Kyle Erickson
So, I don't love where the macro story in Sun Eater is going, I think, but Ruocchio is such a good writer that it doesn't matter that much. This book is crazy and definitely mind bending and thought provoking, but some of the answers to the questions we are getting are in directions that I have little to no interest in. There is also a major character introduced in this one that I think didn't really land. They are more of a concept of a character, than a character themselves. Ruocchio's side characters have always been a relative weakness of the series.
However, the last third or so of this book was absolutely wild, top tier entertainment and mind-blowing reveals, creepy imagery and some of the best characters in the series. As always, the character writing for Hadrian is just incredible, Hadrian is very very old and he feels his age. And as always, Ruocchio's prose is fantastic.
Not my favorite of the series like it is for some people, but not my least favorite either.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
This book is very good and I would encourage everyone, but especially those with children, to read it. However it's also frustrating because the evidence seems so clear that we are headed towards a bad result and we will just not course correct in any sort of meaningful way. I hope this book inspires A) a small amount of parents to be more intentional with their kid's level of screens, B) a small amount of people to be more intentional with their own level of screens, and C) more research and books into this topic which will hopefully result in D) some actual change on a societal level.
But we'll see.
Okay so first of all, this book is an incredible piece of writing. The gradual upscaling of the prose and character work as Charlie gets more intelligent is so well done. I read the book in less than a day and was captivated the entire time.
Secondly, this book makes everyone cry it seems and I was two minutes from the end and didn't really understand why, it's definitely melancholy and has lots of sadness baked into the DNA of the premise and observations, but it wasn't making me emotional. However the last several paragraphs of this book are incredibly moving, sorrow in the deepest sense.
I would recommend this book to pretty much anybody, incredibly good book.
“Of all the films that Miller has ever made, this is the one where it feels like he bled for it to exist. For him to have been the age he was, for him to have come back into the studio system the way it is now, and to have navigated that system and come through it with this movie, it's pure win. You're going to see young filmmakers who are doing press and when people ask, “What got you interested in directing?” They'll say, “I was nine, and my dad took me to see Fury Road.”
This book is incredible for the sheer fact that this movie is an impossibility that somehow was made possible and this book chronicles that. I admit I was skeptical when I saw there was an oral history for Fury Road. I saw the film in theaters and liked it, but didn't really think about it again. The trailers for Furiousa got me curious to rewatch it since people rave about it. Rewatching it and also reading this book makes me understand that Fury Road is a masterpiece. There is truly nothing else like it and the story of how this film went from George Miller's brain to your theater screen is nothing short of miraculous.
This book has no identity.
Percy ranting about brunch, pontificating about old age, cringing at Fergalicious, trying to go to college but still acting like a 12 year old...
Riordan clearly wanted to return to Percy but seemed unclear on who he actually is. Half the asides do not feel like something a person his age at his time would act like (speaking of: they mention Wandavision, so this is set in recent times, but Percy was 16 when the series ended in 2009? Hmm).
It feels like Riordan tried to age this series up with the fans but couldn't do it entirely because so much time has passed, so he had to stay in the YA lane, but didn't want to lose the middle grade charm, but wanted to appeal to the humor sensibilities of the people who grew up with the series (rants about boomers, anyone?) and so the result just feels tonally strange and overall very haphazard.
I will say, though - it made me laugh more than any of the others. So...mission accomplished, kinda sorta?
The twist in this book is either completely ridiculous or utterly brilliant. I'm not sure. But one thing is for sure, it was unique and unexpected. If you feel like you've heard the story of Troy enough times but want a short war novel that will still surprise you, this is definitely a worthwhile endeavor.
The unfortunate part is that I didn't really enjoy reading the book. I think the author is bad at writing dialogue, I can't think of any conversations that felt realistic or good; most felt stilted or awkward. I felt the character motivations in the book are always pretty murky or liquid. It's like he decided how he wanted the story to be different, and didn't put enough thought into how to get everyone there.
Also, near the end of the book, it randomly switches to first person, as in there's a narrator actively telling you the story, which was not employed previously. And then a page later, he actually briefly introduces Homer. So the “narrator” is not Homer. So I'm just....really unsure why this switch was seen as a good idea, because I found it pretty jarring and strange.
