Ghost
DNF adjacent finish. I was really into for about 20% of it between the 20 and 40% mark but after that I could hardly make myself care, too many characters none of which felt particularly interesting to me.
I finished it, technically, but in reality my attention was wandering so much that I don't think I'll remember much of anything so it wouldn't be fair of me to rate it.
I read the author's first collection shortly after it came out and I've been a fan ever since, even though he is objectively the WORST, I keep coming back because his stories are just so good (since this is Goodreads I have to disclose that saying that Rob is the worst is a JOKE between me and the author not me posting a review “primarily about the author's behavior”). Long story short I've never been disappointed by any of this guy's stories and this little mix media/found footage horror story/cautionary tale was no exception, I loved it. It was short but effective and tremendously enjoyable to read.
Ben oui, je suis encore dans mon kick de lire en français et en voilà un autre qui ne semble pas être dispo en anglais (Well, I'm still on my reading in French kick and here's another one that doesn't seem to be available in English).
It was a quick little collection of essays that were previously published in magazines in which the author talks about various feminist topics such the importance of taking it personal and of fully embracing it, malaise as an appropriate reaction to the current state of things, the notion of exceptional but not revolutionary, and even cyclo-feminism. It covers a lot of ground in not very many pages and in a way that's mostly pretty accessible (at least if you're fluent in French).
In the intro to the book the author talked about how having deadlines forced her to deal with sharing ideas that were not final and about which she was still actively thinking and that was a little too relatable for my liking.
This one was really just kind of a slow burn thriller with horror elements so I just waited and waited for the horror to happen and it never really did until the very end. My expectations were really not in the right place and that didn't help my enjoyment.
I really struggled to connect with Harry as a character, surprisingly because we have a lot in common (horror lovers, millennial single moms to a generally easy to parent gen Z kid...). The real horror in this book was one most people are too familiar with: the job market and how hard it is to find even a semi-decent rental.
I don't remember who told me that I wasn't going to like this book but I started it with low expectations on account of it and ended up really liking it, found it quite delightful actually.
It has a touch of the weird, a touch of the dark (if you enjoyed the blend of weird and dark in the Never Whistle at Night collection you will probably like this one) and it centers women characters, if you're familiar with my reviews you probably know that I'm absolutely here for the weird, unhinged and/or angry girlies. Also, there's an Elvis impersonator infestation in one of the stories so you know, that kind of weird that's not afraid to be a tad ridiculous or over the top.
The imagery was great and the stories were smart without pretention and nothing came across as trying too hard.
4.5 rounded up.
I think I'm about to just read everything this author has ever written it was my second time reading her work (in less than a week) and once again I was very impressed by just how bleak and tense she managed to make this story while also including an overwhelming amount of repulsive stuff.
The characters were great (although the main cop one was as cliche as it gets). I was particularly fond of Luc a very fat man recently abandoned by a girlfriend he's not sure he ever truly loved and afflicted with a questionable will to live but also somehow a quite decent guy which made him super easy to root for.
I'm almost sad that there isn't an English version of this book because there's quite a few people I would recommend it to if there was one.
I didn't realize until I came to add this book here that it was in the middle of a multi-author series (there were signs I just didn't pay attention because that's how I roll), it was still easy to follow and I didn't feel like I was missing anything crucial. The experiment side was the weakest part of the story in my opinion because it just didn't really seem even remotely plausible, maybe there's a reason for that given in the previous installments though. I really liked the way the religious aspect was done. There were a lot of “surely it won't go THERE” moments with this book and yet it managed to never come across as over the top and goofy (a problem I routinely find with gore heavy stories), Robitaille really managed to effectively keep a sense of dread and anxiety going which made for a surprisingly quick reading experience.
I don't know why Goodreads has this book listed as having France as a genre since it's set entirely in Quebec and the author also appears to be a Québécoise, if you're looking for something about France you won't find it in this book (even the type of French the book is written in is pretty darn typical of Quebec).
On a side note, last week I read 3 Québécois books all featured pretty darn unflinching bleakness and this is a book that I would consider to be under the extreme umbrella (spoiler ahead: it features detailed on page animal and human torture that most EH I've read does not rival in terms of viscerality) and yet I first encountered it in the small book section or my drugstore all of that got me thinking about the way Quebec's society approaches gore and violence in the context of the whole “extreme horror should be behind the counter” idea that just refuses to go away which I so vehemently dislike. Sure, we've had our share of contested stories but, on the whole, I have this feeling that we are more uncomfortable with censorship of literature and film than with violent content. Could it be that Québécois culture more so than who I am as a person has made me so “comfortable” with the presence of extremely graphic content in my reading material?
