Enno Rehling

Unusual story, interesting universe. If I had spent more time in New York at some point in my life, I probably would have gotten more out of it, so I'm hoping that maybe one of the sequels takes place somewhere I've actually lived.

This would sound like blasphemy to my younger self, but I really don't think the early Tintin books are all that good. The story is very haphazard, the characters are one-dimensional, and it would all be very predictable if half of the time, the solution to any problem wouldn't be “Tintin has a very lucky escape”.

If my memory isn't completely off, the books get good once Captain Haddock is introduced, and the stories have a proper arc (Le secret de la Licorne was my favorite book as a child). These 30's travel books (Congo, America) simply don't live up to modern standards.

I played the game back when it was an indie darling, and liked it well enough, but was surprised to find that there was a comic sequel, and our library had he first three collections on a shelf. Having read the first of them now, I'm not quite sure what to make of it, and not exactly chomping at the bit to read the next ones, though since I have them here, I probably will, and maybe they'll make this first act be more meaningful in retrospect.

This was lucky find. It's a really sweet little book, and what appears to be a pretty decent translation.

As I'm reading more books set in this world, I feel they are delivering diminishing returns. New characters and locations get introduced, and there's a new steampunk contraption or other, but overall, it felt very much like the same thing. It didn't help that I found the “Movie in your mind” production of these Graphic Audio CD to be more than a little distracting. It was more radio play than audio book, with a big cast of voices and constant sound effects.

As someone who has spent most of his life immersed in other cultures, speaking and thinking in a language that I love but that's not my own, Mahid's sens of not-belonging resonated well with me. She and all the other major characters were well realized, and had complex interior lives that made this book very enjoyable.

If I am not mistaken, “They should have sent a poet” is a quote from Contact, which is very fitting because this book deals with a very unusual first contact scenario, so much of Teixcalaan culture revolves around poetry, and because Martine writes beautifully.

The spin on the alien hive-mind is what elevates this book to five stars for me, the parallels to Lsel's imago technology and the empire's Sunlit and Shard pilots were wonderfully drawn.

A worthy successor to what was a spectacular first book in this series.

Dark and frightening. A deeply unsettling story. What happens to the social outcasts we went to school with? They don't all end up like Dahmer, thankfully, but it does make me wonder about some of the kids I went to school with.

On my re-read of this turbo-capitalist dystopia, I no longer find it as poignant as I did the first time around. It's still a great book with an interesting world, in which government has to compete in the marketplace of rampant consumerism, but I wish there was more exploration into the history of this world, and how it ended up this way.

“Thoreau was an amateur” says Christopher Knight, who lived alone in the forests of Maine for 27 years, and I must agree. To remove yourself so thoroughly from society is a strange achievement, and it's more real for all that the world that Knight shunned is so much more like my own than that of Walden. Very well researched and thoughtful book about a true stoic.

For those of us that have devoured all the novels and novellas, this book has some bite-sized encounters with our favorite characters and even some who atarted out as bit players in the main story. It's good to see some more of the magical world of Peter Grant & co.

Peter is so much more clever and funny than his German counterpart, and I always love his wit and the references to nerd culture. Plenty of that in this book, which sees him investigating in the world of high tech. Wonderful, plenty of character development, and more hints to Nightingale's past during WW2.

Favorite story: The President's Brain is Missing.

While it's set in the same universe as the Peter Grant stories, this book has a completely different cast of characters. Tobias Winter is not exactly a German version of Peter, he's much too serious for that. I missed Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narration from the start, and it took me a while to get used to the voice of Peter. Good job affecting a German accent, even if it sounds grating to my ears. I wonder how those reader feel who don't understand the many German word that get thrown in at every opportunity.

This reminded me of my own time backpacking, which must have been just a year or two before the events of this book (The Grateful Dead were still touring). Lovely combination of autobiography and travel book, made me feel things, and tear up a few times.

A strange book, once again very different from any of her previous ones I've read. As always, it was beautifully written, but at first decidedly harder for me to get into than Lent (which I adored). Walton clearly loves Florence and the Renaissance, and has me curious about both of them.

Murderbot and ART together are so much fun, can't wait to see how their “relationship” develops from here.

A captivating look into the United States' late nineteenth century, the Chicago Fair and its influence on the future of architecture, spiced with the history of America's first mass-murderer. I couldn't stop listening, and let a lot of other books languish to get to the end of this one.

This was lovely. Quiet British. Great characters to fall in love with, and a whodunnit with many twists and turns.

Absolutely astonishing for a book from this period. It's a little bit of Walden, a little bit of Trek's basic humanity, and a lot of ideas modern Sci-Fi is still working with.

I'm with Spip on this. Why are the bad guys always so incompetent? They're not terrifying at all, and by comparison, thwarting their plans isn't very inpressive.

I was excited to start on another of McGuire's fantasy series after finishing Wayward Children. This book was good, can't-stop-reading material, but I wonder how there's possibly going to be a sequel, it seems so self-contained and finished.

There are some of Sedaris' trademark short stories in here about his childhood and family that I really enjoyed, but then there are a couple other stories that fell flat for me, usually when he talks about more recent events. Have funny things just stopped happening to him?

I had previously read Jennifer Government, and rated it highly, so I figured I'd give this book a shot. It's nothing like Jennifer, but a very compelling read. The basic conceit is clever, the characters are well-written, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat to the very end, with many twist, turns, and fake-outs. The non-chronological story telling can be a bit disorienting, probably especially so in the audiobook.

Breaking the no quests rule was absolutely the right thing to do. I think In an Absent Dream is still my favorite of the books, but this one comes close.

I got this book after reading Packing for Mars, in the hope that based on the title, it would be more space-based humor. It turned out to be a number of short, humorous columns about lots of things, and while they were funny, they eventually began to blend into each other and feel same-y. The narrator's voice was breathless, and did not contribute to my enjoyment, so overall, while I finished it, I won't be recommending this book.