Tag: book review
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin Rating: 5/5, excellent I loved this book. N.K. Jemisin creates a whole world for readers to explore. The way she obscures secrets to build tension and then reveals them at just the right dramatic moment is nothing short of masterful. N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season is the first book…
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The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Rating: 5/5, excellent WARNING: This review contains spoilers! This book is a touchstone for me. I read it the first time in middle school, and it really resonated with me. The Invisible Man is a very irritable, impatient, smart person. He reminds me a lot of myself and my…
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We Are Legion – We Are Bob (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis E. Taylor
We Are Legion – We Are Bob (Bobiverse #1) Rating: 3/5, average Oy. Here we go again… another scifi new release that I would never have picked up if it weren’t for our science fiction book club. 😛 The strongest part of the Bobiverse series is the science. The fiction part is a little weak,…
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Infomocracy by Malka Older (Centenal Cycle #1)
Rating: 4/5, good Infomocracy by Malka Older is a political science fiction thriller. It’s about a near-future world where 20 years ago, the peoples of the world split off from traditional countries into small local voting blocks of 100,000 people known as centenals. The people in these centenals vote to choose which global government to…
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Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Rating: 4/5, good This book is horrifically, horrifically depressing. I usually enjoy dark books, but I didn’t get anything resembling “pleasure” out of this one. It is SO INCREDIBLY BLEAK. It doesn’t have the dramatic despair of Darconville’s Cat, the humble nihilism of Too Loud a Solitude, or the morbid curiosity of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.…
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Brynnde by M. Pepper Langlinais
Brynnde by M. Pepper Langlinais Rating: 4/5, good Summary: Brynnde Archambault needs to find someone to marry, else she’ll be stuck with dull Mr. Dallweather. The answer to her problem arrives in the form of handsome and witty Viscount Burbridge, but just when everything seems to be going smoothly, scandal strikes and the engagement ends.…
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Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0 #1) by Scott Meyer
2/5, bad We read this in our book club this month and the consensus was that this is a fun, but not very smart, book. I personally didn’t enjoy it very much. I read very slow whether I’m reading something complicated or something simple because I’m used to reading for nuance. There is not a…
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Maimonides: A Guide for Today’s Perplexed by Kenneth Seeskin
Rating: 4/5, good Maimonides: A Guide for Today’s Perplexed is a very slim volume, only 127 pages long, and is an introduction to Maimonides’s epically long tome The Guide for the Perplexed which was originally written in 1190. Maimonides’s main point seems to be that Jewish mono-theism is not simply believing in one God, but…
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You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
Rating: 4/5, good This is a butt-kicker of a book. It contains some deep motivation, real talk, and psychological counseling that could help you get out of a rut. It also has some woo-woo aspirational-vibrational stuff, but the writing in this book is so witty and involving it didn’t bother me. I loved all the…