octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Honestly, I liked this a whole lot better until about 50 pages in, before Meg and company went tesseracting with the guardian angels. It was so nearly four stars from me. There were some wonderful images, and I really did like Meg (even if little Charles Wallace was a smug little pain and deserved to be punted). But it didn't quite live up to my early interest, and I've got a grudge against "the power of love!" stories at the best of times.

I think if I'd read this as a kid I'd probably love it as I love (at least some of) Narnia, but as a first time adult reader it's not quite hitting the spot for me.

I'm trying to convince myself to reread Austen lately (at least more than P&P) and Northanger Abbey is the first in line. I remember it as my second favourite Austen, and I still think as a portrait of greed it's hard to beat. Isabella is so unpleasantly grasping, so superficial and manipulative, but she is above all so accurately, so acutely drawn that she makes the other characters almost pale in comparison, I think. Though I do enjoy Catherine, even when she's letting her imagination run away with her, and especially when she shows a steady sort of gumption after being thrown out of the Abbey. When push comes to shove, there's a deep strain of common sense and self-reliance there, and I've always liked her. (Would much rather read about Catherine than horrible Emma!)

Moderately interesting, but it's hard to get past the fact that this is essentially a collection of book reviews, originally published in the 1960s, 90% of which are about books I've never read, let alone heard of. I did enjoy making connections between what Merril said of her review subjects and what I often think of books I read today (seems a bit like a case of the more things change...), and she sometimes touches on wider issues in the genre that continue to have relevance. That said, this book is probably primarily going to be aimed at people who were reading sci-fi back in the day and want to revisit their reading experiences, or academics who are focusing on the history of genre criticism.

Quick enjoyable read, if a repetitive one. I was really interested in the creepy twins; I would have liked to see more of them in a way that wasn't so info-dumpy. I'm also getting a bit of a Stephen King feel, in that I'm guessing from the reference near the end to bone clocks that there's some level of tie-in to Mitchell's earlier novel (which I haven't read), much in the same way King often shoehorns references into The Dark Tower universe. This isn't something I particularly enjoy - it often strikes me as more for the benefit of the author than the reader - but if that's what's happening here it is at least relatively minor, in that I don't feel I need to have read its predecessor to understand it.

Interesting enough but it does drag in parts. This (subjectively) suffers in comparison, I think, simply because I recently read Davies' The Last Three Minutes, which covered much the same ground and was really enjoyable.

In general, I've read a handful of Asimov's science books now, and sometimes it does feel a bit repetitive. I understand that in popular science you've got to start from the basics to ground your audience, but I feel like I've read something like the first chapter several times from him. And he does delight in explaining exponents, but at least here that's confined to an appendix.

I've been meaning to read this for ages, and I'm glad I finally did. Have devoured it over the last couple of days!

An often disturbing, often sad account of the last (human) survivor of a deliberately-seeded plague and his genetically engineered charges, the replacements for human life. The book jumps back and forth in time between (pre-apocalypse) Jimmy, and his older post-apocalyptic self Snowman. I have to say my sympathies changed as the story went on - in the beginning I much preferred reading about Jimmy, while towards the end I was always waiting for his chapters to finish so I could go back to reading about Snowman.

If I've any criticism it's that Crake never felt like a person to me. More like an idea wrapped in human skin. The Crakers also felt pretty alien, but then again I think they are supposed to.

I really enjoyed most of this. I don't know why, but I was expecting this book to be somewhat saccharine, and it wasn't at all. (Yay!) None of the relationships ended up like I thought they would, which happens so rarely and is something that delights me when it does. Both Rose and Joseph were very well done, I thought; I found them utterly convincing. Joseph's skill, however, was absolutely ludicrous, and in no way resembled the other talents shared by his family. A fascinating character ultimately wrecked because of this heavy-handedness, and primarily the reason why I knocked this down to three stars from four.

I also had a slight problem with the ending. The last two pages, especially - they seemed distinct from the rest of the book, also very heavy-handed. Practically screamed "I'm wrapping up now, this is the conclusion of my thesis".

(I'm still not at all put off chocolate-covered lemon cake, though.)

I can't believe I've never read this before! What I've been missing my entire life...

This book is incredible. The voice is just so perfect - so many children, in books, don't sound much like children at all, really, but Scout is absolutely lifelike. And while I've heard that Atticus Finch is one of the great figures in fiction, I heard it like I heard the atomic weight of uranium, for instance - something known intellectually but having no emotional weight behind it.

I got this book from the library. All I can say is that I have to go out and get a copy of my very own as soon as possible.

One of my favourites as a kid, and the earliest book I can clearly remember reading. As an adult, of course, the experience is different, and one can see the places where it doesn't quite hold up so much. But the nostalgia value is so high that it drags the book up to five stars anyway, simply because of the total delight this book gave me and my sister when we were young. (A great deal of credit for that delight must go to the BBC adaptation - we took endless pleasure in mocking both poor Lucy and the worst beaver costumes ever to have been created.)

Even as a kid, this wasn't my favourite of the Narnia books (that honour went to The Horse and His Boy) but the two books together were the stand-out stars of Narnia for me, and were responsible for a lifelong love of fantasy that continues to this day.

I'm currently rereading the Narnia series, and it's all pretty much as I remember - two books I loved, one I loathed (seriously, The Last Battle can go die in a fire), and the rest.

Prince Caspian is one of the rest. It's alright, and there's the odd sparkling moment, but it's not one of the ones I come back to. Primarily, I think, because you can see in it the beginnings of what I call The Susan Problem. While my favourite Narnian character comes off well in the beginning, she begins to go downhill pretty fast. I wouldn't mind bad behaviour if it weren't so often linked in the text with intimations that becoming an adult is a bad thing (Susan always trying to sound like a grown-up, for instance, to general sneers - noticeable that no-one ever dings the boys for wanting to be men, but growing into adult womanhood? BAD.) This is something that comes back to bite her - and by extension me - bigtime in TLB, but Caspian is where the rot begins, and from childhood I've never been able to make myself like it.