Good fanfic, in which Sirius is not an idiot.

Not sure why I keep reading this tbh. It's got a huge world, but refuses to do the required worldbuilding. Lost interest in the initial hook, muddling through, and also by now removed all the initial chapters, lol. Honestly just still reading it because I get updates in my feed reader. Edit: finally stopped reading in September 2023. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

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.

Might be the only Tchaikovsky I've read so far that is not entirely bleak in its conception of the human race, so that's a new one. Other than that … what's there to say? It's a solid little book. It's just … kinda lazy? I feel like Tchaikovsky is better than this; this is him taking a not terribly novel genre, and giving us his not super creative take on it, but because he's just a good author, the result is still nice enough. The part that I liked most was none of the obvious science fantasy shebang; it was how Tchaikovsky describes depression. Because, yes, very much like that. Nearly pushed the whole thing up to four stars, might actually do so once I re-read it for book club soon. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Roadside picnic was a good book to read, and I was surprised that I didn't find it depressing. It takes place in a small town in roughly-Canada, where an alien exclusion zone has spawned that is very much like a radioactive dump: People around it experience mutations, people at the site when it spawned lost their lives or were injured in weird ways, you should only enter the zone in a special suit, but of course people do enter without one anyways. This was published 14 years before Chernobyl, mind. Our protagonist a is working for the institute investigating the zone when he's not busy being in prison for his smuggling activities. He has a wife and a daughter who looks like a little monkey. As I said, Chernobyl feeling. He's extremely irreverent and snarky and his inner monologue was a joy to read. I read the German translation, but I've been told this goes for the English one, too. The German translation is an utter joy to read. I've been trying to put into words why this book is so very, very Russian. I think it's the interactions between people. There's a common assumption that everybody is scavenging and finding semi-legal ways of making do, and also that everybody could be an informer about to tattle. This common assumption is born with equanimy and alcohol, and a strong reliance on community bonds. While the protagonist is in prison, friends check in on his wife and stand up to her neighbours to end the ongoing bullying, for example. I'm waving hands here, but trust me: The whole book feels like it's taking place in the Russian steppe, not in Canada. I'm not sure I could've pointed this out before moving to Western Germany. I'm still trying to find better words. The book, of course, is slice-of-life – everything else would feel pretentious and wrong. There are starts and stops, and there is an end, but it doesn't follow a dramatic arc: one thing happens, and then the next. Sometimes one thing leads to the next, but sometimes it doesn't. It makes the book more real, more serious – more life-like. It could've easily felt depressing and kafkaesque, but it didn't, so here I am, liking it a whole lot. Also: Look at that cover!

It starts so promising – fun heists, bit too heavy-handed, but good fun. But then it drags. and drags. and drags. You get to see every turn coming, and there are so fucking many of them. The quipping – fun at first – grows stale, and the betrayals get boring, and even predicting them isn’t all that interesting at some point. Add to this the unfortunate pattern of revealing each party member’s (and there are a lot) sAd uNiQue backstory literally in the middle of a big important showdown (different ones for each), and … ugh. I had fun, but not that much, and writing the review 18 months later, I had already forgotten most of the book. Yawn.

I cannot tell you why I bounce off Accelerando so completely. I tried reading it twice, and when the third attempt finally got me through in early 2023, I … apparently read it? I got a file filled with highlights/quotes, and I remember absolutely zilch. I guess after some prompting I did remember the whole "teenager escapes home by enslaving herself to like ten shell companies cleverly stacked" bit after a lot of prompting. I get on fine with Stross books otherwise, so no idea what’s going on.

A scifi book from the 60s, with a young black girl as protagonist, written by a white dude from the US, that isn’t terrible? And also isn’t praised and listed on all the reading lists everywhere? Reading this book was a big surprise, I have to say. This book is a take on generation ships that not only pays attention to society on the ship (which I think basically all generation ship stories set out to do), but also economics, and how the ship relates to non-ship space (and hot damn colonialism on a bicycle, it’s not pretty). The protagonist is proactive, very very flawed in a way that works with her being, y’know, a 14-year-old girl born to influential parents, but also not stupid. Granted, the story has limited depth in the end – it is a coming-of-age story, but I thought things felt very alive and well-handled. And, what’s more, the ending! Oh my, the ending. When the subject of the climax became clear, I was very afraid it’d be tacky or moralising or cheap, and it was none of that. Really glad I read this book.

Not tagging plot spoilers for obvious reasons – the movie did not deviate much from the book, all told: Bambi grows up, lears words, plays with other young deer and other animals with quirky personalities, like the owl who is always happy when people are surprised by it. Adolescence, mother dying, harsh winter, love and rivalry, some more forest society stuff, and finally his father dying and Bambi being all grown up. The works. But then’s the part where you read with an adult’s eyes, and the knowledge that the author was born as Siegmund Salzmann in 1869 in Budapest, and (being Jewish) fleeing Austria in 1938, and is here writing in a very clearly post-1918 world, and there are a bunch of interesting parts: Daddy issues I: Daddy is not home, but he is so grand and impressive and mysterious, and literal fawning Daddy issues II: Daddy condescends to talk to Bambi once, in like two words, and it powers his personality for years Class issues: Deer are like princes and royalty, both in being admirable and great, and in being so accommodated to the easy life that winter hits them hard, and that the more burgois parts of society love to gossip about them War trauma I: A deer is very self-conscious about having been lamed, and all the other deer keep reassuring him that it’s really not noticeable at all War trauma II: Humans start hunting more and more, and societal rules start breaking down under pressure: harsher tone, everybody caring for themselves etc One deer gets domesticated, returns to the forest and fanboys about the Man, and then predictably gets shot, because he forgot about all the laws of the forest, ignores the others, and then runs towards humans. Surely the author being Jewish did nothing to inform this passage. Daddy issues III: Getting shot, but daddy saying “my child” overcomes even a wound, and he heals. Gender issues everywhere, of course: Particularly standing out when he sees his old partner/sweetheart suddenly appear “old and grey and like his mum”, hot dang Religion (aka Daddy issues IV): Just before the end, daddy teaches him that there is a higher Daddy who is above both humans and deer (even Deer Daddy) – slapped-on moral to get published? Interesting read anyway, and I grew up on German children’s books of that time, so it felt like coming home.

