Jessica
Same calm quiet writing. About midway through it really started to drag. There is just so much I really care about the internal turmoil of the obscenely wealthy and the greedy, but the last bit just wrapped up so well. Like Station Eleven, there is a lovely weaving of lives drifting apart and coming together. On to Sea of Tranquility which was the one that was actually recommended to me!
This book is what would happen if The Hunger Games had a baby with Anne Rice's Beauty books and decided to write an x-rated BDSM Pygmalion. But updated for Millennial / Gen Y sensibilities. Also really made me think of The Mars House a lot as well.
To me, it just reads: Battered. Spouse.
Everything just happened but didn't feel organic.
The incessant self-recrimination of Elisha was pretty nauseating. And the relentless doe-eyed naïveté. Maybe that was the whole point, but it got old. All I wanted was for him to be more spirited. He just folded so so fast you barely got any sense of the boy with rage that sold himself to protect his baby sister.
And Alex... Don't get me started. No hard work for his change at all.
Any way. Just not really for me.
An interesting memoir from a skeptic uniquely positioned to interrogate the leading thinkers (and quacks) on the front-lines of something that has (until recently) been impossible to measure. Maybe I will give it a go...?
Read this in one day on Gabber's recommendation! A fun, easy read! Perfect to ease me back into reading more! So very on the edge of cringe so many times. You could see where the story was going almost immediately. The only real suspense was which person would be the bigger problem in the end and how bad it would be. I wish we could have gotten more character development for the friends who didn't really get to have any interior life at all. Alex/Alix stressed me out a lot. I think she was presented in a pretty stereotypical way that rich, white, women bosses usually are (Devil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries, The Help), so that didn't feel particularly new or interesting. The voice of Emira was really great, but I wished for more for her in the end. Not even necessarily professionally, but just something. She was very clearly adrift. And then just seemed to kind of settle in an afterthought. I think the boyfriend would have been a lot more distasteful if we weren't only seeing him through the lens of two people who were both blinded by his good looks.
Want to read a book about coming of age in Nazi occupied France? What [b:All the Light We Cannot See 18143977 All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451445646l/18143977.SY75.jpg 25491300] wishes it was. Historical fiction + magical realism. Love and sacrifice. Survival. Heartbreaking. All the stars.
Really 3.5 or so. Not sure why this isn't listed as YA. A nice fantasy story. Really love Harrow's writing. Definitely will work my way through her published works. But it does not compare to Starling House.
I thought a lot about [b:The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 92625 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Ursula K. Le Guin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1739034156l/92625.SY75.jpg 89324] while reading this. I know that was not the intention here, but it definitely colored how I viewed the actions and culture of the wajinru. A beautiful story though. I feel certain I will think about it often.
There aren't many books that you want to re-read immediately after finishing. This is one. It was a real struggle to get a grip on who was who and what the heck was going on. Like greater than 50% of the book. But it is worth it in the end (is there an end...?).
A depressing, juvie version of Shawshank where the innocence and hopefulness of children is used against them and “twist” just makes everything that much more depressing. So hard to read stories like these and know that none of this is in the past AT ALL. But important to read them and carry them with us anyway.
I did a lot of crying while reading this book. The window into the loneliness of damaged souls.
“Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.”
What a world. Very enjoyable fantasy. Definitely will read prequel.
My only complaint is that while it was quite long and built a massive, massive world with a thousand years of history, religion and mythology, it suffered significantly with pacing issues. It probably should have been two or three books.
The narration of the audiobook is pretty good, but some of the voices were distracting. The narrator does not do a good job with male voices, deep = evil a lot of times, and an emperor of what is described as a vaguely eastern land talks like Colonel Sanders. Very, very distracting.
A sweet companion story to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. They are so short they really feel like a single story. I really loved these little books. Just gentle and kind and warm. Definitely recommend as a title comfort read or a nice gift to go with some tea.
“There's no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn't be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”
Memoir that reads like a novel. Honest, insightful, compassionate, thought-provoking. Def would recommend.
Short for a King book. I am just not the target audience for this book. Feels like it was written for all the people that live near King that he has watched become FOX-ified in an attempt to snap them out of it. But fails at that because it just is too short, you don't invest in the characters and so it just doesn't ring true. Only lost a couple of hours to read it. Definitely would not have pushed through if it was a standard King tome.
Another tasty snack. Easy to read in just a couple of hours. I don't think it is a spoiler to say this is a first person account of a woman whose sister is a serial killer.
Both the narrator and her sister (and their mother) suffered at the hands of an abusive father/husband. This is clear immediately, and a few vignettes are presented to confirm it.
A picture of the sister that emerges is very much that of a sociopath (antisocial personality disorder). While the narrator never confirms it, she does at more than one point, call her sister sick and essentially absolves her of responsibility for her actions.
The mother is not well-fleshed out and is just painted in as a two-dimensional foil for the narrator.
The narrator who is a nurse who, despite her medical background, assiduously avoids any self-reflection as to the effects of the traumas she also sustained. She seems to suffer from a personality disorder (OCPD) as well, but we glean that only from her incidental, off-hand descriptions of her obsessive cleaning and straightening.
And, as is true in the real world, growth for those with personality disorders is exceedingly difficult and can only really be achieved with great active effort. Since there is none of that desire or effort here, there is exactly the expected amount of growth – which is to say, there is none. In the end, there is only acceptance that she will always put her sister first.
As a consequence, there isn't a lot of suspense in the story. Pretty early on, you can see where it is all going, but the prose is so lovely. The writing paints beautiful pictures in your mind of the setting and the people, and I will eagerly read more from this author.
Quick read on the world that lives on and in us. Most interesting fact I learned is that we have a literal battalion of VIRUSES that protect us from invading bacteria. Really does make you think twice about how much and how obsessively we clean and if we aren't maybe way better off just not...
DNF. Read the first book and really looked forward to this one as well, but for whatever reason, it just didn't work as well for me. Did download the app and may check out some of the mediations, but this book really could have been a pamphlet instead.
A sturdy little thriller. Very realistic sugar cane / plantation backdrop. Depressingly realistic denouement. Always read these in my mind as a Netflix movie / mini-series. I would watch this one for sure.
3.5 really. Stories about broken people mostly trying to do the best they can. Most of them failing. So much left unsaid. Some perceptive jewels, but mostly just left me sad.