★★★★☆ 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.

Quantitative Trading: How to build your own algorithmic trading business by Ernest P. Chan Rating: ★★★★☆ So I find the idea of quantitative trading pretty romantic, and I’m surely not the only one. Meritocracy! Antisocial! Morally questionable! Exceptionally high pay, to the point where you can buy basically whatever you want! High risk/high reward, constantly shifting, and oh-so-mysteeeeeerious. You get it. What I liked: It assumes competence. Like, of course you know how to code.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Rating: 3/5 This review sucks. But here, take an image, it makes up for it. We are visual creatures after all. Some of my many thoughts while reading: Why is it copyrighted? What’s up with that, Sirius Publishing? Is it just because you wrote the introduction? Hm. Does feminism necessarily have to be intersectional? Does a feminist necessarily have to stand up for all of pro-choice, for men’s rights, for all colors, for veganism, and perhaps Palestine and Ukraine too?

Artemis Blu and the Solarium Multiversity by Shanna Dobson Rating: 2/5 I found this book from a Youtube review: Infinity Unicorn Book Gives Me Infinite Pain. I like trainwreck-style book reviews, perhaps more than normal ones. A Quora answer led to me reading the infamous Empress Theresa back in the day. That book, for all its plot holes, had zero mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I cannot say the same about this one.