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It seems silly to put a star score on this book, or even to review it, but why not. The movie comes out tomorrow and I finished this just under the wire. My biggest takeaway was that despite never reading this I knew everything about it. A combination of Wishbone and all other media that is inspired by it meant that every story beat was familiar, but still exciting! This is the proto-epic, so obviously everything is inspired by it, but it was cool to feel the parts of Tolkien in this, and a bunch of my other favourite books. "There and Back Again" could easily be the title of this book! Even something like, finally getting back home and now having to fight a war on your own soil, the return not being what you want it to be immediately, a part of Return of the King I always liked and feels directly tied to this. I can't say I am the world's biggest Nolan fan, despite loving several of his movies, and I thought the Odyssey was a strange fit for him until I read this. T...

⭐ 8.5/10 This is the sixth (!?) Red Rising book, and all of them have been solid 8/10s... until now! The back half of this book was phenomenal, with exciting action and dramatic turns, I was completely absorbed in a way I haven't been since the first trilogy. Let me back up. This book also took me 3 months to read. I found the first half a huge slog, and like I mentioned in Dark Age I think I just forgot too much in the long gap between books. I think part of that is the author's fault, since the naming sucks! I get that this is Roman Empire but in space, but that means all these names are hard to distinguish from each other since they all sound Roman! I was thinking again of the genius of George R.R. Martin, or obviously Tolkien, names that sound regional, and in ASOIAF just knowing a last name tells you so much about what they value and what their motivations are. I finished this book and beyond Darrow and Sevro I don't really know what side most people are on. That'...

Oops, skipped a month there! I'm putting both months together now, but instead of talking about more books, I'm just picking the best of the best!     David Nicholls has quickly become one of my favourite writers, because every book that he writes is just so lively and funny and human. This one is about Charlie, who is 16 and spending a summer feeling adrift when he meets an intriguing girl, and so in order to spend more time with her he joins a theater camp, despite having no interest in Shakespeare. It's about first love, but it doesn't feel like a YA book because the story is being told by adult Charlie, who has gotten an invite to a reunion for this summer camp, and he's reflecting on his past and this experience through his adult eyes.     This book had a  bit of a slow start, as we just follow this kid who's a big mess as he begrudgingly tries acting and tries to flirt with Fran. But eventually it turns into something really lovely about first love, the me...

⭐8/10 Back in the Anneverse! I was a little hesitant to get back to it because I didn't love the last one didn't want anything to stain my view of one who has become maybe my second favorite author. However, she wrote this one while she was still young and thus likely still more passionate about writing these stories. To start, I thought this was about to be another classic. The thing about the previous entry (which she wrote 20 years later) is that it's about Anne's kids, and they are all sweet and innocent and boring. This book quickly introduces Montgomery's speciality which is bad kids (and old grouchy lady of whom there are a few)! This book killed me and it was kinda the mark of a real comic genius, always pushing the envelope a little. I'm sure it was quite scandalous in the 20s when little girls were reading about Mary Vance threatening to kill herself if others wouldn't forgive her.  But Mary takes a back seat in the book pretty quickly ...

⭐ 10/10 Another reread, but this one was special. I have basically read a single page of this a day for the past year while my son gets ready for bed. Before I start he always has to see the first picture of Gandalf and Bilbo, then the second picture of Gandalf, then we flip back to the cover to talk about Smaug on his gold. He has also started calling The Shire theme from the LOTR movies the "Bilbo Song", so this is clearly a dream come true for me. It's hard to think about this book rationally, and there were several things that stood out to me that would not be acceptable in other fantasy books I read. Mainly, there are several instances where something happens that is never foreshadowed or hardly explained, and you just accept it because its a kids book. The raven for example, just happens to overhear, and oh ya they can talk and used to all the time, but only to one specific line of men, and oh ya here is this guy Bard who talks to his arrows (my favourite part) who...

I'm a big fan of T. Kingfisher, and I stayed up late to finish her most recent release. More inspired by Snow White than a retelling, this is about the poison expert who's asked to help the poisoned Snow, but what's really going on is nothing anyone could have expected. This has all the hallmarks of Kingfisher's writing - an oddball FMC in her 30s, a unique premise, some horror elements, and a compelling romance subplot. And This might be my favourite combination yet!  YA horror that blew me away. It has dual timelines ten years apart, about Daisy facing an evil house, and Brittany investigating what happened to her. I loved how the haunted house story intertwined with complex mother-daughter relationships, forgotten Black girls, and friendships. And as a side note, it was so nice to have a book set in Canada and dropping so many Canadian references! This is a memoir written in the form of letters from the author to her son, from whom she's been separated. Homeira i...

⭐ 10/10 Wow! I mean Wow! So... this book is unreal. Shout out to Joe for the recommendation. I can't think a time I've enjoyed a book this much in recent years. This is just one of those books that has a soul to it, like it is a character in and of itself. Like the narrator's voice is coming from the very pages and spine of the book. This book is an epic, a grand tale of the old west. We follow Gus, Call, Deets, Pea Eye, Newt, and a slew of others who come in and out of the group known as the Hat Creek Outfit. One day, on the horizon, our boys see none other than Jake Spoon, an old ranger who worked along the Gus and Call during the American crusade against the natives. Jake mentions to his old comrades that there is some insane opportunity up in Montana to become successful cattle ranchers. With that, the trek begins. The boys wrangle up some horses, cattle, and cowboys to drive these steer up to the pastures of Montana. Accompanied by a prostitute named Lorena, the crew ...

