George D

A fun light easy read about the deaths of species and people.

Didn't go where I expected and kind of felt like the journey of Mammut ended arbitrarily but still a good time, and Chris makes the “Mammoth narrator concept” easy to understand and follow on his journey.

I wanted more - a richer biography of even more events and people and places, maybe have the ‘present day' sections somehow add more complexity and depth to the overall story rather than functioning mainly as an enjoyable narrative device.

But if you read a novel and the complaint is you wanted more then it's done a good job I'd say.

Explains why time doesn't exist on a macro and micro scale and written so well I definitely am almost certain I could explain some of it to someone kind of.

The only section/metaphor I still can't fully understand is his comments on entropy only being in place due to the random shuffling of atoms at the beginning, I don't get how that isn't just a redefinition of time and clear proof of times arrow going one way.Overall, a brilliant read that has convinced me time doesn't exist except in my own head - turns out LSD was telling the truth all along.I spent way too long trying to understand that part and none of that paragraph would make sense unless you've read the book but I just wanted to share my confusion in case anyone else also felt dumb while reading that part

This was way too long, definitely great in parts, but wayyyyyyyyy too long.

After reading and loving Misery and The Shining I have now decided that King is brilliant with smaller self contained narratives - I won't be doing any further research to confirm this.

Also, it was kind of distracting that he made the “horror fiction author” character the cool smart hyper-capable brave leader who sleeps with all the beautiful women and every other character idolises.

I gotta say, I personally loved the ending for its sheer insanity. I haven't seen the movies but I strongly suspect they've changed one specific scene.

I sauntered in not knowing how to appreciate poetry and I'm strutting out appreciating the hell out of this most elemental of written forms.

Sure, I only remember a thimbles-worth of the deluge of poetic information Fry rained down upon me, but I caught buckets of his poetic enthusiasm.

Way better.

About halfway through I was very impressed - sure it's gimmicky, but the characters were fun, the chat was extremely relatable, and the idea was being executed in an engaging way - but as it reached the end it felt like the limitations of the conceit started strangling the potential of the story.

Worth checking out for a fun light read.

My rating isn't exclusively based on all the mentions of Greeks in this book but it didn't hurt.

Didn't feel like it achieved the feeling of being both individually great with each story as well as a unified brilliant sum of the parts like Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (the only other short story collection of his I've read) but still a treat.

Good Old Neon is a masterpiece.

Listening to Derek Jacobi narrate this book is a delight, the man commits to a stutter like a true thespian.

It ended a little abruptly, and the characters are a little thin compared to something like Memoirs of Hadrian, but it's the classiest pulpy read I've experienced in a while.

The book was some fun saucy historical fiction, can't argue with that.

I always thought of Booker Prize winners as slow, “literary” affairs. The kind of book I'll need to take time with but the time and effort will end up being worth it for what I take away from the experience.

And then I read this addictive beautifully written thrill-ride and start reconsidering my opinion.

It's not a long book but somehow it's still a lot.

And all of it's brilliant.

You won't be leaving this book without some pretty major shifts in how you view sexuality.

Now to attempt the impossible task of stopping myself from butchering the statistics and wildly extrapolating the results when speaking to people about it.

Srsly though, who knew BDSM was so mainstream? Turns out it's almost more rebellious to not have done it at some point.

A very entertaining read that is only 3 stars in comparison to everything else I've read from him. Also the dramatic ending is spoiled by how hard he had to stretch to contrive the last-minute drama, which kinda sums up this series.

Sanderson really got out all his cliche-demons in the Mistborn series before figuring out his own style in Stormlight.

If George Saunders' goals were to make me want to (a) read more Russian literature and (b) retroactively study literature in university then job well done because you nailed it sir.

She lost me when she disparaged Elton John.

Extremely repetitive but I think that's kinda the point. Still not sure I get it.

I'm more of a Peripatetic myself.

I read this back to back with Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan and realised it was essentially the exact same book but through a completely different lens.

This was more my kinda lens.

I'm glad I read this after Consider the Lobster, that was a much lighter read that helped ease me into this collection of slightly denser essays.

Makes me want to watch more David Lynch and, strangely, take a luxury cruise.

This book is an absolute delight for a very specific sliver of humanity. I am part of that sliver.

After seeing how well J. R. Moehringer put together a story in Shoe Dog I was keen to see how he'd write for someone who was open and honest about every part of themselves. The result is beautiful.

This is entertaining, thrilling, and unexpectedly sweet. Autobiographies can't get much better than this.

I'll be watching the next Grand Slam with a level of appreciation and engagement I've never had before.

I think I'm now inspired to use memory palaces to learn the sum of human knowledge plus a couple of fun card tricks.

This book is basically saying certain indigenous cultures had tools, imagine a block of wood with different things like shells/beads/rocks stuck to it, that served as a “hard drive” of their entire cultures history and knowledge.

That's the kind of ultra fascinating theory I have a lot of time for.

I have waited a month to let my mind mull over this book and I still don't know what the hell I read.

I'm going to reread this soon and maybe then I'll know what I think of this.

A collection of essays so good you'll finish it and immediately buy a dictionary, the collected works of Dostoyevsky, and pornography.Authority and American Usage is the greatest essay ever written. not for the porn, for the tiny moments of truth

A guitar shop called String Theory I could forgive as a fun little pun but honestly, a band called Slaughterhouse 4? Enough already we get it.

And in case you're wondering, the overall message is as on the nose as the philosophy and physics references.

Still, can see how it might warm you up if you were feeling down. Just not sure there aren't warmer cups of tea.

So fun. You need platforms worthy of 70's Elton to stay on top of all the names he drops.

This has made me go back and listen to more of his discography and for that alone it deserves all the stars.

I'd made it this far in life without reading much DFW, I didn't appreciate his ability to display recursive thought at its most extreme, I was blown away.

My bandana is in the mail.