I bought the hardcover edition at the local bookstore and was delighted to find out that it's signed.
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Health services researcher and educator living on Dharug Country in Western Sydney, Australia. You can usually find me in the forgotten parts of the web. I like fiction, the more speculative the better!
My ratings ★ Not recommended ★★ Not for me, but may be okay for you? ★★★ Good ★★★★ Very good, recommended ★★★★★ Exceptional, couldn't put it down
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Ben Harris-Roxas's books
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THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGED THIRTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS by Sue Townsend
From book jacket: Adrian Mole is a worrier. The problems of existence hit him hard. Spots, bits of him that …
Ben Harris-Roxas rated Any Other City: 4 stars
Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante
Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static …
Ben Harris-Roxas rated The Poems of Catullus: 3 stars
Ben Harris-Roxas finished reading Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante
Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante
Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static …
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading War Bodies by Neal Asher
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading Poems of Catullus by Daisy Dunn
Ben Harris-Roxas replied to Thom's status
@thom@bne.social Anyone whose PhD is about a single bloke needs to stfu.
THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGED THIRTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS by Sue Townsend
From book jacket: Adrian Mole is a worrier. The problems of existence hit him hard. Spots, bits of him that …
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading The Poems of Catullus by Gaius Valerius Catullus
I was reminded of Catullus' poems when helping my kid with their Latin homework. What a revelation! I was far too young and naïve to really appreciate his work when I first read it.
Romantic, learned, whimsical and utterly filthy. A poster so devoted to the craft we still talk about him 2,000 years later.
This edition is surprisingly bowdlerised, given it's a relatively recent one, but that's Americans for you. Still, it places his poems in their proper context and they've been a delight to revisit.
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein
Ben Harris-Roxas finished reading Resisting AI by Dan McQuillan
Uneven
2 stars
Content warning Describes broad aspects of the story
This is not a bad book, but it's so wrapped up in describing a set of specific of historical moments and contexts (London, early 2010s, Brazil) that I felt lost within it.
I heard the author interviewed on the TrashFuture podcast and she spoke compellingly, but sadly I just never found traction with this one. This may be more about me than the book though. The prose was good an evocative. The sections within Brazil were more compelling. The plight of a small group of young people trying to survive and forge meaning in the atomising world of late stage capitalism should matter. But the pacing was... off? It felt floated and uneven.
It lost me, or I lost it.
Not for me, but it may be for you.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Far better than I recalled
5 stars
Thoroughly enjoyable, and vastly better than I remembered from when I last read it 25 years ago. There were so many details I didn't recall. I somehow callowly missed all the obvious link the Canterbury Tales amidst the other literary allusions.
The world-building was exceptional, even if things like the world web now seem like a product of the era when it was written. To wit: the the writer and academic describe work conditions in several hundred years from now that seem firmly rooted in the past, let alone the present.
From memory the rest of the series declines in quality, but wow, this was good.