Didn’t feel it – decent writing, and historical horror with a Joan of Arc theme can work for me (as the other book with the Byzantian robots has shown, which I keep confusing with this one, because how many Joan-of-Arc-gritty-alt-history-grimdark books do you need?), but this one just didn’t land. Lots of people I didn’t care about at all, lots of rape-pillage-murder, and for what.

Historical, fantastical fiction about the 1956 revolution in Hungary, and it has absolutely everything. It’s Jewish. It’s queer (gay, bi, poly). It’s a good adventure and it’s written so sensually that it’s also more than that. And it’s HELLA well-researched. That’s what impressed me the most, I think. It’s not just that the author got her facts straight (which I’d appreciate in itself, of course), and then used the historical moments she embedded in the story super well to play with the story. It’s not just the obvious respect she has for the complexity of the situation and the big fucked up tangle of history that produced the situation. It’s the vibes. Budapest as a city where there are no colours left after the war? The depth of despair and trauma of families decimated in the colocaust, and then only further hurt and murdered in Stalinist purges? The mistrust, the hunched shoulders, the checking-who-is-in-the-room, the police, the dread, the greyness of it all. The grief. The life with despair for decades for all of them, and embedded in the context of millennia for the Jewish protagonist and her family. It’s bang on. As are the local vibes. The marches. The bridges. The river, oh, the river that is nearly a protagonist. The angel of death. The pathos is getting a bit much in places even for me, and will be worse for … probably everybody else? I can think of like two people who might like this book as much as I did. But man. Not five stars because I reserve that rating for life-changing stuff, and also because I’m not convinced that some of the plot (the golem) was necessary, and because of a fair bit of black-and-white despite the author’s best intention. But still, great stuff. Oh also, the Author’s Note at the end not only explains why she wrote the book, and that her first contact with (or rather first time in) Hungary was in 2018 and fell head-first into a research hole, no: She also acknowledges how the revolution is nowadays used for propaganda, and how antisemitism was and is present on all sides. And then she provides a bibliography. My standards for author research have been raised and I’ll feel more justified in grumping about badly researched books from here on out.

I liked Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes – even though the ending in itself felt predictable, it was very clear that the journey to that ending was the core of the book. It's not an easy question: How much does intelligence determine who we are, and what would happen if our intelligence were to rapidly in- or decrease? While I liked the concept of the book, I can't say that I enjoyed it though … it felt too stressfull with a hint of the kafkaesque for that.

Wow! This book has bits of Charles Stross in it (as in: secret modern British agency dealing with the supernatural), but at the same time it's totally different. More action oriented, fast-paced, witty, and it never felt like a Laundry knockoff. I'm really interested in where the sequel is going. (I devoured it in one day, so the mystery might not hold up quite as well if you take time to, y'know, think in between. But I devoured it in one day because it was just. so. good.) Upon re-read: didn't like it that much anymore. Very popcorn read, and the amounts of implausible competence and "wtf where did you get the funding" kept me irritated.

Everything here sucks: The protagonists are all a mix of stupid, unreflected, and plain assholes. There’s a distinct lack of imagination: e.g. in a world without men, lesbians are still somehow repulsive and gender roles are well and alive. All the stories left me with an icky and depressed feeling (apart from the alien picnic one, I suppose). There’s a tendency to blame the translators for this, but first of all, these issues are with the content way more than with the language, and secondly, these issues are stable across all the stories and different translators, so I really think it’s just the text that’s … nah.

Was rather happy to forget much of this book, and remembering it a year and a half later for the review makes me feel like when I read it: indifferent and like I could to much better things with my time. The best thing about this book was commiserating about the reading experience at book club. It’s not event that it feels like the author wanted to do a lot and failed, it just feels meh and irrelevant whatever it does, like not even the author cared.

Solid, but also rambling and less tight than the previous books. More nods towards names you already know, but that didn’t add too much in themselves, more as a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, like having one of the women in last-minute bow-training called Penthesilea. I don’t know. It’s a good book, but it doesn’t reach the epic beauty of the first one. Each individual bit is good, but the pacing is less tight than I had hoped for. Still a great take on the Trojan war, and a worthy conclusion to a very impressive trilogy.

