The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

Title: The Only Harmless Great Thing
Series: n/a
Author: Brooke Bolander
Source/Format: Tor.com ebook club; eBook
More Details: Alternative History; Science Fiction
Publisher/Publication Date: Tor.com; January 23, 2018 

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

I’m steadily making my way through all of the old Tor.com ebook club freebie titles that I haven’t read. The next one I wanted to mark off my TBR list this year was this one.

If, like me, you’ve read a book called The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women—Kate Moore’s eye-opening historical nonfiction about the women who worked at radium-dial factories—then you can already guess the exact kind of tragedies that take place in Brooke Bolander’s 2018 novella, The Only Harmless Great Thing.

I was hooked, and I quickly got invested in some of the cast of characters. But that was because I found the side of the story that took place in the past particularly riveting—including the perspective of Topsy, and the other elephant related passages. I wanted to root for them, and I wanted it to work out. But, going into the novella, I knew it wasn’t going to be that kind of story. This one, through its tragedy, was about the message, but that’s exactly what made The Only Harmless Great Thing memorable for me. And, as I was reading it, I was strongly reminded of my experience with The Radium Girls. The story was very good in a lot of respects, as a work of fiction. But it also captured the same infuriating tone and behavior—just like the actual history it was partially based on—with the injustice of the situation and the open callousness of the people in charge.

At the end of the day, The Only Harmless Great Thing was meaningful and poignant, and I'm glad I finally read it. 

 

Music Monday (249): Remi Wolf, Tevin Campbell, Gaelle

Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: I wanted to mention another one of my favorite songs by Remi Wolf. This one is called Buzz Me In, and, just like Volkiano, it comes from her Juno album. Give it a listen!

Adri: I've been listening to Rain by Gaelle. I like how chill and soft it is.

Andrea: Hi all! This week, I'm listening to Can We Talk by Tevin Campbell. Have an amazing week!

What are you listening to this week?

The Friday 56 (238) & Book Beginnings: The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

Synopsis from Goodreads...

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

Beginning: "There is a secret beneath the mountain's gray skin."

56: "The morning gets hotter. Sweat pops on her forehead, running down into her eyes to sting them shut."

Comments: A while ago, this novella was a Tor.com eBook Club title, but I've known about it since it came out in 2018. I kept telling myself I was going to read it but didn't. But, last month, I finally got around to The Only Harmless Great Thing! My 56 comes from page 46, because the story is very short. What are you reading this week? 

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Title: Silver Nitrate
Series: n/a
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy; Historical Fiction; Mystery
Publisher/Publication Date: Del Rey; July 18, 2023

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed. Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a favorite author over here on my end of Our Thoughts Precisely. I’ve read a handful of her books: Gods of Jade and Shadow, Mexican Gothic, Velvet Was the Night, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, and The Return of the Sorceress. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to nab an eARC of her latest novel from NetGalley. I couldn’t read it right away, because there were other ARCs that were ahead of it. However, once it was June, it was the first one on my list.

Silver Nitrate promised to be thrilling and dark, and full of curses and magic. What I got was an incredibly immersive story that was exactly the right amount of horror, fantasy, and historical fiction. Set in Mexico City in the 90s, it had a focus on films and occultism. There were pop culture references, but there was a particular emphasis on the work of a fictional director named Abel Urueta and one of his movies. However, the aforementioned film wasn’t just any. It was incomplete, and it came with its own particularly troubled infamy—and a dangerous mystery that spanned decades.

I liked how Moreno-Garcia approached this aspect of the story: the historical details and how they influenced the fantasy ones. The occultism was an important part of the overall magic, but that was combined with commentary about prejudice and the cherry-picking—the twisting and claiming—of knowledge and traditions from other people. Creating an ensemble of bone-chilling antagonists that were menacing shadows across much of the story, producing some of the eeriest moments of Silver Nitrate.

