My first 5-star read of 2025 🤩
Nate and Koru seemed so real. All their family drama, cultural confusion, not wanting to have kids, pressures from work/parents/siblings, and especially just tension in their marriage - all of it was well-written and intense. Not intense like yelling and fighting, but rather like getting to the real heart of a person. A deep, deep book where people are just piddling about on vacations

This memoir details Eddie‘s life attending Oxford. We see a little before, during, and after his college days as Eddie deals with ableism, assholes, terrible caregivers, an unsupportive faculty, and a few really, really great friends. I was blown away by how many roadblocks he ran into with funding, especially given the wealth of a school like Oxford. Great, short, and surprisingly funny/charming (given all the terrible situations Eddie was in.)

This was such a cool, little book. Employees (both human and humanoid) working on a spaceship are interviewed. The interviewer asks questions about productivity, the items the ship carries, and relations between humans and humanoids. At times we don‘t know whether an human or humanoid is speaking. Sort of an “us verses them” story, told in sound bites. This allowed the story to unfold slowly and in random pieces. Slow, but catastrophic.

First audio of the year! So many things to say on parenthood, especially motherhood, and the division of labor inside the home. We follow four couples in a sort of new, experimental government apartment complex. They have all pledged to have three children in ten years and raise the children communally. Of course opinions differ on the best way to rear children, be a neighbor, and be a partner. No one minds their own business, but that‘s the plan.