Famous Men Who Never Lived | 
pickOne of the things I really love about science fiction is the ability to explore issues in a way that almost feels safer than in regular fiction. This book takes the emotional intensity of the refugee situation presented in Moshin Hamid's Exit West and ups the magical realism to full blown alternate realities. This is a book that I'll be thinking about for a long time and will need to sit with for a while to really process.
It‘s been a while since I posted so I‘ll try to post some of the great books I‘ve read or am reading. I‘ll start with this one. I‘m going to call it hopeful apocalyptic. It‘s about when an alternate New York in another timeline butts up against our own. The main character becomes obsessed with preserving the alternate New York culture. One such piece is a book called “The Pyronauts” (which the publisher cleverly hid behind the book jacket).
pickThis is a really cool book. It‘s science fiction that, I think, would appeal to people who aren‘t big sci-fi fans. It‘s imaginative but also relatable. K Chess uses the sci-fi genre, set in an alternate future, to make important statements about the world we live in, relevant to immigration and refugee issues, as well as general loss.
Love it!
#bookmail from the other week. I‘m really looking forward to the tagged and The Umbrella Academy.
pickBetween🤘🏻and so-so, rounded to🤘🏻because I really like the premise - using the idea of divergent Earths and their histories to explore forced migration and Otherness, “belonging” to a group, grief, and mourning. Where I struggled was when the sections of the fictional book “The Pyronauts” from Hel and Vikram‘s world were included in the narrative - the technique was distracting and didn‘t work as well as it did in a book like Station Eleven.
After the post office, I had to stop by the library for my holds. Excited to read both of these! Just got the arc of the sequel to Trail of Lightning in the mail—I have a fun marathon in my future!
It's my Saturday to work again. I'm currently cataloging the books that come out this Tuesday. 😍