The distance between the aristocrats and the lowest of the low is drawn fairly neatly, even though we only see the criminal underworld. As always, there are just a tad too many witticisms for my taste, but the story is decent, and, crucially, the author isn't pretending that his protagonist is actually cool-just-edgy for the most part (think Dresden Files). I liked that Rhaine was an ambiguous character, with both agency and stupidity, and was acknowledged as such. Also that there is no glorification of violence, no matter the amount going on. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Reviewing this book a year and a half after reading it is rough, because I … barely remember reading it, tbh. But after going through my notes, a lot of it seeped into my thoughts, especially the attitude of “don’t try to do the thing, instead try to become a person who does the thing”, which I think is a really useful frame. I’d like to put more of this into action, but the trouble is that it requires some big introspection answering the questions “Who am I” and “Who would I like to be” in some level of detail. Having turned my entire life upside down in response to some introspection in my early 20s, I’m well aware of the consequences this kind of thing can have, so I’m cautious to engage with it. This is also why I didn’t finish the book – I got a lot of useful stuff out of it, and then put it aside because these things take time. As you can tell from the sheer length of my notes, I got something out of it regardless. The book btw also gives plenty of examples of different internal experiences and modalities, which I really enjoyed. And generally introducing the concept of not just paying attention of how your inner representation of things looks, but also being able to change it, was super valuable to me. Self-concept and self-esteem Self-concept is like a map of who you are – as any map, it’s got inaccuracies and your weird own map projection going on, but also like a map, it’s still helpful when you need to navigate a situation without deriving your stance from first principles every time. Self-esteem is generated when your actions are in line with your self-concept, e.g. if you think of yourself as a kind person, and then you do something kind, you feel good about yourself. So if your self-concept (the flawed map) is aligned with your actual values, you’re building confidence and self-esteem. Low self-esteem then is often the result of missing this alignment – most often because you accept externally-presented values (ie. you compare yourself to others and integrate what you see into your self-concept, even though it doesn’t fit in with your values). The goal of the book is to develop a self-concept that results in self-esteem. Values Your values are, in the end, abstracted versions of what’s important to you. As there are many things that are important to you, it’s helpful to prioritise your values – though a strict hierarchy isn’t possible, of course, as your values are context-dependent. Plus, values change with time and experience. And that’s good! When your values turn into a strict hierarchy, that’s often expressed in disorders, e.g. Bulimia or Anorexia. You can’t and shouldn’t derive your values from first principles – that’s spherical cow thinking. If you don’t already have a decent idea of your values (what’s important to you and what you like/dislike), put yourself in as many different experiences as possible (both for real and imaginary) and pay attention to your reactions. Think about the last time you did something you were not satisfied with – what values were expressed, what values were ignored? How would these feelings or values change if the situation had been different? Strength of bad feelings is a pretty good predictor of how important the quality is to you that was violated. And they can also point at more important values that you perceive(d) as conflicting and chose over the other value (of course, that’s not always the case. Sometimes you just make mistakes.) Self-concept and actions You act in accordance with your self-concept as much as possible (by definition, kinda), so changing your self-concept will change how you act, even if that’s not intentional. If in your self-concept being poor and reckless driving is coupled – no matter the reason – and you start earning a good salary, chances are, that your driving style will change along the way. You may not even remember the earlier behaviour after it has changed if it was just a result of your self-concept, and not in itself important to you. Changing your self-concept in order to change your actions is also really powerful, because you can use one successful change to power the next ones, because you’ll also incorporate “I’m a person who can change” into your self-concept. One technique is all about visualisation (cf Wachter!) – imagine the person who you would be if you were to act like you want to act, and connecting this image with the relevant situations. The important part is that when you work on this visualisation, you don’t see yourself performing the target actions, and instead, you focus on the kind of person who would behave like that, and integrate that with your self-concept. Healthy vs unhealthy self-concept You want to end up with a self-concept that is all you. You want to be able to enter a room and radiate your you-ness so that you don’t need to say or do anything for people to read who you are in your ~presence (he gets more specific than that, but I think he ignores how different people may want to be). In any case, you want your self-concept to be durable and resilient (so you can rely on it) but also self-correcting and responding to feedback (continuously, to avoid a jarring shock when you realise your self-concept is 20 years out of date), because it should also be accurate (matching your actions and values) unconscious and automatic, because you can’t sustain constant thought about who you are – think flow state connecting you with others rather than separating free from self-importance and arrogance, because if you land in that cycle, good luck breaking out QUESTION: Your self-concept being inaccurate and out of date is bad. But how is this different from changing your self-concept to somebody you are not (yet, at least)? How do you integrate your self-concept with what is instead of what ought to be? This is an NLP book, so it gets a bit woo / goes on to rewrite memories. What’s the harm (it says, and I’d agree, if your memories only impacted yourself). Painful memories are, according to the book, parts of yourself that are split off. It’s not really about the past situation/person anymore, it’s just a part of you that is alienated and that you would do better to integrate (cf Feeding Your Demons). Explore your self-concept Start with something that you know to be true of yourself and that you like, something of reasonable medium scope. This is something that comes up when you say “I am –”, and not something that is tiny and irrelevant, or of cosmic size. If you tend to think more about things you do – like care for people – you can use that to arrive at a self-stantement like “I am caring”. Choose something that is reliable about yourself, and that you like. (I’m omitting the group exercises here, as I don’t foresee having a group available to do this, though I really believe that talking these things through with others would be tremendously helpful, because it opens your eyes to possible differences and makes it easier to see what is you.) Next, notice how you represent this quality internally to yourself – your inner summary (a word, feeling, picture, combination …) – what springs to mind when you lean into this. Then go from there and explore your “database” of experiences and memories that underlie this quality. Pay attention to how this database is structured for you: do you actually visualise picking out memories (from files, a list, floating images)? Try different ways of imagining your internal database, of finding experiences in your huge archive of memories. This is important! For example, determine where you are on the following criteria, and, crucially, if you can modulate them. Do you have a ton of examples or just two or three? Do you feel more confident about it if you increase the number, or are two or three strong examples better for you? Where are your examples/memories located within you / your inner space / …. Experiment with moving it higher/lower/closer/farther away/louder/quieter/warmer/colder, whatever makes sense in context. Can you see all or several at once, or only one? Can you peek at others while focusing on one / know how many others there are? You definitely want to end up with some way to flexibly switch between experiences, no matter how you structure and represent it internally – both sequential and simultaneous works, though simultaneous has a lot of advantages. Are the experiences visual? Auditory? Kinetic? …? Can you change this? Can you easily recall them? If so, do you recall an abstract or do/can you reexperience them? Now look at what happens when you recall an experience in context, and try removing the context, so that just the-person-who-does/is remains: which feels stronger and more solid? What is present in the most convincing memories: