perhaps, one day, we will be glad to remember even this
Virgil, Aeneid, Book 1, Line 203
I’m Aerin, and I like to talk about books.
This blog is primarily an outlet for my thoughts and reactions to what I’m reading, book reviews, and occasional reblogs of bookish stuff I like.
I read a little bit of everything, but a lot of science fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction (science and history primarily), and short stories.
You can find me on goodreads here.
I rate books on a 5-star scale, with one star being terrible, three stars being average, five stars being absolutely incredible. I assign ratings for multiple separate criteria, explained below.
For fiction, I rate on:
Plot: high scores for good pacing, satisfying story arcs, well-earned payoffs, etc. lower scores for plots that are either too predictable or just ridiculously unbelievable (per the genre)
Characters: high scores for characters who feel like real people, with depth and complexity and unique voices. extra high scores if the author makes me love them. lower scores if I find them excessively annoying (especially if they’re not intended to be)
Setting/Ambience: high scores for bringing the place and time to life. I want my historical fiction deeply researched, my speculative fiction richly worldbuilt
Ideas: high scores for thought-provoking, thoroughly explored, and well-integrated themes. I want my fiction to have something interesting to say
Prose: high scores for language so beautiful or incisive that I can’t stop reading passages over and over. I am an admitted snob about this. Writers should wield words the way a fine artist wields a paintbrush, otherwise what is the point?
Evocativeness: high scores for books that make me feel things. extra high scores for books that make me cry. low scores for saccharine glurge or heavy-handed tearjerkery. or if I just feel nothing at all
Overall: something of an average of the above, but not entirely. Sometimes there’s just a je ne sais quoi about a book that pulls my overall rating up or down. What can I say, it’s not a science
For short story collections/anthologies, I add:
Cohesiveness: high scores if the stories fit together well, if the whole of the collection is stronger than the sum of its parts. lower scores if the quality of the stories ranges from “very good” to “why is this crap in here, were they just trying to pad out the page count?”
For audiobooks, I add:
Audio narration: high scores for readers who emote, who differentiate the characters with different voices, whose interpretation of the text adds to my experience of it. extra high scores for high audio production values in general. lower scores for readers whose performance actively detracts from my appreciation or understanding of the story
For nonfiction, I rate on:
Information/Ideas: high scores for books that are well-researched and comprehensive, that are either unbiased or very clear about their biases. low scores for misinformation, disinformation, lack of expertise, poorly-supported theses, etc.
Clarity: high scores for prose that is readable, smooth, and readily understandable. extra high scores if the prose is also very beautiful and/or uniquely engaging (funny, warm, confessional, etc). lower scores if I feel like I’m reading a textbook or an academic paper
Novelty: probably the most subjective criteria I rate on; high scores for books that taught me something interesting and new. extra high scores if it’s on a topic I thought I already knew a lot about. lower scores if the book just rehashes things I already knew or could have learned from wikipedia
Overall: as with fiction, something of an average of the above ratings, but not always and not only
Also, please do not listen to how people talk about cover letters on this site. Cover letters are important, and in many industries you can be damn sure they'll be read. And no, they're not 'fanfic about working in your office', or just re-stating the resume contents in a fancier guise. If you treat them like that, then of course they're not doing much for you. That makes you sound like a syncophantic windbag, and it's not doing anything else to help.
I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.
The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.
This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.
And the other mistake? Everyone writes cover letters that are too long. One page is fine. Two is the absolute maximum, and that's if you have a lot of specific things to say. It's a waste of your time and theirs to pad it out with fluff. Of my two most recent successful cover letters (i.e. jobs for which I was interviewed) one was 390 words and the other was 550. That's the length of this post. How long did it take me to write this post? About 15 minutes to write, 5 to proof and edit. That's how long you should be spending on a cover letter, maximum.
This is fantastic advice. I can confirm that when I worked in hiring, the cover letter was the most important part of the application package. We wouldn’t even look at resumes that didn’t include one, and the easiest way to pare down a set of candidates was to eliminate those with lazy, generic, or typo-riddled cover letters.
