Essays, reflections, and personal notes on the books I’ve read—and the thoughts they’ve left behind. This is not a space for reviews, but for resonance. You’ll find everything from ancient epics to thrillers, professional enrichment to classics. Some books made me pause. Others changed how I see the world. All of them, in some way, linger.
The previous Penguin Little Black Classic – Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal left me shocked. It is one of those books that leaves you admiring the writer while hoping the next book on your shelf inhabits a gentler world. Swift’s satire is so sharp and so relentless that even after the final page, the…
The LBC number 8 is a satire. Specifically, a collection of satirical essays by Jonathan Swift. The book is called A Modest Proposal – For Preventing the Children of poor People in Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them beneficial to the Publick. I love satire as…
“You’re stalling, ART-drone said. I am not. I can stand here and be useless without any ulterior motives, thanks.” We are back in the original timeline after a switch back in Fugitive Telemetry. System Collapse picks up immediately after Network Effect. And for the first time in the entire series Murderbot is not as…
”What is a random opportunity killing? When a human kills another human just because they can.” After the scale of Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry felt surprisingly intimate. There were no sprawling rescue missions, no alien contamination threatening entire systems and no crises stretching across large sections of inhabited space. Instead, someone has been murdered…
“Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.” After four novellas, Network Effect was the first time I had to settle into a full-length Murderbot story. Until this point, the books moved quickly. Most could be finished in a couple of sittings. This one…
“Sending SecUnits after me was one thing. But they sent SecUnits after my client. No one gets to walk away from that.” By the time I reached Exit Strategy, I had started noticing a pattern in The Murderbot Diaries. The books are often discussed in terms of artificial intelligence, autonomy and personhood, and those…
By the time I reached Rogue Protocol, I thought I had a fairly good understanding of Murderbot. It was competent, sarcastic and perpetually irritated by human beings. Every novella seemed to follow a familiar pattern. Murderbot would arrive somewhere intending to mind its own business. Then a conspiracy would emerge, people would find themselves…
After finishing All Systems Red, I did what most readers probably do. I immediately picked up the next novella – Artificial Condition. Part of the appeal was Murderbot itself. By the end of the first book, I had become oddly invested in this socially awkward SecUnit that wanted nothing more than to avoid conversations…
Every once in a while, I take a look at the Hugo and Nebula award winners. Science fiction is one of those genres I keep returning to, and the awards are usually a good way of discovering writers I might otherwise miss. That is how I ended up reading A Memory Called Empire last…
Frank Miller’s Batman can make you smile. The kind of smile that remains on your lips long after you have closed the book. When I wrote about Miller’s The Last Crusade, I said it was a sad book. I was looking for fun, and it was a sad book. But this next one made…