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hypocretin's reviews
29 reviews
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
5.0
Such an invitingly told mystery. From the epiragh this book welcomes you to start theorizing about the nature of what is to come. By page 40 I had theories going (many of them dead wrong lol) and by page 169 I had correctly zeroed in on the culprit, only to get thrown right off track again! The last chapter with the message in a bottle was very fun and very welcome.
This was just such a great time top to bottom. Memorabl characters, a whimsical and fantastic premise, lots of style—just a good time!
This was just such a great time top to bottom. Memorabl characters, a whimsical and fantastic premise, lots of style—just a good time!
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
5.0
I love this book. I reread it every 4-5 years, usually when I'm going through a hard time. I love this world and its characters, all the humor and heart and imagination bound up in it.
Sophie is a great protagonist, Howl is wonderfully fun to both admire and mock (the fact that he doesnt know how to play the guitar he carries around to court women remains one of the funniest things I have ever read in a book , Michael is so loveable, and even Martha and Lettie, who get comparatively little time in the spotlight, are immediately charming.
The humor is some of the best in any fantasy story I've ever read, the characters and once both fantastic and extremely grounded and believable. The ending never fails to make my heart feel big and warm.
This is simply one of those books my critical mind has no appetite for. If there is a world beyond this life, let it be a world born of Diana Wynne Jones's imagination!
Sophie is a great protagonist, Howl is wonderfully fun to both admire and mock (
The humor is some of the best in any fantasy story I've ever read, the characters and once both fantastic and extremely grounded and believable. The ending never fails to make my heart feel big and warm.
This is simply one of those books my critical mind has no appetite for. If there is a world beyond this life, let it be a world born of Diana Wynne Jones's imagination!
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
4.0
What a lovely little story. I really enjoyed the inventive setting and how the author explored and revealed its intricacies. My partner and I often joke that my universal comfort-instinct is limited to offerings of tea and back rubs, so suffice it to say the whole concept of a tea monk resonated powerfully with me.
The writing is elegant in its simplicity, presenting enough texture to convey a solid sense of place and atmosphere without floundering in excessive wordiness. I love the pantheon in this world and the respective Gods’ demesnes. Excellent stuff.
The prologue is amazing, I absolutely adored the framing device used to introduce us to both the Gods and broader premise/history of Panga. It packs so much information and personality into just a few short pages. It is a perfect intro.
The story does suffer quite a bit from lack of tension, made all the worse by a badly repetitive middle section.
There was never any concern that anything would be hard for our characters.
A problem is never anything more than a speed bump. You will never come up against anything that you can’t handle.
In the span of two years, Dex goes fromcomplete novice to “the best tea monk in Panga” (according to both the chapter 2 title card and Mx. Weaver in Inkthorn). They did this without training or guidance or help of any kind. Just time and dedication, all of which happens off-screen. They SAY that it was hard work, but there’s no telling what that actually looked like or meant.
A problem is never anything more than a speed bump. You will never come up against anything that you can’t handle.
In the span of two years, Dex goes from
The same is true of challenges within the natural world. The narration TELLS us that the world is dangerous, but you kind of just know it isn’t really. Watch out for these spectacularly aggressive spiders! we are told. But we know, by now, that there is no reality in which one of these “spectacularly aggressive” spiders actually harms anyone. We are told the world is dangerous, but the narrative does not actually live in a dangerous world. Violence and precarity are all theoretical here; doctrines of thought and philosophy—not something that we actually have to CONTEND with.
The idyllic nature of the setting is mirrored by an idyllic fantasy of human (and robot) behavior. The people and objects of Panga are incorruptibly good, their problems invariably surmountable by no more than good, honest conversation and hard work. No one squabbles, no one fights, no one harms one-another. Lovers part on kind terms and weary adults display nothing short of saintlike patience for the antics of children.
When, on the very rare occasion someone does go so far as to snap or be short with their conversational partner, you can rest assured that the other knows and understands that it is really their friend who is suffering, and they do not hesitate to be the bigger, kinder person (or object), acting with only compassion and empathy in all things.
