(no subject)
Aug. 29th, 2022 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe Potato Chip Puzzles by Eric Berlin
Second in the charming series of YA puzzle novels by my Mystery Hunt team captain, about a teenage boy who really likes word puzzles. In this one, it turns out a potato chip manufacturer is running a puzzle hunt for middle schoolers and it turns out that maybe their teachers need to learn some lessons from their students.
Thinking Inside the Box by Adrienne Raphel
A delightful history of the crossword puzzle. There's sort of a chase for meaning that distracts from the history, in many places I would've liked a little more technical detail and a little less conclusory statements about why people like crossword puzzles, but I learned a lot of really interesting stuff. There's a neat chapter about modernists, especially Nabokov and Perec, and how they were attracted to crosswords both as games and as art.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
A return to form for Scalzi, a breezy, satisfying romp through another dimension with characters who weren't particularly deep, but that I cared about. The one oddness I'd point out is that Scalzi seems deeply reluctant to describe the physical features of any of the kaiju. I guess he was worried he'd underdeliver and make them seem silly instead of scary, and he manages just enough characterization of the kaiju by way of behavioral quirks to mostly cover for the lack of imagery. But I'd have liked this book more with cooler kaiju descriptions.
Second in the charming series of YA puzzle novels by my Mystery Hunt team captain, about a teenage boy who really likes word puzzles. In this one, it turns out a potato chip manufacturer is running a puzzle hunt for middle schoolers and it turns out that maybe their teachers need to learn some lessons from their students.
Thinking Inside the Box by Adrienne Raphel
A delightful history of the crossword puzzle. There's sort of a chase for meaning that distracts from the history, in many places I would've liked a little more technical detail and a little less conclusory statements about why people like crossword puzzles, but I learned a lot of really interesting stuff. There's a neat chapter about modernists, especially Nabokov and Perec, and how they were attracted to crosswords both as games and as art.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
A return to form for Scalzi, a breezy, satisfying romp through another dimension with characters who weren't particularly deep, but that I cared about. The one oddness I'd point out is that Scalzi seems deeply reluctant to describe the physical features of any of the kaiju. I guess he was worried he'd underdeliver and make them seem silly instead of scary, and he manages just enough characterization of the kaiju by way of behavioral quirks to mostly cover for the lack of imagery. But I'd have liked this book more with cooler kaiju descriptions.