Holy cow, we’re looking down the barrel of this year’s last month. That went by fast. While I didn’t do as much reading for SciFiMonth as I’d hoped, I think I made a pretty good accounting of myself. I didn’t get finished with the Science Survey, either, but that’ll happen this month. My computer dying disrupted my final weekend, though I plan on getting a replacement system online sometime Dec 1st. Kinda have to, because I need a workhorse PC for my final project (pitching library programs and incorporating presentations, flyers, and a video), and my Chromebook ain’t gonna do it. At least there were Black Friday sales to take advantage of.

Sci Fi Month:
War between the Worlds: Global Dispatches, various authors
The Lost Cause, Corey Doctorow
Firefly: Life Signs, James Lovegrove
The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
Eruption, Michael Crichton & James Patterson
A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers

Nonfiction November:
Rise and Reign of the Mammals
Beauteous Truth, Joseph Pearce
American Carnage: Inside the Republican Civil War, Tim Alberta
Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio, Anthony Rudel
What If? 2, Randall Monroe
Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, Jack E. Davis
The Skeptic’s Guide to Alternative Medicine, Steven Novella

Science Survey:
Rise and Reign of the Mammals (Natural History)
Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, Jack E. Davis (Natural History)

Favorite Highlight of the Month:

While nature is a great teacher, her powers are limited by our receptivity and docility to her lessons. Busyness, overconsumption, impatience, and the distractions of non-essential things are conditions of the Fall, not just city life. Unless you are willing to undergo a conversion of sorts, the sicknesses and abstractions of modernity will follow you onto the land, which has little pity for arrogant or stubborn pupils.(Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching)

Science Fiction Book Bingo:

A Ship and Crew: A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet , Becky Chambers
Old-Timer (A Book Published Before 1974): Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury

Coming Up:

Advent is nice and tidy this year, running December 1st – December 24th, so I’ll do a little something in that direction, reading about Church history, Christian formation, something like that. The lady-friend and I are going to be reading My Dear Hemlock, a version of Screwtape Letters but written about a female “patient”, together, so that’ll be one thing. I usually re-read Screwtape during Advent so this will be an interesting variant. My focus in Dec will be to post reviews for some works I’ve read this year and not reviewed, but there will also be other stuff up the pike. But, all that will wait until Dec 9 when my final grad school work for this month is due. Yes, even the prospect of my being able to play Cyberpunk 2077 must be deferred until my work is done…..