Nate

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. Reading about how and when it came to be created and the general idea of the storyline I thought it could be a curious tale that might hold my interest. In the end it proved to pull me in and keep me interested much more than I would have thought possible before I opened the cover the first time. There were some distractions, like the regular interjection of Latin, which found impossible to completely translate in almost every instance with what little I know about Latin, and just as impossible to completely ignore. It worked within the context, but at times felt like a little too much. Side plots were just vague enough to lead to thoughtfulness, but not so vague as to seem completely unrelated. All in all a surprising good read.

Not much to write for a review of Harry Potter books that hasn’t already been written by so many others. I read this out loud to my son years ago when he was small, but I only read him the first two and a half books, so I decided I would start over from the beginning. Well written and as good as I remember, though the minor differences from the movie snuck up on me. I also struggle with the author’s public comments in more recent years. It is hard to keep those very negative and unkind opinions from my thoughts as I write this. It is well written. The plot is solid. I’m always a sucker for a story of a young boy who discovers something amazing in himself and triumphs over seeming insurmountable odds. The inner child in me wishes he was Harry.

World building, A+. Mechanics and fight scenes had me unable to stop reading those sections. Relationships were a bit too contrived for my liking, but I know some people like half a book of start-crossed angst. Worth the read, though I’m not sure I would rate it as highly as others have. Solid writing, decent characters, and straightforward plot (with some over complicated side plots). I would say the end left me feeling unsettled. There were too many convenient surprises at the end all piling up on top of each other. I won’t give too many details, but by the time I got the end I was literally asking what curveball was going to happen next that would make me roll my eyes. Most of the book was much more believable than the end.

I fell in love with the Bobiverse books (some more than others) and I’ve read through almost everything that Dennis E. Taylor has produced as a result. This is not a bad audio listen. Characters were created with just the right amount of detail and interaction. This subject was just technical enough and relevant to current events to be interesting. Artificial General Intelligence, futuristic technology for travel, communication, and police investigation…all interesting and made me think/hope for the future of our species if we can just keep the ultra rich and ultra powerful from messing things up too much toward their own selfish goals. An enjoyable listen and well crafted. Still keeps me wanting to get more Taylor creations in the future.

Hard to say anything about this book that the book doesn’t explain/tell/relive better. As a person who was mystified by the holocaust and how people, any people, could do so much harm to so many with so little compassion or empathy, I have read many accountings of the events during WWII and this is a book that should be required reading for everyone. I spent many hours researching Auschwitz and the cruelty planned and built into the very structure of the camp and its expansions. This book makes all of those facts and historical accounts more real. It doesn’t put a face on the survivors. There are too few. It doesn’t put names to those who never made it through the end of the war. There are too many. Instead it puts a feeling that isn’t pity in my chest for all of those who suffered. We must be sure it never happens again. Anywhere. To anyone.

I think I understand the wide acclaim and high ratings for this book specifically as well as for the series, and it was a good read. Well written and the plot pulled me through the book quickly. I enjoyed the concepts of class and the characters were fairly well thought out. I feel like the book started out better than it ended. With all these positives, and its popular appeal, I hate to be negative for the sake of negativity. I can’t point to something that I felt was bad or done poorly in the book, and I will give it a high ranking, but for me the events in the beginning that became the main character’s motivation cast a shadow on everything afterwards. The earlier scenes were so poignant that it made it hard to feel as much for later events. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the book, but I wish that somehow it could have carried the emotional weight from the earlier chapters all the way to the end. It was a bright fire that waned to a bed of smoldering embers. It felt like it should have done the opposite.

Better than I expected. I’d never read this when I was younger and in the last 10 years I’ve been making a list of books I wish I had read. This is one of them. It didn’t disappoint. The language and terminology from that time period and part of the country were a small hurdle in the first chapter or two, but the characters and the story more than made up for it. If you want to know what it was like in the south in the early 20th century, the classes, the racial challenges, how the law treated people at the time, this is definitely a window into what the author thought of the time and some of it seems to have the ring of truth. The characters really make the book come alive. To me it distills the essence of family and neighbors. Definitely worth reading.

I’m not sure what to write about this book. Some of the writing was very well written. The subjects of games and game design all made sense to me as someone who grew up a few hundred feet from the local Donkey Kong game and put way too many quarters in that machine. The plot and sub-plots were often confusing and regularly didn’t ring true to me, but I convinced myself while reading that life is often nonsensical and illogical. I don’t know if that defense of the u-turns and abrupt changes is something that would hold water in a court, but at the time it let me continue reading. Something about it made me want to convince myself to keep reading. I can’t put this book in the top tier of books I’ve read, but the writing was better than most and some of it was very creative and imaginative in ways I was not expecting. It’s hard to put my finger on why I felt pulled through this book. It’s not a common feeling. At times it felt like Ready Player One with its cultural references from a past I lived through. It was almost like someone took Ready Player One threw it in a blender with a bunch of old Atari games, a copy of Grand Theft Auto, and wrapped it in a news report about the Columbine shooting…and then decided to try to make a love story that wasn’t a love story, but a friendship story out of it. Chaotic enough to be interesting, but too confusing to be clear in your mind when you turned the last page.

This was a very creative and enlightening look at the Huckleberry Finn story from the viewpoint of Jim (I will think of him as James from now on). I had trouble reconciling the advanced learning of Jim and some of the events which did not completely align with the events/plot of the original Huckleberry Finn (which I read before this as preparation). After suspending my nerd brain from trying to make things line up perfectly, I found myself lost in the story as a new one instead of a different interpretation of an existing one. Being a white male in today’s world, I don’t know if I have the experience, the understanding, or the right to make any kind of judgement about the contents, the themes, or the complicated and intense issues involved. The story moved me. In my opinion, this should be required reading in school. It can sometimes be a tough thing to read what people have done to each other in the name of greed or normalcy or just because they can.