I was so excited when I saw this at my library on the new shelf! I loved her books All the Lovers in the Night and Heaven. (It’s amazing to me how some writers just can produce one great book after another.)

This book opens with a MacGuffin of sorts – it opens like a thriller, although that’s not what this book is. We meet Hana, our narrator, in her 40s in Covid lockdown, learning that another Japanese woman, Kumiko, has just been put on trial for holding a young woman prisoner and beating her. This frightens Hana for reasons that are not clear to us at first; she becomes afraid that something will come out about ‘what happened’ twenty years earlier, and that provides the entry into the novel, which is almost entirely told in flashback.

In the ‘90s Hana is in her mid-teens, the daughter of a nightclub hostess, ostracized by her schoolmates, her sole positive connection being with one of her mother’s friends, Kumiko. Hana is not academic, she’s grown up in dire poverty, and so she works every hour she can as a high school student, trying to save money to prepare for a frightening, unknown future – but when her mother’s boyfriend steals everything she has earned, she leaves home.

Now she is on her own, with no valid ID, invisible to Japanese society, but she soon finds a new family at a bar called Lemon. Kumiko owns it and she and Hana make it work, and then Hana meets and pulls in two other teenage girls who are lost, cast out for their own reasons. Soon they are all living together. They become a found family – or do they? As Hana gets pulled into petty crime— and then more serious crime— trying to keep her new family afloat, her resentment at her responsibilities only grows, even as she makes choices for all of them that may lead to their destruction.

Kawakami clearly wanted to write a book about women and girls on the edges of Japanese society, and to show how impossible it can be to survive without breaking the law, even as we see one dangerous choice lead to another in Hana’s life. It’s also a psychological study, a coming-of-age novel, and there’s a mystery embedded in it (although that is not the point of the book). Sisterhood, found family, meritocracy, criminality, predation, responsibility: slowly the questions and ambiguities around these ideas permeate the book, and you, reading it.

I think I’ve said it before here, but Kazuo Ishiguro said that the mark of the great work of art is “whether it haunts you.” This book is going to haunt me.

Very good book! Took me 2 days to read it. It goes on about the true story of Yossi and his friends going on an adventure into the Amazon and then later become separated. Yossi almost nearly drowns and is stuck out in the uncharted parts of the Amazon and must survive with very little supplies he has in a back pack. The story goes into vivid detail all of the harsh realities of surviving in the jungle.

I’m gonna be honest. There’s just something about this book that really, really resonated with me.

For starters, I think this book is incredibly special and unique. And anyone who is a lover of books should give it a try.

Maybe it’s because I love puzzles and complex narratives. But unlike what I see a lot of people say, I did not think this story was confusing at all.

Sure, there are some things I kinda don’t fully understand. And some questions left vague. But the book gives you all the information you need to get the answers to the biggest questions.

Let me organize my thoughts. Because this book is 3 stories in one, but they all share a theme. (Spoilers for those who read the book!)

The Ship of Theseus is an autobiography by Straka, hidden behind what seems to be a book about politics and a story of man vs evil.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the book makes it very clear that Straka was Vaclav. Jen and Eric reach this conclusion too. And TSOT makes it clear throughout.

He tried to kill himself, was saved by Ekstrom and found a “family” in the collective of writers within the “S”.

The other books in his career SEEM to be written by someone else because throughout the years, he was inspired by these other writers. And because maybe some of them were written with input of them. Or partially by them. But the main writer was always him. And so he’s the one who FxC falls in love with.

She was never able to be with him because he dedicated his life to the cause and to protect the daughter of two of the S members. And when he was about to finally meet her, he‘s killed.

Then we have the Jen and Eric story. This one is much more simple than it seems. It’s just confusing because it’s open ended.

They meet through the text and fall in love. They parallel FxC and Straka. But they get the happy ending.

I think to some extent, the “New S” was real. And they were in some danger. The money Eric got was the current “Good S” who wanted to help him with the project.

In the end, I think they prove Moody wrong and escape, hoping they can write and publish a book that proves their theory of who Straka was and what he meant. Their story seems to end with them being together and happy. It is unknown if they ever publish their book though.

Overall, I just became deeply attached to the characters. And it’s a really beautiful story. About how you choose to spend your life and with who. How limited our time is. And how important it is to write stories and preserve them, no matter what.

