Oh, God. This book.
It's not a 3, it's a 1 and a 5 at once. It's brilliantly conceived, wonderfully executed, covering a depth and breadth of...I don't know what only made possible by the advent of the internet.
And I kinda hated it.
I mentioned by Danielewski's other book that whether you love or hate House of Leaves depends on how much you accept the gimmick.
I couldn't this time around. I just could get beyond the gimmick.
In terms of discussion and wonder and exploration, this is a great book to talk about. I just wish I hadn't had to read it first.

I suppose this is proof positive that delight in the topicality of a novel does not guarantee liking it.
This book was solidly, decidedly meh. As my mom put it when we were discussing it, "whatever he was trying to do, he didn't".
I had two main issues with the book. When i started it, I rather loathed all the main characters for being...unselfaware, I suppose. The narrator refused to give in to their self image, so we read them without the kindness at comes from giving people over into their own views of themselves. And I did grow to like two of them, at around the time it seemed the narrator expected me too. But the third...it seemed to me that the narrator expected me to like and empathize with him LONG before I was willing to.
And this was the character whose voice fit closest to the narrator's. I was disappointed that the narrator didn't feel like a fourth character, but like this third character. I wanted each character to have an individual voice, but they all felt mediated through Mitchell's tone and Mitchell's gaze. And, for a book that's savvy enough to laugh at deconstruction, it is surprisingly incapable of escaping the male gaze.
But I am profoundly grateful that it ended the way it did. The end was exactly right. I just wish the execution had been better.

My mind. She is blown.
Seriously.
I picked up this book because I had put it on my to-read list some time in the past (said list exists, it's nearly 100 books long and growing) and recognized it while browsing through the library. I had assumed it was standard literary fiction. Then I started reading and realized it was an intricate and compelling mystery. Then I got halfway through the book and, as I said, my mind was blown.
I loved this book, loved it in that absolutely unputdownable way that happens, now and again, for no good reason. The excellent characterization helped, as did Renner's ability to make you care about the interlocking layers of mystery. And, of course, the joy both he and I, as the reader, took in the book's evolving weirdness. Everything about it was just so well though out and equally well executed. My only problem is, given how oddly the book sits between genre lines, figuring out how in the world to recommend it.

I was unaware that YA slightly po-mo stream of consciousness was even a genre until this book. This was a nice, quick read with a sweet story and characters it was easy to care about. And the musician name-dropping was entertaining.
Definitely well worth the read, especially given its negligible length.

In some ways, I am still surprised every time I pick up a new Tamora Pierce book. I keep expecting to get the same style of writing in Song of the Lioness and, like most authors, she does not remain stagnant.

I say this because Mastiff feels like more of a break than usual from her earlier works. Overall, this series has been very different (and, unlike the Daughter of the Lioness duology, quite good), but the pacing still felt a bit off to me. I kept waiting for things to happen that took an appallingly long time to occur.

That being said, I have like Beka Cooper from the beginning and I really do think this trilogy is a welcome addition to the Tortallan stories. Other than pacing, my one quibble is with character. Someone behaves a certain way and it was jarringly out of character to me. Which is odd, because Pierce is usually really REALLY good with characters in character. So this slip was doubly disappointing.

Realistically, if you've made it this far with Pierce's books, you'll appreciate Mastiff. It's a master storyteller doing what she does best.

I read this book for the first time aeons ago and enjoyed it, but completely missed most of what was going on. I was a bit young for it, I think.
Going back to it, I feel as though I appreciate it far more than I did as the kid who, among other things, had no idea what kamikaze sex meant.

After finishing the book and feeling ever so slightly like I wanted to throw it across the room, I sat back down and realized just how much I actually enjoyed this novel. Ghosh's plotting is a bit all over the place and his characters are occasionally mouths for exposition, but the conspiracy, the excitement, the rewriting of history is so well-handled that I could not help but enjoy the ride.

Full disclosure: I read this book for a class on the speculative, so it's difficult to analyze it beyond that context. Still, as a book and as an exciting piece of science-fiction, I really enjoyed it. The end just__�felt rather abrupt and I like fairy-tale-esque closure.

Cryptonomicon is not necessarily an easy book, especially if you lack a knowledge in computers, but it is an incredibly fun and rewarding one.