A collection of novellas featuring the same two characters set in various interesting fantasy and fantasy-adjacent settings. White Crow is Mary Gentle’s response to all the bad low effort fantasy that was flooding the market in 90s and early 00s.

Sad/mad gay wizards doing sad/mad gay wizard things. Very grim… There are a bunch of Herald Mages running around at the start of this series which begs the question: “What’s going to happen to all of the Herald Mages?”

One part racist sexist misguided grandpa waxing philosophical about the meaninglessness of life, one part letters responding to Durant’s inflamattory prompt on the meaninglessness of life, one part toothless conclusion. Meh.

Some of the letters were interesting to read but most of the rest of this was not.

The Female Man is a more interesting and consistent story about sex and gender than Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. Russ is a poet and it shows. Russ hits the reader with evocative words and images that still hold up today (mostly). The Complete Alyx Stories haven’t, but they were influential to writers that came later, like Mary Gentle (as seen in the foreword to her White Crow collection)… So I’m glad Russ wrote them.

Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom describes Yalom’s psychotherapeutic framework based around acknowledging and dealing with the anxiety caused by the following existential issues: death anxiety, freedom (or lack of it), loneliness (towards others and towards one’s self) and the meaninglessness of existence.

Another Terry Pratchett banger. Mort takes awhile to get going but once it does it’s amazing until the very end. It’s Terry Pratchett’s combination of philosophical, political, ethical, cosmological ideas infused into (mostly) lighthearted fantasy romps that makes more unique and interesting stories that are still enjoyable to read more than 30 years later.