Ben

Let me tell you what, reading a book about a deadly flu virus that wipes out 99% of humanity and completely shatters society as we know it is a wonderful way to cap off nearly two years of IRL life amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Themes of resilience, survival, and creating life out of loss. I enjoyed it, maybe you will too.

Sadly, just kinda “meh.” Like it's not bad, but also not great. It just sort of is. I appreciate the representation or Armenian culture; we need more LGBTQ+ stories of non-White experiences [some would debate whether or not Armenians are truly non-White, but there's no denying they're spicy-White at the very least]. Other than that, it's just a mediocre romance story.

After watching The Mandalorian, I had a strong desire to consume more media set in the Star Wars Universe. As a lover of sci-fi, fantasy, and all things nerdy; Star Wars is always something that's been near and dear to my heart. Amongst the first video games that my young impressionable brain came to love is Knights of the Old Republic. If you haven't played it, it's a phenomenal game, and a phenomenal Star Wars story. One of the things that I love about Kotor is that it's essentially insulated from the Star Wars movies. You don't need to know or understand the events of the movies because the game is set in a totally different era. It's just a dope ass story set in the universe created by the original movies. And that's why I really like the Darth Bane books as well, they're just a set of really interesting stories that take place in this awesome world.

[3.75] The main character has excellent voice. You can feel the deep dive into insanity brought on by isolation through the words. It's high-quality characterization. That said, there's a lot of weird sex/rape talk that is just really icky to me. It also goes in a weird direction at the end that threw me off.

I read this initially a long time ago in conjunction with the Zombie Survival Guide (also by Max Brooks). I decided to give it a re-read because my friends and I are playing the new(ish) video game World War Z. The game is loosely based on the movie and the movie is in turn loosely based on the book. I'd say the game and the movie are more similar than either are to the book.

[3.75] I'm torn. This book presents some interesting ideas; some I find compelling, some I don't. Harari is definitely a skilled writer, especially for general audiences. That being said he is also no doubt inspired by Jared Diamond, and Diamond is quite the controversial figure in academia. Like Diamond, Harari is (in my opinion) taking one theory and trying to apply it far too broadly. Any living species, especially humans, are far too complicated to be explained by one big idea. It really does feel like he sat in on a colleague's intro to anthropology class and was like “I've got it!”

Really, really, REALLY cute book. It's such a nice feeling to read a book that is genuinely relatable and representative. I smiled, I laughed, I had fun reading this. Obviously, it's YA so they deal with very YA issues, but in the grand scheme these are things humans deal with throughout their life. My biggest issue is that sometimes the two main characters would blend and have the same thought process and literary voice that I'd forget who's perspective a section was supposed to be.

Somewhat difficult to get through because of some personal traumatic experiences with death. A little less than three years ago, a very good friend of mine collapsed into my arms in a sudden seizure. He “lived” for a few more days in a coma, but unfortunately never woke up. We knew he wasn't feeling well, we thought it was just his cancer therapies draining his energy. But it turns out it was a blood clot forming in his brain, forming right as we sat there and watched YouTube videos, a movie, and played video games. Even to this day, I think about the “what ifs.” What if we payed better attention? What if we suggested he go to the doctor/hospital? What if he told us more about how he was really feeling? What if, what if, what if... More in the vein of this book, what if we knew that would be the day he would fall into a coma/die? Is that what we would have done? Is there one final thing he would have wanted to do? What would have been my final goodbye to him?

These are the types of questions Adam Silvera begs us to consider in his YA fiction book “They Both Die at the End.” Spoiler Mateo and Rufus are total strangers up until they get their Deathcast alert. They find each other on the Last Friend app to live out their final hours, and ultimately fall in love. While their one-day romance isn't necessarily the most believable, it's a cute story despite the unfortunate circumstances of their fate.

There are two things I like about this book. First, Silvera builds on this last day premise by including what I'll call “disparate stories” periodically. These are chapters from characters that are not directly involved in the main Mateo/Rufus storyline but play roles in the sidelines, and further develop the world. Secondly, while this book is no doubt about death in many ways, the moment Mateo and Rufus' death occurs is quick. One moment these characters we've grown to love are there, the next they're not. That's the sad reality of death sometimes. On that grim note, fin.

“We're all prophets when we have the benefit of looking backwards.” This is a quote I heard in an audio drama podcast (called 1865) a few weeks ago, and it's just stuck with me since. It's kind of a rephrasing of the title of this book “The rainbow comes and goes.” There are bright days and there are dark days, and sometimes we just have to accept that in order to keep going.

