Daniel Shellenbarger > Recent Status Updates

Starnes does something interesting here with his protagonist. Usually this sort of time-jumping "start civ over" thing, the hero is more relatable than the locals, and that's what you think at the start as he's appalled by the savagery of the ancient world and his goals seem appealing, but gradually it becomes clear he's a dehumanized cog from a absolutist dystopian future and the Romans are the more relatable ones.

There is a thing I've longed for for years, a steampunk/gearpunk interplanetary retro-scifi adventure that actually is good. I've known some examples that came close: Reeves' Larklight, Levine's Arabella of Mars, Martinez's Daedalus Incident, but with each, I've felt like they didn't quite pull it off. This one feels like it may actually get it right (fingers crossed).

Dear Goodreads, please be honest and just say "this is a paid ad for this book", I get it, you need to sell ad-space to make money so the site can keep functioning, that's fine, but don't pretend that some teen girl-focused romantasy about misunderstood monsters is something I might enjoy based on my reading, it's insulting

On the plus side, knowing that all of these were set in the interwar period, it's a comfort imagining that cousin Edwin put his singular gift for outsized mischief and chaos to use doing little jobs for the SAS or MI-5 in occupied Greece or France during the war, driving the Nazis utterly mad in the process before he inevitably blew himself up trying to do the dishes or something equally inane

amongst all the young male menaces in J&W, cousin Edwin stands alone, the most fearsome and terrifying of the lot

how odd, there are only two editions listed and neither has the cover of the edition I'm reading.

I actually started this last week and completely forgot to add it to my reading list, oops :)

Honestly, a part of me thinks that J&W should be considered fantasy as I have a hard time conceiving that there was ever a time that you could tell a young woman that she was an "extremely sound young potato" and for her to "thank you for your kind words". Someone (not me) ought to film themselves trying this with various acquaintances and see what kind of reactions they get.

Oh, Jeeves, how could you? Just for fish!

It seems to me that the real talent of being an epic hero is having enemies who choose to knock you out/imprison you rather than just kill you after you've remorselessly murdered half their friends and/or minions. Also, I think Conan works better in short form, in long form stories, things start to feel cyclical: Conan hunts/fight, Conan is betrayed, Conan is captured, Conan escapes, Conan hunts/fights, etc.

It's funny, goodreads tells me how many books I've read and how many I've reviewed, so it clearly has the capacity to separate reviewed from not-reviewed (I mean, can't be that hard, "query: does field 'review' have text in it? answer: affirmative, response: reviewed"), but I can't seem to figure out a way to sort my shelves that way (other than going in manually and tagging them one book at a time)

It's funny, goodreads tells me how many books I've read and how many I've reviewed, so it clearly has the capacity to separate reviewed from not-reviewed (I mean, can't be that hard, "query: does field 'review' have text in it? answer: affirmative, response: reviewed"), but I can't seem to figure out a way to sort my shelves that way (other than going in manually and tagging them one book at a time)

wow, the "Eulalie" scene is basically word-for-word identical