The Dragon's Promise

I started reading The Dragon's Promise right after finishing Six Crimson Cranes; I was eager to see where the story went!

The Dragon's Promise starts right where Six Crimson Cranes left off: Shiori and Seryu are entering the dragon realm of Ai'long. Of course, Shiori is not really welcome; Seryu's grandfather, the Dragon King and god of dragons, is upset that she took the starstroke to weave her net in the previous book. But she promised to bring him the broken dragon pearl, so she is granted an audience with him. OF course, Shiori being Shiori, she twisted her words: she didn't agree to GIVE it to him, so that makes the King wrathful once more.

And so begins The Dragon's Promise. Shiori goes from one encounter to the next, the literal incarnation of the saying "out of the frying pan and into the fire" as she keeps making pledges to people, and basically antagonizing the court of Ai'long for the first third of the book before magically somehow coming out of all the encounters in one piece.

And that's basically how the rest of the book went. Shiori seemed to have no self-preservation skills, no sense of decorum for a princess. She antagonized and lied to so many people, but somehow always came out okay. In Six Crimson Cranes, I enjoyed her character, and how she worked hard to make her way in the world without her privilege. But in The Dragon's Promise, when she once again has her privilege as a princess, she seems to not care about anything that comes with being a princess, and instead brute forces her way through everything. She somehow comes out okay in the end, but it gets really annoying along the way. I think after her adventures in Ai'Long, I stopped liking her character, which made it hard to actually finish the story. :(  But I persevered through her lies to her father, and her adventure with her brothers and Takkan to the Forgotten Isles of Lapzur looking for the Wraith (and a way to finally defeat the demon-king Bandur). 

I'll admit, I liked her solution to freeing the demons trapped in the mountain. After speaking with the Wraith (the half-demon, half-dragon who is the rightful owner of the dragon pearl), and talking to the shaman in Tambu about their nature (and how they are as much a part of the world as the dragons and the gods), she starts to look at them differently, thinking that maybe the Kiatan ancestors were wrong, and they shouldn't be trapped within the mountain any longer. But the Wraith also warned that, having been trapped for so long, they would take their revenge on the people. Her solution to free them but make sure everyone was safe was elegant.

So all in all, I wasn't a huge fan of The Dragon's Promise. I liked some of the ideas happening in the book, once I stopped liking the main character, it became a lot more painful to read. It also seemed to flit too quickly from thing to thing, and would have benefited being split into more books so the story could progress at a less break-neck speed and actually flesh out what was happening a lot more. I wish The Dragon's Promise had lived up to Six Crimson Cranes, but unfortunately I didn't think it did.

Six Crimson Cranes

Six Crimson Cranes is the story of Princess Shiori, who ends up cursed by her stepmother: no one will recognize her, and for every word she speaks, one of her brothers will die. Her brothers are also cursed, turned into cranes during the day. Penniless and voiceless, Shiori must find a way to break the curse and save them all while war seems to be breaking out around them. 

I enjoyed Six Crimson Cranes. It's a really fun, fairytale-like story (it's clearly influenced by the Wild Swans). There's some fun world building involving dragons and demons. And the story ends up taking you in some unexpected directions, especially at the end. I'm looking forward to reading The Dragon's Promise, which concludes the tale!

Hulk vs Thor: Banner of War

The same friend who lent me Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 lent me Hulk vs Thor: Banner of War.  I wasn't really expecting much from it, but wow was this a wild ride!

After a tragedy in El Pasco, Bruce Banner removed himself from the world, trying to stop anyone else from getting hurt. He separated his body and consciousness into three: Hulk's body was acting like a space ship, taking them out away from everyone. Hulk's psyche was powering the engines by fighting ever increasing (simulated) threats, and Banner himself was the captain of the spaceship. Unfortunately Thor gets wind of where Banner is, and tries to bring him back to face justice, resulting in an all-out brawl between the two! Unfortunately Hulk's powers/madness are contagious; is even the God of Thunder safe?

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did. One of the things that I really enjoyed was that Odin's ghost is currently inhabiting Mjolnir; after hitting Hulk, his spirit is able to enter the control room to talk to (and fight) Banner himself! The two of them ultimately work together to end the fight after Thor is infected; Mjolnir-wielding Hulk was a very unexpected but fun touch to the end of this story, too!

