Ina

It's an unpleasant read. The character is cruel, vulgar, petty, spoiled. The amount of drug abuse is mind boggling. The only thing that salvages it is that the writing is pretty good and the story feels real. I like books that feel like they tell stories that really happened. 
I was hoping the end would tie it together but it really really didn't.
I'm not sure this should've been a whole book tbh.

Beautiful. The drawings and the sentiment. I've never seen a book like this. I genuinely think everyone souls read it. It's probably the coziest book in existence

It was disappointing sadly 

Great book, I want to get a physical copy and run through the exercises more thoroughly 

I thought it would be a charming whimsical bedtime story sort of book, but Mary Poppins is haughty, vain, and surprisingly mean. She also gaslights the children routinely and eventually abandons them.
It's a pretty strange, disjointed little book.

It's a strange read. The parts of it I understand are when well, I enjoy the style of writing. Is vivid but not verbose, I could often see a picture in my mind's eye. I also enjoy a personal centred story with a small ensemble cast.
But there are moments where the writing is confusing and the spell is broken for me. Some of it is due to the Irish words, there are no footnotes or explanations. Some of it is just the minimal style of writing. I'm also a little bit confused by the ending, it feels a bit abrupt.
I enjoyed a lot of it but not all hence the slightly lower rating.

I'm very interested in the topic but the execution is not my cup of tea. I couldn't finish it because it jumped from person to person in a very haphazard way, and the writing was both dry and vague. The way personal anecdotes were presented just didn't make me feel much. It could very well work for others but I struggled to read as far as I did. And I don't usually give up on books.

I liked the parts where Lizzie Stewart shared her experience and opinion. Where she described the stark contrast between women in movies walking down the street empowered and unaffected, in comparison to reality where any man might whisper something gruesome to you as you walk down the streets of London. So much so that I wore headphones non stop after a few years to guarantee my sanity.
I liked where she shares how capable and agile she felt, darting through the tourists and crowds of the tube. I can also relate to the sense of achievement and prowess I felt, turning an exhausting and mind numbing commute into a sort of mini game.
I like these moments in the comic because I learn something about myself and about her.

But so many of the musings in “Walking Distance” are about not taking a stance, not wanting to offend, not daring to speak out in case it sounds like she's speaking with certainty or out of turn or for other women. The apologetic, hesitant tone, in such a personal and naturally subjective form, felt flat and distant to me.

There's so much she could say, I feel she wanted to say, and I think it had the potential of being a powerful, cathartic experience. I got this comic because I lived and walked in so many of London's boroughs in my 20s and felt routinely unsafe. I wasn't sure if it was because I was an immigrant, if that caused more attention or if I was just sensitive and not used to it... I haven't heard many women talk about what that was like to take up public space today in London as a woman by herself and it would've been really powerful to see more of Lizzie's lived experience, personal anecdotes, of her bringing herself and her reality with confidence and conviction onto the page.

Started slow, but I really enjoyed it in the end. I'm glad I kept up with it. It's made me interested in picking up more historic fiction soon. I particularly enjoyed how well researched the book was. It was clear the author had spent time understanding the type period, both in the historical sense, but also from an individual human perspective. Lucrezia may not be my favorite female character but I related for her passion for art and nature. It was interesting to see how her personality and individuality was used against her in her life, both as a child and as the Dutches of Ferrara.
I enjoyed the inter-personal dynamics and wish the book spend even more time on them. For example her relationship with her siblings and parents didn't feel as fleshed out the early parts of the book.

A fantastic down-to-earth, historically researched yet daring tale of adventure, romance, and women's history. As delightful as a Georgette Heyer novel, but I love the choice to focus on the stories of older women! I'm in my early thirties and absolutely adored reading the adventures of these two 40+ year old sisters!

Can't wait for the sequel! Thank you for writing such an inspired, refreshing take on a regency novel!

The premise of the book, at least the way it was described to me, sounded interesting. What if society switches away from controlling and punishing individuals, from using ‘negativity' to force productivity? What if instead it uses ‘positivity'? If we switch from an external motivation to an internal one, but coupled with the pressure to constantly achieve more and more, then the worker will burn out from this internal self-destructive impulse to compete with an unrealistic expectation.

The premise was promising, but there are a lot of issues with the book. First of all the author assumes that this shift has happened universally everywhere. That we no longer have division based on the Other, whether that's race, class or something else. He states we are all the same. And therefore there's no more control, from the outside. We're driven internally to achieve more and more. But taking a look around Europe and the US, even if one could stretch the premise to say it's what corporations want, it's certainly not true for every individual. Plenty of people are not treating their life as a project full of side hustles and bio-hacking. Plenty of people have been accused of “quiet quitting”. And finally plenty of fear of otherness and control still exists in the form of Brexit and other similar rhetoric over the past decade. So that's the first issue, the assumption that the author's worldview and what feels like shallow personal experience are universal and universally valid.

Second, he doesn't argue for his world view. He just states it as fact. “Depression is the result of excess of positivity in society. ” He begs the question over and over again, with no actual evidence or even logical reasoning.

Thirdly, he brings up author after author and rejects their premise based on his argument, but it's just a list of authors he's disagreeing with by simply saying “ they are wrong”. I've read 9th grade essays that had more clearly arranged arguments.

Fourthly, he has some frankly shockingly inaccurate and harmful opinions of autism, adhd and depression. It's the equivalent of someone telling people that cancer is caused by an inflation of the super-ego causing excess bile in the gallbladder. It's a mix of unfounded judgement and a shallow but admiring reading of Freud.

