maribou | 2312 Invincible Gadget Kaleidoscopes

You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier
Some parts of this were preaching to the choir in my case; other parts pissed me off (hey, writers, if you base an extended analogical argument on biological "facts" that are WRONG WRONG WRONGER THAN WRONG, it kills your cred and makes me want to throw your book across the room). Still other parts were deeply alienating in the stop-mischaracterizing-or-ignoring-my-subcultures-and-while-you're-at-it-quit-dichotomizing-so-much sense; a few parts were usefully provocative. I think overall there was not enough of the last of those, too much of the middle two. It did fill me up full to the brim with thinky thoughts while I was reading it, though, which is good.
(100)

Kaleidoscope, by Gail Bowen
I am so fond of these characters. This one has a lot of lectury bits, there are a few people I don't mind being lectured by. The story is good, but as usual the whodunnit is almost beside the point. Start at the beginning with this series, I think? Deadly Appearances is the first one.
(101)

2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson (ARC)
Kim Stanley Robinson is part of my two-handed handful of favorite writers, and so it's unsurprising that I loved this. I was a bit surprised by the experimental nature of the text. The reader has to do a lot of work to keep all the threads together in his/her head, and there are poetic streams-of-consciousness and lists and chapters consisting solely of extracts from fictional textbooks, but it's satisfying work. The structure-building part of my brain was quite sated by the experience. I suspect I will be even more pleased with this book when I eventually reread it.
(102, A2)

Invincible, the Ultimate Collection, vol. 2, by Robert Kirkman et al.
Overall, a joyful, galumphing read. There were some bits, though, that really had an uninflected comics-are-for-stereotypically-immature-het-male-readers thing going on. (Pro tip: If you repeatedly show your sympathetic characters complaining about something being "so gay," IT WILL TAKE ME OUT OF THE STORY and into being-irritated-world. I much prefer being in the story.) In any case, we're talking ... 10 pages? out of about 400, so I'll still be reading these.
(103)