Books I'm Reading

HE JUST KEEPS WRITING FUCKING FANTASTIC NOVELS WTF. NEW FAVORITE AUTHOR UNLOCKED. on to the next one!!!

damn what the fuck is with Eric LaRocca? why do I keep reading his works? I don't know! but I do! every release! I look like a fan, and yet the entire time I'm reading this novel, I'm scoffing at how immature the writing is.

a few examples of the lazy, juvenile writing: 1) "As I x, I y" aka worst sentence structure that makes zero sense grammatically 9 out of 10 times. I wish I bookmarked for examples, but it will go something like this: "As I put my plate down, I take a bite of my dinner." (not a real sentence from the book). You CANNOT DO X... AS YOU DO Y! You do one then the other. sometimes this sentence structure can work e.g. "as I scrolled my phone, I pat my cat" (also not a real sentence from the book) but LaRocca did not do that. kind of a pet peeve of mine, but it stood out.

2) "I COULDN'T HELP BUT" oh my god I'm so tempted to find a PDF of the novel to ctrl+F this phrase. oh my god. I started yelling out whenever I saw one to my wife. it is so often, sometimes in the same page or even paragraph. it adds nothing! why couldn't you help! LaRocca couldn't help but use the same filler phrase over and over :/

3) the refrain. "At dark, I become loathsome." Ok, I like it as a title and it fits the vibe of his other titles, but it was used as a chorus frequently and yet added nothing. it felt very shoe-horned, as if LaRocca had read that one Chuck Palahniuk essay on using choruses and decided to give it a whirl, not understanding how to make it work. it could have been deleted and nothing would have changed. the guy also very quickly was like "oh I guess I'm loathsome in the daytime now too" so??

now that I'm writing this I realize I could go on, but I won't, and I feel terrible even writing this because I imagine LaRocca reading it and I feel kind of mean :/ but I rarely have big crit feelings while reading, and this one was just too much to ignore.

also there is what I said before: I dunno why, but I KNOW that I'm going to read his next release ANYWAY. I don't even LOVE the genre, but maybe the fact that I don't mind it, (even the animal scene), maybe that's enough reason to say I am a fan of the genre? I dunno. mixed feelings.

A super realistic and terrifying look at our near future. Like near-near, like nowish. This was a tender and frightening head-on exploration of what it means to raise children in a damaged world, with a focus on technology and climate. I kept making notes like "so real!" I think the author did a fantastic job of what it feels like to be barraged and pummeled by capitalism. At the tender heart of this book's center is how beneath the concrete and the AI and the bots and the fire/smoke/earthquakes/flooding/fear/terror/etc., we are human animals trying our best.

wow. what a masterclass in worldbuilding. all of the delicious weirdness of China Mieville without the inaccessible language (I say this as a fan of Mieville's inaccessible language). no infodump, just pure and clear immersion in a strange wormy fungal beastial land.