This is such a solid 3.5 for me that I'm so mad Goodreads won't let me have half stars! As someone who gets bored to tears consuming anything related to the apocalypse/the collapse of society, Station Eleven felt so fresh. I love how bizarre it is, and how it indulges in interludes that take you to unexpected places. I enjoyed the images of a lush island, the comics, the swatches of dystopian theatre performances, the terrible Hollywood dinner party and its lonely aftermath. There's a quote on the back cover that says Mandel is "appreciative of the grace of everyday existence" and I think it sums up the book really well - seeing how people rebuild their lives from the ground up again is much more intimate/humanistic to me than circular moral questions on shows like The Walking Dead. 
 My main problem with the book is that I never felt attached to a single character. It was weird that the ensemble cast revolved Arthur when he was such a hollow stereotype of a Hollywood leading man. Kirsten was obviously our main character in the post-apocalyptic world but I felt we were hardly with her - her traits ended up being that 1) she loved acting 2) she was obsessed with Station Eleven/Arthur, which wasn't a lot to hang onto. Maybe it isn't really about their personalities but about what they represent, about how art is created and preserved by all manner of people, no matter what trauma the world goes through. But I felt like without caring about anyone in the book, the attempts at poignancy felt like calculated, rushed beats that didn't land. Despite all that, I'll always love the scenes that take place at the airport settlement. I read 80% of the book at an airport and on 9hr flight, so it was eerie reading about people starting over in airport lounges and abandoned hangars. The ghost plane, the Museum of Civilisation, people teaching each other their languages - it was all unique and beautiful.