Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

May 2024 In Review

Posted on May 31, 2024 by smellincoffee

May proved to be a charming and busy month for reading, and continued the strange trend of my reading more novels than nonfiction, possibly because grad school and a major work project. I did make some progress on the Science … Continue reading →

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Star Trek: Burning Dreams

Posted on May 30, 2024 by smellincoffee

Decades ago, then-Commander Spock risked a court martial to bring his former captain, Christopher Pike, to Talos IV, in hopes that it would allow Pike to escape his body, so ruined by delta radiation. Now Spock is returning, called to … Continue reading →

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Solarpunk stories: a novella and short stories

Posted on May 29, 2024 by smellincoffee

Recently I encountered the word ‘solarpunk’, and learned that it was a subgenre of science fiction that attacks the pessimism of cyberpunk by creating futures that are its opposite. In solarpunk settings, humanity has learned to grow with nature — … Continue reading →

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books We Hyped but Haven’t Read

Posted on May 28, 2024 by smellincoffee

This week’s triple-T is books we were over the moon to buy, but….haven’t gotten around to reading. But first, teases! Volcanoes, then, can be sites of encounter and performance, where history is made. Sometimes their eruptions are so dramatic they … Continue reading →

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Star Trek: Savage Trade

Posted on May 27, 2024 by smellincoffee

When Captain James Kirk ordered the Enterprise to find out what happened to the crew of a science outpost that had gone missing, doubtless he never expected to help George Washington with a political revolution, or fight at the side … Continue reading →

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Sassy galaxies & road-tripping the solar backwoods

Posted on May 24, 2024 by smellincoffee

This week has seen a little action on the Science Survey, as I read titles for the Local Astronomy and Cosmology & Astrophysics sections. First up, The Big Backyard is a short look at the outer reaches of our own … Continue reading →

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The Rosie Project

Posted on May 23, 2024 by smellincoffee

Imagine if Sheldon Cooper wrote a memoir about falling in love, and you’ll have something like The Rosie Project. Don Tillman is a genetics professor with a rigorously scientific approach to life, who has standardized even his meals to simplify … Continue reading →

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WWW Wednesday

Posted on May 22, 2024 by smellincoffee

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Taking on a World of Words, in which participants must answer these questions three: WHAT is your name? WHAT is your quest? WHAT – …..Oh, sorry. It’s about reading. The questions: What are … Continue reading →

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The Shadow of War

Posted on May 22, 2024 by smellincoffee

JFK’s presidency is off to a… start. Dismissed as a greenhorn who has no idea what he’s up to, he’s just had to eat crow on the national stage after admitting to the fiasco that was the Bay of Pigs … Continue reading →

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Science fiction book bingo?

Posted on May 21, 2024 by smellincoffee

Today while visiting a new-to-me blog, Dragon Rambles, I saw a link to a bookish game called Science Fiction Book Bingo. It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt or a reading challenge. Now, what can I claim? Small Beginnings: Start … Continue reading →

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