Thread by @doctorow

I know it's a little late for Xmas shipping, but I'm FINALLY getting around to publishing a roundup of all the books I reviewed in 2019!

Part 1: FICTION FOR ADULTS

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I. AGENCY by @Greatdismal: A sequel to The Peripheral for the Trump years, about seductive bitterness of imagined alternate timelines, filled with cyberpunk cool and action.

latimes.com/entertainment-…

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II. RIOT BABY by @TochiTrueStory: An incandescent Afrofuturist novella that connects the Rodney King uprising with contemporary struggle, pitting supernatural powers against dire politics.

pluralistic.net/2020/04/23/rio…

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III. OR WHAT YOU WILL by @BluejoWalton: A metafiction about the desperate attempt of a character to pull his writer into a fictional world to save the both from human mortality.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/07/lit…

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IV. A BEAUTIFULLY FOOLISH ENDEAVOR by @hankgreen: Sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - a madcap and sometimes brutal tale of social media influencers, alien invaders, disinformation, and runaway capitalism.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/08/abs…

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V. FAILED STATE by @NB_Chris: A legal eco-thriller that imagines the end of capitalism without imagining the end of the world - cyberpunk meets ecotopianism, with anarchist jurisdictions, show-trials, and rewilding.

pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/fai…

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VI. AFTERLAND by @laurenbeukes: Eerily well-timed road-trip novel set after a prostate-cancer plague wipes out nearly every man on Earth, except for the protagonist's teenaged son, who is now being hunted by the (all-female) US government.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

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VII. BALLISTIC KISS by @Richard_Kadrey: Sandman Slim confronts the worst demons of all - his own trauma and self-doubt.

pluralistic.net/2020/08/25/anx…

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VIII. SQUEEZE ME by @Carl_Hiaasen: Hiaasen was writing comedic whodunnits about improbable Florida Man types decades before the memes, and his Mar-a-Lago gator plague novel is a hectic and hilarious tale for our times.

pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/flo…

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VIII. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson: KSR says it's his last novel and I say it's the book he's been training to write all his life. If you like your climate fiction wrenching but still uplifting enough to move you to tears...

pluralistic.net/2020/12/03/min…

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IX. SET MY HEART TO FIVE by @TheSimonBot: An absurdist robot-romp in the mold of Kurt Vonnegut about a robot who catches the disease of emotions and tries to treat it by moving to Hollywood to write screenplays about robots.

pluralistic.net/2020/09/01/can…

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Part 2: NONFICTION FOR ADULTS

I. A PUBLIC SERVICE by @timatron: An incredibly practical, detailed guide for would-be whistleblowers (and journalists who work with them) to staying safe while spilling the beans.

memex.craphound.com/2020/01/08/a-p…

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II. THE MONSTERS KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING by @KeithAmmann: A sourcebook for RPG game-masters explaining how different kinds of monsters can use a variety of combat tactics that add depth, texture (and challenge) to your games.

memex.craphound.com/2020/01/10/the…

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III. SNOWDEN'S BOX by @jessbruder and @DaleMaharidge: The incredible, true tale of how trust among friends allowed @Snowden's leaks to safely transit from his home in Hawai'i to the hands of @laurapoitras and the journalists who reported the story.

memex.craphound.com/2020/03/31/sno…

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III. ABOLISH SILICON VALLEY by @dellsystem: A personal journey from a fully bought-in believer in Silicon Valley's meritocracy to a ferocious critic who demands tech to serve humanity, not a human race in service to the tech industry.

memex.craphound.com/2020/04/14/abo…

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IV. THE CASE FOR A JOB GUARANTEE by @ptcherneva: A fierce little book setting out an economic program to rescue the nation and the planet from a system that insists we can't even hope for a better world.

pluralistic.net/2020/06/22/job…

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VII. SUBPRIME ATTENTION CRISIS by @timhwang: What's worse than having our lies destroyed by surveillance to manipulate us with ads? Having our lives destroyed by surveillance in order to fuel a fraudulent market in ad-based manipulation.

pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/flo…

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VIII. MONOPOLIES SUCK by @Sally_Hubbard: There are plenty of GREAT books about monopolies and the resurgence in antitrust, but Hubbard's is the most practical, providing the reader with excellent advice for actually DOING SOMETHING about monopolism.

pluralistic.net/2020/10/27/pea…

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IX. BREAK 'EM UP by @ZephyrTeachout: The most lucid, readable, infuriating, energizing book on the rise of monopolies. Teachout never loses sight of the systemic nature of the problem, even as she uses individual stories to tell the tale.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

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X. BOUNDLESS REALM by @Passport2Dreams: There has never been a better book about the Haunted Mansion (indeed, this is one of the best books ever written about environmental design in general). Nolte goes WAY beyond trite wisdom about "storytelling."

pluralistic.net/2020/11/09/bou…

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PART 3: GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. YEAR OF THE RABBIT by Tean Viasna: A graphic memoir of Viasna's harrowing boyhood during the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It's a tale we've rarely seen through the eyes of a child, and brilliantly realized.

memex.craphound.com/2020/01/22/yea…

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II. FEMALE FURIES by @misscecil: Castellucci uses an obscure and anachronistic all-woman cast of DC Universe b-characters to tell an incredible, smart, pitiless story about #MeToo, comics, solidarity and betrayal.

pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/fem…

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III. LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE CARTOONIST by Adrian Tomine: A memoir of intensely felt impostor syndrome, a forceful reminder that comparison is the thief of joy - and that the traits that keep an artist going at first go toxic over time.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the…

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IV. CONSTITUTION ILLUSTRATED by @RSikoryak: The Trump years were an unhappy crash-course in Constitutional law, but Sikoryak's genius adaptation of the Constitution in the style of dozens of cartoonists is a pure delight.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/…

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PART 4: KIDS AND YA

I. SEND PICS by @LaurenMcWoof: A YA novel that's a thrilling revenge-play about "revenge porn," a cyber-heist novel that's also a sneaky and forceful book about teen girls' sexuality.

memex.craphound.com/2020/04/21/sen…

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II. IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC by @adelaidesean: A YA novel about a music-obsessed kid who loses his hearing is the frame for a book about ability, adaptation, music theory, family, Deafness and what dreams are really for.

pluralistic.net/2020/06/30/dea…

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III. HARD WIRED by @LenVlahos: A 15 year old discovers the truth behind bizarre dysfunction of the world around him: he's an AI in a sim, and the guy he thinks of as his long-dead father is actually the research scientists who created him.

pluralistic.net/2020/08/31/ai-…

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III. HARD WIRED by @LenVlahos: A 15 year old discovers the truth behind bizarre dysfunction of the world around him: he's an AI in a sim, and the guy he thinks of as his long-dead father is actually the research scientists who created him.

pluralistic.net/2020/08/31/ai-…

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V. WITCH by @finbar_hawkins: A beautiful debut novel about a pair of 17th century sisters who avenge themselves against the witchfinders that murdered their mother. A superbly told historical.

pluralistic.net/2020/10/01/the…

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FINALLY: I published FOUR books in 2020!

I. POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER: My debut picture book, about a little girl who turns her toys into weapons and torments her parents by hunting monsters all night, with wonderful art by @mcrockefeller:

us.macmillan.com/books/97816267…

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II. LITTLE BROTHER/HOMELAND: My multibestselling YA novels were reissued last summer in a gorgeous package with a (fantastic) new introduction by @snowden.

us.macmillan.com/books/97812507…

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III. ATTACK SURFACE: A standalone, adult sequel to Little Brother and Homeland. The @nytimes called it "vocal and unflinching" and "ultimately optimistic"; the @washingtonpost called it a "riveting techno-thriller."

us.macmillan.com/books/97812507…

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IV. HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM: A long pamphlet/short book that makes the case that Big Tech manipulates us and spies on us because they have monopolies - not because they've developed devastating, data-driven mind-control.

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

eof/

Read this thread on the web here: pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/req…