Trying to keep an open mind but this was just terrible. Pumpkin flavored.... ew.

Lots of corny Santa lines and could have been saved by being funny but it's not.

Alright but not enthusiastic about it.

Did not like the essays.

Good petry, topics kinda made me a bit detached though. Lots of misery in Haiti's history.

Not a fan.

Lengthy poem in the voices of characters from Greek mythology. Bottom of the cover reads "A Hymn to the Sea".

Frequently chilling.

Thick lol.

Extremely competent anthology full of political essays, I feel like I've been properly educated haha.

Cheesy and ridiculous but not unreadable.

Well-adjusted heroine paired with a hero with a tortured past.

Thriller - near-future indentured workers pass health clearences and leave the disease-stricken UK by boat for a new life in Australia. While onboard, disease breaks out.

Three POVs - a child, a health care worker, and a teacher.

Pretty good but not excellent.

Recently bereaved couple inherit a mansion surrounded by a creepy forest.

It was alright. Would have liked a less abrupt conclusion.

Bad writing and a bad take on the topic.

Another passable thriller.

Never got into the military-type thriller genre - found Hunt for Red October impossible to follow and couldn't finish it - but this one wasn't bad at all.

Alternate chapter POVs with German V2 operators versus UK analysts. Will the UK analysts find the V2 launch location and stop the bombing?

Does not glorify war.

Typical King - nice concept, large cast of characters, nicely rambley... disappointing ending lol

Characters from the Bill Hodges trilogy show up and it's possible the ending to that one is spoiled. Unfortunately I own that trilogy but haven't got to it yet - don't understand why this one is not properly marked as a series book.

Passable thriller - realistically improbable but it's not doing anything that isn't a thriller staple.

Nominated for the 2019 Locus Horror Award.

More interesting than the first one, rather suspenseful end.

Other commenters mention that Dalgliesh is very undeveloped - we do get some odd details here and there but not much of a personality.

Lots of outdated mental health treatments - not as horrific as it could be though because the setting is a clinic rich pampered people pay to go to.

I could complain about this at length but not going to. At least I am finished with the series.

Done with this series too.

Alyx is a hyper competent Fafhrd-adjacent-type thief/guardian/assassin. Collection includes Picnic on Paradise, the novel, where Alyx escorts some tourists across a war torn planet. Pick is for the novel, thought some of the stories were rough.

Just as bad as the first two in this spin-off series. But I am now done with this series. Closure. :D

Develops a character from the last book as a moral foil to the MC so the MC can "educate' them, which imo just makes the MC seem obnoxious.

Found the MC's backstory boring and would have preferred large segments removed.

Weekly death toll and carelessness with human life seemed too high, especially given the size of the city. Not believable at all. Just added for flavor, I guess.

Read excerpts of this in high school - wrongly expected Odysseus's journey to be the bulk of it. Lots of the famous stories are not given very many lines.

Incredible stories - much more interesting imo than The Iliad even though I think the Iliad has better characters.

Reminds me of a Stephen King novel - interesting premise, lots of characters, much rambling, overly long, has a washed up rock star (and flops the ending). (I like rambling)

Listed on LT as part of a series with Daybreak - they are published in a 2 in 1 but I'm not sure.

Plotwise the setups are pretty identical. Will the exiled smith survive the horrors of the postapocalyptic landscape and find a new home? But indicators that it's the same world as Daybreak aren't there, I think.

No telepathic cats. Telepathic dogs (?).

Post-apocalyptic poisoned earth. Plot is no longer new - will the exiled warrior survive the monsters/landscape and find a home? - but not one I'm tired off. There is a telepathic cat companion.

Rather confusing and jargon dense, but it's getting easier.

Field is criticized as substituting jargon for actual knowledge - idk, jargon does seem to prevent the book from being 10x longer.

Very bleak poems about love, obsession, death, the self, etc.

Does not seem to be a popular translation, but I was extremely impressed by the translator's utter joy in this material. The love that went into this makes the stories shine of the page.

Short stories from Iceland. Sjon's introduction alone is worth reading this.

