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factandfables's reviews
1149 reviews
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
3.0
I wanted to love this book - the idea is so fun, and the past storyline was strong.
However, this book had too many plot holes and illogical lines of reasoning for me to truly enjoy it in the end. The framework was a little shaky and vague and it felt like the “rules” of the magic were not consistent or at least not in the way they were explained.
However, if you like unique thrillers and don’t care as much about it all making sense, this is quite a good story.
However, this book had too many plot holes and illogical lines of reasoning for me to truly enjoy it in the end. The framework was a little shaky and vague and it felt like the “rules” of the magic were not consistent or at least not in the way they were explained.
However, if you like unique thrillers and don’t care as much about it all making sense, this is quite a good story.
A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Anthology by Kerry Greenwood
3.0
This is a beautiful book, and I loved the colored pages and illustrations. The stories were fun but lacked the wonderful immersive quality of the novels, which remain my favorite cozy mysteries out there.
Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land by Noé Álvarez
4.0
As an outdoor recreation professional, it is so important for us to recognize the ways in which nature has often meant very different, often negative things to other people and other cultures, particularly in the United States. This book did a wonderful job of this, and is also very poetically written.
I found the parts of this in which Alvarez talks about his early life and childhood, his family's history and his life now to be more compelling than his experiences on the actual run, but I am grateful to have read this.
I think my frustration from the parts about the race came from the fact that he obviously had a very intense, very mixed experience while running, and it feels like his feelings about that time may have not been fully processed, and so those sections feel more like unfiltered journal entries by a teenager when the rest is a really fluently written poetic exploration of identity and place.
I found the parts of this in which Alvarez talks about his early life and childhood, his family's history and his life now to be more compelling than his experiences on the actual run, but I am grateful to have read this.
I think my frustration from the parts about the race came from the fact that he obviously had a very intense, very mixed experience while running, and it feels like his feelings about that time may have not been fully processed, and so those sections feel more like unfiltered journal entries by a teenager when the rest is a really fluently written poetic exploration of identity and place.
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
4.0
The tone of this book is a lot more subjective and opinionated than I expected. This is both an asset, as this book reads easily and feels like a great, in depth podcast, but it is also a bit of a problem, because her strong opinions about certain things are evident throughout and if you are someone who cares about something she goes after, it can be a little off-putting.
The subject matter of this book is fascinating and I loved the way she structured this into different “types” of culty organizations and I especially loved the examination of how these groups “get” people and manipulate thought patterns through language.
I will say I would have enjoyed a slightly more academic book better, but for a pop-anthropology, this was fun, snarky and interesting!
The subject matter of this book is fascinating and I loved the way she structured this into different “types” of culty organizations and I especially loved the examination of how these groups “get” people and manipulate thought patterns through language.
I will say I would have enjoyed a slightly more academic book better, but for a pop-anthropology, this was fun, snarky and interesting!
Unpunished: A Mystery by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
4.0
This is probably a 3.5 star for me.
I loved the ending (CPG has wonderful happy endings that I really find equally irresistible and implausible), but felt that the actual story was more about her message and not really about the story.
Overall, this fits perfectly into the work that CPG does - it is divorced from reality, and people behave in perfect toy ridiculous ways. But it’s not because she doesn’t understand the world, it’s that she is trying to write a world where women get to exist in a way that simply wasn’t possible at the time, and that leads to situations that feel contrived or utopian.
A fun read, and a fun exploration of genre from an author who usually focused on other things.
I loved the ending (CPG has wonderful happy endings that I really find equally irresistible and implausible), but felt that the actual story was more about her message and not really about the story.
Overall, this fits perfectly into the work that CPG does - it is divorced from reality, and people behave in perfect toy ridiculous ways. But it’s not because she doesn’t understand the world, it’s that she is trying to write a world where women get to exist in a way that simply wasn’t possible at the time, and that leads to situations that feel contrived or utopian.
A fun read, and a fun exploration of genre from an author who usually focused on other things.