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I stumbled over this author, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, by accident and while having a Wikipedia deep-dive on the fellow, stumbled on this novel in particular, which intrigued me. William Makepeace Thackeray was so sick and tired of the authors of his time picking real-life criminals and romanticizing them in their fictional texts that he took it upon himself to teach the public a lesson. So he chose a criminal himself out of the Newgate Calendar, a popular magazine about recent executions of the Newgate prison, and began to write this novel to show once and for all that criminals are not to be glorified for, in fact, their stories are actually miserable and vile if told correctly.
For the subject he chose Catherine Hayes, a woman that was burned at the stake for murdering her husband about 100 years prior.

It's a fascinating concept, especially for the time, although I went into it fully expecting a misogynistic depiction of a woman painted as the devil herself. Luckily, that hasn't exactly been the thing as there are plenty of male characters surrounding her that are far worse than her and, although it's not exactly intended that way, you could easily come out of this story taking that Catherine was driven to her awful crime by the abuse she endured at the hands of these men. Reading this, Catherine was much more sympathetic than the author probably wanted her to seem. I'm sure the 200-year difference between the writing of this text and me reading it had some part in that too, as the domestic abuse and cultural elements that are part of this story have a much different weight nowadays than they did back then.
But even aside from that, apparently Thackeray himself stated that the exercise that was this book was a failure and even he began to feel for this fictional version of Catherine Hayes that he created.
That being said though, I'm certain that both this fictional Catherine and the real person deserved better.

Anyway, what this novel ends up being then is a somewhat pulpy romance that feels like a parody of itself. At moments, the book manages to feel like an ugly collection of misery, as the author probably intended. But for most of the book, it almost works like a literary episode of Mystery Science Theater where the creator of the story takes time to poke holes into his own text and desperately tries to convince you that criminals just don't make for subjects worth romanticizing.
Thackeray goes on tangents of describing how a scene might have been written if it was written by one of his contemporaries, in kitschy and dramatic wordplay, but then doubles down that he refuses to do that to drive home his own point. He also makes out-of-character quips at points or rants about the Newgate Calendar, that aforementioned popular magazine of ongoing executions that seems to be read for entertainment and used as inspiration by authors. He even namedrops popular novels of the time that took real-life criminals as characters and he apologizes to the viewer for introducing the reader to characters that are "so utterly worthless" but, alas, that's what the public seems to want.
All of this has a surprisingly lighthearted aura to it and didn't match the cynical expectations I had beforehand. Whether it be the intended effect or not, Thackeray's Catherine was, for long parts of it, a funny commentary on crime/romance novels, written by a witty and fairly charming, if somewhat unconvincing, author.

The story itself moved on at a rather quick pace too and aside from the usual tangents of the time was a genuinely pretty engaging plot. Almost every character with a name in this book is a criminal and not a good person in general, but their escapades are still interesting. Catherine herself is depicted as not innocent as well and she admittedly does make some odd decisions, but all in all she read, to me at least, as a complete victim of her circumstances, and as the final pages drew closer, I couldn't wait for her to perform the infamous crime because of which she had been chosen for as the titular character in the first place.
The ending even, allegedly, cites real newspaper texts of the time in an attempt to draw the murder as realistically cruel as possible, which is a wonderful cherry on top of this uptight exercise of a moral lesson.

I think that Thackeray's original point had some merit to it but the execution seemed a bit misguided and not very convincing. Nevertheless, it made for a decently entertaining read, be it intentionally so or not.

These are the first Dickens texts I've read now after reading the infamous classic Christmas Carol last year, which I enjoyed decently enough. I felt like giving other spooky works of his a shot as well to see what else this classic author has to offer besides one of his big titles.

Unfortunately, this little collection of short stories didn't really click with me and I only really enjoyed one of the three stories.
The first story of the haunted house confused me a bit because I didn't know that Dicken' text was only a small part of a bigger project that had authors add their own stories to this collective haunted house concept.
The second story about the murder trial had a decent idea but didn't really come across very well for me.
But the final story of the Signal-Man managed to build up a decent atmosphere and I found the titular character actually fairly intriguing. The ending is of course rather predictable, which also stems from its age, but I still found it to be a rather comfortable read.

Even throughout the stories I didn't care much for, there were individual paragraphs that I really enjoyed, like the opening quote I chose. Dickens has a great way with words sometimes. But he also likes to go on tangents and generally I felt like the writing style of the first two stories in particular didn't quite age as well as it did with Christmas Carol. 

