Book Review: This Beautiful, Ridiculous City

On her first night in New York City, Kay Sohini sits on the tarmac of JFK Airport making an inventory of everything she’s left behind in India: her family, friends, home, and gaslighting ex-boyfriend. In the wake of that untethering she realizes two things: she’s finally made it to the city of her literary heroes—Kerouac, Plath, Bechdel—and the trauma she’s endured has created gaping holes in her memory.

As Kay begins the work of piecing herself back together she discovers the deep sense of belonging that can only be found on the streets of New York City. In the process she falls beautifully, ridiculously in love with the bustling landscape, and realizes that the places we love do not always love us back but can still somehow save us in weird, unexpected ways.

Book Review: Unromance

Sawyer Greene knows romance. She’s a bestselling author of the genre—or she was, until her ex left her with nothing but writer’s block and a broken heart. But when she gets stuck in the elevator with a handsome stranger, she sees their meet cute for what it is: just a one-night stand. It might have worked, too, if they could stop running into each other.

Actor Mason West sees Sawyer’s reappearance in his life as a sign. Obviously, they’re meant to cure each other. Him of the hopeless romanticism that only ends in heartbreak—and tabloid trainwrecks—and Sawyer of her writer’s block. Their agreement is simple: 1. No (more) sex, and 2. No matter how swoony the circumstances, absolutely no falling in love.

It’s a foolproof plan–until Sawyer and Mason find that, once set in motion, some plots can't be stopped—and that they might be hurtling towards a happy ending.

Book Review: Mood Machine

Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.

Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The business is notoriously opaque, but Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.

Book Review: Immortality Bytes

Yay, free money and a life of leisure! Except only if you never have children. Sure, a cute little version of you (but not yet so screwed up) sounds fun. But with AI robots taking more jobs, who can reject that “bargain” hoping to afford kids someday?

Stu Reigns does. He’s an idealistic AI programmer and part-time influencer. His demisexual ex-girlfriend, Roxy Zhang, nears perfecting electronic immortality. Add in billionaire banking rascals, and there’s no more certainty — not even “Death and Taxes.”

An old-money Southerner is buying Roxy’s company. This infuriates a sick, rival oligarch — who is about to be rightfully convicted of epic fraud. To escape to this digital eternal life, he compels Stu to steal it.

You’ll never guess all the twists, but maybe the reader peering over your shoulder will.

Book Review: X-Men '97 - Great X-Pectations

The official prelude to the hotly anticipated Disney+ show. The X-Men are back - and the '90s have never looked better! In this official prelude to the recently released X-Men '97 cartoon, created in collaboration with the showrunners, discover what Storm, Jubilee, Wolverine and the rest of the beloved '90s X-Men cast have been up to in the time before their return!

X-Men '97: Great X-Pectations by Steve Foxe and Salvador Espin collects the four issue mini-series from earlier in 2024. Todd Nauck provided the cover for this Marvel Comics collection.

Book Review: Y2K

The early 2000s conjure images of inflatable furniture, flip phones, and low-rise jeans. It was a new millennium and the future looked bright, promising prosperity for all. The internet had arrived, and technology was shiny and fun. For many, it felt like the end of history: no more wars, racism, or sexism. But then history kept happening. Twenty-five years after the ball dropped on December 31st, 1999, we are still living in the shadows of the Y2K Era.

In Y2K, young critic Colette Shade offers a darkly funny meditation on everything from the pop culture to the political economy of the period. By close reading Y2K artifacts like the Hummer H2, Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” body glitter, AOL chatrooms, Total Request Live, and early internet porn, Shade produces an affectionate yet searing critique of a decade that started with a boom and ended with a crash.

Book Review: 1st Case

Genius programmer Angela Hoot has always been at the top of her class, but now she's at the bottom of the FBI food chain—until her first case threatens everyone around her. Angela's graduate school days at MIT come to an abrupt end when she uses her hacking skills on another student's computer. Yet her mentor, Eve Abajian, arranges a new beginning for her—as an intern in FBI's Boston field office.

Her new supervisor, Assistant Special Agent in Charge William Keats, one of only two agents in the Northeast to make his rank before the age of thirty, sees in Angela a fellow prodigy. But Angela's skills come with a natural curiosity, which is also a dangerous liability. With little training, Angela is quickly plunged into a tough tracking murderous brothers who go by the Poet and the Engineer. When Keats tells her to "watch and listen," Angela's mind kicks into overdrive. The obsessive thinking that earned her As on campus can prove fatal in the field.