When, on the very rare occasion someone does go so far as to snap or be short with their conversational partner, you can rest assured that the other knows and understands that it is really their friend who is suffering, and they do not hesitate to be the bigger, kinder person (or object), acting with only compassion and empathy in all things.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea. These are the values and behaviors that we should all strive to live up to. The ideals here resonate very strongly with my own. The difference is, of course, that I am a real person in a real world, and reality is so much more complex and nuanced than Panga.
Real people don’t always have infinite stores of patience and understanding. Real people are not unendingly noble and self-effacing. We miscommunicate. We’re often selfish and self-absorbed. We’re short-sighted, we misconstrue each other’s meanings and intentions. We don’t always communicate effectively. This is true of everyone. Even you, even the best and kindest person that you know.
Real people don’t always have infinite stores of patience and understanding. Real people are not unendingly noble and self-effacing. We miscommunicate. We’re often selfish and self-absorbed. We’re short-sighted, we misconstrue each other’s meanings and intentions. We don’t always communicate effectively. This is true of everyone. Even you, even the best and kindest person that you know.
It would be nice if life were easy and the world not dangerous and all of humankind endlessly and infallibly conscientious. I understand the fantasy, and I suppose that’s just the flavor of escapism this book is going for. For my part, though, I struggle to find much beauty or inspiration in a sermon on virtues that are never really put to the test.
It is easy to work hard when hard work always pays off. It is easy to be kind when the people around you are unfailingly kind in return. It is easy to empathize with people whose values align tidily with your own. It is easy to trust and rely on others when you can rest assured that others always have your best interests at heart.
It’s difficult for me to take a rumination on something to heart when it doesn’t earnestly explore its own premise with a depth of nuance and authenticity. The characters in Panga are easy to love, but I love real people. I love how hard we have to work to be good to one-another. I love that kindness and generosity are skills that we have to work hard to learn. I love us because we do that hard work.
The issue of flatly good character-writing was, for me, exacerbated by the repetitive nature of Dex and Mosscap’s travels. I can summarize—without spoilers—essentially every conversation they had, watch:
Dex: “What about X?”
Mosscap: “X!? X? Oh my—you can’t. You can’t be serious. You don’t believe Y, do you??”
Dex (embarrassed, perhaps very gently frustrated): “But isn’t Y true? I thought [something very polite and well-intentioned].”
Mosscap: “Oh dear, I’m sorry. No, of course you think Y. You have no way of knowing otherwise. I apologize, let me explain. In reality, Y is not true at all. Really, its Z.”
Then, a polite and even-tempered conversation in which the two arrive seamlessly and frictionlessly at a shared understanding of things. Rinse, repeat.
I’m not saying it isn’t nice, it is nice! And sometimes, yes, conversations do work out that way—and how lovely it is when they do! But for this to be the only type and temper of interaction that exists…? I think, for me, it just feels a bit insincere. Flat and two-dimensional in its arcadian goodness. Also just repetitive, which is tiresome for its own reasons.
I hope it doesn’t seem like I hated this book. I know I’m coming down pretty hard on what I perceive as its shortcomings, but I genuinely did really enjoy it! I’m just the sort of person who likes to think hard about and analyze stuff.
I think the last few chapters were the strongest in the book by far. Everything came together in a way that was—yes, frictionless and predictably easy—but also very tender and heartfelt. For all my nit-picky critical inclinations, the final chord in Dex’s arc really landed for me.
All in all, a very sweet story in a very gentle world. I’m far from the prudish sort (former sex worker and sex educator <3), but I do almost wish the references to sex, limited though they were, had been omitted, because otherwise I would be very inclined to read this with my little nephew. :’)
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
I will maybe try to come back to this one. The writing and atmosphere is lovely, but parts of it just stray a bit far into the realm of exoticism and fetishization for my taste, and it made me feel squeamish and uncomfortable in a way that took me out of the narrative. Also, "special" main characters just bore me to tears lol
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
4.0
This is such an annoying book to review. There was so much here that spoke to me, that inspired and touched and stayed with me. So much beautiful writing, such grounded and well-realized characters. This is annoying because those parts exclusively belong to the Marian storyline.
I found everything in Hadley’s section of the book so flat and uninspired it honestly surprises me that it came from the same author. I understand what Shipstead was going for in terms of themes and broader ideas—which I broadly appreciate and agree with—but it was just so lacking in the texture and nuance that characterized the Graves thread I felt like none of those ideas really landed.
