en-US Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:45:43 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7367903118 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:45:43 -0800 /review/show/7367903118 Nicholas gave 3 stars to Reamde (Hardcover) by Neal Stephenson
]]> Review7367902629 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:45:38 -0800 /review/show/7367902629 Nicholas gave 3 stars to Fates and Furies (Hardcover) by Lauren Groff
]]> Review7367902629 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:45:20 -0800 /review/show/7367902629 Nicholas gave 3 stars to Fates and Furies (Hardcover) by Lauren Groff
]]> Review7367902205 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:45:12 -0800 /review/show/7367902205 Nicholas gave 3 stars to The Starless Sea (Hardcover) by Erin Morgenstern
]]> ReadStatus9135849464 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:45:07 -0800 /review/show/7367902629 Nicholas has read Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
]]> Review7367902205 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:44:59 -0800 /review/show/7367902205 Nicholas gave 3 stars to The Starless Sea (Hardcover) by Erin Morgenstern
]]> ReadStatus9135848855 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:44:42 -0800 /review/show/7367902205 Nicholas has read The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
]]> Review6141128906 Sun, 07 Jan 2024 09:31:45 -0800 /review/show/6141128906 Nicholas gave 3 stars to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Hardcover) by Shehan Karunatilaka
]]> Review6052055511 Fri, 15 Dec 2023 12:12:38 -0800 /review/show/6052055511 Nicholas gave 2 stars to Aliss at the Fire (Paperback) by Jon Fosse
Perhaps one of the most difficult-to-read things I’ve ever struggled through, and not just because it’s extremely bleak (which I'm fine with); it conveys anxiety of the characters through repetition, broken sentences, and repetition, and while that does certainly work (you are guaranteed to feel anxious after struggling through just one of its multiple-page-spanning, endlessly looping paragraphs), it makes the book very unrewarding to read. It also feels cheap: there is grief, loss, and (somewhere) hope here, and it could be so much better conveyed.

The characters are one-dimensional and their motivations and reactions uninteresting. Even the things which happen to them are tragically mundane. It's billed as "one of the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate", but not only it is certainly not, it's also not much of anything else. Awful. ]]> Review5883094703 Mon, 02 Oct 2023 18:14:12 -0700 /review/show/5883094703 Nicholas gave 2 stars to Checkout 19 (Hardcover) by Claire-Louise Bennett
There is a fine line in stream-of-consciousness writing between the glorious sensation of being taken for a ride in someone else's head and thumping self-indulgence and Checkout 19 stomped right over it. Which is a shame, because I think the other Bennett book I read, Pond, danced along it perfectly, and there were passages in Checkout 19 which I loved. ]]>