LaShel

The Dear Prudence column is one of my guilty pleasures, but this book was mostly just posts I've read before (and not even the most infamous or salacious ones) with minimal commentary and without the benefit of reader comments (which is always a fun trove of entertainment when it comes online advice columns). I did enjoy the chapter about the author navigating his own difficult family situation but otherwise there wasn't much here for me.

I checked this out because it seemed appropriate for October and I'd heard good things about the author. This was an entertaining and quick read propelled forward by a light sense of dread/suspense and the fun imagery (disco-obsessed vampires with an amazing house and even better wardrobes). The main characters were mostly unlikeable but I appreciated the way the book played with its theme - what makes someone a monster? And to what extent can we recognize the darkness in ourselves?

These short stories are unsettling, as promised, but in a vaguely nauseating body horror kind of way and not in a clever Edgar Allen Poe sort of way. There's a bit of a feminist bent but also most the women just want to have sex and have babies which feels so reductive. And the writing was perfectly fine but not particularly for me.

I absolutely loved reading this book - the writing is beautiful and the descriptions of the meals the author shared with her mother left my stomach rumbling. There were a few passages where I rolled my eyes a bit at the blind spots in the author's perspective (such as when she was talking about her trips to Paris or the concerns of her dissertation advisors) and some bits seemed a little embellished but overall I was ready to proclaim this one of the most beautiful books I had read this year. I tore through it in less than a day and it left me aching with emotion over mental illness, family relationships, generational trauma, colonialism and racism, and the human experience.

And then I saw the reviews and tweets from other members of the author's family. I don't mind at all that the book is not wholly accurate - historical truth has never been something I've demanded of my entertainment. But I am very troubled by the amount of harm that the writing and publication of this book is said to have caused. For that reason, I can't give it the high rating I was planning.

I love Laura Vanderkam's books - the advice is well-written, inspiring, and refreshingly concrete. This wasn't quite as revolutionary for me as 168 Hours but I would still definitely recommend it to anyone feeling overwhelmed by the blurry, busy, "where did the day/week/month/year go?" reality of modern life.

I picked up this book because of the comparisons with Addie LaRue, which I absolutely adored. Like that book, The God of Endings is told from the perspective of a "young" woman who has been cursed with immortality and has to cope with loss and the world shifting around her. The God of Endings also raises some interesting questions about hypocrisy, saviorism, and agency/biological compulsion. I could not put this one down, although I do wish it were a bit less vividly gruesome.

I hate when I (either intentionally or subconsciously) resist reading a very popular bestseller for years only to discover when I finally crack the cover that everyone was right and it's absolutely incredible.

Loved the first half of the book, but was thrown by the shift to the second half and felt disengaged from the rest of the story.

This novel is bleak. I did not enjoy reading this book and I hated every single character. And I wouldn't really recommend it, given how heavy and ugly the story is. But it also resonated and felt deeply true in that way that way that only fiction can. I'm having a hard time sorting out my feelings about my life from my feelings about the book and the one to five star rating system just doesn't really translate for me here.

David Mitchell is one of my favorite living authors, and I suspect the only one who could write a 600 page novel about baby boomer music engaging enough to keep me reading until the end. That said, it's still a 600 page novel about baby boomer music, with an exhausting amount of name-dropping. Things pick up a bit two-thirds of the way through the book when we veer towards the supernatural, but for the most part this book is a love letter to the rock and roll of the late 1960s.

Turns out at least half of the weeds in my backyard are edible - it's fun to think about not just foraging, but specifically targeting invasive species. That said, this book was short and didn't have much depth.

I found this while (virtually) stack browsing and went in not knowing anything about the subject matter. Wow. I've had my share of terrifying experiences as a pedestrian but never realized how intentionally our western cities and towns prioritize the comfort and convenience of drivers over the lives of those who are on foot.

The story is cute, but the writing is very scattered and disjointed. I had such a hard time following some parts that I'm not sure if the other things I disliked about it actually “happened” or not so I'll leave it at that.

Important themes, to be sure, but the characters struck me flat and underdeveloped, the pacing was off, and some of the racism felt cartoonish. Also, small quibble, but a deposition doesn't happen in a courtoom in front of a judge. It's a YA book so it's not damning that it felt like a Disney Channel tv show, but I was hoping for more.