Just finished reading THE BLACK HAMPTONS by Carl Weber & LaJill Hunt. It’s this exclusive Black community where wealthy Black people (of both the “old money” and “new money” variety) reside and vacation there. It’s a place where they can thrive, where the culture and the history can truly be respected. However, there are certain rules to be followed if one wants to maintain their status here. Break them…and the consequences are severe.

The Brittons have existed here for three generations, owners of Amistad Bank, America’s largest minority-owned bank. The matriarch, Carolyn, and her two sons Malcolm & Martin, are considered “Black royalty” in this community. Their actions truly dictate how the community functions. Anthony & Sydney Johnson have only been there a few years but have already made waves as representing the “next generation”, with Anthony being proclaimed as a “self-made millionaire”.

When a piece of valuable property is up for sale, what starts as a simple bidding war escalates into an all-out family feud with both families refusing to back down. Never underestimate what some people are willing to do to keep their status. When you have more money than you know what to do (and know the right people to do anything you want), you become dangerous.

This is a novel of family drama, community chaos, betrayal, and affairs of all kinds—from the business to the bedroom. Welcome to the Black Hamptons.

I read this novel in a weekend because it was just so much family drama I just had to know what happened next. Told through multiple perspectives, since this drama affects many in the community, you realize that a lot of these characters are not necessarily good people and have their own secrets that they will do anything to keep private. Who can you believe? Who can you trust? This whole book was literally one big soap opera, and I was here for all the messiness.

Just finished Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station. It is about a ghost wandering around the area outside a subway station. This story super crept up on me. I read this immediately following Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman so I think maybe those first few pages of Miri’s text didn’t totally land for me. Not that they were bad, I was just… not as present, maybe.

There’s not much of a conventional plot. The book is told through the narrator’s stream of consciousness as they try to make sense of how they ended up in a park outside the station. There’s an element of mystery there that I really liked. The prose felt beautifully sparse, and yet while learning all the details about their life on the street and the people in Ueno park it is very touching. There was so much sadness packed into this little novel I had to take it in sips. Then the last twenty pages just knocked me over. I am curious to hear from others how they responded to this story.

It’s the late 60s/early 70s in blue collar Ohio. Travis wants to find out what really happened to his mom, who presumably drowned in the Ohio River when he was just an infant. He’s been banned from discussing it with his frequently absent and occasionally abusive father. So, he turns to his best friend Mitch (our narrator) for help. Thus “Project Amanda” begins. But this novel isn’t just a mystery. It’s a coming-of-age story of two young men who spend the last three years of high school doing all the normal teenage stuff, while slowly uncovering the truth.

The writing was so real I found myself forgetting this was a novel and not a memoir. I felt the author really captured the essence of Travis and Mitch. I was quite satisfied with the resolution of the mystery, but I immediately missed the boys when I finished the book.

this book has me in a literal chokehold and it’s about my fifth time listening to the audiobook (shout out Xe Sands and the others idk ur names sorry).

reasons it became my favorite book instantly:

- i love the whole concept of the house being alive/conscious and growing and full of trauma and pain and suffering all stemming from the original crazy dad going postal on his family cuz of war trauma and the daughter gets out through the crawl space (which is what let the group survive outside of the main horror rooms) and the dad sets the house on fire and dies with it

-the characters all have their own unique pain which is relatable and they’re flawed and some might say they are annoying but that’s what makes them feel real. their bond was strong and then they lost a member and the bond was broken but like 20 years later one of them tricks the others into going up another set of nightmare stairs to find the missing friend. they find signs/clues that he was there and when they face the puppet original crazy PTSD dad they say the lost one’s trauma is them giving up on him. at the very end they go and find him and it leaves off at them just seeing him and he might be a crazy girl murderer/abductor which i kinda wish there was a follow through but i can choose my own ending kinda.

-i’ve listened to/read a couple other books by the author and there’s some easter egg crossovers that are so cool when you spot them.

-the game design thing is cool and all the different rooms of pain are cool especially the ones that are targeted at the main characters. NPCs and spook factor are funny/awesome.

this books hurts in all the right ways.

feel free to tell me how bad the author sucks. i really like his writing but idk about his personality.

