Isaac

A cozy wholesome tale of tea dragons. Not sure how to rate this– for the art it's a 5/5. It's gorgeous sequence of images with bright colours. I love the variety of character designs. However, I felt the book felt more like a vibe than a story. It's cozy, warm, and bright but it's lacking a coherent plot. I know this is middle grade, but it feels like it could do with a stronger plot. I heard the second one does, so I might pick it up. I love the concept though- tea dragons!! ☕️

2 stars • Well, unlike everyone else in these reviews, I wasn't a fan of this one :(

I love the premise- Victorian M/M with magic, lords, warlocks and more! But I just couldn't care for the plot and all of the supporting characters. I liked the interactions between the leads, the smut was alright and the magical victorian setting was cool...but the mystery plot. It just failed to capture my interest and I was forcing myself through the pages, sorry to say.

4.5 stars — This book feels like a warm hug. A soothing book to read on a rainy day with a cup of tea.

When I was younger, I had a Winnie-the-Pooh bear and used to bring him everywhere with me. To school, to the park, to my Grandparents house. I loved the films too, and yet, despite being an avid bookworm. I had never actually read the books.

So now as an adult, I was browsing through the Gutenberg shelves and decided now was the time to read them. Perhaps a little late, but I'm glad I did. It's a lovely Children's book, with an adorable bear, a host of wonderful of characters and nice hand-drawn illustrations to match.

I'm sure Winnie-the-Pooh will be remain a classic children's story for many years to come. And I'll always be a little jealous of Christopher Robin. You see, I want to live in the Hundred Ache Wood with a cute bear who likes honey. Is that too much to ask?

2.5 stars — This is one of my first forays into the world of cozy mysteries. Coffee and murder. Somewhat ironic, as I'm more of a tea drinker than coffee myself. But there's something so cozy about a coffeeshop. And this book is filled with long descriptions of wonderful coffee-making.

But the actual plot and characters were bland. Our main sleuth Clare Cosi felt underdeveloped and uninteresting. There's a stereotypical gay, a gruff cop, and a creepy ex-husband (who I think the readers are meant to swoon for but I just found him creepy!)

Despite this, the book is easy-to-read and exactly what I wanted at the time. This was a guilt enjoyment, not something I would recommend, unless you're a cozy mystery fan and addicted to coffee.

5 stars • Oh what a fascinating book! Maeda is perhaps one of the most influential names in creative coding. For good reason, he created the programming language, Design by Numbers (DBN). And that laid the foundations for our present-day Processing and p5.js. And this book shows more of his visions and insights of art and computation, with specific emphasis on his student work. I loved seeing the absolute variety of projects, so inventive, visionary and creative. I really love the concept of using the computer or even ‘code' as a tool for art. This showcases a lot of artwork from the 1990s to early 2000s. It was quite inspiring. I got many of my own ideas from reading this book. I also wish I was a student at the MIT Media Lab

4 stars • Oh, I really enjoyed this book. I find many of the scholarly books on creative coding are often just coding tutorials. This one is a bit different. While, there are some tutorials here and there... it is also filled with so many examples and profound insights on the area. Really useful for own research. Definitely have more of an appreciation on creative coding after reading this.

3 stars • Reading this for my university dissertation. Twisty Little Passages is the first scholarly book on interactive fiction (IF). Think Zork, Colossal Cave Adventure, Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, modern Inform works and more. For the most part, it's a comprehensive history of the genre, interspersed with some critical analysis of each game.

Montfort also spends a good deal of time comparing IF to the riddle. It's an interesting point. And never knew the riddle had such a rich history! But it did go on for so long, and felt he dragged that point on for too long. Regardless, this is a comprehensive book to IF, and valuable for any researcher looking into the area.

3.5 stars — This was a whole lot of fun. I got eaten by the Loch Ness Monster, lived with the caveman, met Abraham Lincoln and even got to meet a UFO!

I've been interested in the area of IF (interactive fiction) for a while. I've been hopelessly addicted to Twine, a modern game engine for making interactive fiction. It's such a charming way of storytelling and thought I'd go back and see the genre origins. So here it is, the first book of the Choose Your Own Adventure series published in 1979.

The writing is pretty simple, don't expect anything deep or meaningful here, but despite this it's a lot of fun! Think I managed to find all of the endings.

3.5 stars — Wells' writing style is surprisingly easy to read. A great introduction to the world of time travel, but failed to interest me enough. I loved how our main character, the Time Traveller is nameless throughout the story. Just the Time Traveller. It's an interesting element of mystery and intrigue. But once we got to the future, I found it to drag, be a bit boring. Nevertheless, it interesting to see how Victorian Wells envisioned the future. Instead of advanced technology or steampunk, we got two caveman creatures: the Eloi and the Morlocks, and the Time Travellers experience with these new species. It's not often we get these sorts of future in mainstream time travel stories (we all think of advanced technology now, not cavemen), and that itself felt unique to read.

