Allie

Finally! I enjoyed the audiobook a lot (narrated by Simon Vance), but man it took me a long time to get through 14 hours! And especially towards the end when they're just like, waiting for the count's coffin to hurry up and get back to Transylvania so they can stake him, it dragged a lot. I fully zoned out for like 20 minutes while working at this coffee shop, and as far as I can tell I missed nothing.

This was my second time reading it, almost 10 years between, and color me surprised I remembered as much of it as I did!

But really I just want to tell you that we have the kids' board book “Dracula: A Counting Primer by Little Master Stoker” (lol) and Ethan already knows the names of all “Five Heroes” and is very proud of himself as he names them (“Doctor Helsing!”) but also he counts “one two three four five eight seven eight” for almost every page, so. Pretty good for not even being three yet. Starting him early on the good literature!

I didn't like this. For a book that was less than 200 pages, it felt like a slog. Lots of undertones of colonialism in the West Indies/Jamaica, and when one of the little girls describes the death of her beloved cat during an earthquake as sadder than the death of the black man who worked in their home ... that did not sit well with me at all.

Plus, I admittedly don't know much about child development, but I'm pretty sure if you're a 10 year old kid and your older brother just up and disappears, you'd notice??? I kept feeling like attributes were laid on these kids that wouldn't have been likely, and most of the things they did that were irritating to the adults were mainly annoying because they were on a boat unsupervised and not knowing what to do with that and trying to ingratiate themselves with the only adults around, who just so happened to be pirates.

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. I kept wanting to shout “WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS.”

Really cute holiday novella with some real emotionally messed up main characters and some instalove but not gonna lie I thought Kayden and Jules were adorable, and it was a lot of fun.

Loved the first one, so was eager to jump back into Aven's world, this time as she enters high school and has to deal with big bullies, big crushes, big losses, and big questions about who she wants to be. This one definitely had a slightly older feel, with more early high-school emotions and that thing that High School Allie did too, which was start every blog post (or in this case, chapter heading) with song lyrics, and there was a thing about that I didn't particularly like Kids from Alcatraz ended up being the punk band the friends created at the end of the book. But in general, I still enjoyed this book and listened to the whole thing in one day, and it was great.

A bit of a slow start, because the narrator Josef started out by being wishy-washy about how to start the story, and where in time to start since this book is not perfectly linear, and also one of the things that drove me bananas about this book was that the story frequently switches from first to third person, even though the only POV character is Josef.

And yet Josef redeems himself by being a beautifully quiet storyteller, and once I got past the halfway mark, I flew through this.

The description of this book covers most of the plot points - due to an illness when they are due to leave Austria due to the encroach of WWII, Josef and his wife and child are not able to stay together, escaping to opposite sides of the world (America for him, China for them), thanks to the help of his gentile friend Friedrich, who joins the Nazi party to keep up appearances while also secretly hiding Josef's distant cousin in his attic crawlspace.

And the content warnings below lay out the rest of the story, but none of it was a surprise to me.

I appreciated how one of the things he did in his spare time was care for two Jewish cemeteries, bearing witness to people he never knew and doing his best to hold their memories.

For a Holocaust book, it was quite different than anything I'd read before, and it was good.

CW: the Holocaust (antisemitism, death [mostly off-page], Nazis), statutory rape, stillbirth, suicide

Got me choked up on the second page. Just as much about the sibling(s) that have been lost as the ones still living, and how much they love each other and wish they could play and talk to each other. Going on my son's bookcase.

Was described on Fated Mates as Bride Overboard - woman starts the book married but is thrown overboard by her terrible husband. I'm in.

