Recently finished Hyperion, by Dan Simmons.

I really liked the premise of each character telling their own story. It was a lot of variety and very interesting ideas were explored in different ways in each of them.

picked up yellowface by rf kuang and finished it the same day. recommended it to my partner, who also devoured it in three days.

highly recommend if you’re looking for an easy, juicy (in the way of reality tv, so a little anxiety inducing also) read that’s about ego, publishing, the literary establishment’s treatment of minority authors, the actual mechanisms of being cancelled, and the perils of being Extremely On Twitter. a very fun summer read.

I just finished up Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty. It’s the last in her Daevabad Trilogy, an immensely entertaining work drawing from legends and myths from the Middle East. It’s filled with political intrigue, memorable characters with well developed internality, and detailed world building.

It’s good stuff! I had a lot of fun reading it, it’s a little different than typical fare with the Middle Eastern background, and Chakraborty has an eye for plotting and characters that kept me going through a lengthy tale. I’m looking forward to reading her collection of short stories in the universe, River of Silver, and the Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, a novel set a thousand years before this trilogy.

Just finished Alone Together, by Sherry Turkle.

It’s a book that dives into our relationship with technology, and each other. It’s a decent read for these times we are living, although the author didn’t get to live the massification of social media before writing it.

It dives into how we turn to machines to fullfil our connection needs, while avoiding the disappointments of connecting with other humans. It showcases a bunch of stories to illustrate its point, as usual for non-fiction books, but I felt it gave good nuances to the point, and even identified a little with some scenarios. She goes just a little overboard with how little she thinks about online communities, and I feel she doesn’t state very clearly that communities o line doesn’t have to ve the same as communities in real life. My opinion diverges from shat related to that assumption, but it was a great read overall!

Just finished Ada, or Ardor.

If you want something with brilliant prose, multilingual puns on every page, occasional invasions of other styles, a distorted but familiar world, obsession-driven narrative balancing between passion and transcendence, it might be something for you - unless, like Martin Amis, you find it hysterical and yourself unable to ignore the dark reality of several characters, narrator included, having too much resources to care about morals or most laws.