I can see why this has been one of the more popular online serials over the last few years. It has an appealing cast of characters, a cheerful and somI can see why this has been one of the more popular online serials over the last few years. It has an appealing cast of characters, a cheerful and sometimes moving vibe, each focal character having their own problems, plot arcs, battles to fight, and romance. There's always something new going on, but it doesn't get into plot-hydra mode and lose its way for very long.
Both of the major plot lines in this volume were entertaining in their own way, though both being focused on fighting and violence didn't leave a lot of room for life on Faram. I liked the tournament arc a lot better than the one about the (view spoiler)[vampire guy (hide spoiler)], especially since Tigu got out in the world and increased her circle of friends, including a guy who seems to be on track to be her boyfriend at some point in the future. Handsome Man. Hehe.
The history of this world continues to come to light, and . . . it isn't all that interesting or unusual. It's pretty obvious that thanks to Jin Joh's help, (view spoiler)[the world is entering another golden age much like the one in the distant past that's been lost (hide spoiler)]. As much as the story setup quite a few audio hours ago would seem to contradict it, we're in a story where our MC is the most enlightened and powerful being in the land, loved or at least respected by all except the terminally wicked, who are eventually terminated with extreme prejudice. Its also being a harem story would make it intolerable--as is, we have a perfectly harmonious and near-immediately fruitful monogamous marriage, a bit of wish fulfillment in its own right. Don't get me wrong, I like Meimei a lot, and I think she and Jin are a very nice couple, and she is a strong and interesting character in her own right.
My major ongoing gripe about this serial/series so far is its frequent digressions into points of view and situations that put both the action and interpersonal arcs aside for boring sidetracks that contribute little or nothing to the story. We really don't need to see the points of view of third-string characters like shopkeepers, sect leaders, or bureaucrats. I see the intention of creating a vibrant world where everyone has their own little troubles, but there are better ways to handle that than stopping everything short for a few paragraphs about paperwork or the minutiae of running a shop. That said, I very much like new characters Xianghua* and her brother, and think they are worthy additions to the central cast. There's also a new "Chinese Zodiac" character for Faram.
* I had to look up the spelling since this was an audiobook! :)
I listened to this one as an audiobook with my partner on various commutes, and we enjoyed it a lot (him a bit more than me) and are interested in seeing where the plot crumbs dropped in this volume will lead us in the next. Travis Baldree was an excellent narrator, giving unique voices to all the characters, and doing well with all kinds of moods, from violent, to funny, to tender....more
Fun and funny, and light all the way through, including the thoughtful parts. Aside from one scene, this didn't make me want to become a hermit, whichFun and funny, and light all the way through, including the thoughtful parts. Aside from one scene, this didn't make me want to become a hermit, which is more than I can say for similar light-SF authors Cline and Weir....more
While I was bored by my first attempt at the novel this is a prequel to, I enjoyed this one. A novella was just about the right length. It plays out mWhile I was bored by my first attempt at the novel this is a prequel to, I enjoyed this one. A novella was just about the right length. It plays out much like a creature feature, with perhaps a slower ramp-up before the bloody deaths start, and a smidgen more characterization than you get in that kind of story... but still not enough to build up a lot of sympathy for the cast before they met their inevitable fate. That was balanced well for me, and I also liked the peeks into the activities of the scientists and entertainers along the way....more
I'll find something more coherent to say about it later, maybe.
***
I still haven't come up with a decent essay-like thing for this reviThat was lovely.
I'll find something more coherent to say about it later, maybe.
***
I still haven't come up with a decent essay-like thing for this review, so here are a few loosely-organized thoughts instead:
- I'm not 100% sure what motivated me to read Anne of Green Gables. The only thing I can think of was that reading the first couple volumes of the manga A White Rose in Bloom made me want to read more stories with girl protagonists that were also written by women.
- I have a paper copy of the book, but decided instead to listen to a "free"* Audible version of the story narrated by Rachel McAdams. It ended up being a poor choice. While her performance of the dialogue was quite good, the rest was done in a half-mumbled, unenthusiastic way that was often difficult to understand. Another free version, narrated by Rachel Caruso, worked much better for me, though she also had a tendency to mumble the ends of longer sentences or descriptive passages. Maybe it's something about Montgomery's prose?