This book managed to change my entire perspective on decades of American history. And it was weirdly comforting to see how many overtly-racist, anti-democratic politicians our country has survived so far? This is on my shortlist of books I would make everyone read if I could.

I hated this book. So much so that I wasn't able to bring myself to read anything else for a month after I finally powered through this (in retrospect, I shouldn't have been so stubborn about finishing it). Absolutely nothing about this book was funny to me - it made me sick to my stomach. I only realized while reading other reviews after I finished that all the horrible, mean, and offensive bits were supposed to be “satire” (maybe I missed this in part because of all of the pop culture references that I didn't get? Or maybe I just don't find horrific child abuse, mental illness, and sexism funny?). Clearly there's something here that's resonating with others but the humor just didn't connect for me.

I had some lightbulb moments while reading this - it definitely has some important things to say. As a white woman I was particularly struck by the author's description of two different white high school teachers who were trying to be allies - one of them had a positive impact on her but the other ended up causing harm (because of white guilt). The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because it is very much written from an evangelical Christian perspective for other evangelical Christians and for that reason I'm likely to recommend/gift other books on race to my friends and family, who mostly come from other religious backgrounds.

I hate monkeys. Rats and mice? Adorable! Snakes? Hello there, beautiful. But monkeys? They make my skin crawl. There is nothing creepier to me than a monkey dressed up like a person. Which is a long winded way of saying I should have known better than to pick up this book. Some of the scenes in this book are so, so disturbing that I'm worried they will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Beyond that, this book does have some interesting things to say about race, sexuality, and personhood, but even setting the monkey aside, it all felt a bit disjointed? I kept expecting something to happen that would tie the threads together but it never came. There's a really beautiful scene involving a teacher in a classroom getting through to his students that I loved, but overall this book was not. for. me.

The first half of this book is amazing - slow and beautifully written, with a delicious sense of foreboding doom. Then everything starts to happen at once, magical elements are popping up all over the place with no consistency or reason, there's graphic violence and stomach wrenching child abuse for what often feels like no purpose at all, and the book takes a moralistic anti-technology tone that I hated. So overall three stars, I guess?

Controversial opinion: I did not like The Broken Earth. At all. I was barely able to finish the trilogy. So it took me a while to give this collection of short stories a chance. Which was a shame because these are great! I disliked the one story that takes place in The Broken Earth universe but the rest of them were very good. The scary ones kept me awake at night, the funny ones made me laugh, and a few of them prompted more self-reflection than I'm used to when reading fiction.

One of the few books I feel compelled to own as both an ebook and in hardcopy, this might be my favorite collection of poetry ever. The poems are short but stunning (and not just because they are beautiful).

Time travelling queer romance? Sounds amazing! But the main characters fall so hopelessly, breathlessly, dramatically, obsessively in love without even knowing each other and then spend the rest of the book proclaiming that love in the most effusive, flowery language you can imagine. retching sounds I still liked the premise and the plot (secondary though it was to the characters' emotions) but I am not enough of a romantic to fully enjoy this kind of thing.

There's an interesting story at the heart of this book, but it gets weighed down by the details (there are so many characters who are difficult to keep straight but ultimately are only peripheral to the plot). Had a hard time pushing through to the end, and did not get the resolution I was expecting.

A delightful romp through the afterlife, exploring some of the absurdities of religious doctrine (and dicta) taken literally. I laughed out loud several times. It's verrry irreverent but I personally didn't find it offensive (ymmv, of course) - and I say that as someone who winces through some of the “jokes” in Book of Mormon: The Musical.

While the author painstakingly footnotes his sources, a lot of the jokes build off of a basic familiarity with Mormon teachings - I don't know that it would be as fun of a read for someone with little or no exposure to the LDS faith. Also, like other comedic fiction (the works of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams come to mind) the book's plot and character development are secondary to the humorous escapades.

I enjoyed this debut work and look forward to seeing more from the author.

Fluffy and predictable. I didn't love the “moral” (everyone's lives look perfect on Instagram but are actually a mess - that maybe would have felt fresh in 2013 but not in 2017 when it was published and definitely not in 2020 when I read it) especially paired with a main character who felt like a bit of a Mary Sue (she's just brilliant at her career and effortlessly beautiful and all the emotionally unavailable guys can't help being in love with her, you know?) but it was an easy, fun read.