Colin Gooding

Yes, this is Harry Potter fan-fiction. I was convinced to check this out after reading Brahm's excellent review on the full 2100+ page collection, but I didn't want to commit to that yet so this review is just for the first of six books this has been broken down into.

And I'm not sure what to think so far. Going into this, I thought this would be like an alt-history of Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts if he was raised by kind, smart parents instead of the Dursleys, but there are a lot of changes to the story that seemingly have nothing to do with that. I don't think that's a bad thing, there are a lot of interesting takes on characters here, but it took me a bit to adjust my expectations.

A lot of the book, especially the early chapters, feel like just term papers with a thin wrapping of the Harry Potter setting and characters. Harry is barely a person, he's just a mouthpiece to spout off the major tenants of the scientific process. It smooths out a bit as the end of the book neared, but at no point does Harry, or any of the other kids for that matter, feel like eleven year old students.

But I kind of started to get into a groove once I accepted the book on its own terms. The fact that this is fan-fiction helped me to think of it as sort of experimental story telling within an established playground, and it seems like the author is leaning into a lot of the over-the-top characterization to get certain ideas across.

I'm enjoying a lot of the different takes on other characters as well (Quirrel, Draco, and Dumbledore to name a few) and the story, in so much as it exists so far, is setting up some interesting possibilities, so I am certainly going to read on, but I think I need a little break from it first.

If you're wondering why I'm reading Harry Potter fan fiction, please read my review of the previous book in this series.

I was pretty mixed on that first book, but found some things about it that I really enjoyed that I was hoping to carry into this one. It does sort of start out that way, but then a large portion of this story is devoted to this convoluted war games competition between Harry, Hermione, and Draco that basically wasn't enjoyable at all for me. And as I lost interest in the events if the book, it was harder to put up with how annoying most of the characters are.

I'm unsure whether I'll continue with this series or not. I'm still a strangely a bit compelled by it and it's a pretty easy and quick read (I actually listened to this via an audiobook/podcast that was made by fans and was mostly well done). I'll see what I think after a bit of time away from it.

I haven't read too much of King's work, but I know enough about him to find him interesting, and I've always wanted to write something and have never really pushed myself to try, so I figured this would be a fun read.

It's a great mix of autobiography and advice on how to write. Because of how prolific and successful he is, King has so many examples and stories at his disposal using works that most anyone is familiar with to showcase what he had learned while writing and how the aspiring writer can learn from it too. Even without the Writing Guide trappings, I think he tells some excellent stories here, and that extra layer just makes it all the more engaging.

I listened to this via Audiobook from the library, which King himself narrates. He can be a bit monotone, but it definitely adds some weight to the whole thing, especially in the more personal moments. His story of his wife tearing up after he told her that Carrie had been successfully sold four a large sum of money really got me.

I listened to the audiobook from the library for this, it adds a lot since Tina Fey herself narrates, doing impressions and sarcastic voices and all that.

There are some interesting insights into 30 Rock and SNL, but a lot of the book deals with her growing up as a young woman and is written to be relatable to other women, and while it was entertaining in parts, I definitely felt like I was missing something since I'm outside of the target audience.

A lot of her jokes are borderline uncomfortably stereotypical as well, be it race or sexual orientation... Not always offensive, sometimes just thrown in for cheap laughs. I found it a bit off putting.

Overall, Fey is charming enough that this works, I was just expecting more.

I had an interesting experience with this book because I've been meaning to read it for a long time and didn't know much about the plot besides the setup... until just a few months ago where the whodunnit was casually spoiled for me in a Reddit comment or something like that. Which was a number, but reading through this was fun in the same way as rereading a mystery and looking to see where the clues for, which is something I rarely do.

I'm going to keep this next part vague as to not spoil anything, but when I got to the end I realized that there was an aspect to the spoiler I read that wasn't made clear to me, so the reveal still kind of caught me by surprise, which was neat.

Anyways, I really enjoyed this overall. The writing is really sharp, especially the characterizations, though that may be in big part due to the excellent narration by David Suchet in the audiobook I listened to. Every character has a unique voice and is just fun to spend time with. There's definitely some dated racial and sexist profiling going on in some of the theories, but the book was written in 1934 so it's easier to forgive.