 
Levé's Autoportrait is a unique sort-off memoir. It's not a chronological retelling of the author's life or an assortment of memories guided by a coherent thread. This book is a string of random individual thoughts from the person about the person. Little glimpses into a personality.
Between mundane observations and trivial opinions is the occasional heavier facet of his life, but all of it is presented in a neutral way. It's funny at times, thought-provoking at others, and knowing some of Levé's other works and his ultimate fate makes certain parts stand out even more.

At one point, Levé writes "My death will change nothing." But I'm certain that his death changed how people read this book.
Coming to this after having read Levé's Suicide (twice) made the stream-of-consciousness writing seem very familiar. Reading Levé's candid thoughts about his own struggles with depression and experiences with suicide attempts buried between a hundred different mundane statements felt intimate. While Suicide always brought with it the question of whether the text might have been Levé's own musings about suicide or maybe a premature suicide note for himself, hidden in fiction, here with Autoportrait there is no game to play anymore. He's looking you right into the face and telling you, nonchalantly and seemingly unbothered, his casual feelings about his own struggles. Fiction and reality kind of connect here.
It's even more interesting when he proposes ideas for his future or offers assumptions about his later life which, as we as the reader now know, will never happen. He writes that he expects to die at 85, but his life ended at 42. He also claims that he will not lose his eyesight or hearing because he will die before that happens. That has become true. He writes that he would like to visit Japan before he dies but has a feeling that won't happen. Seeing that he died three years after writing this text, he was probably right.
He also thanks his parents for giving him the gift of life.
But he also writes that the hole is his "favorite part of a sock" and that he thinks "the big toe is doomed to disappear".

Near the end, during one of the longer tangents, he describes how he spent some of his favorite moments with a friend who he had many drunken conversations with in the past. He then continues to say that this friend, one day, told his wife he forgot something in the house when they were about to leave to play Tennis, went back into the house and shot himself with a gun placed in the basement.
It came out of nowhere, but I immediately recognized it as the setup for Levé's other book, the aforementioned Suicide, probably his internationally best-known work. I remember reading a lot of theories in the past about who people think that book might have been about. Seeing it here, described in this context, three years before he wrote that Suicide, ultimately linked the personal autobiography of sorts with his fictional text.

Autoportait makes for a brisk and at many moments entertaining read, but also gives a very candid and intimate look into a man's personality.
Édouard Levé was an interesting man. Not because he was special or glamorous, but because he was an ordinary person, with his own unique experiences and thoughts, which he decided to put to paper in such a straightforward way. His life ended way too soon, but parts of his mind are forever left behind for curious people to read.
Autoportrait is like a randomly shuffled deck of personal experiences which makes it a more intimate and human experience than some written-out, elaborate autobiographies that I have read.

Reading Dick's classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? earlier this year and loving it made me curious to explore more of his bibliography. Checking out this freely available short story collection seemed like a great idea to get a good overview of his general writing.

The short stories in this ebook vary in length and quality. From lengthier texts about the cultural impact of war to brief pages that feel like a Goosebumps story. Not everything lands and some stories are just lukewarm, but others are very engaging and present more unique ideas from this creative author.
If you've never read another Dick text before though, you'll get a pretty clear overview of his typical themes including the theoretical parts of large-scale conflicts, interplanetary contact, existentialism, and high concept technology.
Besides writing engaging conflicts and vivid world-building, he seems to be really good at pulling together established sci-fi concepts in unique combinations.

If you like reading science fiction, this collection is a pretty easy pick-up to get through bit by bit.

Eileen Ormsby is a crime journalist and dark web expert who has written about true crime for many years now. The Darkest Web introduces three prominent aspects of crime on the dark web and thoroughly chronicles some significant events in each of the three chapters.

The subject matter gets more harrowing with each of those chapters.
The book begins with the story of the infamous Silk Road born out of a novel goal to build a safe space for recreational drug use as an alternative to shady dealers in the park after midnight and the page's eventual downfall. The second chapter uncovers the rumors of murder-for-hire sites on the dark web and tells the story of the notorious scam project, the Besa Mafia, while not leaving out the terrible casualties caused on the sidelines. 
Both of these chapters deliver very engaging twists and turns in these real-life cases full of interesting people, backstabbing left and right, skewed morals, and misguided ideals. Even better that the author herself has immediate interactions with many of the people involved and can deliver various in-depth points of view on the respective situations.
Some moments are even humorous when self-righteous criminals send hilariously pompous message board posts or a whole organization goes down the drain because of a ridiculous detail. But it never takes away from the bitterness of the real loss of life due to awful people doing awful things in the midst of all this cyber crime.
It's been an incredibly engaging read and I enjoyed every page of it.

