Space Oddity

Catherynne Valente

★★★★☆

Not quite as fun as the first book, but it’s just as absurd and chaotic.

I started reading at the beginning of October, in the final weeks of the 2024 election, thinking: wow, this is exactly what I need right now! As things went along it got more cynical, and the story read like a bunch of totally disconnected threads, each with its own flavor of absurdist despair, and I just felt like I do not need this book right now.

And then at the end, everything came together in a moment of catharsis, and I found myself thinking yes, this is exactly what I need right now.

Life is beautiful. And life is stupid.* And we could all benefit from a read-through of Gorecannon’s list of Unkillable Facts.