adam

Broke: fictionalized accounts of the creation of famous literature or other art, where the inspiration clearly comes from things they directly experience

Woke: true accounts of the creation of famous literature.

You tell me what's Bespoke

Good, some interesting insights, and he seems like a pretty wholesome guy. A little corny sometimes.

Not nearly as clever as it thinks. But pretty clever. I was more impressed with the plotting and the interconnectedness of everything than i expected. Not 100% sure if I intend to read the next or not.

Lots of things I liked in this quick read—some of the alien-ness of the aliens was very compelling; i felt some of the threads here (the robot who longs to be a person) were kind of half-baked, but the central mystery and reveals are pretty good. Overall a little less substantial than i hoped, i guess.

I don't know if i should now go restart the book of the short sun, the book of the long sun, or the book of the new sun. I'll reread them all, but now they all have different compelling reasons to do so.

The way Long Sun is recontextualized as an in-universe text written by characters in Short Sun, the way Severian was evidently influenced by a meeting with (????) and (??????) also puts new spin on new sun. Ha

This book is a lot like Gravity's Rainbow in how stubbornly it defies even a straightforward description of “what” “happens” from chapter to chapter and in linear time

I have no idea what happened

Fun and easy to read, ultimately had way less of an arc/thesis than I expected

I now know enough proven, factual, on the record information about the CIA that saying even 1/10 of it would make me sound absolutely unhinged, which itself is probably the greatest psyop of all

This has been recommended to me a few times but i didn't realize it was one of the coolest fucking things ever

Not to spoil the specifics, but this deeply researched and totally bananas story involves both secret cuck pornography and academic drama. A quick and fascinating read that is merciless with its subjects and their various potential motivations.

interesting. I wish there was another book about him by someone else, about how he was subsequently disbarred for misconduct in this prosecution.

Extremely interesting things here:

-“Robots are building a pope” as a premise delivers so much in 5 words
-Very interesting/dated how closely this book identifies humans and robots, as the same, as opposed to “aliens”
-I'm not really sure what happened in the ending? I was surprised that was it!

How is this an incredibly smart “network cog feels regret for reality show that causes harm”...from 1972? And why do the HATE WIFE particles leap off the page any time a female character even looks at the plot?

i'm reading and rereading this series and it keeps getting better and funnier

Unbelievably good, incredibly queer, everything SFF should be doing

Time honored genre: 20 years ago a group of friends saw/did something secret and horrible and went their separate ways, and reunite present day to revisit the old events after one of them is killed

That said, i had a hard time putting it down

Note at roughly 33%: i was in a real reading slump going into my shift today and i knew within a paragraph this was going to be a winner, although approximately 95% of Alexis Hall books are. Audiobook narrator Nneka Okoye is absolutely brilliant.

Clearly a transmasc narrative. Maybe half interesting content, 1/4 stuff i skimmed, 1/4 unfortunate colonialism/racism. Sort of enlightened/benevolent on some points but has hideous racial caricatures (like, drawings, actual ones) as well. Super weird stuff, but I can't bear seeing that rating sit so low

I stayed up until 3:08AM to finish this

I wish i had this cover, but the pulpy one is certainly fitting

Technically not queerbaiting in the sense that Legend of Korra isn't queerbaiting if they get together at the very end. Queerbaiting in the extreme.

I love almost everything RJB has ever written, but I thought Foundryside was weak and this was almost unlistenable due to the combination of narrator and very distracting dialogue.

The #1 worst and most frustrating thing is hearing “reality” spoken approximately 30 times a chapter while they discuss nuts and bolts of scriving.

I thought i should push myself to finish this one, if the trilogy is wrapping, but I really doubt I'll read the third.

woof

I've had a hard time reading recently, but i blew through this in less than 24 hours. Gripping