Also I'm still waiting for a book to give Diomedes his due. I'm not sure why he is always cut, or killed off early, or in this case, made into a random petulant child (literally a child). Diomedes is badass.
This was a really cool mystery book where I liked the central mystery and thought it was added to by the imaginative worldbuilding and interesting characters. The central relationship between the MC and his mentor was well done, obviously inspired by Holmes/Watson but different enough to be doing its own thing. Tainted Cup isn't a new favorite, but I enjoyed the entire journey and I will definitely read the next one.
Is Liu Cixin intelligent? Of course. Do I find the ways he discusses most issues very interesting? Not particularly. Do I tend to agree with him? Not really.
This was a weird project, because the interplay between short stories and essays felt poorly handled and a lot of the “essay” parts were pretty short and were clearly written for other things. Maybe a first half of fiction and a second half of nonfiction would have felt smoother? Regardless, I didn't really love any of it. Some of the stories were nice, and I liked his essay about Ken Liu's short stories, as well as the one where he talks about various sci-fi ideas. But largely I found the stories not long enough to sustain interest and the essays either something I disagreed with his thoughts on or just found kinda obvious. Overall, this collection made me slightly less likely to read this author more, which is not what you hope for.
This is the most underrated trilogy I've ever read. Conn Iggulden using a pen name for this trilogy definitely impacted how many people have heard of it, which is a shame because the entire trilogy was great.
Clocking in at a little under 1000 pages for the entire trilogy, it's one of the leanest series I've ever read. The Sword Saint in particular - about 330 pages- was all killer no filler. This entire book was fantastic, it set up an entirely new bad guy and did it easily while paying off the narrative threads of the last two books. Iggulden does a fantastic job with characters, every single one of them feels real and all the major characters have satisfying arcs, besides maybe one. Iggulden is able to maximize investment in character with very little page time.
The magic in this series is cool. There are magical objects around that grant abilities and they have been largely hoarded by noble families who each have a family heirloom, but occasionally, a person also just have a magical ability, or a “knack”, like being able to see a few seconds into the future or nulling the magical objects around.
The combination of magic, compelling characters, and surprising plot developments (plus very tense action sequences!) made this entire series extremely bingeable and compelling. If you like political fantasy, fantasy about thieves and outlaws (the series vaguely feels like Gentleman Bastards to me), or fast paced novels that don't bog themselves down with worldbuilding, I highly encourage you to check this trilogy out.
Look, I can be magnanimous. But I can also be petty. Today I'm petty.
This is a very good memoir that is thorough and well written and at times poignant. But I have one major gripe that I recognize is extremely pedantic, unfortunately it bothered me and I cannot be anything other than what I am.
Geddy named this book My EFFIN' Life. Ya know, fuckin. And throughout the whole book, he keeps saying “that would be EFFIN cool” and “I'm not EFFING playing” and “it was seriously EFFIN weird” etc etc etc. This already bothered me, you're a fully grown man who is talking about doing cocaine and being mean to your wife and all sorts of actual flaws a person could have but you can't say fuck, that's going too far!!! I'll just say the hooked-on-phonics version of this swear so you know what I mean but I still look squeaky clean (but here's my chapter about cocaine addiction!). But sure whatever.
BUT THEN. After a very emotional segment about Neil Peart's diagnosis and death, covid happening, his mother's dementia, his mother's death, and Taylor Hawkin's death, he FINALLY says fucking. But for any of these emotional topics? No. “I would have to mess around with a fucking song sometimes”. That's when he uses it. So whyyyyyyyyyyy do I have to listen to you act like a six year old on a playground whose mommy is gonna get willy willy mad at him if he says a naughty poopoo word for the rest of the book?
Anyways the book actually was very good. Any Geddy Lee or Rush or just rock fans should read it. This will not bother you, because you are normal. Or maybe you're not normal, but you'll still not be bothered by this. I'm the only person. I will bear my pedantic, ridiculous burden, and dock a star from this very good memoir over its lack of swearing.
