Some Online Magazine to Read

This is a (non-exhaustive) list of online science-fiction and fantasy magazines that are free to read the current issue, and which may or may not have archives. Almost all are currently publishing. I may add to this list.

• Apex Magazine
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Clarkesworld
• The Dark
• Interfictions Archive (ended in 2017)
• Lightspeed
• Podcastle (audio and written)
• Escape Pod (audio and written)
• Strange Horizons
• Uncanny
• Fireside Fiction

52 Loaves (Alexanader)

52 Loaves
by William Alexander (2010)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club runner-up. I put on the books on hold, but this was available right away.

First of all, I enjoyed it much more than the Witches book (no link, if you're interested, go find it). That said, I took a couple of breaks because there were points where I just needed him to get on with it.

Also of note, I'm not sure I realized just how old this book was. There might've been a clue early on, but I obviously forget about it.

So Willaim Alexander has this incredible piece of peasant bread. He decides right then that he's going to learn how to make that exact bread, not that he's ever cooked bread before. His wife and family amuse and tolerate this. He decides that he will bake one loaf of bread a week for a year until he gets it right. The first few weeks are really bad. And those after aren't much better.

Along the way, he learns a bit about flour, yeast, levain, poosh and many other aspects of baking and where these things come from. He learns about the disease pellagra and why niacin is added to flour to enrich it along with other nutrients (and how this was not ordered by the government).

He bakes at a state fair. He contacts people to use their ovens. He grows a field of wheat to make flour in his yard in the Hudson Valley just north of NYC. He travels to Paris and Morrocco and finds himself spending a week in an abbey where he teaches a brother to bake bread after so many years not using the oven.

Informative and many parts were interesting when he was talking about other things. By the time it was over, I'd already forgotten much about the levain, etc. There were recipes from bread, but I didn't copy them down.

The Lexical Funk (Clausen)

The Lexical Funk
by Daniel Clausen (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was the second edition from 2014.

I don't know where this popped up from, but I downloaded it for free. I didn't realize how old the book was (relatively speaking). It had an interesting cover, it called itself "a triumph of words", and I thought it was going to be a funny book.

I picked it up because I thought it was be a quick, little diversion from a non-fiction book I'm reading that's plodding along, and while I'm enjoying it, I needed a break.

It was not. It was quite introspective, but for the most part, I didn't really feel it or care about the introspection. The book contains five unreleated stories and an excerpt from a novel that I skipped. The acknowledgments says "many" of the stories were previously published and then lifts five publications, so I assume that all the stories were previously published.

The first story was "Imitation for Beginners" about androids that try to imitate human behavior as best they can. It was told in several numbered sections for no reason, and I worried that the entire book was going to be like this. Again, the android's introspection wasn't very interesting. The one twist was when the older model confronts the narrator telling him that he's nothing speical, and in fact that older model is actually a human imitating an android. The newer model considers this and figures that the older model has malfunctioned and does his duty and dismantles the older model. Now, there is nothing I can tell from the description whether or not the "older model" was either a human or an android. You would think that the reference to the cleaner robots would give a hint about this.

"The Lexical Funk: how the white boy learned to settle down and love the Afro" might be considered by some to be offensive these days. I just found it boring, with the following proviso: the author knows his language and did weave something together, and the entire story built to one amusing paragraph near the end.

"In a glass box over Osaka" is the story of someone who lost a job and is in a restaurant for either several hours or over a day. More introspection. No speculative element that I noticed.

"Rich Jacobs Searches for the Meaning of Life" gets speculative with the produce at the supermarket start talking to him. One of the better, if not stranger, of the stories.

"Starlight Terror and the Cappuccino Machine" is the highlight where a mysterious woman arrives and the main characters and the world around them slowly morph into a 50s-era B-flich. The author must be fond of these because it's not something easy to fake.

"Angela Killed Herself" is more introspective stuff with a giver and a taker, and the giver gives out.