* with a $15 monthly membership fee
- The only, minor issue I have with this book is that I have doubts that Anne would be so beloved by literally everyone she meets. She has a minor feeling of being a wish fulfillment character, for that reason, but I've certainly seen more overbearing versions of that trope.
- Anne works hard for her accomplishments, which makes the type A, extroverted aspects of her character easy to stomach. She ends up (view spoiler)[sacrificing some of her ambitions in favor of her family (hide spoiler)], which made me genuinely believe love was a greater force in her life. (And made me cry in the bargain.) She makes a lot of funny mistakes along the way, too. :)
- I'm not much of an outdoorsy person, so the frequent descriptions of the outdoors missed me a bit. I wasn't inclined to find pictures of all of the many plants, trees and blossoms that were mentioned, and that I had vague-at-best ideas of what they looked like (my fault, not Montgomery's!), making some of the imagery somewhat murky in my mind's eye. Regardless of that, Anne's--and presumably, Montgomery's--love for nature in all its seasons shone through thoughout the book.
- This book was initially written serially in a religious periodical, which led to my having some preconceptions of what it might be like (I'd read it 30 years ago, but had no real recollection of it aside from one or two major events). Anne could all-too-easily have been a never-ending record of Anne's youthful scrapes, with a veneer of religious pedantry overlying it all. Of course, if that were true, this book wouldn't have been as beloved as it is, for a century and ongoing. Those preconceptions were completely overturned, to my delight.
- What a great ending. Those who know, know! It both brought on cathartic tears, and made me anxious to see where Anne's life is going next. They grow up so fast... [sniffle]......more
I had a good time with Ready Player One's video game-centered quest tale, despite its incessant barrage of 80s referencesor: The Weightlessness of War
I had a good time with Ready Player One's video game-centered quest tale, despite its incessant barrage of 80s references, and sometimes cringe-y or questionable depictions of people who aren't young straight white guys. It makes me wonder what happened between it and Armada, for both to be near-exactly the same thing, and for Armada to be so much worse. It's only been a few months since I finished RP1, so it isn't like my reading tastes would have changed all that substantially.
An alien war fleet with tech far in advance of our own approaches the Earth. Protagonist Zach Lightman, who lost his father when he was a baby, is a high-ranked player of an online video game called, incredibly enough, "Armada," whose basic setup is a few-vs.-many space battle game.
Turns out--and I hope you're sitting down--that the battles Zach and his friends have been playing out in the Armada game are actually real-life battles where they are controlling unmanned drones against the alien menace. Just like The Last Starfighter or Ender's Game, as Zach makes sure to remind us! (view spoiler)[A recent game scenario where the players attempted to destroy the aliens' home base on Europa failed, and caused a corresponding failure in the real-life war mission. (hide spoiler)] As the sixth-ranked player of Armada, Zach is recruited into the EDA, Earth Defense Alliance, along with an auditorium of other recruits from the game, to take on an official role as a defender of Earth.
The pacing of this book is very strange. At least half of it is spent setting up the story's very simple framework. Zach meets a girl at the EDA enlistment ceremony, and after a bit of unfunny banter, they're necking. He flies to the moon with some one-note, stereotypical squad mates, and after a few hours of not much happening, the moon base is attacked by the Europans. (view spoiler)[Most of Zach's squad mates are dead after having been in the story for maybe a movie's worth of time (hide spoiler)]. Then it's back to Earth for a hasty conclusion and an ending that (it hopes) leaves things open for a sequel.
Despite the solar system-encompassing scale of the alien war, I never got a sense of stakes from anything that happened. Millions on millions of people die, but since the "real" battling that Zach engages in is a mix of controlling a RC car and playing a video game, I never got the feeling that he was in any real danger at any step along the way, or that the leveling of several major cities on Earth made any difference to the story. He's preserved from experiencing even the slightest physical discomfort by the ESA shuttle having anti-inertia drives, and the moon having artificial gravity, and his dogfighting all being done from the comfort of a gaming chair.
