Ben Saufley

A lot of interesting ideas that then sort of wander and fizzle. I enjoyed it, but as a piece of fiction the structure and resolution (or even lack thereof) falls short.

As I approached the end of the first book I was not convinced that I'd read the second. It was fun, its magic system relatively unique, but the overall story just hadn't pulled me in too much; I didn't get a sense of the world, or its inhabitants besides a small few. But the last chapter of the first book, the cliffhanger with the other prism (to avoid spoiling anything), intrigued me. I said, alright, I'll give it one more book. And I'm glad I did, because this one was a lot of fun. The world really filled itself out; the many interwoven plots were fun and constantly intriguing; and now I have to finish this whole long series. I've just gotta know. Sounds like I'll have to wait for the fifth book too.

My one complaint is that this one had a few superfluous and silly sexual encounters – an issue I tend to have with the genre as a whole. I'm sitting in traffic listening to this audiobook when all of a sudden this entirely unnecessary sex scene or a few paragraphs about breasts interrupt the flow of the story. I'm no prude, but I don't really read for titillation, and when it does so little for the story especially, it just undermines my enjoyment of a book. Thankfully these little interludes were a small fraction of the book.

I've already bought the third.

There was a lot I really liked about this book but much more than any other Weeks book I've read, it spent way, way too much of its time musing on the breasts and bodies of its female characters. Weeks has definitely done some of this in other books and there's some level to which you can write this off as “we're seeing the world through the eyes of a young male character” or whatever, but it was just too much in this book. It dragged the book down a lot, to an extent that I almost DNF'ed.

Having listened to Amy Poehler's “Yes Please” and Mindy Kaling's “Why Not Me” before this, I'd say this was my favorite of the three. All good, but this one had some of the sharpest stuff in it. Funny stuff, insightful cultural commentary, interesting stories. Each had these (and that's part of why I group them - the other reason being that they're of course all semi-autobiographical books by modern women of comedy), but I felt like this one brought the most.

It was weird though to hear her talk about 30 Rock like it's still on.

And the chapter about her dad was sweet and interesting but in parts really sounded like she was justifying some, at best, “dated” (more realistically: racist) views. I think she was just sort of explaining how her dad grew up and came to believe what he believed but there were a few things that seemed to dance close to justification rather than just ... I don't know, explanation. Don't even know if this paragraph makes sense. I just felt like it got a bit uncomfortable for a minute in that chapter.

I ran really hot and cold on this book. It reads very much like a familiar and kind of insufferable subgenre of literary fiction where white men pine for some timeless golden youth in Manhattan, and I didn't like that. I also didn't like the intro, which immediately flashes back in a disorienting way that indicated to me that we'd flash forward again... but we never did. The flashback was the book, leading back to the present. But by the end, I had been won over. It was pretty interesting and I wanted to know what happened. Which is why the ending, which doesn't tell you what happens, and ends so abruptly I thought something was wrong with my copy, left me cold all over again. I'm averaging this out as a 3. I don't regret reading it; I'm glad I did. But man.Update: something was actually wrong with my copy of the audiobook! There's a whole chapter (1/12 of the book!) remaining. So I'll update this once I'm done.

Honestly the mystery wrapped up really nicely with nothing coming out of thin air and yet I didn't figure basically any of it out. A very satisfying mystery with what I think is a well-handled “trans!” twist that doesn't belittle the character, reduce her to the twist, or treat her as abnormal. But I'm an outsider there as a cis dude so maybe I'm off base.

I really enjoyed this book and then it ... ended before it was over. I know there are sequels but it felt like all the POV stories that were told, each of which I really enjoyed and I loved how they were told so differently, were leading to something at the end that the book just doesn't provide. That's disappointing. I'll probably read at least one of the sequels in a while, but like ... it seems like at least the first sequel would just have to be a part of this book.

After having just finished [b:Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition 22827628 Midnight's Furies The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition Nisid Hajari https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407814080s/22827628.jpg 42381651], I was interested to read this book, which was discussed as a kind of compliment to that book—Midnight's Furies being a more historical overview, Indian Summer being a bit more of a personal story. I think I enjoyed this book more than that one, for that reason—but I also found myself a bit more engaged here because of the personal stories woven into the history, where Midnight's Furies at times felt like a long list of incidents of sectarian violence and while I liked that book and felt like I got some idea of the course of the history from it, this book helped me anchor these events in time a bit by connecting them a bit more to the personal stories that shaped them. Both books focused more on Nehru than on Jinnah, on India more than on Pakistan, so I'm curious to find a book that focuses more on the latter, because I feel like while both books appeared to work to be impartial, I only ended up with mostly one side of the story.An interesting subplot of this book was the light with which the author clearly viewed Gandhi, which was a lot less favorable than my (admittedly very broad) impression. He didn't believe in germ theory and was (by this account) very weird about women! Interesting stuff, even if—as with all nonfiction—it only presented part of the picture.

