A.R. Jarvis's Blog, page 3

Love is an Open Road #4

And we’re back again for another fascinating installment of Amy Reads the stories! Apparently I found where all the good stories were hiding this week, because only one of them earned the DNF note! And it’s not like I just slogged through the rest because I had to, they were fantastic!

Prophecy by Pelaam: DNF I’m not even sure what was wrong with this one, just that I could hardly read it. I thought maybe I was tired, but I had no troubles with the next story. It’s something about centaurs and arranged marriages between two guys who are instantly attracted to each other anyway.

More Than French Kissing by Cass Winters: A couple exchange students meet in Paris. It’s pretty much a Hollywood style grand-gestures romance movie, but I mean that in the best way, because this was a very sweet little feel-good read.

Without a View by Penny Brandon: A weird but well-written short about two guys kidnapped and put in a room together. Much was left unexplained so you have to read the sequel if you want to figure out WTF is going on, and also the fact that they *had* to do sex to get free of the room…it was weird.

Unexpected Homecoming by AJ Henderson: While the beginning of this one is a bit painfully cliche, it quickly turns into more comfortable cliches of omniscient old women and remeeting your high school crush. Parts are improbable or cliche (as I mentioned), but overall it’s another sweet romantic read.

Still Waters by Alex Gabriel: My favorite of this bunch; the tale of a monster from a monstrous world, who is trying to make his way as a peaceful fairy-tales-esque creature, when something worse than him hops between the worlds. It is a fantastic blending of horror-monsters and fairy-tale-monsters, and you can see how they fit or don’t fit into the world they are in, and it’s…just amazing. But. The author used “fathom” as a measurement of distance, and that was really painful.

The World in His Eyes by A.J. Thomas: This is a wonderful interracial story, told from the perspective of the guy who is black. Issues of race are touched on and important, but not in way used as cheap tricks, and all the characters are fully-fleshed out with their own motivations and personalities. It’s also a story of missed connections, second chances, and holding on for what you want. And it’s really hot, too.

Forbidden Broadway by Jonathan Penn: Another solid romance story, this time where one guy is a theater buff, and the other guy is …spoiler, never mind. It’s a good read, sweet, affirming, full of feels. But it’s also a bit unrealistic with somethings, like when character A meets character B, and is all “he’s hot, but a jerk,” and then really quickly forgets the second half of that sentence. So nothing unusual or really out of line with a simple romance, just room for improvement.

Love is an Open Road #3

This week’s batch of stories should, as a whole, be embarrassed of themselves. I appear to have only managed to finish four out of ten, although I gave most of them a solid, fighting chance (and even those four weren’t all that great). Oddly, they were mostly poor in the same way; lots of flashbacks, blocks of irritating exposition (“telling”, rather than “showing”), and temporal dislocations stemming from those two things. Some of them also had asympathetic characters, too. And head-jumping.

Yeah. It’s just not the finest collection of stories I can offer you this day.

Not a Word by Dawn Sister: DNF An age-gap story where every time the older gentleman stated  “I’m 43, for goodness sake,” I would snort in disbelief because he acted …25, tops. And that just because there were no rants about chickens or exploding microwaves. And he had a stutter, so that he could consider himself “broken” without actually being broken. To add drama, you know.

The Hanging of Hope by Chris C.: A weird, unhappy tale from WWII of a farmer and a runaway POW. I wouldn’t have finished it, but it was short. Like those godawful Gieco commercials. It did a pretty good job of being emotionally desolate, which is something you want in an ambiguous war-story.

Getting Us Right by Adan DePiaz: DNF A boy-toy/mistress situation (or a severely closeted one?) where the …master? was an asshole of the highest degree, but totally needed to be dominated in the bedroom, so then it was okay that he was an ass. Told with choppy flash-backs, temporal confusion, and too much telling.

Angles by Tripoli: It’s still not the best writing, but this one was sweet and had a few heart-wrenching moments. I enjoyed the twist at the end, and especially that the MC wasn’t an utter idiot about it. A decent short heart-warmer.

The Best Man by Olley White: Probably the best one of this lot; one man (a brother of many) is asked to be his best friend’s best man, and what occurs thereafter. It’s good and sweet and hot and clever (UST, oh my!).