If I were ever to use the review "It was a book", this would be the time to use it. Not quite but bordering on "What did I just read?" It took me a bit longer than a hour to read, probably because I kept wondering what I was reading.

My Hero Academia Volume 37

My Hero Academia Volume 37, by Kōhei Horikoshi (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Spoilers for the "final battle", which may or may not be final because I don't know how long this fight and this manga continue afterward.

Deku arrives to confront Tomura Shigaraki, who is now melded with All For One (or possibly not). Bakugo is done but may survive with another hero's sacrifice. Spinner's added quirks cause trouble for some members of Class 1A (or 2A now, I guess), but they also cause trouble for Spinner whose mind is becoming as beastly as his body. And Todoroki's victory over Dabi may have been premature.

It was a quick read that became available sooner than I expected, and I plowed right through it, putting other things on hold.

Volume 38 is on hold. Hopefully, I'll have that in a few weeks.

A House with Good Bones (Kingfisher)

A House with Good Bones
by T. Kingfisher (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I would not have expected to have read another T. Kingfisher book so soon. The last one I read, What Moves the Dead was good, not necessarily great, nor something that screamed "read more" to me. However, I needed something to listen to on my phone while I was out walking. I went to Libby for ideas. I wanted a short, fantasy audiobook, preferrably under 8 hours. Many were much longer.

Anyway, "A House With Good Bones" appeared, and I gave it a shot. It sounded good enough that I borrowed the ebook, caught up to the audio, which then got left behind.

Instead of mushrooms, this book gives us ladybugs and roses and vultures and some old magic.

Samantha Montgomery is an archaeoentomologist, someone who studies insects and other arthropods recovered from archaeological sites, usually associated with human remains and middens (aka "dunghills"). Her site is shut down but her room has been sublet, so she has no place to go except to her mother's house (which belonged to her mother before her) in North Carolina, traveling across most of the country to get there. When she gets there, things are a little strange and her mother is behaving oddly. And there are weird things about the house.

Sam thinks her mother is started to develop dementia or something similar. She doesn't understand why the interior of the house was repainted ecrue or why there's a portrait of a Confederate wedding hanging in the hall.

And, more weird, there are no insects in the yard on the rose bushes. But there is a sudden infestation of lady bugs that she can't explain. And then there's the portrait that shows what clearly seems to be a child's hand coming out of the ground beneath one of the rose bushes.

Mom's not crazy, and grandma's not gone. Others on the lane know that there's something wrong with the house.

If I have a quibble, it's with the climax of the book, which takes all the action ... somewhere else. I'm not exactly sure where it was or how any of the vultures managed to find their way there. I understand that they didn't need realism at this particular point, but the book went to extraordinary lengths to make the creepy, unimaginable into real, believable things. This was a little disappointing and could've been closer to home, as it were.

One last side note: I have to say that "a house with good bones" isn't a common expression in the Northeast, USA. At least, I don't think it is. It's not one that I've heard. The only other reference I have is the song "The Bones" by Maren Morris, where she sings "the house won't fall when the bones are good", which made me wonder right from the start if the house was going to fall. (Oddly, I assumed that the song was talking about a personal relationship with two people, not the actual structure of their dwelling, allegorically speaking.)

This book was written before "What Moves the Dead" and contains a preview for it at the end of the book.

I enjoyed this, both in audio and ebook, although I abandoned the audio once I caught up reading.

A Cry of Hounds (Ackley-McPhail, ed)

A Cry of Hounds
by Danielle Ackley-McPhail (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

A Cry of Hounds was a Kickstarter book, published by eSpec Books and edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, who also edited my book, In A Flash 2020 and the upcoming A Bucket Full of Moonlight.

A quick check of the Internet says that the paperback hasn't been released yet. However, this book was created in conjunction with the Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, which took place a couple of months ago.

