I have no idea how this book would go over for someone who is not a total fan girl, but I really enjoyed it!
Although there are some chapters that definitely need to be updated now that gentleman Jole is out.

I somehow forgot I owned this until my daughter was up at 4:30 in the morning with jet lag and grumbling because I wanted her to go back to sleep.
Anyway, I had this on my iPad (which was serving as her white noise machine) and once I started, I had to keep reading.
It's not as fascinating as the Memoirs of Lady Trent, although that may be partially my own biases in terms of content, but Brennan still has a gift for world building and I enjoyed this book enough that it's time to hunt down the sequel.

It's not entirely fair to call this a dystopia because, through the bleakness of the world, it's about how dystopias end.
It's also gorgeous and painful and amazing and probably not the book you want to be reading during the 2016 presidential election season. But its also the exact book you should be reading because it's all about the lived reality of being powerless and a minority in a world gone mad. It's so good.

Well, that was an odd experience. Not bad; I actually really enjoyed the book for what it was although I'm not exactly a gonzo horror person usually. But this was definitely a finely wrought example of a genre I don't really read.

So good I taught it.
And what else is there to say? Butler's writing is gorgeous, her vision of the US slowly collapsing is chilling in its believability, her compassion and clear eyed vision tell a dystopian story that leaves hope for the future not in rebellion, but in building and growth.

This in no way enhances my understanding of blade runner, but it sure as hell enhances my understanding of Dick's place in the genre. It's odd to read a book after reading the criticism; you end up nodding your head a lot and saying "yep, there's the paranoid atmosphere, there's the odd sense of dislocation". You can definitely see the precursor of cyberpunk in his aesthetic, but it has to be said, I like cyberpunk better.

Is "weird and on a space ship" a genre? Because I feel like I've been really enjoying a lot of books that more or less fit that description.
Anyway, Gilman's book is absolutely fascinating - she takes the approach to science fiction that consists of pushing the definition of science to its limits and playing with ideas of reality and subjectivity and it's brilliant.
Also, the audio narrator is excellent.

All literary criticism should be this good. I wish I'd had this when I was first bashing my head against deconstruction.

Really 3.5, but I think that's because I think Walton is trying to talk about ideas almost beyond the scope of the book and, while fiction really is the best way to explore the philosophical themes she is after, there are moments where the story and the ideas are in conflict and, by nature of the thought experiment, the ideas take precedence.
It was still a fascinating and really enjoyable read - I just don't quite know what to do with it. (Give it to Talia, naturally).

Hugos reading!
Deeply interesting, may have suffered from being read in short spurts while wrangling a baby on a plane. And the fact that I'm 90% sure that Oozma U is also the name of the school in Monsters U and that threw me off because, well, brain.
Leaving that aside, the story itself fits perfectly with my current interest in "weird and on a spaceship" so I'm very much looking forward to the sequel.