That was something else. Goodreads has La Liste under Theatre/Plays (it is a monologue), and Poetry but I suspect it would be rather at home under psychological/quiet horror too. The style is very effective at dragging you in the character's state of mind, into her exhaustion and distraction and into the guilt that laces everything she has to say.
The Québécois film culture has something of a unique tendency towards the documentary tone (perhaps less in the last decade or so) which gives it a unique hyperrealist feel, this play has that same vibe going which I found most delightful.
About half of the collection was pretty good, the other half just didn't really come across as memorable or impactful to me, that being said I'm not in the age range to be the target audience for this collection.
My favorite stories were:
Welcome back to the cosmos – Space horror will always hold a special place in my heart.
The brides of devils bayou – The one with the strongest characterization in my opinion.
TMI – The most interesting/unusual premise.
Black pride – Charming but I would have liked more horror.
Queeniums for Greenium – Fat girl resisting a “wellness” cult, you know I was going to be down with that one!
The skittering thing – Interesting imagery, would have liked a little more character building.
3.5 rounded up.
Review in English because that's the language most of my Goodreads friends speak but I read the French edition, if a translated edition exists, I cannot speak of its quality.
In my early 20s I really loved that author's stuff, Aliss and Oniria being some of my favorite reads at the time so when I felt in the mood to read in French one of his titles seemed like the safest bet.
The main POV character, Michaël aka Mike is a semi-decent dude slowly digging his way to utter mediocrity, his only redeeming quality seems to be his love for his son but even in that he isn't that great (that relationship isn't really built on in the book and all of Mike's relationships come across as kind of shallow).
The secondary POV is Wanda, a serial killer whose crimes Mike used in his most successful book (insert “f*cking MIKE” sound here for my fellow brain rot speakers). Wanda's dialogues were so stilted and unnatural that I almost wonder if the intent was for it to be unsettling or something. A lot of her POV is told in the form of journal entries and while they did a great job of showing the character's immaturity, they also made her sound quite insignificant which in turn made her control of the situation seem quite farfetched.
The premise that particularly visceral kill scenes would make or break a polar/noir book came across as kind of flimsy to me but then again, I read a fair amount of murdery stuff and I know that visceral kill scenes sell but not necessarily to a mainstream audience otherwise extreme horror would be having a field day.
Ultimately, I found this book to be rather weak, interesting enough to finish but nothing too memorable.
With that title, cover and premise I was immediately drawn to this book, so maybe my expectations were a little too high.
The ideas behind this book are great but I think it needed more work. For something that's supposed to be about someone's discovery that they haven't been the best to themselves or others the introspection is conspicuously lacking. Arguments and tensions are at most hinted at but largely it just seems like the guy was a bit critical maybe and while that doesn't necessarily make for the best relationships that seems a little underwhelming. His progression would have benefited from his character being better established.
Stylistically it was rather plain and different elements of the book came across as disjointed, if the writing had been more stylized it would have came across as more intentional however because the style was what it was it came across as somewhat rushed. It felt like the book never fully committed to being one thing or another and that's one of the areas in which it really fell short.
Jimmy's relationship with Beatrice was really the strongest aspect of the book and the one aspect that felt like it was given appropriate time to develop.
I also hate it when a book ends in a "surprise, there was no stake to all of this because it was all in his head" kind of way and that's what happened in this one so that really didn't help my overall enjoyment of the book.
I received an eARC of this book, many thanks to BookGoSocial on Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.
There's a point in my life where this book would have been a favorite. The characters were great, there's plenty of drama and intrigues and I can see younger me getting utterly obsessed with the characters. Now, I think I'm just not really the audience. It's really a space opera and I would have liked a less opera exploration of the universe the author created, alas, this book was what it said it was.
3.5 rounded up.
I'm not a ballet person, I can't say that I have even a passing interest in it, that would be overstating my level of interest in the topic, I picked up this book because it was one of last week's new nonfiction titles at my library and went in with no idea of what it was about.
There's a rather big chunk of this book that I found a bit meandering and sometimes a little hard to follow (even though these ladies are really bad ass and I assume that someone who has an interest in dance company dynamics and is better at remembering names than me might feel differently about just how meandering that part is) and that I was therefore not crazy about. That being said, the last 20/25% of the book is so packed with poignancy it made the more meandering part worth sticking with. The parts about remembering the dance partners they lost to the AIDs epidemic and the reunion between the older ballerinas and Misty Copeland were so beautifully and impactfully described that it was downright devastating.