At times the story just feels like a full length riddle or something, most of it consists of interviews with the suspects after the murder had taken place. There is very little action happening or anything like that, it's all just deduction. It's still very entertaining and is clearly an early mould of those types of riddles and stories that have come since.

I'll have to check out some more of Agatha Christie's work soon.

This was a surprisingly fantastic book. I love the way it's written, something about the language just made my want to keep reading and the structure of using parts of the Immortal Game to introduce new topics and aspects of the game of chess was a really neat device, and the way he described the Immortal Game itself made me keep reading through the beginning of the next chapter before stopping for the night.

It also helps that the author seems to have the same outlook on chess as I do: He finds it fascinating, but daunting. He'd like to be good at it, but he wants to play without studying opening moves and established strategy.

I was expecting the entirety of this story to take place in the room, with maybe a rescue at the very end. Instead, it does a brilliant thing by having the escape less than halfway through the book and then dealing with the much more interesting implications of adapting back into society when your entire worldview up until then has consisted of a 11x11 foot shed.

It definitely kept me reading in long stretches and I always wanted to see what would happen next.

Lately I've been trying to read more short stories as I enjoy the experimental creativity and focus of a lot of them. Hyperion is like a bunch of short stories woven into a larger plot and I was completely into it (I guess I should read Canterbury Tales at some point too). I read this along with friends in a Slack group where we discussed each chapter individually as we finished them, and that was a great way to digest it.

Most of the stories here are extremely well realized, an intriguing idea with more and more information revealed at the right pace and playing upon your expectations based on the information you know outside of that story. A lot of neat storytelling tricks that worked really well for me.

My only really complaint is that while this book still works on it's own, it's clearly a big setup for the next book in the series, so the end was a bit anticlimactic even if it was still enjoyable.

I'm not a huge Steve Martin fan or anything, but I picked this up because it was on sale and I had heard good things about it. And it was fairly interesting. His humour comes through in the writing and he is open and honest about his personal relationships with his family and with women.

I was hoping it would cover a little more later into his life, but as the title suggests it mostly focuses on his stand up days (as well as his early life and breaking into the comedy business).

I really thought I was going to love this book early on.

The first chapter is told from the perspective of a kleptomaniac, who lies to her boyfriend about the actions of a woman whom she stole something from. Her boyfriend goes on a rant about the (false) actions of the woman, and the narrator becomes “irked by his obliviousness even as she strove to preserve it”. That line to me was just a brilliant representation of a weird internal conflict that I was hoping would continue.

Unfortunately, while the first few chapters delve into these sort of human weaknesses, as I got further into the book I found it dipping farther into more of human depravity that I did not find enjoyable. And by the end, the “future” premises are entirely ridiculous (even if that is supposed to be the point), where society has become so commercial that babies just a few months old have their own advanced cell phones and are directly marketed to, I was just completely checked out.

I think there are some neat things here and there. Each chapter jumps around in time and to different characters that were usually tangential characters in a previous chapter, which is something I haven't really seen before and is often effective, but almost as often is very unsubtle (“Hey, remember that time that thing happened 30 pages ago?”).

I listened to this via audiobook from the library on the Libby app. The narrator Roxana Ortega was good. It felt like she chose a single main tick of each character to base her voices of them around (in control, frantic energy, sultry, etc), which can be a bit on the nose, but does a good job of differentiating a big cast and allowing you to understand the character quickly.

Mieville is great at coming up with fantastical ideas for his worlds and the characters that populate them, but I don't think everything quite worked here. There is so much being introduced in this world at any given time that some of it feels too convenient and could have been seeded better.

The exposition is a little slow and clumsy at first, but when the story gets into full swing it's a great read.

I liked this book well enough as just a story about relationships/popularity/self-confidence growing up and nearing the end of it kept thinking how it was a little strange that the author chose to backdrop this relatively normal high-school-to-adolesence tale with this strange clone organ donor idea.

So when the reveal comes near the end, it really hit me that the whole point was that it was just a normal story. One of the best realizations I've experienced in a book in a long time.

