H James's Updates en-US Mon, 14 Apr 2025 08:16:08 -0700 60 H James's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review6857556909 Mon, 14 Apr 2025 08:16:08 -0700 <![CDATA[H James added 'The Shamshine Blind']]> /review/show/6857556909 The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo H James gave 1 star to The Shamshine Blind (Hardcover) by Paz Pardo
bookshelves: to-read
The emotions‐captured‐as‐pigments concept is intriguing, but the prose is splattered with poorly chosen adjectives, and the plot is riddled with fallacies. ]]> UserStatus1039856717 Fri, 04 Apr 2025 18:44:03 -0700 <![CDATA[ H James is on page 325 of 544 of Babel ]]> Babel by R.F. Kuang H James is on page 325 of 544 of <a href="/book/show/57945316-babel">Babel</a>. ]]> Review7444929726 Sat, 29 Mar 2025 09:37:04 -0700 <![CDATA[H James added 'Abundance']]> /review/show/7444929726 Abundance by Ezra Klein H James gave 4 stars to Abundance (Hardcover) by Ezra Klein
There’s not much new here for dedicated listeners of The Ezra Klein Show (and presumably of Plain English as well?), but Abundance offers a coherent, compelling argument presented with admirable humility and succinctness. ]]> UserChallenge47591238 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 20:30:43 -0800 <![CDATA[ H James has challenged himself to read 36 books in 2024. ]]> /user/show/1330557-h-james 11634 Create your own 2024 Reading Challenge » ]]> Comment286324263 Mon, 27 Jan 2025 15:02:08 -0800 <![CDATA[H James made a comment on Steven’s status]]> /read_statuses/8986858141 H James made a comment on Steven’s status

Do you have reason to think this is better than The Midnight Library? ]]> AuthorFollowing107000723 Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:34:14 -0800 <![CDATA[<AuthorFollowing id=107000723 user_id=1330557 author_id=1100593>]]> UserChallenge61757477 Sat, 25 Jan 2025 17:03:18 -0800 <![CDATA[ H James has challenged himself to read 36 books in 2025. ]]> /user/show/1330557-h-james 11627
He has read 4 books toward his goal of 36 books.
 
4 of 36 (11%)
Create your own 2025 Reading Challenge » ]]> Review6522499619 Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:35:55 -0800 <![CDATA[H James added 'You Like It Darker']]> /review/show/6522499619 You Like It Darker by Stephen King H James gave 2 stars to You Like It Darker (Hardcover) by Stephen King
bookshelves: short-stories
Mr King must know which of these twelve stories has legs—“Two Talented Bastids”—because he put it first in this collection. The two shortest pieces, “Red Screenâ€� and “The Fifth Stepâ€�, offer little pops of ghoulish fun that evoke a Stephen King of half a century ago and are worth the modest time investment. The other nine pieces range from the instantly forgettable (“Laurieâ€�) to the laughably bad (“On Slide Inn Roadâ€�), from the half‐formed (“The Turbulence Expertâ€�) to the too‐familiar (“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dreamâ€�) and are best skipped. ]]> Review6857579501 Sat, 14 Dec 2024 11:12:36 -0800 <![CDATA[H James added 'Red Dust']]> /review/show/6857579501 Red Dust by Yoss H James gave 1 star to Red Dust (Cuban Science Fiction) by Yoss
How Red Dust got published in its original language, let alone translated, is inexplicable and—I can only assume—a giant slap in the face to any writer who has had a competently written story rejected by publishers. This novella makes moves to be an extraplanetary adventure and a hardboiled mystery and a mecha‐inflected action tale and an android’s rights think piece and succeeds on exactly none of these fronts, instead offering a confusing mess of half‐formed ideas and genre fiction clichĂ©s.

The only thing (and I mean only thing) remotely redeeming in this entire story is the coinage of the word ‘Gaussicalâ€�. That’s a cool word. ]]> CommunityQuestion3304680 Tue, 19 Nov 2024 10:31:37 -0800 <![CDATA[#<CommunityQuestion:0x0000555596c09888>]]>