I got through a sizable chunk of reading in January. Part way through, I found myself in something of a humour book kick that just kept on rolling, because why not? ReadA Confederacy of Dumptys – John LithgowThe Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky ChambersCalypso – David SedarisNew Teeth – Simon RichHits…
I heard Simon Rich interviewed on a podcast recently and they discussed this book, Rich’s most recent. It sounded right up my alley, so I immediately put it on hold at the library and finally got my hands on it. I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed so hard from reading. New Teeth is a…
I just finished it. I was hoping to have it wrapped before New Year’s Eve–new year, new project-kinda thing–but what with the usual Christmas busyness around the house plus a Covid scare requiring added family isolation time and hours spent online trying in vain to get a quality test booked before finally scoring one, plus…
Good lord, can Becky Chambers write. I mentioned late last year that Martha Wells wholly renewed my sometimes waning interest in science fiction books, and writing like Chambers accomplishes is going to keep it awake and attentive indefinitely. The story is about a mixed bag of interstellar races who work aboard a “tunnelling” space craft…
Another pretty good year for books, despite renos I’ve written about and a pandemic you may have heard of. In the chronology of how I read them, here are my top books of 2021: Zeroes is the story of what happens if some everyday, flawed people got superpowers. This particular group are known to each…
As I picked up my ebook again this morning, I realized that I was continuing to read from right where I’d left off… two days ago. I cast my mind back to yesterday to recall if I had read farther than I recalled, or maybe read some of the other book I’m reading–now’s one of…
… a Pixel 5. Not the current flagship Google Android unit, but one generation removed from it. Here’s how the decision happened, in brief:– It was an unlocked unit sold at a steep open box discount (everything included but unused; it literally hadn’t even had the cables or anything else unwrapped) on eBay for $500…
A recent iteration in the fill-in-the-blanks card game genre, Kids Against Maturity is geared as a kid-friendly version of the insanely popular Cards Against Humanity tabletop game. The rules are simple: Each player (of ideally at least four) takes ten white Answer cards. There’s a stack of blue Question cards which players take turns reading…
Santa was kind to us this year. And among the games we got was a quick one called Uno Flip. A nice twist on the classic Uno card game, here the players use both sides of the cards as the game progresses. There’s a new action card called Flip, which makes the draw pile, the…
For several years now, my wife and daughter and I have celebrated Jolabokaflod, the Icelandic tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve. The phrase basically translates to Christmas (Jol – think Yule) book (bok) flood (flod), and is pronounced something like YO-la-BO-kka-fludt. It essentially comes down to giving new books (and perhaps…