Good and funny and engaging but also kind of not my kind of thing
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ansate finished reading We are never meeting in real life by Samantha Irby
ansate finished reading To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
ansate finished reading Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
ansate reviewed The Found and the Lost by Ursula K. Le Guin
ansate reviewed The Found and the Lost by Ursula K. Le Guin
Heartily recommend
5 stars
I’m not quite done, but i double checked I’m on the last story and it’s so good. Most of the Earthsea stories were kind of a slog, but i loved the entire set of Hain/Werel ones, and I’ll be recommending the four generations of oregon women one forever.
ansate reviewed Trail of lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
ansate reviewed Soulstar by C. L. Polk
Not dense or heavy exactly
4 stars
But there’s a lot going on - the central relationship is not simple, the main plot revolving around the government (following nicely from the previous two books), a bit of a mystery, sympathy for characters hard done by. It was short and i read it fast, but still i needed a minute between most chapters to make room for all the feelings before diving into what next?
ansate reviewed Air Logic by Laurie J Marks
This series is good
4 stars
This is book four, as is right for an elemental series. I’m glad i got to read them after they were all published, and i just really like them. The characters are great and despite the sprawling family I almost never think there are too many of them. It feels almost fan fiction y at times, but only in the best way. Yes i want them all to care about each other and come up with happy endings. And mostly i get that.
The plot is good, but i almost don’t care because i care so much about the characters.
ansate reviewed Death's End by Cixin Liu
This was my favorite of the trilogy
4 stars
In a lot of ways, i think this book could stand alone instead of being book three. It kind of starts the timeline over in the near future instead of picking up where the other books left off. With hibernation we are able to mostly follow a single person through the book, and that makes it feel coherent in a new way. It’s about the relationship with the larger universe much more than it’s about the Trisolarans. I’m glad we read these
ansate reviewed Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Good enough that i would read more by the author
4 stars
It’s two distinct stories and only one of them is about kitchens. But they are both tender stories of survivors and how they cope with the death around them. Big ole don’t read if you don’t want to think about death.
I liked it so much!
4 stars
Four.five, thank you
It does a perfect job of being informed by a weird scifi setting, but not being just an exploration of the world. It’s about love and family and the way we’re tied to people.
But Also about really cool aliens and a world that’s hard for humans to live on.
ansate reviewed What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
It was good
4 stars
Sad, but not only sad. I felt close to the characters, and comfortable with our narrator. It’s so Artsy and New York-y that it is almost a literary parody. But the important thing is the friendships.
ansate reviewed The little stranger by Sarah Waters
Abundantly atmospheric and elegantly told, The Little Stranger is Sarah Waterss most thrilling and ambitious …
Unsatisfying ending
No rating
I found it unsatisfying enough that it is ending my streak of reading her books. I liked all the ones up to this point (publication order) and i still heartily recommend Fingersmith.
ansate reviewed The games by Ted Kosmatka
Review of 'The games' on Goodreads
4 stars
Enjoyable thriller, and mostly I didn't see where things were going. None of the science annoyed me, but it never thrilled me with new possibilities either. The last 100 pages had me gripped though. I needed to know where this was going.[return][return]Total Bechdel test fail. Two female characters, both of whom were solely there to prop up our protagonist. A lot of stuff just felt unnecessary, failed to drive the larger plot. The sports car, (spoiler) the nephew being at the games. [return][return]For me, 4 stars is "good if you like this kind of thing". and this kind of thing is weakly scifi thriller novels that you'd rather not think too hard about. The problem with writing a review is that I went and thought!