Aside from that, much like in RP1, things are often set up so that something is in place that makes Zach succeed. [Spoiler character] tells Zach the secret of the Europans' invasion strategy that no one else believes, but that is the objective truth. "Hacking" by Zach's girlfriend Lex can do anything the plot requires it to, whenever it is needed. There's a (view spoiler)[fiberoptic network (hide spoiler)] in place that sidesteps the Europans' communication-disabling superweapon, and that must have existed for years--or even decades (as the 372 Pages guys say, massive infrastructure doesn't just pop up overnight!)--before the reader is told about it very late in the story.
At least this time the junk media of the 80s isn't the keystone for every single thing in the story like it was in RP1. Don't worry, though! You'll still get plenty of 80s references, as Zach slavishly takes on the interests of his late father (much like Wade did with the OASIS founder's journals in RP1), such as playing his dad's mix tape of 80s rock, "Raid the Arcade," as background music as he fights the Europan Glaive ships.
Do you recognize "May the Force be with you"? Have you ever heard a song by Queen? Good! There's no by-the-numbers, soulless scene in Armada that can't also be emotionally diffused, or made annoying as hell, with a reference that anyone in the United States would have been familiar with for decades, and that is always treated as either witty or an attempt at seriousness, or even reverence. Mass media performs the function of religion as Zach and Lex recite the "Fear is the mind-killer" mantra from Dune before going into battle.
The last 90 minutes or so of the audiobook is a rushed mess featuring the (view spoiler)[death of Zach's dad, who'd only been around for less than a day anyhow (hide spoiler)] (well at least Cline didn't break out another stupid Star Wars reference for that part, small favors), another RC battle or two, the revelation of the aliens' purpose, and Zach being the hero of the day in the most cliched and unconvincing way imaginable.
Pacing is bad, plotting is bad, characterization is bad, description is bad, dialogue is terrible. Everything we see here has been done better in Cline's previous book. Well, at least I finished it, thanks in part to having the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast hosts as fellow-sufferers on this tedious, weirdly-but-thankfully curtailed journey. Wil Wheaton tried his best as Armada's narrator, and he's the reason this got as many as two stars. If you feel you must try something from the "Clineverse," I'd advise you to read RP1 instead....more
I watched the "Extra History" miniseries about the South Sea bubble on Youtube years ago. Its creators made the seemingly dry notion of a financial buI watched the "Extra History" miniseries about the South Sea bubble on Youtube years ago. Its creators made the seemingly dry notion of a financial bubble into a fascinating and fun story. It was the main reason that this full book on the topic coming through on an Audible two-for-one sale caught my attention.
Money for Nothing starts with three chapters about the scientific revolution and how it gradually changed people's perceptions of numbers, specifically numerical projections and changes over time. Unfortunately, despite Dan Bittner's clear narration (I'm not usually a fan of the "newscaster" style of nonfiction audiobook narration, but it was helpful here!), I had trouble following the trail of financial instruments and manipulations that led to what eventually became the South Sea bubble, and the accompanying large "cast of characters" in the English bureaucracy and populace who were central figures in its creation and its growth. I picked up a copy of the paperback, and started over from the beginning, and had a much easier time, since I was able to absorb its unfamiliar concepts at my own pace. I also liked the various illustrations that accompanied the text.
Thomas Levenson's writing is, honestly, very clear and understandable. He never gets too far into the weeds about complex numbers or concepts. I was readily able to follow the innovations to British finance between the 1690s and 1720s, and how ebullient belief in a stock lacking a solid business foundation caused terrific problems down the line. Those problems not only include financial losses to investors, but governmental inquiries, human suffering, and suicide. The South Sea bubble wasn't necessarily irrational belief in action, or the madness of crowds. At least in part, the trading of government annuities, lotteries, and so on for a newly created Company's stock was a new way of doing things whose potential downfalls weren't clear, until they very much were.
Aside from my natural interest in a precipitous fall following a precipitous rise, the financial doings forming the core of this book are strongly leavened by human interest along the way, and I think that's why I stuck with it despite its subject matter that's pretty far outside my usual reading. As Levenson makes clear in his epilogue, its subject matter is pertinent to the present, and will be pertinent to the future, too....more
This one's more of the same, and there's quite a bit more of it than in the first volume. New characters join the cast, and many, many of the characteThis one's more of the same, and there's quite a bit more of it than in the first volume. New characters join the cast, and many, many of the characters we met in the first book are leveling up.
