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Reading a San Francisco book while I'm in San Francisco.

I found the problem here fascinating, but the solution pretty straightforward. I enjoyed the internal politics and the look at the lives of famous scientists, but I didn't get a lot of a sense of how Harrison clock was different.

It feels like his first idea to address a problem worked, and then he kept improving it for the rest of his life. But I'm not sure what scientific adversity he faced or how he solved his problems.

This was a very engaging read that didn't break a lot of new ground, but did well with established sci-fi tropes. The protagonist was interesting, and there was a good, tight story.

I would say this was about 80% Murderbot and 20% Andy Weir. The core of the book was ideas I've seen used fairly frequently in sci-fi. There were some new ideas and world-building, but they weren't super well integrated in the story. Sometimes the narrator would just take a break from the action to spend a chapter talking about worldbuilding.

I didn't love the way the author wrote women. They were fickle and turned on people too easily. A lot of the book was about Mickey learning self-respect, but he never addressed how Nasha's teasing could read as cruelty. It also doesn't really reveal what Mickey 8's deal is. He seems different from Mickey 7 in ways that are never explained, although maybe that's just a way of saying the narrator is different when seen from the outside.

I'll read the sequel soon and am looking forward to the movie.

The axis this book turned on, and something I'll have to think about for a while, is how exactly Mickey felt about her job. "Ambivalent", sure, but there were a lot of layers. She defines herself by a place she thinks she'll never feel truly comfortable. The author is a beauty writer herself, so she must consider it ultimately worth doing.

The protagonist could sometimes be frustrating with her decisions, but that gave the book flavor.

I liked how big the cast was and how I could see how Mickey fit into her community back home, but the Tee stuff mostly fell flat for me. It was hard to see why Mickey idealized her so much.

Also trying to decide if the letter worked. I thought it was a smart choice to delay reading the actual letter until the end of the book in order to build it up, but I'm considering whether the payoff was worth it.

A quibble, but the author wasn't very successful when she tried to discuss church or religion. She got details wrong and it felt like describing something she'd seen on television.

I appreciated that the authors weren't overly deferential and addressed some of the dirty laundry, but is definitely a book for fans. Don't try it unless you generally like the movies.

The author team were magazine and newspaper journalists and generally wrote in that style. I appreciated the wide range of sources they talked to.

This was mostly chronological but there were also a few thematic chapters about aspects such as the writer's program or trying to break into China.

It didn't cover every movie, but that's understandable given the length of the book.

I listened to a few chapters of the audiobook version while driving and wasn't impressed by the reader. He seemed to be doing an affected "announcer voice" too much.

Noting from myself that my favorites so far are "Starlight Water Space Fresh Air" and "Fizz".

This felt a lot like an SCP story, I think it was effective to write this as a novella. I liked the parts about sameness and losing hope, although I don't know if I needed the magnitude of eternity hammered in so much.

I was surprised about how straightforward the author was about Mormon cosmology/deification, I thought they generally played that closer to the vest.

I don't understand why no