This book also had wonderfully complicated characters, but that’s something that—after reading now six novels—I know this author does well (and it’s something I look forward to). The POVs consisted of Tristán, a soap opera star who sought an opportunity to revive his career, and Montserrat, a sound editor frustrated with the film industry. There were decades of history between the two, spanning back to their childhood. They knew each other and their respective habits. Their relationship—though complicated and not without its hiccups—felt organic and real, and it was something I truly loved about this book.

At the end of the day, Silver Nitrate is another exceptional novel from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Among the ones I’ve read, it’s one of my top-favorites to date.

 

About the author....

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of several novels, including Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. She has also edited a number of anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu's Daughters). Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination.

Goodreads     Website    Instagram

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Del Rey) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Music Monday (248): FKA Twigs featuring Daniel Caesar

Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: Over the weekend, I revisited FKA Twigs' 2022 mixtap, Caprisongs. It's been a minute since I last listened to it in full, and, oh man, I forgot how good it was! And I really wanted to share another one of my favorite songs for today's Music Monday. Give a listen to Careless featuring Daniel Caesar!

What are you listening to this week?

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Title: The Color of Magic
Series: Discworld #1
Author: Terry Pratchett
Source/Format: Purchased; Mass Market Paperback
More Details: Fantasy; Comedy
Publisher/Publication Date: First Published December 1, 1983

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

Imagine, if you will . . . a flat world sitting on the backs of four elephants who hurtle through space balanced on a giant turtle. In truth, the Discworld is not so different from our own. Yet, at the same time, very different . . . but not so much.

In this, the maiden voyage through Terry Pratchett's divinely and recognizably twisted alternate dimension, the well-meaning but remarkably inept wizard Rincewind encounters something hitherto unknown in the Discworld: a tourist! Twoflower has arrived, Luggage by his side, to take in the sights and, unfortunately, has cast his lot with a most inappropriate tour guide—a decision that could result in Twoflower's becoming not only Discworld's first visitor from elsewhere . . . but quite possibly, portentously, its very last. And, of course, he's brought Luggage along, which has a mind of its own. And teeth.

I have not read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in order. My first—and only—two forays into it was a pair of the Tiffany Aching books (Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight). But, for a while now, I’ve wanted to go all the way back to beginning, to read for myself how the series actually began.

The Color of Magic was humorous in all the right ways! It poked fun at a lot of classic fantasy tropes—like wizards, magic, dragons, and heroes—by showing them in the most absurd light. No matter how dangerous the situation, the narrative always provided ironic twists with the most convoluted (and often times hilarious) solutions.

And that was coupled with the other big aspect I enjoyed about The Color of Magic: its characters. Rincewind, Twoflower, and the Luggage (and yes, there were puns everywhere) worked well as a trio for this adventure.

To date, this series has one of my all-time favorite settings: Great A’Tuin, the giant turtle flying through space with four elephants on its back, who hold up the flat (disk shaped) world. And I don’t think I fully appreciated the setting as much I did with this book. Maybe it was the story, or how certain ridiculous areas were still adequate obstacles and a source of tension. I don’t know, but I was having a great time.

And that is the crux of it. I had so much fun reading this book, and I know that I’ll end up checking out more Discworld stories.

 

Music Monday (247): Wednesday Campanella

Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: This week, I wanted to mention another of my favorite Wednesday Campanella songs. This one is called Yeti.

What are you listening to this week?

The Friday 56 (237) & Book Beginnings: The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

Synopsis from Goodreads...

Imagine, if you will . . . a flat world sitting on the backs of four elephants who hurtle through space balanced on a giant turtle. In truth, the Discworld is not so different from our own. Yet, at the same time, very different . . . but not so much.

In this, the maiden voyage through Terry Pratchett's divinely and recognizably twisted alternate dimension, the well-meaning but remarkably inept wizard Rincewind encounters something hitherto unknown in the Discworld: a tourist! Twoflower has arrived, Luggage by his side, to take in the sights and, unfortunately, has cast his lot with a most inappropriate tour guide—a decision that could result in Twoflower's becoming not only Discworld's first visitor from elsewhere . . . but quite possibly, portentously, its very last. And, of course, he's brought Luggage along, which has a mind of its own. And teeth.

