Colin Gooding

I made it just over 50% of the way through this book before deciding to move on from it.

I started reading this with the intention of gaining a vocabulary to talk about why diverse and equal opportunity hiring and promotion practices are important in my workplace, but so far the book has been focused on a more macro level about the recent history and rising tensions around inequality in the US and UK, the death of the American dream, and how generational wealth and privilege undermines the idea of a true meritocracy.

All of those ideas are interesting, but I haven't really learned any new insights here if you have been following the news. There's lots of recounting of Trump's presidential run, Brexit, the college admission scandals, etc.

Perhaps it gets more into analysis later, but I have too many other books in my backlog to bother sucking with it to find out.

MINOR SPOILERS for the premise:

This was a fun twist on a sort of Groundhog Day premise: whenever the protagonist goes to sleep, she wakes up on another day further into the past. It's also a pulpy murder mystery, where we have seen the murder and now have to discover the events leading up to it as they happen, but in reverse. A neat idea!

I was really along for the ride the entire time, as the protagonist isn't stupid and tries interesting ways to deal with her situation, and the writing clips along at a good place. There are fun reveals and I kept adjusting my theories and looking for clues.

Unfortunately, I wasn't super satisfied by the ending, and a lot of the enjoyment of the book is in trying to piece together what happened, so it makes the whole thing a bit less interesting in retrospect. There are still elements of the ending I enjoyed, but the central mystery was a bit meh.

Still, I had a great time with this and it was a fun, quick read.

If you like Bob Odenkirk, you will probably like this. If you do not like Bob Odenkirk, you will probably not like this.

This is a pretty standard autobiography from a working actor with nothing too revelatory in it, but it was fun to listen to Odenkirk talk in my ear for a half dozen hours and here a few behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

I've been making an active effort this year to read books that are actually released in 2023. I found a few "most anticipated" lists and this was on most of them. I haven't read any other books by Kuang, but I have heard good things about them and they are on my to-read pile, plus this book has a great cover and provoking title. I put this on hold at the library a couple months ago and I was able to check out the audiobook on the actual day of release.

The premise is great: a successful Asian-American author dies unexpectedly, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript which is then claimed by a white friend as her own. Unfortunately, it doesn't explore it's titular issue as deeply as I think it could have. It is more just used as a passing point of tension, among other things.

This was well written, but a lot pulpier than I was expecting. The climax in particular I thought was cheesy and unsatisfying. However, the book does move at a brisk pace though and it was easy to keep turning pages.

The story is told from a first person perspective and the protagonist is extremely unlikable and makes unethical decisions constantly. She is not stupid nor ignorant, so she has at least some semblance of logic to justify her actions. She is entitlement personified. She thinks of herself as liberal, but she's more of a center-right "both sides have good points" sort of person. This can be an interesting perspective to tell a story from, but also makes it hard to latch onto as a reader at times.

I think there are a lot of really great ideas just below the surface here that didn't quite reveal themselves as fully as I was hoping. I'm curious to check out more of Kuang's work now though.

This was an interesting read after having enjoyed the movie. There are meaningful differences and it's dense enough that it didn't feel like I was just playing the movie through in my head again.

There are a lot of sort of philosophical and religious debates topics here that aren't strikingly original, but are still interesting to explore (if you truly believed in eternal salvation, why would you ever stop trying to save those you care about?). There's a large cast of characters with different viewpoints and experiences, and there is plenty of the titular talk to that kept me engrossed.

I did find it a bit strange that even with this title, the entire thing is from the point of view of a make narrator, but it does make sense in the context of the story, and I found the final monologue to be very moving.

Definitely recommend this whether you've seen the movie or not.

I think the moment where I decided to stop reading is when Harry gives a speech about how muggles and purebloods (and eventually extra terrestrial beings) will one day only be judged by their minds and "not their color or their shape or the stuff they're made of" that literally starts with "I have a dream". It was too much.

That was the tipping point for me for a series that has some interesting and fun ideas, but is often more on the side of "I'm 14 And This Is Deep" for me. I also think I had maybe some unfair expectations of this being an alternate dimension sort of premise that stems from the singular fact of Harry's upbringing being different, whereas it is more broadly different across a lot of characters, which feels a bit random often and doesn't really work for me most of the time? I don't know a lot of deep Harry Potter lore either, so I think there are a good number of references here as well that are lost on me.

Glad I gave this a shot, but it's not for me. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

I don't even remember why I added this to my holds list at the library. I think it must have been on some end of year lists I looked at last year.

I enjoyed Ghost Music, especially the sort of eerie tone and how it is always on the edge of being surreal, but I did also find it a bit aimless and I was never quite as swept up into the world as I wanted to be.

