Ed Muskie and Ebenezer Scrooge walk into a bar

Future updates: c/o More Cream Please
Continuing, for some reason, to chronicle every book and short story I've read since The Lord of the Rings in the Spring of 2017.

Part 1 (2017) | Part 2 (2018) | Part 3 (2019) | "Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club"

Critical remarks are avoided…

Rereads coopt the register-mark symbol…

"Library Book Club" selections are noted in red to represent the spectre of death.

"CSGNFBØQEBCBBL" selections are noted in blue to represent the suffocation that is professional networking (i.e., my idea).

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Gabrielle Zevin
The Storied Life of AJ Fikry (2014) 👍

Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol (1843)

Jac Jemc
The Grip of It (2017)

George Saunders
Lincoln in the Bardo (2017)

Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
"Miracle Polish" (2011)
"Phantoms" (2010)
"Sons and Mothers" (2012)

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World (1932) ®

Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
"Mermaid Fever" (2009)
"The Wife and the Thief" (2015)

Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) 👍

Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
"A Report on Our Recent Troubles" (2007)
"Coming Soon" (2013)
"Rapunzel" (2011)
"Elsewhere" (2015)

Scott Conroy
Vote First or Die: The New Hampshire Primary—America's Discerning, Magnificent and Absurd Road to the White House (2017)

Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
"Thirteen Wives" (2013)
"Arcadia" (2013)
"The Pleasures and Sufferings of Young Gautama" (2015)
"The Place" (2015)
"Home Run" (2013)
"American Tall Tale" (2012)
"A Voice in the Night" (2012)

Margaret Atwood
The Testaments (2019) 👍

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Yes, 2020 in the workplace kicked off with The Handmaid's Tale and its inferior sequel. Just give Aunt Lydia the whole second narrative—then you won't have to worry about readers anticipating "big reveals" a couple hundred pages in advance. And the mansplaining symposium postscripts? And the mansplaining symposium postscripts! Minus one star.

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Philip K. Dick
"Fair Game" (1959)
"The Eyes Have It" (1953)
"The Father-Thing" (1954)
"Null-O" (1958)
"To Serve the Master" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)

Diane Cook
From Man v. Nature (2014)
"Moving On" (2014)
"Bounty," a.k.a. "The Way the End of Days Should Be" (2014)
"Somebody's Baby" (2013)
"Girl on Girl" (2014)
"Man v. Nature" (2014)

Agatha Christie
Ten Little _______, a.k.a. And Then There Were None (1939/1940 revision)

Diane Cook
From Man v. Nature (2014)
"Marrying Up" (2013)
"It's Coming" (2014)
"Meteorologist Dave Santana" (2014)
"Flotsam" (2013)
"A Wanted Man" (2014)
"The Mast Year" (2014)
"The Not-Needed Forest" (2013)

Simon Winchester
The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words, a.k.a. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (1998) 👍

Kimberly King Parsons
From Black Light (2019)
"Nothing Before Something," a.k.a. "Guts" (2017)
"In Our Circle" (2016)
"Glow Hunter" (2019)
"The Animal Part" (2012)

Don DeLillo
White Noise (1985)

Kimberly King Parsons
From Black Light (2019)
"Foxes" (2019)
"The Soft No" (2017)
"We Don't Come Natural to It" (2017)
"The Light Will Pour In" (2017)
"Into the Fold" (2010)
"Fellowship," a.k.a. "Black Light" (2016)

Ellen Lupton
Thinking With Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors and Students (2004)

Kimberly King Parsons
From Black Light (2019)
"Fiddlebacks" (2016)
"Starlite" (2019)