I've been listening to this series along with my partner on our car trips, and our count of the number of people and creatures living at Faram is in the 14-15 range. On top of that, a couple of narratives splinter off so that some of the characters can follow their own quests for a while.
This leads to some minor problems as we find that there isn't really a central narrative holding everything together. Jin Joh (I'm making my best guess as to how these are spelled) is the central pillar around which everyone else's story revolves, at times giving an impression that the other characters exist solely in service to his story. He's gotten married, and Mei Lin is pregnant. Bi Di goes on a kind of spirit quest and finds a couple new recruits for Faram. Fox Boy (I can't remember his name) learns photography and meets an ancestor. A couple of characters learn how to transform. We learn some background about the earth spirit inhabiting Faram. Monkey Boy is rejected and tries out a new look. Xiao Len learns more about spirit cultivation on the farm than she did with her sect.
Point of view is, perhaps, an issue here. "Casualfarmer" has committed to a migrating third person limited point of view. This means that there's no omniscient narrator to turn to, to provide a bird's eye view-via-exposition of the world and the various plotlines that are developing. Instead, we occasionally end up in the heads of tertiary characters who we have no real reason to be interested in, or care about, or remember when their names show up several hundreds of pages later. I don't think we needed to see the point of view of (view spoiler)[a plow that had once been a sword, not once but twice. I really got tired of hearing the word "cut" after a while. The extended sequence where Lu Jiu seeks out Jin Joh wasn't particularly compelling, either, especially since it ran in place the entire time (hide spoiler)].
Exposition isn't always bad! "Show, don't tell" can weaken a piece when treated like a mandate that can never be defied. The throughline gets a bit lost in a sea of point of view sections, and this volume as a whole feels too diffuse or unfocused. There is a major tournament plotline that was set up, but no one's even arrived there yet. Quite a difference from the first volume, which was more sharply focused both character- and plot-wise.
Don't get me wrong, this is still a charming and funny story, and there's a real sense that the author is fond of their characters and views each one with warmth and respect, and that the characters view each other that way, too, after they've hashed out their differences with each other. There's maybe a little too much emphasis on the idea that people (and animals) are happiest when they're in romantic relationships, and some of those developing hook-ups feel rather forced.
For me, a cozy story largely has to do with the core group being a refuge from a sometimes unpleasant and painful world. Jin built that for himself with his farm, but for the rest of the group I more have the impression that Faram is a comfortable place to level up. We seem to be drifting away from a cozy story with cultivation elements, to one that's the other way around. There's nothing wrong with that idea, and a number of the multiple storylines have been enjoyable to follow. But as the balance continues to tip, and the story spreads out further and further, and gets thinner and thinner, I'm becoming less enchanted....more
A cute, funny, and sometimes gruesomely violent story about a young Canadian man who reincarnates into a xianxia universe and decides the cultivator'sA cute, funny, and sometimes gruesomely violent story about a young Canadian man who reincarnates into a xianxia universe and decides the cultivator's life is not for him, since the person whose body he is now inhabiting died in a freak accident while being bullied by senior cultivators of the sect. He starts a farm out in the country, and it isn't long before some of his farm animals are exhibiting some rather unusual behavior. They're incredibly smart, one might even say... sentient?
As with a lot of these cozy fantasies, sometimes it feels like there must be violence at times to create tension and break the rather homogenous, if pleasant, mood. A cute romance, an endearing cast of characters, and occasional references to Canadian staples like hockey and maple syrup add to the fun.
I listened to this one in the car with my partner, and since I wasn't giving it my full attention in its latter half, I haven't given it a "finished" date for now. There isn't a sense of urgency to it, which, perhaps, was reflected in my attitude toward it. I didn't feel like I missed out on much, to be honest, which isn't necessarily a mark in its disfavor.
Edit after relistening to the second half: I still didn't feel like I'd missed out on much, plot-wise. :D But it was nice catching up with some of the cute scenes that I'd previously zoned out on. This one's much more about cozy vibes and humor than a typical fantasy arc... and, much like the cozy anime and manga I've dealt with, the pleasant drone can also be soporific at times. Stories like this are more affecting when the evils of the real world are hinted at, and you do see a bit of that here.
