Ben Saufley - Reading

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The House of Silk

by Anthony Horowitz

Finished 2018-04-01
Need to Know

by Karen Cleveland

Finished 2018-03-25

This analyst is very bad at her job.
The Star-Touched Queen

by Roshani Chokshi

Finished 2018-03-20

An interesting book. Definitely a distinct world among much of the YA fantasy I’ve read, and I appreciated that. I could’ve done with a bit more character development, and at times a bit more description of where we were, what was … actually happening. The prose got pretty flowery in places—sometimes, it worked, but sometimes it took me out of it. A lot of kind of extravagant descriptions that failed to actually give me a visual picture of a person, place, or thing.

I liked it, but I didn’t really finish the book feeling like I wanted to return to the world and characters, because I’d only just started getting to know them when it wrapped up.
The Fold

by Peter Clines

Finished 2018-03-15
The Woman in the Window

by A.J. Finn

Finished 2018-03-13
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

by Ken Liu

Finished 2018-03-08
Annihilation

by Jeff VanderMeer

Finished 2018-02-27

There’s something very Lovecraftian about the style of description of the foreign organisms, the idea that there are concepts that English has no word for, which I appreciated for a while until it was clear that I was really going to be left with no greater understanding of what the protagonist was trying to describe. The premise was intriguing, but by the end of the book nothing really seemed to have been revealed. I ended the book with almost exactly as much information as I had one third of the way in. And the style was simultaneously too robotic and too flowery? Like, robotically poetic. I dunno. I’d be curious to know more about what’s going on here, but probably not enough to read two more books—I might just look on Wikipedia. And I’ll probably check out the movie.

I contemplated giving this two stars, but I feel like I want to give it an extra star for effort, even if I didn’t really like the result. I liked what VanderMeer was going for, but I felt like it didn’t land, for me, in the end.
The Blood Debt

by Duncan M. Hamilton

Finished 2018-02-22
Jorundyr's Path

by Duncan M. Hamilton

Finished 2018-02-19
The Wolf of the North

by Duncan M. Hamilton

Finished 2018-02-11
Every Heart a Doorway

by Seanan McGuire

Finished 2018-02-06
The Hate U Give

by Angie Thomas

Finished 2018-02-06
Algorithms to Live ByThe Computer Science of Human Decisions

by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Finished 2018-01-22
Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

Finished 2018-01-11

I bought this immediately when I read that Neal Stephenson said, “Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the Internet.”

That may have jacked up my expectations too high.

It felt a lot like a lot of other books I’ve read in the genre. The contemplations of autonomy were really pretty interesting but far from the focus of the book, which was entertaining enough and had pretty standard implications regarding capitalism and tech, but didn’t really hold much emotional weight or any particularly new and compelling information. I’d have liked more examination of any one single theme the book had.
The Paper Magician

by Charlie N. Holmberg

Finished 2017-12-20

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#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The House of Silk

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } Need to Know

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Star-Touched Queen

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Fold

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Woman in the Window

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } Annihilation

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Blood Debt

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } Jorundyr's Path

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Wolf of the North

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } Every Heart a Doorway

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Hate U Give

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } Algorithms to Live ByThe Computer Science of Human Decisions

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } Autonomous

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Paper Magician

The House of Silk

Need to Know

The Star-Touched Queen

The Fold

The Woman in the Window

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Annihilation

The Blood Debt

Jorundyr's Path

The Wolf of the North

Every Heart a Doorway

The Hate U Give

Algorithms to Live ByThe Computer Science of Human Decisions

Autonomous

The Paper Magician