The Intelligence Explosion

I can sum up The Intelligence Explosion in two words. Robots BAAAAD! And by robots, I mean artificial intelligence in all its myriad of forms. Of the thirteen chapters in the book, only one presents the benefits of AI. The rest present the ways AI will mess us up. AI’sContinue Reading

The Locked Ward

Twin girls adopted at birth by two families. One is middle class. One is upper class. The rich one is accused of murdering her family’s biological daughter. The other tries to get her freed from The Locked Ward, a psychiatric hospital where she is being held on a murder charge.Continue Reading

Automatic Noodle

A group of sentient robots decide to run the restaurant where they work after their owners disappear in Automatic Noodle. While the characters are interesting, the world building is the best part of the book. California has broken off from the rest of America after a prolonged war. The humansContinue Reading

Preserving the Seasons

Preserving the Seasons begins with brief overviews of all the ways to save your garden, or farmers market’s, bounty. Freezing, pickling, water bath canning, drying, dehydrating and freeze drying are all covered as are various types of infusions. I don’t know if everyone has a relative like my grandma. SheContinue Reading

Another

Another is a pleasantly creepy middle grade horror tale by the great adult horror author, Paul Tremblay. Like the Goosebumps books, this novel, while set in a young person’s world, is a blast for adult readers too. Casey is a preteen who is already dealing with bullying and tics whenContinue Reading

Algospeak

Algospeak was not what I expected at all. I expected a deep dive into how social media has changed the words we use as well as changed the language itself. While the book does start there, it tends to go off in tangents down 4chan, incels and beauty influencers’ paths.Continue Reading

Rage

Rage is the latest novel in the Kate Burkholder police procedural series. In a small Ohio town, a young Amish man recently back from his rumspringa is found dead in the woods cut into eleven pieces. Police Chief Kate is on the case. She suspects a non-local is the killerContinue Reading

Dogged Pursuit

In the previous thirty entries in this mystery series, Andy Carpenter is a rich defense attorney, who really, really, really, wants to retire but just keeps getting sucked into one more case. To be honest, it was getting a bit repetitive, though Andy’s snarky humor always makes me come backContinue Reading

A Novel Murder

A Novel Murder is an interesting mashup of a cozy amateur detective mystery and an insider’s look into the publishing industry. Jane is an ambitious author at a murder mystery convention. When a literary agent is killed at the event, Jane jumps at the chance to solve the crime whileContinue Reading