Sen

I was on my second read-through of this book wondering why it just wasn't connecting with me, and I think I've finally figured it out: it's TOO aware of its audience.

This book is aware that you, the reader, are most likely someone who lives in the 21st century, and has certain knowledge about the world at the time that it was written. It's possible this wouldn't bother me so much if it were in third person, but since the main character is also the first-person narrator, she feels like a mouthpiece speaking directly to us and explaining how the world has changed since our time. As a result, she doesn't sound like an actual person living in the future this book envisions.

I do firmly believe that "show don't tell" is overdone as writing advice and telling can be used to great effect, but this book just does too much of it in my opinion. Dietz says she cares about these other characters who are living and dying in front of her, but I don't. None of them feel like real people to me, either. An entire relationship happens basically offscreen. I don't have any emotional investment in any of them.

The irony here is that I actually did like the short story this book is based on well enough, as well as the rest of Hurley's collection "Meet Me in the Future". But this is my fourth and probably final attempt at reading one of her full novels. The ideas are interesting, and the points they try to make about the world are good, but I think her style just doesn't work for me in long form tbh.

If you want a more motivational-speaker-y approach divided by room, read Decluttering at the Speed of Life. If you want more bite-sized tips, read Organizing for the Rest of Us. You don't really need to read both. They have basically all the same information, just presented in a different format.

This book is a good comfort read. It is a slice of life story that explores the process of healing from trauma (notably survivor's guilt), various types of relationships (particularly romantic and familial), and the ways that different people go about their daily lives. The setting is low fantasy and has room for more exploration in future books. If you like low-stakes character-driven stories, please consider giving it a try.

This book would probably be useful for anyone just starting out, but if you've already looked into zero waste options, most of the tips will likely sound familiar.

One page says that only 14% of all plastic has ever been recycled, but a later page says it's only 9%. Also, despite the author's claim of trying to keep the book as concise as possible to avoid wasting paper, there are unnecessary decorative pages between every single chapter. So I'm hesitant to completely trust this author, even though many of the tips given are good.

Giving five stars specifically for The Shape Of My Name, which punched me right in the heart, and Before We Disperse Like Star Stuff, which I swear to god could be about real people with the way the dialogue was written, but all of the stories were good.

Everything in this book feels simultaneously grounded in reality and delightfully speculative, with sci-fi, paranormal, and horror elements interspersed perfectly with complex queer characters and messy relationships of all kinds and cool story formats. I'm gonna be thinking about this book for a good long while.

The premise intrigued me, but unfortunately I couldn't make it past the first 15 pages or so. A conversation between two people was presented as one giant run-on sentence, with no dialogue tags, quotation marks, or even capitalization aside from the first word when a new person started speaking. This went on for multiple pages and I could not focus on it at all.