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Wow this was long. It took awhile to get into all the varied narratives and POV characters, I was reading this book from end of December in and out but took breaks for other books. Overall, scared the pants off me about upcoming climate challenges. By the end, I was hooked on all the narratives and invested in the characters and even wanted more book to get more complete endings for some of them.

Wow, I liked this book. Felt like the narrator captured a bunch of familiar marital patterns. Some weird tonal periods where the book went from emotionally wrenching and engaging to almost academic analysis of algorithms to show how a lonely old man got hooked on facebook hate. Overall, affecting and engaging and insightful.

This book was kind of lyrical and throughout it's hard to say one knows what is going on, but also it's kind of breezy in ways so it doesn't really matter. Some hard stuff goes down, but it always seems kind of dreamy or breezy. It's set in a south asian imaginary place, so it feels pretty foreign throughout, and also a magical realism kind of place as well. Overall, not a bad book, but pretty far out of the genres I'm used to and the kinds of stories I'm engaged in.

Just as good as the previous book. I especially love the narrator of these two audiobooks, his voice is rich and it makes the small Irish town feel homey and menacing in equal parts. I especially like the way the characters relate through love but twisted up and blocked and hard to communicate, but eventually they find a way. The pace is nice and leisurely, allowing me to really soak into the setting and the vibe, which I enjoyed a good deal.

This was largely enjoyable, although the turn from Murderbot feeling alienated from everyone to Murderbot feeling cringey about how much its humans care for it is a little less engaging. This story largely focused on Murderbot's trauma response to Network Effect - Martha Wells and its relationship with ART and the humans. Didn't really play out any of the threads about alien contamination from Network Effect, which is feeling like kind of a big tease at this point.

It's not like this was bad, it just wasn't super gripping and I kind of expected a larger story from Leckie. I think there were a lot of really interesting world-building elements here about how the aliens process time and space and the resulting ways they view humans but that stuff is sort of the backdrop for Leckie's exploration of character issues revolving around trauma and loneliness and making choices. Those dramas are interesting too but overall the book felt too small for a space book.

I kept expecting this to get more interesting or science-fictiony but it was pretty slow. Like a short story expanded to a novella and even the novella was too long. Kinda interesting discussions on the edges about what happens after robots take labor and people don't have that to trade on anymore. But that was about it.

Felt unfinished in some ways, like a lot of foreshadowing threads about the downfall of the system weren't explored, but overall an enjoyable book. It was only lightly satirical, or way dry or something. I expected it to be sillier, but it seemed almost sincere.

This book was interesting in terms of one of the narrators being an artist and being compelled to work in a weird way, but there was also a sexual tension subplot that was pretty weird and didn't seem to fit well.

This one seemed formulaic, especially compared to The Husband's Secret. It came after, which makes sense. Seemed like it was templated like the last one, but less interesting because the plot device of the memory loss and the split time story telling was kind of boring / artificial. Still, nice character depictions and understanding people's internal dramas, but ultimately, felt cookie cutter.

A comic memoir. This book seemed insane, because it was about how this guy managed when his wife ducked out and had an affair lasting years. Ultimately, I was more hooked by the wife's story and her unhappiness, she even gets a chapter in her own voice here. Pretty funny throughout as well, the writer has a lot of great one liners.

This one was pretty good. Kind of like Sally Rooney methadone while waiting for another one of hers. I liked all the characters and their drama seemed real and relatable as they loved people and got their hearts broken. Set in Ireland too which is interesting and a bit exotic.

This book was totally wacky. Narrated by a wife talking about how she's obsessed with her husband but also tests him all the time and wishes he would do more for her. But it gets more and more unhinged throughout. Maybe satirical, but also no winking if so. Translated from French so maybe that's why it's hard to say how funny it's supposed to be.

An interesting story, mainly due to the meta-fictional elements. Lots of fantasy remixes here with deliberate winking by an unusual narrator. Overall, though, the stakes of the story never really grabbed me.