This is a long prose poem, a tribute to space and the people who go there. It nominally has characters--four astronauts and two cosmonauts, two women, four men--inhabiting a space station as it goes around the world sixteen times. Nothing happens, there is no real plot. This is either up your alley or not. The writing is lovely and evocative, the “this is what space is like” stuff felt true. There’s talk of space euphoria, of clogged sinuses, of who has to clean the bathroom. I kept waiting for it to “get going,” there was talk of a parental death, a destructive typhoon visible from their station, and it never really did. Not really what I was looking for, but a good book.

Been meaning to read this book for a long time. Erica Hall owns Mule Design, a design company notable for keeping it real and really good design. This book talks about just how much research you need to do when you are working on a design project, which kinds are good, which kinds are bad, and which kinds (surveys) can be good but are also tricksy. It’s very readable, often funny, and will teach you some things. This was the “shitty pulp edition” and I love it, the only downside to this edition is that some of the images in it are sort of blurry like a newspaper photo, not a big deal.

A compelling story about menopausal-age women who are... somewhat witchy. They don’t want to walk the path the world has made for them. They live in an island community off the coast of New York where billionaires vacation and are also (surprise!) acting like total privileged assholes. Bit of a content warning on this one since the story has to do with a lot of abused teenage girls (though there isn’t graphic abuse in the story) and the bulk of the story is about trying to make things right. There are a lot of terrible men in this book but they tend to get their comeuppance.

A good next installment in this set of mysteries about a forensic anthropologist who had a baby with a detective who is still married to his wife. A combination of mystery-solving and interpersonal relationship solving. I like the mystery stuff a lot better than the other stuff but it’s still a nice readable and not-too-complex set of novels with a very likable (to me) main character who is a single mom who does her best and doesn’t much care what people think.

A graphic novel about a dancing school in Bucharest and the young women who are trying to figure things out in their lives (mainly relationships with other young women or not-so-young women). Beautifully drawn and very relatable and brought me back to my short time in Bucharest in the nineties. Ultimately, like many of these graphic novels, it’s a story of friendship and growing up and learning to set boundaries and get comfortable with yourself.

A memoir of a sort by Jon King from Gang of Four covering his early life and the early years of the band through their first four albums and their ascension to popularity and US/UK tours. King has a chatty and funny style and this book is super readable, doesn’t feel like a tell-all, and has some nifty photos. It wraps up at a dark time in the band’s history which is too bad (since the band continued on and worked some stuff out) but overall a great punk memoir.

This was a fun one to ILL at the library. My director: “Should I be worried?” The story is about a mysterious school in an unknown location where people receive schooling in the fine arts of undetectable murder (of one’s employer). It follows three students through their experiences at the school. The important catch is that if you don’t accomplish your “thesis” you will, yourself, be killed. Written by Rupert “Pina Colada Song” Holmes. It’s a fun, if goofy, read.

Even though this book takes place in rural NH, it had a very Vermont-y feel to it. A family with generations of single moms with single daughters, all of whom are witchy in some way, live in a farm doing their thing until a tragedy strikes. They are blamed, and the family fractures and things unravel. Can Lizzy, the title character, pull it all together, and does she even want to or would she prefer to go back to her more normal and anonymous life in New York? This book deals with some pretty difficult things but it has a calm and peaceful vibe and I enjoyed getting to know the family and the small town.

This is a short sort of bland mystery about a couple from New York who buys a house in Vermont (he got a job with the Forest Service, she was hoping for a job at the Shelburne Museum which fell through) and come to town like fish out of water only to discover a dead man in their well! They can only move into the house once the murder is solved, so they apply themselves to it, driving around in their Smart car like n00bs, and figure it out. Solidly okay. It was a quick read and I’ll probably try the second one to see if the series improves.

A tedious retelling of a dramatic shipwreck and the very involved project to locate and salvage the gold from the shipwreck led by one “mad genius” type guy who sounds like he is very extra. There is a staggering amount of detail in parts and then a lot of hand wavey “And then they got the rest of the gold” at the end which felt very weird considering how much detail there was in the beginning. Looking up the story on Wikipedia, it seems that the mad genius went on the run rather than pay his creditors and investors. That’s the book I’d like to read.