Reviews and Comments

I enjoy when a book can take a concept and then build a world, religion, science and laws around that concept. Being able to do a deep dive and understand how this world operates with that concept operating at its core is a fun thought experiment.

Wesley Chu did an admirable job of taking the thought experiment of time travel and the implications it would have before, and after, it was invented. There is some fun science fiction elements and warnings about the implications of our technology.

I liked this book, until it deviated away from the concept that got my attention. Once the story settled in a single location and had Little House on the Prairie vibes my enthusiasm decreased. There were still hints of what I found initially appealing but it became second to Elise and the Elfreth.

I was entertained from cover to cover but the book wasn't what I expected, and that's okay too. Instead Chu took a different concept and explored the personal and survival element further.

Tony Soprano behaving badly, that's creativity. A woman using her sexuality on her own terms? Disgusting.

Maureen Ryan has delivered a powerful book. Each chapter dove into another form of the unpleasant Hollywood underbelly and kept going.

Another brief but memorable phrase: "Vengeance is a lazy form of grief".

Ryan has such elegance to her writing and ability to go into difficult and sensitive subjects that my simple review won't do it justice.

Ryan explores the trauma and suffering of sexual assault victims, actors who were given inconsequential roles due to the color of their skin, the difficulties of being a female in a male workplace and how this infection in Hollywood can continue to fester because it "gets results".

I read this book as the WGA strike was underway and SAG-AFTRA was considering striking and seeing Ryan's prediction about the union tensions was fascinating as it unfolded in realtime.

If you destroy yourself in an effort to get accountability, what did you really get? If you do that, they win.

This was a heavy book to get through. There is no levity. Each chapter is an undertaking as no TV show, movie or professional is safe from having their skeletons examined and discussed. To Ryan's credit there is a sliver of hope offered, but it will take work by those who are reluctant to enforce it.

The Year of Sanderson has been a treat. A new Sanderson book every three months is truly spoiling us. I appreciate that not all Secret Project books are in the Cosmere, and if they are, Sanderson has the opportunity to try something outside of his typical epic fantasy.

Yumi and Nightmare Painter is my favourite Secret Project to date. I enjoyed Tress of the Emerald Sea but my familiarity with the concepts of the world allowed me to jump in without much resistance.

And mine you, this wasn't normal stacking. No simple largest-to-smallest tower. No, this was expert-level ceremonial, artistic stacking. With a vengeful air.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was a bit more concealed in everything. There is a slow reveal to the magic of the world, characters are delicately expanded, everything is a little strange and the conflict isn't immediately known. This deliberate pace allowed Sanderson to play with the relationship between Yumi and Painter and it was well executed.

"Practice," he said, "and luck". The less you have of the first, the more you need the second.

The further we get into the Cosmere the more connected the stories, histories and concepts become. It didn't seem like Yumi had significant Cosmere revelations but whenever Design spoke to Yumi and Painter I got the impression that what wasn't said was almost as significant as what was said. The amount of Cosmere characters, worlds, Shards that were referenced made me wonder if I had forgotten a detail or if I was getting new information. I will have to read a summary or two on fan sites to understand the significance of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and how it fits into the larger picture.

Things only have the value we give to them. And likewise, actions can be worth whatever we decide them to be worth.

Cosmere implications aside, this was a very enjoyable read. Like any Sanderson book the "Sanderlanche" was starting to percolate around the 80% mark and it was quite the rush to the end. I never felt the story lagged and enjoyed the two seemingly unique worlds our characters were from. I found the character frustrations relatable as they tried to sort out what was happening.

I look forward to the final Secret Project instalment and then begin the hype train for Stormlight Archive #5.

Maybe a lion purring in our lap or cavorting in our living room evokes our global mastery, our total control of nature.

Abigail Tucker did a deep dive for The Lion in the Living Room. Tucker made sure the history was thoroughly researched and ensured all topics between past and present were carefully articulated.

Cats, though, are self-contained. They don't need people to complete them. They are the most at home in perfect isolation, whether in nature or the virtual world.