I didn't know much about Anderson Cooper (other than he's a hot silver fox on the news) or his mother Gloria Vanderbilt before reading this. It's structure is based off of emails the two shared over the course of year in order to understand each other more. Throughout the book Anderson Cooper asks questions, Gloria Vanderbilt responds, and if necessary Cooper provides context for the response before following up or asking a new question. It's a structure that I think could get stale if I read it from cover-to-cover in a few days, but this was a book I read over an extended period of time. Whenever I needed a break from schoolwork, I'd read through a couple Q&A sections before picking my work back up.

Overall, I think the insights and experiences shared were interesting, but I do wish that Cooper and Vanderbilt would have acknowledged the extent to which their familial social capital and privilege allowed them to do what they each did with their lives. They lead abnormal lives, not everybody goes out to dinner parties with the who's who of Elite Society on the regular. Obviously, if you're reading an autobiography/memoir of two celebrities, I guess that's sort of an implicit element of the story but I would have appreciated the explicit nod to the extraordinary elements of their lives.

In popular media, time travel is often under the umbrella of science fiction. That is not so for D.O.D.O., if it weren't for witches and their magic – a center point in the fantasy genre – there would be no time travel in the world Stephenson created. It's sort of an interesting blend of scientific analysis of fantastical magic. I think that's a fairly interesting approach to the premise of time travel which has been done for well over 100 years.

That being said, the book has a number of issues. The book is initially written from the perspective of Melisande Stokes, but as D.O.D.O establishes itself the book tells the story via emails, texts and IMs, D.O.D.O PSAs, sitreps, diary entries, and more from other people. While somewhat interesting to read what these people are experiencing, this also has the unfortunate drawback of removing any sense of consistent voice that developed throughout the first third or so of the book. Additionally, it's not always clear what purpose many of these supplemental entries serves. I often found myself asking “What's happening? Why is it happening? Is this important?” Far too frequently, there was no good reason for an entry.

[4.25] This is a prequel to Cargill's sci-fi novel “Sea of Rust,” which I absolutely loved. Unlike “Sea of Rust,” which placed readers decades into a world in which the robots successfully annihilated all of humanity, “Day Zero” sets us at the start of it all. It tells the story of a nanny-bot who, unlike the vast majority of the bots in his neighborhood, doesn't want to kill the humans that were once his masters. He doesn't really want to kill any thinking thing, organic or robotic, if he doesn't have to. But he will if it means he can get his former owner's kid, Ezra, to some sort of safety.

One of my favorite lines in the book comes early on from a robot seeking his freedom in court, Isaac states to the court “Though I may have been constructed, so too were you. Me in a factory, you in a womb.” I had never before so literally thought of pregnancy like that, and it also made think about the myriad of other ways humans and our identities are constructed. Just like robots who are programmed with primary directives that create core aspects of their personality, so too are human children when they're immersed in the cultural soup of their environment.

If you've got an interest in sci-fi stories that question what it means to be human, the notion of free will, and cautions us against artificial intelligence then pick up “Day Zero;” you'll enjoy it!

It's one of those books that's not really wrong, but also not really right either? Idk...it's a good theory on gendered communication, but SUPER generalized. She has a tendency to prove her point mostly through examples rather than direct research. Anecdotes have their time and place and in my opinion she uses waaaay too many.

This is a very “literature” type book and frankly it bored me to death. I'm surprised I finished it to be honest. We don't ever quite get to know the characters, there's no compelling plotline. I can see why people might like this book from an artistic perspective, but as someone who just reads for entertainment this was a real snoozer.

I'm really conflicted on this book. On one hand there is an engaging and perpetually unfolding narrative of political intrigue. How does one Japanese Feudal Lord respond to and make use of a European? How does he gain hold of more power? How does the European adapt to an unknown culture?

Yet, on the other hand Clavell plays fast and loose with the realities of Japanese history and culture. From an anthropological perspective, he's essentializing Japanese culture to be nothing more than the dichotomy between honor and shame. There's always more to culture than one “core” element, but we never see that here. Because of that I can't call this “historical fiction.” This is more of a “non-fantastical fantasy” book if that makes any sense.

I finished this book a few months ago, and honestly I'm still thinking about. That's how good it is! Sometimes it can be straight up painful and frustrating to read because of how crazy her family is, but I couldn't put it down. I accidentally finished this book in just a few days, which I don't normally do. I came to the realization I want to go to grad school because of Tara Westover. By far my favorite book I read this year!