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I've read a lot of RWJF's publications in my professional life, so I'm intrigued that they are now publishing fiction. Also, look at that author list!
A decent anthology with a very talented line-up. The collection is supposed to inspire hope, optimism and a Culture of Health, and while that message is received, there is also the bigger giant flashing neon sign present in all the stories: the future looks very bleak without action against corporate greed, population growth and lack of sustainability. Recommended: a good commuting read.Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
I thought from the description of this collection that a lot of the stories would leave me feeling hopeful - unfortunately his definitely wasn't the case for me. I don't get on that well with dystopian stories for the most part, and this all felt a little to dystopian (and a little too close to the bone, too). I'll be the first to admit that I can be quite sensitive about things, but I know that about myself and so I stopped reading this for mental health reasons. Glad to see Yoon Ha Lee listed
Did not finish. Way too depressing. Writing quality was mostly fine (especially from those authors that I know and like) but the gist of almost every book was "terrible thing happened and we will go into detail how it happened and how miserable and hopeless it is". I thought this was going to be more hopepunk with stories of how we could take apocalyptic stories and make them more positive but no, at most the stories that had "happy" endings just implied that things would get better. We don't ac...
I wanted to like this collection. I liked Paradise. The other stories are ok, but not astonishing. I stopped reading after The Erasure Game. Maybe will try again some other time.Probably just not my thing. The use of "they" for the non-binary character in Erasure Game sounded off, like bad grammar. Maybe one day it won't.
dnf @ 23%. i was so bored. this book is definitely not for me.
Take Us to a Better Place I’m not usually a fan of anthologies. The quality and tones of the stories can be highly variable, which I find personally jarring, and one story not to my taste can make me stop reading the whole volume. When I read short stories, I always prefer single authors collections. In addition, I’m often skeptical of corporate sponsored anthologies - the messaging can be heavy handed and the contributors sub-par. So why did I request a eARC of Take Us To A Better Place, a “cul...
If you enjoy this review, please consider visiting my blog for moreNB—I received a free copy of this anthology for review via Netgalley, all opinions are honest and my ownThe idea for this anthology—a collection of stories meant to shine a light on various issues occurring and worsening, and show potential solutions—is an interesting one, and the stories that resulted take very different approaches. I do feel the need to include a content warning for this anthology, there are mentions of (view s...
Oddly, this did not take me to a better place. Some of the stories were downers, others more stopped than ended. All of the science fiction stories were better than the non-genre stories. Maybe SF authors have more experience at weaving a topic into a story.But none of the stories were five-star for me. The anthology is supposed to revolve around the Culture of Health idea from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I couldn't see any common threads beyond "health" being part of the plots. I could
To your house
there's a really cool short story set in the murderbot universe here, this should be put in the murderbot series list of books. we learn a lot about the rovers, ancestors of the secunits, and we can see the various corporations already lurking in the background, ready to take over. Healthcare was already a theme in the murderbot universe so it was really cool to see it explored more in depth :)
It's more like a 3.5 really.Of course, in an anthology you're always going to find stories you like better than others. Most of these had some valuable contemplations about the roles of community, (income) inequality, politics,... in health outcomes.It's a free read (no, really!) so I'd still recommend this to anyone who might be interested in contemplating the future of our healthcare system through different angles and prompts.However, I felt like there was still something missing from this wh...
Trying to pick a book to read during a plague is not easy. For once in my life I didn't want complete escapism; I wanted something relevant to what was going on around me. But still some escapism! This book of excellent short fiction related to healthcare is just what I needed. Amazing, entertaining, not always comfortable but always good. Highly recommend y'all read it nao.
This book was specifically set up to be visions of the future, coming from the problems of the world today. All very good stories, well worth reading and very enjoyable. They also had some interesting ideas on where the world could end up and what regular people can do about it.
This is quite an interesting anthology. It's free to read or listen.'The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published these stories to help ignite a lively discussion and healthy debate about what it will take to build a better future.'See the website: https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/resea...I read 'Obsolescence' by Martha Wells and it was really good, although it was very short.Planning to read more stories at some point.
Usually, I am unable to give a breakup of individual reviews when I read books like this. Given that there are only ten stories and they vary very widely in the tone as well as the content I decided to try this one time. Hopefully, I will see my way through and not come back and delete this introduction I am typing. I will, however not rate them separately because that would be too hard.Flotilla at Bird Island by Mike McClelland:This set the tone for what I thought would be a collection of dysto...
Some good stuff here. Yoon Ha Lee ("Erasure Game") is great, as usual; Hannah Assadi ("Paradise") is new to me, but excellent.Some stuff really didn't work, including "The Flotilla at the Bird" (Mke McClelland), which reads like a piece of nonfiction with a thin, untasty layer of fiction. "The Masculine & the Dead" (Frank Bill) is why you edit: too many unnecessary details, too many adjectives. And, no, I haven't read anything by Martha Wells, but is she usually this bad at endings? because "Obs...
I give up. It may have gotten more interesting after the two (two!) introduction/preface things that summarized all the stories, and after the very awkward first story, but if I've been procrastinating going back to it for ten months, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm not going to finish it.
Short stories. Didn't finish all of them
Some stories were PHENOMENAL and others only ok