A Bookish Type » Alternate History
15 FOLLOWERS
The particular section features book reviews related to alternate history. A bookish type is a book review blog where the author Annie reviews book related to different genres.
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
2w ago
Time travel stories usually follow the exploits of someone rocketing through time to change history. This person ponders the various time travel paradoxes or wrestles with the implications of an ever-splitting multiverse. All of which is to say that Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is a unique look at the perils of time travel ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
Trigger warning for rape. It’s the end of the world for most people in Stephanie Feldman’s chilling Saturnalia. Climate change has made large parts of the United States uninhabitable, or nearly so. Jobs are hard to come by and the Haves are doing much better than the Have Nots, thanks to generational wealth and advantageous ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
Although biology and societal convention push Ada into it, she is really not cut out for an outlaw’s life in Outlawed, Anna North’s thought-provoking alternate history of late-nineteenth-century America. A few decades before Ada was even born, devastating influenza ripped across the country (and presumably, the rest of the world). The world left behind seems ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
In The Carnival of Ashes, Tom Beckerlegge takes us back centuries, to a time when Italy was ruled by city-states and small kingdoms, when Venice governed a trading empire, and the fictional city of Cadenza was ruled by poets. This novel—which is arranged in linked prose chapters called cantos—shows us the strange events that bring ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
Beware of Scottish standing stones! It was true in the Outlander series and it’s true in Natasha Pulley’s new novel, The Kingdoms. This book might be Pulley’s most complicated story yet. It crosses history with alternate history, love and suppressed love, characters blinking in and out of existence, amnesia and shifting identities, and lots of ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
A while back—I’m not sure when exactly—a student asked me why Shakespeare was such a big deal. The student said they didn’t really care for the plays; they wanted to know why their English professors made such a fuss. I told this student that part of the reason is that professors and critics decided that ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
The old trope of running away with the circus never really made sense to me. Sure there’s glamor and adventure, but it always sounded like a lot of messy, smelly work to me. Running away to join librarians, however, is just my cup of tea. Even without the added “motivation” that prompts protagonist Esther runs ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
Trigger warning for physical abuse. The protagonist of Agnes Gomillion’s The Record Keeper, Arika Cobane, prides herself on her knowledge of the Compromise and the laws of a post-World War III world. She’s in the running to be valedictorian at the brutal school that is training her to be a Record Keeper, with her eyes ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
I don’t think that anyone would argue that America’s health system is dangerous, inequitable, and unsustainable. It’s not the fault of the doctors. (In fact, as I read this book, I couldn’t help but realize how lucky I’ve been with my doctors.) It’s the for-profit insurance and hospital systems. Healthcare should not be for-profit. Samuel ..read more
A Bookish Type » Alternate History
1y ago
Stay with me for a moment. I will get to Annalee Newitz’s The Future of Another Timeline; I promise. It wasn’t long after Wikipedia launched that it became ubiquitous. In spite of the best efforts of many educators, Wikipedia has built a reputation for being (more or less) reliable. And yet, I regularly blow students ..read more