Wants to read Catch-22
book
Rated To Be Taught, If Fortunate 6/10
To Be Taught is another excellent story from Becky Chambers. Gently, honest, touching and inquisitive about the universe.<br/><br/>A novella (so in theory a "short read") is exactly the kind of story I've quickly come to expect from Chambers: about the characters and striving to be better through knowledge and our humanity.<br/><br/>The story is told a message delivered to us - and by "us" the message hopes to be received by Earth. The crew of four humans have been sent to explore outer space and return with their findings.<br/><br/>The mission is entirely a discovery exercise, not "the Earth is doomed, we must quickly find new home" which so many stories would shoot for. So the book tells of the crew landing across four different planets and what they find and tell of their enthusiasm in science and real human struggles in confined spaces.<br/><br/>This is a gentle and easy read, and for me, treated as something to tide me over until the next novel length Wayfarers is released - but equally a solid story on it's own merits.<br/>
Rated The Thursday Murder Club 10/10
So good on all levels. Utterly polished and wonderfully likeable characters.<br/><br/>Not much to add, except that the story was really well drawn out, and the main characters in the "Murder Club" were interesting, had depth and I could really imagine.<br/><br/>Understandable how this series of books have been such a hit. Absolutely looking forward to reading the rest in the series.<br/>
Rated The Name of the Wind 10/10
Absolutely superb stuff. This book was recommended separately by three different friends, and it lived up to expectations. <br/><i></i><br/>It's the first fantasy book I've read (or certainly in the last decade) so initially I wasn't quite sure. As the chapters progressed though, the story fell into really beautiful story telling.<br/><br/>I'm was taken away by how good the writing and prose were. There were turns of phases that were fun and a pleasure to read. The book itself is also broken into small enough chapters that I could read for 15-20 minutes at night and complete a chapter (I like to stop reading at "natural" endings).<br/><br/>The story, or rather the trilogy of books (this being book 1), follows Kvothe and the telling of his life story. Kvothe agrees to tell his story over three days (at which point I realised that I was reading Day 1). <br/><br/>I'd to write more of thorough review, but the story is brilliantly dense that I can't do it justice. The second book in the trilogy is 1,000 pages - which is daunting to me, but it's definitely on my reading list now. There's also a number of novellas that have been written for the world the Rothfuss has written which I've also earmarked. As for the conclusion of the trilogy, I've been told that not only is there no publication date set, but that Rothfuss has been at it for 8 years 😱!!!
Rated Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner 6/10
Pretty gentle and sensible introduction to assembly and machine code. I'm pretty familiar with 8-bit assembly already but this helped to lay some decent foundations.<br/><br/>The pace is a bit weird though. It starts and continues for a good deal of the book as uber simple, almost erring on the side of being patronising with it's weird 16 fingered alien - but it does just about work.<br/><br/>But then, as the later chapters go on, the author suddenly switches from nice and gentle to "obviously", "just" and "simple" and it feels a bit like you're tossed into the deep end with no orientation. I found I had to re-read seemingly short and "obvious" chapters.<br/><br/>Frustratingly the chapters on audio and graphics were exceptionally short only referring to the `out` ports which is technically accurate but didn't offer much advice.<br/><br/>Then around 40% of the book is used to build out a Frogger clone which I'll admit I skimmed.<br/><br/>The appendix is very useful though, with a complete index of opcode to pneumonic and visa versa which I've used a number of times already.
Rated Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory 6/10
Very brief but a good bridging story.
Rated Christmas Jars Collector's Edition 6/10
A sweet tale of kindness. I asked for recommendations for Christmas–feelings books, and this is one that came up, and it does indeed do a good job of getting those feel–good vibes going.<br/><br/>The story is a little sickly sweet, but that's okay. I particularly liked the first 1/4 of the story that follows Louise, an unexpected adopted mother to Hope. This part is particularly tender and gentle.<br/><br/>The book definitely left me with the desire to follow the Christmas traditions that's created in the story, which as the book ends, it's followed by real life stories of individuals who did just that.<br/><br/>I have the kindle version that, unbeknownst to me, included some twenty-odd true stories at the end, making up around 20% of the kindle edition. I read a few of these, but they did follow the same pattern, and eventually skipped over a few feeling it was similar to reading an appendix of a book (and yes, this makes me a little bit of a terrible person!!!).<br/><br/>Overall: does the job I had hoped it would do: get me in the mood for Christmas by reminding me of the "gift of giving (love)".
Rated Stories of Your Life and Others 10/10
I absolutely loved this collection of stories. Inspiring, beautiful, not-so-sci-fi that it was disconnected from our world. <br/><br/>What I also loved about these stories is that they made me think about my own world and and I wanted to share these conversations and thoughts with those around me.<br/><br/>I _think_ my favourite story was 'Story of Your Life' (made in to the film The Arrival) closely followed by 'Tower of Babylon'. But even the _short short_, 'The Evolution of Human Science' was superb, right down to the very first opening paragraph!
Rated The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1: Squirrel Power 8/10
Nice alternative to the super heroes I've read in the past. A very strong young woman (that I'd want to share with my kids), and surprisingly doesn't kick butts as often as she alludes to, but uses sensible discussion and compassion to bypass her foes.
