Reading

Like any collection of short stories; there were stronger and weaker tales. I enjoyed everyone channeling their inner Le Guin, but some stories definitely showed how that's harder than it looks.

Quirky neo-myth that keeps on tumbling before you can ask questions. Not a children's book, but definitely lends heavily from their type of fun.

Heart-wrenching tale of family, spirituality, and repression. Beautifully told in three parts of differing first-person perspectives.

Ursula's affinity with the Tao really shines through in this story. When everything about the world is changing constantly, how do we practice feeling at peace with it?

Picked it up purely because of the cover quote by The Paris Review: The godmother of flash fiction. Its stories dance somewhere between poetry and short fiction.

A short but powerful collage of emotions mixed up in the death of her father.

A beautiful collection of essays that gives an intuition for the stark contrasts in China's society between the countryside and the metropoles.

It's frustrating but at the same time inspiring for its willfull dismantling of the hero's journey.

A tender story on grief and loss of one's guardian. Refreshingly honest about the unstereotypical mundanity of real life.

Simple and precise prose that paints one of the most human stories I've ever read. The characters are so tender, even more so as we start to fathom the true reason for their existence.

Cute and silly adventures that have aged pretty well, to be honest. Though there is something odd about this book.

Half of the time was spent in some mildly-engaging action sequences and it made me realize that I like the Murderbot Diaries more for its worldbuilding of a weirdly hopeful dystopian spacefaring future.

A cute little (fairy)-tale in a surprisingly fleshed out world.

Amazing and somber short stories by a unique writer. The grit and persistence of Octavia can be felt throughout her work. And it's admirable.

A tender and well-researched story, but lacking in its climactic conclusiveness.

Accessible and honestly pragmatic introduction to key institutions in modern economies.

The concluding story of Earthsea. A culmination of Ursula's beautiful prose and thoughtful fantasy. We go along with events that mend the world by breaking the world.

Five tales that explore the fascinating Earthsea world. Loved them all for their quiet tone, beautiful prose, and inspiring voice.

A funny book that feels shallow on all other emotional themes at the same time. I have the feeling that I cannot enjoy Sanderson's books blissfully anymore ever since reading that profile in Wired.

Many inspiring stories and explorations of "first-contact" type plots, and other grand ideas. Cixin Liu crafts these into exceptionally insightful reflections on what our human society actually entails.

An amazing exercise in experiencing time and earth more like trees. It is a beautiful critique of humanity's collective blindness to the damage we're bringing to the natural world.

A delightful children's book that trods along enjoyably and by the end had me more emotionally invested than I anticipated.

There are truly inspiring gems of microfiction in here, but reading them in book form is a shallow exercise. They are clearly meant for microblogging platforms, where they intersperse one's other countless number of toots and tweets as welcome nuggets of fantasy.

Its subtitle is "27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion". And these life lessons truly are conflicting, but that makes them all the more real.

Lovely tale, where my normal critique of YA novels is internalized as Hoid's voice. Namely, that emotions and feelings tend to be described more directly. Kind of like prescribing the reader how they should feel.

A space opera-esque allegory with chess-vibes. It is interesting to finally read serious utopian worlds (i.e., The Culture). Except that even utopian worlds are not always so utopian; where AI minds rule with calculated shrewdness.

As it says about itself, this book is truly written for an audience that knows little about modern science. In that context, it does a reasonable job at invoking the wonder that science can bring.

I had gotten the impression that many people around the internet really loved this book to the point that they put it in their top books of the year. But honestly, I didn't find it to live up to those expectations.

This story made me get a feel for slavery in the antebellum South of the United States in a way that nothing else has ever done before. It is an incredibly powerful tale, filled with expertly written tension.

De bende van De Korenwolf is a classic Dutch children's book series. But I had never read any of the stories when I was child myself. Noemi told me how she loved these when she was little, so I figured I'd pick up a book to read through it.