size, brightness, colour, etc, that make them more robust and substantial to you? When do your examples take place? Past, present, future? How far in the past? Can you focus on achieving a good, even spread here, if appropriate. How do things change if you put future examples in? Try this both with things that are likely to happen/similar as the past, and also with new contexts that were not connected to this self-concept before. More about future examples in the next section. Where do they take place? You don’t want all your examples be from one place (home, school, etc) What is the POV? What happens when you switch to an observer POV, or even the other person’s position? This can both provide valuable feedback if your example is skewed, and also allow you to fully take in how you are when you express the quality you’re focusing on. Now consider what happens when you get feedback that is not in line with your self-concept. This is always a bit jarring and unpleasant, and the two natural reactions (if you get past the bristling denial) are to amend your self-concept or to amend your actions. How is this kind of conflict represented internally for you, and how can you make sure you’re sensitive to it and notice it as soon as possible (as noticing and reconciling your actions and your self-concept sooner rather than later is easier, before the gap is large, and also will make you happier.) An interesting insight is that working with a large number of examples results in a self-concept that is both more stable AND more sensitive to feedback, because it’s easier to see discrepancies. This also means including many smaller less important seeming examples rather than just near-life-changing situations. If you are more secure in who you are due to the many examples you can rely on, you can feel more open curiosity when you notice or are presented with counter-examples or conflict, rather than feeling like your self-concept in under attack. Self-concept and time The distinction between self and behaviour is a bit artificial (you are what you do), but it’s still useful to look at identity as kind of the abstracted form of your behaviours, a form that exists and is recognisable in different contexts. Creating future examples is very handy – it allows you to notice discrepancies in advance and adjust for them. The more detailled your future examples are, the better. It is also an open-minded approach towards the future: when you make promises or vows etc, you lock yourself in, and assume that you know better now than you will in the future. But presumably you’ll continue to learn and grow, and then get to feel bad when you have to go back on your previous vow because you improved your understanding, etc. Make your future examples as detailled and vivid as possible, referring to last chapter’s checklist of what works for you in terms of solid experiences in your database. Then lean into the example and ask yourself: “Is there a problem with this? Is any part of me against this?”, and listen carefully (cf IFS!). This is where you notice when you make too ambitious plans, or plans divorced from who you actually are. Even though the future examples should be vivid, they should also retain some vagueness, especially regarding circumstances. Don’t lock yourself into too specific situations: Remember, we’re still aiming at the type of person you are, not at specific actions. Treat it as a forecast, a potential event, and stop before it feels too compelling. The other aspect of time in your examples is that an even spread in the past is really useful if possible. And spotting periods that are not present (e.g. school years) is very telling and should be investigated. Changing stored experiences Try to modulate your stored experience – a first good step is to find distortions and get rid of them. For example: Check if your appearance in your stored experiences is generally positive/complimentary or not. A small example would be changing the posture you have in your stored experiences. If you make yourself appear more upright and confident in them, there are good chances for that to carry over. If you are unattractive/shy/other-negative-attribute-you-do-not-endorse in all your stored examples, then any tiem you refer to an example, you’ll strengthen the negative attribute. This isn’t to say that you should actively distort the image – just to be vigilant for harmful distortions, both positive and negative. Counterexamples: utilising mistakes You are not a saint. No matter what quality you endorse or display, you won’t be 100% consistent in it. The most kind person can be unthinkingly hurtful. The most honest person lies. We all have a shadow, and we should rather ~~eat it~~ integrate it than fight or ignore it. Including counterexamples in your database serves multiple purposes. First off, it supports a warning system: they illustrate how you have fallen short, and how you may fall short again in the future, so you can try to avoid that. Learning from mistakes, imagine! And of course, the earlier you get started, the better. Secondly, they help you avoid catastrophising: they make it clear that falling short is part of life, and that the next time it happens, it’s not changing who you are or an identity-shattering event. Of course, we want to make sure that the stored counterexamples don’t encourage more of the same behaviour, like the stored real examples do. There are two things we should do, for this reason: Make the counter-examples less prominent in some way that makes sense in the internal storage context (b/w or sepia, muted, smaller, etc), and make sure to only include past counter-examples, no future theories. When you look at your counterexamples, try to find a factor that is common to them. Once you’ve identified their commonalities, you can also use this to narrow the scope of your initial statement to be more realistic: “I am kind, as long as I am not ravenously hungry, in which case, run for your life”, or “I am a motivated person, as long as I am not exhausted and need to let my body recover”, etc. Or, you could use it to widen/change the scope: “I am a good planner on long timelines, even though I may look distracted in short-term planning instances.” You may even find that you can integrate the examples and counter-examples into illustrating a larger and more important quality. This is also helpful in letting go of guilt: Reframe the implied “I didn’t follow my values” into “I encountered conflicting values, and followed one of them, because I couldn’t see how I could reconcile them”. Not only is this more balanced, it also makes it obvious what to look at in order to deal better in the future. You could also transform your counterexamples. You could link it to a positive transformation that occurred later (“I learned from this”), or even blend them so they transform directly into one another. Building a new quality Knowing that you can change your self-concept, what should you build? The first impulse will often be to radically change something you dislike about yourself. But. It’s really very hard to build the opposite of an existing self-concept. It’s better to pick something else that’s productive/helpful, but not in direct opposition to something established. When somebody sees themself as inherently lazy, then building up a self-image of “I am productive” will lead to a lot of inner conflict. It’s easier to build something up that softens or complements the other attribute – e.g. if you or others think you are too critical, you could add a component of acceptance, or of kindness, in order to let you still be critical, but be less hurtful/jarring. Starting from other people’s criticisms is an alright idea for attributes to pick, though make sure you actually want to make those changes and are not blindly accepting other people’s guidance. You could also look at people you admire or like, and consider if there is any behaviour of theirs that you want to make yours. This also goes in general: no matter what attribute you’re incorporating into your self-concept, make sure to make it fully your own. The best strategy is to pay attention to your collection of examples and your inner reactions to them – even when you start out with somebody else’s attribute, you’ll want to change it to be appropriate to your age/gender/who you are. If you ignore the good advice and want to change an attribute you already have in your self-concept, you’ll start by building up and reconciling counter-examples. But man, hard work. You start by collecting counter-examples. Lots and lots and lots – start with 50. And once you have those, aggregate them into a big “I am x” collection. If you can’t find examples, that usually means you are being a perfectionst about it. Think smaller. But if you really can’t find any or enough, you could also start from other people’s experiences, putting yourself in their shoes, and past-/future-pacing them into your own life. (NLP hits hard here.) This is the easiest if it’s something that you unabiguously want, with nothing getting in the way and subtly keeping you from it. That … won’t be the majority of the time. Be honest about this. Visualise the different you, and ask yourself if you could be like that right now, would you have any objections? And then listen closely. (here ends chapter 9)

