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Arcadia by Iain Pears, 2015

I bought a fire signed first edition of this book from the dollar tree and now it's one of my favorites.

It's a virtuosic smorgasbord of themes, genres, and plot lines that should please if not completely arouse to ejaculation any fans of sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and even maybe political thrillers alike. It's simply loaded to the brim with awesomeness and surprises and putting it down proved to be a nuisance.

A mathematician from some distant future (who knows which one) is devising highly polarizing technology supposed to have the capability of accessing parallel dimensions and/or time periods, which is tested with the open ended fantastical jottings or a brilliant professor. The device feeds off the information to create a sort of projection of the story, a Tolkieny fantasy land of swords and lords. A young girl wanders in on accident and complications arise. And these complications are quite complicated. There's blackouts and deaths and the institute that formerly employed the machine's creator needs to track her and it down in the interest of public safety. But the whole nature of the technology is to study the inverse of cause and effect and whether the future can alter the past as it does the other way around.

So new universes come to be and that's just not the way things are supposed to be so the timelines of the respective worlds have to conform to keep the story logical, thereby sending the other into a state of complete never-existence because the nature of things is that it's all just one universe after all. You never really know when or where the dimension is located with respect to the other and the way they're connected also ought to be a subject of deep speculation.

Arcadia is amazingly inventive and deft in so many fields and impossibly gripping. A true feat.

5/5

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How I Came to Sparkle Again by Kaya McLaren, 2012

A book loaded with an almost comical amount of tragedy and hardships for its fragile characters, but more so loaded with hope and perseverance.

The main character comes home to the ski town of Sparkle, Colorado after fleeing from her husband and his affair with another woman, and it's up to the Sparklers to help her heal, whether that be with humor or liquor or hot sex. There's also a ten year old girl with a dead mother and single father with hardly any time for her. And miscarriages.

The pay off didn't deliver as much as I'd hoped but it stayed true to the claims of being a page turner at least for me. It also should get bonus points for a surprising amount of gruesome medical recollections.

3.5/5

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Dodgers by Bill Beverly, 2016

A coming of age and travel story that's straight outta Compton.

We got this guy East, who at only 15 is a reputable street banger/watcher for the trap and he and an assembled crew of four set out to the alien land of Wisconsin to bust a cap in some judge's ass.

Pretty gritty at times and an unexpected turnout somewhat.

4/5

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This Census-Taker by China Miéville, 2016

Very intriguing and esoteric little tale of isolation and the such. A young boy and his parents live up a grand hill, far away from the bridge town below. After the mother leaves that world, he would run into town screaming murder, seeing the act vaguely, already aware of the father's penchant for coldly murdering small animals with his bare hands to throw into some deep corpse hole. So now it's just father and son and son isn't a bit excited about that equation. Then comes a census taker very late into the story and I guess everything's good then.

The atmosphere here is something else entirely, something highly unsettling.

This book was so interesting in the content it has that its length is downright disappointing, I'd really liked more from it, more details and insights, but as it is it's sort of like an appetizer for a monumentally amazing book that doesn't exist.

4/5

I'm glad you're getting so much reading in, but please tell me that you're still writing.

Because reading without writing is like fucking without cumming.

I write every day

How many times do you write it?

I'm writing these reviews, aren't I

Yeah, but you didn't write "every day" in any of them.

sorry