valrus finished reading Sex at Dawn by Ryan, Christopher
I don't remember when I actually finished this lol
I don't remember when I actually finished this lol
Reviews and Comments
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valrus rated You Can't Go Home Again: 2 stars
valrus rated James: A Novel: 4 stars
James: A Novel by Percival Everett (duplicate)
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from …
valrus rated The Ministry for the Future: 4 stars
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's future generations and to …
valrus commented on You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
I don't like this book very much so far! Every character is a caricature but for some reason described in exhausting detail! The social commentary is broad and unsubtle! The eye dialect is cringe and it uses the N word with the hard R!
I don't like this book very much so far! Every character is a caricature but for some reason described in exhausting detail! The social commentary is broad and unsubtle! The eye dialect is cringe and it uses the N word with the hard R!
valrus started reading You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
Book club book. Can I read this in a week and a half? Prrrrrrrrobably not!
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building; its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon …
valrus reviewed Mega Man 3 by Salvatore Pane
New Games Journalism done wrong
2 stars
I have no strong memories of Mega Man 3, but I don't think that affected my lukewarm response to this book. The author sort of takes MM3's uneasy status as the less-acclaimed follow-up to a widely beloved game as a prompt to explore the role of nostalgia in why they like it so much... but it's just all not really that interesting or insightful a personal reflection. And the analogy between Mega Man collecting weapons and the nostalgia-driven impulse toward video game collection is heavy-handed and unconvincing.
The stories about the development of MM3 are kind of interesting, and the author clearly did their research, but the personal stuff just didn't really add to the reading experience, for me.
I have no strong memories of Mega Man 3, but I don't think that affected my lukewarm response to this book. The author sort of takes MM3's uneasy status as the less-acclaimed follow-up to a widely beloved game as a prompt to explore the role of nostalgia in why they like it so much... but it's just all not really that interesting or insightful a personal reflection. And the analogy between Mega Man collecting weapons and the nostalgia-driven impulse toward video game collection is heavy-handed and unconvincing.
The stories about the development of MM3 are kind of interesting, and the author clearly did their research, but the personal stuff just didn't really add to the reading experience, for me.
valrus reviewed Final Fantasy VI by Sebastian Deken
Focuses on the music. Fine by me!
4 stars
Focusing on the music was a pretty good choice — FFVI's soundtrack is iconic and not very thoroughly covered in the otherwise comprehensive Reverse Design book (which I obtained a free PDF of before they made the "definitive version" which they're now charging $50 for): thegamedesignforum.com/features/reverse_design_ff6_1.html
It seems like all the Boss Fight books I've read have some overbaked figures of speech, and this one is no exception — "It’s kawaii repackaged for the JV football team," "If climate change doesn’t kill us first, humanity will die drowning in attitude tees and Funko Pops" — but it does a good job of contextualizing Uematsu's music at a strange intersection of "low" and "high" art and drawing out his skillful use of leitmotif. A solid read for those who, like me, are somewhat musically inclined and for whom FFVI remains a linchpin of video game music.
Focusing on the music was a pretty good choice — FFVI's soundtrack is iconic and not very thoroughly covered in the otherwise comprehensive Reverse Design book (which I obtained a free PDF of before they made the "definitive version" which they're now charging $50 for): thegamedesignforum.com/features/reverse_design_ff6_1.html
It seems like all the Boss Fight books I've read have some overbaked figures of speech, and this one is no exception — "It’s kawaii repackaged for the JV football team," "If climate change doesn’t kill us first, humanity will die drowning in attitude tees and Funko Pops" — but it does a good job of contextualizing Uematsu's music at a strange intersection of "low" and "high" art and drawing out his skillful use of leitmotif. A solid read for those who, like me, are somewhat musically inclined and for whom FFVI remains a linchpin of video game music.
valrus reviewed The Appeal by Janice Hallett
Too bad only one of these people got murdered
4 stars
Content warning very vague plot arc information
It's called "The Appeal" because the layers of deception keep "a-peeling" back!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was half-tempted to go back and reread this immediately upon finishing, so effective were the multiple reveals in the book's last third. It would probably feel like a very different book if you read it with the knowledge of what's really going on — but all these characters are so unlikable in so many different ways that I didn't really want to subject myself to their two-faced, petty correspondences again. If you can get past that, this is a really well-constructed book.
valrus reviewed The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Only sort of successful for me
3 stars
Content warning vague plot details
Well, I didn't see the Big Reveal coming but then I hardly ever do with those kinds of things. I found this pretty absorbing but there were three sizable flaws for me: 1. That much-vaunted Plot was not so compelling as to deserve the awestruck treatment it gets by the book's characters 2. I'm not convinced that the threat of being revealed as a plagiarist was (a) legitimate, because an IDEA for a plot and a few pages of intro material do not a book make, or (b) ever much of a threat, given that there was no way for the person making it to prove it without outing themselves as a murderer 3. I thought the section where the main character was traipsing all around the country looking for Clues was too drawn-out and not interesting enough to warrant all that page time
valrus commented on The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
(Brangwen Family #1)
Lush with imagery, this is the story of three generations of …
This mf clearly wrote this book before "show, don't tell" became a thing
This mf clearly wrote this book before "show, don't tell" became a thing
valrus reviewed Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy. …
Alas, a lass
4 stars
Content warning Mild, vague spoilers, but spoilers nonetheless
Honestly a lot more enjoyable than I feared. The central conflict is so Victorian it seems absurd from the vantage of 2024, but once I settled in to that just being How Things Were (and appreciated that the book is a challenge to that state of affairs) it was pretty readable and not quite as dour as I'd been led to believe. Still pretty fucking dour though. Poor Tess. Naïve as all get out, but still, no one in this book deserved you.
valrus stopped reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose
Not a coincidence I stopped reading this right after the election. The whole thing (meaning: America) just seemed like a horrible mistake to me, and so this book, about an effort to expand it, took on the aspect of a horror novel. Unlike a horror novel, though, it was incredibly fucking boring.