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gograh.bsky.social
Effortless Malaise
@gograh.bsky.social
340 followers 710 following 290 posts
culture junkie raconteur
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gograh.bsky.social
Almost 3 years ago, I decided to get back into reading on a regular basis and resolved to read every day for a month. I just cracked 1,000 consecutive days and more than 270 books and novellas read since that resolution.

I don’t normally make a fuss but I am really proud of myself!

#booksky
#goals
image that shares information relaated to “You beat your record reading streak” showing 144 weeks in a row and 1,000 days in a row of reading.
October 11, 2025 at 9:48 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#Finished Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson @keithrosson.bsky.social and you’ve gotta drop whatever you’re doing and give this an October read. A high-test, real-deal, unrelenting grinder that evokes the best of the mass-market paperbacks of my ill-spent youth. FANTASTIC!

#booksky
#horrorsky
the book jacket for Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson, featuring a red and black background with the title ina semi-gothic font. The illustration features a winding, two-lane road in the bottom third with a human skull that has vampiric, elongated incisors “eating” the road
September 25, 2025 at 8:32 PM
gograh.bsky.social
Friday Night’s Alright (for Mar Molcajete)
a picture of a red restaurant table with a wooden plate with a stone molcajete stuffed to the brim with crab legs, mussels in the shell, fried tilapia, octopus, scallops, and clams in a spicy tomato broth. Butterflied shrimp hang from the rim of the molcajete and there is sliced crust bread on a plate just off to the side.
July 19, 2025 at 12:14 AM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished All the Fiends of Hell by Adam L.G. Nevill. Harrowing survival story in the midst of either an alien invasion or breach of a cosmic horror-esque dimension. Compelling characters and a truly gripping, propulsive grind to survive an insane apocalypse.

#booksky 💙📚
#horrorbooks
book jacket for All the Fiends of Hell by Adam L.G. Nevill, featuring a black background and an oblong, demonesque red head with an open mounth of white fangs and a featurless face except for a giant, gaping hope where the eyes and nose should be. Jagged spikes ring the sides of the head.
July 10, 2025 at 2:40 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. A small town lives with a 350 year old witch in its midst, enduring the curse and abiding by strict rules—until a set of circumstances throws the town into chaos. Rich cast of characters and excellent unfolding horrors!

#booksky 💙📚
#horrorbooks
The book jacket for Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, featuring a background of residential houses in a neighborhood, with a power/telephone pole slightly askew to the right. Floating in midair to the left is a woman in a tattered dress. We see her from behind, her hair and dress disturbed by the wind. She is bound about the torso by wire and her left hand is at an angle, pushing against the wire. There are leaves blowing in the air around her and everything is cast in an eerie, greenish hue.
July 7, 2025 at 1:46 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. A fictionalized (but excellently researched) narrative about two key events during Ted Bundy’s rampage, giving agency not to Bundy but to the women whose lives were changed by his violence. Brilliantly written and exceptional.

#booksky 💙📚
the book jacket for Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll featuring a bright yellow background with a rectangle in the upper third. Within the rectangle is a posterized closeup of a woman’s forehead, eyes, and nose in an electric pink color, with the exception of the whites of her eyes and bright yellow eye shadow.
July 2, 2025 at 1:45 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older @older.bsky.social The 3rd Mossa and Pleiti adventure adds richness and depth to everything that makes this series great. Complex relationship dynamics, wonderful prose, and academic intrigue abound!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
book cover for The Potency of Ungovernable Impluses by Malka Older, featuring the light-blue silhouette of a retro-future cityscape in the lower background, below a purple, red, and pink depiction of the swirling clouds of Jupiter. In the foreground, the silhouette of a woman stand on the left, with her arm slightly raised toward the silhouette of a woman on the right, who appears to be walking away but is looking over her shoulder and her arm trails, reaching out slightly to the woman on the left.
June 23, 2025 at 2:07 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory @darylwriterguy.bsky.social A warm, funny, thoughtful rumination on the meaning of . . . well, EVERYTHING, in a world where its inhabitants know they are living in a simulation. Fantastic characters and a literal trip!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
book jacket for When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory, featuring an illustrated pink and orange sunset, with the sun setting into hills on the horizon in the bottom third. A black road winds its way from the bottom of the cover to the hills in the distance, where it terminates in the half-sphere of a black tunnel. On either side of the road there are sheep grazing on a pink plain, which are mirrored in the sky by white, fluffy clouds.
June 19, 2025 at 1:57 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished The Handle by Richard Stark, book 8 on my tour through the Parker novels. This one sizzles with non-stop action as Parker works with The Outfit to topple an isolated gambling racket with promises of a big haul. Mayhem ensues!