Like the last time, I just can't get into this book. I can appreciate the characters and the writing and the depth. I do think that the "Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say …" is funny. I can see how the grit and darkness can be enjoyed. But man, I just don't like it. It's not even the brutality, I think it's mostly the pacing and the sense of impending doom without any sort of hope for help. I absolutely believe Abercrombie will let all of this civilisation fall and make us watch, and like, I get enough of that IRL. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Deep wisdom, calm storytelling, and some love shining through: I love Earthsea a lot, and re-reading this book made me very happy. Apart from the near-lyrical style, I was also surprised to remember that the story is quite dense, and there as much story in this book as many others would fit in a trilogy nowadays (growing up, mastering school, mastering the antagonist, for example?).

I tend to really like the experimental stuff, especially when it’s playing with language, and very especially epic poetry. So why didn’t this work for me? I don’t know. Harder for a non-native speaker to get into, I guess, because it runs on word-level vibes? Or maybe it’s that I spent half my time frustrated with the top/bottom format of the book – I’m used to works that are printed in two languages being side-by-side, and find that much easier to read. I constantly lost my place and then the flow was gone, and … eh. I don’t know. I’m sad that this wasn’t for me.

Isekai parody, making a rock go on a quest in a broken levelling system. Surprisingly cute for the genre-aware. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Difficult to tie off a series like this (and I'm perpetually grateful for the one-shots and shorts illuminating the time after the main plot's end). There is too much going on, but I found all the moving parts interesting in the end, and was not disappointed at all. Such a good series/universe. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

I could read basketofnovas for a week straight without getting sick of the stories tbh, even though I found the second part getting a bit stuck on occasion, especially in fleshing out the political system. It all comes together once you've read all the one-shots and extended universe, but the first experience was not perfect. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

The brilliantly difficult series is a top contender for my favourite fanfic series. It's ambitious, and it sometimes fails, but especially if you read the one-shots, the author ties it together so well. Possibly the only AO3 author I will read no matter what. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

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.”

Spent my February reading all the good fics. This one starts as a standard re-sort, then goes sideways into a beautiful take on dark magic, rituals, friendship and love. Like, some of these rituals I just want to adopt for myself. Let's just not talk about the appalling Latin, though. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

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.

This author just gets queer fanfics. Nice takes on reincarnation, dysphoria, old wisdom and new hormones. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Again, actually nice fanfic – same author as the last one, so that's not too surprising. Covers the whole story. Bit standard and boring in places, but then picks up, with some actual foreshadowing. Cedric's death hits much harder than in the books now that there is an actual character involved. Politics, war, buildup and planning. Portraits, departures from cannon, animagi side plots, ancient lore: what's not to love? Enby Tonks in a good relationship, and much queer goodness. Too many happy relationships and bullshit betrothals, but what can you do. A new primary school. A national team. Happily ever after. yeah, this was nice. On re-read: The initial rush through third year is very "we all know what's going on here, right?", but otoh – we do all know what's going on, so there. It's very hard on the "comfort" side of hurt-comfort, with not a ton of tension, but y'know, popcorn reads are good, too. Harry discovering that he's gay by being both into his future boyfriend and totally crushing on the way-too-cool Bill was a nice touch. Towards the end, the fic was very skimmable – in increasingly shorter intervals, the author seemed to decide that now would be a good time for a smut/romance chapter, and they were very same-y. You get very much what's on the tin. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Actually sweet fanfic. Things happen, most of them are not nonsensical, the fluff is somewhat earned and slow to build. Good finale, but then drags on into an overly excessive (even by fanfic standards) happily-ever-after. Anywho, fun. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

We call it "trying too hard". Falls down all the terrible pitfalls of terrible fanfic. (You know, among the fanfic that is readable and has an understanding of grammar and punctuation.) This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Still more silly super-hero, super-villain super-drama. I did like parts of the prison arc, actually, but the general protagonist idiocy was just off the charts. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Sigh. Relationships. Brands. Blah. Any decent fanfic series inevitable goes insane. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Getting longer, and more whimsical, not for the better. But the whole wand-branding thing is more than interesting, though already shows sings of shoddy execution, sadly. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Actually decent. Some development, some betrayal, blah. Not great, but could be so much worse. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Pretty alright. Drew me in with the back-in-time stuff, and apparently I read the entire series. PTSD stuff, as is only right. New friendships. blah. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