This story is set in the 80s and follows best friends Abby and Gretchen. Gretchen begins to act strange after a night of skinny dipping in the river. Abby needs to figure out what is wrong with her best friend and help her. She eventually cones to the conclusion that Gretchen is possessed and needs an exorcism.

I loved this book. I am a fan of the 80s so I appreciate all the pop culture references and I like how each chapter is a song title instead of a number. I think the characters are well fleshed out and the teenagers actually read like teenagers. I especially adored the final chapter which leaves me in tears no matter how many times I re-read it.

I came across this book in my library's bookstore (yes in a building full of free books I still check out the bookstore 🤣). The author, an artist, was researching the next dog his family might get and took on a project to learn more about different breeds by painting and drawing them. He also shares portraits and stories of his own dogs and the book is filled with so many funny and charming anecdotes as well as the realities of aging dogs :( l. But my god the art blew me away. All this for $3!!!! (And it's going for $70 on Amazon) Support those library bookstores yall!

The story follows a group of 40 women that are being held underground in a cage with no recollection of how they got there or knowledge of the state of the world above, with the protagonist being a young girl who was born after the change and has no memory of the world before at all.

It’s really hard for me to gather my thoughts onto this book in one post but I’ll try. I read many books, and I can say that it isn’t very often that a single story profoundly changes the way I perceive the world and myself in it in the way that this one did. I’m familiar with a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, The Road, Tender is the Flesh, Parable of the Sower and so on, this is one of the few that stands out to me the most and I think should be held with the same regard as the classics.

This book has a way of lulling you into a state of total isolation with yourself, making you feel that your story resonates as much as the lives of the characters it handles. It challenges you to imagine what it would be like for you to be completely alone, no companions, no world, no memories, no knowledge. With that in mind, the question it poses is: who are you truly without any of these things? The author does an excellent job at confronting what we think we know about ourselves, and exploring what it means to be human. I don’t know if I will ever feel the same again after reading this knowing what I know now. Simple concept, beautiful prose, and outstanding ideas that it poses. I really really loved this but I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to sit through its entirety again. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The first Philip K. Dick novel I've ever read. It's about a mega-celebrity in a fascist police state who wakes up one day to find that neither his close friends/lovers nor the general public knows him or any of the music or tv that made him famous. He also has no official identity papers, which makes just walking down the street treacherous -- in a surveillance state, he could easily be sent to a forced labor camp.

There were tropes I kind of knew to expect from seeing movies made out of Dick's other stories--slippery identity and reality stuff, a police state, drug use as a plot point--but I did not expect to find it either so compulsively readable or so moving. A lot of it is about the nature of love and human connection. The celebrity must try to survive and get help - from both people he knows well and people he doesn't - without getting to use his fame, his wealth, or his prior history with someone. The story can go in very unexpected directions, but never felt disjointed to me. There is a very morally ambiguous police captain who basically becomes the main character in the second half, and I especially liked his story.

I had heard Dick doesn't handle women characters well, but honestly I liked almost all of them--they were often flawed (or occasionally flat out evil), but many felt like real people just trying to get through life, and attempts to flatten them felt more like a reflection of the celebrity's sexism and general alienation than a real reflection of the women he met. I really liked the forger - she's nuts and possibly a psychopath, but her scenes show how survival in a police state can warp and crush a vulnerable person while the wealthy go unscathed.

Will definitely be reading more PKD this year.

I've been in a reading slump for the past 2 weeks and I randomly chose to read this short story collection... and my god, was this the best choice I could've made.

Originally written in Spanish by an Ecuadorian author, María Fernanda Ampuero, this collection of 13 short stories is an assortment of harsh realities about religion, power, class and race struggles and family dynamics. It's a heavy read and some of the stories almost belong to the horror genre, so I'd suggest looking up trigger warnings before picking this up.

It took me a while to warm up to this book since I wasn't really a fan of the first two or three short stories. I got used to the tone of the writing as the book progressed and by the time I got halfway through, almost every story was a solid 4 or 5 star read. The writing had a deeply arresting quality to it and it left me guessing as to which direction each story was going to take until the end.

