Reviews and Comments

Ji FU

fu@millefeuilles.cloud

Joined 2 years, 3 months ago

Trying to find a better way to track books I want to read than a random spreadsheet. I had used readinglog.info which was provided by my local public library until they shut down the program. Luckily, I regularly backed it up via their CSV export. I've used Library Thing for years, but adding books for "To Read" really screwed up a lot of the other features of the website, like recommendations, etc. I really love Free Software & the Fediverse particularly. My primary social media account is on Friendica @fu@libranet.de for now everything I post here is automatically "re-tooted" there.

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Ernest Cline: Ready Player Two (AudiobookFormat, 2020, Random House Audio) 3 stars

Days after Oasis founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. …

A bit more unbelievable than the first

4 stars

Ready Player One is one of the greatest books I ever read. As such the sequel is likely disappoint. Cline's writing is still spell-binding and leads one wanting to turn the page. The sequel claims to start only a few days after the end of the previous, but so much of the world has changed, like Artimus now hating Z.

Cline tries to get the magic of Haladay's contest again in the quest for the siren's soul. But while Holiday's contest took years to complete, Anarch gives our protagonist only hours to get it done. The number of times that the characters feel free to joke and guess the outcome of an invent doesn't seem believable at a time they also are fighting for the survival of much of the human race with less than 12 hours to complete it.

That being said the story is still very good, and …

W.T. Kosmos: Mega Gossip (Paperback, 2025, Wise Wit Press) 1 star

In this laugh-out-loud journey through social media chaos, Maya is determined to step out of …

Not very good

1 star

I recieved this book for free from #LibraryThing early reviews in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly, this book has pretty much nothing going for it. It's a juvenile novel about the dangers of social media. As awful as that sounds it's actually worse. Mega Gossip is their local social media platform on Puddoin Head island. And yet she's gong to get a million followers? There's also lots of jokes about poop. Probably be good for junior high boys, but I also don't see junior high boys reading a book with girls as the protagonists.

Jeffrey Rowe, Emmy Cicierega: Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure! (Hardcover, 2016, Disney Press) 2 stars

Blendin Blandin is searching for the legendary Time Pirates' Treasure, and he needs Dipper and …

You might like it?

2 stars

The illustrations were great. I liked that unlike traditional "Choose your own adventure" they weren't written in some weird second person perspective (e.g. "you took a step to the right and found a rock") and instead allowed you to make the decision of a particular third person the person of whom changes throughout the book depending on what makes sense for the story.

I found the story itself was kind of lame and I still couldn't get my 12-year-old interested in reading even though she's a huge Gravity Falls fan.

David R. George III: Raise the Dawn (DS9-Relaunch #27) (Paperback, 2012, Pocket Books/Star Trek) 5 stars

The second novel in a two-part Typhon Pact adventure set in the universe of Star …

The new Deep Space Nine you didn't know you needed

5 stars

Wow! George has always been one of my favorite Star Trek authors but this blew me away.

The book begins seconds before the previous novel ended. U.S.S. Robinson exits the worm whole to find explosions galore and Sisko may never be the same again.

It's certainly an odd story though. 400 pages, only 24 chapters, but a prologue and an epilogue that make up 100 of those pages.

The Romulan praetor is committed to peace even when everything the Romulans have been doing leads the rest of the universe to believe otherwise, but she goes to great lengths to make it reality.

The leaps between the real world, the past, the wormhole are written so amazingly that something that should be incredibly confusing is even easier to follow than if it was in front of your face, and I have never had so may out loud physical emotional responses to …

wants to read V by A. C. Crispin

A. C. Crispin: V (Hardcover, 1984, Gregg Press) 5 stars

Try To Resist

They arrived - tens of thousands of extraterrestrial beings - in huge …

First devoured the NBC Mini-Series/Mini-Series Sequel/V The Series on NEtflix like 10 years ago, watched the ABC Re-boot TV Series in less than 2 days last week on Tubi. Can't get my fix, so time to start on the books, was going to start on Book 2, but now that I've seen the reboot, I need a reminder of the OG so the novelization it is.

Roderick Vönhogen: Geekpriest (AudiobookFormat, 2013, Servant Books, An imprint of Franciscan Media) 5 stars

A priest with a lightsaber? With these adventures and anecdotes, Fr. Roderick Vönhogen shares his …

Much better than I expected.

5 stars

If you are a Catholic, a Star Wars fan, a runner, someone concerned about mental health or a podcaster, I recommend this book.

Geekpriest is about the adventures of an unexpected priest from a rural town in the Netherlands. He tells the story of how he grew up a Catholic, and even most people in his Catholic school thought the church teachings where dumb, he wanted to become a comic book artist, but was drawn to the priesthood, against his parents' wishes.

He wrote a hand coded website about the rumors surrounding " Star Wars The Phantom Menace" even though his bishop didn't think it was something a good priest should be doing. Along the way he was able to make references to the Catholic faith seen in the Star Wars universe, and unbeknownst to himself later when attending a Star Wars release received reports from multiple people that he …

Irwin Math, Leonardo Barsantini: Understanding Basic Electricity (Hardcover, 2023, Artisan North America) 3 stars

This book will give the non-technical reader a general idea of what electricity is, how …

Not what I was hoping for

3 stars

I received this book for free in return for an honest review through LibraryThings early review program. It was pretty OK. Nothing particularly insightful, I was hoping to be able to use it as a reference for my kids' 4-H project, but not really going to work for us.

reviewed Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton, Scott Brick: Jurassic Park (AudiobookFormat, 2015, Brilliance Audio) 5 stars

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most …

Even better than the movie!

5 stars

I had been wanting to watch Jurassic Park again lately, but with two young night owls it's hard to find a time I can watch a PG-13 movie. I thought listening to the audio book might scratch the itch. It actually made it worse as I wanted to note all the differences I heard if they matched my memory from seeing the film in the 90s or not.

The book was fantastic. Its a story we all know pretty well by now, but told so much better. The introduction includes a number of children on the Costa Rican mainland being bit by "lizards" a workman murdered by a raptor (which they tell the doctor was a digger accident, and the workman wakes up to say "raptor" which is interprited as being a cryptozoic creature, and then an American girl was bit by a lizard on a remote beach that caused …

Ciara O'Neal: Pedro the Pirate (Hardcover, 2024, Cardinal Rule Press) 4 stars

Hoist a sail? Do it solo! Explore the high seas? Who needs a crew? Not …

A great idea, a fun book, four year old lost interest.

4 stars

I received this book for free as part of LibraryThing's Early Review program an exchange for an honest review.

The book was cute. I really loved the IDEA of showing a foster kid in a new environment, his desire to have nothing to do with these new people, and in the end needing to work together and be nice to achieve a new goal.

The actual story (words) made no actual reference to the foster kid situation, it just sounded like a pirate story. When paired with the "for the parents" section before the story and the book's illustration the idea should be clear. Unfortunately, the pictures didn't seem to be enough to keep my four-year-old's attention, even though they looked great to me. She listened as she went along her playing way. I think it may have been better if the story started with a quick line about how …