Cormac McCarthy is one of my favourite authors. The Road might be my personal favourite book, and Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men are not too far behind. I was really saddened to hear of his recent passing, and it pushed me to finish this book sooner than later.

I picked up The Passenger shortly after it was released last year, and I was excited to read a book of his upon its release. It starts off with a pretty intriguing premise, but it quickly becomes sort of aimless musings that I didn't completely connect with. There are some effective conversions and I just like the cadence and tone in which McCarthy writes, but I had a hard time focusing on this book which is why it took me 6+ months to finish.

I'm still interested in the follow up to this book, and digging more into McCarthy's backlog, but I'm hoping for more next time.

Kevin Wilson's previous book, Nothing to See Here, is one of my favorite books in recent years. This latest book doesn't quite get into that category for me, but it does cement Wilson as an author for which I will read basically anything he puts out at this point.

Now Is Not The Time To Panic is a great little book about things like obsession and art and relevance and meaning. The story follows a familiar trope in the vein of something like Stand By Me as it is about fleeting events of a summer that profoundly affect the rest of the lives of a few teenagers, but as with other Kevin Wilson books I've read, everything is a bit heightened and strange, while still occuring in a grounded reality. I just really dig his style.

I listened to this via a library audiobook narrated by Ginnifer Goodwin, who captured the tone perfectly and injected a great energy into the story. The author himself also narrates a section that comes after the book and talks about his writing process here, including the origin of the book's repeated mantra, which is an interesting and touching story on its own.

I finished re-reading this with my daughter awhile ago and forgot to log it.

At this point, the series doesn't hold as much interest for my daughter at her age (5). There are fun concepts and exciting scenes for her, but it's overlong in parts and some of the side plots are just sort of dull. However, my daughter's review when I asked her for it was “Thanks, that was a very good book”, so maybe she enjoyed it more than I thought.

After we finished this, we started the Order of the Phoenix, which is a lot more plodding than this, and only made it a handful of chapters in before abandoning it for now. We'll try again in a year maybe to continue the series.

I still like this book, but have always preferred the simpler and shorter first three books.

I saw this on a few Best of 2022 lists so I figured I would give it a shot when it was available through the library.

This is a decades-spanning interpersonal drama that is centered around characters that make video games for a living. It was always teetering on the edge of being a bit cringey, as classic games are used as metaphors for different stages of life and relationships, but game development as a conduit for both forging bonds and creating tension works as well as any other creative field.

I enjoyed reading this, but I'm not sure that it will stick in my mind.

I really love Parks & Rec and The Good Place, so I was curious to check out this book by the creator of those shows, Michael Schur. I've seen him in a few interviews too and he's always seemed like a genuinely nice and thoughtful person, on top of being funny.

And his voice certainly comes through in this book, especially since I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by him. In the intro he explains that this is a sort-of Philosophy 101 book based off his research when making The Good Place, and that's definitely accurate. He never gets into anything too deep, but he keeps things light and fun so that it is entertaining throughout.

He has a few personal anecdotes here and there, but I think I was hoping for a few more insights into his career and some of the shows he's worked on. That's probably more my fault for having expectations of this book that it never promised.

I've been hoping for Emily St John Mandel to impress me again after I really loved Station Eleven, but both this book and The Glass Hotel have been just totally fine.

Ultimately I just wasn't totally gripped by the story. I'll keep things vague, but I'm a sucker for this type of story and I like a lot of what's done with the setting and time period, however there are also a bunch of clumsy and trite elements to it. There's also a self-insert character for the author here that felt really awkward.

There are still a lot of neat ideas here and I just enjoy the way Mandel writes, so I'm glad to have read it.

This one started off very promising to me, and kind of fizzled out a bit further into it. I really like the structure of this book, it's a series of short stories told as vignettes from different characters, but all within the same world and timeline. (It's also a pandemic story, although a fantastical one, but that might be off-putting to some).

There are a few stories near the beginning that were incredibly engrossing. I'll try to keep it vague and it will sound silly, but one is about a euthanasia theme park and another is about a talking pig. These are complete stories, well told, and are actually quite heartwrenching.