Fifth, it's full of German words and phrases on almost every page. As if the translator or writer, whoever made this choice, was so attached to the German version they couldn't let go and write a coherent text in English. These aren't philosophical terms, they're just.. phrases. It's a jagged, painful read even for someone like me who can read German.

There are only a couple of coherent thoughts and they could be summarised in a couple of sentences. Capitalism wants us to be more productive, regardless of our happiness. It's more efficient to make people be self-driven and for them to be their own guards. That way more people can be productive more of the time. Perhaps this is worse than controlling us explicitly because now we are our own worse enemies all of the time. So this is bad for us and makes our lives shallower, separating us, making us compete, and making us constantly look for the next thing to achieve. There. That was more coherent and more instructive than the entire book.

I don't recommend this book, it's a waste of time. I think this man is very good at writing rage bait content. Pamphlets with one or two coherent thoughts and a bunch of quotes from other more established authors, to give the book an academic appearance. But then he uses the quotes to say they are simply wrong and to restate his premise. I'm surprised anyone is talking about this book. I would imagine it was written by AI if it was published a couple of years later.

I picked this book up because it seemed to find me in my own personal winter. I was also hoping to resonate with a fellow neurodivergent woman. Some chapters were hit and miss for me. But the chapter called “Song”, where Katherine May describes conquering her own battle rather than travelling around the nordics or somewhat unsuccessful interviewing people to understand their own winters, spoke to me. This was a very personal and raw chapter about her literally losing her voice after becoming a mother, the result of years of losing her voice metaphorically one way or another as a result of gendered and class related feedback. I appreciated the way she frankly spoke about motherhood and how it made her feel... I wish the rest of the book felt like that particular chapter, there was so much personality, so much raw emotion that was lacking from the previous chapters. I think I saw a glimpse of this in the chapter around her son's struggles in school that led to her homeschooling him but there was just so much less to relate to than in “Song”.

I may not always like the book or the main character. But it's an incredibly well executed book. I do feel towards the last third something in the main character's unique voice started to get lost.. perhaps less capitalisations of random but meaningful nouns?

I love many of Frances Hardinge's books, but I have mixed feelings about this one. The last third of the book got better so I gave it three instead of two stars. The ending was clever too and it tied things together well.

However I feel like the first two thirds were clunky and perhaps written in a hurry. The thing that bothered me the most was all the exposition. Usually the author is great at world building by showing rather than telling. But so much of the book felt more like an outline with loads of explanations stitched in. There were quite a few paragraphs reminiscent of badly written fan fiction.

Overall the world and story were unique and interesting as in all of her other books. But I don't get why it's written in such a different style than usual.

I really wanted to love this book. I think some parts are incredibly creative like the bone magic, the readings, the different types of sight.

But that's really the only thing that kept me going.

I didn't like Saskia's character at all. I didn't relate to her motivations, pretty much every time she does something there's an explanation that makes no sense to me and is the opposite of what she should be doing. She jumps to conclusions, which made me roll my eyes and sometimes I wanted to stop reading entirely.

I found the first half of the book really predictable but things got more interesting towards the second half.

Sometimes the rules of this universe made no sens - like the way the timelines interacted or Saskia's abilities and their limits or lack of limit, or how expensive kenning bones are and yet how shameful it is to be a leftover. And other things like that but I don't want to spoil the book.

I'll read the second one anyway because it's a duology and there's no more books in the series after that. I hope the second book is more streamlined, without having to jump between alternate timelines.

It's a good book, even if it's not the type of book I usually read. Something about the cat on the cover made me pick it up at the book shop, and I'm glad I did. It made me shed a few tears for sure.

I thought the road trip was a very clever way for Satoru to say goodbye. I found Nana's character a bit frustrating, but his loyalty at the end was touching, if unrealistic. I was happy with the ending, I liked the fact that Satoru made up with his aunt. And in a way his funeral brought all his friends together, which was also touching.

I love this book! I've read it twice. I find that the action moves exactly at the right pace. I enjoyed the world building and the place magic had in the world. The way bread magic was described.. you could see that the author really thought about it. How it would work, how it would feel. It felt real to me, which is probably the first time a fantasy book really pulled me in and made it feel real.

But my favorite part was the way this book handles some really serious real world topics like discrimination, the failure of authority or adults around you, access to education, and in a way that often felt profound to me. I didn't expect so much depth from a book like this to be honest. It's a refreshing combination of light/funny and thought-provoking.

I enjoyed this book. I felt that the character was believable, and I could relate to him and his story. The story surprised me a few times, even though it was also predictable in some places.

I'm glad I read it in the end, it made me think about the difficulties related to taking care of children with special needs. But it also opened up a different way of thinking and it helped me understand the reasons behind those children acting in “abnormal” ways.

All in all, I would say it was eye-opening for me and an interesting read.

I don't often give up on books but this was an uncomfortable read. I can only speak about the amount I read and the few reviews I read after to confirm whether I should give up or not.

Firstly I was looking for a cozy mystery. The main character is effectively a stalker. That's not a spoiler as it becomes clear from the first few pages of the book. She uses her telescope to spy on people, filling twenty books with other people's private details. From other reviews I know she does much worse things but I didn't care to read that far.

The excuse seems to be that she's neurodivergent. But in my view this is not what real neurodivergent people are actually like. It does more damage than help representation.

Finally, the “male gaze” vibes are strong, the blatant, almost disturbing objectification of a young neighbour woman and her lips was disturbing.

All three combined just gave me the ick and I don't care to continue reading. Didn't feel cozy at all. Don't recommend.