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A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
Death, you’ll say, yes, of course, death is his brother, but old age is the monster.
A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
Without being able to formulate it clearly, he senses that if no one remembers, then everything is permissible.
this is a statement about the current geopolitical landscape
A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
There is no time machine except the human being.
A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
Boredom is the emblem of this city. Here Canetti, Joyce, Dürrenmatt, Frisch, and even Thomas Mann have been bored.
savage
A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created.
An interesting mix of victorian(?) midwifery and eldritch mysticism. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't as groundbreaking as Our Lady of Endless Worlds.
Content warning infant death
the proprietor's wife brewed a mediocre ale, but roasted very good hog on her spit
Content warning infant death
Sarah knew Rebecca's babe was dead as soon as the head slid free, from the look on Mistress June's face.
A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
The #SFFBookClub pick for October 2025
This was a fun novella about 17th century London midwifery where there's a spate of babies being born with monstrous appearances and magical abilities. This is the September 2025 #SFFBookClub pick.
There's a fun angle of respectability politics, of not wanting to be publicly seen as queer so that Sarah can get better midwife clientele (and survive as a widowed woman), but also taking the angle of her having to cover the parts of herself that are uncanny. (Sure, sure, I am a sucker for the metaphor of queer as monstrous.) There's also a strong gendered metaphor of Sir Christopher Wren, creepily representing science and men cataloguing the world (and thinking they truly know it) versus the midwives having their own knowledge of other worlds and of magic.
Overall, this book met my expectations for exactly what I thought it was going to be in a good way. I love …
This was a fun novella about 17th century London midwifery where there's a spate of babies being born with monstrous appearances and magical abilities. This is the September 2025 #SFFBookClub pick.
There's a fun angle of respectability politics, of not wanting to be publicly seen as queer so that Sarah can get better midwife clientele (and survive as a widowed woman), but also taking the angle of her having to cover the parts of herself that are uncanny. (Sure, sure, I am a sucker for the metaphor of queer as monstrous.) There's also a strong gendered metaphor of Sir Christopher Wren, creepily representing science and men cataloguing the world (and thinking they truly know it) versus the midwives having their own knowledge of other worlds and of magic.
Overall, this book met my expectations for exactly what I thought it was going to be in a good way. I love a solid novella that can fit in good worldbuilding and plot and some character development without leaving me feeling like there's elements missing or it's rushed. It feels like the kind of story that would make a good movie. (This is all especially in comparison to previous novellas we have read for #SFFBookClub, like Countess.)
I have some thoughts about the ending, which I will put in a separate spoilered post.
The #SFFBookClub pick for September 2025
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions …
This felt to me like a much more surreal variant of North Continent Ribbon. Each story/chapter was a continuation or a tangent of a previous one, but I don't feel like the whole contributed much to a more coherent understanding of the whole picture. Overall, the vibe was very vague, and I'm not sure how much I took away from the experience.
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions …
It’s strange to think there are humans who aren’t me.
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions …
This was the #SFFBookClub book for August 2025.
In some ways, this book structurally reminded me of How High We Go in the Dark; they're both a post-apocalyptic, interconnected series of stories about humanity trying to survive. The stories here are further in the future and feel much more surreal and dreamlike. If anything, I feel like I've missed something critical as a reader--I can't quite put my finger on what this book is trying to do.
There are a few things that don't work for me. I think the stories largely don't stand on their own: there's many interesting ideas, but they don't feel connected via plot or resonate with a theme. There's also a penultimate chapter of the book where the book just out and out tells you everything it's been hinting at previously. I had guessed at a good bit of it, but it felt underwhelming …
This was the #SFFBookClub book for August 2025.
In some ways, this book structurally reminded me of How High We Go in the Dark; they're both a post-apocalyptic, interconnected series of stories about humanity trying to survive. The stories here are further in the future and feel much more surreal and dreamlike. If anything, I feel like I've missed something critical as a reader--I can't quite put my finger on what this book is trying to do.
There are a few things that don't work for me. I think the stories largely don't stand on their own: there's many interesting ideas, but they don't feel connected via plot or resonate with a theme. There's also a penultimate chapter of the book where the book just out and out tells you everything it's been hinting at previously. I had guessed at a good bit of it, but it felt underwhelming to have it laid out so plainly rather than sketched across stories.
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions …
The #SFFBookClub selection for August 2025
