Reviews and Comments

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.

Fascinating history of the battle against cancer, vividly describing not just the mysteries of cancer and their gradual unraveling, but also the politics and people involved. There's plenty of ego and professional rivalry involved, with people holding onto wrong ideas and going down wrong tracks, but they're still the heroes compared to the obvious villains (tobacco industry, how are they still in business?) and sometime hero/villains (big pharma - heroes when they fund the research and bring it to market, villains when they, eh, not enough cancer customers). The author is a cancer physician and this book channels his professional and emotional investment in the topic, but cancer affects all of us, so while there are way too many "must read" books, I consider this one of them.

I read the author's Pulitzer Prize winning book Being Mortal and found this work similarly fascinating, and probably with lessons applicable to other fields on how to systematically improve practices. Of course the stakes are high in medicine, in particular, surgery, so the message is more compelling delivered with the author's humility and honest self-doubt (not something you often see doctors express).

Anthologies of this type are typically a mixed bag, and that is true here to some extent - at it's dullest these personal reflections on video games sound like they're just complaining about how they had to stay home and couldn't see their friends during the pandemic, but the best ones reveal how games can provide solace, shelter, even revelation, to those who already felt isolated, and as a bonus provide recommendations on what to play (Stray, you're on my shopping list).

This was a fun read, the story moves in a cheerful breezy fashion with visuals to match and peppy dialogue that reminds me of Brian K Vaughn stories, but it's not quite at that level, with occasional lines that make me wince like "off the reservation" (this being scifi, try imagining a future where people don't say that anymore), and it's not that deep, either. But the series has legs, and I'd like to see the next volume.

actually a reread, wondering how it's held up over time

It's an interesting premise, and the artwork conveys the action but the story feels clipped and the constant time jumps don't help, so I had trouble keeping track of what's going on and getting invested in the characters.

Despite the occasional descriptions of this book as chick lit, and indeed it alternates almost entirely among the points of view of the main women characters with the males providing (mostly) comic relief, I found this story engaging and hilarious, somehow balancing the lighthearted tone against the increasing underlying seriousness. At nearly five hundred pages, I found myself slowing down toward the final stretch thinking, OK, I can see where this is going, let's wrap it up, but the ending was gratifying and still somewhat unexpected.

I had some trouble getting through this book. The author's prose is excellent of course and creates a central character that you have to root for, but the violence and mistreatment and even just the racist environment of the times is unpleasant enough in fiction and this is fiction based on reality (this is why I have trouble reading or watching about slavery). Keep in mind this wasn't that long ago, and the actual school was only closed last decade, with no reparations for the victims (those that survived) and no consequences for the victimizers. That is why I consider this a must read.