More of the same. Unreliable narrator, which was fun in places. Very slow burn. Too much patience for this shit, but what can you do. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Old age was generally precarious and on the margins in the Middle Ages. However, the status and practical circumstances of old people varied by country, century, class, identity and so on, and the results are a fascinating study in options. It's much harder to figure out, given all these options, what may have been common (as no historian wants to make calls about that!), but I still appreciated seeing the variety and details come to life. Notes Who is old? Maimonides proposed a purely subjective yardstick for old age in a woman: ‘Who is an old woman? One who is called old and does not protest.’ Of course, medieval philosophers loved to come up with lists of stages and categories: Augustine divides life into six phases, with old age beginning at 60 (and today's geriatric specialists mostly agree and put it at 60-70). Four and seven stages were also popular – with much variety, including "old age (45-70), very old age (70–death)" (Dante), "old age (50-70), decreptitude (70-death)", 58, 60, 72, enfeeblement starting at 60, even 40 (Erasmus) etc Official status is maybe a better way to determine who is old: a person's weregeld sinks by age in the laws of the Visigoths (500 solidi aged 20–50, 200 aged 50–65, 100 solidi afterwards; with women going from 250 to also 200, then 100), which looks pretty similar to what happens in the bible. Other relevant laws are the ones excluding old people from required taxes or labour duties, in the field or the city watch, for example. Common age barriers were 60 (like in the Roman Republic and Empire) and 70. Retirement depended strongly on personal circumstances and demographics, much less on age. For women, the matter was somewhat easier, as people could and would just point at menopause, making women count as old in their late 40sor early 50s. But it seems that sometimes, women were only considered old at around the same age as men, say 60, and before then had a special status after they couldn't get pregnant anymore till the onset of old age. Notably some people take letters from Michelangelo and Petrarch in their 40s complaining about their old age as a sign that people counted as "old" much earlier back then; but this book shows beautifully that they were just whining/joking, just like people do today, by comparing it with their much later letters and career. At the same time, people around 40 could easily also be described as too young, eg when it came to rank and titles, e.g. becoming a prior or a bishop. Florence, being less of a gerontocracy than Venice, still only allowed people over 45 to be elected to their hightest posts. The lowest upper limit to be found was in Lucca, where men over 55 were barred from office. (Similar limits existed for 60 and 70 year old men in other cities.) Lots of negative characteristics were attributed to old people: Stinginess due to anxiety over their property dwindling and fear of being destitute. Old people were low status – by law often seen as somewhat feeble-minded, reverting to (the bad aspects of) childhood. The old are regularly listed as the recipients of alms just like the ill and the poorest of the poor, and are regularly grouped in with other low status groups like women and slaves (Aquinas). Albertus Magnus says that the old man is not bitter, but that he feels nothing anymore, like a lamp to go out, yikes. Demographics Life expectancy got a lot better in the twelfth and thirteenth century, then first gradually and then drastically declined in the fourteenth century with the Black Death. In Florence, in 1300, life expectancy (which includes all child deaths) at birth was 40; in 1375 it was 18, in 1400 it was 20, in 1425 it was 28. But those who survived childhood had a fair chance to live to be 50, 60 or 70 years old. As a rough average across regions and times, a medieval person aged 20-25 had a life expectancy of 30 years. However, with the Black Death, the percentage of old people actually increased to something like 15%, whereas before it was at 8%. (In 1984, it was 14% in the "developed world", and stands to reach 20% now.) So for about a hundred years during the Black Death, demographics looked as "modern" as they wouldn't again until now. Women had a lower life expectancy in the Early Middle Ages due to child birth, but it then rose (comparatively) during the High Middle Ages, when at least in the cities, women often had physically lighter work and did not fight in the wars many men were embroiled in. If you took into account only natural death, women and men in ducal families in England (1300-1500) had roughly the same life expectancy at age 20 (31 years), but if you took into account violent death, the life expectancy of the men aged 20 dropped to 21 years. The old body Biologically, aging looked much like it does today, only with less support, and has been observed well: Wrinkly skin, white hair or loss of hair, more mucus, tremors, loss of teeth, hearing difficulties, inflammation especially of the eyes, blindness, low energy, increased difficulty moving and breathing. And, mentally: insomnia, restlessness, irritability, forgetfulness, gullibility, inability to recognise others or even themselves. Health advice often focused on making old age more bearable, recognising that there was no stopping the decline, only possibly ways of prolonging it. (Of course, blah blah humours, old men are cold and dry etc, old women cold and wet because they hold in their period.). Light activity was advised ("use it or lose it" even then), warm food (focus on young animals), small meals three times a day, diluted wine, fresh milk, a sunny well-heated room, and little excitement or work or strain. As little as possible stressful medical interventions like bleeding. (We have four very interesting essays on "The Sober Life" by Alvise Cornaro, written when he was 83, 86, 91, and 95, before his death aged 98). Before the twelfth century, old people were often shown as nearly evil. With the general rehabilitation of the body in Christianity in the twelfth cetury, the general attitude started to sometimes include the virtues of old age, such as growth of wisdom and diminuation of desires. Conduct There are generally both positive and negative attributes and behaviours attributed to old age, and writers used the ones that were more convenient to their current writing. To a certain degree, there was understanding, especially for the often attributed stinginess due to their economic precariousness. It was also noted how personality and general life affected old age immediately. But generally, in the Middle Ages there was less positive connotation to old age than eg in Rome before (though, of course, mockery of old age occurs in all time periods). Loss of memory was verging on a moral failure, even. Old men were mocked if they were stingy, sexually active, grumpy, frail, forgetful etc. Marriages between very old men and young women were seen an unseemly. (Which means they happened, of course, just to general gossip.) A person's age was also mostly not precisely known. The clergy often kept track of their own fairly well, but we can see from official investigation records that getting somebody's precise age was often impossible (and frequently rounded up). Investigations into age was also common in places with a retirement age – we have lots of records like that from England. Old people were often requested for all sorts of land disputes, too, as the transition to written records took centuries and continued to be patchy for a long time. (The rehabilitation of Joan of Arc talked to her contemporaries, who were by then 70-80 years old.) In this context, old women were also often used as interface to interact with and inspect the bodies of younger women (eg. for rape accusations, pregnancy, lactation etc). Old women were also (sometimes by law!) preferred as housekeepers for clergy. Parents Families and aging parents were handled differently across time and space. Generally, Southern Europe tended more to have a patriarch. There was a lot of literature (biblical, Roman, Icelandic sagas, everywhere really) admonishing about reciprocal giving and taking care of aging parents – it was so clear and understood that it mostly didn't even make its way into law, though neglect of aging parents sometimes was defined as a crime. There was also – always and everywhere – the anxiety of being disadvantaged when turning over the family business to the younger generation (cf King Lear). Lots was written about this: children were admonished, but so were parents: to consider their future old age when rearing their children. Sometimes the advice was also to not turn over ownership to children, just to be safe. Clergy Minimum ages in the church weren't terribly high; you could become a bishop aged 30, a priest by 25, a deacon by 20. Retirement happened in advanced age or never – especially people in power, like abbots or bishops frequently died old while still maintaining their position. Not to mention popes: mostly elected in their 50s or 60s, and of course sticking around forever. Priests generally could draw some income from their post, so-called benefices, but those who couldn't, ended up impoverished and hoping to find space in special almshouses for clergy, something that when combined approached, but never reached, a pension scheme for priests. (This relaxed after the Black Death, when there were the same number of benefices, but fewer priests.) Minimum ages for monks basically didn't exist, though nuns were often also older women joining a convent late in life. But generally, old men and women retiring to a monastery did not actually join the order, they just made a donation (a lump sum or ongoing) and got room, board, and support in their final years. Drawing from this, Roger Bacon seems like the only one thinking constructively about old age. In his utopian writings, he talks about state-sponsored alms for the old, the option of actual assisted suicide and if that was refused, care till death. Old monks were cared for much like that, though without enjoying any special status. Interestingly enough, btw, age expectancy in monasteries declined during the plagues, by nearly as much as in the outside world, even in monasteries that kept fairly aloof. Rulers and soldiers Kings, as opposed to popes, were often young. Some crowned as minors, and most coming into power between their late teens and early thirties, because kings reach the throne following the death of their father, and kings also didn't tend to live very long. Between 1000 and 1400, there was one European King to die in his 70s, and very few in their 60s. Interestingly enough, when ~Germany (I know, I know) switched to an electoral monarchy, age of the candidate seems to have been relatively unimportant. In contrast, Italian leaders tended to be at least middle-aged, often old or very very old (hi, Venice). Bavarian laws actually defined incompetence in age in order to determine when a duke might oust his father: a leader had to be neither blind nor deaf, could bear arms and mount his horse, go to war, participate in legal debate, judge his people, obey the king. Life expectancy in the nobility was rather low, lots of violent death. Old men usually performed some military function of their estate until death. (And sometimes still rode to battle – the English regent in 1216, William Marshall, still took part in battles when he was 72.) But that was the exception – old knights were not generally respected. Soldiers and mercenaries had it hard in old age. No income, no pension, wounds and so on. Some had lifetime contracts that included retirement in money or lifetime property, salary, or grants. Here, the book also mentions some super cool women, especially Eleanor of Aquitaine, but also Matilda of Tuscany, Katherine Neville and Margaret, Countess of Flanders and Hainault. Widowed noblewomen were economically secure, though with little power apart from manorial influence. The widow's rights to a dower were acknowledged througout the feudal world. They might stick around their court, or go elsewhere because they didn't get on with their children. Urban society Nobody could make a banker, merchant, physician, notary or artisan retire. People of that class got comparatively olds. However, economic distress often happened to merchants their past 50s (where they first reached their height of prosperity), as they had to start emancipating their sons (usually when they were around 16, much younger than emancipation in other similar vocations), including transferral of property; provide dowries for their daughters and granddaughters, offer loans to poorer family members etc. Sometimes, the business was entirely transferred to the son, with legal agreements about pensions paid to the father. Knowledge workers like physicians (and midwives!) were often preferred at old age, when they had a lot of experience. Artisans never retired, just changed how much they worked, and gave the more strenuous tasks to younger workers. They also received help from their guilds or fraternities, who stood by with legal aid, loans, support for widows and children, and sometimes a sort of pension for those who were unable to work anymore, plus the right to dine at the guild. Larger more prosperous guilds or fraternities would even have rooms in hospitals. Women in this social strata were very secure in their old age, as they would receive their husband's pension or a dower or dowry after their deaths. Some even could take on their late husband's role in the workshop and guild. In the city, old parents sometimes resided with family, but it was not the rule. Households in Florence in 1430 were only 3.8 people on average, and only 3% of households had ten or more inhabitants. (I don't think either is counting servants fwiw). Pensions were also around, and could be purchased to receive regular payments later, to be transferred to widows sometimes, and in various forms (money, room and board, etc), sometimes in return for part of their belongings after death. Servants sometimes received bequests like that, but more often one-time payments. Peasants The peasantry has the highest local variance in arrangements, both for inheritance and dealing with aged parents. Sometimes the father would choose the inheriting son, sometimes the property was split, sometimes the oldest son or oldest child inherited by default. Often this was decided only by local custom and the family in question with no oversight, even when there was technically rulership by a feudal lord. The two fundamental modes of retirement were either holding on to control despite not working any longer, or making a son head of the household and retiring. In southern Europe, the former was more common, with all sons remaining subject to their father's authority. The only property sons could obtain in their father's lifetime would be inherited from their mother. He could also marry away, but even then his life and property remained under his father's authority. This meant that the older a man became, the more property he controlled, especially as families in rural areas were started at younger ages. His sons and sons-in-laws who joined his side of the family were completely dependent and couldn't even spend more than a few coins without his permission. Peasant widows would stay with their household, which they could head or assist, depending on local trandition (in Tuscany, for example, the sons took over, whereas in France, the widow led the household). Other modes included brothers remaining with the property even when they married, and working it jointly. In the second model, more common in northern Europe, aging peasants retired and turned the property over to their children, either the oldest or a chosen son. How this went over depended on the family – anything from calm retirement to being suddenly restricted in everything was possible. Retirement agreements sometimes stipulated a minimum of maintenance in food, living space, which secured the old peasant's quality of life in case their children grew stingy or cruel. Some agreements were more meticulous than others (even enumerating food items and quantities), either mirroring education or trust issues, or both, who knows. Retiring couples also sometimes received a small cottage or hut away from the main property. Complaints about broken agreements and mistreatment abound, with jurors awarding fines etc. An old peasant's status was reduced, but their wisdom still made them important to the community. However, landless cottagers or smallholders had it much worse. They often became paupers, gleaning the fields or retreating to poorhouses. Prosperous peasants in Austria and Norway often kept ageing hired labourers around. Charitable organisations Awareness of property was coupled with a duty of charity. Almsgiving was basically mandated by the Church. The medieval concept of charity included poor relief, donations to monasteries, to the construction and maintenance of churches, bridge building and road mending, to hostels for pilgrims. Contributions both during life and in wills were normal. It's remarkable, though, that in most stories about charity that were common at the time, old people are not mentioned, though in practice, they received assistance just like other groups in need. Almshouses were never quite sufficient. After the Black Death, there was less willingness to help. Poor people received food from monasteries and almshouses, but also for other duties, like walking in funeral parades.