Her chapters felt, at best, like a waste of time. I’m stubbornly committed to not skipping around in books or speeding up the performance, so I listened to all her chapters and I just truly wish I hadn’t. There were a couple of moments where events in the Graves thread were foreshadowed or revealed through Hadley’s perspective of events, and some of those times—including the revelation that Marian did survive her last flight !!!—actively made my experience of the narrative worse. It made Marian’s survival about fulfilling Hadley’s personal arc. It made it feel cheap and unearned and I was instantly prepared to just hate the whole ending.
Now, luckily, I do not hate the ending, because Marian Graves (Martin Wallace!! ) does earn that ending. There were some extraordinarily beautiful ideas and phrasings in those last chapters, but also in all of her sections.
The writing alone in Marian’s thread is just dead gorgeous. It’s lyrical and lingering, very light with its touch on detail, and yet so incredibly grounded in a sense of reality? There’s nothing dreamlike or fanciful about any of it despite how soulful and expressive it is. It reminded me a lot of my experience of reading Demon Copperhead, although with a much different inner voice than the one guiding the story here.
But also, just thematically with its stories and characters. These sections have so much compassion and thoughtful exploration in them. It is an incredibly honest and tender depiction of grooming and abuse . It never shies from the complexity of things, the imperfectness of the honest story where we want clear answers and clean emotions. I love it. It means the world to me.
So, how then to rate the book as a whole? I think probably the 5-star scale isn’t always the best way to measure art, but in the spirit of the sport I’m giving it a 4, because I think the good outweighs the bad. I still really loved this book, and if they ever release a hardcover edition that is only Marian’s thread I will be the first in line to buy it.
“If it had been her, she would have done what he said he would do: walked in the winter night far away from camp and lain in the snow, under the stars and the aurora. Or maybe not—it is not lost on her she had twice failed to choose death. She’d written in her logbook that her life was her one possession. She had kept it; she had wanted it.”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape and Sexual assault
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang
I just loved Misaki as an unreliable narrator in general. She was an amazing protagonist throughout the story, full to the brim with personality and opinion and anguish and rage. Even when I knew she was in the wrong or being small-minded or uncharitable to the people around her, I always understood where she was coming from and why she felt and reacted the way she did. I spent a lot of this novel disagreeing with her, but I never once stopped rooting for her. I bore her agony with her, felt the fond swell of achievement in her victories.
I loved watching her grow up. I loved watching her lift her eyes for the first time and take in the people around her and realize what she had. I loved watching her fall in love with her family, with her community.
And I loved, too, our other POV character. It's difficult to speak much of him without spoilers to the arc he follows, so I won't linger on it. I will say Mamoru's character took a little while to really get going for me, but watching him make the decisions he did in the contexts that he had to make them filled my heart with love. Just a boy trying his best to do the right thing, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Even when he wasn't sure he knew what exactly the right thing was. Such paralyzing things for a child to be faced with, but he forced himself to move anyway.And it made all the difference. What a good kid! I love him!
The last thing I will say of the Sword of Kaigen is thatit really helped me understand religious mourning practices that hinge the concept of the deceased's ability to find peace on how well their loved ones executed their funery rites .
I am not in the church anymore, but I grew up in a tradition where the destiny of your immortal soul pretty much came down to how well you lived your life under the rules of the faith. I had heard of practices where the family's adherence to funerary rites was the deciding factor, and always sort of thought privately how harsh that seemed. In my own naive mind, it seemed like you could live a perfectly just and good life and a couple of lazy family members could botch your chances at kicking it in the next realm.
Embarrassing though it may sound, this book is genuinely the thing that made me realize these traditions are not really about the deceased.
After Mamoru's death, there's a lot of superstition and anxiety about his spirit being restless, being trapped on earth and at risk of being warped into something tormented and monstrous if his family does not wish him into the next world properly. Misaki's narration treats this possibility as a very real, very visceral concern. It is an anxiety that hangs over a lot of the back half of the story. She interprets every uneasy sound in the night, every nightmare that stirs her surviving children from their sleep, every startling flicker of shadow out of the corner of her eye as indications that Mamoru's spirit has not been allowed to pass on, all because his family isn't performing the correct grieving rituals.
