Books shelved under “Ebook”

Adrian Tchaikovksy is probably someone I will confuse with Alastair Reynolds for a long time just because they are both science-fiction authors from the UK and like to write about wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. And Put Away Childish Things is a novella loosely based on the premise “What if Narnia were real and it were terrible?” Except, that’s kind of already been done? I received an eARC of this from NetGalley and publisher Rebellion.

Harry…

Another in the slate of ace-focused books released recently by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, who through NetGalley provided me with an eARC that I am finally getting around to reviewing! Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks on Existing in an Allo World by Michele Kirichanskaya is a kind of how-to guide for being asexual in a world that privileges sexual attraction and desire. It’s not prescriptive (as Kirichanskaya notes, there is no one right way to be…

One of my responsibilities as an English teacher is to help my students build their media literacy skills. In the past couple of years, I have become increasingly convinced, in fact, that media literacy is the most essential skill English classes can cover. The deluge of disinformation and morass of misinformation out there is staggering. Throw in the challenges of deepfakes, and, well, it’s starting to get depressing, how difficult it is to evaluate the…

Often people ask me what I would recommend if I am no longer recommending Invisible Women. Usually my response is the unhelpful, “Dunno, figure it out.” But really, the amount of books I read? There must be more books about technology and bias out there, especially in the four years since that one was published. So when I heard about More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, I…

I’m not sure what got me interested in Missing Clarissa—whether it was the general description, the podcast element, or I just felt like taking a chance. Thrillers aren’t normally my genre of choice. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised by Ripley Jones’s debut novel. It was darker than I expected yet also has plenty of light character moments. Thanks to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the eARC.

Clarissa Campbell went missing in 1999. The cheerleading…

The idea of free speech sounds great on paper, and it’s one of those nebulous concepts that most people, if you asked them if it sounded like a good idea, would generally affirm. But that hasn’t always been the case until very recently—more recently, in fact, than one might think. Dennis Baron explores this in You Can't Always Say What You Want: The Paradox of Free Speech along with a robust look at free-speech debates,…

Despite loving podcasts, I have never listened to Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca’s podcast of the same name. Nevertheless, I was drawn to Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else because, hey, asexual and aromantic over here! It feels very fitting that I’m writing this review at the end of Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. Thanks to Jessica Kingsley Publishers and NetGalley for the eARC.

…

You know, I don’t really think I ever asked myself this question after the one sleepless Sunday night I spent wrestling with it. I jest, of course. Kind of. I think for me my understanding of my transness was sneaky. It kind of grew in my subconscious for years until it burst forth, fully formed, and once I accepted it, everything else happened all at once. Nevertheless, Am I Trans Enough: How to Overcome Your…

Even though I don’t have TikTok, some of the best content always escapes that platform to find its way to me. Such is the case with Cody Daigle-Orians, purveyor of Ace Dad Advice. I remember watching some of his videos and thinking exactly some of the sentiments he shares later in I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life, such as “it’s so nice to see an elder ace!” Lol, we’re so…

Money is kind of a big deal. I don’t particularly like this fact, but I would be a fool not to acknowledge it. For the majority of my life, money has been more digital than paper-based, even though a fully qualified digital currency in Canadian or US dollars still has yet to materialize. I have never owned a paper chequebook in my name, and almost all of my payments are online or through a chip-and-pin…

Nothing has changed since George Floyd. This year opened with another high-profile murder of an unarmed Black man—Tyre Nichols—by police. While it’s true the officers have already been indicted for Nichols’ death, the commentary continues to privilege the idea that this violence is the result of isolated actions, of inadequate training, of something—anything—other than ongoing systemic racism. Some coverage emphasized the race of the police officers—they, too, are Black—and seemed to say, “How can this…

One of those books where the meaning of the title becomes apparent by the end of the book, Children of Memory is the third (and final?) volume of the Children of Time space opera from Adrian Tchaikovsky. What began as a story about the possible evolution of life from Earth on different worlds in one novel has sprawled into an epic meditation on what it means to be alive. Thanks to NetGalley and publisher…

As is often the case, my memory plays tricks on me: I thought I had read Children of Time last year—no, I read it in 2021! I’m actually impressed I recalled as much of it as I did when I started Children of Ruin, though Adrian Tchaikovsky does his best to provide pertinent backstory. I wanted to say he does this without infodumping, because it’s kind of true, except that this whole story is…

This is one of those books that is far better than it has any right to be. I remember reading the description on NetGalley, where I received the eARC, and thinking, “A space-opera reimagining of Wizard of Oz? Neat!” and being down to clown. But then I actually read Over the Moon—and I was angry. I was angry at the book for how good it was—don’t ask me why, I’m irrational—and irritated…

Although not strictly speaking a romance by one definition of the genre (see the penultimate paragraph of my review for a minor spoiler as to why), Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell has many of the satisfying hallmarks of romance. The eponymous character is a seventeen-year-old boy with a serious crush on his online gaming buddy. When they get a chance to meet offline—but his buddy doesn’t know it—Noah takes it upon himself to launch an…

As I’ve noted in other reviews, perhaps most recently Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, being ace (asexual) in our society is no picnic. While I won’t deny there are benefits to opting out of the compulsory sexuality of our society, the fact that we must, indeed, opt out is problematic. In particular, I think that many a-spec people have a hard time figuring out their labels—partly because asexuality encompasses a lot of overlapping identities, but also…

As I’ve said in the past, I am very selective about the anthologies I read. Novels are my jam when it comes to fiction, short stories and novelettes and novellas much less so. Nevertheless, when Derek Künsken’s collection Flight from the Ages And Other Stories came up on NetGalley, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to request an eARC for review. Künsken might fast become one of my favourite living science-fiction authors. Ever since I…

This is one of those questions that gets asked of you at a certain time in your life. Sherronda J. Brown introduced me to the term chrononormativity when I read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, and that made a lot of things click for me. So When Are You Having Kids?: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren't Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents is a practical guide for addressing a very…

Shout out to CBC Radio’s Spark for their episode on protecting our intimate data, which interviewed Danielle Keats Citron. That’s how I learned about The Fight for Privacy just ahead of its release date and managed to snag an eARC courtesy of NetGalley and W.W. Norton Company.

This book is primarily US-focused, which probably shouldn’t be surprising. That being said, Citron references South Korean examples quite a bit, along with a smattering of other…

Philosophy of the mind has always been one of my favourite realms of philosophy. I love thinking about how we think. About why we think. Consciousness, sentience, intelligence—how did these traits evolve? How do they even work? Patrick House explores Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness (literally what it says on the tin) and tries to address these questions. As he admits in the introduction, he doesn’t have all the answers—none of us do—but…