Author Archives: Goddess in the Stacks

Book Review: Redshirts

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redshirtsRedshirts
by John Scalzi
Science Fiction
317 pages
Published 2012

Some books are surreal suspensions of disbelief. Some books just make you go “WHAT the FUCK” every couple of chapters when a new twist is revealed, and this is one of the latter. Just – what the FUCK.

Imagine your average sci-fi space opera TV show on cable television with hand-wavey science and half-assed special effects – take those characters and make them realize they’re IN A TV SHOW. Let them realize all of their woes are due to shitty writing, and see what they do with that knowledge. THAT is this book, and it is crazy and hilarious and weird and eye-roll-inducing.

Between the time travel, the Box that does magic science behind the scenes so things work out on-screen, the Narrative taking control and making people say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise do – this book is wacky and just full of what-the-fuckery. It’s fun, though, and if you can keep yourself from groaning out loud every few pages, it’s a pretty good read.

From the cover of Redshirts:

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is even more thrilled to be assigned to the ship’s xenobiology laboratory, with the chance to serve on “Away Missions” alongside the starship’s famous senior officers.

Live couldn’t be better . . . until Andrew begins to realize that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) sadly, at least one low-ranked crew member is invariable killed.

Unsurprisingly, the savvier members belowdecks avoid Away Missions at all costs. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is . . . and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

TTT – Bookish Items I’d Love to Own

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a list on her page of everyone participating, so go check that out for more bookish goodies! I only got to seven items before getting sick, so here’s what I’ve got!

 

The first two things are things I’ve actually asked for for Christmas this year. Storiarts has an amazing collection of scarves, gloves, tote bags, and pillows printed with excerpts from literature. I really want their scarf and writer’s gloves printed with e.e. cummings’ “I carry your heart” poem. They have so many items with so many different classics to choose from. If you have a favorite piece of classic lit, they probably have something with it printed on it!

This skirt is absolutely adorable. There’s also a dress in the same print!

I want this print for my future reading nook.

I’m also a big fan of enamel pins, and these three are perfect to go with the Hufflepuff pin, introvert turtle pin, and feminist pin that are already on my bag. I Like Big Books / It’s Not Hoarding If It’s Books / Books Are My Happy Place

 

 

Book Review: Number One Chinese Restaurant

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number one chinese restaurantNumber One Chinese Restaurant
by Lillian Li
Contemporary Fiction/Family Drama
288 pages
Published June 2018

I don’t tend to read a lot of contemporary fiction, but I had several on my beach read/summer reading list, and this one is set in Rockville, Maryland, which is pretty close to where I live. Having read it finally, I wouldn’t call it a beach read, though!

Number One Chinese Restaurant follows the owners and staff of The Beijing Duck House before and after a devastating fire. There’s a lot of chinese culture revealed in the book, from familial obligation to amending names with an Ah- prefix, to the immigration process to America, to knowing what region someone is from by their accent and forming opinions of them based on that. (Although I suppose we do that in the US, too – that last one might be universal.)

We start with the two brothers, Jimmy and Johnny. Jimmy is the current owner of the Duck House, while Johnny is out of the country for the first part of the book. The two brothers are opposites in most ways, with Jimmy being the back-of-house hardliner and Johnny being the diplomatic schmoozer.

(Speaking of back-of-house, this book PEGGED restaurant life. I’ve worked in food service quite a lot, and from the chaos of rushes to the drug and alcohol abuse, to the confusion between front and back of house but at the same time feeling like you’re all in it together – yeah. This book NAILS it.)

From Jimmy and Johnny, we have their strong-willed mother, Feng, and her cousin, “Uncle” Pang, who has mysterious connections and can get things done but isn’t exactly benevolent about it. The last member of the immediate family is Annie, Johnny’s daughter. There is a staff chart in the inside cover of the book to help keep everyone straight, and it’s quite handy, because then we get into the staff. There’s really two main plotlines going, though they revolve around each other and intertwine in places. There’s Johnny’s efforts to open a new restaurant, and then there’s Nan and Ah-Jack.

Nan and Ah-Jack have both been working at the Duck House for thirty years, and have married other people but have always adored each other. As the restaurant enters crisis, so do their personal lives, and things get messy.

In order for me to like contemporary fiction, there have to be personal hooks that interest me, and this book hit food service, minorities, and the local area. That was more than enough to make it an enjoyable read.

From the cover of Number One Chinese Restaurant:

The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a go-to solution for hunger pangs and a beloved setting for celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family’s controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each of them to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.

Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave his late father’s homespun establishment for a fancier one. Jimmy’s older brother, Johnny, and Johnny’s daughter, Annie, ache to return to a time before a father’s absence and a teenager’s silence pushed them apart. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, are tempted to turn their thirty-year friendship into something else, even as Nan’s son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. And when Pat and Annie, caught in a mix of youthful lust and boredom, find themselves in a dangerous game that implicates them in the Duck House tragedy, their families must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to help their children.

Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multivoiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silk-screen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive.