I'll admit that I didn't follow the story super well at times (I basically had to describe some of what happened as "space magic," even though I know it wasn't really magic at play at all). But it was really crazy, a lot of fun, and definitely worth the read!

Dark Knights of Steel Vol 1

A friend of mine lent me Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 awhile ago, and I finally sat down to read it today. Dark Knights of Steel sets Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in a medieval fantasy setting with an alternate history for Kal-El. In this setting, Kal-El's parents escaped the dying planet Krypton when his mother was pregnant; Kal-El is born on Earth. Batman's parents were the rulers of one of the three kingdoms, but after they were killed by the Green Man (Lex Luthor who found the Green Lantern ring and became the Joker), Kal-El's parents took over. Bruce was the bastard son of the Waynes (Thomas isn't his dad here) and so would never have been accepted as the ruler. 

While the Els rule fairly peacefully, magic is banned from their kingdom. Batman is tasked with rounding all of the magic users up and imprisoning them. Due to this, and a prophecy from John Constantine, the neighbouring Kingdom of Storms wants the Els dead. With the help of the Green Man, Green Arrow launches an arrow and kills Jor-El, starting the three kingdoms' descent towards war.

What's really fun is that Dark Knights of Steel takes you in some really unexpected directions. There were a few moments that I did not see coming because the story plays with what you know of the characters: for example, Dark Knights of Steel's Kal-El is not the same (Superman) Kal-El who we're used to. But you don't realize it until the story unfolds.

I thought this was a fantastic reimagining of the three superheroes, and I can't wait for Volume 2!!!!

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 9: Okay

Well, here we are: the finale of The Wicked + The Divine! Unfortunately the Comics Plus app didn't have Volume 9 on it, so I had to snag the physical copy from the library.

 

I had no idea where the story was going, beyond a few hints from Ananke's sister that the Children would have to find their own way out, and the ending she suggested to Ananke was false. Volume 9 also finally explained how Ananke (and Minerva) worked - Minerva appeared when the other Children's powers appear. They are basically the same person, but their consciousness splits until one of them dies. 

I was also really happy to see that reading Volume 8 was necessary: some of the things that happened with earlier pantheons (specifically the last two pantheons) directly came up in this book. 

I was really excited that some of the characters who were sidelined earlier by Ananke got new bodies! And Baphomet/Nergal made an amazing sacrifice that no one saw coming (not even the other characters). 

Laura Wilson managed to find her way out of the cycle first, at the end of Volume 7: she realized she wasn't a god, but still had her powers. It just took practice to make them work. When everyone confronted Minerva, she was the one who helped everyone end the cycle. It wasn't an exciting climax (in an action way), but it was a very fitting end for the whole series; you don't realize at the beginning how it's about the birth and death of stories, but that's honestly what The Wicked + The Divine is, at its heart. Not only their birth and death, but their power.

After that, the story wraps up with Laura accepting the punishment of her crime for murdering Ananke back in Volume 4. Then the book ends many years later, at the funeral of Cassandra, who comments on the good that the remaining members of the Pantheon have wrought now that they've broken free of the story and were able to live out their lives as themselves, not gods. 

All in all, Okay is a fitting end to The Wicked + The Divine. I'm glad I decided to reread/finish the series. While it is often quite brutal (there's a lot of gore, which I found very uncomfortable), the story is good; overall I enjoyed it.

The Wicked + The Divine Volumes 7 & 8

I decided to combine these next two into one review since I've been reading them so fast. Volume 7: Mothering Invention, is building towards the climax of the story. It's also explaining a lot of Ananke's past. Mothering Invention showed how this whole game started, and how it has played out through the millennia. 

But then Volume 8: Old is the New New, was completely different. I was excited for more of the story, and totally unprepared for this interlude: Old is the New New collects some short pieces that tell stories of other pantheons, and so isn't part of the main story. It was interesting to see different incarnations of gods like Lucifer (though I was really uncomfortable with how graphically gruesome the Roman story was). There was also a combination prose/comic story of the 1923 Pantheon created like an Agatha Christie mystery (specifically And Then There Were None) which was interesting but at times a bit hard to follow due to the way it was written (and the way the Morrigan spoke). The volume then ends with a collection of Funnies written in the world, which were amusing. 

