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TaraBlack

TaraBlack

Joined December 2016

Reading is cool.
review
TaraBlack
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Pickpick

This is pretty bleak but really cleverly changes the narrator's register as her circumstances change.

1 stack add
quote
TaraBlack
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The new President is probably the worst one yet.

gentlepet I've been thinking about this book a lot lately 8y
1 like1 stack add1 comment
review
TaraBlack
The Mezzanine | Nicholson Baker
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Pickpick

My experience of this book was one of simultaneous boredom and hysteria, punctuated with moments of laughing out loud. It is an ode to escalators and shoe laces; it revels in the mundane. It's Seinfeld if Seinfeld wasn't asking for the laugh. Very quick read. Don't touch if you are annoyed by footnotes.

quote
TaraBlack
The Mezzanine | Nicholson Baker
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Can you take seriously a person's theory of language when you know he was delighted by ... cowboy movies?

quote
TaraBlack
The Mezzanine | Nicholson Baker
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"I was now permanently arrested at an intermediate stage of personal development."

review
TaraBlack
The Angel's Cut | Elizabeth Knox
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Pickpick

I didn't feel the same sorrowful-delight that I got from The Vintner's Luck but Xas's alien complexity and attempts to exist in the world and survive time are transfixing in a quiet sort of way.

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TaraBlack
The Angel's Cut | Elizabeth Knox
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"History is the monster in their stories."

quote
TaraBlack
The Goose Bath: Poems | Janet Frame
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"If I did not often need to shelter in a word"

quote
TaraBlack
The Angel's Cut | Elizabeth Knox
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"A light in your sovereign darkness."

review
TaraBlack
The Just City | Jo Walton
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Pickpick

Apollo and Pallas Athene have a go at creating Plato's Republic as a thought experiment. Just the best kind of unlikely fun.

2 likes1 stack add
quote
TaraBlack
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"There's a definition of tragedy as a story where you know the end".

review
TaraBlack
Do Not Say We Have Nothing | Madeleine Thien
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Pickpick

Heart-wrenching intergenerational story about the cultural revolution in China. Beautiful prose. Mediates on music, loss and identity. I cried a lot.

1 like1 stack add
quote
TaraBlack
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Cordelia could mean

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TaraBlack
Do Not Say We Have Nothing | Madeleine Thien
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The one who plays too slowly will be swallowed by time.

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TaraBlack
Do Not Say We Have Nothing | Madeleine Thien
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I wanted to know why infinity consisted of water and sheep.

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TaraBlack
Do Not Say We Have Nothing | Madeleine Thien
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"Their incompatible love made her feel hollow".

quote
TaraBlack
Hera Lindsay Bird | Hera Lindsay Bird
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"It just comes over you like an urban sandstorm "

review
TaraBlack
Station Eleven: A novel | Emily St. John Mandel
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Pickpick

Great post-apocalyptic fiction. Oddly gentle and hopeful. Beautifully structured.

quote
TaraBlack
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"Born, each, in a sense with memories on loan"

review
TaraBlack
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Pickpick

Honestly fabulous. Buy it for everyone you know who likes science.

3 likes1 stack add
review
TaraBlack
Dad Art | Damien Wilkins
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Mehso-so

At once didactic and life affirming. The cover does not represent the book but it does represent how I felt reading it.

review
TaraBlack
Tooth and Claw | Jo Walton
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Pickpick

Jane Yolen's blurb pretty much sums it up. It's an Austen comedy of manners with dragons. Really satisfying romance but also, they eat each other and mistreat their servants.

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TaraBlack
Tooth and Claw | Jo Walton
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"Most dragons regard writing as a feminine accomplishment. "

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TaraBlack
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"Venus is a terrible place."

review
TaraBlack
Desolation Road | Ian McDonald
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Pickpick

The book places layer upon layer of fun, sci-fi-satire and characters with a lilting cadence and imaginative flourish.

quote
TaraBlack
Desolation Road | Ian McDonald
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"as mutually indistinguishable as peas in a pod or days in prison. "

review
TaraBlack
The Notebook: The Proof ; The Third Lie : Three Novels | Alan Sheridan, Agota Kristof, David Watson, Marc Romano
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Pickpick

This was disturbing in a compelling way. I liked the first novel/part the best but the book turns in on itself in a structurally superb way so it is best as a whole. It contains child abuse and rape. It's characters operate by a rigid and brutal moral code. Not something to read if you are feeling vulnerable.

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TaraBlack
The Notebook: The Proof ; The Third Lie : Three Novels | Alan Sheridan, Agota Kristof, David Watson, Marc Romano
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"he who writes nothing is lost"

review
TaraBlack
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Mehso-so

This was underwhelming, considering how much I have enjoyed his other books. I couldn't work out if the crossovers from other books were meant to carry it or not.

1 like1 stack add
quote
TaraBlack
The Notebook: The Proof ; The Third Lie : Three Novels | Alan Sheridan, Agota Kristof, David Watson, Marc Romano
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"The word love is not a definite word." - Agota Kristof, The Notebook Trilogy

quote
TaraBlack
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"It makes me happy that an arm of the US government has, in some official capacity, issued an opinion on the subject of firing nuclear missiles at hurricanes. " - Randall Munroe

blurb
TaraBlack
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"Joke is secret language inside words".

review
TaraBlack
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Pickpick

This book, while drawing characters that are just a little too quirky, is ultimately joyful and worth reading if you can forgive a big logical flaw and want everything tied up in a bow. It has genuine heart.