I was originally hesitant to read this book because it's review scores were substantially lower than Station Eleven, but I am so glad that I did. Emily St. John Mandel is a British Columbian treasure and New York is lucky to have her.
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Pronouns: he/him Reading is my escape. Books are my love language.
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36% complete! Rainer has read 11 of 30 books.
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Rainer finished reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Rainer reviewed The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Sad, Poignant, Beautiful
5 stars
This book is so beautiful, so insightful, and so sad. This story is a deep-dive into the different worlds that we can often fall into. It's an examination of wealth, poverty, addiction, guilt/shame, stealing to get by, making art for art's sake, making art for ambition's sake, greed, dread, and so many more things.
As someone whose family was significantly impacted by the 2008 financial crisis (and let's be honest, whose wasn't), I found that entering back into the world of watching white collar criminals squirm was like a warm blanket. There are a few scenes in the book where various financial criminals are overtaken by waves of dread and it felt like such a balm to my soul to experience their suffering as a reader and then to remove myself back into the cozy world of my own little reading nook.
The Glass Hotel is not a feel-good book, …
This book is so beautiful, so insightful, and so sad. This story is a deep-dive into the different worlds that we can often fall into. It's an examination of wealth, poverty, addiction, guilt/shame, stealing to get by, making art for art's sake, making art for ambition's sake, greed, dread, and so many more things.
As someone whose family was significantly impacted by the 2008 financial crisis (and let's be honest, whose wasn't), I found that entering back into the world of watching white collar criminals squirm was like a warm blanket. There are a few scenes in the book where various financial criminals are overtaken by waves of dread and it felt like such a balm to my soul to experience their suffering as a reader and then to remove myself back into the cozy world of my own little reading nook.
The Glass Hotel is not a feel-good book, but it's a damn good one.
Rainer wants to read The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
A rich, magical new book on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker shortlisted author …
Rainer reviewed Someone in Time by Zen Cho
A Heartwarming Collection of Intriguing Stories
4 stars
This book was at times a delight, and at other times a slight burden. I really enjoyed all of the stories that were included in this book, and there are so many talented authors who contributed to this wonderful collection.
The stories made me cherish the relationships in my life. It's really a celebration of love in all its many forms. While some stories focused on romantic love, others focused more on the love that exists between family members.
The one thing that made this book feel like something of a burden at times is that each new story brings with it a large amount of world-building. Stories about time travel have a lot of context to establish in order to make the plot points seem believable. In a larger single-narrative story, much of this work would be done at the outset and then the reader could enjoy the development …
This book was at times a delight, and at other times a slight burden. I really enjoyed all of the stories that were included in this book, and there are so many talented authors who contributed to this wonderful collection.
The stories made me cherish the relationships in my life. It's really a celebration of love in all its many forms. While some stories focused on romantic love, others focused more on the love that exists between family members.
The one thing that made this book feel like something of a burden at times is that each new story brings with it a large amount of world-building. Stories about time travel have a lot of context to establish in order to make the plot points seem believable. In a larger single-narrative story, much of this work would be done at the outset and then the reader could enjoy the development of the characters/plot inside of that world. In this collection, each new story brings with it the demand of building a new mental framework for understanding the story. Some of the stories are very dense with this kind of "just keep reading and eventually it will make sense and you will love it" kind of stuff, and on its own there's nothing wrong with that. But that's the reason why I'm putting this at a 4/5 instead of a 5/5.
All in all, I highly recommend reading this collection (at your own pace).
Rainer wants to read Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an …
Rainer started reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
@charli-gremlin this is kind of how I felt about this book. Really glad I read it because of the really cool and insightful visions of the future, but also not something I would recommend highly to someone.
Rainer rated We Are Bellingcat: 5 stars
Rainer finished reading We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins
Rainer finished reading Someone in Time by Zen Cho

Someone in Time by Zen Cho, Jeffrey Ford, Nina Allan, and 2 others
Anthology of inclusive tales of people through time looking for one another and for ways for the world to be …