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So matter of fact about her romantic advances. Truly a gem.

I think it speaks to the strength of the characters that Maomao takes a bit of a backseat for much of this volume but it still manages to be engaging, with lots of intrigue and development happening along the sidelines of Maomao's life. But even in the backseat it really shows how central she is to so much of life in the royal capital.

I found an archive of all the Animorphs books and, for some reason, thought that reading through them for the first time in well over 20 years was a brilliant idea.

There's interesting bits here with how morphing works and stuff, but I definitely wouldn't recommend this nowadays. It's surprisingly brutal for a children's book (as all the good ones are) but it is still a children's book, and the simple language and plot really holds it back from being a really good read.

It's not perfect, but definitely an interesting way for Jinwoo to progress beyond the system. He got it after the double dungeon, and he surpassed it upon his return. Very cool.

I often struggle with narratives where there is such overt, cruel, and public bullying happening over a long period of time. It speaks to such a large societal failure to deal with such instances that it beggars belief. 

I thought I would feel the same way about Carrie, but I don't. She and her family are so messed up that people don't know what to do about them. Sue and Tommy, for good reasons or not, actually make an attempt to help her. And when it all goes to hell it does so in such a way that it becomes hard to feel that much pity for Carrie in the end. 

It's a tense, fast, terrible story that never really tries to surprise you but always has you hooked in anyways. Super good read.

Goofy little Belgian man solves mystery, POV character is just smart enough to constantly look like an idiot. It's a classic for a reason. It's an engaging mystery where I was always second-guessing my assumptions, and Poirot is actually such a fun character, shedding light and befuddling everyone in equal parts. Just a great read altogether.

Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching is lovely. She keeps a lot of the poetic obscurity—which is also where a lot of insight is—and she doesnt shy from presenting an interpretation of the work as a whole, which strengthens the presentation greatly. There are fewer contradictions and odd asides, and there are plenty of notes in places where Le Guin took liberties, explaining both what she did and why she felt it was necessary.

Any edition of the Ching is lovely to read through, but Le Guin's strikes a balance between poetry and teaching that feels just right. Absolutely fantastic.

I forgot about the appearance of Dr. Slump characters in this arc. Always good fun to see a genuine threat done in by gag characters.

Other than the climax just kind of going confusing at breakneck speed this was a fantastic book. Really love how arbitrarily self-assured Esk and Granny are. They are basically unstoppable in a university full of dweebs. Great fun.

It's sort of what I think of as a typical Scalzi book, with the down-on-their-luck protagonist suddenly being thrust into a much more sci-fi life than expected, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. Hera may be one of my all-time favourite characters. The whole thing is just funny, with a serious of ridiculous situations and a man who is too shell-shocked to do anything other than accept that it's happening and joke about it a bit.

If the end wasn't so deflating, where it all just sort of wraps up nicely with a cute bow and everyone's chill, it would probably be a 5-stars from me, but it sort of felt like the default expected ending. Enjoyable enough, but not really interesting.

Still, if you want something light and goofy this is a lot of fun. Highly recommend.

Cardinal lays out why the White Paper put forth in the late 60's is a terrible framework for solving the problems of Indigenous people in Canada. There are more recent accounts of what a good solution should look like, and more fullsome accounts of problems with various agencies and treaties, but this is one of the earlier accounts that does a good job of laying out why Indigenous concerns aren't as simple as just treating them like any other Canadian.

The landscape has evolved a lot since Cardinal wrote this, and our vocabulary is able to be more specific about reconciliation, self-government, intergenerational trauma, cultural genocide, and so on, but for a time period where much of these concepts were in their early days he puts forth a solid picture of what steps can be taken to move towards real reconciliation.

The end of Muscle Tower is fun, what with Goku being shot repeatedly and it never working. And then it sprints off to the next weird thing, and the next one after that, and then it just kind of ends. The story really isn't structured for a volume at a time, but it's still good fun.

So, like, I enjoy this one as I generally do with the Hardy Boys, but holy hell the bad guys are stupid. Kidnap the wrong kids, lose their prisoners repeatedly, can't find anyone on the island, can't escape the island... at least when the boys are dealing with pro criminals there's usually more of a struggle, but in this case the criminals are a bunch of doofuses trying to be threatening, just badly.

These boys are far too comfortable having revolvers pointed at them.