Souls Like Strings

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Now I'm definitely playing Pacific Drive

The origin of the Stalker movie, then the Stalker games and finally Pacific Drive; I can definitely see why it spawned so much different media. Roadside Picnic is a masterclass in pulling you in through what you're not told rather than what you are, little about the Zone is explained, years of time are skipped and major action sequences are cut as unnecessary. The book is more interested in the effects the Zone's bounty has on humanity than glorying in the sci-fi or horror...

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

Entertains while teaching

It's not often that being called Demon Copperhead would be considered the least of a person's problems, but that's certainly the case here. Born on the floor of their trailer home to a drug addict mother, young Demon manages to have quite quite a pleasant childhood with his brother-in-terrible-name Maggot until his mum shacks up with a new man. Thus begins the rollercoaster of Demon's life, suffering through awful situations to seize a ray of hope then be brutally shoved right back into darkness.

Get a part time job?...

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju.

At least she's not a woman in the 19th century?

Another in the storied tradition of 'being a woman sucks' books, this time set in modern(ish) Korea. It starts off like it could be non-fiction and since I've heard a bit about how rough things are for woman in Korea I didn't really start wondering if it was fiction until near the end when I started wondering if you'd have to be Kim Jiyoung's shrink to know all this. I'm sure there are plenty of Korean women who've been through...

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

Surely there are better ways to communicate than holographic scrolls

Another example of me being surprisingly interested in political intrigue after Goblin Emperor and for much the same reasons; the characters are well-written and likeable. I guess something inherent to the genre forces authors to actually think about troublesome things like motivations, worldbuilding and how people might act in a given situation rather than having their characters do whatever seems coolest at the time.

Our protagonist Mahit is ambassador from a small space station to the galaxy-spanning Teixcalaan Empire,...

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas.

Lesbian lovers leap lustily

In 1967, four female scientists invent a machine allowing time travel (to any time the machine exists, so no going back to see dinosaurs). A burst of celebratory trips the night before they reveal it to the world triggers an underlying psychological condition in Barabra, causing her to have a breakdown on camera the next day and be excommunicated from the project.

Decades later the other three scientists work for (or run) The Conclave, the organisation which monopolizes time travel, while Barbara has been in...