Kavinay

Probably would not have kept reading if I wasn't told something big happens later.

Damn interesting for the engineering behind the scenes even if the military industrial context is repugnant.

Also, the shear lunacy of the CIA never disappoints.

Thank you for everything Sir Terry Pratchett.

When you think of Scott's work, it's easy to focus on Windblade. But what's amazing is her ability to write Starscream with deviousness and pathos at the same time.

“I'm Sentinel Prime and I'm hear to say, was a Titanmaster since back in the day.”

Yippee ki yay number function!

Serialization is underrated. Yoshikawa makes it work to his advantage with stories that interleave like both a play and epic.

Good grief, an alternate title could very well be “2020: all the ways the world will quantitatively fall apart.”

It's weird when even the writer admits he's kind of lost the plot and then needs to wrap it all up.

Just incredibly fun.

This isn't a celebration of the self-help genre. In fact, if anything, Greenberg and Meinzer run something akin to a meta-analysis of the genre and found much of it frankly to be fraudulent. The most surprising thing is how many of the self-help idols rely on self-flagellation (obvious) rather than acknowledge how issues beyond your control (less obvious: power structure, gender, race, class) are often deeply intertwined with our concerns about anxiety, health, wealth and more.

Most self-help books are, indeed as we might cynically suspect, a predatory author's (usually white, hetero, cis-gender men) attempt to exploit peoples' fears for idolatry and expensive post-book training.

Is Zane quite possibly the most pathetic protagonist in all of Battletech?

Sam Vimes, the only acutely class conscious character in fantasy fiction.

Gillen does such a great job translating the feel of the movie gang to print without engaging in retreads.

The colour style is just not my thing.

I don't know if any of the three threads would be too exciting as single books. But woven together by Pak, you get a really fun escalation that stands out compared to most original trilogy comics.

So the gang are stranded on the exile planet of Zlatan Ibrahimovic...

It's like a cop show, with daemons.

The galaxies stories are okay (Ultra Magnus) and really good (Guage). But the main series remains incredibly aimless and slow.

A good way to end the Dark Horse run.

Inquistor as DEA agent.

Good idea, but a bit of a slog until you get to Hera's ship. Feels like a very drawn out first act, though I'm liking the “Rogue One” feel compared to the X-Wing series.

This book isn't really about the punctuation mark; rather, it's a response to grammar pedantry.

There's a short story from the WD150-ish era about Thousand Son's Brother-Captain Karlsen's “memory palace” that's so much better than this entire book.

Sid Meier is a genius. Pirates! remains a masterpiece and I've lost chunks of my life to his strategy games and even his flight sims. All that being said, Meier's Memoir is a bit like the common of experience of Civ:
- enthralling early game with nostalgia inducing looks at the other side of the games that shaped your youth and the industry.
- bit of lost momentum in the middle where you start wondering if Meier will expand more on conflict in his career given what you know about things coming to a head at Microprose, etc. (he doesn't)
- a slog of an endgame where you realize even his attempt at answering critiques of the genre he defined (the whig history baked into Civ) is completely unsatisfying.

Sid Meier's games remain great. His perspective on his career and any meaningful conflict in his field is surprisingly shallow. For someone who acknowledges his own myth as being built around creating interesting decisions, his retrospective doesn't touch on any issue being within his control. Reflections on momentous decisions like splitting with Bill Stealey or consideration of the effects of “the crunch” on developers' lives just float by like a cloud on the Spanish Main. This book is just such a disturbingly uncritical look at Meier's “Greatest Hits” that you're left wondering why a mind capable of such great and creative analysis couldn't apply the same scrutiny to his own career?

A masterclass in modern monetary theory with jokes.