Reviews and Comments

Beautifully constructed and revealing back and forth on 1950s family roles, though with the limits to its depth that implies.

Facing difficulty, in meditative practice and in our relationships with ourselves and beyond. Turning towards and embracing feelings of insecurity, hopelessness, and pain as reminders of the "commitment to sanity" that groundless ego-less reality presents to us.

An unsteady book, wherever you may stumble in reading it I can at least say it was about to turn a corner to something else quirky unexpected and real, and the bulk of the story is true enough and heartfelt as far as I can recall and relate, a 2020 Covid & George Floyd indigenous bookstore memoir for Minneapolis.

LeGuin, especially in her second half (or here in her last tenth) feels so appropriately introspective, personal, grounded, succinct. Reflection and clear nearness of cessation.

While full of a sense of wonder (of other-than-human and human capacities) and social inequality (wealth and the access and control that exerts over the world and our relationships), this turned out to be a story I deeply do not care about, narratively driven by what I'll call in mild spoiler a Thiel-inflected AI.

Eagerly giving this a re-read by audiobook for the first time, which is the fullest-cast full-cast production.

A delightful heist buddy crew against the odds space marines aliens in all configurations inscrutable galactic menace histories of oppression misunderstanding and hope. Also, a bit light and scattered.

Personally revealing comic essays, uninhibited philosophical reflection and genitalia and cat butts, with a sophisticated depth of introspection on perception, action, and the complexity of the modern world.

Each element is pristine and sun-baked here, like the setting: reluctant detective on the murder case, wealthy aesthetic recluse, mundanely dystopian AI. And as spare translucent noir, I enjoyed it.

tears up anyways thoughts to come.

Compelled to return to the frontlines of madness, clawing for oblivion in the face of evils and devils, a glint of compassion and sanity from another human sharing the experience. Deftly haunting storytelling.

What a delightful sprawling madcap slice of New York. Dark and funny, an overwhelming cast and set of threads and diversions. Did any of it matter? Does it voice a rosy cozy gritty 60s or grimly stubborn mid-point between southern oppression and modern violence of drugs and poverty? As recommended to me, the audiobook is an absorbing performance.

Wasteways and waste regimes, this points to larger intersectional issues of production, consumption, and political-institutional capture - but is primarily a close comparison of waste management policy in Boston & Seattle in the 1980s and 90s, focused on ultimately narrow variations in recycling programs and citizen input, and how those are compliant or resistant to our national narrative of trash.

Atmospheric, crashing ocean surf, tangled beaten bodies at the edge of land and sea. The title collection most coherent to me, the overall sense of storm-tossed black Carribean experience more than any particular line or shape.