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There is I think probably a thread of brilliance that winds its way though this novel - but I was rarely quite able to grasp it. I am a bit suspicious of the translation; the writing has a kind of wet, glistening consonance that is either amateurish or a deliberate artistic style that emboldens the titillatory corporeal aspects of the book that I enjoy the least. The flatulence, death and shit comprise a blackly humorous take on the occasionally horrifying events that I suppose may be considered provocative or at least honest, but that reads to me more as just unnecessarily edgy.

Impressive, compelling and detailed story of a bunch of crazy Britishers, gallivanting through life, clinging to the glory of a bygone era, callously causing wanton death and performing feats of greatness. It is astonishing their arrogance, what they lived through, what they accomplished.

Life on Mars is great edutainment, clearly the work of people who are passionate about research, space, and space research. It is full of fun anecdotes and what seems like a difficult to assail argument that space colonization is not coming anytime soon - which, gotta say, is a bit sad to hear. The humor that defines the Weinersmith's brand is a bit thin, I imagine basically that it ended up being a bit less funny of a topic than they anticipated, and so perhaps it is a bit less entertaining than their Soonish and Zach's Open Borders. Nevertheless, a fascinating read for anyone who thinks space is kind of neat.

Dickens for me stands a bit a part as a master of the weave of a plot. Emblematic and mostly straightforward characters bounce around to surprising and delightful ends. I'm a bit concerned for the future of Dickens though - while the stories he tells are likely timeless, the style is a bit overwrought for the current day. And so reading is just a bit of a chore, for less of a reward than many contemporaries - Elliot, Melville, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky all provide much more to chew on. I enjoyed Great Expectations a bit less than A Tale of Two Cities, but that might just be because in retrospect, I think Dickens is best when read by a precocious young reader still figuring things out. These days I'm probably merely cocious.

A sweet and thoughtful novel, a little bit lonely, Henry James looking back on an interesting and humane life and set of relationships, father and sister and artist friends. Contemplative but never (terribly, I suppose it is in the eye of the beholder) dry, James's life makes for an interesting platform for exploration of life, death, friends and family. I should probably read more of James's work, and I guess Tóibín's while I'm at it.

Gotta love Bill Watterson and anything he makes

Brusatte takes you through an excellent history of both the dinosaurs themselves and the field of paleontology, from a few crazy pioneers (I could stand to learn a bit more about Baron Nopsca, scientist, swashbuckler and spy) to the high-tech science with computers and lasers it is today. What I found most amazing in this book is the particular way it seemed to anticipate precisely what I was curious about - whenever I started to wonder a bit about X, or how Y works, it would jump in with an excellent explanation, about how we know what the dinosaurs were eating or what color they were or how carbon dating works. Excellent, entertaining and informative, I just kinda wish I was a bit more of a Dinosaur Nerd growing up - which would have made this all the more mind-blowing.

I worry sometimes about my Education. I always thought it was like, pretty good, I got good grades in a wide variety of subjects, but then something like The Cultural Revolution comes to the fore and I am just astonishingly ignorant. A thing that something like a 10th of the current world population lived under, and I just have no idea what life was like, no anecdotes or stories, maybe I read a paragraph or two in high school and wrote a sentence answer on an exam some time.

Pretty good for self-insert fanfic. Better then the Iliad, better in parts and pieces than the Odyssey.

I've been keeping a little inventory of books that misuse and abuse the word palimpsest. It is, in my opinion, a bit of a trap of a word - arcane yet evocative, strange sounding with a compelling meaning that is particularly so for authors; what is more authorial than burying one layer of meaning behind another? And so it seems extraordinarily common for authors to shoe in the word where it is not appropriate, either through blatant misuse (I'm looking at you, The Traitor Baru Cormorant) or just like a bit of a stretch (it is not necessary to refer to dirty whiteboards as palimpsests, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow). Also, to Homi K Bhabha, palimpsetical is most definitely not a word that needs to exist.