Sunday Stuff

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I’m starting to look over this year’s challenges and think about what I want to do in 2019. I’m currently at 40 out of 50 on the PopSugar Challenge, so if I buckle down, I could totally finish that by the end of the year, especially since I own most of the last ten books I need to read for it. To be honest, though, I probably won’t. I have far more interesting library books to read!

I’m debating starting two challenges without end dates on them next year. I’d still do the Goodreads Challenge, but that’s just number of books. The first of the two challenges that have been interesting me lately is the Dewey Decimal Challenge, where you read a book for every category of the Dewey Decimal System – or at least every 10s category. It’s a lot of books, but with no time limit on the challenge, it’s just something to keep track of over the next few years.

The other challenge is a geographical one – there’s two main ones, and I think I’d start first with the US challenge – read a book set in each state and territory of the US. Once I finish that, I might move onto the world challenge, which is a book for each country on Earth. Preferably written by an author from each country.

I have about six weeks to figure out what challenges I want to start.

On a completely different topic, I’m really glad I have posts scheduled out about a week and a half on average, because right now I am NOT feeling good. I caught my husband’s cold – which is really just a sore throat and some stuffiness, but it’s made my thyroid flare. So I’m coughing but trying not to, face is full of snot, and my immune system is going absolutely INSANE because the tiniest upset sucks when you have an autoimmune disease. I’m not getting much reading done, is what I’m trying to say! Heck, I’m having trouble focusing long enough to type up this post. Chronic illnesses, man. I just need it to clear up by Thanksgiving, as we’re getting away for the weekend up to Philadelphia, mostly to see VNV Nation in concert Friday night!

And of course this all hit me the same day I finally got my pre-ordered copy of Girls of Paper and Fire, and then the very next day the library sent me The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, but instead of reading either I’m about to go pass out. Blargh.

Book Review: Autonomous

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autonomousAutonomous
by Annalee Newitz
Biopunk
301 pages
Published 2017

Autonomous is an interesting story that poses a lot of moral questions. It doesn’t really take sides; both the pharmaceutical pirate and the agents tracking her down are painted in sympathetic ways, as if we’re meant to like them all. We see why Jack is a pharmaceutical pirate; medicine is only available to those rich enough to pay for it, so the poor stay poor and sick and short-lived. She wants to change that. She reverse-engineers drugs, manufactures them, and distributes them to the needy through her associates.

Meanwhile, Eliasz is a conflicted military agent who is sexually attracted to robots. Or at least to his partner, Paladin, though a flashback shows what might have been the start of his attraction to robots. Paladin is probably the single most interesting character in the entire book, as she muses on the nature of being indentured, and searches through her memories and the internet for information about her situation.

The book does have LGBT content – Jack is bisexual, and Eliasz is – robosexual? Is that a thing? Paladin could be called nonbinary or trans; she repeatedly mentions that gender isn’t a thing to robots, but because she’s a military robot, most people call her a he at the beginning of the book. She learns the brain inside her is female, and to make Eliasz more comfortable with his attraction, she decides to use female pronouns. Eliasz does use the F word to refer to himself being attracted to the robot at the beginning, when they were using male pronouns. This puzzles Paladin for a while, causing her to search the term and figure out what Eliasz meant by its use.

There’s a lot of complex world-building in this book that is barely brushed past. From the corporations who own patents covering everything, to the system of indenture that covers humans as well as robots, to the bio-domes that cover cities (but it’s livable outside the biodomes, so why are they needed?), to the new federations that cover continents that used to be divided into several countries – there’s a LOT going on. And there’s not just robots, but also some pretty advanced cybernetics implanted in humans as well as an everpresent network of data that can be tapped into with implants that everyone has.

Ultimately, for as complex as the world is, and cohesive as the plot is, I’m left wondering who, if anyone, was in the right in this story. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be happy with the ending or not. I’ve seen other reviews saying Neuromancer was a way better book in a similar vein, and I actually have copy of that waiting to be read. So we’ll see.

From the cover of Autonomous:

When anything can be owned, how can we be free?

Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, a pharmaceutical Robin Hood traversing the world in a submarine, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack leaves a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, repeating job tasks until they become insane.

Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his partner Paladin, a young indentured robot. As they race to stop information about the hacked drugs at their source, they form an uncommonly close relationship that neither of them fully understands, and Paladin begins to question their connection – and a society that profits from indentured robots. 

Friday 56 – Number One Chinese Restaurant

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number one chinese restaurantThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li.

Poor wifey, she’d tuckered herself out. He gently pulled down the quilts, searching for her forehead, her lovely fat cheeks.

But from the nest of fabric, a thick pillow emerged. Confused, he pawed the quilts down farther. He grew desperate to see her tufts of hair and chilled scalp, her familiar, clammy skin, but still more pillow showed. He tore the bed apart, throwing sheets onto the floor, and only when the mattress was bare did he stop. His wife was not home. He had no idea where she’d gone.

Well that’s quite the mystery. And only a side-note to the main plot! I am intrigued. Full review up when I finish the book!