This prequel novella follows Ronnat and delves into the long festering war between the two magical groups in 10th century Ireland. I enjoyed the novella quite a bit, it answered a fair amount of questions about the backstory of this world. I do think it's better as an introduction than as a continuation, because I knew what would happen and basically how it would happen already, but there are a few unraveled details that make it worthwhile anyways.
One of the best memoirs I've ever read, and it makes me like some previous memoirs less by being incredibly moving, honest, open, and informative and not relying on the reader to do the emotional heavy lifting (“my mom died so now I'm sad”- looking at you, Crying in H Mart).
My new go to recommendation for non celebrity memoirs.
This author is completely insufferable at every point however I do think this had a good look at the working class and especially at the time it was written was important for how others viewed these jobs and income brackets and I think people who have never had to work low income jobs or grow up poor could benefit from reading this.
Just....just don't act like this insufferable author. That's my take away. Holier than thou, naive, judgmental, vain. Did you guys know that Barbara Ehrenreich is COLLEGE EDUCATED folks?!?!?!?!?!! Step back, we have a college education strolling through. The worst part is when she takes a job as a waitress in Key West but is worried that PEOPLE ARE GOING TO RECOGNIZE HER NAME AND OUT HER. Are you really suggesting that in between all of the scrounging around to put food on the table and find appropriate housing and get through a shift with a little bit of sanity intact, that these people are going to be falling over themselves to recognize a journalist's name/picture and then think to themselves, “this is a trick! A scam! A dirty scallywag, exposing the seedy underside of my lifestyle! Away with you, tramp!”? The sheer GALL of this woman
Anyways can confirm that being poor sucks
This book was fine but I'm pretty confused why I have only heard praise about it. I didn't feel really anything about it the entire time except for the first 70-80 pages being very compelling. After that, there is a giant section of the book that is very different and people stop acting like people, and then the last chunk is okay. Won't be continuing this series, but nothing about it was actively not good.
This book brings The Empire of the Wolf trilogy to an end. I really enjoyed the first two books of this series, they both mixed medieval epic fantasy with mystery and a bit of horror. It was a great mix to me. Unfortunately, I think Trials of Empire did not live up to these first two installments for several reasons.
Trials of Empire simply tries to do too much with too little time. This third book tries to scale upwards at a staggering rate; we are no longer following a few people trying to stop a conspiracy to change the empire, now we are dealing with ancient, eldritch cosmic beings with insane scope and power. It's not undoable, and it's not as if it fails utterly, but it ramps up so steeply that I was left with whiplash. In the shuffle of all this, the characters and their internal dilemma's are largely lost in the shuffle. True, Helena does have a few terse conversations with Vonvalt and co, but mostly, they all spend this book reacting to insane shit happening and who can blame them?
A similar issue adding on is how much is not set up well or at all in the first two books that is now very important. A major element set up in the first two is almost not a factor in this book, and a character that plays a large-ish role in the second book randomly shows up in a chapter of this one out of nowhere, monologues for a few pages, and is then gone. Instead, we get several factions that hitherto were not mentioned. About halfway through the book, we get a giant exposition dump about the afterlife- the place where, until now, we have been dipping into, with some of my favorite scenes in the series. We are told about various factions and hierarchies and who the Big Bad of the series is, who hasn't been mentioned until this point. And then the rest of the novel is about assembling these factions together to beat the hierarchies and Big Bad from the afterlife and the final battle is filled with elements I didn't get enough time with to fully comprehend what I was reading. So my eyes just glazed over. Demons, eldritch, wolf people,blah blah. We also spend way too much time in visions and dreams - including in the big battle! It was an element that felt overdone for what it actually brought to the novel.
I don't feel like the central conflict between the two main characters is resolved in a great way, it's mostly handwaved. I do think the very end is good, and as always, the writing is good. I think this series needed a little less, or more books.
DNF 50%
This book is not really enlightening, its just exhausting. I've seen a lot of people say this book made them think about a lot of things but I guess I have already thought about those things because nothing in this book so far felt to me like worthwhile of being a book and not an essay, and I furthermore don't know why this author should be the one I'm listening to. It's mostly just, “oh yeah, a lot of people loved Harry Potter/David Bowie/Bill Cosby, and they shouldn't have to feel bad for that, but sometimes they do anyways�� over and over again.