The stories in this volume are steampunk or have a steampunk feel to them. And while they are not Sherlock Holmes stories, they are meant to evoke Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And, of course, they needed to have a dog in them. That dog could be Cerberus, a giant puppy, a construct, or any mythological creature. And the fact that they don't repeat is a testament to the editor. (Note: I mean it -- I'm not kissing up.)

A couple of the stories feel like they are the "continuing adventures" of the characters contained within, but Keith R. A. DeCandido fooled me by using other Doyle characters and setting this adventure immediately after the events of one that Doyle published a century ago. (And I only know this because I was at a reading at the eSpec Book Launch party at Heliosphere, in Piscataway, NJ.)

The stories include "The Curse of the Baskervilles" by Arthur Conan Doyle (an excerpt from the novel "The Hound of the Baskervilles"), "The Night of the Howling Wind", by Ef Deal, "The Adventure of the Exploding Airship" by John L. French, "A Grecian Pawse" by Doc Coleman, "The Vampire of Rannoch Moor", by David Lee Summers, "Amber Waves of Bane" by Dana Fraedrich, "Weighed and Measured" by Bill Bodden, "Progenitor" by Keith R.A. DeCandido, "Ember Eyes" by Jessica Lucci, "The Houndstooth Affair" by Aaron Rosenberg, "A Glimpse of Death" by James Chambers, "They Who Have Lost Their Way" by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and "Sherlock Holmes and the Stonyhurst Terror" by Christopher D. Abbott.

This is one of those times when I wish I'd been on the ball about recording my reading. I finished this book back in May, but with the end of school and real life events, this blog (and my others) took a back seat.

To highlight a few of them: Ef Deal sets the stage with "The Night of the Howling Wind" which takes place in Ireland during a historic windstorm (really, it happened) and involves werewolves and murder. "The Exploding Airship" is a "Hope and Gracie mystery" dealing with an automated plane that exploded over the banks of the Thames (bonus points for naming the airships Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.) "The Houndstooth Affair" takes place in New York City, specifically involving the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a clockwork songbird built by Cartier. And "Sherlock Holmes and the Stonyhurst Terror" unravels the mystery of a Yeth Hound, which given that this story employed Holmes and Watson, you knew that it would have a rational explanation but you still had to wonder what it was.

An enjoyable read. Recommended. Again, for anyone who stumbled upon this blog -- it isn't private, but I don't actively publicize it -- I've written for eSpec Books and I've participated in many of their Kickstarter campaigns, so I own a lot of their books (and bonus stories), and they are a large part of my digital TBR pile.

My Hero Academia Volume 36

My Hero Academia Volume 36, by Kōhei Horikoshi (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Now that I'm caught up, I'm reading these once every few months, so I'll list them separately.

The "final battle" continues. I notice that the anime that I'm watching on Hulu has almost caught up with the books. This past Saturday, Monoma copied powers that allowed him to use Kurogiri warp gate abilities to separate all of the villains into groups where heroes would be waiting. (Deku unfortunately gets snagged and dragged into the wrong portal.)

As shown on the cover, the highlight is the showdown between brothers Dabi and Shoto. Dabi notes that Endeavor didn't come himself and assumes he's too ashamed to be there. This doesn't bother Dabi because he wants to destroy everything Endeavor holds dear before disposing of him.

At the coffin in the sky, Tomura Shigaraki still has the power to create more hands from his body as a natural ability. However, his Decay quirk is being negated by Monoma who is standing by Aizawa so that he can use his ability past the normal time limit. (Aizawa has one eye bandaged -- I don't remember if he lost it entirely -- and his ability isn't what it had been.)

Without Deku, they can't finish off Shigaraki.

Three month wait for the next book.

In Defense of Witches (Chollet)

In Defense of Witches
Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial
by Mona Chollet (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club selection. I listened to it as well as read it.

The club decided that we would try our luck with nonfiction for a month. It didn't go much better.

The Introduction was over 40 pages. That in itself tells you that the book was going to drag. The overall sentiment was that this book should've been an essay. I wouldn't been fine with a Buzzfeed article, or if the 40 page introduction had been the entire book. Not much to add afterward.