Travis Baldree's narration was quite good, though after listening to a couple of the pieces he's done (this and Legends & Lattes), I'm not fond of how he voices female characters....more
I listened to this in the car with my partner, who got it through a Kickstarter. I only half-listened to portions of it, so won't consider it a "read I listened to this in the car with my partner, who got it through a Kickstarter. I only half-listened to portions of it, so won't consider it a "read book" for my Goodreads goal, nor will I rate it.
I think it's important for average people to know about the scummy practices of the tech monopolies and the walled gardens that they try to tie us to, whether through social ties or even the physical parts in our electronic devices. None of these corporations actually respect users' privacy (personal info fuels targeted advertising and other algorithmic content, after all), or anything else regarding their well-being, unless mandated by law to do so. They will do whatever they can get away with to keep those stocks going up, with the assistance of institutions (i.e. the government) that are decades-slow at regulating them. See: AT&T.
Interoperability--whether of parts or communication--is crucial to the solution, but while some appealing alternatives to big tech are set in front of the reader (or listener), the means to attain them is left unclear. I learned a lot, don't get me wrong. It's useful as a 101 about our current gilded age, and sends a clear message that change is possible. Though it won't be easy, it won't be cheap, and it won't be fast....more
It's the 2040s. First-person narrator Wade Watt lives in a corporatized dystopia full of poverty and violence. Or rather, his meat body does. PracticaIt's the 2040s. First-person narrator Wade Watt lives in a corporatized dystopia full of poverty and violence. Or rather, his meat body does. Practically all of his waking hours--and the waking hours of hundreds of millions of people on earth--are spent online in an all-encompassing computer simulation called the OASIS. Through "haptic rigs," players can viscerally interact with their digital environments, which offer everything from PvP battles to IRL pizza delivery.
Why's everyone so obsessed with this sim? Well, five years ago, billionaire software developer and OASIS founder James Halliday died without issue, leaving behind a video inviting OASIS users to seek out "the Easter egg." The person who finds three keys in the simulation, and solves the final puzzle, will inherit Halliday's wealth, including OASIS itself.
I decided to read this book mostly because I recently joined the Patreon for the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast, and this was their inaugural selection. Looking back on these episodes from 2016, it's funny that the thumbnail image for the podcast, its opening music, and even its title, are oblique references to Ready Player One. Conor and Mike expected to give it the RiffTrax treatment and get on with their lives... and 26 books later, they're still at it, supported and encouraged by over 1000 patrons. :)
The most obvious thing you won't be able to escape for more than a paragraph or two at any point in this story, are the constant barrage of references to '80s pop culture. Halliday was obsessed with the corporatized slurry that was the mass media of the '80s*, to the point of writing a journal or autobiography listing all the TV shows, video games, and so forth that he remembered loving when he was young. This document, "Anorak's Almanac," is what Wade and the other "gunters" (short for "egg hunters," somehow?) use as a kind of guidebook for what media properties might be pertinent to their quest.
* it wasn't any worse than the corporatized slurry of today, but come on. even the rosiest of nostalgic glasses can't transform Doritos into two-star Michelin cuisine.
Obtaining every one of the three keys, unsurprisingly, involves '80s mass media in some way. Which area in OASIS each key "puzzle" is located, is more of a puzzle than the puzzles themselves. Not a single one of Halliday's challenges involves anything beyond (view spoiler)[rote memorization of a movie, or mastery of a video game. (hide spoiler)]
And Wade always has the right tools for whatever situation he is put into. (view spoiler)[He gets every single key, and opens every single gate, on the first try. (hide spoiler)] Toward the end of the book, Wade is (view spoiler)[thrown into a sort of debtor's prison (hide spoiler)] by the evil corporation IOI*, and my immediate thought was, "He's planned his way out of this beforehand." And he had. Whatever difficulties he gets into that can't be dealt with by preparing ahead of time, along comes a deus ex machina to save him.
