September was a quieter month for leisure reading than the last have been, in part because of grad school — I’m constantly reading articles related to information science for class, both the assigned pieces and those I can find connected to the subject. As a result I’ve been more fiction-interested, though I’ve also picked up a few books related to topics we’re discussing in class (information seeking, information behavior, social media, etc).

Climbing Mount Doom:
Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley and Ken Powers
Crypto, Steven Levy.
The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr. Review this week.
Skimmed/discarded: The Supremacists. This is a little book about federal judges (from circuits to Supremes) legislating from the bench. It’s badly dated at this point, so I decided to look for something more current.
I have several books in the pending discard box which include the Genghis Khan book and the YA western title. I was in a PURGE PURGE PURGE mood yesterday and am waiting to see if my mind changes.

The Big Reads:
Finished and posted a review for The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Now to give the Shahnameh some attention.

The Unreviewed:
War of the Worlds, narrated by LEONARD NIMOY with supporting narration from Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Brent Spiner, etc. More of an audio drama than an audiobook, the main attraction was the Star Trek alumni presenting. I don’t know if this should count as a ‘read’, but it’s on Goodreads so there ya are.

Storm Front, Jim Butcher. An urban fantasy novel in which a private detective (Harry Dresden) who trained as a wizard is contacted by the police department to investigate a double homicide in which the killer could have only been using magic. Unfortunately, Dresden is regarded as the suspect himself by the White Council, who monitor and police magic users. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the character, but lost interest in the plot. Magic in this novel is one of those things a few people know about, a few more people know about but try to ignore or misinterpret it, and the rest of us are wholly oblivious to.

The New Right, Michael Malice’s investigation of the ‘alt right’ Malice is a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, and who like Ayn Rand used that experience to develop a deep animosity toward the State. He’s a merry, cheeky warrior, though, not a brooding one — and that attitude got him invited to a private community of ‘trolls’, where he began encountering people whom he profiles in this book. The New Right is a survey of various movements that are united chiefly by their viewing of progressivism/psuedoleftism/psuedoliberalism as The Enemy, and by their recognition that the right wing of the uninparty state (the neocons, corporate-cons, establishment GOP types) is an obstacle, not an ally. The book focuses more and more on racialists as it develops, so I grew weary of listening to this audiobook despite enjoying Malice in general. Sidenote: I had no idea until visiting his Wikipedia page that he created Overheard in New York, which I’ve been visiting for nearly twenty years now. This is one I will probably revisit if I can find a cheap physical copy: audio isn’t a good format for nonfiction I need to chew over, and it didn’t help that I mostly listened to this while playing Stardew Valley, so I was often distracted by fishing, flying monsters, and arranging my sprinklers so minimize manual watering of my pixel crops.

Capitalist Punishment, Vivek Ramaswamy. A DNF, as it’s principally written towards investors who find their funds being used to support political causes without their knowledge or consent. If I had enough money to invest, I’d buy land and go Thoreau on everybody.

Coming Up in October:
A SF celebration! Expect a hearty dose of science fiction to make up for dire lack of it most of this year. I blame Mount Doom.