I would have loved if the storyline took a different slant where we know why the profound weaves were so important and how that contributed to the sibling gods. Why sand, songs and bones? I feel like I need to read more of the Birdverse before reading this one to know why Bird is the central focus. I had no problem with being dropped into the world and floundering to figure out the world, but I feel like the foundations of this society is a bit strange.

I liked the foundations for both of the main characters, but I didn't really "get" the world building in this book and why the society feels so strongly about ostracizing nen-sasair if it's truly as fluid as weaving a carpet and transforming to a person's desired gender. How would they have even recognized him after the transformation you know? He probably looked completely different once the sandbirds came for him and he could have moved on to a place where no one knows him?? If the Khana society worshiped Bird, why would they not consider his transformation as a divine gift to be embraced??

I would have liked more character motivation and clearer drive. Uiziya wanted to learn how to weave from death, why could she not have tried earlier? Why did nen-sasair give the collector the weave of hope to release one of his lovers, why was this deal struck in the first place?

Haikyuu lights up my heart with how much care and passion there is wrapping up Hinata's story and also setting up the fact that it is not the end for them and their professional careers will only continue to climb. They will only keep inspiring future generations and allow this loop to repeat again!

I loved seeing Hinata and Kageyama's final battle where they finally could finally make good on their promise as first years.

It's great to see all the call backs and especially the banners of their schools being waved in the background of their pivotal moments during the Adler vs Jackal game.

Is this guide bordering on too generic? Yes but I also think that the book is enhanced by all it's examples and anecdotes. The chosen snippets all serve as strong examples of good story telling.

I think the chapter about mining experiences, details and the final summation chapter were the stand outs. There were numerous encouraging tips in those chapters.

The other chapters were more generic since the book still has to do it's best to apply to everyone so it makes sense.

As I kept reading, the more I realized that the Moth as an organization is similar to a PR company since it helps showcase stories in the most appealing way possible and works with many high profile individuals to work their story for the general masses.

It is objectively a terribly written book that defies the logic of sports but the compelling train wreck characters really keeps you turning the page.

...I had to turn the library book back in and haven't picked it up again in favour of my months old holds being available!

I read the whole book but I really didn't like El Higgins as the main narrator/the writing style of this book. El is just up in teen angst for no reason after going through 6?? years of this sort of schooling.

There is a lot of interesting world building but it also comes in very large trains of thoughts by El. There must have been a more natural way to show what happened in the past/build it up better. Like when El says she reinforced her table - maybe show her trading with others and build it during shop class? Instead she makes a mirror that can tell the future but she never uses it in the novel. I understand it was to build friendship with the other characters but eh. I read this book because I liked some of Naomi's other works and also because Orion Lake was suggested as a Golden Boy character like Gansey from the Raven Boys and Jason or Percy from Percy Jackson. Yes that holds up! El is just a dialed up to 10 Blue from Raven Boys which was a bit much.

I think one scene that did this well was when she was trading spells since she had something valuable and we know they were valuable since it caught the interest of people that wouldn't even know the language of how to perform the spell.

Naomi Novik is a hit or a miss for me. Spinning Silver was my favourite of hers, I enjoyed Her Majesty's Dragon but this and especially Uprooted were my behated. I think I like her writing better when it's focused on older characters where they have developed habits and interests.

I thought this book was interesting!

I really liked the second half after the twist and how she ended up really fixing everything

The pacing got a bit lopsided here with the new characters but it was still a fun novel to read!

I thought that there were many delightful origin stories for the words and the author really tried his best to make them connect from one topic to the other. I thought the story about the Guillotine was nice especially how it was related to executioners. I thought the jump from pooling money from poule was interesting since it was based on gambling on who could throw a rock at a poor bird.

The humor of the book is REALLY English where other countries are clearly inferior to them. There are certainly a lot of jokes that don't age well about Indigenous people, slaves and colonialism. By the third quarter, the charm of the short chapters wore off.

I think it's hilarious that he prefaced the book the way he did. Books have the kindness of interrupting the narrative and taking a break while being suckered into a conversation with him does not. I think this book reflected this idea really well ahaha

Hmmm I would say this was worst than the first - the book sure does move along quickly but there are two time skips in this book that makes sense, but also the plots that weren't time skips weren't all the strong to display character developments.

I rather liked the Sower arc but the Huan Hua Palace and fall out after the arc fell flat. The world has changed considerably and Shen Qingqiu is just scrambling to make sense of it as a stallion harem reader.

I think the opium poppy chapter contained too much of an info dump, I found it the driest of the three sections. Maybe it's because he improved as a writer over time, but the caffeine and mescaline chapters were just far more interesting to me.

The caffeine one being the legal psychostimulant that suits capitalism in all it's forms, both to sell and to corral employees to keep working following the 9-5 cycle because caffeine happened to get metabolized at that rate.

The mescaline chapter was rather choppy, but I really liked the experiential contrast between taking pure mescaline and the tea extract. I plan on reading Huxley's Doors of Perception sometime soon to see what his experiences were!