But the reality is that there is no ghost or concrete indication that his spirit is suffering. The ghostly wails in the night are the crying of a newborn in the house over. There's nothing in the text of the book outside of Misaki's interpretation that suggests anything supernatural is taking place. Because the truth is, that isn't the point.
They don't need to mourn Mamoru so that he can find peace in the next world. They need to mourn him so that they can find peace in this one.
That's what I always missed about these funerary practices. They aren't for the dead, they're for the living. They're there to urge you to make peace and find closure as best as you are able in a situation where sorrow can threaten to swallow you whole.
Misaki and Takeru and Hiroshi and Nagasa and Izumo needed to prioritize their grief and mourning for Mamoru because grief is a wound that will kill you if you are not careful in how you tend to it.
I might just be highly sensitive to those themes and ideas,having both lost someone very close to me before and actively navigating anticipatory grief for multiple people in my own life as I was reading , but I just think it was handled really beautifully.
So, yeah. Sword of Kaigen. A book not without its flaws, but also a story with a tremendous amount of heart and a lot of intelligent things to say for itself. I really loved it (and I didn't even get into all the fun wacky anime-ass fight scenes!!!!!!!).
4.75
If I were over-concerned with objectivity, this would probably be a 4- or 3.5-star book. But love covers a variety of sins (or whatever the fuck it was Peter said), and I simply loved this book.
The front half drags a little. The concept of state propaganda is introduced rather chunkily. Why is it mentioned at the top of chapter 1 that this book takes place on "Planet Duna, 5369 y. s. p.” when these words never come up and are never relevant again? Why are there completely fake units of measurement for time? Is any of this relevant or meaningful to the plot? Does it add anything of value? Not really!
And yet, I cannot bring myself to level these criticisms with vigor. I love this story of a woman falling in love with her family, of reconciling the past. This story of making peace with your imperfect history so that you can love your imperfect present for what it actually is, rather than resent it for what it is not.
I love how much this book has to say about history. About what it means to have history; the history of a place or a people, but also what it means to have a history with someone. There's such a beautiful tension and heartache in how it explores what it means to be swept up in tradition as something beautiful and profound, while also acknowledging the harm of what it is to be stuck in the past, weighed down by cultural or personal baggage that does not serve your best interests.
The past will haunt you, and it will ruin you if you cling to it too hard.
I also really loved and admired the amount of nuance and care that went into some of the passages that explored Misaki's conflict of identity as a woman with grievances about how her own culture treats her as a second class,
The front half drags a little. The concept of state propaganda is introduced rather chunkily. Why is it mentioned at the top of chapter 1 that this book takes place on "Planet Duna, 5369 y. s. p.” when these words never come up and are never relevant again? Why are there completely fake units of measurement for time? Is any of this relevant or meaningful to the plot? Does it add anything of value? Not really!
And yet, I cannot bring myself to level these criticisms with vigor. I love this story of a woman falling in love with her family, of reconciling the past. This story of making peace with your imperfect history so that you can love your imperfect present for what it actually is, rather than resent it for what it is not.
I love how much this book has to say about history. About what it means to have history; the history of a place or a people, but also what it means to have a history with someone. There's such a beautiful tension and heartache in how it explores what it means to be swept up in tradition as something beautiful and profound, while also acknowledging the harm of what it is to be stuck in the past, weighed down by cultural or personal baggage that does not serve your best interests.
The past will haunt you, and it will ruin you if you cling to it too hard.
I also really loved and admired the amount of nuance and care that went into some of the passages that explored Misaki's conflict of identity as a woman with grievances about how her own culture treats her as a second class,
"Other girls at Daybreak tended to react with revulsion to the idea of growing up to become a housewife. A deep, restless part of Misaki was relieved to be in a place where her viciousness was an expectation, not a surprise. Another, equally deep part of her felt a need to defend her culture from these outsiders who clearly didn’t understand it."