Unfortunately I felt the book to be incredibly dry. I had a difficult time feeling motivated to read the book and found the chapters exhausting. The book is insightful but it felt like an onslaught of information, and sadness.

Cats are ruining ecosystems, cats are poisoning us with toxoplasmosis and cats don't need us. I identify as a cat person but after this book I feel a little ashamed for fostering destructive creatures in our household.

I'd never thought of them as sacrificial animals, but perhaps in a sense they are - the secret price of the almost spiritual pleasure that we get from our feline companions.

This is a well researched book but it's a lot. I found very little levity and the book read like a tragic accident that humanity is now unable to reverse and correct.

It's amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking.

Packing for Mars is a deep dive on the minutia of what has been considered for space travel. I feel that current technologies and processes can be taken for granted but the effort to take it from a whiteboard to space offers a challenge at every turn.

I once read an Air Force technical report that lists the desired attributes of edible paper: "Tasteless, flexible, and tenacious."

How do you test the first zero gravity toilet? How do you fit the flagpole in the moon lander on the Apollo 11 mission?

Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much normalcy can people forgo? For how long, and what does it do to them?

Packing for Mars was an easy read that allowed me to casually drop in and out of the story. Mary Roach has an inquisitive mind and I appreciated the amount of research and depth she went into for these topics.

"That's what we do for a living. We don't fly in space for a living. We have meetings, plan, prepare, train. I've been an astronaut for six years, and I've been in space for eight days."

I took a week to write this review so am a little light on comments.

He did this to me. No. It's way more fucked up than that. I did this to me.

I went in with zero knowledge of what this book was about and it blew my socks off. I was captivated by the book. I disrupted my routine for several days to read more than I typically would. This book could find itself get upgraded to five stars but for now it's a strong 4.5.

If you strip away all the trappings of personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make me me?

I like playing with the thought of experiment of what would happen if you woke up with a clone. Would you set them to tasks around the house while you enjoyed your free time? Would you duel to be the only one?

My understanding of identity has been shattered...

Multiverse has been popularized in media over the years but Blake Crouch didn't assume what the reader knows, or doesn't. Complex theories are elegantly described and get slightly more layered and nuanced as the story picks up. I didn't find the hand holding patronizing and enjoyed how the intricacies of the science was casually inserted in the story.

Even with familiarity in the multiverse I still a shocked face when all successful Jason's continued to find Chicago prime and think they were the eligible Jason to resume the life they walked out on a month ago. I was so engaged with the story I didn't consider this being a possibility and enjoyed how this ramped up the climax of the story.

I can't help thinking that we're more than the sum total of choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.

The story is rooted in science but offers plenty of "what if" questions that the reader can wonder about heavier questions like what makes us us.

The box isn't all that different from life. If you go in with fear, fear is what you'll find.

This was a fast paced, extremely engrossing story and will continue to think about it.

"And we're not lost."
We are fucking lost. Literally adrift in the space between universes.
"We're not lost."

I hate Evelyn, but I think I like her very much.

I did not expect to give this book 5 stars. I was looking for a casual read. I wanted a break from my other books. What I received was an incredibly touching, beautiful and sad love story.

I judged The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo incorrectly. Much the same way Monique peels back the layers of Evelyn's life and understands motives and heartache, so did I. This story was extremely well written and it threw several emotional curveballs I hadn't experienced in other books from Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Being wanted meant having to satisfy. At least, that was my view of it back then.

"You loved having a movie star on your arm. You loved getting to be the one who slept in my bed. That's not love. That's possession."

"I have no idea what you're talking about", he said.

"Of course you don't", I said. "Because you don't know the difference between the two."

This book explores sexuality and sex, passion and love, the obsession of celebrity culture, journalistic integrity, understanding who your genuine self is and the challenges in being able to truly be that person. Yeah, there's a lot in here and Taylor Jenkins Reid executed all of these threads wonderfully.

The quickie Vegas elopement with singer Mick Riva.

Again, insert the "Leo pointing at the TV" meme because now that I'm aware of the universe Taylor Jenkins Reid has created it's very rewarding to see characters and events casually show up in one book and be explained in another.