Reviews and Comments

Nonya Bidniss

Nonya_Bidniss@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

On Mastodon I'm @Nonya_Bidniss@mas.to I love science fiction.

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Surviving Autocracy (2020, Random House Large Print) 3 stars

Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen

3 stars

Short, fast read in which the author discusses many examples of how Trump's autocratic and fascistic impulses played out in his actions & words as well as the toadies around him. You heard about these things when he did them; Gessen discusses them in the context of the would-be autocrat's intent & desired effects.

Destructionists (2022, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 3 stars

The Destructionists by Dana Milbank

3 stars

An exhaustive recounting of pretty much every rotten thing Republicans have done to damage the U.S. politically in modern history. Ultimately as it reached the current day I stopped listening to this audiobook, as I have personally lived through the criminal Trump regime and the literal destruction it perpetrated, and I'm still watching the current malignant shenanigans of the post-Trump death cult that still calls itself the Republican party; I need no summary of it. For those interested, I think you'll find a lot of history in this book you might not have been aware of.

The City We Became (Hardcover, 2020, Orbit) 4 stars

Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city.

Every city has …

The City We Became by N.K. Jemison

4 stars

Content warning Spoilers

The Information (EBook, 2011, Knopf Doubleday Pub. Group) 3 stars

From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, …

The Information by James Gleick

3 stars

A good book if you want to know everything about information from the concept of information to the history & development of theories and technologies. A real soup to nuts book. One of the key things I learned is that information theory and all that goes into it is just not of interest to me. (shrug) But if you're into it, I bet you'll really like this book.

Sapiens A brief Story of Human Kind (2011, Harper) 4 stars

(p.010)

Harper Perennial

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2015 by HarperCollins …

Sapiens

3 stars

Sapiens (2011, Harper) 4 stars

(Audiobook) I already knew a lot of the content but I enjoy having it from a new perspective with a variety of new anecdotes. At some points I distinctly felt like the author's biases were coming through--in fact at some points I really questioned his ideas--but otherwise an enjoyable and informative book.

Perhaps the Stars (Hardcover, 2021, Tor Books) 4 stars

From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the …

Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer

2 stars

This whole tetralogy was bizarre, excessively wordy, and generally unpleasant, all the characters and their interactions were insane, finally culminating in a drawn out death wheeze of an ending. I only finished each book including the last out of a mild fascination with "could this get worse, or will it get better?" Was the author simply playing a colossal joke?