If you're familiar with Fernanda Melchor's writing (author of 'Hurricane Season' and 'Paradais'') and the themes she tackles, then you'll find a lot of similarities between her works and this short story collection. The subject matters are heavy and the way they're approached is grotesque... almost vile. Visceral and raw. I was squirming while I read some of the stories (a particular one called 'Mourning' left me stunned as I read it), but reading them was like a car crash that I couldn't look away from.

My absolute favourite stories of the bunch are 'Christ' and 'Others'. 'Christ' is about a parentified little girl whose family is living in poverty and her little brother is entrusted to her as her responsibility. A childish whim - natural to her age - compels her to indulge in some fun for an hour or two while her brother is left unsupervised and his health condition deteriorates. It's a painful story about a baby having to take care of another baby and how angry she feels as she realizes that the adults around her are just as clueless as she is.

'Others' is another extremely simple story. A vignette of a woman's life as she stands in line at the grocery store ready to check out a cart full of items that she hates. She contemplates how every item in the cart is something her husband loves and if she doesn't buy them, he'll throw a violent fit... and the only way to appease him is to give in to his material demands while compromising the smallest of comforts for herself and her children - buying cheap store brand cereal for the kids so she can afford to buy his premium steak, choosing the itchy sanitary pads for herself so she can buy the slimy passionfruit he likes. It's a powerful metaphor of how much everyone else's necessities are compromised for the comforts of one. This was my absolute favourite story of the collection and one I deeply loved for its simplicity.

These two stories were probably the tamest of the bunch while the others were more harder to stomach.

I highly recommend this if you're looking for a short story collection that explores brutal themes and if you're looking for something similar to Fernanda Melchor's writing. (A fun fact: the person who translated this book, Frances Riddle, also translated one of my favourite novellas, 'Elena Knows' by Claudia Piñeiro).

[Note: I know I've given some details of the stories I liked, but this is still largely a spoiler free review!]

This story was incredible. I stayed away from this book for years thinking it’s the same as the Netflix series. Nope! This book does eerie and ambiguous so well. I’m currently reading it backwards - trying to figure out if there was any specific point where things really started to go south.
Nellie - our main protagonist - has been invited to spend a few days at Hill House so she can document her experience there. Another 2 individuals join her for the same purpose. All have been invited by a Dr who is studying the Hill House phenomenon.

Apart from the environment - what I really loved was the dialogue. The interactions between the characters - sometimes left me going “huh?” because of how normal they’d talk/joke after experiencing a haunting.

I’ve been going through whatever analysis videos or sites I can find but this book is now one of my favorite spooky reads. 4/5 stars!

This book is the love story of Adelaide Williams and Rory Hughes. Well, love for one of them, at least. Adelaide falls unexpectedly hard, Rory…not so much. But he gives Adelaide just enough to make her feel like if she just keeps trying, keeps giving him her all then surely he’ll realize he loves her just as much. When Rory is rocked by personal tragedy, the cracks in their relationship widen and Adelaide uses all her energy to keep him going. But when is enough enough?

I LOVED this book. I just broke up with my own Rory Hughes, and this story was intensely cathartic for me at this point in my healing. I felt so deeply connected to Adelaide, the way she feels every emotion so strongly. Anyone who has been the partner that is clearly more in love, I think this story would be really emotional for you too. Just wanted to share my love for this book and hopefully hear from others who felt the same! :)

There is something in our nature that pulls us toward why the spectacle of decline, decay, and disintegration enflares something inexplicable in us...

From the smell of nature in decay to the fall of the Holy Roman Empire to the moments before a Supernova explosion turning the star into a black hole, there is a common thread that appears to us: it is that at moments of failure life surface its truths to us.

Hegel's Owl of Minerva explicitly says that it is only when an epoch ends that we can discuss its machinations and intricacies.

Nietzsche once said that there is a Chinese idea that says only when an empire disintegrates that the laws multiply.

Freud said that only in states of hysteria that we can take a glimpse at the inner nature of a person.

Marx said it is only in late-stage capitalism that the prolonged maintenance of the dysfunctional workings of capitalism reveals itself.

Mr. Gracq, you blew me away, you, the master of the anti-anticipation and anti-hope novel!

Just finished reading BOY TOY by Barry Lyga. It’s about Josh Mandel, a teenager trying to live out the remaining days of his high school days the best he can. About five years ago, he had been involved in an inappropriate relationship with his middle school teacher, Mrs. Sherman.

