John

Beautiful short read. Much more poetry than hard science fiction, too much for my tastes. But the quality of the writing means it deserves more than the 3 stars I would give it based on my preference alone.

A return to the good old Stephen King. I ripped through the 600 pages of this book and enjoyed them all. If I have any criticism, it's that his 2019 kids somehow use slang and cultural references from the 1960s, but that's a small issue because their portrayal is still spot on. I'm going to have to check out King's other recent books, because it seems like he's going through a Renaissance!

It was okay. Not quite as unputdownable as I was made to believe, as I did put it down long enough to forget what was going on when I picked it back up.

I was weirded out by Lee Child's descriptions of driving: she “slewed” the car into the parking lot. He “nosed” onto the highway. It wouldn't have been odd if he used these words once, but every time they get in cars (which is often), they are slewing and nosing everywhere.

It's like Lee Childs wants me to believe this is how everyone describes driving.
It's not! It's weird!

I'm going to “slew” away from reading any sequels.

This second eisenhorn book was fun, too, but it felt like it had a lot of loose ends left wide open and the ending didn't quite feel satisfying or well earned, compared to the stellar first book. Still worthwhile, check it out!

A lot of fun and action packed.

Fantastic! Science fiction the way I love it: mind-expanding and focused on the effects of this different world on the emotions and relationships of the people who live there. It's really well fleshed-out and the main characters are very sympathetic.

An interesting idea presented here is that the “evil emperor” has her (all pronouns are feminine in this society, whether male or female) consciousness shared across millions of clones, which means that she just walks around by herself with no guards or anything, because if she loses one body who cares, and she seems to have a really informal relationship with everyone. It's great! Love this book, can't wait for the next one to come out.

I enjoyed it, the really informal way the main character expressed himself didn't bother me at all. It's not a book that blew my mind or anything, but it was a fun way to spend a couple hours. Hopefully it gets people pumped to get up there and find ourselves another place to live than this rock on which we find ourselves now.

Best book ever, it changed the way I view the world. It injected my life with wonder at the ordinary things around us, and the sheer scale of what has come before us. Highly recommended!

I wish I'd read the edited version. The council voting part was pointless and tacked on and felt like it took up a fourth of the book.

Great book about how “compliance professionals” use tricks in the way we think in order to get us to give them money. Good stuff, makes you less of a dummy, you dummy.

It's a good one! It consistently somewhat defied my expectations what with the oceans-eleven in a fantasy (science fiction?) world premise. It kept me up at night in order to finish it. I greatly enjoyed the richness of the world Lynch has created here, although sometimes the interludes didn't really add much to the story and just served to slow down the pacing for me. Recommended!

An entertaining book full of interesting reports of how Habits rule everyone's lives. It's straight forward and doesn't make any outlandish promises or introduce any one-size-fits-all techniques to revolutionise whatever and whatnot. It has, never the less, changed my life for the better. I have been able to recognize negative habits that I have had and replace them with more positive ones. I am very glad I read this book! Read it, you might like it too.

These have to be the sweetest, most emotionally mature group of teenagers who ever lived. But it looks like all the teachers are gay too now? Eh, it's cozy and relaxing and (more importantly) a quick read. I'm still 3 books behind schedule to reach 52 this year!

The ending was absolute deus ex machina trash, making everything that came before it pointless. I highly suggest pretending this book and it's sequel “Children of the Mind” never existed.

Holy shit, Andy Weir wrote The Egg?

A guy has a midlife crisis while his son has a monster in the closet crisis. Well written, great art. Certainly more character based than plot based. Unsettling horror. Good, but feels short in a bad way. Like it's a snapshot of a situation rather than a full story.

A quick and incredibly charming read! It is self-aware and clever, pulls no punches, and is a book that I wouldn't mind reading again right now, a week after I finished it. And I never read a book twice. Destined to be a classic!

DNF. “oh, he's the best hitman ever but he only kills bad guys and he's such a great guy and way smarter than everyone else, oopsie his client is acting pretty shady I sure hope nothing goes wrong” blablabla I get it, please get to the interesting part. 300 pages later the obvious finally happens and the story finally begins. But then still nothing happened, and my patience ran out. Honestly, a good short story writer (which Steven King actually is!) could get the first half done in a few pages. It's grating when the author doesn't respect your time or intelligence. I have pretty much loved everything King has ever written, so my intense dislike for this book is an unfortunate surprise for us all.