On the other hand, a thoughtful, well-written and tailored cover letter demonstrated genuine interest in and understanding of the job, which was huge for us. We were typically hiring entry-level candidates; the resumes for that cohort are pretty unimpressive and samey across the board, and it’s obvious when they’re being padded out with nonsense (I will never forget the resume that claimed experience “liaising with cosmonauts,” and when we asked the candidate about it, he explained that a former cosmonaut had visited his middle school and he’d asked a question at the assembly. He did not get a second interview.)
But good cover letters typically indicated good candidates, and also got our attention on folks who might not have seemed like a great fit at first glance (degree in an unrelated field; overqualified for the role; etc) but turned out to be fantastic employees. I obviously can’t speak for every company or every field, but I cringe whenever I see claims that cover letters don’t matter or are a waste of time. Your resume on its own is not as impressive or as descriptive as you think it is. Your cover letter could be.
Right Hand Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures by Chris McManus (2002)
Current obsession: this random 25 year old nonfiction book I stumbled on at the library. It’s comprehensively nerdy in the best way, deeply researched, compellingly written, on a topic that intersects with every aspect of our lives but that I’d never given much thought.
The concept of a writer writing a vivid and accurate scene in a language transparent and devoid of decoration so that we see through to the object without writerly distraction suffers the same contradiction as the concept of a painter painting a vivid and accurate scene with pigments transparent and devoid of color—so that the paint will not get between us and the picture.
June in the books! Last month was all about rereading Murderbot in prep for the latest installment, Platform Decay. Time well spent, was great to hang out with the gang again, will never not be in the mood for Murderbot.
The Turnglass was a disappointment, but Japanese Gothic and Lincoln in the Bardo were also fantastic reads.
Finally picking up Radiant Star, and it feels like coming home. I love that I can still get teenager-levels of excited about being dropped into an SF worldbuilding puzzle on the very first page.
I love that the city’s name has no consonants: what kind of interesting things are we going to be doing with phonology?
I love the “of course” in the first sentence: who is narrating this, and why, and who is their audience?
I love the title Consorority of the Translocation: ohhh we’re doing fun stuff with religious orders here (one of my very favorite SF subthemes), and the allusion to Christian confraternities and transubstantiation is putting some definite pictures into my head, buuuut of course we are elsewhere and elsewhen and the term translocation is so blaringly SFnal—are we about to get funky with quantum physics? In a ritualized religious way?? Sign me UP.
I love the rambly didactic voice in general: this narrator is going to be fun!
Annnnd I love that we’re diving right in to some unique applications of gender and social class - themes I’ve come to expect in the Imperial Radch universe and Leckie’s writing in general - but the specifics in each new book never fail to surprise me, and what we’ve got here on page one is already so tantalizing I can’t wait to dig in further.
Current read: The Turnglass (2023) by Gareth Rubin.
This is a tête-bêche featuring two novellas:
And I admit my interest was piqued solely by this structure; I am helpless to resist the charms of weird postmodern shit like this. Even when it turns out to be hopelessly stupid and pretentious, which I hope won’t be the case here.
One story takes place at an isolated mansion on the farthest edge of Essex, England in 1881. It has all the trappings of a gothic good time: sickness, secrets, murder, madness, a prisoner bricked into the structure itself.
The other story takes place in Hollywood in 1939, where our protagonist, a struggling actor, falls in with a rich young benefactor who lives in a strange glass mansion on the beach and throws lavish parties to distract himself from the horrors of his past.
Both dwellings are called Turnglass House. Both feature a weathervane in the shape of an hourglass.
And both realities are intruding into each other in bizarre and intriguing ways.
The jacket specifies no one method or order for reading, saying either novella can be read first, or that both can be read simultaneously. I’ve opted to alternate chapters back and forth, which is working well as developments in one story often refract backward in the other.
So far I’m digging everything except the writing, which is clunky and obvious in a way that indicates the author trusts neither himself nor his readers. But I’m having so much fun teasing out all the echoes and clues that I’m willing to overlook some clumsiness.
Update: I have now finished this, and regretfully must report that it turned out to be very dumb and very bad.
It’s especially disappointing because the premise itself was so intriguing. But Rubin’s writing is repetitive and amateurish, the plot twists are simultaneously predictable and absurd, and the characters lack not only realism and depth but any consistent qualities whatsoever.
