There is a tiny town in Texas called Midnight.

It has a vampire, a psychic, a witch, and an assassin (maybe).

It has a missing girl and a creepy family and a sense of belonging for anyone who is a little bit weird.

Manfred the internet psychic moves there to live in a small town and work from home, and quickly becomes part of the community just in time for them to be embroiled in an old scandal that has spilled over into new crimes. What follows is a crisply wound mystery that has the same wonderful small town adventure feel that the first Sookie Stackhouse books had. Highly recommend to fans of fascinating people, mysteries, and magic.

I wanted to read this because I like true crime and 3/5ths of my girl gang loves this podcast, but I listened to two episodes and found them so annoying I couldn't continue on. I thought this would be a good compromise. Unfortunately, this isn't about true crime at all. It's half self-help and half memoir, and while all the stories are interesting in an I'm-reading-a-funny-blog kind of way, as a book it's less than impressive.

The audiobook is excellent. I didn't like Emika at all, but the world building is super fun. It has all the virtual reality excitement of Ready Player One without any of the 80s nostalgia to bog it down. It's fast-paced and overall really fun.

Spoiler

I love that Lu made me care for and trust and like Hideo and then it was like WHAM BAM FUCK YOU HIDEO

This was weird (basically a biography of a story idea) but i would expect nothing less from a book by Neil Gaiman about Douglas Adams. It's full of fascinating trivia and did make me want to go back and re-read the books, but it also left me feeling disillusioned.

Myke Cole's review sums up my feelings: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1202651402?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Nowhere near as good as the first. None of the major plot points made sense. Like, Hideo created this magical algorithm that just enforces all laws? That's the most insanely complicated thing I've ever heard. Even if you think every law is moral, which is stupid in and of itself, any algorithm designed by humans is biased. Zero's motivations never made sense at any point in the story, and his middle-of-the-book backstory reveal did absolutely nothing to change my opinion of him or Hideo. I am pissed as hell that Emiko forgives Hideo for everything he did, including all of those deaths, and gives him the chance to work on the next neuro link. Fuck that.

Gave it two stars because it was action-y enough that I bothered to finish it, but it was a disappointment.

My first introduction to Russian literature. Surprisingly modern for being written between 1928-1940. Weird and magical and entertaining.

This book is a little too frilly to be a concise introduction to the sutras, yet it doesn't delve deep enough to be interesting. It's very preachy, but I liked some of his breakdowns of the different steps.

Really feeling like these books are meant for adults more than for children. All the business about freaks was handled so cleverly. I just adore Handler.

This novel showcases the kind of deep and almost fey friendships that arise in college, when you are thrown together in a way that never happens when you are older. It questions morality and friendship and meaning. It is a beautifully written, dark, and heady story. This book makes you question what you might be capable of, given the right circumstances.

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A re-read felt so brutal. But I still love this book.