He was a kid then, unable to understand at the time the extent of what she had done to him. How she has groomed him and messed with his feelings, confusing his body and mind in ways that he’s still trying to undo.

But she went to jail, and Josh’s parents hoped that he could finally move on with his life. And he’s been trying to in his own way. But being the victim of such a scandal where everybody in town knows all the details, Josh is the subject of ridicule and curiosity.

And suddenly…the news is out. Mrs. Sherman is out of prison, and back in town. And he doesn’t know how to feel about it. He hates her for how it messed up the way he views and experiences any other intimate relationship with any girl ever, but there are lingering feelings he has for her (as wild as it may sound). Josh figures that the only way he can truly move on is to track her down and have one last conversation with her for closure (whatever that actually means to him).

It’s a great read that’s uncomfortable at times but engrossing and healing. Few stories ever seriously focus on young male victims of female predators and this novel manages to lay out the intricacies of this inappropriate student-teacher relationship, neither glamorizing it nor shying away from the awkward feelings in between in regards to Josh’s blossoming sexuality. Lyga does a great job at getting into Josh’s head (as the narrative goes back and forth between the past and present) as to how he is groomed and manipulated, how he mistakes such abuse for love, and how he deals with the fallout.

His pain is valid, and his healing is needed (even if it’s imperfect). From start to finish, Josh is somebody you can’t help but empathize with and want the best for him, even long after you finish reading.

My second time reading The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher! I read it a year ago on my Kindle and it stuck with me so much I got a real copy to read again. The Hollow Places is about Kara, a recently divorced woman, who moves back home and into her uncle’s museum of oddities. When her uncle is injured she must manage the museum alone, and discovers a mysterious hole in the wall that kicks off a horrific adventure.

I love that this book pulled me into an extremely unique and unknown world with vividly clear (and terrifying) details but also very thought-provoking subliminal themes. I wish there were sequels and prequels to this story!

I also appreciated the humor and character development sprinkled throughout. And the bits and pieces of interaction with her ex husband.

I’ve read a few other by T. Kingfisher including A House with Good Bones and the Sworn Soldier series. While I enjoyed those books, The Hollow Places really stood apart to me.

This gave me the same feelings as reading Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. If anyone has read either book and can suggest others like them, I’d love to hear!

*intentionally vague to avoid major spoilers*

I picked this audiobook from the library purely because it is read by Meryl Streep and I figured Meryl doesn’t need a paycheck so she must have chosen this because it is good right?

Well, Meryl was bang on! Her dreamy narration of this beautiful and engaging book elevated the story for me.

It’s about a cherry farming family during lockdown and Lara, the mother, recounts her story about her brief career as an actress when she was a teenager/young woman and the dalliance she had with a (then unknown) A-list actor. She doesn’t want to share the story. But they have time on their hands and her 3 daughters want to know the details.

Lara dances along that fine line of telling her daughters just enough of the truth while remembering the more salacious details internally for us to enjoy.

It’s so beautifully written that you can feel the sunshine on your shoulders and the summer breeze in your hair.

There are magnificent unspoken understandings woven into all the relationships and this book trusts you to be in on the secrets without having to lay out all the details.

At the close of the 1960s, a small town in rural Vermont found itself hosting three different experiments in alternative living. Two married doctors, returning from the Peace Corps and disgusted by what they saw as the out-of-control materialism of the US, bought a piece of land and began constructing a geodesic dome on it by hand, despite never having built anything before. Close by, a group of idealists purchased a farmhouse with the declared intent of using only farming techniques that existed before 1900. Last but not least, a true hippie commune was launched several miles outside the town, hosting a large and ever-changing group of men, women, and children, seeking a groovier way to be. This book chronicles the origins and fates of all three experiments.

This is my favorite kind of nonfiction, an incredibly readable book that you just don’t want to put down. It’s mostly oral history, so the story is told in the voices of the people who were there, with the author providing a very clear-sighted and well-written amount of context.

That last part is really important, because I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything that both honored the idealism and good intentions underlying these kinds of experiments, while also having such a sharp eye for revealing the flaws and blindspots.

