Mike > Recent Status Updates

I really like how everybody's aware that the spells they're doing are stupid. It's kind of refreshing compared to a lot of fantasy that insists on being taken seriously despite being... well, not serious.

Fall'n Into the Sear by James A. Bibby: 2/5 Tone problems, not a very interesting or thematically coherent story.

The Cunning Plan by Anne Gay: 1/5 Gimmicky, hard to follow (too many characters for such a short story).

War of the Doom Zombies by Richard A. Lupoff: 3/5 Mildly funny, anticlimactic.

The Seventeenth Eunuch by Jane Yolen: 2/5 Not very funny, badly paced.

A Fortnight of Miracles by Randall Garrett: 3/5 Well-written, but forgettable.

Aphrodite's New Temple by Amy Myers: 2/5 Hard to follow, gimmicky.

The Fifty-First Dragon by Heywood Broun: 5/5 Not sure what this is doing in a collection of comic fantasy, but a really interesting little tale nonetheless.

The Boscombe Walters Story by Robert Rankin: 1/5 Racist, confusing, unfunny.

Looking-Glass Land by Lewis Caroll: 4/5 Creative, realistically captures dreaming.

The Story of the Four Little Children by Edward Lear: 2/5 Not creative, just random.

The Disadvantages of Mind by James F. Sullivan: 3/5 Entertaining but gimmicky.

The Return of Max Kearney by Ron Goulart: 2/5 Badly paced, unmemorable.

The Unpleasantness at the Baloney Club by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre: 4/5 Creative, funny.

The Distressing Damsel by David Langford: 2/5 Cliched, not very funny.

Tender is the Night-Gaunt by Peter Cannon: 1/5 Difficult to follow, and not very rewarding to put in the effort.

Neil Gaiman: 2/5 Well-written, but underwhelming and absolutely pointless.

This is still interesting, in a sort of horrifying way. There's really not much to say about this - this is more like a very long work of journalism than a real memoir with themes or much of an artistic vision. Competently written, but considering the vast number of memoirs about this subject, nothing special.

There's a definite feeling that there's not actually much of a story to the Camp David Accords, so Wright has to fill it in with excessive backstory and biographical details to make this book-length.

This book is annoying, because it's trying to be everything to everybody. It wants to satisfy people who like history, people who like biographies, and people who like policy, and it ends up being unfocused as a result. The good writing is about the only thing this has going for it; this is too scattered to be entertaining, and not very informative for educational purposes.

I really hate how little discussion there is of the human impact of the issues that these leaders are discussing. It makes us forget why the Camp David Accords actually mattered, and just makes really important issues of Palestinian oppression into meaningless bargaining chips for the one or two people who Wright is actually interested in.

On one hand, I'm kind of worried that this will turn out to be the kind of indulgent great man history that doesn't really teach you anything. On the other hand, this is the most readable and interesting thing I've read in months. So we'll see where this goes.

Little Sisters by Vonda N. McIntyre: 3/5

Ghosts of Home by Sam J. Miller: 5/5

The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club by Nike Sulway: 2/5

Oral Argument by Kim Stanley Robinson: 1/5

Drones by Simon Ings: 2/5

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik: 4/5

Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong: 4/5

The Lily and the Horn by Catherynne M. Valente: 4/5

The Empress in her Glory by Robert Reed: 3/5

The Winter Wraith by Jeffrey Ford: 2/5

Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan by Ian McDonald: 1/5

I think this book is a fair bit longer than it needed to be.

The tone of this book is a bit weird, but very interesting. I'm not sure if I like how un-narrative and at times even hard to follow it is. But at the same time, I do appreciate the scope.

The episodic nature makes it really easy to get lost in this book and then not remember anything about it at all.

This isn't actually as depressing as I was anticipating from the first couple of sections. There's actually a lot going on here, much of it very interesting regarding how suffering affects people and how little bits of joy can still be found, in a way that's much less cheesy than that description implies.

This succeeds at being fun, and it's not going for much else, so it's hard to complain.

I'm honestly reading this book too slowly to have anything to say every time I finish another 10%. It's mildly fun, it's not much else.

I wonder if Host might be missing her calling as an author of fluffy MG books, because as far as wish-fulfillment goes, this is actually fairly effective.

I wish this were more explicitly pro-Palestine; while I'm not saying that the Palestinians have never done anything wrong, I'm also bothered by portrayals of the conflict that try to posit the Palestinians and Israelis as equals in the situation. That said, this still looks potentially interesting.

Not much has changed (I had to read very new little for this particular assignment). The only new thing I have to say is that it's weird how many of these books about diplomacy emphasize the importance of the ability to eat anything.

I am reading this far too quickly to actually absorb anything, which is a shame, because this does seem interesting, if kind of sloppy and under-edited.

This is alright, I guess. I don't remember the story being this slow to start, but the writing is as interesting as I remember.

This is not all that interesting and pretty inartfully written. The complete lack of examples makes it difficult to comprehend, or even trust.

Okay, the recent history is actually a lot more interesting, even if it's still fairly Anglo-centric. This book is improving in my graces somewhat.

Boy is this dry. To be fair, it's getting less dry as it goes along, so perhaps this book won't be that bad on balance. But I've read the history of diplomacy in a couple iterations now, and this is the least interesting one so far. None of the intrigue of interesting people OR trends that feel important to the average person.

This is less bad than previous Hemingway stuff I've read. It works better when I see the point as more poetry than actual storytelling. The minimalist language is still awkward as hell to me.

An interesting, mostly well-written and very readable history of diplomacy. Not sure that this book is going to be essential for anyone in particular, but it's alright.

As far as these books go, this one is particularly readable, and I like the tone choices and how much Fletcher pulls from his own experience. This is interesting and informative.

This remains pretty insightful. Perhaps a bit basic and obvious, but it's still useful to have this kind of thing categorized neatly so that it can be understood.