Category: books

I wish I had actually read this in high school. I am positive I only read the Spark Notes right before tests. Nearly 20 years later all I could half remember was the name, Scout.

This was my favorite book I read in 2024. Nothing else came close. I look forward to reading it again.

I feel so bad for Siri.

A man designs exactly how he wants his sentient AI girlfriend to look. He decides what wears, what she does each day, and what she doesn’t. The book is from the AI girlfriend’s perspective, Annie. And boy was this a tough read in some parts. Her owner is emotionally abusive. He is misogyny incarnate. This book isn’t an allegory, it’s direct. This is what an emotionally abusive relationship is. Here are the thoughts of the victim. There is a psychiatrist explaining abuser’s need for control. As a story it was fine. I appreciated it more as an illuminating look into something dark and horrid.

The audiobook narrator sounded a lot like Siri. It was weird.

Cozy atmosphere and kind people in a fantasy setting.

For the last few years, this book would remind me of its existence. Updates from friends on Goodreads. Walking by a bookstore window. A guy reading it in an airport terminal while I fail to stop my two year old from diving under a chair to eat a dusty peanut M&M. Every time I saw it, I would see the cover and think that it was definitely not for me. I am no puritan of fiction, I love me some genre. I read lots of genre. Definitely more sci-fi than fantasy, but I like fantasy just fine. Okay, not high-fantasy or the fantasy where it’s written like the King James Version of the Bible, but some fantasy is good.

The cover is definitely fantasy, but a domestic kind of fantasy. It wasn’t that that pushed me away, I don’t need the promise of big epic action on a cover. I mean, I don’t even need anything to really happen in a book to love it (I’m looking at you, Psalm for the Wild-Built). I think the cover just gave me the impression of something AO3. Fan-fiction.Someone’s Dungeons and Dragons character that they decided to write a story about. I write that and it gives the impression that I look down on AU writing. I know the memes about AO3 tags, but beyond the humor, I am jealous of their ability to write. I’m here, every now and then writing these reviews about how I feel about other people’s writing and other people are actually writing stories. Creating, adding to, changing worlds. Jealously aside, I’ve never had a desire to read fan-fiction. The cover of Legends & Lattes I guess lead my brain to associate it with something that I think I wouldn’t enjoy. Well, it was wrong.

In 2023 I discovered cozy fiction with Becky Chambers. Now, Travis Bladree welcomes me in, gives me a heavy blanket, a warm mug, and tells me there’s bread in the oven. After finishing my first cup of Legends & Lattes I dug in to the more recently published prequel, Bookshops & Bonedust, which was even more enjoyable. Guess I need to read more fantasy. And I guess I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

A body guard, a retired detective, and a billionaire author walk into a bar…

While I haven’t read all of the Thursday Murder Club books, I was happy to hear that Richard Osman had a new series on hand. We Solve Murders keeps the same genre, but steps out of the sleepy retirement village in the countryside of England.

Instead of retirees solving crime, our protagonists are Amy (a body guard), her father-in-law (ex-detective), and a very successful author (crime novels of course). The three hop from one country to another as the stakes get higher, but if you know Thursday Murder Club this is a cozy murder mystery. Maybe not quite as cozy, but it will definitely aims to leave you feeling warm.

It’s an enjoyable read, though I did go on a bit of a journey with the writing. That third protagonist, the billionaire author of crime novels, she was too quippy for me. Every line of hers was an over the top jaded joke, and she had quite a few lines. Eventually I got over it and I enjoyed the character more, but along with a few too many cute plot points left this quite a few pegs down from Osman’s first book.

The shenanigans of a charismatic Count, ordered to live the rest of his life in a luxury hotel in the USSR.

Charming, transportive, and full of heart, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles follows the life of a leisurely Russian count who, after the Russian Revolution and following civil war, is sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. Said “house” being the luxurious Hotel Metropol in Moscow.

The story of Count Rostov’s enduring stay in the Metropol spans decades. Witnessing the early days of the metamorphosed Russia and through the tumultuous, era-defining years that follow. Watching the world change as the protagonist makes a life for himself in the confines of the hotel feels similar to people-watching in an actual lobby. The guests who enter in 1922 are so different those who arrive in the middle of the century. As the values of the USSR spread, as wars unfold, as modern conveniences emerge, witnessing these shifts through Rostov’s eyes allows for interesting color and introspection. The count himself becomes something of an antique, and oddity of a bygone era, especially in the post-aristocratic Russia.

Counter to my expectations, Count Rostov–a man who has never worked a day in his life–is incredibly charismatic, introspective, and empathetic. Naturally, such a man finds friends in all corners of the Hotel Metropol. The attachment I developed for Rostov and his friends surprised me. I laughed, felt genuine joy and even heartache. Towles has talent for writing lovely characters.

If I had to quibble, it would be that the ending didn’t quite stick the landing for me. It felt a little too twee. The book is philosophical, humorous, and has plenty heart. It feels special. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say I the conclusion felt ill-fitting. Perhaps it’s just a matter of taste, but I found the ending less satisfying than the rest of the book.