I do wish I had realized what Volume 8 was sooner: Gillen suggests the reading order for these stories, and they may have been more effective if read where they were intended, rather than as a whole chunk near the end of the story. They may also have been better to read after the conclusion in Volume 9 (though we'll see - I haven't read 9 yet, so I can't say for sure).

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 6: Imperial Phase Part 2

Just a short one this time. The Imperial Phase, Part 2 was a quick read. Lots of backstabbing in this one, lots of death, and lots of drama. Cassandra, Dionysius, and Woden put together a show to power up the machine to try to figure out what it's for. Woden tries to use it to mind control all of the attendees. Meanwhile, Baal and company are hunting Sakhmet after she rampaged when she found out the Pantheon had lied to her. 

But the biggest surprise came at the end: it seems that Ananke may not be so dead after all. And she's trying to get one more head from a god or goddess to stave off The Great Darkness...

I definitely can't wait to see where things go from here!

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 5: The Imperial Phase, Part 1

Well, here we are: the first new (for me) The Wicked + The Divine story that I've read since starting the series back in 2016! The Imperial Phase, Part 1 had a hard act to follow (the crazy ending of Rising Action). I wasn't sure where the story would go (and honestly, it kind of felt like the creative team wasn't 100% sure what to do with the first issue after Ananke's death, though I imagine that was on purpose to show how the Pantheon has to figure stuff out now without the Goddess who guided them for millennia). 

This volume opens as a magazine with pieces about different members of the pantheon. The back pages of the book explain how this was put together, and it was really neat: the creative team got their writer friends to do an email exchange with Gillian, who stayed in character as whoever they were interviewing. Then the writers took that email exchange and crafted an article. I thought that was a really neat idea, and it was fun to read one of the actual interviews in the back pages.

The Pantheon are trying to figure out what is true and what is false from what Ananke told them (as well as what the purpose of her crazy machine is), when there starts to be attacks from the Darkness that she warned them about. But rather than working together, they are now split in three: those who primarily want to stop the Darkness, those who want to research everything about their existence (especially with their second year closing in on them), and those who don't care about any of it. But the attacks are increasing, and research is slow going....

I can't wait to see what Part II will bring.

The Wicked + The Divine Vol 1-4 Rereads

I was browsing on Comics Plus, a comic reading app my local library offers, and found most of The Wicked + The Divine is available on it. I never did read any more after finishing Volume 4 back in 2016, so I decided to start it again and see what I think now. I honestly didn't remember much of what happens in the first 4 volumes. But I think I enjoyed them a lot more this time around. 

I just reread what I wrote about these volumes back in 2016. I didn't find the dance party of Dionysus as bad this time around (it was still a bit confusing, but I wasn't trying to follow it super closely either this time - they were partying, and that was good enough). I also just looked up the god Nergal, and he sounds pretty interesting - I'm not sure why Baphomet lied about who he is. I also didn't really get why people didn't like the Goddess Tara so much (but I also didn't read the pages of terrible social media posts about her, so maybe there was something in there?) 

Needless to say, I'm quite enjoying the story this time around, and can't wait to see where things go now that Ananke is dead...

Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond

I've been reading Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge for the last few weeks. A lot of the basic ideas of the book (at least the first part) reminded me of Exercised: our bodies are meant to move, and movement equals health. Younger Next Year is a shorter read though. I also found that Lodge, who was a medical doctor, breaks down the science in a fairly accessible way (while Liberman is taking an anthropological approach, so his book covers things differently).

Younger Next Year is all about explaining why we need to move, and how moving will fundamentally make your body younger. At its most basic level, everyone has signals in their body to either decay or grow; exercise turns the growth signal on. If you can turn the growth signal on repeatedly (by exercising the majority of days), then your body can repair damage over time, slowly becoming better than it was; doing this for a year will fundamentally make your body younger than it was the year before.

Younger Next Year is mainly focused on people nearing retirement. The book asks them to treat exercise as their new job in the last third of their life, working out on 6 days of the week (if you're not yet at retirement age, the book recommends that you aim for about 4 or 5 days since you don't yet have the time, and the decay signals within your body aren't as strong yet). It also talks about maintaining connections and finding purpose in your retirement, which I thought was very valuable - I've heard stories of people who pass fairly quickly in retirement if they feel they have no purpose outside of their career. 

