Rated Doctor Who: The Deviant Strain 8/10
This was an excellent story that would have been great on screen too (though with later series' budgets), but the sentence fragments during moments of action were frustratingly bad.
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Rated The Worlds of Big Finish 9/10
<div>I do like a Big Finish crossover and this one is better than most.</div>
Rated The Payback 10/10
<div>Set in the near-future where people who are behind on student loans risk a beatdown from the Debt Police, <em>The Payback</em> begins with a lazy shift at an LA mall and increasingly amps up the pace. I loved reading from a retail store employee's perspective. An underutilized profession in novels! More "Mall Novels," please, even if only half of this book takes place in one.<br><br>And then it all turns into a heist? One of my favorite genres? Yes, of course I loved this book.</div>
Wants to read Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past
Rated The Twenty Days of Turin 6/10
I think I would have liked this more if I were more familiar with the time period/location (1970s Italy) to which this story alludes, and also if I'd read more of it while not drowsy. However! It's a good book with pleasantly unsettling elements, and plenty of other people should get more out of it than I did.
Rated Katabasis 5/10
<div>If this book is meant to replicate the futility of certain sections of hell by being a little bit of a slog to read, then mission accomplished.<br><br>Alice is just SO special, dontcha know, SO SPECIAL. She doesn't need pesky things like FEMINISM or FOOD or NORMAL HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. She has THE WORK! And her coworker/fellow grad student is just TOO GOOD to be CHRONICALLY ILL! He must HIDE it! <br><br>I don't need my main characters to be likable, but I gotta have some reason to care how it all shakes out for them.<br><br>Look, I really loved Yellowface and Babel, so I was quite surprised that I didn't really like this much. I get that it's supposed to be a tale of not killing yourself for academia and/or terrible "mentors," but it doesn't seem like Alice learns a whole lot. I guess it was innovative in that it was a dude, for once, who got <spoiler>fridged, temporarily, in order to advance her plot, but I didn't care that much.</spoiler><br><br>The magic system and the intellectual rigor were not turn-offs. I get it; it's Cambridge. And the writing itself was 99% perfectly fine. (Writers, please never make me read "quirked a smile" again, though.) It's just that, if we're writing a story about fucked up priorities, I guess I just expected a little more revelation other than <spoiler>"Now I will have an undead boyfriend who is ashamed of his health."</spoiler><br><br>YMMV!</div>
Wants to read Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream
Edited 86d ago
Rated Doctor Who: The Guardian of the Solar System 10/10
As much as I love the Eighth Doctor audio adventures, this (along with its first 2 parts) is the best storyline I've heard from Big Finish... And not just because of my undying love for Jean Marsh. The writing is great, the sound, all of it. Beyond recommend all three for any Doctor Who fan.
Rated The Man Who Fell to Earth 9/10
<div>I was surprised by how much I loved this. I have a free month of Audible, so I listened to the audiobook that was available without having to use a credit mostly because I'd seen both the movie and the TV show, and I thought, "Well, why not complete it?" But this mostly holds up as both a product of its time and as a story that's still relevant today (alas), all while remaining innovative and interesting.</div>
Wants to read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1
Wants to read Rough Music
Edited 86d ago
Rated Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion 8/10
Tolentino is a great writer - her project is taking the tools of literary criticism and applying it, deftly and clearly, to non-literary texts: broad cultural trends, institutions, her own life. These essays vary from bright and fun to heavy, but they all come from the same sharp critical eye.
Rated A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) by George R. R. Martin (2-May-2006) Paperback 8/10
GRR Martin blazes new trails in introducing you to characters, getting you to identify with and root for them, getting you invested in their plans, and then messily thwarting those plans. He also enjoys tormenting you with having characters act upon information you know to be untrue, or fail to discover information that you know would help them. <br/><br/>Great fun, really.
Rated How Did You Get This Number: Essays 6/10
Very nicely written, and Crosley is charming and a great observer, though these essays don't quite close the deal for themselves - you might be left asking "so what?" A quick and pleasant read.
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.
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.