Seriously though, this book would make a fantastic movie or show.
I liked that at the end the author shows that even when people do want to remember it's easy to lose track of people who paved the way and that it's important to share the duty to remember and honor them especially when they are part of a marginalized group which is routinely erased from their own history.
I wanted to love this one but really it was too long and one note for me.
It was very long, and the situation was pretty much the same for like 75% of the book and the character alternated between the same 3 states of mind over and over and over again. Now, I can imagine there are people for whom that kind of horror is particularly effective, but I am not one of them so for me it was just progressively getting more and more tedious. It didn't particularly help that I never really grew particularly invested in Gyre since she never felt like a fully formed character to me.
Neutral 2.5 rounded up.
With that title and that cover (the cartoony version with the orange background) I didn't expect something quite that heavy (no I did not read the blurb or look into it before I started reading). There are some charming moments in there and the writing is absolutely fantastic but this book is HEAVY in a way that feels entirely intentional. There are charming moments in there and they are carefully placed to further the devastating weight of the events in the book.
On the whole I did enjoy this book, it was engaging and heartbreakingly beautiful at times but there seemed to be a lot of plot holes and strange leaps in logic. I think the plot holes and leaps were an intentional aspect of the narrator, to establish the blend of naivety and arrogance that make up her character, but it sometimes clashed with the general tone of the book (which might have been a translation issue, I assume).
This one was both charming and melancholy. The style is really agreeable and if you're the kind of person who enjoys thinking about small things and points of detail you might just fall in love with it.
There's part of the book where the author talks about her final walk with her dog, Charlotte (why is Charlie the perfect name for a good boy or girl?), and at the time of my reading the book (mid-June 2024) my cat, Ali, is home on palliative care and I know that soon I will have to schedule that final appointment with the vet, reading that part of the book made me feel seen and it was oddly comforting so I suspect that this book will hold a special place in my heart on account of it.
After talking about the book with a couple of people I concluded that it is just enough about the author's thinking to not be quite a memoir and that therefore it is okay for me to rate it.
That was a fun and quick read. It's told in transcript of a podcast/YouTube show format which was an interesting choice, but I thought it was done quite well.
This particular author seems to reinvent his writing style for every book and that's one of the biggest draw of his work, I never know what I'm going to get but I know it will not be lazily or poorly done.
I really enjoyed Lily and Nick's POVs but Mei's was a little harder to follow for me. On the one hand I wasn't a fan of Mei's parts but on the other hand it also went to show that Khong can give different characters their unique voices and flairs which is always impressive.
Sprawling family sagas aren't my thing but it was done exceptionally well here and with such a reasonable number of pages I'm really impressed with how organic and unrushed the storytelling came across as. Seriously, with the topics this book approaches I expected it to be on the ponderous and slightly pretentious side but it was neither, I found it almost charming (oddly enough) and entirely unpretentious. On a technical aspect I would absolutely give this one a 5/5.
It was my first time reading this author and it will certainly not be the last.
I didn't really care for this one, I kept waiting for something to happen, for something to shock the main character out of being the most boring and annoying version of herself or something but it never happened and by the time I came to terms with the fact that it wasn't happening I was so near the end that I figured I might as well finish it. I don think I would have cared much for this one as a teenager either, I feel like it sort of falls into a weird in between of being too literary for one category and not quite literary enough for another.
I should just stop picking up books which have blurbs that start with “whip-smart”.
I came for “its indicting portrayal of mental health and public obsession, fandom, and cancel culture” and to be honest I didn't get much of that. There's a couple of scenes that deal with the fickle nature of fandom and media but what I really got was a psychologist who confirmed most of my negative assumptions about psychologists and a story told largely from what I assume to be the least interesting POVs. Even with all that nicer prose or a more engaging style could have easily saved this book and there were moments where it was clear that the author is capable of writing engagingly so I'm not sure why this padded outline is what we ended up with.
Neutral 2.5 rounded up,
What if a job in sales entailed selling yourself short, literally? That's the question Keisling invites you to contemplate here.
The world building was pretty frigging fantastic and I'm an absolute sucker for stories featuring the whole supernatural underworld somehow connected to our own where a character is somehow granted access to more or less against their own will. Don was a generally pretty likeable character so it was easy to stay invested in what happened to him and to feel for him.
That being said, I wasn't really impressed with what made people “saturated with mediocrity” though, but I'm the type to think that finding comfort and joy in the mundane is great so maybe I felt just a smidge called out. Also, what happened to Mr. Precious Paws? Unforgivable!