s Most Anticipated 25 books of 2018 pick
A Medium’s Books pick for We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018 list
Set in a near future Washington, D.C., a clever, incisive, and fresh feminist twist on a classic literary icon—Sherlock Holmes—in which Dr. Janet Watson and covert agent Sara Holmes will use espionage, advanced technology, and the power of deduction to unmask a murderer targeting Civil War veterans.
Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper’s bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation’s capital, a bleak, edgy city in the throes of a fraught presidential election. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay.
Watson’s readjustment to civilian life is complicated by the infuriating antics of her strange new roommate. But the tensions between them dissolve when Watson discovers that soldiers from the New Civil War have begun dying one by one—and that the deaths may be the tip of something far more dangerous, involving the pharmaceutical industry and even the looming election. Joining forces, Watson and Holmes embark on a thrilling investigation to solve the mystery—and secure justice for these fallen soldiers.
Sherlock Holmes lesbian retelling
Civil unrest leads to a NEW Civil War
A looming election could be the final puzzle piece
Not sure if smart to read this leading into the election but downloading because WOW
But then came the outrage from the NRA. The Christian fundamentalists. Angry white men—and quite a few women— who wanted the federalists to shut up and go home. They were the ones who believed those dark times had made America great. They were the ones who had made those dark times even darker.
Alida Sanches had not invented gun control or equal rights, but she sure made a handy target to blame when the terrorists took over Federal buildings in Oklahoma and Missouri and declared themselves the New Confederacy. When Kansas, Iowa, and western Arkansas joined them with riots and guns, a new era, a new civil war, had begun.
So for her second term, Sanches had quietly set aside her principles…
Read Moneyball a few days ago after seeing the film again. It’s very good, but the film does a good job capturing most of the important stuff. Definitely worth a read though, especially for types who view poker analytically, which is most people on this site.
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I’ve been reading a lot of Greek tragedies lately. Turns out to be a pretty good way to mentally prepare oneself for election night. I have a hard time imagining the outcome being any worse than Medea.
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Most people on this site? Who wasn’t?
I believe David is more of a feels kind of player
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That explains why the first poker book of his I bought cost me at least a million Sklansky dollars.
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You really should have known better
Blowing that first hundred dollar deposit on party in 2004 and never looking at it again changed my whole life. Oh well I’ve always been about that hard mode life.
Some people went the ultra hard route of extravagant parties and the existential crisis of what to do with all that money. As I said, it’s a feels game.
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