The book was short on witches and long on generic feminism, and also the fact that all women are witches, so every woman is still on trial. Not something I buy, but the author made an effort to make the case. Granted, you had to get through a lot of the book before there were more mentioned of Gloria Steinem than there were of Donald Trump or Rush Limbaugh. The author also states that feminists aren't out to kill all the children and then spends dozens of pages supporting the assertion that women would do better for themselves if they don't have children.

Speaking of children, there could've been more about the midwives delivering babies. Now these were women who were accused of being witches if for no other reason than more of their babies lived while those delivered by doctors had a higher mortality rate. The answer was simple: hand-washing. And cleaning in general. Cleanliness is next to godliness after all. Actually, that last statement was NOT made in the book. That was something I read decades ago in an article that mentioned that many of the midwives in question were, in fact, nuns. Mothers wanted the nuns delivering their babies and not doctors.

Even leaving out the religious connection, more about this would've been more about the defense of witches.

An extra chapter about some of the witches killed in Salem or in England, France and the rest of Europe might've been appreciated.

At our meeting, the book didn't get higher than an average rating. Some good ideas but rambled too much. For the record, there were 4 women and 2 men in the webspace.

Fangirl: the Manga (Volumes 1, 2, 3)

Fangirl: the Manga (Volumes 1, 2, 3)
Manga adaptation of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl by Sam Maggs (2020-2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Looking for random manga and the New York Public Library website recommended "Fangirl", which was a four-part adaptation of a novel, which I wasn't familiar with. So I started reading it. What I wasn't aware of at the time was that the fourth and final book has not been published yet. Arg.

Yes, I'll borrow it sometime after it comes out.

There are twins named Cath and Wren, whose mother only had one name picked out (Catherine). The two were fans of "Simon and Baz", two characters from popular fiction (I'm guessing similar to Twilight, but I never read that and has no plans to). They are "shipped" together despite the fact that neither of the characters are gay in the source material. For that matter, neither of the sisters are gay either (at least in the first three volumes).

The two are going off to college, but they won't be rooming together. Wren knows that they need to spread their wings and be individuals. Cath is a little afraid of this. Wren is the extrovert which gets her into trouble sometimes, and Cath is an introvert who stays in her room if her roommate doesn't drag her out of it.

Wren has given up on the fanfic. Cath still lives for it, so much so that it interferes with her creative writing class.

Wren starts to reconnect with their mother, who abandoned the family when the kids were little. Cath hates her mother and doesn't want to see her again.

And Cath falls for her roommate's ex-boyfriend who is a fan of Cath's stories.

Nothing objectionable. An interesting read. Obviously, I'm not the target demographic for this.

If I had any complaint, it would be the construction of the books that I got from the library. The first book was formatted like a regular graphic novel, not magna. The front page was on the left. The second and third books start on the right BUT ... and this is the annoying part ... the pages themselves are meant to be read from left to right, not right to left. THAT was confusing.

But I dealt with it.

Waiting for part 4. I don't think I'll read the actual book though.

Manga: The Devil in a Part-Timer, Volume 17

The Devil in a Part-Timer, Volume 17
(2017)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is just here for completeness.

Walking past the library one Saturday morning a couple months ago, someone had left a bunch of books outside on top of the book return bin for anyone to take. There wasn't anything of real interest, but I saw this one volume of a manga that I hadn't heard of. Even though it was Volume 17, I figured it'd be enough for me to decide if it was something I'd like to find the first volume of and read through.

If what I guessed is true, the devil is a teenager for some reason, and in this particular episode, he's concerned about getting his driver's license. At the same time, another character is missing, and others show up looking for her.

By the end, demons are showing up and there's a showdown, which you'd expect any manga to have.

Nothing gripping. I didn't hate it, but I don't think I would've read volume 2 if I'd picked up volume 1 instead. I'm not planning on looking for this series.