Save Me Tonight by MP Wallace: The basic summary makes this a tale of “Soul mate” werewolves, but it has an original take on that, and does it’s own thing. The issues are the same troubles that this whole group suffered from, though it has them to a much lesser degree, and also the last…third? or so seemed almost entirely gratuitous. Like, “Oh, hey, we completed the plot, but I forgot to mention dragons and mpreg! Better tie that in now! And set it up for the sequel, too!” Still not bad, just…unnecessary.

Troubled Heart by Sammy Goode: DNF A man who recently lost his husband slowly begins to fall for his neighbor. I made it about 3/4 of the way through this before I just couldn’t handle the flashbacks, and doubling-up of scenes (where it’s told from Character A’s POV, and then when we switch perspective, we hear it all again from Character B’s POV). Also, it looked like they were heading towards a perfect union, and I felt no need to see it.

The Last Yeti by Tully Vincent: DNF One yeti-shifter, and one one-armed asshole meet in Alaska. The second character was like a slightly better-written version of the guy in the last story, but they both had issues with a recent lost love, and this guy was more of an ass. It might be more worth reading if shifters and yeti are your thing.

Stilts by Valynda King: DNF A dancer who has a speech difficulty and very long legs, and a detective who is so sexy the English language can hardly contain him. There’s a murder at the dance club, and then I lost interest.

The Things It Takes by Leisha Caine: DNF A long-term couple working through some things. If it weren’t for the temporal displacement of things (where the story chapters say “two weeks later” and the story text refers to something from the last chapter as being “last night.”), it might not have been so bad. Has an emotional distance that, had it been intentional, would have worked well with the situation in the story. Too bad it was really just the result of poor writing.

Love is an Open Road #2

I feel like I should be more than two entries into this year’s Event, but I’ve been busy, I guess. Reading is by no means the only thing I am behind on, if that makes you feel better, although I have no idea why it would.

Anyway, I realized I was remiss last week and didn’t post the link to the event, which is a …thing put on by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. So now you have that, and I’ll try to remember it henceforth.

A note: I’m not just talking about the good stories this year, because Reasons. Ones I didn’t finish are marked DNF (Did Not Finish). There will still be some that I don’t review and don’t mention (and don’t read), but I plan to generally talk about most of them this year.

Dashed by Gwynn Marssen: A clever and funny tale of an accidental summoning. It’s a really great short read, although while the resolution of the Really Big Problem was clever, the reason why that particular problem resulted from the thing that caused it was never made clear.

Imprint by Devon Grey: DNF I used to think that I didn’t like first-person narratives, but it turns out I like them just fine, unless the narrator is like an annoying uncle with a captive audience. Then I hate them.

An Unexpected Acquisition by L.L. Bucknor: DNF, but I got about half-way. An accountant takes over the book of a new client, and makes friends with him. I think it was aiming for a romance between them, but at some point I realized the writing style was just a list of events, and that ruins everything for me. If one could avoid noticing that, it might be an okay read.

Mr Wonderful by Willow Scarlett: This was a wonderful story, about a wonderful young man who meets another wonderful young man, and they spend a wonderful weekend together, generally being wonderful. It’s probably the most wonderful feel-good affirming story I’ve ever read.

A Case of Time by Al Stewart & Noah Homes: DNF One member of a long-distance couple decides to spice things up by sending the other on a treasure hunt after clues, until the tables are turned, and I realized there were better things to read. Thinks it’s a much better story than it is.

Three Musketeers and a Jester by MC Houle: DNF A young man invites his boyfriend over to meet his besties. The boyfriend’s name is shortened to FA, which I couldn’t handle, especially since the rest of the writing was sloppy. Like I’m trying to read a bit more right now, but can’t figure out which character is being talked about and which is doing the talking. Sloppy.

Perihelion by Tami Veldura: A very intriguing sci-fi tale of a world that I will not attempt to describe nor explain. It claims to be book #1 of something, and the sequels might be worth checking out, especially since the first one, while fantastic, is also incredibly, incredibly confusing.

Haywire Witch by Ren Stjerne: A powerless witch tries to live in the human world, but finds that nothing is as it seems, including his powers. While the porn-to-plot ratio for this one is a bit high, it’s still a cute and sweet little read.

