The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C. L. Miller (2024) ★★★☆☆ Note the bird silhouette in the O of “to”. Part of why I got the book! Spoilers! Another Winner’s clearance book. This one, though, only had two clearance stickers as opposed to four. I read the Goodreads reviews after finishing the book, but before starting the review. They confirmed my view that it’s just… a meh book. More three star ratings than anything else.

★★★★☆ No Nonsense Dog Training: A Complete Guide to Fully Train Every Dog by Haz Othman This is the second part of a two-part series on dog training methodologies. If you haven’t read my review of Zak George’s Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog, do that first. Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you. Okay, I have THOUGHTS. Firstly: the four stars represent my experience of reading the book and the sheer amount of new information I learned.

Zak George’s Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog: Proven Solutions to the Most Common Training Problems for All Ages, Breeds, and Mixes by Zak George and Dina Roth Port ★★★☆☆ So this was supposed to be Part One of a two book review series, and you the reader will see both reviews posted at the same time. I promised myself I wouldn’t begin reading the second book before finishing the review of this book.

★★★★☆ Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1969) This cover is great, isn’t it? My reading backlog is endless, and I only fitted this in due to a glowing recommendation from my dear and wonderful imaginary friend. He read Project Hail Mary at my recommendation, so I figured it was mandatory to return the social nicety. What am I saying? I really liked the book. And I don’t happen to have this lovely book in my library, so I had to find an ebook.

★★★☆☆ What If? 2 by Randall Munroe (2022) Alas I lost my index card bookmark of notes, so there are no direct quotes here. I liked this book. I didn’t like it nearly as much as the first one. Was it worse or was it just because I was far older while reading book 2? The original What if? was really magical to me. Young me, Costco, reading the back where it says you can eat the book for around 3,000 calories if you could eat books.

★★★★☆ A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015) This is not my most controversial review, but it’s definitely the most controversial book I’ve reviewed so far. There are literally famous criticisms of this book: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/striptease-among-pals/ - Paywalled being one https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/andrea-long-chu-new-york-magazine - and this one being another. It won a Criticism Pulitzer, though I thought the line between criticism and personal attack was pretty thin. This type of book inherently makes you wonder about the author, though.

★★☆☆☆ 21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act by Bob Joseph (2018) Firstly, it’s my fault for going to the wrong bookstore. It seems to be dedicated exclusively to school books. It’s not the bookstore’s fault, but it’s not my fault either, 1) because nothing is ever my fault, and 2) it didn’t say so anywhere!!! Certainly not in the first sentence on the website in the first Google Search result.

Chasing Perfect by Susan Mallery Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ I got the book for $1 from Winners after seeing that it had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR red clearance stickers attached to it. What kind of book deserves a 1/5? An offensively bad one. I was two-thirds through Chasing Perfect when I started this review. I just couldn’t take any more of this. The premise is slightly interesting on the surface level.

Understanding Autism: Discover the many ways autistic minds work Rating: ★★☆☆☆ This newsstand magazine (it’s vaguely book-shaped, so it’s a BOOK and so this is a valid BOOK REVIEW) was solidly a 2/5 at the beginning. I felt obliged to give it a 3/5 by the end. It’s still a 2/5 in my heart. [One-month-later update: Nope, frick that. If 21 Things is getting a 2/5, this is getting a 2/5 too.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Rating ★★★★★ Spoiler warning, although knowing what happens won’t ruin your enjoyment. I knew there’d be an alien, I knew he’d save the world, and I still enjoyed the book. I read The Martian back when it was popular, after watching the movie. These books are about as mainstream as it gets. I figured I deserved one after Quantitative Trading and A Room of One’s Own.