Book Review - The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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July 26, 2019

Alternate History is usually the story of grand changes. What happens if the South wins the Civil War? Or if Charles Babbage managed to create computing in the Victorian Era? These types of big questions make for exciting World Building, but “The Only Harmless Great Thing” by Brooke Bolander is a smaller and more human story.

It . . .

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Facebook Is Just An App But I Use It

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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July 19, 2019

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I was at lunch with some friends for work, and I casually remarked that Facebook was fucking evil, and they asked if I had an account. I think that the idea that you can unplug from the mothership of the data economy in any meaningful way and organize your life with the people around you is a joke. I might not freelance anymore, but . . .

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Book Review - Ruined By Design by Mike Monteiro

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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July 12, 2019

Professional ethics books are the closest we'll get to applied Philosophy. (That is, until someone starts paying me to shout at people in the street how they are wrong about everything, but the last time someone tried to make that a profession--they ended up having to drink hemlock.)

Monteiro is the head of . . .

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Living The Bibliophile Life

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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July 08, 2019

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Monday post for last Friday as I took some time off and never got around to being on a computer for the five day weekend.

We are awash in books. We have more of them than ever before—ebooks have allowed an explosion of publishing. We’re reading books on phones, tablets, e-readers, and print book sales are going back up. For . . .

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Book Review - The Doomed City by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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June 28, 2019

The Strugatsky brothers are probably most famous for their novel Roadside Picnic, which later Tarkovsky adapted into the film Stalker. I came across the Doomed City via a blog post on Boing Boing, where Cory Doctorow sang its praises. The brothers wrote the book back in the 70s, but it wasn't published until 1989 due to its overt . . .

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Learning From The Record Store

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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June 21, 2019

I don’t have enough hair left for a mohawk, and I’ve had a corporate job of some sort for over a decade. My punk rock bona fides are solidly in the past. I mean I’ll still scream and yell for a loud rock show, but I will admit that my taste in music drifts a bit more electronic these days. (Often it sounds like Wulfband . . .

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Book Review - Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders

MikeNM

Rants and Reviews. Mostly just BS and Affiliate Links.
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June 14, 2019

Saunders isn't explicitly a genre writer, either by brand or content. Some of his stories are straight literary fiction about weird people socially hobbled by their stupidity, narcissism, or both. When he does lean into genre fiction, it's often just a spice added to his regular style. He doesn't get tied down in world building or . . .

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