This was a reread for a book club, and I'm really glad that I got the chance to do a deep reading of it. It's about Aza, who has contamination OCD, as she looks for a missing billionaire, falls in love, hangs out with her best friend, and struggles with her mental health. I have never read a book that captures the feeling of an OCD spiral so well, especially the cyclical nature of it. It's funny and realistic and poignant, and it sparked great conversations at our meeting.   This book revolves around three Filipina maids working in Singapore and their experiences as domestic workers in a wealthy country. They each have their own backgrounds and situations, but all face discrimination, abuse, and neglect in different ways. A central point is that a fellow maid gets charged with murdering her employer, even though the maids know she wasn't home when it happened, so in between work they do some investigating. I found it really eye-opening, and was a clear-eyed view of life...

⭐ 4/10 I'll start by saying I have seen the trailer for this movie and it will be an absolute smash hit. Great actors, perfect directors for something like this, fun trailer, when the story of history is told and my WeViews come back up everyone will say I am wrong. I had a friend I hadn't talked to in forever at a party last weekend say he read this and loved it and thought of me and I had to share my hot take... This book is unreadable! I am truly baffled by the universal love for this. Now let me explain, I love sci-fi, and I also really like science! I took astrophysics as an elective in university, you know, the the course where you usually take something to raise your average. This book felt like studying for an exam, but not in a way I used to enjoy. He completely bombards you with new science, but also an onslaught of explanation and experimentation. The book would pick up steam, and then there would be minutes of explaining procedure and scientific method that would c...

     ⭐ 6.5/10 This book is pretty mid. I'm not entirely sure what it is that I didn't like, it just didn't hit the way I was hoping it would. I read this book as a prerequisite for the movie that just came out because the movie looks like it has very positive reviews. If the film adaptation has good reviews, the source material must be good right? Well... sort of. This book has some interesting attributes to it. For one, this was supposed to be a critique on the Vietnam war which definitely comes through in a poignant and thought provoking manner, and the writing is fairly good for Stephen King standards which for the most part makes for an enjoyable read. I just couldn't get into it as much as I wanted to despite the interesting premise. I unfortunately feel that the premise of this book is more compelling than the work itself. Essentially, there is this long standing tradition in this book's version of America called the Long Walk. This Long Walk is a walking mar...

⭐10/10 My two favorite things: food and history! This is again not actually a book, but a university course consisting of 36 half-hour lectures. I had a good feeling about this course going in, but this became an all-timer for me very quickly. I think this course is one of the best ways to learn a general human history, a way to learn about food, and a way to learn about the development of culture and advancement. It's a specific course, but it covers a ton and is a very interesting lense to view history through. Everything has always revolved around food! The lecturer is also awesome. He's a great speaker, but also incredibly passionate and entertaining. You can tell he loves this material and is great at dividing and organizing it into bite-sized (get it??) lectures. I will always have a heart for early human history, which is the first few chapters, but some favorites I wasn't expecting were the chapters on Islamic influence on cuisine, the chapters on global...

⭐7/10 Another favorite of a Weview reader, and so I want to be careful with my criticism, but as I always say: friendships are temporary, Weview is eternal.  I don't actually have all that much to say about this one, but I think that's kinda the problem. I never disliked this book at any point, but I never fell in love either. Obviously I think I'm not the target audience, that this is mostly meant for kids, but I've loved kids books in the past. The problem with this one then is that it's really not funny like most kids books. In fact it's pretty much humourless, and so you're putting a lot of the plot, and the plot never grabbed me.  This one is well-written, and obviously a lot of thought and love went into this. There are some interesting ideas introduced, some likeable characters especially once my guy Iorek Byrnison is introduced. Another thing I'll add is that the audiobook is absolutely fantastic and possibly the best choice here.  Bu...

⭐ 6/10 The final of the McMurty collection I own, the first was a masterpiece, the second was memorable, and this was an outright dud. I read it quickly, so I wouldn't say it was terrible, but my goodness this is the horniest book I have ever read! Did not expect that. Basically a bunch of high school kids all sleeping with each other. When that gets played out, one of them starts hooking up with his football coach's wife, and she loves it. The football coach leers at the girls they used to date in a disgusting way. Other adult women show up and either flirt or sleep with these boys. There is a spontaneous trip to Mexico to visit prostitutes and watch porn then come back. The boys go to a farm drunkenly one night to get their fix in another way... just 100 pages of lust and desperation. I will say there is a thread in all three of these books of feeling like you missed the good ol' days, like something is ending and you don't know where you fit in what is coming next. ...

