Welcome to Night Vale
From the creators of the wildly popular Welcome to Night Valepodcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle to find ourselves...no matter where we live. Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge. Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "King City" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels. Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
2mentions
2people
2015–2018years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Sorry for the wall of text.
1. Bourne (The language and world of this novel are extraordinary - everything is falling apart yet brimming with life. Strangely moving)
2. The Design of Everyday things (Essential for anyone in UI/UX)
3. All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries (Highly engaging, entertaining sci-fi novella series, from an author that can write a very decent robot protagonist)
4. The Power (Interesting story with sci-fi elements on the dynamics of power, sex, and gender roles. I didn't care for the book, but the first 3/4 of the book are amazing)
5. Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days
6. 7 brief Lessons on Physics
7. The Last Lecture (The energy and positivity coming from a man knowing he's about to die is infectious. Great read)
8. A wizard of Earthsea (Move over Harry Potter, this is the essential children's story about wizards)
9. Exploring diabetes with owls (Funny, irreverent)
10. Miss Peregrines home for peculiar children (Made an effort to read more YA this year - this was the best in this series, but I still hated it. There's a host of better YA series out there.)
11. A Wizard of Earthsea: The Tombs of Atuan (See 8.)
12. The Girl in the Dark (Interesting book about a skin condition I had never heard of, and the trials of living with a very rare condition)
13. The Phantom Tollbooth (Clever children's book)
14. Black hole blues and songs from outer space (Informative book about the study of space, the political and economic forces standing in the way of science, and the incredible individuals working in this field)
15. Welcome to Night Vale (Hugely entertaining, clever and weird)
16. You need a budget (Basic economics book explaining how to budget in a way that lets you do more with your money)
17. To fight Against This Age (Incredibly pretentious, Ivory Tower philosophizing)
18. Infinity Gauntlet (Half the Universe dying because Thanos wanted to sleep with Lady Death will never not be ridiculous)
19. The Right and Wrong Stuff (Great read explaining how to anticipate and avoid career pitfalls)
20. Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children: Hollow City (pretty shitty)
21. The Farthest Shore (Ursula K. Le Guin was the biggest loss this year)
22. Miss peregrine's home for Peculiar Children: Library of Souls (I hate this book and all its characters)
23. Every Good Endevour (Religious book about a Christian worldview and the value of labor - not a bad read)
24. When to Rob a Bank and 131 warped suggestions… (interesting, funny, from the writers of Freakonomics)
25. Weapons of Math Destruction (Probably the most useful book on this list, if you're reading this on "hackernews")
26. Holes (Perfect summer paperback read)
27. Silver Screen Sirens (Essential for film geeks)
28. A full life: reflections at 90 (I gained a lot of respect for Jimmy Carter: he lived an incredible life and does great things)
29. Call Me by your name (Very good romance novel to send to your bigoted relatives at Christmas)
30. Hyperbole and a half (Incredibly entertaining, very distinctive art style)
31. The Murderbot diaries: Artificial Condition (See 3.)
32. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Best children's book, fight me)
33. Less (Exceptionally well-written)
34. Resilience (Great book, especially for those that have gone through extremely difficult circumstances)
35. The Strange Bird (Dark, bleak, full of life, see 1.)
36. The Murderbot diaries: Rogue Protocol (See 3.)
37. His Dark Materials: The subtle knife (See 32.)
38. Tap Dancing to Work (Very dry, some stories/articles are fantastic, others very, very boring for people that do not care about finance)
39. So Good They Can't Ignore You (Pretty good)
40. His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass (Amazing YA, see 32.)
41. Uncontainable (Inspirational book about conscious capitalism)
42. The Emperor of All Maladies (Pretty much everything you'll ever want to know about Cancer, written in a very engaging way)
43. Blind Spot
44. Shoe dog (Great story, see madmax108's comment, totally agree)
45. The Faithful Spy (Beautiful artwork describing a Christian pastor's fight against fascism during WW2)
46. Zero to One
47. You'll grow out of it
48. The Happiness advantage (Really fantastic book about the value of positive psychology)
49. Dreams from my father (Enlightening look into Obama's early days)
50. Ayoade on Ayoade (Entertaining, extremely scatter-brained, not as funny as his interviews or tv programs)
51. The Diabolic (badly written YA Sci-Fi)
52. The Physics of Everyday Things (surprisingly informative, recommended for non science-people interested in the way things work)
- I read a lot this year, so I'll just point out some highlights:
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - The highlight of the year. I'm now partially through the 3rd book in the series. And amazing portrait of the friendship between 2 girls as they grow up and try to escape the violence and poverty of their small town in Naples.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - My guess is that plenty of people here have read it. Great read about the fall of civilization due to a massive flu outbreak.
Room by Emma Donoghue - Beautiful, heartbreaking, troubling and uplifting.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - A classic, glad to finally read it.
The Room by Jonas Karlsson - Absurdist take on corporate life about a man who finds a room in his office building that shouldn't be there.
Welcome To Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor - For fans of the podcast. I highly recommend both.
Uglies/Pretties/Specials by Scott Westerfeld - YA trilogy about a future in which everybody is made pretty once they reach a certain age. Not great literature, but a fun read. Although the second one is a little blah.
Get In Trouble by Kelly Link - Excellent collection of fantastical yet mundane short stories.
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine - Powerful exploration of race in America. I feel like I need to read it a few more times.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - Still one of my favorite authors. Story of a baby whose family is brutally murdered and ends up being raised by spirits in a graveyard.
