Colin Gooding

I made it just over 50% of the way through this book before deciding to move on from it.

I started reading this with the intention of gaining a vocabulary to talk about why diverse and equal opportunity hiring and promotion practices are important in my workplace, but so far the book has been focused on a more macro level about the recent history and rising tensions around inequality in the US and UK, the death of the American dream, and how generational wealth and privilege undermines the idea of a true meritocracy.

All of those ideas are interesting, but I haven't really learned any new insights here if you have been following the news. There's lots of recounting of Trump's presidential run, Brexit, the college admission scandals, etc.

Perhaps it gets more into analysis later, but I have too many other books in my backlog to bother sucking with it to find out.

Cormac McCarthy is one of my favourite authors. The Road might be my personal favourite book, and Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men are not too far behind. I was really saddened to hear of his recent passing, and it pushed me to finish this book sooner than later.

I picked up The Passenger shortly after it was released last year, and I was excited to read a book of his upon its release. It starts off with a pretty intriguing premise, but it quickly becomes sort of aimless musings that I didn't completely connect with. There are some effective conversions and I just like the cadence and tone in which McCarthy writes, but I had a hard time focusing on this book which is why it took me 6+ months to finish.

I'm still interested in the follow up to this book, and digging more into McCarthy's backlog, but I'm hoping for more next time.

MINOR SPOILERS for the premise:

This was a fun twist on a sort of Groundhog Day premise: whenever the protagonist goes to sleep, she wakes up on another day further into the past. It's also a pulpy murder mystery, where we have seen the murder and now have to discover the events leading up to it as they happen, but in reverse. A neat idea!

I was really along for the ride the entire time, as the protagonist isn't stupid and tries interesting ways to deal with her situation, and the writing clips along at a good place. There are fun reveals and I kept adjusting my theories and looking for clues.

Unfortunately, I wasn't super satisfied by the ending, and a lot of the enjoyment of the book is in trying to piece together what happened, so it makes the whole thing a bit less interesting in retrospect. There are still elements of the ending I enjoyed, but the central mystery was a bit meh.

Still, I had a great time with this and it was a fun, quick read.

I read the first book in this series (The Gunslinger) over a decade ago now. I didn't really care for it, but there were things about it that I did like, and the fans of this series are very vocal in their praise of it, and there is a possible new tv show in the works for it. So I thought I'd try to continue on.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. At times it is thrilling, but at other times I find it to be either a slog or just straight up off-putting. The story of "edgy" King that I don't love tends to rear his head a fair bit.

I was leaning towards a 2/5 on this, but the last section of the book is a string of tense action scenes that had me captivated.

I'm not super eager to contine the series, but I probably will get around to it in under a decade this time.

This was a bit precious for me, though parts of it definitely work. The interpersonal drama kicks into gear somewhere halfway through that has me engaged, but a lot of the resolutions were a little pat.

It moves along briskly though and you could do worse for a summer read.

I've been making an active effort this year to read books that are actually released in 2023. I found a few "most anticipated" lists and this was on most of them. I haven't read any other books by Kuang, but I have heard good things about them and they are on my to-read pile, plus this book has a great cover and provoking title. I put this on hold at the library a couple months ago and I was able to check out the audiobook on the actual day of release.

The premise is great: a successful Asian-American author dies unexpectedly, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript which is then claimed by a white friend as her own. Unfortunately, it doesn't explore it's titular issue as deeply as I think it could have. It is more just used as a passing point of tension, among other things.

This was well written, but a lot pulpier than I was expecting. The climax in particular I thought was cheesy and unsatisfying. However, the book does move at a brisk pace though and it was easy to keep turning pages.

The story is told from a first person perspective and the protagonist is extremely unlikable and makes unethical decisions constantly. She is not stupid nor ignorant, so she has at least some semblance of logic to justify her actions. She is entitlement personified. She thinks of herself as liberal, but she's more of a center-right "both sides have good points" sort of person. This can be an interesting perspective to tell a story from, but also makes it hard to latch onto as a reader at times.

I think there are a lot of really great ideas just below the surface here that didn't quite reveal themselves as fully as I was hoping. I'm curious to check out more of Kuang's work now though.

If you like Bob Odenkirk, you will probably like this. If you do not like Bob Odenkirk, you will probably not like this.

This is a pretty standard autobiography from a working actor with nothing too revelatory in it, but it was fun to listen to Odenkirk talk in my ear for a half dozen hours and here a few behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

This was an interesting read after having enjoyed the movie. There are meaningful differences and it's dense enough that it didn't feel like I was just playing the movie through in my head again.

There are a lot of sort of philosophical and religious debates topics here that aren't strikingly original, but are still interesting to explore (if you truly believed in eternal salvation, why would you ever stop trying to save those you care about?). There's a large cast of characters with different viewpoints and experiences, and there is plenty of the titular talk to that kept me engrossed.

I did find it a bit strange that even with this title, the entire thing is from the point of view of a make narrator, but it does make sense in the context of the story, and I found the final monologue to be very moving.

Definitely recommend this whether you've seen the movie or not.