⭐ 8.5/10 This was a large book I read basically in a week while on vacation, so it will always have a special place in my heart. It's the story of a boy who is born into a difficult life in Virginia in the late 90s, and follows him as he grows. The book says its a modern retelling of David Copperfield, which I have never read, but funny enough I found a kids version of this book on our trip and just looked at the pictures and was shocked at how direct of a retelling this is. Names and events are all basically the same, just modernized, at least from what I can tell from my 2 minutes skimming Copperfield. Not sure if that diminishes the book to me, but I certainly would have been more impressed if this was an original piece. Regardless I found this book incredibly engaging. The life of Damon is tragic, with continual hardship. Even when good people enter his life, or promising events occur, you can feel him backslide because of the people around him and the circumstances of his lif...

⭐9/10 This is the book which was eventually adapted into the award winning movie of the same name, a movie I watched earlier this year and really loved. However, rather than being a narrative in really any sense, this is more a work of investigative journalism in which the author spends years studying this phenomenon.  The phenomenon, for those unfamiliar, is one in which following the recession, thousands of (mostly) seniors bought vans or RVs to live our their retirements in, living minimalist lifestyles and doing seasonal work to keep afloat. It was a lifestyle born from necessity, but gave way to a fulfilling, sometimes beautiful way of life. The book itself focuses mainly on a few people, including the author who bought a van and lived in it for a few months to get a better idea.  This book is phenomenal. Not only is it well-researched and nicely written, but it is about a topic that has become near and dear to me. It's honestly a lifestyle that appeals to me,...

⭐ 8/10 Lonesome Dove is now on my Mount Rushmore, so of course I had to read another McMurtry. Why not the next one that is in the collection already own? Like Dove this book thrusts you into the old West in a way that feels genuine. Reading these I often think about my love of fantasy, and the thing I love there is a distinct world that feels real and lived in. McMurtry's dialog does exactly that, and I love how it takes me a couple pages to sink into the style before I am completely swimming in it. The dialog is sharp, the setting is vivid, and the life of the characters is completely alien. He is able to romanticize a way of life I would never survive in. This book follows what is essentially a love triangle. Two men in love with a woman, and she is in love with them both, and they kind of share here their whole lives. The book is split into three parts. We witness their young adulthood from Gideon's eyes, a realist who is a hard worker but can't ever commit to his feel...

⭐ 8/10 The fourth book in the Red Rising series, it had moments I really enjoyed but I didn't love it. That's kind of my review for the series as a whole, but I found reading this one to be a bit more difficult than previous entries. It had been a couple years, and I had completely forgotten everyone. So many times we would bump in to a character and I would recognize the name but completely forget their significance, which was kind of sad. I think the reason this was bearable at all is because this is the first book with multiple perspectives! So there are new characters I can be with and form a relationship to and start with a blank slate, for the most part. By the end I felt fully back in the world, and promised myself I wouldn't take years to get to the next one. I think this is a cool sci-fi world, and its refreshing after Sanderson to read fantasy that skimps on the details and leaves a ton to your imagination. The book never felt slow despite being twice as long as ...

Look at that cover! This is a YA horror book written by a trans Canadian author that knocked my socks off. A small town has secrets it's trying to hide, and after the death of a boy and a newcomer arriving, things start slipping out of control. It's a book about being trans or queer and living in a small town, and how a community creating a facade of a perfect town can backfire. Also maybe closing your eyes to anything that's "not your business" is not good actually! It's violent and full of rage, and I loved the way it played with time and perspective. Check the triggers, but if you're interested in reading it, I'd recommend going in blind without looking at reviews or a longer description! This is a short book of essays about ableism and disability justice, specifically relating to technological advances for disabled people. Most of the essays focus on a different type of technology for different disabilities (prosthetics, hearing aids, cures for aut...

⭐ 8.5/10 Man, I can't believe how much I enjoyed this book.  I remember seeing the movie, The Martian, a few years back and really enjoying it. I've always been a big sci fi guy, especially when the sci fi in question is similar to the technology we have now. I'd pick a "near future" sci fi book or movie, over a "distant future" sci fi book or movie any day! I love science, physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and I really enjoy it when the author of the sci fi novel I'm reading shares in that passion. Andy Weir is that guy on steroids. This book is chalked full of physics, math, biology, engineering, and makes the character he is writing seem like a believable scientist. This book is a pretty prototypical "Earth is in peril and humanity must band together to save it" type of story. I say prototypical because it doesn't deviate from the formula too much and yet still manages to make a story that is super original and interesting.  Essenti...

⭐9/10 This is the follow-up to Lonesome Dove which I would say is firmly on my all-time list now. I know this book is not considered on the level of that one, and I think with that expectation, this one is super enjoyable. It's not quite the behemoth that Lonesome Dove is, but it's certainly a chunker and yet I felt I was able to read through it pretty steadily. This again is a slow-burn, but whenever I'm reading I'm fully absorbed and not looking for anything else to read. It's fully immersive, detailed, and while the prose often seem plain, the book can strike you with some beautiful writing.  This one takes place 20 or so years after Lonesome where we catch up with our characters, and after the events of the first book, many are looking for meaning or ways to continue on. The main plot of this book is that they are looking to track down a bandit essentially for bounty money, so I guess in retrospect it's kinda more your classic western, though it ...