Phil Denhoff

Fun, easy, quick book. Predictable, sure, but Scalzi’s sense of humour infuses this book.

Good basics on Feng Shui. Doesn't really have Mr. Tan's signature TikTok feel, but it's a different medium, so that is to be expected.

Slow Productivity reads like a collection of haphazardly and lazily tied together anecdotes, just long enough that it could be published. While I’m familiar with books in the genre that are similar, this comes across as perhaps the least effective or moving of the bunch. As an argument, it’s wholly lacking in substance.

The crux of the book is do fewer things, work at a “natural pace” (hopefully you know what that is!), and obsess over quality. You got the thought in one sentence. There is some discussion that slow productivity is like slow food, but you’d get more out of reading about the history of slow food than from this book.

good resource; accidentally got bogged down trying to finish reading the techniques at the end, but I found that would be better as a recipe book, useful only if you need to apply the technique immediately.

Not for me. No surprise there. Felt like a caricature of a good romance novel, or at least an amateur novel. It’s middling. Unimpressive. An interesting and good idea but with poorly formed characters. In theory, the story should have been great, but I think every scene was too rushed and not given enough time to sit and develop. The characters were relatively flat. Frances had wonderful development near the end but it was like the author had a chance to make this complete character, got right to full character development, and never used her again. Frances is smart and full of punk energy and then we don’t see her again.

Listen, I’m roasting a romance novel — I’m well outside my normal genre. When Emily asked if I’d read it with her I said sure, but I think part of me expected the book to be a modern classic. Excellent writing. I didn’t know I was in for pulp space romance fiction.