Uncommon Type

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is totally what you would think a collection of short stories from Tom Hanks would be. Fortunately (unfortunately). They are mostly feel-good stories that have hints of darkness, which he doesn't explore, but instead focuses on the optimism. My favorite "The Past is Important to Us" has a bit of sci-fi time travel and it doesn't end so well. Still most of it focuses on the love story set amid the NY World's Fair. There is a typewriter in each story--sometimes in the background, sometimes front and center. There are several involving a group of multi-cultural characters being good friends while some try to date each other, go to the moon, or have mind-blowing success that turns into a curse. They were pretty good too. The recurring character in his "Our Town Today" was excruciatingly bad and almost unreadable ( I skipped them). And he uses words like kablooy, jiffy, without irony and is full of "dad-jokes" (that he also uses without irony). It's nice to read cute little ditties, but don't expect to dig to much or remember much when you're done.

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one of us is lying

One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely one of the more well-thought out, well-told YA books I've read. Each voice is authentic and deals with the stresses of teens trying to fit in and the pressure they feel to succeed. If I guessed the ending, it's only because my daughter kept telling me I wouldn't so I read it closer than I would have. She loved it, and I enjoyed it quite a bit as well.

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The Alice Network

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fine book about female spies, women making hard choices and living their lives regardless of society's expectations. An interesting setting livens up what are really stock characters and rather predictable story. Read it for the history.

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Florida

Florida by Lauren Groff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautifully written short stories about about feeling trapped one way or the other. Not all the stories are winners bit they are all so well observed and so well written you will remember them long afterwards.


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how dare he suggest risk like this to me, when I have proved myself vulnerable

Perhaps this is a projection: as they are both black swans and parents, they are already prefeathered in mourning.

her dog looks at me with a kind of human compassion,

these gorgeous changes that insist that not everything is decaying faster than we can love it.

It was the bread that made the pain return to his body, the deep warmth and good smell.

It was only then, when the night entered, that I understood the depth of time we had yet to face.

I felt, rather than saw, the power go out. Time erased itself from the appliances and the lights winked shut.

I hated that you opened your mouth and suddenly became another person.

things that once were alien life have become, simply, parts of her life.

She is frightened because maybe she has already become so cloudy to her husband that he has begun to look right through her; she’s frightened of what he sees on the other side.

The way he lets himself be full animal, a sensualist, the way he finds glory in the body’s hungers and delights.

how she was only one living lost thing among so many others, not special for being human.

Slowly, through reading, she became aware of the way the demands of a language can change you.

Keep me safe, she says to give him a job, pretending to be afraid. I don’t want to fall.

She would tether them here, to the earth, with her body.

Ancillary Mercy

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you want to read a posthuman book series, this is it. The main character is a ship and it’s interactions, feelings, thoughts and motivations are human but not. The trilogy is well paced and this last book has a great twist. I can’t say why I loved this trilogy so much, some of its concepts I couldn’t even fathom, but I have a feeling I will come back to this again and learn something new every time. I admit I may have a bit of a “ship crush” on Breq

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People in Radch space—and outside it—tended to think of “Radchaai” as being one thing, when in fact it was a good deal more complicated than that,

There was no answer I could have given to the question of what I would drink without seeming to send some message, or imply something about what I was or wasn’t.


Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, large as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else.