For anyone curious, here's a breakdown of what I read last month (December 2024):
Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
This one starts out very strong, with a few Quotables (that I’ve since forgotten), but once onto delving into trickier subjects and imagining futures, the good doctor wears American tunnel vision goggles, which plays against the subtitle while ignoring addressing the root of his two biggest (admittedly interconnected) gripes: funding for scientific advancement, and people not accepting that scientific advancement is a better use of money than humane needs. Money, again, is the problem…which gets that way when like ten people have most of it, so it seems. Still, an engaging read.
Ivy League by Candace Nola
See my review here.
Starling Street by Dinah Palmtag
The cover of the pocket edition I picked up at a used store declared it to be more horrifying than Psycho. I haven’t read the Bloch book (Gwendolyn Kiste’s comparison of the movies and book in a way-back-when issue of Unnerving Magazine kind of cooled the already less than burning desire to grab a copy), but I doubt it’s any less horrifying than this story, which is predictable and obvious, though quick and accessible. There’s a million better books and ten million worse…so, in a pinch, this one’s wholly readable, at least.
A Perfect Likeness: Two Novellas by Richard Wagamese
Now here’s a real standout. Both stories work from top to bottom. There’s suspense, humor, and action. The writing is wholly accessible. The language and tone are right up my alley (Canadian books set in Canada often land for me, perhaps because there are comparatively so few published; wise editors at the big six publishing houses have a thing for stripping away our identities…and so many Canadian authors seem to accept this and cave in hopes of higher financial returns). Grab this if you’re into stories about poor folk eking out urban existences.
Gone Fishin’ by Walter Mosley
This one was a bit disappointing. I’m a fan of the character Easy Rawlins and a bigger fan of the author himself, but this one was a slow, scattered, and mostly pointless trip. There are two chapters near the end almost completely dedicated to accounting church services. I have a decent imagination, but the only thing that sounds as boring as going to church service is reading about attending a church service (just kidding; how could anything be more boring than a church service?). Mosely has a number of excellent books; this one was a miss for me.
Rivers West by Louis L’Amour
Formulaic, yeah, okay, but dude had a winning formula. The pace is blistering (to a fault now and then), the characters are rounded, the action is pure fun. Enemies to lovers is on the table (will they, won’t they?). The outcome of the goal is bigger than any one person. The hero is hard and unbending, but in the right across the board. This is a total page-turner that offers nothing but pure entertainment.
The Mulberry Tree by John Frasca
I didn’t know this was a dramatized non-fiction when I picked it up, but the truth of the situation added huge depth. The world was a vastly different place back in 1965. The writing is inviting and concise. The author won a Pulitzer for his work around the case, so I don’t know what else I can add. A very good, though very brief, read.
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito
This book is tremendous. It offers up the kind of truths that are so often swept away to uphold our comfort (discomfort breeds change after all) while maintaining the status quo. I hope many more Westerners read this book. I really can’t even look at the very clothes on my back or the cellphone in my hand the same way. It was utterly fortuitous that I stumbled upon this one and purchased a copy at the time I did (shortly after Bezos and Musk made their recent big purchase of the United States) while wading through the pillows, toys, games, and xmas junk to find the non-fiction section of books at a Chapters.
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Bio: In 1984, Eddie Generous was born into a family born to shit the bed. He has a print-journalism diploma from a community college, which is important if he ever accepts a job offer to rewrite articles vomited out by AI technology. He was the first of his household to go to college—and first offspring of his ilk to avoid institutionalization, thus far.
Currently, Eddie lives on the west coast of Canada with his wife and their three cats. He is the author of close to 40 standalone books, has edited six anthologies, and has put together 19 issues of Unnerving Magazine. More than 100 of his short stories have seen print in anthologies or magazines. He created and operates Unnerving Books, a small press responsible for publishing close to original 100 titles. He enjoys getting stoned and dancing around his living room.
For more about Eddie Generous, visit jiffypopandhorror.com
Coming January 25, from Dark Ink:
After the sudden death of their parents, the Gerber siblings take over the family farm, quickly learning that fending for themselves is much harder than they'd assumed. This hardship leaves them open to letting a strange man they'd rescued from winter's clutches stay on for room and board, oblivious to the ferocious evil he's carrying as well as ravenous beasts it will draw to their home.
Following a string of grisly chaos across the country, a private detective finds herself directly on the heels of a pack of spree killers she'd been paid to locate. But things aren't as they seem; she never anticipated that she'd come face-to-face with a bloodthirsty pack of werewolves.
If this sounds like something you'd dig, please consider grabbing it from an indie bookshop, or better yet, requesting your library to stock it. It is available on Amazon, but I'd rather go unread than to continue chipping into Jeff Bezos space-retirement fund; so, please, do not buy it (or anything, ever again) from Amazon.