Reviews and Comments

So far this is fun, like, it's about a generic but friendly tech bro getting to live his nerd dreams and explore Fun Concepts. It all doesn't really feel too real, which I like.

I finished it, but it was more stressful than anticipated. There's a ton of abuse, sexualised violence is a central plot element.

It goes to a very abuse-y direction that I'm not really in the mood for. Maybe the blurb would have told me so, I'll never know.

Am very much in the mood for some low thinkiness copaganda rn.

Ok yeah this one has a few nice pages about the tiny things that live in water. I like those. If this is the book that I remember from when I was a kid, then it's quite likely that I only really read those pages and ignored the rest.

The explanation of how lenses of magnifying glasses work is really bad imo, I totally didn't get it. I understood more from Wikipedia than from this! But the explanations of electron microscopes, on the other hand, were pretty good, I never got those before and I feel like now I have a vague idea of what they do.

All in all I would have preferred more details on the tiny things that live in water. But it was an ok book.

I certainly learned something about bears.... and about procyonidae! The choice to include the latter was probably partly because they're called "small bears" in German, and partly because messy classification. (Like, red pandas are included, but nowadays Wikipedia says they belong somewhere else anyway.)

My favourite facts are these brown bear facts: - with the different subspecies, brown bears can weigh anywhere between 80 and 600 kg - brown bears in different areas prefer different kinds of seeds etc :)

Well, this was enjoyable but mostly superficial, the kind of thing that every explanation of what cats are says. I enjoyed the historical and physiological bits the most (there's a page that has pictures of different big cats with their mouth open so their teeth are visible, that one's good). The behaviour bits were a bit irritating because all of the "why do cats do that" is presented as solid facts, but afaik a lot of it is just one theory among many. And the advice for cat owners also seemed a bit superficial and potentially sometimes wrong? Idk.

I'm a bit disappointed this this doesn't have the depth of the more technical books in the series!

I've read the first couple of stories, and am starting to think I might be in the wrong mood for this. I liked "Kushtuka" by Mathilda Zeller, there's a lot of blood, but also a supernatural component and a somewhat satisfying setup. And the foreword was really cool. The other three stories were also stories about humans being cruel, but without anything that made them easier to stomach for me, stories about abuse, sometimes with the twist of bashing back. I don't really feel up to much more of that.

But I got distracted a few times and didn't fully follow the plot. But I like the whole thing around Annagramma grudgingly becoming a good witch!

This one is really nice. It's exciting, and it has a lot of Granny Weatherwax, next to other super cool characters, and there's even some musing on what it means to be a witch that is not only super cool, but also has Esme get sentimental! Love it.

There is plural stuff again, both the more explicit kind and more indications that being a witch means not being too singlet in general, and being comfortable with that.

I was so reluctant to start a book that doesn't center on the Ramtop witches. Mainly because I didn't want to read too much about anyone who's not Granny Weatherwax. But I'm glad I still read this, I like it a lot in so many different ways, it feels like a really well rounded story!

I love Ratbag as a cat name.

I loved this one! In a lot of ways. The plural stuff, and Granny Weatherwax being herself, especially how she insists she is helping the priest when he is keeping her upright, and the vampire stuff. It's all very nice and satisfying.

Yeah no I think I won't finish this. Now the supernatural component was revealed, but the actual scary thing is still this horribly abusive family. Which is a good move I think! But it's also really draining to read.

I started it very reluctantly, guessing correctly that it would be very different from Certain Dark Things. I like it so far... but for my current mood there's too many scary and upsetting people and not enough scary and upsetting other things.