Finished Reading
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
I’ll be honest, I was looking for a short science fiction book for #TrekAThon and I’d heard a bit about the Martha Wells “Murderbot Diaries.” All Systems Red was fine. A first person narrative, our main character is the self-dubbed Murderbot, a sentient security droid who hacked his governance programing. Murderbot is taciturn, sarcastic, cynical, and a bit lazy when it can be. Kind of like grumpy teenager. Murderbot has a past, which we don’t find too much about, and the story has a mystery, which isn’t entirely solved. This is the first in a series of novellas, after all. I’m not inclined to read the rest because “Murderbot Diaries” isn’t really my thing. I find I’m pretty picky about science fiction.
Jay’s Journal of Anomalies by Ricky Jay
From 1994–2000, magician Ricky Jay published a quarterly pamphlet entitled Jay’s Journal of Anomalies. This is a soft bound collection of the 16 issues, lovely typeset and lushly illustrated. Subjects include intelligent dog acts, flea circuses, ceiling walkers, the Mechanical Turk, and the odd association between dentists and traveling entertainments. Magic adjacent subjects. Jay is more interested in the history of such things instead of the debunking of them. The illustrations of broadside, advertisements, and poster are from his own collections.
Summer Challenges Check-In
#TrekAThon wrapped up on Saturday. I managed to save six crew members! Hey, I’m terrible at prompt-based readathons, so this is totally a win for me.
- Commander Scott: Zhiguai: Chinese True Tales of the Paranormal and Glitches in the Matrix, edited and translated by Yi Izzy Yu & John Yu Branscum
- Nurse Chapel: The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo by Zen Cho
- Captain Kirk: Jay’s Journal of Anomalies by Ricky Jay
- Yeoman Rand: Jay’s Journal of Anomalies by Ricky Jay
- Commander Spock: All Systems Red by Martha Wells
- Lieutenant Uhura: All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My goal for 20 Books of Summer was ten books. And with a month left, I’ve read…ten books! I don’t really have plans to expand my goal to 15 books. I have two books in-progress that would count (started after June 1st), but I also have The Mysteries of Udolpho, planned for August which is 18th century and long. But, Reverse Readathon and Bout of Books are both coming up; I won’t say “impossible” and I’ll continue to keep count.
Simple Tricks & Nonsense 
How did you like The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo?
It was not what I expected (I expected a speculative fiction aspect), but I did enjoy it. I’ll probably read more by Zen Cho in the future.
Aww I love Murderbot! “A first person narrative, our main character is the self-dubbed Murderbot, a sentient security droid who hacked his governance programing.” It’s funny you said “his” because I’ve seen men refer to MB as her and women refer to MB as him and very few as it. I think it’s very interesting!
I did refer to MB as it later, but that was on second thought. I listened to it as an audio book and the reader was male, so that has definitely influenced my way of thinking.
MB is more male-like as the stories go on. Ahh I didn’t know they went with a male narrator!
Yours is the first review of Murderbot I’ve read that isn’t positively glowing. I’m not a huge science fiction fan so I’m hesitant to try it but I’m sure I will eventually. I suspect my reaction will be similar to yours though.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is on my Classics Club list but I’m usually more in the mood for classics in the winter months. At least the chunkier “classic” classics. I’ll be curious to see what you think. Good luck!