#booksky 💙📚
#crimebooks
#thrillers
book cover for The Handle by Richard Stark, featuring a textured orange background with a silhouette of a revolver prominently across the upper middle. In the lower left corner, there is a black and white photo of a roulette wheel and in the lower right there is a silhouette of a small boat with an outboard motor. There is the silhouette of a man leaning over the motor and the silhouette of a man seated in the middle of the boat.
June 13, 2025 at 12:55 PM
gograh.bsky.social
Quote post with the Fantastic Four comic that came out the month you were born
cover for Fantastic Four 112 by artist John Buscema, featuring a solid black background with the Hulk on the left with both arms raised with his hands in fists, facing off against the Thing on the right, who has his right fist cocked back behind his head and his left arm straight out pointing down. The hype text reads “Hulk vs. Thing—‘Nuff Said”
June 12, 2025 at 3:33 AM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Oracle by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I enjoyed this mashup of technothriller, the Old Gods, angsty teens in love, the Grizzled Old Man Who Has Seen Too Much But Still Has Heart, and a looming apocalypse. Fun and inventive!

#booksky 💙📚
#horrorsky
#horrorbooks
the book jacket for Oracle by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, featuring a black backgroumd with the sulhouette of a lanky teenage boy in a hoodie with the hood up amd obscuring his face. He appears to be standing hip-deep in the agitated waves of the sea, and he is lit from behind with a yellow glow.
June 9, 2025 at 1:09 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore @lizmoorebooks.bsky.social A deep character study of mid-20th century social strata wrapped within the mystery of two children gone missing nearly 15 years apart. Couldn’t put it down! Not my usual fare but I really enjoyed.

#booksky 💙📚
#mysterybooks
the book jacket for The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore, featuring a watercolor painting of a forest scene with a tree trunk rising diagonally up from the bottom left and a branch continuing up to the top. Dense foliage fades into the background. From the center top, a line of pink paint drips downward, culminating in a bulb of paint right in the center of the cover.
June 2, 2025 at 1:28 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi and WOW, what a mind-bender! In an alt-1930s history where technology exists to interact with the dead, British spies hope to ferret out a Soviet mole while a huge secret threatens living and dead alike. Conceptually amazing!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
book jacket for Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi, featuring an illustration of a cliff face in the bottom third, with four silhouettes of men in trenchcoats and fedoras illuminated from behind by a yellow half-circle of light that has jagged beams of light emanating out from the core against a white background.
May 29, 2025 at 1:58 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Terrible Worlds: Revoultions, featuring three excellent novellas by Adrian Tchaikovsky @aptshadow.bsky.social Collects Ironclads, Firewalkers, and Ogres, each exploring key aspects of agency, systems, and the inevitable cracks in power structures. Fantastic!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
the book jacket for Terrible Worlds: Revolutions by Adrian Tchaikovsky, featuring a black background with what appears to be a bloated red sun occupying all but the lower third of the cover.
May 23, 2025 at 10:54 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished the short story Human Resources by Adrian Tchaikovsky @aptshadow.bsky.social A fun piece of social satire about automation and the performative nature of workplace interaction. Tchaikovsky’s adroit use of humor is on full display!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
#scifi
book jacket for Human Resources by Adrian Tchaikovsky, featuring a dark blue background with a tiny silhouette of a human figure at the bottom and looming above it in the foreground is a conglomeration of computer parts and wires, culminating in a half-sphere of a screen with a smiling female face looking down on the human figure.
May 18, 2025 at 12:35 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished The Seventh, by Richard Stark, the 7th book in the Parker series. The title also refers to Parker’s cut of a stadium heist that seems to go smoothly but completely unravels by the end, with a couple of truly out-of-left-field twists. Great fun!