Then there is the third and final chapter, the darkest of the book pointing at the most depraved part of true crime organized through the dark web. Fittingly, this chapter has the most down-to-earth and serious tone. While the other two chapters had moments of entertainment and spectacle, this chapter is a purely educational warning and it's not for the faint of heart. The text is graphic as it deals with "snuff films" and organized child abuse, to put it in the vaguest way possible.
Again, Ormsby picks a notorious case to educate about an infamous aspect of the dark web and chronicles it with clear structure and insight. It is undoubtedly hard to read but the book doesn't dwell on it more than it has to and manages to clear up some misconceptions as well as include the aftermath and conviction of these crimes.

If you are into cyber crime, I highly recommend the two first chapters of the book as they are very thorough and well-written accounts of two incredibly interesting and somewhat infamous stories on the dark web. Though I'd only recommend venturing into the final chapter if you are sure you want to or can handle the retelling of truly depraved crimes. (See content warnings.)

Unknown Number is a short story that was originally published as mock-up text message screenshots through a Twitter thread and is, as of writing this review, now in the finals for a Hugo Award.
I stumbled over it by pure chance and it intrigued me to read that a literary text released via a social media platform like this made it so far in this fairly prestigious awards ceremony.

The original post of the story is still available here [ https://twitter.com/Azure_Husky/status/1420177933826732034?s=20&t=kTeU3GMTrLutK2MntHRZnA ] and as you can probably imagine, it's a quick read. Around 60 screenshots of fictional text messages chronicling a conversation between two people.
The concept is pretty clever and brings some good perspectives on gender identity and roads not taken. It's clear that this story reflects the experience of real people in a way and it does a good job at making it accessible to the reader.

This was a revisiting of a book I read for the first time as a teenager. I absolutely adored it back then and used to call it one of my favorite books for years. As a huge bug fan and cockroach enthusiast, a crass story from the point of view of a cockroach colony inhabiting an apartment was an incredibly fun experience for me.
I had a feeling though that going back to it this many years later I would not have the same reaction to the book and I was right.

Again, the concept of writing a story from the point of view of a colony of Blattella Germanica, a common kind of roaches, trying to survive in an apartment that is going through some changes due to the relationships of the human tenant, is an incredibly fun one to me. The roach interactions are written very well for the most part with a lot of detail to their actual anatomy and way of living. Things like having the roaches get their names from the first thing they read after being born, many of them growing up from the glue in books and therefore having a personality imprinted on them from those texts, is a great idea and makes for a lot of entertaining brief character moments.
I also enjoyed how graphic some moments can be as some of the roaches have to endure some terrible things under the hand of the human tenant. There is a serious gore element to this book as roach deaths are described in a lot of detail and the bugs are imbued with enough personality to make it even harder to read at points.
It makes sense for a book about the life of ordinary cockroaches to be so grimy at many points. And a lot of these have been memorable to me. Some of them are wild like a moment where

the protagonist roach comes across an aborted fetus in the sewers and has a cathartic beatdown, fed by his frustrations with humans at the time

.

The unique protagonists are also used for some interesting and rather entertaining social commentary or exploration of human life. The differences between the autonomous and survival-driven cockroach and the more spontaneous and shame-driven human are commented on very frequently by the protagonist roach and can be pretty clever. There are thoughts and discussions between roaches on shallow beauty standards, hypocritical morals, questionable mating behavior, religion, and other things while observing their human adversaries.
Unfortunately, there are also attempts at racially charged commentary, which comes across as very heavy-handed, and together with the author's already odd focus on the ethnicities of characters and stereotypes, it makes for some uncomfortable and unnecessary pages. This is the side of this novel's crass nature that I cannot appreciate. Reading a white author create a stereotypical Afro-American living in the "ghetto" for example felt misguided, and having characters very often be reduced and called by their ethnicity throughout the book just seemed a bit strange.
Some of the graphic moments also go into very daring sexual territories; I wouldn't blame anyone to put down the book after reading those. This book certainly goes places.

This re-read really has been a conflicting experience through and through. Weiss' The Roaches Have No King undoubtedly has a general story concept that I absolutely love, and as long as the focus lies on the survival of and interaction between the roaches, I did enjoy this book greatly for the most part. But I cannot deny that Weiss' character writing is questionable at many points and his attempts at social commentary come across as pretty tone-deaf in some chapters.
I probably can't deny that reading it as a teenager added a lot to my still persisting love and fascination for bugs, which I appreciate. But this is definitely a flawed book with some extended ill-advised tangents.

