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John Lusk

Tarheel@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 1 month ago

Old white cishet suburban male. Software engineer.

Mostly interested in sci-fi (fiction) and anti-racism (non-fiction), but, wow, is that stuff Hard To Read. (Mostly because it's all my fault.)

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John Lusk's books

To Read (View all 13)

Keith Laumer: Retief! (2002)
No cover

Candice Millard: Hero of the empire (2016)
No cover

Keith Laumer: Bolo (1984, Berkley)

Currently Reading

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva: Racism Without Racists, 6th ed. (2021, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)
Heather McGhee: Sum of Us (2021, Random House Publishing Group)
Martha Wells: Rogue Protocol (2018)

Read (View all 53)

James S.A. Corey: Caliban's War (EBook, 2012, Orbit Books)
James S.A. Corey: Leviathan Wakes (2011, Orbit)
James P. Hogan: Inherit the Stars (Paperback, 1977, Del Rey)

User Activity

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reviewed Network Effect by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

Martha Wells: Network Effect (Paperback, 2021, Tor.com) 4 stars

Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.

You know that feeling when you’re …

This is why books are superior to video

5 stars

I am LOVING this series, and this novel was no exception.

With all the inner monologue and 4th-wall breaking (and the asynchronous HelpMe.file insertions), I keep thinking "how could this be rendered in video?" (Except I didn't think "render" in my head, because holy cow, is it pretentious.)

And my conclusion is: it would be tough, and very few could do it. I'd love to see it done well, but 99% of book-based video is so "lossy", to appropriate a criticism of JPEG as compared to GIF. ("Lossy" meaning all those delicate plot and character nuances are lost.)

reviewed Artificial Condition by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)

Martha Wells: Artificial Condition (2018) 4 stars

It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. …

I estimate 97% probability I will read this entire series

5 stars

This one was also awesome. Murderbot, for some reason, feels responsible for some humans and a smaller number of other bots. This is an interesting plot device.

Also, it feels to me like there's this sort of "escaped slave at risk of being recaptured" thing, along with "other humans feel guilty about that and want to treat it kindly but murderbot finds that extremely awkward and tiresome" thing, and I think those two things could definitely be (de?)coded differently, if you have a mind to, and that feels different (and I like it).

Alsø alsø, there's that whole "cold, heartless sole wanderer always moving like a rolling stone" thing that's appealing.

finished reading The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl (2009) 4 stars

The Windup Girl is a biopunk science fiction novel by American writer Paolo Bacigalupi. It …

The prose is poetry. It's worth going slow to savor it, but that also makes it hard to read (i.e., it takes effort), as opposed to the pulp that is my usual diet. It's worth it, though.

I think of it as bio-punk. With enough Thai (presumably) words to keep you off-balance.