While I found a lot of the science (Lodge's chapters) and the latter third of the book interesting, I do have to admit that I overall wasn't a fan of Crowley's chapters. He wrote them specifically for (older) men and it shows; I wasn't his target audience, and, being a woman, I felt uncomfortable with the way he was trying to urge his audience on. I did persevere and finish the book, but there were many times during Crowley's chapters that I didn't want to.

Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility & The Meaning of Life

 I haven't previously read anything by Viktor E. Frankl, but when I saw Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility & The Meaning of Life, I was intrigued. I've also been going through a rather difficult time right now, and embracing hope sounded like something worth reading.

Embracing Hope is a collection of four essays, lectures, and interviews of Frankl that were never previously published in the United States. There's a lecture from 1984 that Frankl gave in Austria, A 1977 interview with Frankl from Man Alive, a television show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. An article from 1955, and another lecture from 1946 in Austria. All four pieces touch on finding meaning in life, even when life is difficult. The pieces also touch on issues that are still very topical in today's world such as the fear and fracturing of society into different tribes who do not want to work together.

I really enjoyed both the first lecture and the interview from Man Alive. Frankl had a really great outlook on finding meaning, that, while suffering does lead to meaning, no one should be voluntarily suffering (one of his examples was: if you have a tumor that can be operated on, you should get the operation! Don't suffer needlessly). Humans are driven to find meaning in their lives, and, once found, humans are capable of bearing incredible hardships for that meaning.

He also spoke in most of these texts about saving your accomplishments in the past. The past is a safe place for them: for they cannot be taken away from you once they are there. I really liked that idea, and have used it without really realizing it before. :)

While overall I enjoyed this book, I will admit I had a hard time understanding the final text. It seemed much more dense than the other three. And also seemed to jump around a bit (there were a few places where I didn't really understand his conclusion to a point because it felt like he leapt from one thing to another). For that reason, I think this book will probably benefit from being reread at some point in the future, to better digest this lecture (and any other points I may not have understood in the other three texts).

Play With Your Cat! The Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline

It's honestly been awhile since I finished anything more than a graphic novel (I read a few over the last few months that I didn't document here). So I was very happy to actually make it through Mikel Maria Delgado, PhD's Play With Your Cat! The Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline. I've been reading the book on and off for a month or so, and finally sat down to finish it this afternoon.

Play With Your Cat! is full of excellent advice for anyone who has a cat and wants to engage with them more through play (which honestly should be everyone who owns a cat - having a cat in your life should mean that playing with them comes with the territory, much like having a dog means you need to be out walking with them!) Delgado goes through the (somewhat lacking) science, busting myths like "some cats aren't playful," and "cats are aloof and don't like people." 

While it took me a bit to get through, Play With Your Cat! is honestly a fairly quick read. I recommend it for all the cat lovers out there who want to learn more about strengthening their bond with their cats through play!

Folklords

I saw Folklords at the library and was intrigued. A boy in a fantasy land has visions of our world. So he goes on an illegal quest to get answers from the Folklords. But there's a legion (the librarians) in his way. And he has no plan of how to find the Folklords!

I thought it was a very interesting story. I liked the worldbuilding and characters (the enchanted forest was really spooky). But unfortunately, by the end of the graphic novel, I felt like there were more questions than answers. And the series was canceled after issue #5, so there's no answers forthcoming. 😞

Untethered Sky

Fonda Lee's Untethered Sky is the story of Ester, a lady who, after a manticore kills her family, trains to become a ruhker, someone who hunts the monsters with the help of giant rocs, the only creatures capable of killing manticores. She is paired with the roc Zahra, training the fledgling to become a fearsome hunter. But the rocs belong to only themselves, and Ester and Zahra's partnership is tested when they become embroiled in the empire's largest manticore hunt ever.

I really, really liked the world of Untethered Sky. I liked how Lee made the manticores so fearsome. We are used to living in a world where we are generally the top predator; in Lee's world, that isn't the case, and the whole human world is rightfully terrified of the monsters. It also takes another monster to fight the manticores - the ruhkers take their own lives into their hands at the beginning of training a fledgling, plus acting as bait for their rocs to kill manticores once they are fully trained.

I also liked the characters. Most of the ruhkers are driven by their love (and obsession) over their birds and Ester is no different. Neither is Darius; their friendship and partnership grows thanks to training their rocs. But they are also all individuals; Namsin is more at home in high society than Ester, and Darius has no interest whatsoever in that world. It made for an interesting dynamic between the three of them.