Breathing Again by Sofia Grey: This was a an incredibly moving little story. I was crying by the end–and pretty much without even realizing it. It was beautiful and perfect, and gave me all the feels. Which is extra special, since most stories that have the veteran/PTSD/disability tag combo are…just awful in so many ways, but this one really stood out as something different and real and…it was fantastic. Go get a box of tissues and read it.

The Union of Sun and Moon by Gus Li: This one was decent. It tended to jump in time and place, skim over large portions of the action, and leave things unexplained that were really rather Important. Not to mention that the main emotional-impact event left me rather …unimpacted. But it had it’s moments, and was worth reading.

SSBB #57: Things That Go Bump in the Night

I went entirely out of my way to read these all by Tuesday, because I knew I wouldn’t have time to review them after that…and then I didn’t get a chance to post anything until today anyway. Woops.

This was a popular issue in that there were eleven stories! All of them thematically appropriate, I believe. But most of them short. Only the last story was two-parts. So it’s still a good Halloween-evening read; gay porn to appreciate between doorbell rings!

The shadow in the classroom, by Hyakunichisou 13: This was a sequel to a previous story, which I am, as always, too lazy to look up. It’s about a teacher who’s been having mysterious troubles in his classroom, and calls a supernatural investigator to investigate. It’s a well-told story, though the smut does not come from the source you would expect.

Ectoplasmic Manifestation, by Aosora Hikaru: A young man, who is a horribly easy mark is invited to a haunted house by his boyfriend. The trip to the house itself is sadly brushed over, but otherwise this is a hilarious and fun little high-schooler romp.

The Whims of the Dark One, by Yin Twig: This probably took the cake for crazy shit. In a good way, mostly, though the smut goes right into blood play and pain, which I’m not so big on. But that’s why I’ve learned to skim things. And the twist at the end..actually the whole plot… I can’t say it’s wonderful, but I can say it kept me in a state of contented confusion until the very end, and beyond.

Hunter, by shukyou: A young man plays bait for a creep, or possibly he doesn’t, with plenty of supernatural elements. A solid read.

A mon seul désir, by Reddoraion no ōjo: I didn’t finish this one, but here’s a list of the tags I would give it, if that were my job: knights, age gap, slow burn (well, slow building), disability, PTSD, present tense.

The Red Hood and the Bad Wolf, by Ryoko21: This was a take on Little Red Riding Hood, but it was unique as far as those go, and I believe it had the hottest of the smut. Werewolves were involved, obviously.

What Found Me in the Undercroft, by SeishinNoUwagi: A creepy steampunky tale of a haunted castle, the man who lives there, the man who’s cataloging it, the creepy occurrences, and a terrifying back hallway. Among other things. Had a neat little twist at the end.

Castillo de Cruzito, by Riba: Another with a twist! This one not so much “neat” as “I saw it coming, yet am still horrified.” The sex was very, very much blood-play and violence and the SM part of BDSM, and I got squicked right out of that, but around it was an intriguing and moderately unusual ghost story.

The Bridegroom, by Oishi Maki: There’s an author’s warning about disturbing content on this one, but I wasn’t particularly disturbed. I guess it has lots of adultery/cheating of various flavors, and one character is strongly encouraged to *ahem* force another, but it doesn’t seem to actually happen (in story), and maybe I’ve just been inured from reading crap on the internet? I did think the whole story was very confusing, though, so perhaps something more than I gathered was implied and I missed it? It was okay, beyond the confusing part.

What Friends Are For, by Matao Torakka: One friend helps another home, and then helps him in other ways.

Narcissus, by Iron Eater: Two parts. This one is fun. It starts like it might be a ghost story, then just… let’s say the creepiness builds until you realize what’s going on, and what’s been going on, and the world no longer looks like it ever did before, and I think they’re going to kill you. Better run. Oh no wait, it’s too late for that…

Beyond by Sfe R. Monster

I got another kickstarter comic anthology reward! This one was Beyond: the Sci-fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology Edited by Sfe R. Monster.

The title is fairly descriptive as to the contents. The ideology behind it was simply to have Sci-fi/Fantasy stories that reflect the LGBT spectrum (without it being a negative character element adding to their Evil Nature, or aiming them towards a tragedy). And it does that quite well. The stories are a mixture of “It’s okay to be ___” tales, and just genre stories with LGBT characters. But I thought they were all interesting, well drawn, and well told.

I don’t know how kickstarter rewards make their way out into the real world for other people to read/buy/consume, but if this fits your niche of interests, I would definitely recommend locating and reading it.