Even more fluff, lots of recaps, no new conclusion, some unwarranted angst immediately alleviated with more fluff, an ambivalent ending, and too much focus on a non-workable economy. Not a fan, but if you loved the first one and just want more, then this is what you want. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

After not getting on too well with Wayfarers (I liked it, but too fluffy, no desire to go back), this book worked much better for me. Some of that is "right place, right time", of course, but definitely more my thing than Wayfarers. Discounting the emotional bits, I do think the book could stand to be built better – the narration is occasionally very plain and sometimes approaching shoddy. But hey, the ideas and feelings make it easy to gloss over that and enjoy it regardless. (Also, I cannot read this kind of fiction without thinking of how Delany would dissect it.) This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

This is not a bad book, and I like Sarah Pinsker a lot. I liked it, and it put my biggest worry at rest: that she wouldn't manage the transition from amazing short stories well. Her plot arc might be a bit wobbly, but her character work is incredible (and vibes for any given scene are obviously always on point). I'm still torn between three and four stars, because the twist wasn't a twist and the message was rather clear, but I'm in a mood to be generous, possibly due to the queer rep and how it made me feel feelings. Possibly feelings I wasn't ready for: It was written in 2019, published in September, but a pandemic with resulting never-ending oppressive lock-down is a major plot point. And how terrible things feel when everything is digital and nothing is real and the only people you see are your parents in the middle of nowhere or your unsafe insane flatmates in a locked-down city. So, you know. That kind of feelings. Two protagonists: the cool old musician who has to make do illegally, because she's not buying into the VR system, and the young woman growing up with all this and feeling very anxious about people, germs, and everything (and holy writing batman, that was well-written). Lots of vibes. Lots of excellent writing. Lots of pain. Not sure about the ending, and stuff, and it did still feel a bit episodic (solid choice when your biggest strength are excellent short stories!), but it made me happy to see Sarah Pinsker succeed at what she set out to do. She does all the things well, but I think the biggest one are vibes: How to feel anxious in a crowd. How to feel amazing in a crowd. How to feel live music come alive in your body. Man, so many good descriptions of music! (And a surprising amount of digital rights / privacy activism.) Also: “We should be getting back to normal,” one would say. “Before we forget what normal is.” “We have to find a new normal,” said another. I knew all their names by then, but it didn’t really matter who said what. It was the same conversation, over and over. Wonder what it felt like publishing this in 2019, and then waking up in 2020. Also, lmao at Superwally and the employee motivation posters: "You are valued but replaceable" is so on the nose but still made me laugh. But also the super invasive work for them as tech support ("Good job! The customer could hear your smile :)". Also also: Super cool ideas about people having playable tattoos and other musical body mods. Hell yeah. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

