I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and I am really glad I did because I am not sure I would have discovered it otherwise. It is a very creeI received a copy of this book from NetGalley and I am really glad I did because I am not sure I would have discovered it otherwise. It is a very creepy, very well written YA horror novel about ghosts and witches in a New England beach town during the off-season when tourists have left and...something else...has set in.
The creepiest part, which was very well done, was the way the main character's best friend is written as she falls under the spell of the ghost that they are communicating with. I felt the main character's fear and frustration with how her friend is acting. I also liked that when some improbably over the top events happened, the main character also voiced that they didn't make sense tried to reason out what the point of them was. It made for a nice balance between having some jump scares but also trying to make the jump scares work within the narrative....more
I follow a few science fiction subreddits, including a couple specifically for sci-fi books, and lately it seems like the only book anyone can talk abI follow a few science fiction subreddits, including a couple specifically for sci-fi books, and lately it seems like the only book anyone can talk about is Dungeon Crawler Carl. Previously it was Project Hail Mary, which I love, so when NetGalley offered up the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, I grabbed the first one assuming that I was going to be in for a great ride.
And it was...fine. Fun, even. It's "litRPG" which means that it contains a lot of descriptions of things you would find in a role playing game. When I play games, I am not a dungeon crawler fan, I need something a little more than just fighting and leveling up for the goal of fighting harder enemies and getting better loot to keep me going. And that was what ultimately led to me finishing this book and not feeling the need to keep going with the series. The bulk of the prose is descriptions of fighting and the rewards the characters get from fighting. I can tell from the hints laid in this first book and from looking over the back cover synopses of later books that stuff evolves with the world that this game takes place in, but I don't think I can sit through another 7 books of fighting and loot and achievements (which get the characters more loot).
I was also disappointed that the first book doesn't contain its own story. Most series will have the overarching story but then also have a beginning, middle, and end of events happening within each book. This book just ended at the main characters getting ready to head down to floor 3, having cleared the first two floors. There's no smaller arc that gets resolved, which makes me suspect that subsequent books are just going to keep rolling with one long story and not offer up any smaller self-contained arcs.
Ultimately I'm glad that I took the time to see what everyone was talking about, and it went by very fast and was fun, but I don't think I will be finding out what race and class Carl and Donut pick on floor 3 and I'm OK with that....more
There have been a few books that have caught my eye about the evolution of language on the internet, but Algospeak was offered on Netgalley so I pickeThere have been a few books that have caught my eye about the evolution of language on the internet, but Algospeak was offered on Netgalley so I picked this one up first. After I finished it, I was wondering if I would still be interested in other books on this topic. From looking at the synopsis of a similar book, Because Internet by Gretchen McCullough, the unique thing that stands out about Algospeak is that its primary focus is on short-form video on TikTok and Instagram, rather than taking a longer view back to the earlier days of the internet. So if you've already ready other internet language books, I think this one has a hook that is worth the time.
I have to admit I had a little bit of a mental meltdown when the author referenced being in middle school in the mid-2010s. That was just yesterday, right? I thought this book was written by a grown person?
Once my brain did some reluctant math, I came to really appreciate the perspective on this topic of someone who grew up when short-form video content started dominating social media. Rather than reading something written by an older outsider who is researching and trying to understand how this form of communication has shaped language, we have a guide who has been steeped in it and can share firsthand observations of how it has evolved. I thought that it was very valuable that he gave plenty of examples from his own social media content and was able to explain what he did with it and why.
On the downside, not all of the trends he referenced were explained, and my exposure to TikTok has primarily been through being a semi-regular viewer of After Midnight. I'm not online enough to recognize what some of these trends were without a sentence or two to describe them. He mentioned the Roman Empire a lot without explanation, I am guessing this is not a historical reference? But what is it?
I think the most useful thing that the author did was tying in the current trends in language to the overarching trends in language evolution that have always existed, and explaining how what we're seeing now isn't any different than the way language has always evolved. He did this fairly regularly throughout the book and kept tying each new point into this. It definitely took my original point of view that kids are really bizarre and need to put their phones down and go outside, and turned it around a bit to feeling like okay, we're just continuing on this path we've always been on. ...more