User Profile

Delia Locked account

feijoatrees@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 11 months ago

Pakeha New Zealander, trying to read more and be a bit more grounded in the real. Huge Goodreads fan but also a fediverse fan and keen to try this thing out. Grateful to the volunteers with their ethos that have established all this.

This link opens in a pop-up window

2025 Reading Goal

31% complete! Delia has read 13 of 41 books.

avatar for feijoatrees Delia boosted
Richard Powers: Bewilderment (Hardcover, 2021, W. W. Norton & Company)

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual …

Review of 'Bewilderment' on 'Goodreads'

Nope. Nope. Nope. Just, uh uh, no way. No can do.

The only reason I am giving this 2 stars and not 1 is because the book, in spite of itself, did give the reader some things to ponder. About the natural world and humans place in it. About the way we alter it even as we revere it. About who we are, nature vs nurture, the way we alter our "real" selves through drugs, therapy, etc... Does it make us "better" even though we are not truly "ourselves" any longer? Stuff like that is worth examining.

But the rest was schlock. Pure cornball. And the ending. Just nope, nope, nope.

Read it if you are a corny, sentimental type. I, myself have had a life-long adversion to corny and the obvious. I am a life-long contrarian and refuse to be lead. Oh you might get me to follow along …

avatar for feijoatrees Delia boosted

Review of 'Bewilderment' on 'Goodreads'

Edit (26 May 2022): I just learned that neurofeedback therapy is not only real, but FDA-approved. Here I was, naively thinking that this book was near-future science fiction. But no, it is pretty much now.

‘Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing.’



This was my first experience reading Richard Powers, and it was unfortunately somewhat underwhelming. The epigraph had a line from Lucretius which got me very excited, because who doesn’t love De rerum natura? But… this book is nowhere near that level; in fact, go read Lucretius instead, you’ll be better off for it. Sure, there are some clever turns of phrase, but the prose is filled with them to the point that they seem mundane, not revelatory. The characters are somewhat stocky; once you meet them, it’s not hard to understand their personalities, and they don’t experience …

Richard Powers: Bewilderment (Hardcover, 2021, W. W. Norton & Company)

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual …

I wanted to like this book, it was easy to read and had a forward, propulsive style. But the wife as saint character felt two dimensional, and the autism as savant once managed felt like a trope too. Some cool ideas and good structure, but just felt… preachy and misanthropic which is a shame.

Samantha Harvey: Orbital (Paperback, 2024, Penguin Random House)

Life on our planet as you've never seen it before

A team of astronauts in …

Beautiful and restful

Audiobook - it’s both a brilliant and potentially damning thing that this book almost instantly put me to sleep; and I’m not sure that it would have been one I would have been able to read physically. I enjoyed the detail of the astronauts day to day life and at times it read more like an autobiography or documentary than fiction. I listened to the end and don’t remember how it ended… and yet I don’t mind. This is the vibe of it I guess.

Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell: Shackleton's Way (2002, Penguin (Non-Classics))

Dated yet excellent (at least 2/3 of it)

So a book from the early 2000s is going to have some hilarious commentary on what it’s like since the baby boomers have found themselves in executive leadership, and the role of the internet in the world. It was a book in chronological chapters of Shackletons ordeal with learning points as summary and then reflection from modern leaders. It could have done without the latter - most especially glaring when comparing the last part of Shackletons journey across an island with two other men; frostbitten and starving, making the call to careen down a sheer glacier simply because there was no other way; closely followed by the CEO of Jaguar making record profits by encouraging staff to push themselves to the limits? Uh-uh - not a match!! But the bits about Shackleton himself were well written accessible and compelling, and I’m grateful for his story to be nestled in the …

Charlotte McConaghy: Once There Were Wolves (Hardcover, 2021, Flatiron Books)

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of …

Love the Cairngorms, don’t recognise them here

On one hand, loved (some of) the writing, read the book within a day- loved (some of) the themes. Passed the placenta test… but the twin trope was awful and the violence and hypocrisy about responses to violence; had too many happy endings for too many difficult topics