Beginning: "In a distant and secondhand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part... See... Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge ancient shell pocked with meteor craters."

56: "The Luggage backed off slowly."

Comments: I have finally gone back and read the beginning of the Discworld series. This book was delightful and very funny. What are you reading this week?

Quarterly Recap: April-June

Welcome! It’s July…already, and I feel like the year is flying by. It's already time for the second Quarterly Recap of 2023. This time, I’m covering blog posts that have appeared on the blog from April through June. As always, I’m starting with reviews…

April, May, and June Reviews...

• The Cult of We: We Work, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell
• The Book of Gems by Fran Wild
• Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
• The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall
• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
• Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell
• The Thorns Remain by J.J.A. Harwood
• Breakup From Hell by Anna Davila Cardinal
• A Fire Endless by Rebecca Ross

**Note: Weekly memes (like Music Monday and The Friday 56 + Book Beginnings, can be searched with their labels: Music Monday, The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings)**

Other April, May, and June blog posts...

• Short Stories I Read in May
• Upcoming Music I'm Waiting For
• Short Stories I Read In April
• So I Played Ooblets
• Short Stories I Read In March
• So...I Played Aggro Crab's Going Under
• I Listened to So Much (For) Stardust by Fall Out Boy
• Quarterly Recap: January-March

Looking ahead, I’m pretty excited for the ARCs I’m going to be reading in the next couple of months. I won’t say too much here, but some of them are much anticipated sequels or new books from some of my favorite authors.

In July, there’s a new book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia coming out, plus I’ve finally gone back and read the beginning of the Discworld series.

As far as games, I'm slowly working my way through the Subnautica games. But, mostly, I’m knee-deep in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This game is massive, and I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of the story or the areas available to explore yet. But, I’m having so much fun.

Music Monday (246): Tennis & Blanco Brown

Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: The last time I did a Music Monday post, I mentioned that I was listening to an indie pop playlist on Spotify. There was a lot of great music, and another one of my favorites was Let's Make a Mistake Tonight by Tennis.

Andrea: Hi all! This week, I'm listening to I'll Never by Blanco Brown. Have an amazing week and 4th of July!

What are you listening to this week?

Short Stories I Read In May

It’s the twenty-ninth of June. So it’s time to talk about the short stories, miscellaneous posts, and podcast episodes I read or listened to in May.

All These Ghosts Are Playing to Win by Lindsey Godfrey Eccles (Uncanny Magazine; Issue Fifty-Two)

I only got around to reading two stories from Uncanny Magazine in May, and the first was All Theses Ghosts Are Playing to Win by Lindsey Godfrey Eccles. This story, at its base, is about grief and regret and forgetting. And it does those things very well. It’s told from the perspective of Theo, a ghost, who is in a casino where memories are the currency. This was an interesting approach to this kind of story: by linking high-stake bets with the function of a sort of limbo where you go up (as a big winner) or to the “DARK.” Supposedly, but is everything really that simple? You’d have to read to find out. There was also ample time devoted to Theo’s reminiscing, but I liked those moments just as much as the other aspects, themes, and overall conclusion. So while the general tone had an air of melancholy, All These Ghosts Are Playing to Win was haunting but in a good way. And I enjoyed reading it.

A Lovers’ Tide in Which We Inevitably Break Each Other; Told in Inverse by K.S. Walker (Uncanny Magazine; Issue Ffty-Two)

The second one was this very short piece called A Lovers’ Tide in Which We Inevitably Break Each Other; Told in Inverse. I read this one for the writing, which was evocative and instantly drew me in with descriptions of a lonely night at a shore combined with a slight feeling of the fantastic and uncanny. And I liked it exactly for those reasons. All-in-all, this was another good one.

