The Myth & The Majesty

A year ago, I gave a not-quite-a-review for a book. I read Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in a Denver hotel room while preparing for a life that ... as it turned out, never quite happened. It was a weird place and time in my universe and on some level, I wondered if my deep, abiding love for that book was inextricably linked to that almost-life. Six months later, I read it again. Turns out this was a book that had nothing to do with where I was. I still loved it. Then, something crossed my radar in September. Robin Sloan , the hilarious and brilliant author of Penumbra , had a newly released novel. ... About bread. Kind of. I finally acquired it last week, and then this week I opened it up. And the next day, I was done. Here's my review: Go read it . The thing that gets me about Sloan's books as a whole is that they are rather hard to describe. They're not directly mysteries or love stories or anything quite that easily classified (well, not yet...

I'm finally hitting that thing on my to-do list that I've been casually delaying for, oh, about six months now. Of course, it immediately went awry. Like most of you, I carry a smartphone that at any given point in time contains hundreds of photos I've barely perused since they first appeared on the screen. Sure, every once in awhile I'll thumb through them, trying to remember what day that hike was or when exactly that aunt visited, and occasionally I'll trip over something oddly memorable. Like this. Or the day I took this. Or ... Seriously, how many cat pictures do I have?    This one caught me a tad off guard. And of course, there are the food photos. I seem to be a digital hoarder. Well, no longer. In the midst of my data cleanse, after I'd pulled everything from the last two years off my memory card and while I was sorting through it, I got The Message. Card Corrupted. Formatting Required....