Reviews and Comments

Really well-written, the dialogue flows (in natural modern English with swear words, not a stilted English indicating it's not English), and the epic scope of the story doesn't get in the way of sympathetic characters or diminish the horrors and cruelty of politics and war. In fact, the historical analogies are obvious (read the authors note at the end) but the end tied it all together even more than I expected.

Really nice tips on taking (and editing) photos with your phone including gorgeous examples on each page. Only quibbles are the author goes to great lengths to avoid including basic math in the explanations, and she apparently takes the photographer-centric view that anyone seen in public is fair game as a photographic subject, even suggesting pretending to be making a call so you can capture someone unawares. That's so paparazzi.

Looks really interesting, great reviews and a Pulitzer, but the Chomsky-like introduction is ruining it for me.

I found the first few chapters highly entertaining, slightly in the vein of Big Little Lies (or Little Big Lies?), but it threw me off when a "black woman" was introduced. Wait, was I supposed to assume everyone else is white?

Looks like it could be a fascinating story in the mode of Ken Liu's "silkpunk" stories and R.F. Kuang's Poppy War trilogy (the author of which whose name was mangled with S.L. Huang's in the Hugo controversy "report", I just thought that was hilarious), but as with the a previous work by this author I found the prose too herky jerky, long stretches of action with some dialogue but it doesn't really convey atmosphere and character to me, reads more like a screenplay, so I set it aside after the first chapter.

Looked like it could get interesting but written too much from a default white perspective for my taste - I stopped a few chapters in after "a black guy" "a Hispanic guy" "a Middle Eastern guy". Never "a white guy".

Interesting premise in the first volume of this series, and the art depicts the action and gritty dark future tone (heavy on the black ink), although how every woman (well, all three of them) have bodacious bodies distracts from the dialogue, which isn't that great anyway. It is a good setup, though, and I read this through in one setting, so that bodes well for the following volumes.

This was a very satisfying conclusing to the trilogy. I was mesmerized by the first book and enjoyed the second, although I have to admit it was a slowdown, but things pick up again with this third installment. These are all long stories with a lot of chapters constantly switching points of view (maybe that's a good thing as there are plenty of people-will-be-idiots scenarios which had me thinking this could get aggravating) but the action really gets going toward the end so I was bingeing the last chapters and also wondering if I was mistaken, there are so many things going on this must result in a cliffhanger for another book. And really, I wouldn't have minded.

This is the best book I've read about tea, although really the only book except for one self-published from China that said tea is great and it cures cancer. I do wish this one covered more varieties of Chinese tea instead of, for example, providing a bunch of tea cocktail recipes, but maybe he's trying to convert pub drinkers. Anyway, good background on the history of tea, the basic categories, and a smattering of individual varieties with, like a good coffee book, brewing tips, and a mild admonishment not to put all kinds of sugar, milk, honey, lemon, etc. in your tea, just get some good leaves and drink!

I don't really see the added value of the comic book format, which really just means it's illustrated with comic book panel, no comic book characters/dialogue/plot. I'd rather have photos of ramen. But that aside, it's a pretty good background on ramen, the origin and different types, with the usual cookbook stuff about prep, equipment, ingredients. In other words, it's an illustrated cookbook.

I stopped reading about halfway through. I'm all for crafted, organic, farm to table food, but, as it says in the title, this is a manifesto, and the anti fast food diatribe (and by fast food she means just about any other type of food) reminds me of a Swedish colleague who asked me why poor people eat at McDonalds while we dined at a nice Thai place that cost several times as much for a meal. And a book that continuously cites health and anti-health claims should list some sources.

I picked this book up fittingly in a discount music store, and found it amusing in a crude snarky way but stopped halfway through the book and halfway through the chapter ranting about soccer, being a former youth soccer player myself, it was either too much or too much on the nose. I like to indulge in a we were the best generation as much as the next GenX-er, but GenX at its most annoying (when we're not running terrible tech companies or being the characters in Reality Bites) is ironically tearing itself down.

This might be a different case if somehow I was not familiar with the Aliens franchise or if in particular I didn't like the second film, but this story is basically Alien 2.5 and could have been the second half of a ridiculously long James Cameron directors cut starring Hicks and (in flashbacks) the rest of his marine buddies, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. Admittedly, I was a bit worried in the first few pages that this is one of those sci-fi novels I find unreadable - I haven't read Pat Cadigan's other works, but there is a screenplay/comic feel to the prose - but once you know what's going to happen, grab some popcorn, settle in for the ride, and remember to nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure (yeah, right).

This is the first work I've read from this author and it's a nice find. The prose is evocative in bringing out the hardscrabble midwestern environment (and also the sex scenes, but there's a bit of whiplash there as if alternating between noir and dear penthouse), and there is no shortage of antiheroes.