From around the web…

• Print Run Podcast Episode 162: Turning Over the Same Leaf
• Place and Tome: On Two Kinds of Unforgettable Reading Experiences [Molly Templeton; Tor.com; May 25, 2023]

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

Title: The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion 
Series: n/a
Author: Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell
Source/Format: Purchased; Paperback
More Details: Nonfiction
Publisher/Publication Date: Crown; July 20, 2021

Goodreads     Amazon     Barnes & Noble

Synopsis from Goodreads...

The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and what the company's epic unraveling exposes about Silicon Valley's delusions and the financial system's desperate hunger to cash in--from the Wall Street Journal reporters whose scoops hastened the company's downfall.

In 2001, Adam Neumann arrived in New York after five years as a conscript in the Israeli navy. Just over fifteen years later, he had transformed himself into the charismatic CEO of a company worth $47 billion--at least on paper. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the 6-foot-five Neumann, who grew up in part on a kibbutz, looked the part of a messianic Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The vision he offered was mesmerizing: a radical reimagining of work space for a new generation, with its fluid jobs and lax office culture. He called it WeWork. Though the company was merely subleasing amenity-filled office space to freelancers and small startups, Neumann marketed it like a revolutionary product--and investors swooned. 

As billions of funding dollars poured in, Neumann's ambitions grew limitless. WeWork wasn't just an office space provider, he boasted. It would build schools, create WeWork cities, even colonize Mars. Could he, Neumann wondered from the ice bath he'd installed in his office, become the first trillionaire or a world leader? In pursuit of its founder's grandiose vision, the company spent money faster than it could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, the CEO scoured the globe for more capital. In late 2019, just weeks before WeWork's highly publicized IPO, a Hail Mary effort to raise cash, everything fell apart. Neumann was ousted from his company--but still was poised to walk away a billionaire. 

Calling to mind the recent demise of Theranos and the hubris of the dotcom era bust, WeWork's extraordinary rise and staggering implosion were fueled by disparate characters in a financial system blind to its risks, from a Japanese billionaire with designs on becoming the Warren Buffet of tech, to leaders at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs who seemed intoxicated by a Silicon Valley culture where sensible business models lost out to youthful CEOs who promised disruption. Why did some of the biggest names in banking and venture capital buy the hype? And what does the future hold for Silicon Valley unicorns? Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell explore these questions in this definitive account of WeWork's unraveling.

I remember the promotion for a company called We Work—which sublets office spaces—and, at one point, it seemed like it was everywhere. Building off of trendy marketing and a purported core purpose of being an interconnected space—a “community”—to appeal to those looking for a different office experience. However, with the pandemic, I forgot about them. So when I recently heard about a book called The Cult of We by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell I was, to say the least, intrigued, because I somehow missed the majority of the news as it was happening—and what I did hear about I didn’t delve too deeply past the surface.

The Cult of We does exactly as the synopsis promises, by delivering an in-depth look at the rise and fall of WeWork. Mapping out the company’s earliest days (and prior iteration)—as well as the founder’s life and the turning point when greed, a convoluted purpose, and false representations—warped what was promising on paper into a colossal mess with far reaching consequences. And the further I read, the more the first two sentences of the author’s note stuck in my mind, as what it had already succinctly explained was bolstered by a detailed recounting.

“The implosion of WeWork in September 2019 was an astounding moment in business. Nearly $40 billion in value on paper vanished, virtually overnight, as the investment world woke up to the reality that America’s most valuable startup wasn’t a tech company but simply a real estate company—one that was losing more than $1.6 billion a year.”—from the Author’s note

This book read like one long news report. Parts of it could be a little dry and, given the subject of the book, it was filled with financial jargon. However, I never felt lost when reading it, and by the midway point I was thoroughly engrossed.

So if you’ve wanted to know more about WeWork’s situation, then I’d recommend The Cult of We.