Books I've Rated 3 / 5
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Pretty Girls
Finished
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Harry Potter and the Cursed ChildThe Official Playscript of the Original West End Production
Finished
Note: please see my 2025 blog post re: Rowling
Original Review
I'd be curious to see this live. The medium did it no favors - the writing style is so far from Rowling's that it read more like fanfic than the "real thing."The story itself is fun and interesting. The pacing is more like a play than a novel so I’ll grant it some leeway there.
The dialogue is often quite bad and feels like it was written by someone unfamiliar with the characters he’s writing.
Happy to have gotten a little more time in the Potterverse; kind of bummed/underwhelmed in what I ended up getting. Beggars can’t be choosers I suppose.
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Stranger in a Strange Land
Finished
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Infomocracy
Finished
Kind of fun. Felt a lot like Snowcrash early on, but went much more toward politics than tech and action. The characters weren’t very fully developed and the whole thing felt kind of light. But I appreciated that so much of the world was insinuated rather than spelled out. If there were a sequel (the plot was fully realized but I could see more here), I’d probably pick it up.
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Fear ItselfThe New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
Finished
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The False Prince
Finished
Fun. I think this one was ruined a bit by listening to it rather than reading it – the reader wasn’t bad, but was very much present in my mind, meaning I couldn’t entirely lose myself in the story. It took a weird turn in the middle, not so much plot-wise but storytelling-wise. But it’s interesting enough that I may try to pick up the next at some point.
It is one more YA novel where I didn’t get a very good feel for the world – the author was too caught up in a few (pretty standard) characters and telling the general plot. I’d like to know more about the world, the way it feels, looks, operates. I think authors can get lost in worldbuilding and that’s never good, but YA novels too often forego setting the stage, establishing the setting. This is one of those novels. Maybe now that we’ve established some characters etc, she’ll build out the world a bit more in the next one?
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Outlining Your NovelMap Your Way to Success
Finished
A bunch of similar stuff from Structuring. Good food for thought. Again nothing groundbreaking but just listening to it made me look at some stuff from a different perspective.
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The 8-Minute Writing HabitCreate a Consistent Writing Habit That Works With Your Busy Lifestyle
Finished
A lot of self-promotion, not a ton of actual information. A few breakdowns of things like how to go from outline to sketch to draft (etc) were helpful to me as someone who’s still trying to figure out the process. Short enough that I feel like it wasn’t a waste of my time. Got a few things and can move on to the next thing. Might try to read something else from this author with a bit more in-depth discussion.
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A Darker Shade of Magic
Finished
Not bad. I really like the concept of the multiple Londons and how that world was built, but none of them got particularly fleshed out or realized. The characters were alright, but I didn’t feel much connection with either of the protagonists by the time the book ended. I think the narrative arc could’ve used a bit more restraint – some pauses, some time to get to know the setting and the characters. It felt like a pretty standard YA arc, where something propels the characters on some half-explained adventure, generally fraught with nondescript streets and halls full of faceless bad guys and some general sense of evil, building up with few twists until the final confrontation. The concepts that were introduced were fun and interesting but I think the author was afraid to let up for a minute, which left me at the end less invested or interested in the whole story. Not that it was particularly chaotic, it just felt like the story lacked … texture?
Part of this may just be due to the audiobook format in which I experienced it. I’d recommend you read it rather than listen to the audio, either way. The guy’s voices were … weird.
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The Big ShortInside the Doomsday Machine
Finished
I think I only understood about 30% of this book. That’s not a criticism of the book, more a caveat of my review. But it was interesting how much time was spent emphasizing how nobody could understand CODs, credit default swaps etc, and then assuming I understood it.
The overarching plot was interesting and I liked the writing style but I kept waiting for it all to click and the Big Short to be laid bare … and then it was over. I was left with the understanding that yeah, everything they’d bet on had I guess come true and that was bad and also I must be pretty dense to have made it all the way through this book without really understanding some of the key issues.
I’d probably look them up if I were on my kindle but I listened to this on Audible. I should probably go back and fill in the gaps.
Tl;dr - probably a good book that deserved a more informed audience than me.
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Why Not Me?
Finished
Pretty smart and entertaining. Not a ton to it – would’ve liked her to continue a bit more on any number of topics. A few of the essays felt like filler.
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His Majesty's Dragon
Finished
I liked Uprooted a lot better. There was nothing wrong with this book but it didn’t really grab me in any way. It was an interesting world with decent characters but just … meh? as a novel.
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The Fifth Gospel
Finished
Better than Dan Brown. A bit of a strange anticlimax though. The last third of the book was a bit of, “is this the big secret? no, is this the big secret? No… is this ? …oh, it’s over?”
That’s probably an exaggeration. But there was at least some of that confusion about what the whole thing was about, as the end approached. Anyway, it’s still better than Dan Brown. I enjoyed it. I’d probably read something else by this guy.
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Yes Please
Finished
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Snow Crash
Finished