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink

I started listening to Welcome to Night Vale the podcast sometime last year. I won’t say I was immediately hooked, but I will say that it didn’t take very long.

The premise is that you’re listening to an episode of a nightly community radio show in a dessert town named Night Vale where nothing is as you expect and librarians are terrifying.

Welcome to Night Vale: a Novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor was eagerly anticipated by me since the moment they announced it, so I was thrilled to have it quietly delivered to my kindle on Tuesday with a minimum of bloodshed and sacrifices to the Old Gods.

And as a fan of Night Vale, I loved it. It’s a wonderful sort of romp through this mysterious town, and we get to see glimpses of normal life, and meet all our favorite characters at a level which simply cannot be portrayed through the podcast’s format.

But.

It’s written in the same presumptuous, rhetorical, philosophical style as the podcast, and since my inner voice doesn’t sound like Cecil Baldwin, it just got really weary and heavy really fast. Sometimes I don’t even like the weight of the audio, and yet here it was written down.

And then all those “glimpses” I mentioned above were pretty much just that. We went to see Old Woman Josie! Why? I still don’t know. She said some Night-Vale-style techno-babble and that was that. The Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Their Home was mentioned several times, but not for any reason. There was a tarantula, but it was just distracting, and then a bit depressing, and then referred to as if it had been used as a metaphor, even though it had not. The flies had a play, but their purpose was ultimately inconsequential to the book.

In fact, there were only one or two subtle details that were mentioned that tied in to the plot’s resolution at all, so we were left with a net full of red herrings and little else– which to some extent is how the podcast presents thing; all details are equally important and unimportant, and the gun in the first act is not required to reappear in the third, even if we spent the whole of the second discussing it and it’s possibilities. But it’s frustrating to read that as a book. If these things are just there to be weird and distracting, do they need to be there at all? or if they do, then, do we need so @#$%ing MANY of them???!!

And then, lastly, the characters, Diane and Jackie, were nearly impossible for me to tell apart. Even in the middle of the book I still had to pause and retrace my eyesteps to figure out which character we were talking about. It was as if the book had been written from an “untethered” third person perspective (you know, when an author slips from a close-up in one mind to a close-up in another without warning or true omniscience; there’s a term for it I can’t remember now, though)– except that it wasn’t. The perspectives changed with the chapters, there just wasn’t a damn thing about how the two women’s voices were written that distinguished them. Except when they were talking because Jackie occasionally, and almost without cause, would slip “man” and “dude” into her speech. Add that to two names which my mind likes to read as “boring name one” and “boring name two,” and unless character-specific things were mentioned (Diane is a Mom, Jackie has been 19 for centuries) they spent half the book being pretty much the same person to me.

But despite all that, I swear that I liked it, and I’ll read a sequel if I get the chance, yet as to you reading it, I’d say only if you’re already a fan. And even then I’d strongly recommend the audiobook version if you can get it (Cecil reads it), since honestly this was read like the transcript for a really, really, long podcast, and not a novel at all.

Splinterpoint by Regina St. Claire

You ever read one of those books that is just so good, and so awesome that you feel like you never need to read again? The sort of book that fulfills every wish and desire you didn’t even know you had involving genre-bending insanity, trope-poking hilarity, perfect plot balance, and unmatchable awesomiosity? That would be Splinterpoint by Regina St. Claire.

I shit you not. I don’t think I will ever need to read again. I don’t even think I need to write again, because the book of my heart has already been written (also I’m not quite that funny, nor quite that capable of tying in tiny details to the plot). This book is like the mic drop of all the best books ever, and there’s nothing left.

That’s it.

This is the end.

Love is an Open Road Round Up #1

Opening Statement by Amy Jarvis: I’ve been reading the Don’t Read in the Closet: Love is an Open Road stories for a few weeks now, but due to various reasons, I haven’t gotten around to posting about them until now. They’ve so far run the gamut from “OMGAWESAUCESOME” to “well, I read it.” But I’m not reading them in order by length this year, instead I’m reading them by whatever insane order my kindle has sorted them into, with some exceptions (for favorite authors, especially). So some of these deserve a longer entry all to their lonesome, but…I’m lazy. Also at this point it’s most important that I get started on posting these. So without further ado;

An American Homo in Paris by Vanessa North: This was a great start to the …anthology? Group? Set? whatever. It’s a sweet tale (that I think is a sequel to something? It certainly referred to past events such that it could have been, but I can’t find anything to support that) of a gay couple that moves to Paris, and…things don’t go as planned. It’s hot and intense, and really sweet, too.