I think the moment where I decided to stop reading is when Harry gives a speech about how muggles and purebloods (and eventually extra terrestrial beings) will one day only be judged by their minds and "not their color or their shape or the stuff they're made of" that literally starts with "I have a dream". It was too much.

That was the tipping point for me for a series that has some interesting and fun ideas, but is often more on the side of "I'm 14 And This Is Deep" for me. I also think I had maybe some unfair expectations of this being an alternate dimension sort of premise that stems from the singular fact of Harry's upbringing being different, whereas it is more broadly different across a lot of characters, which feels a bit random often and doesn't really work for me most of the time? I don't know a lot of deep Harry Potter lore either, so I think there are a good number of references here as well that are lost on me.

Glad I gave this a shot, but it's not for me. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

I don't even remember why I added this to my holds list at the library. I think it must have been on some end of year lists I looked at last year.

I enjoyed Ghost Music, especially the sort of eerie tone and how it is always on the edge of being surreal, but I did also find it a bit aimless and I was never quite as swept up into the world as I wanted to be.

When I'm anticipating a movie or tv show coming out that's based on a book, I'll often try to read it first as I find seeing the story I've just read visualized is an interesting experience.

In this case, I had watched and really enjoyed the first season of the show before I started reading, which covers this book in is entirety, and is pretty darn faithful to it.

So while listening to this audiobook, I found myself in a weird position of generally just picturing the scenes from the show more than actually engaging with the writing, I think? It's hard to say how much I got out of the book itself.

Still, I'm a sucker for this type of story and the characters and quippy dialogue is a lot of fun. I'll definitely be watching more of the show and I'll try to figure out if/when to read the books.

I listened to the 1977 BBC Radio performance of this play as an audiobook from the library.

Wilde is just so charmingly witty and it's fun to follow the rapid-fire dialogue in this. It was a good time, but I was never completely enamored by it. I think it would be a blast to see performed live with an audience though, so I'll have to seek that out sometime.

This is a really insightful and well written account of a heartbreaking relationship. With the title of this book (which is a great title), I was expecting the entire thing to be just a scathing indictment of her mother, but its a lot more complicated than that.

The book is written in such a way that her mother's pattern of abuse and manipulation is obvious, but from Jennette McCurdy's perspective at the time when believing in her mother and making her happy was important to her (and still is to this day, to some extent). This was really revealing and deeply affected me, as McCurdy walks through key moments in her life and I had to try to understand how her mother could possibly behave in the way that she does and sympathize with McCurdy's inability to do anything about it.

I'm not necessarily a big memoir reader, but sometimes when I read them they are a bit scattershot, covering a lot of different areas of a person's life with varying degrees of interest. This book is a lot more laser focused on its thesis as described by its title, and I find that to be a lot more engaging.

I unfortunately found most of this book to be achingly boring. There are some fun bits and nicely written passages, but I just was not engaged at all.

I maybe should have put this down early on, but it's fairly short and I kept holding out hope that the next story would be better.

I finished this just before this year's Oscars started, haha.

I am a huge movie nerd and I try to watch the Oscars every year. In fact, I've been making a point to watch all of the films nominated for Best Picture before the awards are given out for the last few years too.

And so, I really enjoyed this book! I would say the first half to two-thirds of the book are more just about Hollywood in general with a loose thread of the Academy Awards to tie things together and the rest is more solidly about the Oscars, but all of it is interesting and well written. I'm not sure that there's anything shockingly new revealed here, but the detail and breadth of the stories are a lot of fun.

I appreciate that this was informative and concise, but I found it to be a bit too dry and not particularly revelatory or anything. It's not bad, just not worth recommending.

I listened to this as an audiobook from the library and it had an interview with the author at the end, which is always a nice touch.

Kevin Wilson's previous book, Nothing to See Here, is one of my favorite books in recent years. This latest book doesn't quite get into that category for me, but it does cement Wilson as an author for which I will read basically anything he puts out at this point.

Now Is Not The Time To Panic is a great little book about things like obsession and art and relevance and meaning. The story follows a familiar trope in the vein of something like Stand By Me as it is about fleeting events of a summer that profoundly affect the rest of the lives of a few teenagers, but as with other Kevin Wilson books I've read, everything is a bit heightened and strange, while still occuring in a grounded reality. I just really dig his style.

I listened to this via a library audiobook narrated by Ginnifer Goodwin, who captured the tone perfectly and injected a great energy into the story. The author himself also narrates a section that comes after the book and talks about his writing process here, including the origin of the book's repeated mantra, which is an interesting and touching story on its own.

When I was a teenager, the Wheel of Time was one of those series of books that really helped deepen my love of reading. I devoured the first six or eight books in a summer or two I think, but then I fell off of it and never completed the series. I've always wanted to try to get back into it, but it's a pretty daunting task with the length of it all. I initially considered trying to figure out where I left off and jump back in there, but my memories of it are so vague that I decided the best thing to do would be to start over and listen to the audiobooks.

It was really fun to revisit this. The world and ideas in this story just get to me. It's strange having a hazy recollection of things that come later, because it feels like so much less is revealed in this first book than I expected, but there's still so many hints of things to come.