Rated The Afterlife of Walter Augustus 4/10
A bit obvious, uneventful and a miss for me.<br/><i></i><br/>As always this review is based on my experience of reading this book and not reflective of the actual content or story for a broader audience (I say because I'm not particularly glowing in my rating!).<br/><br/>If I had this on holiday then I may have warmed to it a little more. It definitely feels like the kind of book that doesn't require much thinking.<br/><br/>I found the twist "baddie" very obvious but at the same time lots of the story moved forwards without any real reason.<br/><br/>I came away from reading the book like it had been 100 pages or so. Maybe it's because I felt like the characters didn't have any depth - the sister Victoria is cruel and unkind to the protagonist Letty, but it seems for no reason other than to make a bad character (in the living world). <br/><br/>Then there's Walter, living in the afterlife (or the interim, or maybe even purgatory…), it's unclear why he's been there for so long - what was special about his name. He wrote a book of poem, god knows how many hundreds of years prior to the current day, so I'm not entirely sure why he doesn't pass on.<br/><br/>Later we meet Hector. I'm not sure how he's part of Walters "life". Maybe it was explained and I skimmed idly past it, or perhaps it's just some rando that has a larger part to play - and even then, when Hector plays his hand, he kind of just falls off the pages.<br/><br/>All in all, a bit of a miss for me.
Rated Lord of the Flies 6/10
Stressful, but solid, reading.<br/><i></i><br/>My rating is based on how much I _personally enjoyed_ the story. It was pretty heavy reading, and perhaps more so as I knew there was an underlying bullying aspect that ran through the story - and bullying always puts me on edge.<br/><br/>The book itself is brilliantly written and the climax of the story is masterfully executed. Golding does an excellent job of slowly building up the tension throughout the story until it's crashing so hard at the end of the story it seems like there's no way out.<br/><br/>Ralph's (one of the protagonists) feeling of peril at the end of the book is visceral. Reminding me of my typical nightmares and stress dreams where I'm unable to escape the terror no matter what choice I make.
Rated The Galaxy, and the Ground Within 8/10
Surprisingly difficult to connect with.<br/><i></i><br/>This is still a well written, interesting, continues the Wayfarer universe and prompts some challenging thoughts.<br/><br/>Where I did struggle was connection with the characters. Because they're exclusively alien, and entirely so: 4 arms and a shell, tiny sloth like swinging creatures, laru furball bendy things (though I imagined the creature from Ice Age oddly enough), because they're hard to visualise in my head I found it harder to connect to the characters.<br/><br/>I do also suspect this is a way of putting the reader in a position of a minority, to be unable to recognise oneself amongst the peers, which is what kept flipping back and forth in my head whilst continuing with the tale.<br/><br/>As with other Becky Chambers' books, the story isn't some fantastical explosion of events, but a soft observation of life and interaction of species and races living together - and that's something I'll continue to love about their books.<br/><br/>My favourite is still the first book, I'm not sure anything is going to top that for many years, but this is still a solid entry into the Wayfarer world.
Rated Artificial Condition 8/10
Uh! I love this character! This is the 2nd book in the murderbot books and the main character, who I realise now doesn't have a name (nor gender as it's a bot) is so fun to read. <br/><br/>The murderbot is so dry and grumpy and so different from previous characters I've read in sci-fi.<br/><br/>The first book definitely works as a stand alone, and although there's a self contained story in this second book, it definitely carries through a decent number of references to the earlier story that I'd not recommend reading this on it's own.<br/><br/>Since the books are only around 160 pages, I'm moving right on to the next installment and looking forward to it already.
Wants to read The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer
Rated Annihilation 8/10
<div>I am quite late to the party with this book, but I enjoyed it enough to get the next installment from the library. I listened to the audiobook, which leant itself well to the diary style in which it was written.</div>
Rated Exit Strategy 10/10
I read the first installment of the Murderbot a few months back (as an Amazon single), but after reading it, I decided I was going to pony up the £8 for the following 3 books - although probably the most I've spent on a single book, let alone 3 books - absolutely totally worth it. I **loved** this series.<br/><br/>The series follows Murderbot, a rouge security unit, mostly good at killing but who would rather just watch TV and be left alone. The first book reads easily as a stand alone, and I'd say the second book does too. <br/><br/>The third and fourth pull together all the previous adventures into an overarching story that we see Murderbot learning about itself and struggling with the the concepts of emotions and desires.<br/><br/>In fact, the Murderbot ends with that huge question of: what do you want.<br/><br/>There's so many things I enjoyed about this series: it's a sci-fi that doesn't really require you to understand all the ins and outs of the political systems that exist in the world. I've read a few sci-fi books that really struggle to make the world believable because there's often so much to take in - the Murderbot diaries does this in a way that reads easily and lightly.<br/><br/>The action sequences are really well written and fairly easy to follow - another thing I've struggled with in other books.<br/><br/>Even though we know that the Murderbot is a construct, it exists in a time that emotions can be simulated - and therefore felt - by the Murderbot, which, just like any one of us, they don't relish having to process those emotions, and they'd much rather just shun away and hide away escaping with TV.<br/><br/>Finally the characters are refreshing. As a white man myself, I'm too quick to assume the gender and race of the characters I reading about, Martha Wells does a really good job of keeping me in check, reminding me that Murderbot _doesn't_ have a gender, there's people in the universe that don't identify as one gender, and that not everyone is white. I love this, and I appreciate it in the books I read (in the hope that it shifts my mindset).<br/><br/>Loved it.
Wants to read Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race