I just loved Misaki as an unreliable narrator in general. She was an amazing protagonist throughout the story, full to the brim with personality and opinion and anguish and rage. Even when I knew she was in the wrong or being small-minded or uncharitable to the people around her, I always understood where she was coming from and why she felt and reacted the way she did. I spent a lot of this novel disagreeing with her, but I never once stopped rooting for her. I bore her agony with her, felt the fond swell of achievement in her victories.
I loved watching her grow up. I loved watching her lift her eyes for the first time and take in the people around her and realize what she had. I loved watching her fall in love with her family, with her community.
And I loved, too, our other POV character. It's difficult to speak much of him without spoilers to the arc he follows, so I won't linger on it. I will say Mamoru's character took a little while to really get going for me, but watching him make the decisions he did in the contexts that he had to make them filled my heart with love. Just a boy trying his best to do the right thing, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Even when he wasn't sure he knew what exactly the right thing was. Such paralyzing things for a child to be faced with, but he forced himself to move anyway.
The last thing I will say of the Sword of Kaigen is that
I might just be highly sensitive to those themes and ideas,
So, yeah. Sword of Kaigen. A book not without its flaws, but also a story with a tremendous amount of heart and a lot of intelligent things to say for itself. I really loved it (and I didn't even get into all the fun wacky anime-ass fight scenes!!!!!!!).
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape
It is handled, in my opinion, very respectfully but unflinchingly. The narrative doesn't linger on act itself, but it does stare down the fallout in a way that I think a reader should go in prepared to stomach. I kind of can't believe this book was recommended to me without a content warning.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
4.75
A beautiful book, overflowing with heart. There is so much love and compassion in these pages, not only for all the butches and femmes and for Chinese immigrant families and communities, but for those who fall out of those contexts or who don't always understand or treat kindly those within.
A lesser book would take the thoughtless racism of the white lesbians who surround Lily in the queer scene and render them villains, empty of anything but naive privilege. A lesser book would condemn not only the cold-iron homophobia of her parents, but the personhoods of her parents whole cloth.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club does neither. You love these characters, warts and all. When they harm and wound one-another, when they are thoughtlessly racist or stubbornly homophobic, it doesn't feel like the villain has arrived to stir up the reader's sense of injustice and ire. Instead, it is heartbreaking. You love these characters, can see the good in them—the best in them. When those relationships break down, it is not merely the agony of harm done, but the sorrow of someone you love giving over to their worst instincts.
I wish the ending had carried on a ways. I wish more could have been resolved; I don't think I would have wanted a squeaky-clean tidy ending, but some indication ofwhere Lily was with Shirley or her parents or even Aunt Judy would have been nice. Even if the answer was that those relationships were beyond repair, I'd have liked to hear more of where she was emotionally on that journey before we parted ways with her. I would also have liked to know what became of Shirley's involvement with Calvin, or whether her father ever got his papers back .
I think those elements of the ending are truly the only thing holding this back from being 5-stars for me, but regardless of those modest quibbles, I genuinely think this is truly such a special book. I am not a Chinese American who grew up at the height of the Red Scare, but I was an awkward little sapphic with a thing for butch girls, and the story of Lily and Kath's romance returned me to my youth in a way that almost no other romance in fiction ever has.
A lesser book would take the thoughtless racism of the white lesbians who surround Lily in the queer scene and render them villains, empty of anything but naive privilege. A lesser book would condemn not only the cold-iron homophobia of her parents, but the personhoods of her parents whole cloth.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club does neither. You love these characters, warts and all. When they harm and wound one-another, when they are thoughtlessly racist or stubbornly homophobic, it doesn't feel like the villain has arrived to stir up the reader's sense of injustice and ire. Instead, it is heartbreaking. You love these characters, can see the good in them—the best in them. When those relationships break down, it is not merely the agony of harm done, but the sorrow of someone you love giving over to their worst instincts.
I wish the ending had carried on a ways. I wish more could have been resolved; I don't think I would have wanted a squeaky-clean tidy ending, but some indication of
I think those elements of the ending are truly the only thing holding this back from being 5-stars for me, but regardless of those modest quibbles, I genuinely think this is truly such a special book. I am not a Chinese American who grew up at the height of the Red Scare, but I was an awkward little sapphic with a thing for butch girls, and the story of Lily and Kath's romance returned me to my youth in a way that almost no other romance in fiction ever has.
