Kate

OKAY oh my goodness I'm finally letting this one go.

I'm not going to give it any stars because I don't think it's fair. This is one that I feel like I can only fairly rate if I stuck it out to the end, but I did not.

So here's what I loved - everything about Bridger and sensayers and the set-sets and the social and technical and moral world-building. LOVED it. Like, I ate it up. Those were the moments I had to get off the bus or something and I walked around in the world with my nose in this book. The moments that I had to ask people to wait a sec because I was just in the middle of a section and just give me a few minutes, I'll be with you when the chapter is done.
What I didn't love - the politics. I found it SO BORING. Part of it was that there were a lot of names of people and groups and I couldn't keep them straight and just reading through wasn't helping me to make sense of anything. Part of it was the way that Mycroft was presenting it just jumbled things. Part of it was that I actually didn't care about the petty internal machinations of the political players. I'd hit a section about some politician or another calling Mycroft in to be his eyes and ears or ply him for information or what have you and my eyes would glaze over. I'd try to read through because I thought that maybe it would have an important bearing on something I found interesting later on but it wouldn't stick in my head. I started skimming until I saw Bridger or Carlyle again, then would be right into it, then I'd hit another political section and just completely lose it. I held on to this book for way longer than I should have because of how awesome I found some of it, and maybe in the future I'll be in a mood where I can get through the stuff I'm resistant to right now, but for now it's not worth it. I thought I could just skip the stuff I didn't like but that's not going to be very satisfying for me, so here I am putting this book down. Which I'm kind of devastated about! I'll probably try to come back to it later.

I just couldn't get into this one. The premise is fascinating, and I had a lot of questions about the universe it's set in that I wanted to get answered, but something about the style didn't interest me. I think I was hoping it would be something different, but also right now I'm not willing to force myself through the beginning to see if it'll get better later. So I'm not rating it because I didn't stop reading because I thought it was bad...I just really needed to put it down.

This book did really nothing for me. I don't like the idea that my possessions are being tortured by my method of folding or stacking or whatever. I get enough of the particular sadness of possessions having emotions from the Toy Story movies. Also, none of this seems life-changing to me. I mean, granted, I didn't read the whole book...I skimmed a bunch of it though...and I haven't actually gone through the steps but it just sounds like cleaning to me? Am I wrong? Aren't there lots of books about cleaning that have different cleaning methods that might work better or worse for different types of people and this is just one of them? For my next big clean, I am planning on getting rid of as much stuff as possible, because it just sits there doing nothing. Weeding is good for all collections of stuff. But I can't say that reading this book gave me this idea. I don't think that emptying my bag out every single night only to put most of that stuff back inside will make me feel more at peace with my life. So I'm glad that this book helped some people, but I don't really go in for self-help books in general so this one is no exception.

The tone of this book is almost exactly the same as 1000 Ways to Die, which was a great show, but it realllly doesn't work for me in written form. Plus there's a lot of entirely unnecessary and strangely judgmental background information about the people in these stories that just made me roll my eyes. “The technician, a devout Muslim who considered homosexuality the behaviour of deviants, opened the door and wheeled Jamal inside.” This little tidbit doesn't add anything to the story, because she just did her job and was never mentioned again, so who gives a shit? Is it really necessary for us to be reminded that some people might not approve of how the patient lives his life? Or in a different story, after the doctor couldn't identify a mass in a patient's breast: “She's from Africa, so this has to be something infectious.” No - it doesn't have to be something infectious. Africa doesn't have a monopoly on infectious diseases! The common cold is an infectious disease! You can take into account a patient's travel history and consult with colleagues without perpetuating the idea that Africa is just a seething hotbed of disease. Even airport customs asks about specific countries and not the ENTIRE CONTINENT and only when there ACTUALLY IS an outbreak. Just because the doctor was right in this case doesn't mean that all African people with symptoms you can't identify right away have an infectious disease (from Africa...because again there are plenty of infectious diseases an African person could have picked up in Canada).

Also I thought it was kind of weird that this book used the gimmick of having one of the stories be made-up. Especially since the page you're directed to to vote on which story you think is a lie is a 404 error. So I can't even talk about any of these stories being real because I have no idea which one isn't. This is a small issue but it still annoyed me.

I should have listened to the warning at the beginning - this book is not suitable for adults. I did laugh out loud at many of the butt puns (univarse...haha) but they started to blend together after a few pages. Plus I didn't care for the story. I'm sure 12-year-old me would have been into it more, and I will definitely recommend this one to children who like to giggle uncontrollably. It could be good for playing the [b:The Eye of Argon 2129518 The Eye of Argon Jim Theis https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347758875s/2129518.jpg 2134961] game for kids (try to read it out loud for as long as possible without laughing).