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I think I might finish out the year and then give up on the book reviews. They were fun. I can't keep up. It's mostly turned into a thing I feel perpetually guilty about, along with all the other things I feel perpetually guilty about. (Other things that are going, at least as an experiment - the grapes, the tomatoes, and my current accounting system.)
70. Star Wars: Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn. 4. Do you like Thrawn? Do you like Anakin whining? Have some more of that!
71. Reticence by Gail Carriger. 4.5. Bringing the Custard Protocol series to a delightful finish, we get a doctor I adored as a romantic foil for Percy.
72. Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes) by Boris Fishman. 4.5. Memoir of a Russian immigrant, structured around cooking. Remarkably charming.
73. Hinduism for Beginners by Shalu Sharma. 1.5. I don't think this contained any factual inaccuracies. That's about all I can say. Written at the level of an untalented high school sophomore, containing very little in the way of useful information, and quite a lot of completely random factoids. A list of Hindu holidays should not include completely secular Indian festivals that have nothing to do with Hindusim. (Also, if you're going to have a section of festivals for women and caption it playfully as letting the ladies get in on the fun, I'm not going to be pleased to find the only one there involves fasting for the entire day to pray for the health of my husband. That's not a festival for women. That's yet again a festival for men, in which women suffer.)
74. Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. 2. I loved this ode to fandom when I read it back in middle school. It...does not age well. The anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism especially. Don't go back and reread this one. Trust me on this.
75. Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. 5. The fluffiest, most wish-fulfillmenty of romances between the son of an alt-history US President and the Prince of Wales. Freaking hilarious.
76. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. 5. Gorgeously lush epistolary novel between two agents taunting and falling in love with each other across a never-ending time war. The language is just incredible.
77. Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. 4. Far more readable than Les Mis, but oof. Even more depressing than I'd realized.
78. Thinking in Numbers by Daniel Tammet. 3. I don't know what I was expecting here; maybe some kind of through-line? But really, it's a moderately entertaining guy rambling about literally whatever comes into his head. Each essay is ostensibly about math in some way, but a lot of them are kind of a stretch.
79. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. 5. Even more well constructed and angsty and textured than many of her other works. (Also, stands alone.) Dazzling story of linked twins bringing down reality, with a twist of time travel involved.
80. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam by Jerry Brotton. 3. Mildly interesting, but there wasn't as much topic here as he hoped there was, so we get an awful lot of textual analysis of Shakespeare to fill up the page count.
81. Circe by Madeline Miller. 5. Brilliant retelling of the legend. Linked to a bunch of others she's not traditionally linked to, but deftly. I love her portrayal of Odysseus.
82. Speaking of Bears: The Bear Crisis and a Tale of Rewilding from Yosemite, Sequoia, and Other National Parks by Rachel Mazur. 3.5. The author isn't going to win awards for poetic writing, but the story is told in a sufficiently straightforward manner and she has the sense to let it stand for itself. And it's a fascinating story.
83. The Glitch by Elisabeth Cohen. 3. Arrggh this one was so frustrating. The protagonist was one of the most fascinating and compelling ones I've read in a while, the human embodiment of the Lean In philosophy and what that looks like from the interior. And yet by the end she chooses the stupidest possible ways of handling things. And the premise is fascinating, hinting at possibilities of alternate universes or artificial intelligence or cloning or a vast shadowy conspiracy. And then the author chickens out and takes the least interesting possible ways of explaining things. The first half is freaking brilliant, and then it's like Cohen lost her nerve and just frantically wrapped things up rather than explore the unsettling possibilities she raises.
84. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. 3. I liked this better the first time I read it. I understand the importance of close reading, but Prose doesn't tell you much about how to do that. Instead of analysis, this is more like a friend gushing over all her favorite books including plot synopses but without quite explaining why she likes them so much.
85. Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro. 5. An absolute gut punch of a book, more than I was expecting. But beautiful. (I'd gotten it based on a reading of his, which I loved, without really reading the cover copy. This is a story about police brutality that needs telling. But yeah, expect to feel sick and maybe do some ugly crying.)
86. The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Younger. 5. I'd thought this was more about the boat, but it's actually about the storm itself. And it's amazing how fascinating a story Younger manages to craft, while telling us not only about the people but about history and meteorology and marine biology. Deeply compelling.
87. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. 4. While much criticism has been leveled at Vance for his bootstraps mentally (which is somewhat justified), this is mostly the story of one family and is in fact deeply revealing. And good Lord, depressing as hell. I don't know what to do about this, honestly.
88. Educated by Tara Westover. 5. The Hillbilly Elegy people, turned up to 11. Oof. Incredibly beautiful and compelling memoir of growing up in a manic depressive fundamentalist hell.
70. Star Wars: Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn. 4. Do you like Thrawn? Do you like Anakin whining? Have some more of that!
71. Reticence by Gail Carriger. 4.5. Bringing the Custard Protocol series to a delightful finish, we get a doctor I adored as a romantic foil for Percy.
72. Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes) by Boris Fishman. 4.5. Memoir of a Russian immigrant, structured around cooking. Remarkably charming.