“Disability can be difficult to look at. Disfigurements ... can be unsettling in their strangeness, their out-in-the-open vulnerability. But rather than ignore it wilfully, the protagonist in “The Sitting” is forced - with her meticulous artist's gaze - to stare directly at what she's been conditioned not to, and to treat the disabled body as aesthetically valuable. And what she finds is that bodily difference is worth viewing - and worth viewing closely. It is sublime, and intimate, and deeply human. In a way, it is art.” - Megan Granata, afterword to “The Sitting”

I've been participating in the Read Harder challenge for the last two years. I love that the challenge has encouraged me to read more women authors and more authors of color, and read more often about experiences that different than my own. But what I realized a few months ago is that, for all the reading-other-peoples'-experiences thing, there really hasn't been a whole lot of emphasis on authors or characters with disabilities (though, to give credit where it is due, one of last year's challenge tasks was to read a book whose main character had a mental illness).

Upon having this realization, I went in search of books about disability in general, because to be perfectly honest, I was not entirely sure what all was included under the umbrella of disability. I am thankful I had the opportunity to read this anthology of stories, and that the author of each short story wrote an afterword to follow about why their piece was meaningful to them and how it came into creation. Some authors wrote stories similar to their own experiences, while others made up stories that were only somewhat related - or completely unrelated to - their own disabilities (or the disabilities of loved ones or figures in history).

It's sometimes hard to review collections of stories by different authors, but ultimately, I thought this was excellent. While I did not love every story, most were so wonderfully told, absolutely breathtaking. These stories covered such a broad range of topics: facial and body deformities (as mentioned in the quote above, one of my favorite stories, “The Sitting”), blindness, dementia, mental illness, diabetes and kidney failure (ohhh, “Bombshell Noel” by Thom Jones was so, so good, and so, so hard for me to read), birth defects, quadriplegia, deafness, recovery after a stroke (another favorite, “please, thank you” by Dagberto Gilb) and more and more. So many different perspectives.

I'm really glad I read this one, and I'd highly recommend.

Buddy read with Jeananne. This was excellent - of course I knew some of “white Christianity” was ridiculous, like obviously Jesus and his disciples weren't a bunch of European men, when most of the Bible takes place in the Middle East and northern Africa, duh. But Gay talking about some of Christianity's original thinkers and how they are misleadingly presented as white despite being African was kind of mind-blowing. And it should not have been as big of a surprise that Christianity flourished in Africa and other Eastern countries long before anywhere western.

I also want to think more about this idea about someone being a “product of their time” especially when giving the benefit of the doubt to white people over other races of people, and how that can be a type of whitewashing.

Definitely recommend. It got a little in the weeds in later chapters, but overall I found this to be very useful and interesting.

Instead of finishing The Age of Walls for my buddy read tomorrow, I read this smutty short story with sexy literary banter. I regret nothing!!!

Book club met last night, so now I don't have to finish this! Turns out, getting through 60% was more than enough, because we only talked about one plot point that I hadn't gotten to yet. But I bet you can imagine what it was based on the fact that this is a Historical Fiction About Puritans.

I alternated being interested and finding the loooong passages of descriptions boring enough that I started nodding off a few times.

But really, the reason I'm reviewing is because this is not a very widely reviewed book and as such there were not any reviews on GR that indicated that this has MASSIVE TRIGGERS all over it. I actually stopped reading before Charis had her baby, but the aforementioned ending indicates to me that Charis did not lose the pregnancy nor die from it.

As such, for future readers, here you go - warnings through the parts I read.
TW/CW: Murder/massacre, on-page death of family members, discussions of dying in childbirth, pregnancy, what we would now call post-partum depression, suicide, death of an infant, elements of racism against indigenous people

I tried, I really did. We're going to be discussing excerpts of this at my church book club, and I already had it on my TBR, so I figured why not try to do the whole thing. I got through page 57 (somewhere in the middle of Book 4). There were lines throughout that were lovely, expressing Augustine's love for God and His goodness. But the language was so difficult to read as a modern reader, that even with close attention I don't know that I was really getting a lot out of it.

I could keep trying, I suppose, but I went to the Sparknotes website to look up summaries for the next few Books (chapters), and after clicking through a couple of them, I couldn't muster up any desire to keep reading summaries, let alone the rest of this tome. I think that's a good indication I should set this aside.