The pacing of the book is really good, too. Untethered Sky follows Ester and Zahra from the moment they first meet, spanning six years of Zahra's training and accomplishments killing manticores. While I didn't necessarily see the ending coming, it felt inevitable based on what happened. I quite enjoyed Untethered Sky; it was a fast read (it is a novella), and I hope that Lee will one day revisit the world to tell more stories of the ruhkers!

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

 Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was another one of Brandon Sanderson's Secret Projects books (like Tress of the Emerald Sea). It sounded fantastic, so I've been really excited to read it. :)

Yumi is a yoki-hijo, a girl of commanding primal spirits (it works better in her language). She lives a life of ritual, in service to her people, calling spirits from the earth to power devices to make peoples' lives easier. Painter (his actual name is Nikaro, but he calls himself Painter) holds the civic job of painting nightmares. In his world, nightmares escape the shroud, which surrounds his city, and it's up to the nightmare painters to paint them into harmless shapes so they disappear and leave everyone alone. When a spirit asks Yumi for help, Yumi and Painter find themselves magically thrust together. They spend twelve hours in Yumi's world, with Painter inside of Yumi's body and Yumi able to only interact with him and the spirits of objects, and the other twelve hours in Painter's world, where Yumi is physically there and Painter is the spirit. Together they need to figure out why this is happening to them, how they can stop it, and what exactly the spirits needed their help with! And along the way, they become entangled in each other's lives.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was fantastic from start to finish. I loved the worldbuilding - Yumi's and Painters worlds were so different and interesting. I loved all of the characters. Both the two main characters were interesting and grew a lot. And the other characters from their two worlds were all interesting as well, and really helped place you in each world (everyone from Yumi's life were all about the ritual of her calling, while Painter's felt so modern in comparison, hanging out at restaurants and going shopping. I also really enjoyed the story. I loved seeing how both Yumi and Painter navigated their situation (the book tended to switch perspectives from chapter to chapter, so you would get one from Yumi's view, and the next from Painter's). They really grew as individuals as the book unfolded and I really liked that. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter also had some twists and turns that I definitely did not see coming! 

I really enjoyed reading Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and definitely recommend it! :)

The Debt-Free Lifestyle

I haven't read a financial book in awhile. I wasn't specifically planning to at the moment (I have several other books on the go right now), but The Debt-Free Lifestyle by Christine Conway caught my eye at the library because of the tag line: "We put $150,000 towards our debt in six years - in Metro Vancouver!" So I decided to bite and find out how Conway managed to pull that off.

Spoiler: by living in Surrey BC, not downtown Vancouver like I thought from that tag line.

The Debt-Free Lifestyle is a bit of a misnomer. Most of the book is actually focused on mortgages and the power or prepayments. While interesting (especially since I have recently actually bought a house and am now dealing with a mortgage), I didn't feel like the book was very focused on a lifestyle. Conway's system is super straightforward: look at your paycheck every payday, make sure there's enough money going to the things you need (bills, mortgage, gas, food), and save the rest (probably putting it on your mortgage as a prepayment, but depending on where you are in terms of amortization schedule and time to retirement, you might want to be investing instead). As far as a system goes, it's not earth-shattering. I actually far prefer the approach that Shannon Lee Simmons advocated for in Worry Free Money (which is the system I still use today!)

But in terms of readability and information on mortgages, I did find The Debt-Free Lifestyle interesting. Like I said, I recently bought a house, so I am now actually interested in how mortgages work (I never planned on buying a house, so never paid much attention to mortgage talk in any of the other personal finance books I read). Conway breaks everything down well, showing several mortgage scenarios and how much different prepayments can change your timeliness and how much interest you end up paying. I also found the book a fairly quick read: it was interesting and I didn't really get bogged down anywhere.

If you're a new homeowner, I think giving The Debt-Free Lifestyle a shot is worth it. Conway gives you a lot of tools to help you think through what strategies you might want to employ while considering getting and paying odd your mortgage. But if you're looking for more help with debt or other more general finance topics, you're better off giving this one a pass in favour of other books.

Leopard's Hunt

I don't know what exactly possessed me to take Leopard's Hunt out from the library. I'm not really a romance fan, but the book sounded intriguing so I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately I was fairly disappointed by it from the get-go; I should have stopped reading it, but I ended up finishing it earlier today. I didn't really want to blog about it, but I wanted to make sure I had a record so I don't go taking any other Christine Feehan books out - they're definitely not for me.

