keep moving forward

Bad news for outlaws: The remarkable life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie.  I grabbed this to check off my to-do box for a Coretta Scott King book award winner, as I haven't yet read one.  It's hard to comment about my choice of book without falling into political statements about the choices of the awards committee.  I shall resist.

This book is pretty ok.  Nonfiction picture books are always iffy-- matching the content level to the audience level-- and the sentence structure is a bit stilted, but the inclusion of "wild west" vocabulary add a nice element.  The illustrations aren't concrete enough for my preference but the consistent colors used was nice.

Warriors of the storm by Jack L. Chalker.  This author is weirdly obsessed with sex.  I have to keep in mind that this was from the late 80s.  The author also has a tendency to info-dump.  The multiple worlds are complex, but he lets the characters lecture each other in order to explain things to the reader.  The topics in each paragraph don't even flow together-- the writing is awkward and clunky, and espeically so in the "informative" sections.

A closed and common orbit by Becky Chambers.  Because I recently reread The long way to a small, angry planet, and in excited preparation of the third book coming out this year, I grabbed this again.  Like the first book, the second one is even better during the second reading.  Knowing where the story is going, the details add up faster; the emotional bits resonate stronger.  Sidra still comes off as whiny much of the time; it's true she didn't have much experience when she made her choice, but it was still hers to make.  It's more annoying than a major problem.  Cannot wait for book 3!

Star trek: Enterprise, season 1, with Scott Bakula.  I haven't seen a single episode of this before, so this has been treat, even though I know this wasn't very popular.  I particularly like how perfectly the technology looks like earlier versions of what's seen in TOS.  The plots meet the original plan of meeting new peoples and cultures; I'm kind of disappointed that there haven't so far been many episodes that seemed like social commentary.  That was more a TOS and NG thing, but it popped up often enough in DS9 and Voyager.  Well into season 2 already.