Brutally breathtakingly violent, like people are. But leavened by a remarkable evocation of the way who we love shapes our understanding of the world.

A bit heavy handed in places but an extremely engaging fast read.

An accurate depiction of what nighttime parenting does to the imagination.

Love the widow. Falling out of the sky laughing.

The usual lucid Didion prose and slightly hallucinatory and remote ultra-privileged perspective. The Lowell poem about Caracas in the middle of the essay on Colombia pissed me off. Scenario: essay about San Francisco and L.A. with random poem about Vancouver in the middle of it. Wut?

A strong beginning, some really engaging sections. I didn't dig the inclusion of the blog posts, and wasn't wild about the ending, but I liked that it allowed everyone to be flawed without being caricatures.

Weird counter-revolutionary fascist sentiment from Batman. Presumably just lazy/confused writing.

Adult relationship drama. A charming, gently-paced entry in an always-readable series.

Sunglasses for scale, because this thing is more plinth than book. eBook this one if you can. Nobody's going to read this who hasn't already been suckered by the first four, so no further review is really required. It's a more sprawling and less rollicking tale than its predecessors, though.

An engaging "YA" with the great advantage of not having a central romance grafted onto it. Good opening, a little slow in the first third, and then really picks up when the quest starts. Strong visual description. The epilogue seemed unnecessary to me but I can understand why it was attractive to include it. I would be keen on a film adaptation because of the delightfully original imagery.