Leopard's Hunt is about two leopard shifters who find each other and work through their brokenness to make a relationship. Except they are also special leopard people - they are faster and stronger and have more gifts than regular leopard people, and so need to keep themselves hidden (but go around killing people in front of others (their own people, who they originally wanted to stay hidden from too) with their gifts all the same so they're not really trying). Both of them have ties to the Russian leopard mafia: Gorya was born into it, and had to hide what he was (he worked on taking it down from the inside while training up his leopard and his powers), and Maya was a slave who got out after some horrendous stuff happened to her (this is triggering, but she was r-worded as a child as a sex slave), and so she has devoted her life to tracking down the people who did this to her. Their leopards are mates though (though he doesn't remember it, Gorya and his leopard saved Maya and hers when she was younger), so they belong together for reasons.

This book has a lot of bad stuff in it. The pair are against sex slavery and so take down a huge ring, encountering lots of depraved things (and that's on top of their horrible backstories). Plus every time I thought we were through the bad stuff, more things came up (it ended with Maya's long lost sister appearing, who gave a graphic telling of what happened to her when they were separated as children. I will not write it here). 

The book also was just repetitive. Maya and Gorya say the same things to each other through most of the book, not believing they're good enough for each other, but clearly fine. Maya's tragic backstory and complete dislike of men prior to finding Gorya didn't stop her from giving her all and skipping through their steps to get them to a physical relationship quickly. Surprisingly, there was only one main sex scene - it just went on forever (I think it spanned two really long chapters) and was kind of weird and uncomfortable (I had to Google a few words to figure out what was happening, and a few things sounded really gross the way they were described). I admit that I'm not really interested in sex scenes, so others may like this part of the book more than I did.

So all in all, I didn't like this book. I should never have read it. Once I started it, I should have stopped. Now that I did read it, I cannot in good conscious recommend it to anyone because it has lots of horrible things that happen (and uses a lot of it as backstory). I will not be reading anything else by this author.

As Old As Time

I snagged As Old As Time by Liz Braswell from the library. It is a "what if?" Disney story - "what if Belle's mother cursed the Beast?" I thought that was intriguing, and Beauty and the Beast is one of my favourite Disney movies, so I was onboard.

I honestly wasn't really prepared for this book to impress me as much as it did! The story is broken up into a few parts. The first one goes back and forth between the rough story the movie tells and what happened in the past to Belle's mother and father. There's quite a bit of interesting world building that happens, showing how the last kingdom of refuge for les charmantes slowly becomes a place of hate and intolerance. This part culminates with Belle touching and accidentally shattering the rose, cursing the Beast and all the castle's inhabitants for all time. 

The second and other parts are where Belle's story wildly starts to differ. Now that the curse is coming to pass, the castle is being swallowed up by magical spiderwebs designed to keep the castle inhabitants inside; these webs are also slowly dragging the castle into the earth. The enchanted objects also start to have weird moments where things are going wrong - you can tell it's an indication of much worse that is still to come. The Beast also starts having more and more violent outbursts, having a harder and harder time controlling himself. 

 

Belle decides to stay and try to break the curse (since it's her fault this has happened anyway), and so she and the Beast spend a lot of time researching and investigating. Together, the two of them try to figure out what happened to her mother, why her mother cursed the Beast, and how they can break the spell. While differing from the movie, the story does still hit many of the story beats, though they end up different. 

The book was a tad predictable in a lot of ways though. I figured out fairly early on who the villain would be (and I was not disappointed). But even still, I was surprised. The book takes a few brutal turns that I wasn't expecting, and the ending doesn't end exactly happily ever after. But it was still an excellent read, and I recommend it for any fans of Beauty and the Beast who are interested in another take on the tale. I'll definitely be looking out for more of these Disney Twisted Tales!

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

I don't remember exactly where I came across OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) as a method of goal setting. But I was intrigued and bought John Doerr's book Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs. I had previously encountered SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), but OKRs sounded like a better way to set goals. Having tried and failed with SMART goals a number of times over the years, I thought OKRs might be a better fit.