I enjoyed the book overall but I do think that the eventual revelation that the women were lying, while maybe necessary to keep the twists coming and reveal the big twist (which was an interesting if not entirely unpredictable one), wasn't really twisty itself and is obviously problematic. I spent a lot of the book wondering if the author would reveal their politics, and while I don't think the twist is an endorsement, it builds up these women to a real extent, somewhat intelligently presents all the things people tell themselves so as not to believe the victim, while presenting them in a way that seems to indicate it's not a great thing... and then says “yep that's right they weren't a victim” and that sucked

Had some kind of fun ideas but the execution wasn't great. The writing style felt amateur; I felt the author's presence too much, both in the language used and sometimes in the concepts (the spell-shooter may be an interesting twist on paper but its description and use were ... I don't know, not compelling). The pacing and arc of the story were offputting, and the protagonist, more even than many others, was entirely along for the ride, making almost no decisions himself.

It wasn't awful, and I imagine some kids will get a kick out of this series. But I think I've been spoiled by other YA that holds up for adult reading.

It doesn't help that you find yourself forced to compare it to Harry Potter - Ben is Harry, Charlie is Ron; but no Hermione to balance out those two personalities! As the book goes, it distinguishes itself from HP, and really that contrast not a fault of the book itself, but you're going to get those comparisons when you write about an orphaned boy who discovers a secret magical world right under the noses of modern-day England. And when the comparisons come, it's no surprise which series wins.

Solid. Second half much more interesting than the first half. A lot of tangential information seemed to slow the book down at times. And I hate, hate, hate, reading, seeing, thinking about crimes of the sort that were committed in this book. So... I'm glad I'm done with it.

That said, I'm going to have to see the movie. I can probably get through the awful parts. And if so, I bet the rest will be a hell of a lot of fun. The book at least lays the groundwork for that.

Some really interesting stuff that, over and over, descends into silliness that is not just goofy in how it relates sci fi to real world tech, but extremely credulous or over-ambitious and not at all wary of the dangers of the things it's proposing. The actual, scientific, brain stuff is interesting. The “maybe we could recreate The Force from Star Wars” stuff feels amateurish and goofy.

A lot of self-promotion, not a ton of actual information. A few breakdowns of things like how to go from outline to sketch to draft (etc) were helpful to me as someone who's still trying to figure out the process. Short enough that I feel like it wasn't a waste of my time. Got a few things and can move on to the next thing. Might try to read something else from this author with a bit more in-depth discussion.

Very quick read. Kind of a strange approach to telling the story, but definitely interesting, communicative, informative. Surprisingly sympathetic (without of course condoning some terrible acts). The art is well-crafted and a also relatively unusual style in the medium – you see a lot of faux-amateur indie comics; a few photorealistic; plenty that mimic the mainstream. You don't see a ton with this sort of Wall Street Journal portrait crosshatching/stippling style. Or, at least, I don't.

I did find it interesting how the author anglicized not just names and nicknames (somewhat reasonable, though I realized I kind of expect at least some foreign words thrown into conversation between foreigners in media) but also the conversational style. I had to remind myself that these conversations were (presumably, though never explicitly stated) taking place in Serbo-Croatian. Even a few place names got anglicized: Niš became “Nish,” for example. But Dejan wasn't “Deyan.” This won't be a thing for most people, but as someone who spends a lot of time around Serbs (girlfriend and family), I actually found it kind of distracting.

There's some interesting stuff here but it's shoved between hypocritical self-aggrandizement (so much disdain for “businessmen” while simultaneously describing himself as the same thing in different words), weird takes on science (in one breath bragging for creating polyester garments; in the next ranting about the risks of nuclear power and GMOs), and company promotion. Some thoughts about what a business can do to be responsible in the modern world, some thoughts about what humankind can do to stem the tides of climate change ... these were good things. But they were delivered in weird patches and at times filled with assertions that made many assumptions I wasn't willing to make.

He has a weird relationship with science. And he says “dirtbag” a lot in a context that I'd never heard before, but I guess that's a thing.

Love Ruth Ware and her storytelling kept me in this till the end but it was disappointing overall—predictable almost from the start.

I enjoyed it but it's a little unsatisfying once it's all unfolded. basically: “oh no, they're gonna frame her—but they failed, the end”

I listened to this on audible and it ended ... very suddenly? I'm going to have to search out if I missed some ... very crucial stuff. But I don't feel like I did? I was really enjoying this, and then it just ended.

I didn't read all of Coraline (I don't own it - I picked it up at my parents' house and never finished it), but this had a lot of the same feel as the film (which I do own). I like both a lot, and the way he plays with what happens to a child's world when adults aren't on the child's side echoes government conspiracy plots in a unique and more personal way, but I do feel like there were a lot of the same sort of things going on in each book. Ursula felt a lot like the Other Mother. So while I did enjoy it, I just think I might've enjoyed it a bit more if it were a bit more its own thing.