To make sure we don’t end things on a minor chord, I will say that A Gentleman in Moscow inspired a great deal of curiosity in me for Russian art and history. I’ve started reading Anna Karenina and listening to Tchaikovsky. I’m on the search for more novels and non-fiction on turn of the century Russia. Count Rostov has a great love of literature music, and food. It’s hard for his loves to not rub off on the reader. I’ve even been prepping to make a very special French recipe mentioned in the book.

If American Gods is a cross-country roadtrip of a book, Anansi Boys is a commute.

My least favorite Neil Gaiman book? If not least favorite, it’s right next to Stardust. Gaiman often writes variants fish out of water stories of a normal person becoming entangled in the surreal. This book was me realizing it’s his go-to story structure. I love American Gods, Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Neverwhere, but Anansi Boys fell short for me.

Maybe my disappointment comes from my previous experience with the setting of Anansi Boys? Although it’s a very different tone, the book is semi-marketed as a sequel to American Gods. Anansi feels more akin to Good Omens, but without the cleverness. It tried a little too much for dry humor, a little too hard at the end to bring in the surreal. The book lacked the dark charm and mystery of its predecessor. I imagine Neil Gaiman luxuriating in writing American Gods. Making his publisher sweat with the pace he wrote; moseying from one paragraph to the next. A process that took a couple years and maybe a few roadtrips. Anansi Boys felt like he wrote it on summer holiday. It’s not that it was bad read, I just expect so much from a Gaiman book. It was a letdown after the highs of his other stories.

The first draft of the end of the world.

I’ve read Stuart Turton’s other two books and loved them; a Groundhog’s Day murder mystery and a haunted martime thriller. Both books were so unique in their premise. His latest book is no exception to that, but interesting circumstances fail to make up for uneven execution. As someone who enjoyed his previous novels, I think this book felt like a draft. It needed a couple more rounds kneading and proofing.

At times it seemed like Stuart was writing what would happen in a movie, rather a book. Leaps in narration left me confused as to where something was occurring, who was doing what. I can imagine seeing exactly what he wrote in the format of a movie making more sense. The book would flip between first and third person in a confusing manner. Narration was mostly from the point of view of an omnipotent being, but would sometimes for a paragraph be the perspective of a different character. These flips in narration were so sparing that they seemed like they were left in on accident. Like at a previous time Turton changed his mind from multiple first person POV’s to a single omnipotent one. The protagonist’s frequent “aha!” moments often felt unearned. Some characters were overly flat, others seemed to just pop in out of nowhere or vanish. There was an instance where “he” was written when it clearly should have been “her”. The further I read, the more baffling I found chunks of the plot. By the end, I didn’t really care for the overly complex details of the mystery.

While there is a lot to deride, I did love the mysterious setting. The mother-daughter relationship was nice. Figuring out what happened to the world, this island, the elders, was interesting. Turton is great at unique ideas. A great story could be told on that island, with those characters, and that narrator, but the execution just wasn’t what I was expecting.

Empathy for the Buggers.

I’ve dabbled in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s one-off novels, but never gotten into his grand space bound epics. After reading Service Model, I figured what the heck, I’m a big nerd, this guy writes some interesting stuff, I’ll try out this grand Children of Time series of his that keeps popping up. Hoo boy, this book was not at all what I expected. I’ve read some Tchaikovksy and enjoyed it. The novels were always fun little stories that had great moments, but were never something that I really loved. Children of Time was outstanding.

The book alternates between what feels like a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough and the life of a historian, on of the last members of humanity, as the species slowly travel across galaxy. The remains of civilization are on a single ship, searching for a new home, in an out of stasis and situations arise. Gaps between our historian protagonists sleep can span hundreds of years. At first he is older than his peers. Over time, his peers are woken up more frequently and stay out longer. In the span of two weeks of waking, he sees friends younger than him become elderly. What felt like closing and opening his eyes, were literal generations. Every time he surfaces like a submarine to find his world changed.

The nature documentary chapters were unexpected. They follow lives and exploits of jumping spiders. Spiders that through a series accidents, are larger, smarter, and inherit an anciently terraformed world. Following the arachnids throughout similarly large stretches of time, I found myself cheering them on. They befall and surpass a variety of existential threats throughout the millennia. Throughout the book, there is a sense that conflict will eventually arise between these two species over the one habitable planet. As a reader, I feared the conflict. I had empathy for both sides. Two-legged and eight.

While this is the first book of a series, I am perfectly happy to stop right here and not read the sequels. I have this fiction anxiety where I fret the author will “ruin” my beloved world, characters, story. I convince myself that I’m happy not knowing everything, not knowing what might happen. I think Children of Time is a perfect read all on its own. Maybe I will get over it for this series and continue on. I guess time will tell.

A robot butler’s sad, comedic search for purpose.

I went in to Service Model blind, knowing nothing of the book and having only read one other book by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Elder Race, I recommend it). The novel follows a robotic personal valet, a real gentleman’s Gentlerobot, as it discovers the world.

Service Model reminded me of Douglas Adams at times. There’s a hilarious absurdity to most events and dialog, while also being sandwiched by tragedy and introspection. The book straddles the line of a somber setting and still makes me chuckle.