When I'm anticipating a movie or tv show coming out that's based on a book, I'll often try to read it first as I find seeing the story I've just read visualized is an interesting experience.

In this case, I had watched and really enjoyed the first season of the show before I started reading, which covers this book in is entirety, and is pretty darn faithful to it.

So while listening to this audiobook, I found myself in a weird position of generally just picturing the scenes from the show more than actually engaging with the writing, I think? It's hard to say how much I got out of the book itself.

Still, I'm a sucker for this type of story and the characters and quippy dialogue is a lot of fun. I'll definitely be watching more of the show and I'll try to figure out if/when to read the books.

I listened to the 1977 BBC Radio performance of this play as an audiobook from the library.

Wilde is just so charmingly witty and it's fun to follow the rapid-fire dialogue in this. It was a good time, but I was never completely enamored by it. I think it would be a blast to see performed live with an audience though, so I'll have to seek that out sometime.

This is a really insightful and well written account of a heartbreaking relationship. With the title of this book (which is a great title), I was expecting the entire thing to be just a scathing indictment of her mother, but its a lot more complicated than that.

The book is written in such a way that her mother's pattern of abuse and manipulation is obvious, but from Jennette McCurdy's perspective at the time when believing in her mother and making her happy was important to her (and still is to this day, to some extent). This was really revealing and deeply affected me, as McCurdy walks through key moments in her life and I had to try to understand how her mother could possibly behave in the way that she does and sympathize with McCurdy's inability to do anything about it.

I'm not necessarily a big memoir reader, but sometimes when I read them they are a bit scattershot, covering a lot of different areas of a person's life with varying degrees of interest. This book is a lot more laser focused on its thesis as described by its title, and I find that to be a lot more engaging.

I finished this just before this year's Oscars started, haha.

I am a huge movie nerd and I try to watch the Oscars every year. In fact, I've been making a point to watch all of the films nominated for Best Picture before the awards are given out for the last few years too.

And so, I really enjoyed this book! I would say the first half to two-thirds of the book are more just about Hollywood in general with a loose thread of the Academy Awards to tie things together and the rest is more solidly about the Oscars, but all of it is interesting and well written. I'm not sure that there's anything shockingly new revealed here, but the detail and breadth of the stories are a lot of fun.

I appreciate that this was informative and concise, but I found it to be a bit too dry and not particularly revelatory or anything. It's not bad, just not worth recommending.

I listened to this as an audiobook from the library and it had an interview with the author at the end, which is always a nice touch.

When I was a teenager, the Wheel of Time was one of those series of books that really helped deepen my love of reading. I devoured the first six or eight books in a summer or two I think, but then I fell off of it and never completed the series. I've always wanted to try to get back into it, but it's a pretty daunting task with the length of it all. I initially considered trying to figure out where I left off and jump back in there, but my memories of it are so vague that I decided the best thing to do would be to start over and listen to the audiobooks.

It was really fun to revisit this. The world and ideas in this story just get to me. It's strange having a hazy recollection of things that come later, because it feels like so much less is revealed in this first book than I expected, but there's still so many hints of things to come.

At first I thought it was a lot faster paced than I was worried it would be, but I was definitely feeling the length of the book in the later half of it, even though a lot of interesting things still happens. I feel like there's an amazing 600 page book in here instead of a really good 800 page one.

I'm looking forward to making my way through this whole series, but I plan on taking my time with it and listening to it alongside other reading. I'm glad it has held up for me though!

I feel like I would have loved this if I read it when I was in high school.

Unfortunately, I no longer am, and I thought it was just fine. It's not really fair to this book that I have already read Brave New World and 1984, both of which came out after and were likely inspired by We, but many of the same ideas here so not have the same impact on me reading them now.

Still, the gaslighting dystopian regime here is interesting to explore and it is pretty short and fast paced.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by the actor Toby Jones, which I think enhanced the experience greatly.

I liked this the least of the trilogy. It felt less cohesive than the others and I was just less invested in what was happening.

There is an interesting cloud of dread and nihilism over the whole thing, and like the other books it is still full of a bunch of wild little ideas and scenes.

This is a fascinatingly unique trilogy though that will stick with me for awhile!

This is a really fascinating series and I can understand why it's so revered. There are a ton of big and intricate ideas that I will continue to think about for a long while. I love how the ever-approaching threat coupled with their near-omnipotent power creates this environment of non-sensical yet logical strategies of the "wallfacers" and the sort of murder-mystery parlor scene "wallbreaker" moments, somehow the tone works in a tantalizing and almost silly way, while still causing some existential dread.

I even just loved the conceptualization of small things like temporal "countrymen".

