Reviews and Comments

Didn't love this but at least it was short. Beautifully written but probably more interesting for someone who isn't totally obsessed with space/the ISS. Kind of expected more, I picked it cause it was shortlisted for Booker. That said it was a pretty relaxing read as someone who like, rewatches Cosmos to stave off panic attacks.

WENDY IS PERFECT

Didn't quite fill the Kristin Lavrandsdattir-sized hole in my heart but i binged this audiobook in a day while repainting my room and it was a certain type of fun

This book fucks

It was good! There was a plot point early on that kind of fucked with my suspension of disbelief and bugged me like a splinter the whole rest of the read, and some neatness in the plot that I wasn't totally buying/in the mood for. But I'm a sucker for expert prose, subtly handled subject matter, and readability so it won me over.

Read this because I wanted to recommend it to a few people (based on some interviews I heard while she was doing press for the book). A surprisingly enjoyable read, even if I don't align with her politically in a lot of ways and find her a bit insufferable, I do think she lays out a lot of stuff about what's weird about the present moment quite well. Would give to my mom

Death. Dogs. Dogs and humans. Writing. Writers love to write about writing.

First book I've finished in French (I picked the shortest one possible, its like barely a novella lol).

The small town nuclear family setting made me feel so claustrophobic and a few hundred pages in, right when I was starting to wonder why I was still reading this weird family book, all the characters and the story started blowing open. Really well crafted, nothing revolutionary but a solid book to get wrapped into for a few weeks.

Really simple prose and a kind of overdone premise made me feel like I knew what I was getting into, but the story sucked me in really quickly and I ended up finishing it in one sitting. Really appreciated the steady, almost omnicient presence of the narrator through lots of turmoil in the lives of the women around her.

Comfort reread :)

Chip's propensity for unreliable/unlikeable narrators makes his books a bit of a slog sometimes, but he's still one of my favourites cause there's always layers of intent going on under the writing and he's so fucking smart and funny. Love imagining an occupied solar system with queer cooperative living and on-demand informed consent gender- and sexuality-affirming health tech, but! Theres a lot of dodging and ducking in and around the question of utopia here and the almost-campy idealized aspects of the society and tech play into these explorations. Loved it.