Perhaps there's another way to read Everything You Ever Wanted: that it's really a book about depression and suicidal ideation, and that Nyx is merely a metaphor for the mental state of people with this illness, separating themselves from the rest of the world and from those who love them. However, because interacting with people in the 'normal world' is portrayed as so meaningless (even face-to-face interaction in the pub is portrayed negatively) it doesn't work on this level either. While this is an easy enough read, it won't satisfy either SF fans or those looking for an exploration of emotional connection. Two and a half stars. #notforme Now I have to decide if I want to read her first memoir that details her life in a harem and as a drug addict...??? SOME GIRLS, which chronicles her time spent in the harem of the Prince of Brunei, has been translated into eighteen languages. There is pain in this novel too, real and raw – and here it finds its heart. Iris’s father took his own life when she was a child, and haunts her own recurring suicidal thoughts. Most of her pain, though, arises from a profound loneliness, which Sauma presents as endemic, unavoidable, impinging on every relationship, even the closest: “Eleanor wasn’t one of those mothers who test their children’s patience with constant phone calls. Instead, she tested Iris’s love by rarely getting in touch.” Why did she want to go? Life on another planet is a reasonable choice for a scientist, or an adventurer. It appears to make no sense at all for a personality like Iris. Her only incentives seem to be boredom and a quest for some sort of fame. These are strange motivations, and speak of a very deep desperation indeed.

Twenty-eight year old Iris is miserably unhappy with her very normal London life and her barely-tolerable on-off relationship. Disconnected from her family, getting drunk, having sex, living her life on social media, detached from anything solid or real and seeing no future. It’s a life I’ve read about a dozen times. It’s all very normal. While I don’t believe in any single magic explanation for the remarkable resonance of “Despacito,” there are a few crucial factors that are worth our attention if we’re curious about this momentous occasion in American and global popular music.I received an advance review copy of Everything You Ever Wanted from the publisher through NetGalley.

Everything You Ever Wanted is a missed opportunity. The concept is great, and implies that Sauma will be examining some of our lazy assumptions about life without social media, challenging the idea that everything was better in the 'good old days'. However, both strands of Iris's life turn out to be equally horrible, principally because of Iris herself; she's a very unsympathetic protagonist, seemingly unable to make any kind of effort to build the kind of life she wants. I understand that she's mentally unwell, but in that case, perhaps her struggle with depression shouldn't have been included, as it would have allowed Sauma to properly grapple with questions about community. And there is something deeply troubling about the state of Nyx. A series of mysteries become clues that the project is failing. New recruits and needed supplies fail to arrive. Who are the controllers? Who is watching the people of Nyx? I lift the shades to a brightening sky smudged with clouds the color of Creamsicles and a full moon hanging over a little white farmhouse. Green and gold fields of sunflowers turn their expectant faces to the horizon. This kind of sunrise is a gift to baristas, farmers, insomniacs, and mothers" (157-8). Much of this story is extraordinarily absorbing. I wasn’t particularly interested in Iris’s everyday London life, her drinking and depression - a state she calls ‘The Smog’. She seemed a very shallow, self-absorbed, not especially compelling personally. The minutiae of her job, her sex and family life, were of little interest to me. The story becomes much more engaging once she makes the decision to throw everything away and try for Nyx.Luiza Sauma has injected a little life into this genre by personalising it. Rather than grand, epic, sweeping futurism, we have here an intimate tale of one woman’s yearning for both an escape from the drudgery of our cyclical life (work, home, sleep, work) and a way to feel like she was part of something important, both personally and professionally. pg. 111 "It takes sitting through so, so many hours of guesswork and frustration and boredom to reach a heartbeat of connection, of understanding."

Hinton Instruments' MIDIC processor provides a sophisticated and capable intelligent MIDI interface and event processor in a small and very robust box. You can use the RS232 serial communications standard to control it from almost any computer. MIDIC has been successfully interfaced to computers as lowly as the BBC B or Apple II to powerful professional workstations like Suns, with everyday computers like Amigas, IBM PCs, Apple Macintoshes and Atari STs (honest!) somewhere in-between! MIDIC frees the controlling computer from most of the hard work of controlling MIDI events because it has an on-board microprocessor which does the filtering and controls the data buffering. The computer you connect via the RS232 cable only needs to tell MIDIC what to do and it will then get on with it.Everything You Ever Wanted is a real breath of fresh air for science fiction – a genre which has felt a little lost of late. Perhaps there’s something to be said though, in our current climate, for the current boom in the fantasy genre, one defined by its powers of escapism, versus the gloom of sci-fi, a genre that’s at its peak when it’s holding up a mirror to the current state of the world around it. YouTube views permit a new kind of participation in the making of popular music, and the rest of the world now has a vote. We have yet to grasp the implications of this shift, but one result is that we’ve spent the first half of 2017 singing along in Spanish and winding our waists to an Afro-Caribbean beat. In a moment of resurgent isolationism and xenophobia, there is something reassuring about a popular vote that elevates our unofficial second language to No. 1 for most of Trump’s tenure to date. Tariku is not an easy child to raise, but they never give up on him and I was really pulling for them to make it past all their hurdles. I have six natural children of my own and could identify with all the individual problems you can have with a child. Tariku likes to bite and hit and they have a difficult time finding a school that will work with them to get him better adjusted.

Next month I will explore uses for the messages described this month - the sort of things you read about but are never sure how to do! Another couple of very useful utility programs will extend the capabilities of those already described. Meanwhile, press those MIDI dump buttons, observe, compare, verify and learn - the practical work is all part of the fun! Wow, but Jillian Lauren has had a crazy life. And man, does she know how to write about it. This, her second memoir, focuses on her marriage and struggle with infertility and her ultimate decision to adopt a boy from Ethiopia. When he has attachment issues, her ability to throw herself into trying to figure out how best to help him is remarkable. I already knew that parenting was hard, but I can't even imagine dealing with a toddler who has had emotional trauma.In contrast, note that Daddy Yankee has insisted on holding the torch aloft for reggaeton. “This No. 1 is not Daddy Yankee’s,” he announced in July after becoming the most streamed artist on Spotify. “It’s the entire genre’s.” Switching from Spanish to English for his new fans, he added, “We’ve been on this wave for a long time. Now it feels good that the whole world gets to surf with us.” Jillian is a regular storyteller with The Moth and performs at spoken word and storytelling events across the country. She did a Tedx talk at Chapman University in 2014. She has been interviewed on The View, Good Morning America and Howard Stern, to name a few. I am on Matt's couch again. Half the time I think I am irretrievably lost and half the time I know that I will not be here forever. This disgusting place with this love of my life. Not Matt, of course. Gross. Not even hero in. Okay, heroin, yes, heroism. But really it's the relief. The floating glaze of today and today and today. Is it so much to ask for, some relief? Says everyone who has ever made a deal with the devil. Is it so much to ask for?