Sam Horrorwitt
@shurwitt
Longtime Bay Area arts journalist and occasional playwright turned mailman. I could tell you stories.
Or their shitty siblings in general. I’m sure this is only the tip of the iceberg, because hooboy X-Men writers loooove this trope. And I’m not even counting all their clones and alternate timeline versions here. (2/2)
The X-Men easily could have faced a villain team entirely made up of everybody’s shitty brothers, if they haven’t already. (1/2)
It should be The Piano or maybe My Brilliant Career. Hell, I have a soft spot for Until the End of the World. But who am I kidding? My favorite Sam Neill film is Omen III: The Final Conflict. And it’s not even close.
70. I forgot that I’ve read two of Hua’s earlier books, but she’s local, so that tracks. This novel builds slowly into a riveting portrait of “nice” racism in a fictional Bay Area suburb, where people find the flimsiest excuses to complain about their neighbors and justify it to themselves. #booksky
69. Having sampled a couple of Horowitz’s other series, I quite liked the first book in this one, half of which is a murder mystery in a classic style and the other half makes the editor of that popular mystery series solve a murder of her own. #booksky
68. It’s funny it took me so long to read Pratchett, especially because I read mostly fantasy in my teens. Now that I’m reading Discworld in middle age, I can’t get enough of it. This one’s a delightful sendup of fairy tale tropes while deepening the witches characters we’ve come to know. #booksky
67. I really enjoy Holton’s comedic shtick of stiff propriety vying with lust in a madcap magic-infused Victorian England. Like her earlier trilogy, this one features a different reluctant couple in each book, this time lifelong friend professors feigning enmity to not be forced apart. #booksky
66. I’ve read a few novels by the UK comedy icon lately, & this is my favorite. A typically befuddled Mortimer protagonist is invited to live in a fancy apt. complex if he surveils fellow residents, & his gf has gone missing. Mortimer reads the audiobook with Diane Morgan & Arabella Weir. #booksky
I do love Alameda’s Fourth of July parade. It just gives a real sense of the community coming together.
Our little town of Alameda happens to have the longest Fourth of July parade in the country. Here’s the start of it today, as it passes through our neighborhood.
65. What even is this book? The narrator occasionally experiences a day repeating 9 times, exactly the same except for any changes he causes himself. His wealthy grandpa is killed on the 2nd repetition of one of those days & he has to figure out how to prevent the murder. It’s a lot of fun #booksky
64. I dug Taub’s last book about Lydia Bennet practicing witchcraft, & this one isn’t just an Austen-meets-Frankenstein pastiche. Yes, awkward sister Mary does experiments to raise the dead, but it’s a touching adventure featuring a cruel nemesis & an unlikely ally with secrets of her own. #booksky
63. I’m impressed how much I enjoy this series, considering the formula is consistent: It’s always stately manor inheritor Annie solving a present-day murder rooted in a 1960s murder she’s currently reading about in her great-aunt’s diary. This time her mom and deadbeat dad are involved. #booksky
62. The narrator tells you up front that this is a faceless corpse mystery, and how that subgenre usually ends in the alleged victim revealed as the real killer. A woman’s body is dug up outside a postwar Tokyo brothel, leading to a confusing array of detectives untangling love affairs. #booksky
61. Most of the women-focused reinterpretations of myth that I read are Greek myth in particular, but I really enjoyed this unique take on the Mahabharata, told from the nonlinear perspective of the river goddess Ganga. I’ve been curious about Patel’s Kaikeyi, and now I’m even more so. #booksky
60. I dunno why I didn’t read this way back when I read the rest of the Robot books, except that it’s less readily available. It reads like a fascinating parable about one robot gradually becoming human, with a ton of philosophical dialogue. I know there’s a movie, but I haven’t seen it. #booksky
59. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I’ve read this before. Especially because I like it a lot! A temp office worker for supervillains becomes obsessed with quantifying the damage done by the existence of superheroes. And I’m delighted to learn there’s now a sequel. #booksky
58. Well, this one is just a delight. It’s told like a mystery, but there’s no death till very late in the book. A mom packs up her family and flees after a dog bite complaint, convinced that a neighbor wants to kill her dog. That seems pretty over the top, but what unfolds is even more so. #booksky
57. Another book I wish I liked better. It’s Zelazny’s last, told by Jack the Ripper’s dog. They’re engaged in some mystical game with Dracula, Frankenstein, Holmes, the Wolfman et al. to free Lovecraftian elder gods or stop that from happening. I just got tired of all the game talk. #booksky
56. My mom read a lot of Hillerman, & I only really got into mysteries after she was gone. I can’t say I cared much for this first book in his Navajo mystery series, tho. The mystical aspect made me feel like I hadn’t done some prerequisite reading. Maybe there’s a better one to start with? #booksky
55. I didn’t notice that this all happens in one night, but I liked it a lot, even though it ends with nothing resolved. People hunt for a john who beat a prostitute. A woman lies in months-long sleep, watched by a masked figure. It’s mysterious & atmospheric in a way Murakami does well. #booksky
54. This was a lot of fun. Newly laid off and broken up with his boyfriend, George is stressed out walking rich people’s dogs in London when he suddenly winds up in the same place circa 1300. How he got there is one question, but more pressing is how he’ll survive in medieval times. #booksky
53. Bester won the first Hugo. He wrote the Green Lantern oath.But I found this mind-bendingly weird book hard to follow, its messianic hero a vengeance-crazed, tiger face-tattooed rapist who can teleport and is the key to some magic substance sought by powerful people. #booksky
52. It’s fascinating reading Everett’s very first novel, from 1983. Suder follows a baseball player in a serious slump, obsessively playing the same jazz LP for everyone he meets, wandering away from his family, pursued by a criminal, and picking up a runaway child and an elephant. #booksky