Read this one out loud to see if it would help me appreciate it more - do remember liking it but none of the poems seem to have stuck. Maybe not a good method.

Favorite part was the Forth Bridge in Scotland lol, the part the other reviewers thought was boring. Absolutely gorgeous bridge.

Another book of perplexing poetry. Need to give these things more time, probably.

Can't not give Gilgamesh a pick.

This has a strong reputation but I didn't actually like it that much. I don't see how it's anything besides check boxes mediocre historical fiction. Still readable.

Very nice. What is says on the cover. Mountain poems by Meng Haojan.

Wish it was bilingual - a lot of this publisher's poetry books seem to be but as soon as I get to a language I actually speak a little bit of the book isn't. Ho-hum lol.

Rather perplexing, but interesting.

Friend gave me this to read. Very short, but difficult to read because of the injustice faced by the main character. Found it similar to The Vegetarian.

Short stories from a variety of perspectives - all about people being mistreated by the North Korean government.

Realized I haven't reviewed a bunch of books I read on Litsy - been posting about them elsewhere and forgot.

Post apocalyptic adventure novel - very tropey.

Has a cat as a main character. Like its optimism and hope.

Unreadable due to its extreme sexism.

Idk how people manage to get that kind of warped understanding of humanity. Do they not talk to other people?

Very bad. Irritated with it.

Stongly dislike writing that talks down to me as if I cannot follow plots or understand complex situations.

One left in the series. Might read the next while watching TV - the amount of concentration required is probably low enough.

These are very good. Must have had a misconception of medieval romance stories as repetitive and standardized because I was surprised at how different all the lais were. Nice variety of stories that keeps it interesting.

Finishing up an old series. Very juvenile. No complexity of thought or writing. Dialogue is a bit grating in some places. No longer remember reading the first ones so don't know if they are the same.

Uncomfortably about a deadly pandemic, which I was not expecting. Don't think it's offensive but doesn't give the topic much sensitivity - a deadly pandemic is as much a fantasy as a spaceship to the authors.

Judges and Ruth. Sorta fell off of reading the KJB. Have a month to finish before I need to return it.

Judges has some neat stories, particularly Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. The last chapter of Judges has an ick story where the women from Jabesh-gilead and Shiloh are forceably given to the tribe of Benjamin to marry. The first are survivors of a massacre, the second are abducted.

Nothing much to comment on about Ruth.

Read the ebook and google images wasn't giving me a good cover so here's the author.

Very good poetry. Especially enjoyed the poems focusing on seasons.

This was fabulous - really liked it.

Main character Kehinde's husband wants to return to Nigeria from the UK. Decisions, decisions.

One of those novels about a horrible man being horrible which are so popular. Not my favorite genre.

Think this brings it to a total of two I've liked (also Babbit).

Very rich and covers a lot of topics, partically racial issues. Heavy on the theme of crabs in a bucket. Jake punches down verbally and physically when he can. Lots of scams.

Very underread - not published in Wright's lifetime. Tbh think maybe the world wasn't ready for it.

Heist SF.

Has interesting things to say about religious awe but it's trying to be a fun heist SF not literary fiction so it doesn't go very far.

Extremely well done, believable world building.

100 stories. The translation leaves a lot to desire and was a bit painful at times to get through - but where else I going to read these stories?

Several stories were standouts.

Charlotte Temple is an early American best seller - a Goodreads reviewer compares Rowson to Stephanie Meyer.

Rowson was an early activist for female education - am convinced there's a underlying message in this the religious moralising is put up to obscure. I might be a conspiracy theorist.

One of the early feminist utopia SFF shorts.

Extremely illuminative. The atobiographical excerpts are also extemely good as is the nonfiction background information essays.

This is my new favorite book.

Now finished with all of Austen's completed novels.

Think this one, with its commentary on Harriet's inferiority, is the most classist of Austen's novels. Emma's maid got a mention that makes her almost complete absence from the rest of the book seem bizarre.

Also got in another ding at Ann Radcliffe. Greatly prefer Radcliffe.