ppkfs's Reviews (152)

DNF after the first 2 of the 7 short stories. I mean it wasn't bad but it was just kind of...so lacking in any depth that it wasn't enjoyable. One happy feel good story and one bittersweet sad story and they were FINE but they were just sort of...completely flat.

Very strange but very enjoyable.

It was alright. I can respect it as one of the foundational works of noir fiction but it really was just..ok and not much else.

When it hit, it hit fantastically. Well, maybe fantastic is the wrong word because it's an incredibly sobering and depressing read. But when it was in its element, outstanding. I don't want to say the rest of it was bad or pretentious but it was kind of slow going and not...great. A hard book to rate because for me the not great definitely outweighed the moments of raw emotion but...yeah, I think 3/5 works.

I probably should've read the Imperial Radch trilogy first but I managed to piece together enough things. It was really enjoyable to read, even if the last quarter or so was kind of a rush and at least one of the characters sort of...exists and things happened and were never expanded on or explained or *anything*.

So that should put it down to a 3.5 but it was very fun, so.

Yeah it was pretty good. I mean it's a comedy about the British landed gentry written in the 1910s so it's not exactly going to be a Vonnegut or an Adams in its comedy but it lands better than you think it would.

What a book. Completely captivated me from start to finish. Beautifully flowing prose. Utterly transfixing. The best thing I've read in forever.

It was pretty enjoyable.

I mean I can sure see its relevance as one of the first pieces of drama we have record of, not to mention the whole Freudian aspect, but the story itself...is not...great. I didn't really like Shakespeare in school and I would love to give him another try, but this is "what if Shakespeare was obscenely archaic and the total play consisted of 3 conversations between characters".

It certainly picked up a bit in the last third or so, I guess?

I saw someone else call this "completely devoid of subtext or tension" and it's completely correct. It's a wonderful lighthearted little story about books, and what books mean to us, and there's a talking cat, and the cat is perfectly written as a cat. It doesn't try to overstay its welcome and it succeeds completely fine. An enjoyable snack of a book.