* oh, good grief. I listened to this in audiobook so it wasn't until I typed it into this review that I noticed that IOI kind of looks like a TIE fighter X(
The central cast, including the deceased Halliday, nearly without exception (I'm not sure about Shoto), are orphaned or come from shitty enough backgrounds that they may as well be, and are living in a world that OASIS is a glossy, dopamine-infused escape from. The various places in the OASIS are depicted vividly, although a lot of the things that happen in it would make sense in the real world, but wouldn't in a game world, at least not one that had halfway-competent programmers (i.e. fully destructible environments). On the other hand, aside from the Stacks at the very beginning of the book, the real world is a mere sketch, its depiction riddled with holes. Mass poverty, and universal Amazon-level logistics, and corporate debtors' prisons, and worldwide lag-free high-speed internet connections, all exist side-by-side.
Like a lot of light entertainment, RP1's theme or lesson is stated outright at the end of the book. And I'm not sure if I believe it, at least in part because of the things I mentioned in the previous paragraph. (view spoiler)["Reality is real" (hide spoiler)], aside from making my partner and I laugh out loud in the car, isn't exactly a thunderous revelation. A = A. Wow! There's this sort of idea that the real world can be saved by someone who (view spoiler)[both has an obscene level of wealth and is unselfishly willing to share it with millions of others (hide spoiler)]. You'll excuse me if I'm skeptical of that. As Conor and Mike pointed out, when Wade (view spoiler)[is in the IOI prison, he disdains the company of his fellow prisoners, and doesn't give them a second thought after he escapes himself. And his big plans for the Easter egg fortune are to take himself and his gunter friends out into space, which inevitably reminds me of Elon Musk's dabbling in migration to Mars (hide spoiler)]. Neither of those things indicates that Wade has compassion for anyone but "me and mine."
When my partner and I discussed the book after we'd finished listening to it, we thought that the theme (view spoiler)["working together is better than going it alone, and sharing is better than keeping it all to yourself" (hide spoiler)] came across more strongly than the explicitly stated one. So there's another way to look at it, that isn't contradicted by the text.
Setting the gripes aside, which is surprisingly easy to do, this was fun to listen to. RP1 is a very trope-y story, a straightforward MacGuffin quest, with: an implacable enemy with infinite resources, huge explosions (both in OASIS and the real world), a boss battle against a big bad, a smooch at the end (c'mon, this is no spoiler if you've seen a single action movie!), a rainbow coalition of supporting characters (the 11th-hour (view spoiler)[Black lesbian (hide spoiler)] reveal was certainly something), and a walkthrough of the early portions of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Wil Wheaton's performance of the book had just the right level of youthful-sounding energy for a car listen, though it might be too shout-y for quieter environments.
So, hmm. Fun, but cringey. The last third of the book was better than the rest of it. Equivocal messaging. It isn't as bad as "372 Pages" makes it out to be, in my opinion, but that's kind of their thing. I had a good time with both the book and the podcast, and they made a few weeks of southern California traffic congestion a little more tolerable. A kind of OASIS, you might say....more
Reviewing energy seems to be low right now, so it's bullet point time. Sorry!
- Nice easy listening. The prose is very simple and easy to follow.
- WillReviewing energy seems to be low right now, so it's bullet point time. Sorry!
- Nice easy listening. The prose is very simple and easy to follow.
- Will no one think of the pretty girls and how much they suffer? ; ;
- Characterization is pretty slight. The women are given a characteristic or two, the men even less. Laverne Cox did a good job making the three female POVs* sound different from each other, but to be honest she didn't have all that much to work with. I liked her narration.
* ? - this felt more omniscient than third-person limited, with a bird's-eye view of the characters, a lot of exposition, and occasional head-hopping into another character's viewpoint.
- I was surprised at how many serious topics were dealt with, and in a straightforward way. The calculus of love vs. security, drug use and addiction, abortion, mental illness and mental health facilities (that still existed then, for better and worse). Women were unable to invest the money they'd earned themselves, back in those days. A friend could commit a friend to a mental asylum and no one blinked an eye.
- But unfortunately, whether due to the slight characterization, the omniscient PoV, or what, I wasn't connected closely enough to any of the characters for those issues to have much of an impact. (view spoiler)[One of the main characters died and all it got from me was a shrug and idly wondering if the rest of the leads would die, too. (hide spoiler)]
- It's a man's world and all a woman can hope for is to be pretty enough, for long enough, to gain security that lasts past that very fleeting window of hotness. One of the male characters calls one of the MCs "pig" and "cow" when she gets overweight, and later doesn't hesitate to hop into "the kip" with her when she slims up and comes onto him.
