Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

read by Michael Crouch

Oh my goodness, what a sweet story. I don’t mean sappy—I mean the protagonist has a fantastic personality (airily witty, a little insecure, loving, impulsive, just precocious enough to be adorable and just bad enough at stuff to be believable) and ends up in a ridiculously bad situation and muddles through it as best he can and ends up… well, I won’t spoil it for you.

The setup: Simon Spier is a closeted gay teenager who has somehow managed to make contact, anonymously, with another closeted gay boy at his high school. They deliberately don’t know who the other is; they call each other by code names (the other boy calls himself “Blue”) and they communicate without details that would out them to each other. Within that anonymity, they develop a super close bond that is just starting to feel romantic as the story begins.

And then, disaster strikes. Simon forgets to close out his email account on a school computer, and another kid, who has a crush on one of Simon’s female friends, finds it, takes some screen shots, and uses the information to blackmail Simon into playing wingman for him. It’s not entirely that Simon doesn’t want to be out as gay—he does, he’s just waiting for the right time. But he feels sure that if Blue gets outed, he’ll never speak to Simon again. And that’s just unacceptable.

Hijinks ensue, and this book is plot-based enough that I don’t dare say another word about them. So there you go.

What I loved about this book: well, Simon’s personality, which I already discussed. And the fact that any character you spend any time with at all is also a distinct personality, and all the interwoven and complex relationships including a few intense friendships (the kind most people don't have past high school), and the moral ambiguity and complexity of the situations and people’s reactions to them. Also the many cultural references—I’m the wrong age to get many of them, but I enjoyed the way they were tossed around in a way that made the characters and setting more grounded in reality and I ended up googling some music.

Oh, and I understand this has been made into a movie called Love, Simon. It's probably pretty good. But I've already got these characters in my head just the way I want them to be, in part because Michael Crouch did such a fantastic job with the reading for the audiobook. So I'm going to hold off on watching it, for now at least. I'm sure my curiosity will get the better of me eventually.

Basically this book is better than it needs to be, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommend.

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

read by Michael Levi Harris

So what we have here is a kid who calls himself a “fractional Persian”—raised “American” in the U.S. by his Persian mom and blond “Übermensch” dad. (He loves Persian cooking, for example, but only speaks enough Farsi to be polite and talk about food.) He nerds out about Star Trek, Tolkien, Harry Potter, and, of all things, tea. He’s a little overweight and get teased at school and doesn’t have many friends, which makes him a constant disappointment to his dad. In fact, Star Trek is just about all he has in common with his dad. That, and depression, and a chronic inability to express himself.

He’s also smart and thoughtful and, it turns out, pretty decent at soccer, a.k.a. non-American football—and a really good friend. But we don’t know about any of this at the beginning of the story, and neiher does he. Well, maybe the smart part, but not the rest.

Things start to move when the family takes a trip to Yazd, Iran, to visit with the grandparents he’s never met in person before. His grandfather is formidable and his grandmother is sweet and he’s expected to make friends with the neighbor kid, Sohrab. Which actually turns out to be the greatest thing ever. Because Sohrab is super interested in Darius, and draws him out, and helps him feel like it’s okay to be himself, fractional or not.

What I loved about this book: it made me fall in love with Iran and with Persian culture (and made me super hungry for Persian food). The relationships were varied, three-dimensional, believable, relatable, and central to the story. The drama was dramatic indeed… but also understated (way more Benjamin Alire Sáenz than, say, Francesca Lia Block). There was tons of representation, most of it very off-hand, all of it spot-on, especially regarding depression. And Darius himself was such a sweet, dysfunctional nerd. I feel like I went out with him, or maybe I was him, in high school.

Highly recommend for all fractional Americans and most anybody else.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

read by steven crossley

As a gamer myself, it seems abundantly clear to me that the author of this book is also a gamer. As I was reading, I could almost see the rules for the magic system taking form around me (here is the list of magical elements; here is a description of the relationship of the planes on which the different Londons exist; here is the fumble chart for magic items—oh no, wait, you’re dealing with an Artifact, see Index D7).

Also, clearly, here are two player characters with elaborate back stories who have no reason whatsoever to hang out together (clashing alignments, anyone? Plus they come from different planes) and the GM had to go to great lengths to cause the world to not only shove them together without them killing each other, but on top of that to give them a common goal. If you’ve ever been the GM in that kind of situation, you know how annoying it can be. Herding highly territorial cheetahs.

