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Far and away the best, most enjoyable locked room murder mystery novel I've read. To be fair, I've not read a lot of them, but this one is the easy standout of the bunch. The detective rivalry aspect is really fun, characters don't get backgrounded in favor of mechanical gimmicks, there are smart observations made every other page instead of having a pile of them at the very end and Rouletabille is a delight. Easy recommendation.

This is a classic and one of LeGuin's most celebrated books for a reason. Not only is it a fantastic science fiction book with one of the most meticulously thought out cultures I've read, full of folklore and traditions and sayings and other bits of flavor that make it feel like a living breathing place, but I couldn't imagine anyone better than LeGuin to write about the process of looking past your prejudices to move from ignorance to understanding and the messy process of accepting a culture different from yours that manages to be brutal and miserable but undeniably sweet and heartfelt at the same time. I loved The Dispossessed but I suspect once the dust settles it might be The Left Hand of Darkness the one to stand at the top of her scifi output for me.

Another Becky Chambers novella, another wholesome comfy read that is over far too quickly.

I'm glad to have filled in this gap in my "household names of literature" knowledge, even if it didn't make much of an impact, maybe partially due to me already knowing the answer to the core mystery from cultural osmosis. It feels very "structured" and somewhat dry, but ultimately it's a lean read with some clever ideas. It has some iffy statements regarding the temperament of people from some or other nations, but then again I suppose only an Anglo Saxon brain could truly understand /s

Having just finished this it feels like the rawest fucking book I've read in a long time or maybe ever. Murata is a genius and her writing is as engrossing as it is shocking and disturbing and beautiful all at once. This is the work of someone who has something to say and doesn't give a single fuck about subtlety. And is also extremely gifted at telling stories.

Heed the CWs on this one, please I consider myself pretty desensitized to fictional violence and very shitty situations in general and I was having pretty visceral reactions while reading some of the sections in this one.

Le Guin doesn't pull any punches in this short novel that turns out to be a version of the environmentalist, anti-colonialist story of which there are many iterations of in media, but is also one of the better ones, with Le Guin's usual transparency of intention and thoughtfulness behind it. She doesn't hold back or confuse the message one bit. I thought the PoV being split between 3 characters and the length of the book makes them a little one-note and doesn't let them be more than what they represent (including one of the most hateable, loathsome characters I've read) but they do the job fine.

I'll never not like the way Nghi Vo writes. She has real skill for efficient, yet very lyrical and evocative writing. Having read The Chosen and the Beautiful recently, I have to say I found this one slightly more approachable, although they feel like part of a set with their "light magic realist" settings and I couldn't say why this one got its hooks in me faster. 30's Hollywood is a great setting for such a novel, and it feels like very few aspects of it go unexplored, with the magical aspects used to great effect. I really enjoyed the cast too.

Not an easy read, I had just enough background to get the gist of what it was getting at, and I agree for the most part, but still a book that isn't so concerned about being understood universally as it is speaking to and reflecting the author's non-distilled thoughts. The book description above is very accurate, although I didn't particularly think the use of "programming concepts" were particularly well deployed or resonant.

A breezy, very traditional murder mystery. I find it funny how both japanese mystery books I've read in this style reference classic murder mystery authors rather heavily. I prefer this one to the other I've read (The Decagon House) mostly because of the length and also having some characters not entirely dislikeable.