I think I may try rereading this at some point, I listened to the audiobook and it's possible I just wasn't in the mindset to pay property attention to the latter parts of the book, but they just didn't hold my attention as much and by the end I was a bit unsatisfied. Still worth reading for the high points though.

I really like the way Towles writes. He's able to introduce a new character and within a page he or she is already fully formed in my mind. He does some neat tricks in this book to properly place you in time while constantly shifting character perspectives by having slight overlap in described events from one person to another.

I think I prefer the last book of his that I read, A Gentleman in Moscow, but this one is great as well. It meanders a bit here and there, and is perhaps a bit overlong, but that also just adds to the Odysseyian wandering feel of the whole thing and takes the story in places I did not expect.

There are some interesting concepts here and the subject matter is important, but this book just didn't really work for me. I'm not sure if listening to this as an audiobook affected my enjoyment, but I found the writing to be mostly unengaging (except for some of the supernatural stuff) and the characters felt underdeveloped.

I was also made uncomfortable by the depictions of sexual violence, which obviously is the intent and that's fine, but what bothered me more is that since that is an ever-present aspect of the book, whenever there is a non-violent sexual description, I was immediately put off and since they are all homosexual encounters it made me feel a sort of weird guilt as well for feeling that way.

The demonic presence that threads throughout the story is pretty effectively unnerving though, and the sort-of fourth wall breaking interstitials are something I really like in theory, but didn't quite fit into the story as much as I would have liked.

This seems like it's close to something that could have been great and I can understand the high reviews for it, but as it is I wouldn't personally recommend it.

Murakami is such a strange writer to me because at one moment he expresses some element of the human psyche with such nuance and then he'll turn around and write some just ham-fisted like I'm-fourteen-and-this-is-deep style philosophizing, usually centered on women. There's one story here that starts “Of all the women I've known until now, she was the ugliest” that kind of hurt to read. A short story about how looks affect social status and personality and all that could have been interesting if handled correctly, but this was not that.

Anyways, not great. I still love Norwegian Wood though.

Ishiguro is one of my favorite authors. I've now only read four of his books, but I need to read more. The Remains of the Day is a masterpiece. Never Let Me Go has a specific moment in it that really stuck me and I still think about a lot. The Buried Giant built and interesting world and explored really interesting themes.

Klara and the Sun does a great job of slowly building out the state of the world without relying on an exposition dump. I love stories that throw you in and just let you figure out the rules contextually. The POV character has a childlike quality that works really well and really all of the characters are well realized and interesting, though I guess I was expecting more pivotal moments for some of them, I think the story tended to meander a bit at times.

I feel pretty similar to this book as I did with The Buried Giant. Ishiguro is such a gifted writer and takes on heady ideas, and while they don't always completely land, I'm still glad to have read it.

This is about exactly what you would expect from the premise, which is simply taking background characters and small moments from The Empire Strikes Back and fleshing them out into short stories. Have you ever wanted to see the scene between Luke and the medical droid fixing his arm that must have occurred before the scene in the movie actually starts? Do you want to know what the citizens of Cloud City thought about the Empire's occupation of it? Would you like to get inside the head of the wampa that captured Like on Hoth? This book is for you.

It was generally pretty fun. Having a whole bunch of different authors (and narrators in the audiobook) made for a good variety of stories told from different points of views from both rebel and empire characters all the way to animals like the aforementioned wampa, the tauntauns on Hoth, and that big monster on the asteroid whose mouth the Millennium Falcon flies into. It wasn't quite as drastically varied in tone and style as I would have liked, it all feels of a piece of the movie, but it was still fun.

There are some drawbacks to having these all as completely disconnected sorry stories though. They are presented chronologically in line with the movie, so the conditions on Hoth are described in detail at least a half dozen times. Same with Han and Leia's open secret romance dynamic. There are FOUR stories that prominently featured the scene where Vader force choke kills that one Admiral while video conferencing with him early in the movie. Some of it just stuck out strangely reading these all back to back.

Still I liked this well enough and there's something fun, though cheesey, about realizing when a scene from the story starts to become a scene that was in the movie and recognizing specific lines and whatnot. There is another book like this about A New Hope, so I'll probably get around to that eventually as well (I just listened to this one first because it was available sooner via the library).