Note: After I read this (more than a month ago), I was looking at the anime listings on a couple of platforms, and I saw that this is a show. If I had time, I might watch the first two episodes, but it's low on the list.

Pinata: A Novel (Gout)

Pinata: A Novel
by Leopoldo Gout (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club alternate selection. It wasn't selected. However, given the wait time for the book, I reserved it before the poll results were in. I listened to most of the book, and I read it in its entirety. Since I finished reading it, I didn't feel the need to finish listening.

I read this book before The Saint of Bright Doors but I forgot to include it in the blog when I was catching up with my backlog. Oops. I read this a month ago, end of March, begining of April. I could check Libby to see when I checked it out, but it's not that important.

Pinata sits on top as the best book I've read this year although it isn't perfect. I believe I gave it 4 stars on Good Reads, and I would give it 4.5 out of 5 here. I enjoyed it, but the ending was a little off for me.

The book opens centuries ago with Mexico being conquered and a church being constructed on Mexican burial grounds. The priests there find pinatas, the ancient kind made of dead bodies, and destroy them. One priests suffers a horrible supernatural death because of it.

Flash forward to the present day. The church is being restored to create a boutique hotel. Carmen Sanchez is an architect sent to Mexcio to oversee the work. She faces sexism and nationalism -- she's of Mexican heritage but still a foreighner. It's summertime, so she brings her two daughters. One, Izel, is a teen who hates that she was dragged along instead of going to drama camp with her friends (she has lots of teen drama) and who has a secret boyfriend that she's constantly texting. The younger daughter, Luna, is a bit of a misfit in school but she devours all the curiousities that Mexico has to offer.

A Mexican woman who works at city hall, Yoltzi, has the ability to see spirits, an ability she's always had. (I have to admit, when first reading, I thought she was an older woman, not someone in her 20s or 30s.) She spots Luna being followed by spirits and is worried that her openness makes her vulnerable to spirits taken over her.

When an accident at the cathedral causes a wall to be broken and a secret chamber (not on any of the floorplans going back hundreds of years) is revealed, containing some of the pinatas we read about earlier. Because of the incident, Sanchez is recalled to New York, but not before Luna steals one of the pinatas and manages to get in through custons. (She had a jar of crickets which would've been confiscated instead except that she ate them.

Once back in New York, the weirdness which started in Mexico starts to ramp up, and Luna is at the center of it.

Yoltzi, along with other side characters Father Verón and Quauhtli, try to get to New York. Here is where I was less happy with the book. It's not that I want characters to have Plot Armor but they don't need to have unnecessary targets on their backs either. It doesn't come down to one person standing, which if it had, I would've knocked a full star off my rating.

I enjoyed the book overall although the pacing was off a bit here and there.

DNR: The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera)

The Saint of Bright Doors
by Vajra Chandrasekera (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club selection. This book was chosen because it was one of three in the window of a bookstore in Nashville. We all hate this bookstore now.

The book was popular enough that I had to settle for reading the hardcover, which I needed to pick up in Manhattan because I couldn't get it in Brooklyn. Being only a year old, it's still quite popular, apparently.

If this had not been a book club selection, I would've given up on it a lot sooner than I did. As it was, I kept reading until the day of our meeting and I was still only about a third of the way through the book. I found out that only one person managed to finish it (and she was mad at us that she stuck it out). Even the group founder, who is a librarian, was unable to finish this.

No one had anything nice oto say about it beyond the fact that it started off interesting in the first chapter and then went whereever it was that it went. It didn't go through a bright door, though, which were described a lot, but otherwise were beside the point of the story, which went hither and yon.

Anway, this book was a waste of a few weeks of my time -- although not completely because I did read a different book on my kindle app at the same time. It's not only a "DNF" but I've added the tag "WTHDIJR" to the blog for this book. Because what the hell did I just read?

Once vacation is over, I'll be on my way back to Manhattan to drop this thing off. And then, on to the next book.