Read
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Abandon
Finished
I’ve enjoyed Blake Crouch’s other works and so I picked this one up, and I suppose I regret it. Boring, poorly-paced—things only start to kick off like 60% or 70% of the way through the book—and not entertaining in the process. Sometimes the plot takes a while but the characters get you there; this was not one of those times. Maybe in part I just don’t enjoy the Old West as a setting, so I guess that’s on me. I’ll probably still read more of his work, but he’s become a better writer since this one, and come up with more compelling premises.
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Eulalia!
Finished
Wanted to revisit one of my favorite childhood series. Listened to an audiobook that was voiced by Jacques and “A Full Cast,” and surprisingly I think that hurt rather than helped my enjoyment. Part of it is simply that I listen to audiobooks at a higher speed, and the range of voices and accents didn’t do well in those circumstances: if I listened at 1x it was definitely too slow, but the voices were not a uniform speed, so a reasonable speed for the book was still too fast for certain characters. Jacques’s low Liverpudlian accent is lovely, but can also be hard to make out when, e.g., driving. So that’s obviously not a criticism of the book, but it did affect my enjoyment. The book overall felt a little strangely paced, without a clear rising action and climax. Few of the characteristic feasts, and actually very little time at Redwall at all. It was alright, but certainly not my favorite of the series.
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Blood of the Chosen
Finished
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Guilty by Definition
Finished
An enjoyable mystery. The puzzles were fun, and felt like I might have figured some of them out if I had been reading instead of listening; but let’s be honest, probably not. Those and the overall linguistic angle added a fun background to a somewhat standard “ghosts of the past” type mystery.
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The Knight and the Moth
Finished
This was a fun and engaging world. It kind of straddled the line between a fairy tale and a more standard fantasy, and I guess I found that a little disorienting because there are different tropes, different expectations for each. At times, it seemed like the obvious next question was not asked, or next discovery was not discovered – the latter could be chalked up to subverting expectations, but the not so much the former. I think that’s where the genre confusion came in: fairy tales often just kind of skip over the details and you have to roll with it, but this felt a bit more grounded, so those missed details stood out.
The twist at the very end was simultaneously obvious and extremely frustrating: give us a minute with our victory, come on! -
Long Bright River
Finished
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A Drop of Corruption An Ana and Din Mystery
Finished
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What Boys Learn
Finished
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Gardens of the Moon
Finished
I almost DNF’ed this book around 30%. The opening half hour of the audiobook is like a parody of fantasy written by someone who hates fantasy. A mishmash of prologues, pull-quotes, time jumps, and “Part One” / “Book One” / “Chapter One” … I feel like there were more. At 30%, I still had no idea what was happening in this book or what characters I was even following. Some fans of the series advised me that the series gets better, and that Erikson didn’t have an editor for this one (dunno if that’s true, but it jibes for sure). The novel settles and develops a narrative arc eventually. After that, it’s fine. I’ve read worse fantasy, and I’ve read much better. A number of characters, especially but not exclusively the Bridge Burners, blend together and I forgot anything unique about each of them. Now that it’s over, I have a general idea of what happened in the book, but the specifics are … vague. I would probably give the second half of this book closer to a 3, 3.25, but the first third drags it down some, so 2.5.
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Strange Houses
Finished
I have mixed feelings about this book. For one: it hooked me right away; it’s the first book I’ve read cover-to-cover in a written format in years—I’m working on a few other, longer books, but mostly I’m listening to audiobooks. And I was entertained the whole way through. So for that: four stars. But also, it’s kind of silly. For me that was actually probably a good thing; I’m not a big horror reader and I don’t like the feeling of being terrified. So the silliness reduced the initial creepiness to a tolerable level. But now that I’m done, I can’t really shake that silliness.
Within the first few chapters, Uketsu and Kurihara have apparently figured out the absurd scenario at the center of this all, with basically no mistakes. The scenario is silly and far-fetched, and there are so many other ways to read these house plans—sinister ways, even—that the fact that they supposedly got it just right is bothersome.
I’ll say this, though: if it was the author’s intent to leave people theorizing, they’ve certainly got me there. But the most satisfying theory I can come up with just feels a bit too far from any possible author’s intent, or at least any well-written plot:
that the whole thing presented by the two women was a fabrication, simply to satisfy the curiosity of these people who were investigating, by engaging the theories they had published in the newspaper; sending them in the wrong direction, and wrapping it up with a bow. In that way, they engaged these silly, paranoid delusions, and threw them off the scent of any number of much simpler criminal conspiracies. We never meet either of the children supposedly at the center of this plot, nor even their mother. They’re conveniently in hiding by the end of it all. The loose end this leaves is the neighbor, but I suppose that could just be one more person sent to shore up the story. All of this is why I have to give this book a decent rating: despite the many flaws that can be pointed out, in the end, I was engaged and it’s kept me thinking about it since.
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When We're in Charge The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership
Finished
I think this book has a lot of interesting things to say, some interesting insights about trying to be a person, and a leader, without losing your soul. A lot of it isn’t actually specific to the younger generations, except insofar as older generations were not, I guess, raised with the idea or expectation that their job, and their selves at their job, should be some kind of reflection of their own values and priorities. There are certainly parts of the book that feel a little cold, stereotypically capitalist—arguably still hanging onto an older way of doing things—but I think a lot of that is at least a valid perspective to be considered, even if I sometimes felt that I wanted to push back, and the intent behind even those sections was one of trying to survive or thrive in a the world that we all live in.
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Camp Zero
Finished
I really thought I’d like this more than I did. It was interesting, but it seemed to have a “point”… that it never really got to. Like there were undercurrents of a philosophical or ethical statement being made, and plenty of broader ideas were clear—the world is cruel to women; capitalism is a monster; the environment will change—and I generally agree, but it never added up to any more compelling thesis. Also the fixation on overpopulation was strange to read; it feels like a theme from a prior era, and dampened the anti-corporate argument. It all seemed to build toward something and then just kind of end. Which left me with just the impact of the vignettes it pieced together, which were interesting but a little disappointing as a whole.
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The Spider
Finished
It took me a little while to get into this one. I had forgotten where the last left off, and a decent way into the book it still rang very few bells. But it got going, I got back into the swing of the characters, and I enjoyed the third act. I’m really curious how the trilogy resolves, because while Carew is intent on ensuring “gray-ness” in his characters, Bellamus is hardly a villain, and if Roper’s plans are essentially
genocide -
A Stranger in the House A Novel
Finished
I was largely entertained by this book, and it generally kept me guessing, which is most of what I want out of a thriller. A good thriller has enough “a-ha, I thought so” moments without letting you guess the whole thing, and this did well enough on that front, for me. I’m deducting points for the
woman lies about abuse for personal gain -
You Shouldn't Have Come Here
Finished
This was … not good. A good 60% of the book had no plot movement, no tension except for a mild will they/won’t they. The writing was extremely corny. I enjoyed Jeneva Rose’s “Perfect” books for what they were, but this – written, I think, before those? – was not even that. I’m not entirely sure why I don’t rate this lower, but I suppose a few points for the mildly interesting “twist” that came about five minutes after anything resembling plot started taking place and ten before the end of the book. But even then,
from the beginning, it did seem pretty likely that they were actually both the bad guy – if there was even going to be a bad guy, which was not clear for most of the book. Both, or neither! But yep, both.