log(book)
There are currently 160 reviews missing.
The last time I was up to date with reviews was 2022-01-31. Since then, 256/416 books (61.5%) have been reviewed. We'll get there … eventually.

Welcome to log(book)!

This is where I valiantly try to keep track of The data gets synced to Goodreads, but this site is the primary source. If you're really interested in what I'm reading, you can subscribe to the feed. Thanks for the content go to our civilisation and the preceding ones, to the people involved in the publishing industry – authors, editors, layouters, translators, printers, illustrators, agents, publicists, marketers, book sellers, antiquarians –, to my family for hooking me early and understanding that all a child needs to be happy are eighteen hours of uninterrupted reading per day, and to my friends for their consistently good-or-interesting recommendations and their patience with what they call my "reading habit".

Here are a few of the books I’ve read recently:

Cover of Light from Uncommon Stars.

Light from Uncommon Stars

by Ryka Aoki · published 2021 · read 2024-12-04
★☆☆☆☆
Every minute I spent reading this book was a minute that I could have read trashy bad fanfics that still have more nuance, plot, character and consistent world-building than whatever this was. I don’t even know where to start. The writing is bad. Formulaic in language, and committing POV hopping in a way to make sure that we never get to see important inner reactions or emotions of anybody to anything. Pacing is all over the place – the parts that should be emotionally load-bearing get skipped entirely, and there are things like completely new characters getting dropped on us, including their whole family history, about a third of the book in, and somehow we’re expected to care. And was this book not edited? I’m not a native speaker and there were things I’d have called out for editing. Content-wise, it only gets worse. The world doesn’t feel real and has zero consistency. How do “alien space empires all die of depression when they realise mortality doesn’t go away and nothing is eternal” and “heaven and eternal torment in hell and bargains for your soul with demons really exist, but only here” mesh? They don’t. But sure, shove an emerging sentient AI finding personhood in there, I’m sure that’ll help. In spirit, this book is pure wish-fulfillment. It literally ends with “oh and also the rich guy gave the self-insert protagonist a Tesla”. There is absolutely zero examination of anything it presents, and zero consequences for anything. Secondary POV character is redeemed(-in-narrative) for not sending the protagonist to hell, after doing the same for six others (zero emotional impact) and also just … killing people who annoy her? Sure, sure, why not. How are your space aliens doing handling their angry school shooter son? Oh, they just pause him, which they can do for 50 years? Grand. The big relationship gets a happy-ever-after even though it was terrible and unfulfilling throughout? Why not. Emphasize excellence as the thing that can’t be bought, but then it can be bought from hell, and the protagonist isn’t great at music, but at the same time she’s this hidden genius whose soul will just let her make the most beautiful music, especially if the secret aliens give her holoprojectors? … sure but why. There’s a lot of needless detail about donuts, other food, and violins. As somebody who loves classical music and recognised ~half the performer names etc, I can say that this did … nothing. It felt wooden and dead and janky – which is probably the best way to describe the whole book and its characters. Oh, and actually, the queerness: The trans character is just a trope checklist. Yeah, I know the author is trans – queer people are allowed to write queer people badly, just like everybody else – they don’t have magic writing powers. And this stuff was so bad – a lifeless trauma dump. Ew. The only redeeming feature of this book was complaining about it at book club, and getting very drunk in the process.
Cover of Deaf Republic.

Deaf Republic

by Ilya Kaminsky · published 2019 · last read 2024-11-28
★★★★☆
Not falling in love with this one, but there are very strong parts in it, and what more can you really ask for in a poetry collection / smol epos. Re-read because I’m giving the book away.
Cover of Infinity Gate.

Infinity Gate

by M. R. Carey · published 2023 · read 2024-11-13
★★☆☆☆
I thought this was going to be a three- or even four-star book, but alas, the let-down. Promising in the beginning: I love a good alternate-worlds story that puts some thought into how the whole thing can shake out socially and economically, and this book seemed to do just that. Plus, the identity of the narrator was cool and promising, and the narrator’s bias was clever and snarky. Well, that all went down the drains after the first quarter or so, when suddenly space-opera-MilSF-blah. Why are we reading out super-soldier specs? Y a w n. I could’ve lived with the added POV characters (and actually, the school girl x AI couple was endearing and decently written), but man, going all-in on adventures in space and technobabble was not a good call. And then, in the very end, it turned out that a) the author clearly thinks we are stupid, because there is something that is signalled so clearly it might as well be spelled out, and it’s treated as a twist. Maybe Graydon Saunders has broken me, because he would’ve considered that part almost too clear and in need of less obvious hinting (and leave it at that, forever), but that felt lame as the outcome of the final showdown. And then the book ends on a non-ending/cliffhanger, while formally revealing the identity of the narrator – which has been clear from the beginning, so either this is another faux-twist or the writing is just off. Definitely not enough to get me to read the next part, as you can just tell how it’s going to go from here. Man, this one had potential – the initial AI rights setup plus the parallel similar-but-not worlds with different species were cool. But sure, throw it away to get in a couple more stats about your Iron Man suits. Kinda sad, that.
Cover of Bread and Wine.

Bread and Wine

by Samuel R. Delany · published 1999 · read 2024-11-11
★★★★☆
Chip meets Dennis, who lives on the street. It’s everything. It’s romantic, it’s hot, it’s matter-of-fact. It only gets better by knowing they are still together. I’m not usually one for graphic novels (graphic novellas?), but this one … yup, nope, made me cry. And also will make me read Hölderlin, wtf.
Cover of Here & There.

Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher · published 2015 · read 2024-11-10
★★☆☆☆
This book is an odd one – I liked the premise, and while there is one easily-guessable/telegraphed “twist”, it’s not the actual twist that you get slapped with on the last ten pages, so that part is all good. However. The main plot exists in two layers of framing plots: The investigator’s report on what happened, and her son reading the report after she disappeared. I generally like nested structures that play with multiple levels of footnotes and commentary, so it’s not a problem in itself, but: The son is such a whiny asshole it seriously detracted from my reading experience. One or zero framing layers would’ve been so much more preferable. I guess you can’t make the twist work without frame, but just the investigative report would’ve worked so much better imo, because after a while, it’s hard to be sure if the whiny bullshit dudebro attitude the actual protagonist shows is author bias or characterisation (and to some degree it’s got to be on the author, tbh).