You should definitely read it though if you haven't. It's short and it's worth spending the time on.

Enjoyed the hell out of this one, like the last. Ate it right up. That said, a few concerns:

• First, if one more person's mouth makes a line (grim or otherwise) I'm going to lose it.

• Second, Kvothe is what, 17 now? Maybe 18? By the end of the book? Two books in and like two years have passed? It's a trilogy. I'm enjoying this long adventure but I'm wondering what's going to happen to get everything into the third book. It sounds like, maybe, there will be another trilogy after this, that's ... maybe AFTER the story is told? I'm alright with that. But I'm still kind of wondering how we get there.

• And yeah, I'm still a little let down by the fact that neither book has had an arc, really. It's all leading to something, hopefully in book three (book six?), which is cool, but I'd like a sub-arc. Something to tie the book together, while the overarching narrative continues on its long, long way.

• There isn't even a release date for book 3 yet? When you've got a story like this that is really one big book in three parts, not three books, you've got to get it out there!

Honestly I tend to enjoy Brent Weeks books and this was no exception but I have to knock it down a little because of several over-the-top “men writing women” bits and some implied or explicit sexual violence that really didn't need to be there.

It takes a long time to get interesting, but I'm interested enough that I'll pick up the next. It still feels a bit devoid of character, even with some big bombs near the end that seem like they should be shocking. But there's enough in there to keep me intrigued.

I really enjoyed this. I spent a lot of the book trying to figure out where it was going, and what its political motivation is – dystopian futures rarely lack some political motivation. So far, the only messages I can tell are basic, moral, principles, not political ideologies. Which I like. I think there were hints dropped earlier on that in retrospect were intentional red herrings as far as the intent/plot of the book. I was trying to turn it into The Giver, or something along those lines, and trying to determine the moral lessons I should be learning from all of the factions, which ones were good and bad, etc, and while it shared some themes with overt allegories like The Giver and 1984, it's definitely its own thing and a lot more than it initially appears to be.

I also found the love interest plotline seemed to be a much more convincing version of Twilight's. I only read the first Twilight, because it was a garbage book, but it seems to me (as a straight man, obviously not the main target here) that this book did a much better job of a similar thing: the characters are obviously drawn to each other. There's a lot of noticing of clavicles, and tensing of muscles, etc etc, but the characters are a lot more fleshed out and even the attraction feels a lot more convincing. I enjoyed it, and I also enjoyed that (like many other YA/children's series with love stories) it wasn't all about that. It played a part, and did a good job, but it didn't detract from (or attempt to distract from) the larger plot.

I'm really looking forward to picking up the next one.



== Spoilers ==
Spoiler
The ending felt like it didn't live up to what the book had put together – it felt like I, Robot (the movie) or any number of other sci-fi plots, when the book had developed a pretty interesting world and a unique economy and political system. Not only did the whole mind control thing feel like Will Smith battling robots, but the themes were echoed in the lead Erudite doing it all seemingly in the name of logic, and a number of other things. I hate to keep using a Will Smith mis-adaptation of Asimov as an example, especially since I know I've seen this storyline before, but it's all I'm coming up with right now. I'm fine with that plot, mostly - I enjoyed the movie, too, mostly – I just felt like the book set it up for more.

Beyond that, the book seemed to fall apart a little for other reasons here: you have trouble controlling divergents, and you decide the thing to do is send one you're probably controlling to be like the only guy in charge of your quest for Chicago domination? I don't know. I still liked it, and I'm excited to see what happens next, but I do think there was a lot of smarter stuff in the book before Roth had to conclude the first story arc.

I was really looking forward to this book and I think I just ... don't get it.

I talked to my father-in-law, who is Serbian, a while back about how he enjoys reading Russian/slavic authors, even in English, because their thoughts are structured in a familiar way to him – I felt the opposite here, wondering if what was being said would click more with me if I had grown up in China. That's not a criticism, really, just an observation. Much of the book felt like it was told as an allegory that I just wasn't getting, or a fable with a moral that went over my head. The characters all seem motivated by some emotional resonance with the Three Body game that I feel expected to understand, but I definitely don't.

The surface story, beyond any attempt at finding a deeper meaning, was intriguing but ultimately underwhelming. Like I said, I feel like there's more meaning beneath it all but I don't feel particularly compelled to continue the trilogy because I suspect it would be similarly lost on me.

Intriguing premise mostly plays out like an after school special. Got it on Audible because it got good reviews and is going to be a movie. I imagine it'll be better as a movie. As a book it's ... YA I guess. I've gotten used to expecting that popular YA resonate with adults as well as kids but this feels mostly like sure, I guess a teen might get something out of it.