An interesting time capsule. At times I raise an eyebrow when women's writing is called trash and men's is called classics, but this one doesn't rise far enough above "basic best seller" for me to argue for it to get an invite to the best club in town. It was worth a look to see what stardom looked like back then, how attitudes have changed (it's a good thing that this book feels very old in some ways), how TV affected the entertainment industry, and how blasé the attitude toward drugs was (and probably is) among high-profile people like celebrities....more
This book has 40 chapters or so. I don't know whether they were taken directly from Lawson's blog posts or not, but they do have that kind of feeling This book has 40 chapters or so. I don't know whether they were taken directly from Lawson's blog posts or not, but they do have that kind of feeling to them: short, punchy, anecdotal, forgettable.
In small listens of a chapter or two, they're fine. They're funny, kind of loopy and/or weird, and sometimes enough to elicit tears, especially when she talks about her mental illness and the mutual support she's shared with the commenters on her blog. Much beyond fifteen minutes or so of the audiobook, though, and Lawson's conversational style and stunts started to wear on me. Am I really supposed to believe she started shouting about a bunch of silly, unrelated nonsense to her retirement planner, for example? If so, I hope they were paid well. She finds many opportunities to baffle, confuse or startle people, but none of her hijinks are cruel. I think she has a good handle on what lines would cause emotional harm if crossed.
The heartfelt parts wouldn't work anywhere near as well without a counterbalance of fun, so I'm not displeased that the fun parts are there. Our senses of humor are very different, though--maybe too different for me to genuinely enjoy those parts--so I ended up zoning out through a fair amount of the book.
One time through a single book of Lawson's is enough for me, I think. But, as with all humor, you might feel completely differently about that....more
Another read in the car with my partner. Maybe if I hadn't read The House in the Cerulean Sea first, I'd have appreciated this one more, but as is, thAnother read in the car with my partner. Maybe if I hadn't read The House in the Cerulean Sea first, I'd have appreciated this one more, but as is, the basic vibe (mostly cozy with a fair amount of underlying pain, an isolated setting, some cute kids (and a single spiky one)) and the storyline (a romance, formation of a found family, looming threat of the outside world) were a little too similar to it. I can still see myself turning to this one for a second listen-through if I'm in the mood for a familiar found-family tale....more
Natives was a buddy-read-by-PM with Becky, and we discussed each chapter extensively, so that means the rest of my friends will only have a very shortNatives was a buddy-read-by-PM with Becky, and we discussed each chapter extensively, so that means the rest of my friends will only have a very short review, because I am now completely tapped out on thinking about this book. :D Sorry!
Some of the material Akala presents was either 101-level, or talked about recent-to-its-time news in ways that I was very familiar with (Brexit and the election of TFG, in particular). However, a lot of it was much more new and interesting to me, especially when it came to delineating Britain's racism, and how it is both similar to, and different from, that of the U.S. A sort of autobiography of Akala was a thread running throughout the book, where he talks about various events in his life, and connects them to the concepts he was laying out.
I listened to this in audiobook, narrated by the author. I have read in another review for this book that the "black and white" edition has a bibliography, so perhaps I will track it down for further reading....more
A cozy story about Viv, an orc who decides to quit adventuring and settle down in the city to start a neighborhood business. The title should tell youA cozy story about Viv, an orc who decides to quit adventuring and settle down in the city to start a neighborhood business. The title should tell you what kind. :)
Don't think too hard about the worldbuilding--it's basically World of Warcraft, with a smidgen of the rat characters from Everquest. Here the various fantasy races all get along just fine, and while there's a hint that there's some prejudice against Tandri, Viv's employee and eventually business partner, for the most part any real conflict is on an interpersonal level. Anything that carries a whiff of the industrialized present can be chalked up to gnomish ingenuity.
This story provides the reader with a nice warm coffee shop to spend some time with a found family of pleasant, lightly-sketched characters. Some mild peril and a sweet romance add a touch of spice, no more challenging than cinnamon, on top of the frothy mix. This story's neatly put together, but there wasn't enough over and above to keep my full attention while I listened to it in audio....more
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