I read this short picture book standing next to the public book shelf I saw it in and put it back after being done.

Definitely gotta take this with a grain of salt to enjoy this to any degree. Otherwise it's just gonna come across as preachy and reductive, of course. It's not super creative. I will admit though that one or two panels did give me just a slight chuckle.

 

Up until recently, I hadn't really connected to the Blade Runner movies, but rewatching the original and seeing the late sequel for the first time some days ago made me really interested in the world they are set in. To explore more of them, I thought it was a good idea to read the classic novel they are based on in the first place and I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would.

I was a little bit lost at the very beginning with the early world-building and exposition because there are quite a lot of futuristic ideas thrown at you pretty quickly. Especially the Isidore chapters, one of the two characters that the book switches between, had me a bit confused until further in.
But as soon as their roles in the setting are established, the book became very engaging, and the world is full of very interesting elements. Like, for example, the electric sheep that apparently actually exists and is not just metaphorical as I expected it to be.
Between the concept of real animals being extremely rare and highly sought after due to mass extinction and often replaced with technological imitations, and the conflict between humans and "rogue" androids, there is plenty of opportunity to examine empathy, the meaning of humanity, artificiality, and existentialism. All in very organic and engaging ways.

The chapters regarding Rick Deckard, the android bounty hunter, go through some thrilling situations that had me glued to the page for a while, and the chapters regarding Isidore had some often rather humorous but also sometimes rather horrific moments. (The spider scene had me fucked up, not gonna lie.)

It's very easy to see why Dick's novel is regarded as a bonified classic. Not only is the futuristic world cultivated with lots of interesting ideas without really ever giving away that it was written in the 60s, it also uses that setting very well to explore certain elements of human relationships and what it means to exist. All the while telling a rather fast-paced and tight story.
There were only a few short moments that I didn't appreciate much, mainly a section near the ending that went a bit too much into one direction for me to really follow it well, but all in all, this was still a very satisfying read. 

I want to learn about the world and I want to be aware of the many problems we are running into on a daily basis as the whole of humanity. But it is hard to keep a cool head and remain positive with the onslaught of cynical news and opinions in a time of fast information and highly connected technology. It always seems like the world is just getting worse and worse in a way.
So Rosling's Factfulness sounded like a very interesting and valuable book based on its premise. To use facts and data as proof that the world isn't as bad as we think it is and to alleviate some of that societal cynicism. I was very interested.
But I was also a bit skeptical at first. I was a bit afraid to be running into some guy re-arranging numbers and labels to make real-world problems sound less important or doing a dismissive "numbers don't care about your feelings" shtick which seems to be so popular these days. Luckily, the more I read, the clearer it was that this book is not just data but also filled with a lot of genuine humanity and acknowledgment of real problems in a realistic but also hopeful way.

The book isn't aiming to dismiss certain problems as being less important or not worth worrying about but rather shows statistics to correct certain common misinformation and attempts to add the context that is needed to realize that it's actually going up, not down. Yeah, there is still injustice in the world, wealth isn't spread ideally, climate change is definitely happening, and so on. But, as Rosling writes himself, it's important to remember that it can both be bad and better than it used to be. Acknowledging previous progress is important to keep us motivated to continue to work on these problems and not fall into a fatalistic mindset that everything is already doomed.
Rosling writes a lot about how to read information to prevent toxic assumptions or misinformation through missing context. Being aware of the imbalance between positive and negative stories in the news, simply due to the sensationalistic concept of journalism itself, for example. He talks about the unhelpful instinct to look for someone or something to blame when most problems are more complex than to be caused by a single element. He gives many notes on how to read information better to not lose your own mind.

Each chapter of the book is one tip to get away from that general negativity instinct that most of us have, each paired with a common negative assumption of the world we live in and its respective statistics. Besides the focus on data, Rosling writes in a very human and down-to-earth way. He also has many stories to tell from his personal work as a doctor and statistician, traveling the world all over, that make the text more engaging.
There are one or two little moments where I'm not quite on the same page as Rosling, but overall I found this book to be very informative and pretty charming. Rosling is clearly very passionate about the world we live in and he is even more passionate to spread his hopefulness and confidence for a better future with other people. 
The fact that he worked on this book up until the very end of his life, still making notes and adjustments to the text while literally on his death bed, is also proof that this meant a lot to him.

While this book surely won't be a complete anxiety relief, it does provide a lot of very helpful ways to better deal with the daily news and do our part with less fear and worry.