danielcasey's reviews
131 reviews

The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now by Hilke Schellmann

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

The audiobook moved at a rather slow, formal pace but the content was spectacular. This reveals that a lot of the suspicions about AI are true. It is a tool that is misused & marketed erroneous to dangerous results
When I Say the Bones I Mean the Bones by Amanda Hawkins

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

3.75

littered with gems among its deceptively brief or airy ruminations on what remains after a body’s death, after loving someone 
Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water by Amorina Kingdon

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challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Fascinating study of how aquatic creatures experience sound, how they hear, & how we humans impact that hearing. In easy, plain language, the author gets to the heart of the issue without shying away from existential questions & still able to avoid superficiality. An excellent book
The Ocean in the Next Room: Poems by Sarah V. Schweig

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reflective medium-paced

4.0

There’s a distance in these poems between reader & author that feels sizable. But there’s also an eerie fabulism happening which makes the long narrative poems have a greater impact than they usually would
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

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lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

A very light story with surprising low stakes for what Hardy would later develop. There are novella is carried by the dialogues of ancillary characters because it’s here that Hardy captures the pastoral world he want to set his “plot”
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I’m rereading all of Hardy’s novels this year (in publication order). A review is rather silly for such a classic author but still… There were narrator moments that made me smile & I enjoyed the interplay between Cythera & Miss Aldclyffe. Manston felt like an odd insertion that took over the story. All in all a good way to start
If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose by Refaat Alareer

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challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.0

A collection of prose & poetry; an indictment of Zionism. 

A reminder of our casual cruelty & just how cowardly we are
Life As No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence by Sara Imari Walker

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informative reflective fast-paced

2.0

Physicists attempting philosophy is nearly always dreadful. The assertions, comparisons, history of thought, and interrogating questions all feel adolescent (at best) or medieval (at worst). The thinking is sloppy & the argument less than compelling.
Good Girl by Aria Aber

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sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

While the structure, tone, & prose are all accomplished, this is a needless story to be told & has been told by adolescents/young adults for nearly 40 yrs. There’s nothing of substance or innovation here. Instead of a novel written by “that guy in your MFA class,” it’s a novel written by that girl in your MFA class. Borders on insufferable.
I'll Come to You by Rebecca Kauffman

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sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Set in 1995, this is a family story about middle-aged Boomers (late 30s, early 40s) dealing with their Silent Generation parents while birthing what would become Millennials. 

It is a tiresome, sad read. Depressing in the manner of provoking pity. However, the prose is skilled and the characters well-wrought.