You could generally call me an anecdote enjoyer: even when I snark about useless anecdotes in self-help books, I like the reading experience. But this book was … a lot of repetitive anecdotes, interrupted only by equally repetitive "movement good" level info. Granted, there's also quite a bit of science (evolution, hormones, brain chemistry) with actual citations, but it all felt very low-relevance and not super trustworthy. That might be me overcorrecting for the replication crisis, but also I'm not actually interested in what the brain chemicals are called that start being active when I move for 20 minutes etc. Notes Being physically active makes you happy. This is 90% of the book. For example, movement increases happiness even in hospice patients and cures anxiety, whereas reducing your step count can more or less directly induce depression. She quotes ~5.5k steps as being little enough to lead to feelings of anxiety and depression. This bit wasn't in Born To Run, I think: Humans are the only primates to have a nuchal ligament, a bit of connective tissue between skull and spine, usually found in other running species like wolves and horses. (Keeps your head from bobbing when your run.) (And yes, runner's high comes from moderate activity for 20+ minutes blah blah.) Another thing she keeps coming back to is how exercising together with others also makes you feel happy, grounded, and fulfilled. Of course, this has to be shown with a million anecdotes, but it's still a thing worth highlighting and nudging. Examples include volunteer movements that evolve into strong, helpful communities and so on, and also anything that makes you move in synchronicity with others (mentions the absolutely enchanting term "muscular bonding" 😳). See also: adventure races like Tough Mudder that also rely on people helping each other. Fun facts: researchers have real trouble finding people willing to stop exercising. She tries to set this up as something awesome and incredible, when it's really intuitive (if you've been exercising regularly for years, of course you don't want to stop and see your effort start draining away). Cites a study that a gym found that minimum exposure to build a reliable habit was four days per week for six weeks. Well chosen music increases performance (which is one reason many races don't allow headphones. I will never run in a race like that). I mean, who doesn't like working out to "Till I Collapse" or "Eye of the Tiger"? "Joyful movements are fast, big, and vertical. Happiness bounces, leaps, and jumps. It is upward-facing and expansive." Changing your life by changing your proprioception (or failing to do one by failing to do the other). More in favour of "Rectangles Bad": "Eighteen percent of the people in the United States say they have had an intense spiritual experience while in nature, and almost half of all mystical experiences take place in a natural setting." This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Heads-up, I read this one in German, and I thought the translation was fairly good, though in that slightly annoying overly dramatic tone of German that all German Fantasy seems to be in. So props to the translation to be tone accurate, but also, ugh. Current-ish day modern society, but witches exist and so does the inquisition. Our POV characters are a young witch and an old inquisitor. They fall for each other. Their multi-decade age gap seems to mirror the authors' age gap, and that preoccupied a lot of my attention and … ick. Ickkkk. Big "are you writing about your marriage? I really hope not." But even apart from the language and the relationship thing, I was not impressed. Now, admittedly, expecting another Vita Nostra isn't fair on anybody, but man, this just was not it. Everybody is constantly moody and obeying their every moody whim, inconsistent, and meh. Nobody is even remotely likeable, everybody sucks: Witches are somehow both legal to exist if they register and submit to state authority, and also regularly tortured. The inquisition does the torturing (what a nice protagonist to have), but also kinda sorta wants to pretend they keep the general population under control, who hate witches even worse and would just lynch them. Other mythical beings are also around and just integrated in society as enforcers, or hunted. Did I mention that everybody is incompetent, changes their opinion five times per day, is overly given to tantrums, and sucks? Also casual use of torture as just a plot device without any consequences. Ehhhh, I'm not even sure why I finished, as the ending was so muddled and overly dramatic without real purpose. Ah man, I really didn't expect this book to just suck. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Cute little story. Bonus points for the vibes and the actual playable interactive part, but somehow, despite the aging and the library and the everything, it felt superficial and didn't grab me. It's really well-done! Just, I admire it from a distance. Love that it's available online, of course – and that taking it offline would change it and make it less interactive. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Childhood favourite, especially after I found out that this wasn't a magical fairytale about living with a lion in the middle of Moscow, but that it was reality! Lots of small bits that I loved, especially how Chaplina talked about her work in the zoo.

Big Dumb Object, but without the Dumb, as the Object is actually load-bearing and has context and faux-science attached to it. Sadly not great for me: The old sci-fi disease of being better at conjuring up scenarios than at having characters interact. The best indicator is that while the Big Dumb Object wasn't dumb, the protagonist (genius field-medalist scientist) had all the feeling and impact of a prop with a hand-written "genius btw" sign attached. That sounds a bit harsh: The book did start out pretty cool, but then just dropped off and failed to convince. To be fair, there were long stretches where the characters don't interact and just think, and those worked surprisingly well! But especially the second half had way, way too many ideas and zero coherence, and then descended into science babble + "oops, we need an ending". Cool things: The fact they had procedures to take people through the shock-and-awe they experienced when seeing the object the first time. The handling of crew relationships. Got smartphones about right. Stupid things: the Russians (good god, the potato). The futurist alien society – there were enough cool ideas in there to fill three books, and none of them got to shine. The ending. The sex. Side note 1: It was pretty hard to judge how old the book was: the mood is very "processing the height of the cold wars", but the characters (and particularly the treatment of women) felt modern. I only looked up when it was written halfway through, and was a bit surprised. Side note 2: this was the first book I read for my now-beloved book club! And the discussion was a lot of fun – as always, more interesting when only some people like the book. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.