His second collection of short stories is equally surgical, but more touching. Ted has always been very strong in his imaginative science-fiction, and this bundle again contains many interesting concepts worked out in ways that truly made me ponder them in more depth.

Te-Ping's stories convey the normalcy of humanity exceptionally well, most of all. Otherwise, they inspire little will to be exceptional, and gave me more of a creeping feeling that the individual differences between people are all relatively minute.

The plot of this second book in the series is kind of all over the place, and I did not entirely enjoy that.

Very satisfying grand fantasy that has strong dialogue and plot that kept me engaged.

A beautiful perspective on Earthsea from the unheroes, ordinary people---our people. This book tells a wonderfully tender and loving story. It is rich for the woman's wisdom.

This genre-bending doorstopper is amazing. It shifted my perspective and worldview through which I interpret and understand humanity's past, all the way to its current and future challenges.

A subtle and peaceful perspective on the future, where humans and robots live apart. In Becky Chambers's fashion: mostly character and worldbuilding, little plot.

An incredibly beautiful denunciation of the Vietnam war, through Hainish analogy. Subtly but unambiguously captures raw human brutality.

Ted writes surgically precise sci-fi, and he does it by blending credible science and deeply human emotional beats. Its effects did inspire less imagination in me than JLB's work, however.

These short stories are beautifully efficient metaphysical explorations coated in deliciously erudite magical realism.

A fast-paced and enjoyable story in West African environments fresh to the fantasy genre.

I found this book to be a beautiful journey towards grasping human meaning. Victor offers a truly insightful and utterly human account of his experiences in concentration camps.

The original English editions are beautifully and eloquently written, to a degree that is rare in current works of fantasy, partly because it signifies a more formal bygone time of the previous century.

Jemisin does not mess around and writes short stories that pack a punch and hit their story beats very efficiently.

This translation is beautiful. Ursula's prose and poetry are a vessel of unbeknownst resonance for this subject matter.

This classic story is sublimely epic in scope and you feel this every beautiful section of prose that hints at worlds, cultures, religions, and motives.

This novella is an amazingly humane glance at what science fiction also has to offer. It blesses the reader with hope, inspiration, and empathy for human exploration of space and the big Why.

This is a nice little short story, in which we experience the ethical transformation of the ruthless general Daynja Édo who is employed by the Boorhian Empire.

The cosmic game of hide and seek; a brilliant introduction to parts of human philosophy grossly under-represented in Western society.

It is actually a concrete story and not just this daunting monument of classic science fiction that I had envisioned in my mind.

This book delivers a satisfying story in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world with imaginative worldbuilding, but nothing blazing-your-pants-off epic.

The Murderbot Diaries has become my most beloved series in recent years. This sixth entry lives up to the level of comfort reads I've come to expect of it.

Bertrand's position on happiness reads straightforwardly, but it actually takes quite some introspection to formulate it as such.

It's a beautiful collection of short but powerfully brimming texts, on racism, but really, on humanity itself.

Ursula's stories are magical. Though this bundle was a little harder to get through.

Snow Crash is a fascinating cyberpunk classic with great world building but a plot that does not live up to the same enthusiasticism.

A bit dull. The futurism in the stories did little resonating with me. This should not be an issue in itself, but sadly most stories were not very engaging either. They lacked significant progress or character progression.

A great novella that pulls you in for an engaging ride where you won't even notice that you are just reading a novella.

T.J.'s wholesome story that ignites (if it wasn't there yet) a sense of wonder about our world.

An amazing exercise in developing wordly intuition based on realism.

Essays on the ability to take action that I found to be leaning heavily towards the introspection side, while still conveying surprisingly concrete points.

The solarpunk genre is a promising new sound, and I enjoy the generally upbeat worlds, characters, and stories. However, some of these explorations forget to include much story.

After introducing me to the word epistemology, the essays in this book gave me exceptionally well-crafted ideas on thinking, argumentation, and communication.

An amazingly well written narration with enviable depth of thought.

James Baldwin's collection of essays has been powerful, in both message and prose.