July Reads

So it looks like I’ve been slacking this month. Appearances are deceiving! Just as the scrawny Bruce Banner contains the gigantic Hulk, just beneath the skin of my anemic reading list lurk 2 books of such bulk that they’re spilling over into August. Tune in next month to find out what they are (Hint: Weird Tales).

Super-Cannes by JG Ballard

Humanity struggles to find equilibrium when constrained by an alien system.

The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling

Genghis: Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden

Genghis: Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden

I almost never read series books one after the other. The tension maintained in these books is pretty brilliant, such that I stuck around for like 800 pages and still wanted more.

The Best American Essays 2011 ed. Edwidge Danticat

I don’t like writers as protagonists, and I don’t think I was fully aware that these would almost all be memoire-ish creative nonfiction essays. The Zadie Smith essay on Facebook is fantastic, though.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

High-Rise by JG Ballard

Humanity struggles to find equilibrium when constrained by an alien system.

Orphanage by Robert Buettner

Like a novelization of Starship Troopers, but the machismo is all genuine. Blech. I won’t be reading any of the rest of this series.

Satanic Summer by Andersen Prunty

You get hooked by the S&M, but stay for the really good characterization of the slacker evangelical protagonist.