4.5 stars — This is such a weird little book and I love it. I would would call this a silly dystopian. In the fictional island of Nollop, a totalitarian government are so extreme, that they decide to ban letters of the alphabet.

Yes, sounds silly, but I guess that's the point, to create satire about fascism by creating an absurd dystopian scenario. And you know what? It works! This is a wonderfully written book told only through letters. The citizens of Nollop don't use technology, and communicate through means of written letters. As the government begins by banning the letter ‘Z' (believing this to be what their founder Nollop would want), and then so on with more letters of the alphabet, the way the residents communicate changes.

It was interesting to read. Mark Dunn is great at blending dystopian horror with humour. Yet, I wouldn't call this comedy, it has its funny moments, but Dunn has also managed to create a world where the impact of banning language seems realistic and sad. It is also lipogrammatic tale. Once a letter is banned, Dunn stops using that letter for the rest of the book. This must have been an difficult feat to write- impressive!

4.5 stars — This was beautiful, haunting and melancholic. I think a dark fairy tale is an apt description of this novel. It uses many fairy tale conventions, but not in a cliche way. There are witches, magic. But yet the words witches and magic are never once uttered in the duration of this book. It's very much an adult fairy tale, with scary depictions of child abuse, contrasted with an supernatural ocean as a backdrop.

This is my first Gaiman book I've read, and gosh, his writing style is so memorising. Absolutely gorgeous.
This reads like a memoir, since in some ways it is, it borrows from Gaiman own childhood, but not too much and still stands as an original story. This memoiric style of writing is then intertwined with this enchanting idyllic fairy tale. It works well, and creates a great magical realism story.

Honestly I'm still left a little stunned from this story. It's just so beautiful? Yet dark. It's a dark fantasy, a fairy tale, magical realism and a memoir all in one. It also feels like a Ghibli movie. And yes that's high praise. Similar to a Ghibli great, it's about childhood, with spirits and monsters. It depicts the brutal parts of life, but then there's the kind Hempstocks witches. Their world may be strife with danger, but their home feels like a cozy recluse where they serve warm food. I actually stopped reading mid-way in this book, and reimagined the story as frames of a Ghibli film.

I read the illustrated edition of this book, and the art was gorgeous. Fairy tales are so often accompanied by childlike illustrations. But Hurst's illustrations are dark and sinister. No colour at all. Some pages are black, with white text. It works so well with the tone of this book. Made the book so much more melancholic.

Also there's a stage adaptation of this work, and it's visiting my area soon. I've heard the stage version is even better than this book, so I might try and find the tickets. May edit this review if so!

3.5 stars — A beautifully written coming-of-age novella about Ru, a migrant from a land of dragons who moves to India, but feels like an outsider due to his mysterious heritage he knows little about.

This feels like a novella about identity, culture and immigration. I like that this is more-or-less a realistic story of a boy stuck between two cultures, but one of the cultures happens to be one infused with dragons and magic. But instead of having traditional fantasy tropes of chosen ones and the like, this is very much grounded in reality, of a boy that wants to live in the present, but also wants to honour his family's culture.

I also learnt a new term called Third culture kid. Not mentioned in the book itself, but I think Ru can certainly be considered a third culture kid. The Dragoneer culture and the Indian culture intertwine.

The greatest success of this novella is the prose. It's beautifully written with this dream-like, evanescent quality, merging realism with the fantastical. The plot isn't always clear, and I struggled at times understanding its magic system, but there is this daydream wonder that kept me entertained. The relationship between Alice and Ru also feels endearing, a first love that ends, but not in a dramatic way, more a coming-of-age first love sort of deal. A wonderfully written book with some interesting ideas.

3.5 stars — I like books that takes risks or are told in unconventional ways. This one is told through the notes on a dictionary. It is a non-linear story of love, or well, a love that failed. This is a poetic book, almost free verse.

I also like the non-linear way this is told, with how they fell in love and how it ended told all at once, changing our perception. My past relationships feel almost tainted by what happens at the end. A break up changes your opinion of a partner and I feel the non-linear aspect really conveys that. We learn they were cheated on early in the book, but we also get parts of their early relationship and love just after. You want to say “Aww” at the relationship moments, but since we know the ending, we don't and I think it changes our view of the the relationship.

I think love is an overall complicated thing, and Leviathan did a great job of depicting different stages of a relationship. At times, I found the prose to be a little dull, but I appreciate this book tried to be experimental and is a nice short read.