Anna

Really good (though very US-centric) trip down the memory lane.

Not surprised to hear that this is being made into a Netflix show because it reads exactly like one. I guess all the red herrings, cliffhangers, twists and turns are supposed to be clever but they're just exhausting.

idk why I like this sick shit

I think this what people consider a “good beach read”.

I imagine this translation took a lot of work and it's no doubt an important historical document, but it's not the most ravishing read. I'd have loved more detail and more interiority, but I also don't want to judge Osman by 21st century storytelling standards.
Would make amazing base material for a tv show adaptation though, I hope someone out there is already working on it.

Interesting perspective on the collective guilt of German draftees and grunts. Not sure how much of it is based on true events but it felt true to me as it matches a lot of the war stories I'd heard from the Polish veterans growing up.
Props to whoever left a copy at a Vancouver Airbnb where I picked it up.

I really really loved the main story (love/ghost story), as well as the fact that the fictional narrative is set in the author's real bookstore (she even makes an entertaining and revealing cameo) and the characters are all connected to it.

The only thing that felt a bit odd for me was the inclusion of covid and the George Floyd protests - I'm not really sure why, maybe it's too soon? It already felt quite dated because of this (I know, it's crazy considering that the pandemic is not over at all yet, but the emotions of the early covid era make me feel nostalgic now which was definitely not author's intention).

I love meta horror and was completely on board with the concept of this book, but I struggled to follow it a good bit - could be just my reading it through the doom times distractions though.

The core of this book makes for a genuinely revelatory and clear way of thinking about addiction (and how to avoid it). I am not sure about some of the research the author quotes though - a lot of it sounds quite dated (at one point she literally quotes a paper from the Soviet Union) and the fact that the vast majority of drug users don't end up addicted is not directly addressed - probably because it complicates the book's thesis about the inevitability of addiction given conditions a b and c, which are then explained to be rare and unpredictable and complicated, and yet somehow inevitable. It's a mess. The author's total abstinence following years of addiction biases this book quite strongly and the author is very, very open about that bias, which makes this book less scientific than it purports to be.

I'm really loving Gissing and the way he focuses on the lives of lower-middle and middle-middle class Londoners - I find this stuff so much more relatable than most of his contemporaries with their focus on landed gentry.

The characters' problems are all so familiar: the rents are too high, the wages are too low, the air is polluted, chronic bronchitis, everyone is an artist, every artist is either starving or floated by a rich daddy, everyone's back hurts, the dating scene is all grifters and golddiggers. A character casually invents Twitter in chapter 33, gets funded, goes on to a startup life. In 1883! London really is eternal.

Really enjoyed this, good old-fashioned thick piece of melodrama. The ending felt a bit rushed though.

I couldn't really connect with this book. Could be my fault, could be the format, or maybe it's intentional? Hard to say but it's been a day since I finished it and already I forgot both the plot and the point.

I was super on board with the story but the last part really threw me off, way too cheesy for my sensitivity. Cool concept though.

Kudos to the Monomythical newsletter for convincing me to pick up a self-published book that is also based in a creative commons-shared wiki-based internet universe thingy (I won't even pretend to understand how those spaces work as it's not my scene).

This is excellent sci-fi horror that reminded me a lot of Jeff Vandermeer's Area X books - somewhat similar scares, with a love story at the centre, and metaphorically potent.

My bad for picking up a book that has two things I believe are impossible to make interesting: a walking journal and adult diagnosing herself with an ASD.

I'm sure this book is objectively fine.

This was a blind library loan as part of my “Marseille-based novels to read in Marseille” book stack, but it turned out unexpectedly great. The plot is at times very melodramatic but the author handles it with great skill.

I've always been very curious about the lives of sailors, having grown up in a coastal town and among friends whose dads spent 6 months of each year on the sea. This was a great peak into their minds and lives, and it matched my own observations about the more problematic parts of that lifestyle.

The author is obviously in love with his city but he also really gets the reasons why Marseille is so easy to fall in love with for a visitor and why certain types of people feel so immediately at home there.

Spoilery trigger warning: the ending made me extremely sad.

Really good Halloween read.

An unexpectedly pleasant flight read for a plotless novel. My only point of reference for plains is the Canadian prairie which I guess is close enough. To be honest not really sure wtf I read but I liked it.

This was suggested to me by someone who suspected I might share some of Paglia's views. Up until now I'd only known her as the weird female edgelord who'd argued her way into publicly supporting pedophilia in order to own the libs.
In a classic case of a broken clock being right twice a day, I do agree with some of her views. Also, her rage is entertaining - she can definitely throw a creative diss even if she keeps going after a handful of the same people.
However, she seems very stuck and resistant to new data about a whole lot of things. Her bizarre insistence that homosexuality is a choice is the main one that comes to mind, but this kept bothering me throughout the book. Also, somehow pigeon masculinity says something about human masculinity? I guess if you're aboard the Jordan Peterson train and also clueless to the existence of penguins, swans, heck really all of the animal kingdom. It gets tiring after a while, like listening to the argumentation of someone who refuses to google. She keeps coming back to numerous straw men that I can only guess are second wave feminist arguments of yore.
Exhausting.

Not sure if I liked SST for the writing or if I was just so titillated by Broder's exhibitionism, but I devoured it in one sitting while thinking wow her poor husband and wow her poor parents what if they read this and WOW OK, cycling between feeling ashamed for her and really envious of her obvious balls. In the end though SST achieves its ostensible objective of making you feel less weird and alone.

It's all really silly.

I don't usually rate those types of books because they're “utility” but this book is the equivalent of Neo having kung-fu streamed directly into his brain in the Matrix, but for Go. Spend a weekend going through this book cover to cover and you're all set for a Go job. I'm not sure how the authors did it but I wish all coding books were this effective - our jobs would be so much easier and upskilling would be a breeze.One downside: no gopher toons.assuming you already know programming

This book is so extremely of its time. Curious to re-read this in a decade or so to see if it has aged like the rageface meme or rather like the Old Economy Steve meme.

I really want everyone alive to read this. The title might suggest that this will be a how-to for drug use, but it's a powerfully revisionist book that completely annihilates a lifetime of indoctrination that we're all put through.

There were several moments in the book when I felt acutely embarrassed of my own ignorance, especially being an ex harm reduction professional with a long-standing interest in the subject. Thankfully, Hart talks very openly about his own history of ignorance and participation in the state's demonisation of drugs, and how his mind had been changed by his work in neuroscience and the science of addiction.

I think most people who aren't drug users would find this book to be an effective exercise in empathy with those who do. But most of all, it's necessary to dispel the myths that we're told about drugs and the people who take them.

I really loved Hart's tone too and am putting him on top of my fantasy celebrity dinner party (with all the drugs) list.

Unexpectedly awesome. It takes a really skilled writer to make the “magical women” trope palatable to me these days, and O'Farrell's characters are alive and vivid. The historical backdrop is handled so well too. Worth reading for the incredibly well researched chapter that follows the journey of a flea carrying plague bacteria across the medieval world.