#booksky 💙📚
#crimebooks
#thrillers
book jacket for Richard Stark’s The Seventh, featuring a yellow background with black amd white photos of a 1960s era football helmet on the right and an open suitcase full of American dollars on the left. in the foreground, there’s the silhouette of a revolver floating over the rest of the image.
May 18, 2025 at 12:23 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Quantico by Greg Bear (I’m a huge GB fan). A well-paced, near-future (for its 2005 publication date) technothriller. Fun read but not up to Bear’s scifi best. More prescient than comfortable in 2025 as to the dismantling of federal agencies. Worth it!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
#scifi
a book jacket for Quantico by Greg Bear, featuring a Matrix-like shower of green alphanumerics on black in the background and a bright red, modified biohazard symbol in the foreground
May 12, 2025 at 10:58 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton. Closed-room mystery/horror on a ship, set in 1634. Read it for the zigs and zags and great cast of characters, not for its historical or seafaring accuracy. Keeps you guessing! Genre-bending and lots of fun.

#booksky 💙📚
#mysterybooks
the book jacket for The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton, featuring a line-art illustration of a rolling green and black sea in the background and a compass with a pentagram on the face on a chain with an anchor pendant at the other end
May 7, 2025 at 10:22 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds, which is book 2 of the Revenger series. Another fine addition to this pirate-themed space opera, although the action is dialed back for a more introspective set of character studies. The world-building is the real draw!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
the book jacket for Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds, featuring a starfield background bisected by a crescent of blue-white light, which illuminates the silhouette of an elongated, angular, black starship with diamond-shaped solar sails at its stern.
April 28, 2025 at 12:59 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished The Jugger by Richard Stark. Book 6 of the 24 Parker novels, The Jugger differs from the previous books in that there’s no heist—this is a murder mystery through-and-through. Rural setting and a small-town cop that gives off a great Jim Thompson vibe!

#booksky 💙📚
#mysterybooks
book jacket for The Jugger by Richard Stark, featuring a mustard-yellow background with a silhouette of a revolver in the foreground. There is a black and white photo of a combination lock wheel in the lower left and the silhouette of two legs in pants and shoes from the knees down (suggesting a dead body) in the lower right of the cover.
April 18, 2025 at 1:34 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty @mightymur.bsky.social A fantastic locked-spaceship mystery with a unique premise, perfect pacing, and slippery, multi-faceted characters. Twists and turns abound, but it concludes in a way that respects the reader!

#booksky 💙📚
#scifibooks 🪐📚
#mystery
book jacket for Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, featuring a starfield background with floating male body in the middle with a bright light behind him, rendering the figure mostly a silhouette. The light diffuses out from all around him, partially obscuring the starfield background
April 16, 2025 at 10:34 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#NowWatching 13 Assassins, directed by the incredible Takashi Miike. Gorgeous, decadent, heartfelt, and fatalist. You live this film. My fourth or fifth re-watch and it is as sumptuous and perverse as the first time I stumbled upon it.

#filmsky 💙🎥
#samuraifilms
#bestmovies
movie poster for 13 Assassins, directed by Takashi Miike, featuring a bedraggled and exhausted swordsman of the Edo period in Japan, under a cloud-haunted sky.
April 12, 2025 at 12:18 AM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished Tomorrow’s Kin by Nancy Kress and I’m impressed by the premise, the hook, and the hard science. I admit to struggling a bit with the characters and the pacing, which is fast but contrived. A good read and I’m compelled to seek out the sequel nonetheless!

#booksky
#scifibooks
#scifi
book jacket for Tomorrow’s Kin by Nacy Kress, featuring a New York skyline of the Freedom Tower (?) in the background of a breaking dawn. There’s an oval-shaped dome structure in the foreground with a lattice of beams visible through a transparent shell, hovering above the Hudson Bay. The Statue of Liberty is visible as well as some boats in the bay.
April 11, 2025 at 10:28 PM
gograh.bsky.social
post a movie from the year you turned 18
the iconic movie poster for Batman (1989) featuring Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton in text top billing and then the gold oval batsignal in the middle, with Batman in all caps underneath
April 9, 2025 at 10:19 PM
gograh.bsky.social
#JustFinished London Match by Len Deighton, the conclusion of the first Bernard Samson trilogy. Thrilling espionage and complex maneuvering keeps one guessing righ to the last page. 80s late Cold War spy stuff done right. Samson makes a great protagonist.

#booksky 💙📚
#spyfiction
#thrillers
the book jacket for London Match by Len Deighton, featuring a blue background with red diagonal stripes and a black and white photograph of Oxford Street in London in the 1960s, with an iconic block of curved buildings on eaither side of a wide street full of cabs, double-decker buses, and pedestrians
April 8, 2025 at 9:37 PM