Wow, was this good! I picked it up because I was struggling with a sermon on the parable that gives the book its name, but even if I didn’t end up taking much from the book for my sermon, it really made an impression.

It’s evocative, and it does an amazing job of describing a hopeful apocalypse. I can see how other media I like—Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway or the indie TTRPG Why We Fight—owe something to this book.

I honestly didn’t know what I would think of this book. I’d heard some complaints and caveats about it, but some folks also highly recommended it, including one of the people who made a caveat (and who is outspoken on problematic social attitudes), so I thought it was worth a try.

My verdict is that this feels like fanfiction, which isn’t supposed to be an insult but also captures some of my own caveats. Why compare it with fanfiction? Some parts feel unwieldy and overly explanatory of the worldbuilding. It does take a certain pleasure in being transgressive, and sometimes that does cross a line. Yet, I meant what I said about comparng to fiction not being an insult, because it is creative and interesting in the way that sometimes only self-published stuff can be.

I get why this film is beloved! It also did not crack me up the way I was hoping.

Look, there were good parts to this movie, including jokes that made me laugh and scenes that made me tear up. It just seems weird to feel continuity lockout from a Toy Story movie (never having seen the fourth one), and that made me wonder if this movie needed to exist.

What’s more, I have a rule of thumb that good tech criticism in fiction needs to target the companies as much as the computers, and this fails that test. While the movie stops short of moral panic (and intentionally so), it gets close, and critiques that could be good feel a bit shallow and obvious to me.

This storyline is a bit tough for me, but reading it in a collection reminds me of how much better Dumbing of Age is when you can read a storyline all at once. Really enjoyed the read even if it’s not my favorite arc.

I don’t regret reading this book, but it’s not as good as Hodgman’s other memoir. I don’t feel like it holds together as well, it feels anchored in 2019 in a way that doesn’t work for me, and I always get bugged when someone picks on “reckless cyclists” when so much of our world and infrastructure are stacked against cycling (though I’m confident that some cyclists are the entitled white dudes that Hodgman is taking aim at in that particular story—I just think there are better ways to skewer white dudes than targeting those who travel by bike).

The finale of this series (or at least this arc) focused more on the parts I liked less, so meh. I still enjoyed the series though and would be interested to read more Andolfo.

I was ready to rate this higher when I watched the season finale last night, but after sleeping on it, I’m actually grumpier about the series than I realized. I loved the first few episodes, but I’m not sure the twist pays off, and the final episode felt stuffed too full. There’s a bit too much going on in the series, and while I’d gladly watch the second season, I won’t mind if we don’t get to it.

Gotta say that I don’t like the fantasy elements of this story as much at the digs at totalitarian policing of gender and sexuality, but this second volume is still a good read.

This comic is very weird, but the art is good, the translation is excellent (or at least I don’t think of it being translated), and the social commentary is very well done.

Comme il m’arrive de lire un peu sur l’anarchisme, comme les écrits anarchistes parlent souvent de la Commune de Paris, comme je ne savais pas beaucoup sur cet évènement, et comme j’avais besoin de quoi écouter ce matin, j’ai choisi cette série pour approfondir un peu mes connaissances. J’ai toujours l’impression de ne pas savoir grand-chose (et de ne pas connaître la réponse à la question posée par cette petite série), mais elle a été bien faite.

I waited a couple of days before writing my review, and I had trouble remembering what I had read. I really want to like this series, and I don’t actively dislike it, but that is just not a great sign.

I like John Hodgman, and I liked this book. It’s well-written, nerdy and funny in the right places, and does a good job (or at least I think so) of valorizing his own lived experiences while also candidly acknowledging the mountain of privilege that serves as their foundation. Listening to him narrate the audiobook was even better.

I enjoyed this volume more, likely because I read it in a shorter timespan. I still feel hesitant about the series, perhaps because I have read so dang much superhero fiction that it’s hard to feel like there’s anything new here. I still have a bunch of volumes checked out, though, and I do want to keep going.

I can’t remember how long it’s been since I listened to this the first time. It is artfully done, and the Jonathan Coulton addition is tremendous. Some jokes feel like they haven’t aged well (either because they’re simply not timeless or because I don’t think Hodgman would make the same joke today), but the low-key absurdity of the project really appeals to me.

I read this in scattered chunks before and during a busy week of family camp, so this might not be the measured assessment this deserves. There are things to like here, and I want to continue trying the series, but I confess to having trouble following this particular volume. I’m still learning to tell many of the characters from each other (and a LOT get introduced here), and manga conventions remain unfamiliar to me, so I’m still trying to get used to the medium.

This series just does not work for me, I think. I passed it up countless times at various libraries before coming into PDFs of it through a Humble Bundle. That was also not a done deal until I read Remender’s Black Science, which I mostly appreciated and figured that maybe I should try this one, too.

It was shortly into the second volume that I ruled it out for good, so I guess this is a partial review of that, too. I get that the series is supposed to be an allegory or whatever, but the violence and grossness just does not work for me, whatever it is supposed to mean more broadly.

I still recognize the bones of why I’ve liked this show for 5+ years, but this season feels like a stretch. The Titan mission seems like the worst planned space mission of all time, Dev makes a lot of dumb decisions so that he can have a change of heart later, and many of the characters feel like dominoes to be set up in specific ways so that the writers can set off a particular chain reaction. It was fine, but not as good as past seasons.

Cette série continue à faire des bêtises que je trouve gênantes: Il n’y a que quelques personnages « importants » qui doivent vivre toutes les expériences d’un.e Français.e de cette époque, et il y a plein de choses qui se passent pour des raisons dramatiques et non logiques.

Pourtant, cette saison en particulier montre la saleté de la guerre, et je suis impressionné par combien on ose critiquer les Français.e.s même au lieu de croire que tout le monde a été des héros pendant la guerre.

See, here’s a volume that is also reallll dark but has enough anti-nihilism in it to make it shine. This is apparently the last of the volumes I own, and I don’t mind not having any more to read… this series isn’t quite as much fun the second time through.

Ice Cream Man rides a fine line between nihilism and anti-nihilism, and this volume was too far on the side of the former for me to really enjoy a reread.

Don’t remember how much I liked these stories the first time around, but the worldbuilding of Ice Cream Man is my least favorite part, and without the novelty of a first read, it was just meh.

It didn’t change my life, but this mix of genie magic, techbro survival bunker, and passion for the theater was a fun combination.

This book was exploding with creativity: I loved the idea of a two-second time machine as something that just kind of exists but hasn’t caught the public eye, to the extent that it’s forgotten about quickly in the narrative. I also appreciate any story that takes shots at tech bros, and the magic in the book was really interesting.

That said, there were seams in the book that stopped me from giving it full marks. I didn’t follow all of the plot developments (especially the end), it sometimes felt like it was trying to be too cute, and I didn’t always get what Anders was going for with the overarching themes. Still really good, though!

I picked this up on a whim while visiting a Japanese bookstore with family. I’ve long felt that of the great comics traditions, manga is one I know less well than I should. I’d heard this name enough to trust buying it without knowing much about it, and I enjoyed reading it on the plane back from Los Angeles. I’ve checked out several of the subsequent volumes from local libraries, and we’ll see how this goes!