Eh.

Fuckin’ brilliant.

:-)

Cool characters, great plot-twists, lame and anticlimactic season finale.

I’ve been wanting to read this for a year or two now, ever since I read the first few chapters in the New York Times. I love how spare and effective the writing is; Didion uses lots of passive voice stylings but they always feel intentional.

I can’t put it down.

Pretty much the anti-Meera movie, but I actually didn’t hate it. It seemed consistently well-meaning, and for some reason that went a long way.

I’m having much better luck with fiction lately.

A fascinating topic, but the treatment of it doesn’t make for as seamless and engaging a meld of science and personal writing as I had expected (or hoped for) - the science is a little dry and repetitive, and the personal narrative is just not that compelling, for some reason. I also find Flaherty’s use of the term “writer’s block” a bit troubling, because I don’t think she means it quite in the sense that many people do in ordinary usage-and if she does, then I confess that I need a little help coming around to the idea of treating it with medication. She addresses this concern, but her arguments don’t quite convince me.

Not my usual style of book, since it hovers closer towards being a “bestseller” in style (by which I suppose I mean it’s very readable ;)) than I typically let myself in for. Once I started it was delicious to read sitting caked in salt on an armchair in our Bintan bungalow, though - ensconced in the book for hours on end, as I haven’t done in years. I love holiday reading.

Entertaining, to a point, but mostly just an interesting idea, since Ouellette mostly uses episodes and events (sometimes just flimsy scraps, like the fact that Oz has a band) as excuses to talk about scientific concepts (usually quite briefly, and - particularly when it comes to quantum physics and string theory - not very clearly). The book skims over the surface of both science and Buffy, and disappoints me as a fan of the show and of science writing. Oh well. It got me through much of the journeying to Singapore.

Sweet, a little slight, a little too one-note for me. Definitely a lovely exercise in noticing; I’m just not sure it winds up being very much more than that.

Helps me slow down and focus on my reading, though, and for that I thank Baker.