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Hello, and welcome to my blog! I'm a PhD student in the Department of Economics at MIT, and in my spare time I read and share my thoughts on what I've read. On this page you can find lists of books I've enjoyed and movies I've seen, short reviews, and commentary on things that I've found particularly interesting.

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Review of "Prophet" by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché

I received an ARC of this book from Grove Atlantic in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers.  My prior experience with Helen Macdonald was limited to her nature writing (I loved Vesper Flights ) but when I saw she was co-writing a thriller with science-fiction elements, I thought it would be worth a look. Especially in its opening section, Prophet delivers several moments that recall Macdonald's careful attention to the natural world and gift for writing characters who are, via observation, trying to piece together a framework through which to understand it. Towards the end, several moments of near-horror recall her story "Deer in the Headlights," which uses that same precise prose to great effect in showing us a world that is subtly wrong in unsettling ways. At various points in the book, characters are able to spontaneously generate objects and scenes with nostalgic value--from teddy bears to 1950s diners to arcade games--and these...
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Review of "The Strange" by Nathan Ballingrud

I received an ARC of this book from Saga Press in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers.  While I am a big fan of Westerns on the screen, I've never felt any particular interest in seeking them out on the page. Still, when I read an excerpt of The Strange on Tor.com, I was immediately reminded of the Coen brothers' classic film True Grit (2010). When the blurb for the book mentioned it as well, I decided to get a jump-start on the release date next week and went looking for this advance copy. What I found was a compelling story that ended up drifting a little too far from its initial promise for my taste, but still kept me engaged for a weekend and brought some of the classic Western elements to a new setting. Annabelle Crisp is not quite a ringer for True Grit's Mattie Ross (if you haven't seen True Grit , stop reading this review and go watch it! Nobody does dialogue better than the Coen brothers, and Hailee Steinfeld knocks it ou...
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Review of "Jade Shards" by Fonda Lee

I received an ARC of this book from Subterranean Press in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers for Jade Shards but will discuss characters and events from the Green Bone Saga. After her previous follow-up novella, The Jade Setter of Janloon , Fonda Lee returns to the setting of her Green Bone Saga with four short stories about the pro- and an-tagonists: Ayt Mada, Kaul Lan, Kaul Hilo/Maik Wen, and Kaul Shae. Each adds some backstory to characters that we see grow and change through the main novels and largely succeeds at delivering the kind of intimate character moments I appreciated from Lee's writing.  In "The Witch and Her Friend," we get to see Ayt Mada's rise through the eyes of Anden's mother Aun Ure. The story does an excellent job of showing how the two girls' friendship, which began in school, gradually fades as they choose different paths in adulthood. Aun Ure's decision to step back from life as a Green Bone ...
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