Hunters of a Faded God by JC Shelby: DNF This was…good, I guess. I didn’t read it all in one sitting, and somewhere in the break I realized it spent A LOT of time being a textbook example of why you shouldn’t write a story mostly in flashbacks. It has a really solid plot, and the characters and world are both interesting, but I got tired of the randomly switching flashbacks, the inability of the author to let us know anything, the constant rehashing of stuff we already knew, and the unnecessary exposition.

Top Floor by K.C. Faelan: DNF Top Floor was another one that I didn’t finish, although I made it much less of the way through than with Hunters. It was about a hotel bellboy in the 20s who went to work for the exacting client on the top floor of the hotel. I stopped somewhere around when the story hit “improbable Cinderella” levels, with Bad Shit still going on behind the Exacting Client’s back, while he was buying the Hotel Boy new clothes…It just hit really absurd levels with me, and I only need to know so much about fashion in the 20s, anyway.

Darksoul: Part One by Lexi Ander: Darksoul was a relief to find after two duds (and I believe a few that were best left unstarted). It’s a solid sci-fantasy world with a few different alien races who mostly get along, and one half-breed who is rescued by his father’s people because his mother’s people want to kill him, and then there are political shenanigans. Also, a human nurse who may or may not have some magic of his own, which may or may not compliment the half-breed’s. And all the uncertainties are left for the sequel! …Except while I enjoyed Darksoul, I don’t have any burning desire to read that sequel. If the story had been longer, I probably would have read all of it, but I lack the motivation to seek out more. I can’t remember why exactly, but I also hardly remember the story itself, so perhaps that explains it.

The Biggest Scoop by Gillian St. Kevern: My newest favoritest bookest. It’s a high school romance, but it manages to both take itself very seriously, and not take itself seriously at all–I think that’s helped by the fact that the MC is well aware of the fact that High School Drama doesn’t actually bleed out into the Adult World. And that, in turn, is assisted by the fact that while there’s a Dance on the line and aiding in the Plot, it’s not the be-all end-all of their existence, and no parallels between it and Marriage are made. But whatever the cause this is probably the very best of the stories in this grouping, and if you only read one, it should be this one.

Long Time Waiting by Ann Anderson: Two life-long friends decide to room together for college, and through various collegiate antics end up as lovers. It’s nothing special. Actually, it is a bit “special,” since the longer I read, the more the author felt she had to impress on me how little she knows about things like tabletop D&D. Or steam-rooms. In fact I am now doubting my own experience and understanding of those two things (among a few others) based on how strangely they were portrayed. So mostly I read it with a mild sense of alarm and cliches about train wrecks running through my head.

Reclamation by Cari Z: I stand by my comment about Biggest Scoop, but if you’ve enough time to read two stories from this list (or if you don’t have enough to read that one), this would be the second one I tell you to read. It’s a dystopian setting, where one character is a cop undercover as a stripper, and a guy who works in …uh…reclamation. The Romantic Nemesis is incredibly cliche, but otherwise this whole world and the people who inhabit it are intriguing, and dimensional, and have their own troubles and goals. It’s also full of some of the best kind of UST, and the ending is optimistically realistic, rather than fairy-tale happy. So it’s just a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it.

Divine Intervention by JC Wallace: A man survives a horrific car wreck, and refuses all help and assistance in getting back on his feet until the Love Interest comes on the scene. This was decent. There were parts of it that went…too rosy towards the end– like it was slow and reasonable until the man started getting back on his feet, and then all of a sudden, everything went perfectly and quickly (except for a few dramatic bumps for literary reasons). But it was subtle, and it was a heart warming read.

Dare to Live by Caraway Carter: Another heart warming one, this time about two old friends trying to get over the deaths of their spouses, and also hiking Machu Picchu while being 50ish. It was sweet, and endearing, and optimistic.

Moonshot by Hope Nicholson

Drama Shot!

A long time ago, I supported the Kickstarter campaign for Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection. I figured I love fairy/folk tales, and I seem to like webcomics if my bookmark list is anything to go by, so, like I said I backed it.

