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BEZORP@books.theunseen.city

Joined 1 year, 8 months ago

Mostly read around bedtime. Mostly.

He/him/they cishet white fragile trying dreamer antiracist gullible.

Since the ratings on the Bookwyrms don't impact authors' livelihoods, I feel comfortable getting more granular and using all the stars, so if you see a 3/5 rating on a book I say I liked, this is a rough breakdown of what I mean by my stars:

  • ★☆☆☆☆ I was offended. I think this book has serious flaws.
  • ★★☆☆☆ Not really my thing, and may have been a struggle.
  • ★★★☆☆ Liked it, maybe even a lot. Might re-read.
  • ★★★★☆ Loved this, and I want to talk about it.
  • ★★★★★ I am obsessed. I may even be shaking right now.

As always, the text of my review is a much more accurate representation of my feelings.

I have a very WIP website here.

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2025 Reading Goal

Success! Another Hopeful Fool has read 5 of 1 books.

Walter Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz (Hardcover, 1999, Tandem Library) 4 stars

Highly unusual After the Holocaust novel. In the far future, 20th century texts are preserved …

Father in law gifted me his old copy (from the 70s, and yes it smells incredible). Not sure how this one passed me by, but I love going back and visiting these sci-fi classics and seeing if I can make out the seeds of things to come.

For now it occupies an honoured position beside my bed, under the backlog stack.

reviewed A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers, #2)

Becky Chambers: A Closed and Common Orbit (Paperback, 2017, Hodder & Stoughton) 5 stars

Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - …

I Cried

4 stars

The dual stories, told in short, impactful chapters is such a powerful mechanism, and Becky Chambers wields it perfectly.

Both stories are riveting for their own, very different reasons. But both have to do with social justice, and personhood denied.

I found myself getting to the end of one chapter and being oh but I want to stay with this character! only to get embroiled in the other character's chapter immediately.

It's like an anti-cliffhanger. Rather than leaving you hanging, it pulls you in to the next segment, and then pulls you right back into the following.

If you liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - the previous entry by Becky Chambers, then I can super-recommend this.

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commented on A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers, #2)

Becky Chambers: A Closed and Common Orbit (Paperback, 2017, Hodder & Stoughton) 5 stars

Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - …

I'm really really liking this book. It goes back and forth between two vignettes, that I suspect will cross at some point, and they're both fascinating in their own way. One is definitely of the more "cozy" variety, whereas the other is much darker, and starts off with some heavy exploitation of a vulnerable group.

The worldbuilding here is incredible. I find myself re-reading little sentences that explain shades of the world. Never going into too much exposition, so that when some fact of the world is explained I'm like gimme gimme gimme nom nom nom!!!

Only my second Becky Chambers book, but I think I'm a fan for life. <3