Leslie Fucking Jones by Leslie Jones Leslie Jones is a character. There is really no one like her in the entertainment scene right now, much less the world. She’s a living female orc (and I mean that as a compliment — I like female orcs). What producers and executives don’t get is how to utilize her. So she’s stereotyped as the loud black woman or the comically large Black person among the petite white ladies. Like she only exists in relation to other people. But she’s her own person and this is her story. And to tell the truth, it’s unfortunately not very different from other struggling Black artists. She…

The Best American Short Stories 2022 edited by Andrew Sean Greer So when I first started this “year of short stories” I asked Reddit how to write one, because I don’t know how. I write novels. I do long form. What they said was “read short stories”. So this is my first foray into sampling what others are doing in the space. All I know is I was glad when it was done. Did I learn anything? Well, I learned that I am way out of my league when it comes to reaching the kind of quality and skill needed to express an idea in a fancy literary way. But…

Golden Son (Red Rising #2) by Pierce Brown I don’t know what defines military science fiction, but this is it. And I’m sorry I didn’t recognize it in my review of the first book when I compared it to Hunger Games because I’m an idiot. Hunger Games was about survivalism. This is about strategy, tactics, politics, and war. I’m an idiot not to see it for what it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, it’s a testament to how good the book is that it disguises it so well. In Red Rising, it was basically setting up pieces — the character creation and then “the war games”…

The Client by John Grisham I realized I had never read a John Grisham novel, and I like law (I watch Legal Eagle and listen to podcasts about it.) So I thought I ought to remedy that, since the guy basically invented legal thrillers. (Is there such a thing as lawyerpunk? Justicepunk?) The style reminds me of Memory Man. Straightforward, good with tension, tight with time. All the events take place in only three or five days. (The justice system can work fast when it wants to in the Grishamverse). The story doesn’t seem like a thriller or suspense novel, but it is. It’s just about a kid who learns…

I thought it’d be interesting to see how I pick books to read, if there’s a pattern. So I looked back over 2022’s books I read and tried to remember how/why I added them to my “to be read” list. Swashbucklers – a Big Idea on John Scalzi’s site. The Big Idea is a type of featured post where authors of new works can talk about what inspired them to write the book. All These Worlds (Bobiverse #3) – The third book in a trilogy, and I liked the first two well enough. I don’t remember where I became aware of the original book. Nothing But Blackened Teeth – a…