I don’t mean this as a bad thing; quite the reverse. It's something that amused me somewhere in the back of my head as I read.

So: in the book there are four Londons (that we know of), each on a different but intersecting plane of reality. Delilah Bard is a rogue (excuse me, a resourceful and dextrous young woman with a fine appreciation for the moral gray areas of life) who comes from Grey London, where there is no such thing as magic. Kell is a magic user (excuse me, a powerful, acerbic, and somewhat arrogant man with the ability to use runes and words and blood to bend reality and travel between the planes) from Red London, where magic is abundant and the people live in harmony with it.

The two of them come into contact because of a plot originating in White London, which is a cold, miserable place where magic is all about dominance and is gradually bleeding away, along with everybody’s life force. The plot involves an artifact from Black London, which we don’t talk about, because its fate is too horrible.

Kell ends up with the artifact, Delilah swipes it from him, both come to grief in different ways, and horrific hijinks ensue. 

This is a fine fantasy novel with very high-caliber world-building. Recommend.

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

read by Martin Jarvis

With the new series set to premier this month, I had to read Good Omens. I’d avoided it for all these years because, honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s. (Yes, go ahead and pelt me with raw carrots or something.) I just didn’t love Neil Gaiman enough to read this collaboration—and I love Neil Gaiman a lot. But the on-screen version of American Gods was so good, I decided I had to have the necessary background to properly appreciate this adaptation.

And it turns out to have been an excellent idea. Good Omens is terrifically funny, in a style reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ best work: somehow ludicrous and dry at the same time. Basically two angels, one fallen (Crowley) and one not so fallen (Aziraphale), are friends who have “gone native” here on Earth and are living happily among us. But then it turns out that the End Times are about to happen—and neither of them wants that.

Also in the mix: the Antichrist, age 11; Anathema Device, a witch and a descendant of the eponymous Agnes Nutter; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; and a couple of misguided but very devoted witch hunters. Hijinks ensue.

There are tons of scenes that stick in my head in a very visual way—but if I told you about them, I'd be like that preview of that really hilarious movie that shows all the funniest pratfalls and sight gags and one-liners to get you all excited, and then when you go to see the actual movie, you realize you've already seen all the best bits. So I'm not gonna do that.

I will tell you that it's about free will, more or less. Free will, and the absurdity of the human condition, and yes, it's also a buddy comedy, sort of. It's got elements of the Hitchhiker's Guide and of American Gods, which you would expect. But it's also got elements of The Screwtape Letters (but less preachy), Lucifer (the TV show) (but smarter), The Good Place, and The Preacher.

Verdict: definitely read it. Especially if you plan to watch the show. If you like this sort of thing, this is definitely a great example of it. If you have no idea what sort of thing this is, this is a good place to start. If you don't like this sort of thing... I still think you should give it a try, because this might very well change your mind. If it doesn't, I'll still shake your hand and wish you well.

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

read by Paul Boehmer

So humanity has found a way to time travel, and to edit history (and therefore the future) for the good of humanity. But it’s run by a cadre of chest-thumping nerd boys who live together with next to no female companionship (and no female colleagues at all) outside of time, in a no-place called Eternity. 

Eternity is meant to be a safe bubble of idealism and intellectual stimulation, free from distractions and the sorts of personal prejudices that would lead to bad decisions… but which, in reality, is a seething cauldron of bitter competition, thwarted desire, unexamined privilege, and unchecked neurosis. 

Basically, if you put a bunch of Silicon Valley bros in charge of all of time, it would look something like this.

I spent a lot of time gnashing my teeth at the obvious error of putting a bunch of putatively meritocratous hormone-soaked monks in charge of humanity’s destiny, and trying to tell myself that Asimov grew up when and where he grew up and so had some serious but understandable blind spots when writing this. And then, when the main character (duh) becomes willing to mess up all of history and therefore the entire future of everyone purely because he wants to get laid, I gnashed my teeth even harder.

But I kept reading… because it was a classic that I’d never gotten around to, and it’s not that long, and I figured what the heck.

And then it turns out that Asimov was taking all of this into account… but if I tell you how, I’ll spoil the book for you.

Verdict: read it. But only if you can stand to grit your teeth for the first 90% of the book. In my opinion, it was worth it.