What I'm Reading Now

Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filgree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

These are wonderful books, sort of steampunk, all sharing the same universe, in which a Japanese man, Keita Mori, can "remember" the future, or rather futures, and -- at certain junctures -- intervene to make sure one specific future occurs. When that happens, he can't remember any of the other futures, or the things he would have known in those futures. In the Watchmaker, a young British civil servant, Nathaniel Steepleton, meets him and falls in love with him. It's the 1880s, though, so homosexual love is a problem. Also, Mori is suspected of being a terrorist, since a recent bomb was set off using his specific sort of clockwork. 

There is also a mechanical octopus which runs on quantum programming, and a workhouse child named Six. I love these books and I wish Pulley would write more of them very, very quickly.

Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

I liked this a lot, though I didn't think I would, at first. It reads at first like it's going to be one of those books that labors heavily to mock people. But as we move further into the story, it stops being quite so twee in its mockery, and the book improves immensely. If you can wince your way through the opening 20 pages or so, it's worth reading. Also a good look at what people in the 1930s thought the near future would look like.

Lemony Snicket, Poison for Breakfast

My kid read all the Lemony Snicket books when he was about ten, and loved them to bits. This is the first one I have read all the way through. (I read bits to him when he was little.) It's an adult novel -- novella, really -- and has the same tone and feel as the kids' books, but is definitely aimed at adults. It's about what it says on the tin: the narrator, Lemony Snicket, finds a note saying that he's eaten poison for breakfast, and he investigates the crime. It's really, as Snicket notes about halfway through, more of a philosophical muse than a crime novel. Wonderful writing, though, and short enough that you can read it in an hour or so. Recommended for those who like this sort of thing. (I like this sort of thing.)