73. Hinduism for Beginners by Shalu Sharma. 1.5. I don't think this contained any factual inaccuracies. That's about all I can say. Written at the level of an untalented high school sophomore, containing very little in the way of useful information, and quite a lot of completely random factoids. A list of Hindu holidays should not include completely secular Indian festivals that have nothing to do with Hindusim. (Also, if you're going to have a section of festivals for women and caption it playfully as letting the ladies get in on the fun, I'm not going to be pleased to find the only one there involves fasting for the entire day to pray for the health of my husband. That's not a festival for women. That's yet again a festival for men, in which women suffer.)
74. Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. 2. I loved this ode to fandom when I read it back in middle school. It...does not age well. The anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism especially. Don't go back and reread this one. Trust me on this.
75. Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. 5. The fluffiest, most wish-fulfillmenty of romances between the son of an alt-history US President and the Prince of Wales. Freaking hilarious.
76. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. 5. Gorgeously lush epistolary novel between two agents taunting and falling in love with each other across a never-ending time war. The language is just incredible.
77. Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. 4. Far more readable than Les Mis, but oof. Even more depressing than I'd realized.
78. Thinking in Numbers by Daniel Tammet. 3. I don't know what I was expecting here; maybe some kind of through-line? But really, it's a moderately entertaining guy rambling about literally whatever comes into his head. Each essay is ostensibly about math in some way, but a lot of them are kind of a stretch.
79. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. 5. Even more well constructed and angsty and textured than many of her other works. (Also, stands alone.) Dazzling story of linked twins bringing down reality, with a twist of time travel involved.
80. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam by Jerry Brotton. 3. Mildly interesting, but there wasn't as much topic here as he hoped there was, so we get an awful lot of textual analysis of Shakespeare to fill up the page count.
81. Circe by Madeline Miller. 5. Brilliant retelling of the legend. Linked to a bunch of others she's not traditionally linked to, but deftly. I love her portrayal of Odysseus.
82. Speaking of Bears: The Bear Crisis and a Tale of Rewilding from Yosemite, Sequoia, and Other National Parks by Rachel Mazur. 3.5. The author isn't going to win awards for poetic writing, but the story is told in a sufficiently straightforward manner and she has the sense to let it stand for itself. And it's a fascinating story.
83. The Glitch by Elisabeth Cohen. 3. Arrggh this one was so frustrating. The protagonist was one of the most fascinating and compelling ones I've read in a while, the human embodiment of the Lean In philosophy and what that looks like from the interior. And yet by the end she chooses the stupidest possible ways of handling things. And the premise is fascinating, hinting at possibilities of alternate universes or artificial intelligence or cloning or a vast shadowy conspiracy. And then the author chickens out and takes the least interesting possible ways of explaining things. The first half is freaking brilliant, and then it's like Cohen lost her nerve and just frantically wrapped things up rather than explore the unsettling possibilities she raises.
84. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. 3. I liked this better the first time I read it. I understand the importance of close reading, but Prose doesn't tell you much about how to do that. Instead of analysis, this is more like a friend gushing over all her favorite books including plot synopses but without quite explaining why she likes them so much.
85. Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro. 5. An absolute gut punch of a book, more than I was expecting. But beautiful. (I'd gotten it based on a reading of his, which I loved, without really reading the cover copy. This is a story about police brutality that needs telling. But yeah, expect to feel sick and maybe do some ugly crying.)
86. The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Younger. 5. I'd thought this was more about the boat, but it's actually about the storm itself. And it's amazing how fascinating a story Younger manages to craft, while telling us not only about the people but about history and meteorology and marine biology. Deeply compelling.
87. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. 4. While much criticism has been leveled at Vance for his bootstraps mentally (which is somewhat justified), this is mostly the story of one family and is in fact deeply revealing. And good Lord, depressing as hell. I don't know what to do about this, honestly.
88. Educated by Tara Westover. 5. The Hillbilly Elegy people, turned up to 11. Oof. Incredibly beautiful and compelling memoir of growing up in a manic depressive fundamentalist hell.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-19 03:16 am (UTC)From:Maybe if you happen to think of it, you could note the ones you tend to give really high marks? (or hilariously bad ones?) But that's totally not required - I'm fully in support of de-stressing about things that aren't necessary.
also, hugs, and thank you for having posted them as long as you have. :) I've always enjoyed them.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-19 03:28 am (UTC)From:I want to have done them. But I'm realizing that I have a lot more that I want to have done than I actually have time and energy to do, and maybe I need to be choosier about which long running obligations I actually enjoy.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-19 03:36 am (UTC)From:I'd just like to underline the "obligations I actually enjoy." there's definitely too much on everyone's plates to do things you aren't enjoying. So, +1 on that.
Also happy to hear (via your other post) that this year's school situation is better for both ARR and for you. :)
no subject
Date: 2019-10-20 02:26 am (UTC)From:I can always pester you for book recs in person. :)
no subject
Date: 2019-10-23 08:52 pm (UTC)From: