Sometimes, you find books that are good books, and you notice how they are good books, and you like the parts that make them good books, but you don't like them. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is such a book for me. It's not the characters – they are vivid, and real, and neither horrible nor brilliant people. It's not the plot – the story wanders, and is mostly slice-of-apocalyptic-life, but it's a good story. It's not the writing – the language is precise and beautiful and conjures up images and feelings in your mind.

Inoffensive to a fault. Read for book club. Feels odd in several ways: feels slice-of-life even when it's not; doesn't feel sci-fi even when it isn't. The characters are cool but I won't remember them. The author stand-in is awkward. The tie-in with the other novel … not sure, but I'm not a fan. Also, everything is really bloody obvious. You always try to find out who the time traveller is, where he's meeting himself unwittingly, etc. Annoyingly predictable in that regard. Well-written, I suppose. Also it's like there are only 10 people in this world and they keep running into each other. Book club had a fan theory: Since this world is canonically taking place in a simulation, maybe the fact that there are only 10 people is just … a fact, to preserve CPU.

Again with the flat emotional affect and the repeating characters. Jumbled, didn't go anywhere, and wasn't compelling enough to convince as a slice-of-life. The only things I slightly cared about were the less obvious connections to Sea of Tranquility, and I didn't even like that book in the first place. No idea why I read this one. Props for this bit of dialogue though: “Vincent,” he said, “do you know what a Ponzi scheme is?” “Yes,” Vincent said. Claire, from the sofa, still crying: “How do you know what a Ponzi scheme is, Vincent? Did he tell you? Did you know about this? I swear to god, if you knew about this, if he told you…” “Of course he didn’t tell me,” Vincent said. “I know what a Ponzi scheme is because I’m not a fucking idiot.”