Chris
A solid 3, maybe 3.5. An interesting premise and Marrs knows how to keep your pages turning, with plenty of cliffhanger chapters and exciting reveals as you go. Unfortunately, those same reveals eventually become a bit too soap opera-y for my liking, limiting my enjoyment and feel like the book ends with a sputter. Would likely make a great tv series though!
A fleeting glimpse of possibilities that doesn't overstay its welcome. Chambers paints worlds of what hope could create and then fills them with characters who love like us, who wonder like we do, who find themselves wrestling with our same big questions. Journeying with the characters is a salve, a mug of hot tea, a hug that goes on longer than you thought you needed.
While it starts as a solid popcorn movie scifi story, even with the stereotypical characters, by about the midpoint the wheels come off and it truly feels like the author is flying by the seat of their pants. Characters are suddenly not what you'd expect, the plot shifts completely, and the book winds down to a bit of a whimper.
Chambers is always able to craft a story that feels like a warm mug of tea and a blanket wrapped over your shoulders. And this book might be her crowning achievement, at least in that aspect. Hopeful, optimistic, funny, and smart, a book for everyone who doesn't know what they're doing but hoping they're headed in the right direction.
Devastating and beautiful, it is incredible that Baldwin was able to get this published in the 1950s. An intense and vulnerable examination of sexuality, masculinity, and how damn confusing and confounding life can be when you're young! A book everyone should read in their late teens or early twenties as they try to figure out themselves, their relationships, and their place in the world.
Ryka Aoki put together a beautiful portrait of being a trans girl in the Asian community of Southern California. The science fiction aspects play second fiddle (heh) to an intimate look at a young girl trying to find her place in the world and her passion for the violin, shared with a woman who made a deal with a demon.
The book gave me a newfound appreciation for the violin and, as someone who is “cishet” but doesn't entirely know what that means, for what it might be like to grow up as a trans person. It is ultimately a tender, touching, and soulful story of hope.
I am right now trying to decompress from finishing this book. Emotionally, it is like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It is bleak and harrowing and there is a tension that underlines every moment.
But it is also an intimate journey with a naive stranger, who sees the world and its people differently than we do, and in that difference there is courage and curiosity and determination.
Ultimately this is a book that gnaws at something in the very core of us and leaves us somewhat raw, ready to grow back better.
I think this is more of a 3.5 stars. An interesting concept of a future where anyone left in Lagos has to survive in a single gargantuan tower, but I think I would have appreciated more meat on the bones. Some of the depth goes unexplored and the characters feel too shallow, but it's a quick and curious read nonetheless.
Less carefree than The Blacktongue Thief, but no less gripping. Buehlman is able to depict brutal and tragic circumstances without it ever feeling cheap or maudlin. And even through it all things still feel hopeful and worth fighting for. That balance is no small feat and I can't wait for more from this world.
An interesting sort of romcom with a neurodiverse main character with a penchant for Greek mythology. Really well done overall but a bit too long. I would have liked things trimmed down by a hundred pages or so.
I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was so good she deserves her own mention. Kristin Atherton's reading of the book was superb and gets 5 stars just on its own. I could listen to the main character's boss for hours he's so perfectly done.
An interesting concept marred by a bored and lifeless execution.
Putting aside the grotesque use of depression and suicide as superficial plot devices, fixed by simply, I don't know, not being bummed (???), the book just fails at ever being interesting.
Imagine the most dense main character who makes virtually no choices of her own, who does almost nothing to move the plot forward, and who seems as bland and incurious as possible. Then imagine that person telling you a story. That's this book. Nora is a dreadfully boring character who doesn't choose anything. All of the characters around her are 2D cardboard cutouts for her to talk to whenever she needs this one or that one. They lack any complexity.
Everything that happens to Nora (and EVERYTHING only happens TO her, never because of her), is riddled with cliche. The book never surprises you. As soon as a situation is presented, you will know the outcome because it is a series of cliche vignettes.
Lastly, the writing TELLS you everything every step of the way. Nothing is shown. It is perfectly fitting given who Nora is, but it is exceptionally boring to read.
I am totally okay with junk food books, with guilty pleasures, with popcorn. But this was none of that. It is only junk, no pleasure, and instead of popcorn tastes more like a slice of week old bread.
This is overall a good meditation on how we work best. A lot more Jewel than I expected, and sometimes the book feels more like a collection of survivorship bias anecdotes than practical studies or applications, but throughout it remains a good reminder to slow down, because that's how we work best.
Particularly depressing in our modern age was discovering that hunter gatherers worked fewer hours than we do now. I guess they hadn't yet discovered the blessings of capitalism.
I'd give it 3.5 stars. This is a great dad book since it's about WWII and Gladwell has that classic dad book style anyway, but the book doesn't back up Gladwell's thesis. It's full of interesting vignettes and anecdotes that are fascinating to discover, but much of Gladwell's premise that the concept of precision bombing as a way to prevent larger casualties hasn't panned out in reality.
Gladwell essentially argues that carpet bombing may have won WWII, but obviously that was because of the existence of the precision bombs of today. It ends up being a weak thread to connect the strong individual stories within.
I never expected to be captivated by this book, never expected to dig into the dirt of the earth while I listened to Kimmerer's gentle reading, but here I am. The book is half reflection, half philosophical instruction, and fully inspirational, designed to guide us in better appreciating the world around us, the living beings that make up so much of our day to day but so often go ignored. Kimmerer doesn't chide us, doesn't condemn, but with her mirthful wisdom, gently encourages her readers toward beauty, toward hope, and toward life.
It is a book that makes you want to take walks, or sit quiet in the woods, or pass your hand back and forth over a blade of grass. It is a book about slowing down, motherhood, gratitude, and love.
Kid Sent Off to Magical Fantasy School could be a genre all its own, and The Will of the Many struggles from that trope and from that same kid being coincidentally good at all the things, but the writing and characters are interesting enough that you can forgive it for it's similarities to other works.
My largest criticism is that the whole Magic system of this world is kind of hand-wavey and poorly explained, but it's also explained enough that it works in the broader sense even if it's confusing if you think about it too long.
Regardless, the book works. I am left dying to know when the sequel will come out and I am excited to see where things go and perhaps most importantly I am rooting for the main character. All in all a really thrilling fantasy adventure. That the culture is modeled on the Roman Empire is only icing on the cake, since men think about it every day anyway. Looking forward to more from Islington.
Johnson does a wonderful job of weaving together the tangled, complicated web of innovation and genius, taking many examples throughout history and breaking them down to strip away their “eureka!” moments and reveal their gradual, delicate, and complex formation. Inspiring and insightful and hopeful for whatever revolutions are percolating in our midst right now!
The story and the dragons and dragon school are fun concepts, but the world-building is paper thin and the characters feel more like late 90s CW teen drama than anything of substance. It's a fun, easy read but could have benefited from a bit longer in the oven. Also, she the author should find a synonym for “subluxate”.
Ultimately I'm not the target audience and that's ok!
This was a brave and brutal read, at times hard to stomach but easier to get through knowing McCurdy herself wrote it, that she has been able to heal this far, knowing there is some light at the end of her tunnel.
McCurdy is able to tell a tale of mental illness, abuse, ED, and acting without judging her mother or her younger self. She simply unflinchingly presents the story of her life and lets the reader digest it, rather than telling us how we should feel in those moments. And it leaves us shaken and disturbed, hoping that this tale, while entirely unique, will help others who might be trapped in a similar cycle.