There are only a few things that prevent me from giving this a full-hearted recommendation. At times it gets bogged down in some details or logical explanatory tangents that just feel unimportant to me and go on for awhile, distracting from the main thrust of the story. I also just think that most of the characters are fairly personality-less, there are some simple archetypes here and there, but I didn't find any of them uniquely compelling aside from their function in the plot. This could be by design with the nature of the story, or perhaps its an issue with the translation here, but either way I didn't feel as fully invested in some moments that I think I could have otherwise been.

Still, a great book that I think I enjoyed a bit more than the first! I'll probably try to finish of the trilogy pretty soon here.

Marked as Did Not Finish

I picked three short stories by HP Lovecraft to read in book club this week, so I took those ebook out from the library thinking I would start with at least those stories and read maybe more.

I made it through The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Call of Cthulhu, and I started The Dunwich Horror, but early into that one I gave up.

I feel similar about reading this as I do with something like Tolkien. I respect the influence of the work and I think the broad stories/worlds and some specific moments are great, but I just can't get into the writing.

This is all aside from Lovecraft himself being a garbage person that certainly comes through in at least the casual racism throughout these stories, though I actually found it interesting to think about whether certain tropes that are prevalent throughout horror (fear of the other/the unknown being the big one) is inherently racist, or if just combining that with this writer makes it feel worse (though there often is clear racist terminology used in the writing, though not always directed at the monsters).

Anyways, glad I tried this out even if it's not for me.

I always loved these books when I was a kid. I was excited to show them to my daughter, Dot, because they definitely influenced my sense of humour growing up, and reading them again all these years later I still find them hilarious!

Its brand of silliness is just perfect to me. The principal reminds the kids that in order to make traffic flow smoothly on the stairs of the school, those traveling up the stairs should stay to their right, while those going down should stay to the left. Brilliant.

This is a collection of four books that were released between 1978 and 2020. I'm pretty sure I had only read the first two before, and the last two were still great as well! In fact, Dot tells me the fourth one was the best of them all. I'm going to go with the first, as the nostalgia is just too strong for me.

I decided to read this because Brahm mentioned in his review that this was more breadth over depth, which was something that was opposite to his preference. I, however, don't read a ton of non-fiction and when I do I prefer a wide range of topics around a theme, such as Freakonomics or a Malcolm Gladwell book, so I grabbed the audiobook from the library.

This was a fun, easy read even if it wasn't super enlightening or anything. Each section on different parts/functions of body is generally basic enough that a high school biology class likely covered it, but almost every one of these sections also includes a fun anecdote about an early pioneering doctor or researcher that made discoveries in that area.

Things that did surprise me were the things that we still don't have answers for. Did you know that we don't have a good scientific explanation for why we sleep still? I assumed there was a specific regenerative process or something that I just forgot the details about when I wasn't paying attention in a class, but nope, we just need sleep for... some reason.

Glad I listened to this though! Was a great book to drive to and do chores to.

After I finished reading and loving Kevin Wilson's latest book Nothing To See Here, I started looking through his previous work and immediately marked this to read next after seeing the first line in its description: “‘Wildfire Johnny' is the story of a man who discovers a magic razor that allows him to travel back in time.”

The way Wilson writes just pulls me right in and I'm not sure why. His characters are fairly archetypical, but he brings them to life with a certain nuance and believability that I just enjoy spending time with them.

I liked all of these stories and I think each of them had something interesting to say, but a lot of them felt a little slight or unfinished by the end. None of them hit me as a great, complete story. But I'm not sure that they were supposed to, they are all thin slices of a theme, and sometimes that's okay.

The majority of the reason I enjoyed this book is in the prose. There is a really interesting mix of this sort of melancholy tone interspersed with both strange humor and some sinister/forboding moments, all wrapped within a bit of film noir trappings. It almost feels like a few tonal steps away from something like the movie Fargo? It's fascinating to read, even though by the end I thought some of the writing patterns showed themselves a bit too plainly (but were still mostly effective).

I did love the choice to have the POV character never speak. It reminded me of a video game like Half Life or Chrono Trigger, and it added to that noir tone. It also forces the supporting cast to reveal their character a little more freely, I thought it worked extremely well.

The plotting here is very strange as well. It seems like the A plot is a slice of life story of a the struggles of small reserve community, and then the B plot is a grandiose billionaire murder conspiracy. Both are compelling, but I'm not sure that either of them were completely successful. I'm sure there are layers of the allegory I'm missing, but I still wanted to see what would happen next and tore through the last half of the novel, so it certainly worked at some level.

I'll have to add some more Thomas King to my backlog, as this was my first of his and he is clearly a talented writer.

I've read a few Chabon novels now, and while I've never really loved any of them there's always something interesting there and the prose itself is very good.

Here, I liked the prose again, but I couldn't get into the characters or story at all. I probably would not have finished it if it were longer. I think it's just not my type of book, it reminded me of something like On The Road.