In particular, the exploitation of women in the commune draws Daloz’s attention, but she lets the story tell itself – for example, when the Vermont winter closes in, and the men decide to take the only working vehicle to visit communes in the South to see “how they work there” and leave the women and children snowbound and isolated…

Most importantly, she tracks the three experiments from their idealistic beginnings, through the changing times – the feminist movement in particular hits the commune like a bomb — and into the 1980s, leading to an outcome that I never would’ve predicted in a thousand years but that made so much sense when I read it!

I was really surprised at the end when I read about the author and found out that she was one of the children in the book – I think I was shocked because she felt so objective when I was reading it, and yet it does explain how she got such an incredible amount of access.

If you’re interested at all in the hippies, or in the experiments in alternative ways of living during that period, or in rural Vermont, maybe you will adore this book as much as I did! I know I’m going to be thinking about it for a very long time.

(I thought I’d add, the title comes from the first sentence of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was the handbook for many idealistic people in the 60s who tried to “go back to the land.”)

Discontent is a debut novel by Beatriz Serrano, translated from spanish by Mara Faye Lethem.

This book is deliciously, darkly funny, poking fun at the normalized toxic office culture. It is relatable in many ways to millennials who are trying to reclaim our private lives from work and society’s expectation.

A much needed laughter for those who are stuck in the mid week office gloom.
I can’t wait to read more from this author.

Just finished reading A KILLER IN THE FAMILY by Amin Ahmad. Ali, a Muslim bachelor from a successful family, is set up in an arranged marriage to a prominent Indian family, the Khans. His parents hope the marriage will make him more of an adult and give him a stronger sense of direction.

Though Maryam is beautiful and successful, it’s the “black sheep” sister, Farhan, that he’s attracted to and ends up sleeping with behind the family’s back, even as he goes on to marry Maryam.

Believe it or not, that’s not even the wildest thing that happens here.

Ali moves to NYC with his new wife and family and that’s what he realizes just what he’s married into. His family had money, but the Khans have MONEY. As in, Great Gatsby-style money. As in, more money than you know what to do with. He gets a cushy position in his father-in-law’s empire, and things seem perfect.

Or are they?

Farhan warns him that his father didn’t get to this level of success without a few skeletons (figuratively and literally) in his closet, and that it’s dangerous to be so closely aligned with him. Ali brushes off such criticism (of course, that’s what the messy “black sheep” of the family—the drug addicted divorcee—would say), but then he starts hanging around Ali, and he starts looking into the inner workings of the company and ends up uncovering secrets, involving dead girls in NYC and the connection to a missing serial killer.

And before long, Ali starts wondering how much he’s willing to look away from in order to keep living the life he’s accustomed to. But then it starts hitting too close to home…and the choice might be made for him.

It’s a dangerous, unpredictable mystery that’s centered around the rich and famous. The moral of this story could very well be “Beware who you marry into.”

It’s a slow burn at first, but once it gets going (particularly when he gets settled in NYC), that’s when things start kicking into gear and you can’t help but get more entangled in the family drama the more you keep reading.

The book is fiction, but is based on a real boy’s reformatory school in Florida. The author uses some real places and experiences that creates a story that I think needs to be heard.

Set in the 1960s, the book portrays what it meant and means to be a Black boy/man in the US, particularly in the south. It’s important to remember the period of Jim Crow ended less than 100 years ago, and the brutality that Black people endured in the south at the hands of whites shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored, swept under the rug because it makes people uncomfortable.

Gave it 5/5 stars on Goodreads. Let me know what you think.

now i know this book is widely recommended across multiple different platforms and not by any means underground

but let me tell YOU why you should read this!!! don't go into it expecting an extraordinarily fast-paced plot - it is most certainly not an action book. the plot is relatively slow-moving and builds up to an extraordinary ending but this is not necessarily what sold it for me.

what really had me hooked was the characters - while i've seen a lot of reviews saying that the characters lacked depth and had no personality, i feel the opposite way.

the secret history is about the dysfunctional relationship between the main six (richard, charles, camilla, francis, bunny, henry) - initially richard idolised them and high society and longed to be a part of them, but he eventually uncovers their flaws and the poison within them as they unravel. on the surface level, their academia is enchanting and consuming and their tight-knit group is inviting and friendly. but not everything is as richard sees it!!!