At first I thought it was a lot faster paced than I was worried it would be, but I was definitely feeling the length of the book in the later half of it, even though a lot of interesting things still happens. I feel like there's an amazing 600 page book in here instead of a really good 800 page one.

I'm looking forward to making my way through this whole series, but I plan on taking my time with it and listening to it alongside other reading. I'm glad it has held up for me though!

I feel like I would have loved this if I read it when I was in high school.

Unfortunately, I no longer am, and I thought it was just fine. It's not really fair to this book that I have already read Brave New World and 1984, both of which came out after and were likely inspired by We, but many of the same ideas here so not have the same impact on me reading them now.

Still, the gaslighting dystopian regime here is interesting to explore and it is pretty short and fast paced.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by the actor Toby Jones, which I think enhanced the experience greatly.

I liked this the least of the trilogy. It felt less cohesive than the others and I was just less invested in what was happening.

There is an interesting cloud of dread and nihilism over the whole thing, and like the other books it is still full of a bunch of wild little ideas and scenes.

This is a fascinatingly unique trilogy though that will stick with me for awhile!

This is a really fascinating series and I can understand why it's so revered. There are a ton of big and intricate ideas that I will continue to think about for a long while. I love how the ever-approaching threat coupled with their near-omnipotent power creates this environment of non-sensical yet logical strategies of the "wallfacers" and the sort of murder-mystery parlor scene "wallbreaker" moments, somehow the tone works in a tantalizing and almost silly way, while still causing some existential dread.

I even just loved the conceptualization of small things like temporal "countrymen".

There are only a few things that prevent me from giving this a full-hearted recommendation. At times it gets bogged down in some details or logical explanatory tangents that just feel unimportant to me and go on for awhile, distracting from the main thrust of the story. I also just think that most of the characters are fairly personality-less, there are some simple archetypes here and there, but I didn't find any of them uniquely compelling aside from their function in the plot. This could be by design with the nature of the story, or perhaps its an issue with the translation here, but either way I didn't feel as fully invested in some moments that I think I could have otherwise been.

Still, a great book that I think I enjoyed a bit more than the first! I'll probably try to finish of the trilogy pretty soon here.

In the version of the audiobook that I listened to, there is a retrospective forward by King that mentions that the pseudonym Richard Bachman could serve as a vector for his angry and aggressive tendencies. While I generally like King, this side of him is not my favourite.

I have read plenty of unpleasant bleak dystopian novels that I have enjoyed, but basically every moment of this one is full of rage and there is very little time for anything else. There is a lot of aggressive language even just in the description of characters, though some of that maybe also is just a reflection of the time in which it is written, and even just the "victories" present throughout the book are just sort of nihilistic.

I feel like I never really got a good sense of the world, and there are a lot of ideas that are brought up briefly and discarded. Maybe it would have worked better if I was into the book more, because I do think its interesting to come into this story without a bunch of leadup into how The Running Man came about, but it still just felt pretty thin to me.

King is unquestionably a gifted thriller writer though, so there are many scenes of action or suspense that had my full engagement moment to moment, I just don't think it worked as a whole for me.

I saw this on a few Best of 2022 lists so I figured I would give it a shot when it was available through the library.

This is a decades-spanning interpersonal drama that is centered around characters that make video games for a living. It was always teetering on the edge of being a bit cringey, as classic games are used as metaphors for different stages of life and relationships, but game development as a conduit for both forging bonds and creating tension works as well as any other creative field.

I enjoyed reading this, but I'm not sure that it will stick in my mind.

I, like I assume most people, know this story very well even though I have never actually read it. I'm honestly most familiar with it through Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Muppet Christmas Carol, which are both great! In fact, seeing The Muppet Christmas Carol with live music from the local symphony orchestra is what inspired me to finally read it.

And I loved it! I've always loved the structure of this story, it just feels like one of the classic basic archetypes of a story that hits on something interesting with every beat and doesn't have any fat on it. The quick character arc and morals expounded by his change are also very satisfying.

This Dickens guy has a pretty good way with words too, I'd say. I love a lot of the lines that are often quoted verbatim in adaptations (“A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!”, “If they would rather die, they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population”, “Come in! and know me better, man!”, etc). Each character, time period, and location is imbued with so much life and texture, and they all become very clear in my mind while reading it.

I actually listened to this via an audiobook that was narrated by Hugh Grant and made available for free through Audible, though it annoyingly had ads littered throughout as I don't have a subscription to Audible right now. It is a pretty short read as well, so I think I might try to revisit this one more often in the coming years, both in written form and audiobook, and of course as performed by Muppets.

I always loved these books when I was a kid. I was excited to show them to my daughter, Dot, because they definitely influenced my sense of humour growing up, and reading them again all these years later I still find them hilarious!

Its brand of silliness is just perfect to me. The principal reminds the kids that in order to make traffic flow smoothly on the stairs of the school, those traveling up the stairs should stay to their right, while those going down should stay to the left. Brilliant.

This is a collection of four books that were released between 1978 and 2020. I'm pretty sure I had only read the first two before, and the last two were still great as well! In fact, Dot tells me the fourth one was the best of them all. I'm going to go with the first, as the nostalgia is just too strong for me.