And sometime in…June, maybe? I got the email that my .pdf version was available, so I dutifully downloaded it, but I’ve found that (despite webcomics) I don’t actually like to read .pdf comics if I can help it, so I waited for the physical version of the book.

And waited.

And waited.

Eventually they sent us an email saying they’d shipped all the books! And then 4-6 weeks later they sent one saying they’d worked out a deal with customs so the US people could get theirs (but there would still be a delay). Then 4-6 weeks later they sent out an update explaining how overseas things would be shipped, and why those were slow. AND THEN 4-6 weeks later they sent out something saying they’d sent the last round of books (and they were sorry it took so long, thanks for waiting, personal issues, you know?).

Now, I understand that kickstarter rewards often take time to process, and that every step adds to that time, and if you’re having personal issues while trying to fulfill rewards, that’s not fun at all. But I also feel like I was really jerked around by them, strung on with BS about customs delays when really they were “going through a rough spot” or something…I don’t know if I wanted them to be more professional, or more personal about the whole situation, but somewhere in the months and months of waiting, my excitement for this book soured.

I finally received my copy of the book in early October, and I found it to be…less than I wanted it to be. I mean, it’s decent, and there are some stories that I enjoyed reading, so I suspect some of my neutral feelings are at least partially caused by the waiting process. Especially since I can’t hardly think of any particular thing to talk about with the damn book itself. Just that I’m cranky it came late.

Some of the stories were really unbearably strange, and I did not care for them. And then I feel like an asshole, since these are written by a marginalized person about their marginalized culture! How DARE I wander in with my white privilege and Western story expectations and turn my nose up at what they have to offer?? Well, hey, you know what? I love what you do, it’s not for me, I’ll go eat my quinoa over here, thanks.

The stories I liked I liked, but everything was so short, it’s hard to remember specifics. And overall I’m glad that it exists, but as with the last comic anthology I backed (Love in All Forms–I don’t think I reviewed that one), it did not seem to actually fit in the niche of expectations I had for it. So I’m afraid I must conclude: Three stars. Decent read, but would probably not back again.

Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler

I guess it’s been a while again. I apologize, but I was trying to slog my way through this Empires of the Word (Word, not World, mind you) book. Although “slog” has connotations of dissatisfaction with the reading process, and I was in no wise unhappy with my reading choice. I would often chose to knit over read, but I was never actually in want of giving up on this book.

Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler is a book about the history of languages–of written languages, specifically, since we cannot easily investigate the details of languages that were not written down, although some languages and their history can be reconstructed by the bits of themselves left behind in other languages. But basically this book focused on the written ones.

It was interesting. I think I wanted more anecdotal facts to share with others (where there were none), and I had a really hard time following the writing until after the bit about the ancient fertile crescent, which was a struggle both content-based, because I couldn’t recognize what was being spoken of, and language-based, since this author was writing as a British Academic Linguist, and I am an American…uh…dabbler. So I needed to adjust there. But once I did adjust, and could recognize the topics, it was very engrossing.

Especially in terms of ideas for world-building, since, let’s be honest, that’s why I read books like this. So I have a new shiny idea for the aether-verse world, and how language can suddenly be a major factor in …well, I don’t want to spoil anything, nor give anyone ideas about things that may never see the ink of day.

So the book was interesting, if slow, but I also felt like it was lacking in some places. Like it covered the spread of Russian, but I couldn’t remember anything about the origins of the Cyrillic alphabet. There might have been a bit about the origin of Russian the Language, and a few nods to standardizing the writing system, but nothing on the origins (and I would have remembered that bit, since I took some Russian in college). There was also a lack of consideration as to how recorded language might affect the changes of language over time. Which I suppose was just beyond the scope of this book (and perhaps it’s too new of a Thing to have been analyzed), but it was basically unmentioned, despite being a Big Deal if you think about it.

I think there were a few other points where I wanted a bit more detail, or felt that there were discussion holes, but I can’t remember them anymore, so let us no longer dwell upon them.

Overall I felt that this was a really good and informative read, and I feel like a more well-rounded person for having read it, even if it was slow and highly academic. And I’m really looking forward to reading as much fluff as I can fit on my kindle in the next few months.

Just after I read these four magazines that piled up while I was stuck in that book…