Doerr was a big fan of Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel who first introduced Doerr to OKRs. So Doerr wrote this book in an attempt to better spread the OKR mantra. In Measure What Matters, Doerr give a history of Grove's methods and how they related to Doerr's life, then goes on to explain the method with a series of case studies from successful businesses that use the model.

At the beginning of the book, I was quite on board with things. The book was well written, the case studies were interesting, and I was excited to make OKRs work for me. Unfortunately, the more I kept reading, the more my enthusiasm for the book waned. I started to feel like I wasn't really getting to understand the method in a more in-depth way, which I would expect from the book. The case studies also weren't really helpful - the more the book went on, the more it felt like everyone was saying "we succeeded because of OKRs," without really going into nitty-gritty details. I actually felt like the most useful part of the book was the appendix with Google's OKR playbook (published with their permission), which actually walks you through how to set good objectives and key results, as well as pitfalls to watch for. Prior to that, a good chunk of the book started to feel like fluff and filler, which wasn't great; it made me want to stop reading.

I also went into reading Measure What Matters hoping for help with personal goal setting. But Measure What Matters is very much written for companies and their leadership, not for an individual trying to improve themself. So that was very disappointing as well.

While I am glad to have encountered the idea of OKRs, I didn't feel like Measure What Matters was a very effective book for learning about them. I also feel like other books will be more helpful for individuals wanting to set effective goals for themselves than this one is.

Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

 

While perusing the library the other day, I stumbled on Daniel E. Lieberman's Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding. Lieberman takes an anthropological look at exercise to explain why so many people in the modern world struggle with getting enough exercise, even though pretty much everyone knows how good it is for you.

Exercised is a big, dense nonfiction book, so it might be a bit intimidating to pick up. But Lieberman's writing is accessible, and his subject matter is interesting. He looks at the differences between modern Western people, and people elsewhere in the world (with a particular look at hunter gatherer people who are still around today), dispelling many myths that people have about exercise, showing that we evolved to conserve as many calories as possible, and so it is entirely alien for us to actively seek out burning calories for fun.

The statistics he shares are fascinating. He directly challenges many of the beliefs people I know hold about aging. He shows the benefits of exercise for a broad range of conditions (and it's surprising how many things are improved by exercise). While reading Exercised, I discovered a lot of fun things that I've been sharing with my friends and family, which will hopefully change our entire outlook on exercise (and aging). While exercise isn't a magic bullet that can stop everything, being active into your later years drastically decreases your chances of a shortened healthspan (and decreases your risk of many chronic diseases!)

The one thing I wish Exercised did better was tackle what we can do to increase our exercise in this modern world where so much activity has been removed (mainly thanks to driving and other modern conveniences). That chapter didn't offer much more than "be social," which, while understandable (humans are social beings who evolved to hang out with others) was a bit of a letdown. What should someone who commutes long hours and barely has time to see their family and friends do?  Are there better tips to help people get started, knowing that once they start they will feel better afterwards? I guess other books will have to help more with these and other solutions (this is an anthropological look at exercise, so in some ways I guess this chapter didn't really fit within the rest of the book, and that's why it felt so underwhelming).

All in all though, I am glad to have read Exercised. I feel like my outlook on exercise has changed, and it has inspired me to try to better fight my evolutionary drive to sit and do nothing, all in the name of better health!

System Collapse

 I was excited to see a new Murderbot Diaries book at the library the other day!  And even more exciting, this one actually does pick up after Network Effect! Unfortunately, it's been three and a half years since I read that book, so I didn't remember a lot of what happened. :(

System Collapse has Murderbot, ART, and their humans trying to save some colonists from enslavement by a corporation, Barish-Estranza. But every time they turn around, the mission gets more and more complicated. First, there's a second group of colonists who have split off from the primary group (and the primary group long lost contact with them). Then, much to their dismay, once Murderbot, some of the humans, and a segment of ART in a drone locate them, they discover that Barish-Estranza has gotten to the second group of colonists first!  

And all the while, Murderbot isn't functioning the way it should.  Something happened to it (which it redacts through most of the book) and it is trying to make sense of everything. Unfortunately, that means that it isn't able to keep everyone safe the way it normally can.

While I enjoyed System Collapse, I really felt that I needed to reread Network Effect.  I couldn't remember who ART's humans were, and only vaguely remembered what had happened to everyone. I recommend rereading that before jumping into System Collapse if it's been awhile for you, too.