7/17

Just one damned thing after another by Jodi Taylor.  There were a few flaws with this that made me sad.  First, the perception of the passing of time was poorly shared: the character would mention a few things happened, but the writing makes it feel like we're talking a year at the most and, whoops, now she specifies it has been fully five years.  It would have been better not to specify-- everything made sense within the 12-18 month perceived time frame and wouldn't have felt funny to the reader at all.  Specifying draws attention to the way the years were glossed over.  Secondly, there were quite a few times where there were exclamation points that stood out to me.  They seemed juvenile, made the writing feel less polished.  The sentences they were attached to would have stood fine on their own.  Rookie mistake?

Aside from those two caveats, what a fantastic book!  I read it cover-to-cover in one day-- not non-stop, there were a few breaks, but still.  It will definitely appeal most to a certain subset of readers who would. given the chance, jump in to that world with both feet themselves.  The personal-issues section about three-quarters through felt a bit rushed, and the blatant set-up for a(n unnecessary) follow-up installment was poorly handled, but again, early author mistakes.  It looks like I missed the boat a bit on this one-- a long series of books and related stories is already out.  I'll have to see how they are.

Finding Dory, with Ellen DeGeneres.  My husband was actually the one really excited to see this.  I had heard a ton of good things about this movie, but it was pretty meh.  We saw it in regular old 2-D (because trying to coordinate 3-D glasses and regular glasses gives me a headache) and it was nice, but just nice.  I wouldn't go see it again, and I don't need to have it on DVD, but it was fun.

The x-files with Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.  Amazon has removed The x-files from Prime, and I was barely into season 5.  I was so mad I submitted feedback.  You can't take it away without mentioning to people first.

The long way to a small, angry planet by Becky Chambers.  This is a fantastic book, most appropriate for readers who already enjoy sci-fi: there are tons of terms and ideas that are tossed in with no intro, or only mentioned ever so briefly; long-term genre readers will go with it, but it would make new readers feel a bit lost.

I thought this would be a space-opera-type-sci-fi, where we're really in it for the setting and created world, but it turned out to be super about the characters.  They all had enough depth to make them realistic and relatable, and the awesome universe was a bonus.  I really loved how all the different alien races have very different family and social structures, but none of them (and not the author) get all preachy about the "right" way for society to behave.

The tailgater's cookbook by David Joachim.  Grilling and coolers: I figured many of these would translate well for camping.  Correct!  I wrote down a handful of recipes and some good helpful notes about grilling technique.  It is organized in a useful way and is easy to understand.  Recommended.

Love and capes: 1: Do you want to know a secret by Thomas F. Zahler.  This was a nice grown-up graphic novel about a couple, one of whom happens to be a super hero.  I liked how the chapters were strung out over more than a year, and characters would allude to events that occurred between chapters-- it gave the story some depth: things happen even when we can't see, like it does for real people.  I did find the characters not quite as deep as I would have liked, although the author did a good job with the length of book and the medium-- more character depth would have required a longer book (which would have also been fine; this is pretty skinny), and this story line would probably have been a hard sell as a novel.  A good graphic novel to transition people who think GNs are all "comic books."