Bunny by Mona Awad
2.75
An unreliable narrator can be a wonderful tool for exploring the interiority of a character, for understanding their mind and heart. It’s an opportunity to connect you to them, to see the world as they see it, even if you know in the back of your mind that they aren't accurately representing it. It can be a way of building empathy and understanding with a perspective that might be difficult to connect with when presented from a more “objective” point of view.
I had a lot of problems with this book, but chief among them is the fact that Samantha wasn't just unreliable, she was unbelievable. By which I mean, lacking in nuance to the point of being impossible to take seriously, even in a suspend-your-disbelief-for-fun way. Her unreliability was all she was. It was the only trait she had beyond vague misanthropy and her role as a creative writing student. There was no further texture to her personality to connect with.
Like, I think it's extremely telling of how thin the character writing for Samantha is that we never actually get to read any of her writing. Her writing. The thing her entire arc revolves around.
In 300 pages, the only things I can tell you I learned about Samantha are that she isextremely unwell , she likes to write but struggles to do so, and she's apparently into scene kids .
If unreliability can be a tool for building empathy and understanding, Bunny did the opposite. It regarded its narrator as having nothing of value to explore. She was never anything more than her unstable perspective.
Like, I think it's extremely telling of how thin the character writing for Samantha is that we never actually get to read any of her writing. Her writing. The thing her entire arc revolves around.
In 300 pages, the only things I can tell you I learned about Samantha are that she is
If unreliability can be a tool for building empathy and understanding, Bunny did the opposite. It regarded its narrator as having nothing of value to explore. She was never anything more than her unstable perspective.
That said, I enjoyed all the fun, trippy imagery that you get throughout the book. Loved the Bunnies and their boys tremendously (empty-headed bunny boy brushing her hair with the back of the brush REALLY got me. Inspired stuff ). Some of these moments are just crying out for an animator’s hand.
I gotta say, though, the prose itself REALLY did not hit for me. I’m a little shocked by how much the writing seems to be praised? I assume this must just be a me thing but man, I dunno.
Awad uses the phrase “like so many/much _____” TWELVE TIMES over the course of the book. Twelve times!!! THREE OF THOSE TIMES WERE ALL ON PAGE FOUR.
A character is described as “wolfish” seven times in the space of 86 pages. I cannot tell you how many times things were “smokey” if not simply “smoke.”
The characters were so flat and one-note and completely devoid of chemistry it was impossible for me to engage meaningfully with the emotional crux of the climax (which is a SHAME because the fairytale logic of said climax is extremely up my alley ).
The book also gestured vaguely in the direction of interesting themes and ideas, but somehow managed to never say anything about them?
Like, the concept of wealth disparity is certainly brought up and bandied about throughout the text, but what does it actually have to say about it? Is Samantha’s economic precarity relevant to her actions and experiences—or is it just kind of an aesthetic lens? Something to help distinguish for the reader why her lounging about drinking in her spare time is different and unique from how the Bunnies do it? Samantha doesn’t seem to have a job, or want one. It doesn’t seem to stop her from spending time at cafes and going to tango classes. Doesn't impact her life at all in terms of how she spends her time.
The income inequality in this book is—as far as I can tell—included purely for aesthetic purposes.
The income inequality in this book is—as far as I can tell—included purely for aesthetic purposes.
I think the same could be said about how it explores mental illness. Samantha is clearly suffering a psychotic episode…right up until the climax is resolved. Then she’s fine and at peace and choosing the steady reality of the imperfect but genuine Jonah over her beloved fantasy. What are we supposed to take away about mental illness from this besides "woah, that was crazy. glad that's over." ?
Also, a very tonally jarring power-fantasy happy ending just in general?
I don’t know, folks. This one was just wasn’t for me, I guess. To those who took from it something I could not, I am glad for you and I wish you well, but personally, I found it flimsy. All style and no substance, like so much wolfish smoke...
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
4.5
extremely informative AND uplifting (two of my favorite things). I dock it half a point for some light repetitiveness and a few places where the author seemed to stop short or leave empty space in her argument, but all in all I really loved it. Very accessibly written for the lay-audience and genuinely surprised the hell out of me a few times (plastics aren't all bad, who knew)!