I’ve continued to show a little more restraint this past month. Though I’ll be showing more books than June, I only actually bought one new physical book. While I once again wonder if I’m forgetting something, one of these is actually a book I forgot to mention last month too. So, perhaps not for the first time, I actually did forget a book.

Enough carrying on, let’s have a look at these books.

New Books

I’m not sure why I put off buying You Feel It Just Below the Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson for so long. Cranor is one of the co-creators of Welcome to Night Vale, the books of which I typically rush out to get, and the two co-authors also created the podcast series Within the Wires, which I believe shares its setting with this book. Though I’m many seasons behind on that show, I did really like the first two seasons. I don’t know what particularly spurred me to pick this copy up, though I think it was a decent hardcover price. In any case, I’m happy to have it, the shrink wrap warping the dust jacket notwithstanding.

The book I forgot to mention buying in June was More Than This by Patrick Ness, a Young Adult novel that caught my eye at a thrift store. It sounds like an interesting coming-of-age story with a twist, as the main character seems to die at the outset, only to wake up in a familiar yet abandoned world. I was quite struck by the cover design too, which I’m often a sucker for.

I also picked up This Is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau, a horror novella that caught my attention a while ago. I’m trying to mind my shelf space as I accumulate more and more books, so instead of opting for the library with this one (they don’t have it), I decided to buy this one digitally, which I believe only cost me a dollar or so. It looks I’ll be able to easily read this in a sitting or so, it’s just a matter of determining whether I want to read it relatively soon or wait until October.

Novel Discoveries

2120 by George Wylesol is a book that relies mostly on visuals, though I’m not sure that it’s a comic book, taking cues instead from choose-your-own adventure books and old-school point-and-click adventure video games, telling the story of a computer repairman trapped in a strange, nondescript office building. It sounds heavily experimental, so I’d really like to check it out.

Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei is a manga series that caught my eye after watching a lackluster video essay that brought it up. It tells the story of long-lived cyborgs traversing a megastructure that has engulfed the Earth so completely that they no longer remember what land even is. The world looks bleak and hauntingly empty, and it seems to be a series of existential science fiction horror, which ticks a lot of boxes for me.

The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich is a social sciences nonfiction book about the forces that shaped Western society and thinking into something the author considers to be unique in humanity. It seems to be a bit dense, so I’m not sure about my mileage with a nonfiction book like this, but I’d like to pick it up from the library and give it a shot.

Anomia by Jade Wallace is a novel I learned about thanks to a post made by a local bookstore that I follow. Set in a small town that “feels displaced in time and space”, the story follows a group of characters coming together to find a couple that has gone missing. Based on the synopsis, this novel seems to be something of a literary experiment, as it apparently depicts a world that is “a folkloric alternate reality where sex and gender have been forgotten“. I’m curious to see how that unfolds. Also, bonus points for a good cover design.

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Until next time, thank you for reading!