book

Wants to read Virtue

Rated A Game of Thrones 8/10

Rated Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity 8/10

Very striking - journalism that reads like a novel. A few years in the lives of families living at the edge of subsistence in a slum in Mumbai, right behind the airport and luxury hotels that symbolize a rising global upper class. Boo, the author, mostly removes herself from the story and narrates from the perspectives of her protagonists as they deal with poverty, corruption, religious conflict and their efforts to carve out a space for themselves. Beautifully done.

Wants to read Virtue

Wants to read Dust

Rated The Invaders 6/10

Well-done, and nicely balanced on the line between literary-MFA-ish and soapy, but doesn't quite land as hard as it wants to. It's told from the perspective of two unhappy people in a wealthy Connecticut town - a lonely second wife and her college-age stepson. The writing is skillful and there's a lot of plot to stay engaged with but it seems a little self-focused and small-scale, and it's definitely a bummer.

Rated The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction 6/10

Not a lot I didn't know already, but nicely done - efficiently walks through the major points while still having room for a little analysis of what did and didn't work.

Wants to read The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth

Rated A Dance with Dragons 8/10

a blast, although it suffers a little from the fact that it's (a) interminable thanks to a lot of GRRM's writing quirks (b) overshadowed by the knowledge that even though it's interminable, it still won't actually *end*, and the next book is who knows how far off.<br/><br/>

Rated Doolittle 6/10

Wants to read Happiness

Rated The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach 6/10

Rated A esperança de Pandora: ensaios sobre a realidade dos estudos científicos 8/10

Wants to read Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach

Wants to read Happiness

Rated A Common Pornography: A Memoir 8/10

Everyone has stories, brief anecdotes relating to our history. Our memories are at once humorous and heartbreaking, some retold again and again, some kept private forever. In <i>A Common Pornography</i>, Kevin Sampsell gathers his stories and assembles them into an atypical memoir, and the results are both intimate and intriguing.<br><br>Sampsell’s descriptions of the people he encounters are perfect in their spareness. He has a way of making a person clear within two sentences that might take other writers two paragraphs. I also appreciate his candor when it comes to more private moments, moments most people would hesitate to share at all, but still had an effect on their lives. From near-wordless encounters with other men to nights spent alone, he details his search for affection in a very real, honest way.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/04/common-pornography-by-kevin-sampsell.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)

Rated A Wrinkle in Time 8/10

Ah! Finally I have read the book that pretty much everyone read as a kid, and I somehow never picked it up. (I was probably too busy with R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike, tbh). Enjoyed this a lot, and I enjoyed how this edition gave some additional facts about L'Engle and the genesis of the book itself.

Finished reading Sistema novo da natureza e da comunicação das substâncias e outros textos

Wants to read The Listeners

Wants to read 1Q84 Book One and Book Two [Hardcover] Murakami, Haruki

Rated Doctor Who: The War Doctor, Vol. 2: Infernal Devices 9/10

Rated Finbar's Hotel 8/10

Ah, collective loneliness and anxiety about life. Enjoyed this. Worth returning it late to the library.

Rated The coup / John Updike 6/10

Hmmm. Enjoyable, but ultimately kind of slight; beautifully written but too in love with its own language; too queasy-making about race and touched through with whatever the Africa version of "Orientalism" would be. Recommended with reservations - I haven't read much Updike but have to assume this is regarded as a lesser work.

Wants to read [(Selected Stories)] [Author: Alice Munro] published on

Rated A Master of Djinn 8/10

<div>While sometimes the writing style wasn't for me — a Me problem, as I like my descriptions unfussy — I was still very much invested in this book. I liked the alternate-history-Cairo setting, where magic is real and its particulars legislated on a variety of planes, and the characters were all very distinct from one another. I'm interested in reading more, which works out nicely, since I have a novella set in this universe too.</div>