reads2cope's reviews
409 reviews

At no almost point did this book go where I expected it to. Some of the choices were a little heavy handed, but it didn’t take away from the enjoyment enough to be anything but five stars. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while!

“What does it mean to love? A country? A book? A people? To say “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty,” while thinking about Palestine. While holding the key to your father’s first home. While While While. The news keeps screaming”

This collection tore out my heart and stomped on it and I absolutely needed that.

“She treated her patron saint as one of her relatives, a member of a family that had been torn apart and dispersed. He was the only person she had left, apart from Nabu, the cat, and the specter of her son, Daniel, who was bound to return one day. To others she lived alone, but she believed she lived with three beings, or three ghosts, with so much power and presence that she didn't feel lonely.”

Grim and funny. I really flew through this and now I regret not spending more time with it. Who is the real monster and the nature vs nurture debates were brought in again and again but in new and creative ways each time. I never knew what was coming next and it was exciting to see how each character reacted to every new turn.

Only the third Le Guin I've read, and the parts I disliked were the same things I disliked in Left Hand of Darkness - a strange focus on sex and too much time debating complex politics (in Left Hand) and physics (in Dispossessed)

I also was confused by the flashbacks at the beginning, possibly because I listened to it rather than having an eBook or physical copy. However, the way anarchism is described on Annares, and especially contrasted with the capitalism on Urras, was very interesting. I hated Shevek, which by the time he gets to Vea's party I hope the reader is supposed to do, but still, even that felt like a push too far. However, the last third of the book really paid off and the excitement of the ending might get me to continue the Hainish Cycle... we shall see. 

Bring back music breaks between chapters! I'm learning German, so I'm not sure how much of this I remembered from rereading the series last year compared to how much German I'm really understanding now, but it did help with vocabulary and hopefully more. Excited to hear the rest of the series this way. 

Did I just read this book in January? Yes. Did I listen to this in just a few days in February? Of course. How many times have I streamed the BBC miniseries this year? Do not ask!

Every author brought something completely different yet every piece melded seamlessly into this stunning anthology. 

Not my favorite from Talia Hibbert, but the romance at the core was still great! For such a short book, it felt like it was taking on too many heavy topics (especially for a Christmas romance) and definitely didn’t have the space to handle John’s character, but I was still rooting for Cash and Bailey and wasn’t as annoyed at such a corny epilogue as I normally am!
Do be aware there are a million Harry Potter references… hopefully that era of shoehorning Hogwarts into everything is now over!

"She'd become attached to the phone as if it was another limb, as if she was trying to recreate in our house with her calls back home."

Beautifully written coming-of-age. I liked the time -jumps, it made most of the book feel like vignettes, though the action definitely picked up at the end. I wanted so much more for Razia, but I love how the ending showed her she did have community. 

Oh my god I loved this so much. A socialist Pride & Prejudice is right, and since I love P&P so much I can't believe it too me this long to read this! I only watched the BBC North & South miniseries for the first time in 2020, and have re-watched it so much since I almost had it memorized. Normally I try to read the book first, but some of Gaskell's writing was confusing for someone not familiar with the dialects she included in dialogue, so in this case it helped to have a reference. 

No slight against the book, but this edition (Duke Classics eBook printed 2012) was awful. I switched to reading a Project Gutenberg and listening on LibriVox (really enjoyed MaryAnn's reading!) because the Duke version was missing punctuation and had many other mistakes (printed "hack" instead of "back," "he" instead of "be," etc.) Definitely will be avoiding checking out any more from Duke and hopefully will find a way to report it to my library so they can get a better copy.

It was also disappointing that a book about inequality contained so many slurs and stereotypes against the Roma and the Irish, and such disgust towards Catholics, but it was enlightening to see what was so socially acceptable to say about minority groups then.

Finally, the ending was so abrupt! Gaskell built up the romance and tension so beautifully, I wanted more, so please forgive me if I finally start logging FanFic reads on here...