“I’m updating my content. What would you like to read?” I asked the Lazyweb.

“Your book recommendations!” The Lazyweb answered.

Well alrighty then, here are writings currently on my mind.

Long Fiction

SyFy’s The Expanse hooked me. Bait taken, I’m still reeling up the serial-reading-line of Epic that is James S.A. Corey’s near-future space-opera. I love the exploration into that oft-overlooked time between now and interstellar economy. I love “being” in space, feeling the shifts in gravity, the need to reconsider three-dimensionality and fragility; like the opening to 2001, it puts me there. I love the rich politics where no one is right and everyone is right. I love the multi-cultural cast and the shifting terms of what culture even means. I love that there are a million of these books.

Short Fiction

I’m a sucker for poetic, genre-fuckit, experimental, multi-layered lit that subverts the easy answer. Even more, I’m a sucker for literature written about people like me, by people like me, for people like me–but that’s a good deal harder to find. Spoon Knife Anthology 2: Test Chamber delivers a vastness of short stories, poetry, memoir-fueled essays, and unclassified short works exploring intersections of neuro/gender/sexual/racial/cultural diversity, curated not as education for normies but as a howl to those of us it represents. As an anthology, it’s a mixed bag at times, but the top-notch stuff is top-notch, and all of it is worth the time.

Non-Fiction

At work, in the kitchen, there is a white board with a monthly question. For July: favorite non-fiction rec?. This translated to me as: if your colleagues read only one systems-thinking book ever, what should it be? My choice is the slightly dated Frijof Capra’s The Web of Life. At its essence, Capra’s take-away message from much of his work is that holistic thinking is how we get out of this global wreck we’ve made. Capra’s writing is accessible, the systems-thinking frames are key to good decision-making in a global ecology, and it’s a gateway to deeper readings on complexity.

Graphic Fiction

Someone made a list of all of my favorite storythings and handed it to Cryoclaire and then she made Drugs and Wires. 90’s nostalgia cyberpunk dystopia brain-computer anti-heroes lowlife broken hearts bestfriends cyberparts evil-corps back-ground-art easter-egg references to industrial bands and william gibson screaming self-destructive edge-of-beauty. Yes, please. Free online weekly. Read it, love it, buy her merch.