LoveStar Book Review: Rampant capitalism and the death of Love

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LoveStar by Andri Snær Magnason is a weird and wacky Sci-Fi novel translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb.

The book follows a couple, Indri and Sigrid, who love each other desperately until they are calculated apart by an algorithm (think Tinder but without free will), as well as the enigmatic LoveStar (CEO of LoveStar) as he searches for answers after commercializing literally everything in human existence (well there about anyways).

LoveStar is set in an impossibly modern and rather dystopian world of tech and rampant capitalism; think Black Mirror meets 1984, Brave New World by way of the works of Douglas Adams and Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

May Reading Wrap up

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A somewhat mixed bag of books this month.

The sublime Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux was a massive standout; I also read a bunch of historical things - Grettir's Saga and some old Icelandic Folktales - as well as a cute cosy fantasy Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, which is a bit outside my realm of reading (not subject matter but writing style - "easy reading").

All the books I have started but haven't finished!

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This is an almost definitive list of all the books I've started reading but haven't finished...yet.

From a questionably formative experience with Kafka's unfinished existential work The Castle, which I was reading at school at the age of 9ish, to Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle that I haven't picked up in 3 years despite getting around 2/3 of the way through!

April Reading Wrap up

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This month was quite a random reading month; I went from a Soviet Era Sci-Fi to The Art of War, an Ancient Chinese Military Manual. I also read a couple of Nordic Fairytales, a sensational book by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen and Eliza Clark's unhinged novel Boy Parts.

Classic Sci-Fi: Roadside Picnic Book Review

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Roadside Picnic is a 1972 philosophical science fiction novel by Soviet writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It inspired the iconic film from acclaimed director Andrei Tarkovsky and still feels as relevant today as when it was written.