David Portnov

I listened to this book all at once in one day, only pausing briefly when I needed to focus on something. This is a deeply personal dive into everything you would want to know about Josh Peck. Does he talk about Drake & Josh? So briefly that it might as well not have been in the book. Does he talk about his relationship with Drake Bell? Not at all. This book is about Josh Peck, the person, navigating his life up through 2021 and all of the baggage he's had to deal with in life. It's all delivered in a way that feels like he's talking directly to the reader who asked him to tell his life story. It's the opposite of embellished. There are a lot of ups and downs. It's worth a read, but it's also definitely worth a listen. Josh does his own audiobook, which is great.

The Creative Gene is a translation/compilation of essays by Hideo Kojima on his relationship with specific pieces of media and media that he enjoyed at specific times in his life. I found a lot of the essays to be pretty inspiring and they really help the reader get to know Kojima as a person. It's probably his most personal writing to date. If you're at all interested in what makes Kojima's brain tick or who he is as a person, this is the book for you. If you don't know who Hideo Kojima is, then you will by the end of the book.

A novel I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did.

Halo: Bad Blood was a pleasant surprise. I had originally intended to read it alongside Halo: Shadow of Intent, but that didn't quite pan out. Bad Blood turned out to be the novel I enjoyed more. Matt Forebeck's excellent dialog and character writing made the book for me. I wanted to see what happened to Alpha-Nine at every step along the way. The plot wasn't hugely impactful to Halo lore, but it was a fun story I don't regret experiencing.

2.5 Stars

How long do you give a book before dropping it? My answer is about 20 percent, which is where I dropped this one. I didn't absolutely hate it, but it just wasn't doing anything for me. It was amusing at times, but it was also boring quite a bit of the time. Ignatius is a character you understand immediately and he just... lives. That in itself is fine. I like overexaggerated characters. It's just that there is no real depth to anything that happens in this book. It's just standard satire. I guess I'm one of those people who was not that into it.

It just very YA to me, not that that's a bad in general. That didn't really appeal to me. I also wasn't hooked by the main character. She wasn't very interesting to me beyond her revenge quest.

I wasn't feeling it. There's nothing wrong with the book. I was just never excited to read it and that killed my reading pace. I also had a hard time remembering what happened even the night before a reading session.

I honestly wasn't engaged at all with the text and structure of the book. It felt like reading a textbook or an extremely long essay about something the author wanted to prove that I didn't really about, surprisingly. It was just not for me.

This book was really well written and I did like the main character, but I just wasn't that into the plot.

I don't feel compelled to keep going, mostly because I don't care to see where this story ends up going.

I just wasn't interested enough to see where it was going. It seemed shallow and, although it's well-written, I don't think I'd get anything out of it.

My first DNR! While I enjoyed the parts of the book that focused on the story and characters, those parts were were few and far between compared to the overly descriptive battle scenes. I gave this half-a-book's worth of chances before I finally realized that I never looked forward to actually reading it. I'm sure that a different author could have told this story in a more appealing way. It's just unfortunate that this book is currently the latest in the Halo timeline at the time of this writing.

I'm generally not a fan of the story genre and I didn't feel interested enough to keep going.

I wasn't getting anything particularly interesting out of this book. I lost interest in it in general.

I wasn't interested enough to see where they story would go.

It's short, but I'm not super into it after the 20% mark. I just don't feel compelled to get back to it between other books and just need to let this one go.

It felt like The Last of Us without characters that I actually cared or knew anything about.

I wasn't interested enough to keep going. The book wasn't necessarily bad, just not that exciting for me.

The intrigue to keep going just wasn't there. I wasn't looking forward to reading it every time it came up on my rotation.

I wasn't interested in any of the characters. The world was mildly interesting, but I didn't care about the story.