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ratfactor

ratfactor@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 10 months ago

Reader of books, programmer of computers, raiser of children, drawer of art. My website: ratfactor.com/ Also on Mastodon: mastodon.art/@ratfactor (where I mostly post art!) The avatar is a watercolor painting (from my sketchbook) of Tux, the Linux penguin with a pipe and disheveled feathers on the head (Slackware Linux style) in a Roman-style robe and computing on a laptop atop a Roman column. He is leaning on a marble block that has a martini glass. You can't tell, but the martini glass just contains fish-flavored water.

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Heidi (Kingfisher Classics) (Hardcover, 2002, Kingfisher) 4 stars

The famous Swiss classic about Heidi, a five-year-old orphan girl who goes to live with …

Review of 'Heidi (Kingfisher Classics)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

We're working our meandering way through the great western cannon of children's literature. Heidi is an interesting story. It's surprisingly repetitious, but that's part of the charm, I think. You really get into the cadence of life on the mountain. I like a feel-good story that gives me that vicarious thrill as our main character helps people and this has that, but not always in ways I expected. There was a religious aspect I wasn't expecting and I braced myself at one point because it looked like it was about to get real heavy-handed, but it didn't. Most of the characters were quite interesting and acted on motivations that were consistent but not always obvious (sometimes leaving us to guess what they were thinking, sometimes not). The humor was spare but much appreciated.

This is no Anne of Green Gables, but I liked it well enough and so did my …

Widow (2022, Amazon Publishing) 4 stars

Review of 'Widow' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Extremely entertaining! Tons of dark humor and a plot that could have gone anywhere at any time. I really enjoyed reading this and the pages just flew by. This sort of dynastic thriller (particularly political) are not my usual sort of thing and I have a feeling this book might be unusual even those circles. The use of narrators was great. The situations were crazy. I'm wavering between four and five stars because I couldn't have asked for more entertainment. It's nutty fun!

Seveneves (Paperback, 2016, The Borough Press) 4 stars

When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish …

Review of 'Seveneves' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

All of the positive raving for this book is true! All of the criticisms are also true! Stephenson is his own thing and he breaks all the rules of fiction. He breaks them in a couple different ways in this book. When it's great it's REALLY GREAT. When it's not so great, it kinda sucks. At different moments, I wanted to give this five stars. It's a hell of a book and I absolutely recommend it to any "hard" SF fans. Know that the exposition can really be a brick wall in the storytelling and it's not artfully done at all. But Stephenson has certainly earned himself a place on the hard-core SF shelf with this one (if he hadn't already).