Review

Heat Before Serving There’s a limit to how much grimdark fantasy I can take, and Best Served Cold found that limit. The book begins with echoes of Victor Hugo—a sense of grand tragedy and sweeping revenge—but quickly settles into a relentless bleakness where nobody is allowed a good time. Not even a little bit. Part of my struggle might have been circumstantial: this was a book to fall asleep to, and fall asleep i did many times. I experienced sections out of order and never quite found my footing in the story. But even discounting my non-ideal reading experience, I lost steam. There are only so many partially failed assassination attempts you can read before fatigue sets in, physically and mentally. ...

Let’s turn this into a review: I deliver Parcels in Beijing Competently written. One of the nicest things about reading is just the ability to get the details of a different life, one that I will perhaps never live. Hu Anyan does a great job depicting both the ups and downs of blue collar work in modern day China. What are the social relationships that form, and what are the hardest parts. I appreciate the revenge list, the things that really pissed him off, and the honesty that he never really acted on it. ...

Last week was at my college alma mater, and I was surprised at the memories that came back to me. The campus was permeated with fear and self criticism, bad memories of asking for a loan, opening a bank account with a $50 paycheck, or thinking about how to spend the last $4. What I forgot was the wild ambitions, of foundj a club, gettingperfectgrades, the compulsive gap to live in a fantasy world since incremental progress was itself depressing. Of mice and men nails this reality of being poor. Thinly sirprisj g part is how hard it is to see the reality when you are in it. ...

Author: Paul Thomas Anderson Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Completed: January 1, 2025 Last edited time: January 2, 2026 12:43 PM Status: Reviewed Type: Film What was it that made that movie so good? It had a cultural element, looking head on at the immigrant situation to paint a dystopia that is not far from our own. The vision of an alternate America haunts. The theme of being a dad, being a better self to protect one’s daughter, that also hits hard. The few lines, about biological vs genetic father, about parenting in a way that is different than peers, and the cinematic moments of being caught, of discovering that the time is now, of what it would mean to be paranoid against the US government.

Re-org-er Want to see how power al-Sharaa drove in victory to Damascus, or how a CEO reclaims a stalled culture transformation? Skip the nonfiction. Read Pretender! (But certainly don’t read this if you haven’t read the proceeding 7 novels) This is the second leg of Bren Cameron’s long logistics return. Destroyer was apex tech: shuttles, starships, and Skyfall. This one drops to trains, buses, biplanes. 1917. ...

Tea Drinker Reading Inheritor three years after the first two books, I had to reassemble Cherry’s political map from fragments. Like Bren, I often didn’t understand what was happening. What holds the book together is the widening field of conflict. On the human side, factions maneuver against each other. On the atevi side, rival interests circle the center. The multilateral tension gives the novel its energy. No single antagonist dominates. Instead, power shifts through conversation, protocol, and small missteps. ...

Not a new message, but a more first principles approach to Chinese international policy. A new author on China to keep tabs on.

Can a single book be responsible for a book slump? The Good Life is my argument for yes. Over the years, I’ve found the way to keep reading is to make sure I have multiple different streams of books. My main streams are as follows: The fiction book - Trashy, zero effort, likely just another space opera. The easy non-fiction book. Probably written in the last 5 years, history about a person, company or phenomenon. ...

**In this Familiar Multiverse ** Infinity Gate and Echo of Worlds present a familiar concept if you’ve read other multiverse stories, like Dark Matter or The Long Earth. There’s a macguffin that allows stepping into a different dimension. Some of these dimensions are imperceptibly different, while others are completely alien. I enjoyed the multiversal play and while the premise was worn, the characters and pacing were enough to keep me going. ...

A Predictable End… of the World Not nearly as interesting as Sea of Rust. Especially for those that have read Sea of Rust, there’s little point in this book. The hope would be one about near-future tactics, but that is something that books like The Last Soldier covered in more detail. The transformation from nanny into tactical paranoid bot seemed interesting but underdeveloped.