I'm not going to lie, I can't really even say I tried that hard. I got through book 1, so about 25 pages, but this was never going to be something that interested me. I got bored trying to skim through the Wikipedia page to find out what this was supposed to be about.

A twist on my favorite trope! Will and his best friend Rose agree to pretend to date to boost their chances of their Youtube show getting a streaming contract (because the fans are clamoring for it), but a few days before Christmas, Will has a one-night stand ... with Lizzy, who it turns out is Rose's estranged twin, who will also be home for Christmas.

This was DELIGHTFUL. It was steamy and sexy and also had family reconciliation and getting snowed in, and of course Rose was secretly still in love with her ex and had negative-100 chemistry with her fake boyfriend, who couldn't stop mooning over Lizzy.

Read it!

I've been watching the Netflix show “Lupin” that is based on this book series at the same time as I read this collection, and the short stories are overall WAY lighter in tone than the show. This collection featured 13 stories of Lupin's outwitting detectives, stealing valuables in very tricksy ways, assuming false identities, and being flamboyantly over the top in his correspondence as he pulls one over on people. It was great fun - probably my favorites being “Arsene Lupin in Prison,” “The Wedding-ring” and “The Red Silk Scarf.” (I appreciated “Edith Swan-neck” too, but found it a leeeeeetle bit preposterous.)

I also found myself giving Lupin a little bit of a side-eye; were it not for the fact that he's a thief, he would make a great detective rivaling Sherlock Holmes, as he uses a lot of the same types of observations and deductions to manipulate people and determine their actions in advance. The way he always explained how we was able to manage the crimes he committed or play people made it feel a little like a knock-off Holmes ... which I guess Lupin kind of was. Still, a lot of fun.

Heard about on the Fated Mates podcast and downloaded it SO FAST. Yes it's August, I don't care. This was my first age-gap, Daddy/baby romance. I didn't mind the age gap thing, nor the role-playing between consensual adults, but there were some elements that kind of pushed this into creepiness for me (he watched her grow up, even if they didn't touch each other until she was 19). The whole I'm-going-to-get-you-pregnant thing is not sexy to me unless both parties are 1000% on board, but good on you if that's your thing - it's just not for me.

It was

I mean, it was fine. It had a lot of plot. Little character development until the absolute very end. I didn't feel anything toward either of the main characters (though obviously Eli was meant to be a sympathetic character), and all the action was so matter-of-fact that I didn't really feel anything for any of the Sisters' victims either. The premise got a lot more interesting once Hermann Warm came into the story, but there still wasn't enough here (which feels weird to say, because there was A LOT here).

The further I got into this audiobook, the lower I felt like scoring it.

** CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS **

The first 1/3 of the book gets three stars. It was interesting, compelling ... I could get behind the main character, Misty, and feel her frustration with her comatose husband (who tried and failed to kill himself) and life working as a waitress in a hotel, which she feels stuck in. It wasn't groundbreaking or anything, but it was enjoyable enough.

But then shit started getting weird. Like, paranormal psychological thriller weird. And I couldn't stop cringeing and squirming because I was just so uncomfortable with the way the plot turned, how everything kind of fell apart around Misty and then everyone made her out to be crazy when all the characters around her was trying to hurt her and control her.

I don't like reading things about people intentionally hurting other people, making them feel pain on purpose. I've put down books and returned rented audiobooks that described torture scenes in the first few chapters. So when Misty described jabbing a brooch pin into her comatose husband's hands and feet until she hits the bone? I almost turned it off right there. When she describes one of her husband's friends from school having an earring ripped clean through his ear? And then keeps mentioning it throughout the book, how his ear hangs split in two? I'm squirming just writing about it.

I don't know why I kept going with this one. It clearly was not going to be the kind of thing I was going to like, but it was for book club, and ... well, the first part was good, and I kept expecting it to start getting good again. It never did.

Although some of it is a little out of date (originally published in the 1970s, updated in mid-1990s), I'd recommend this book to everyone. In addition to being a fascinating read, it included a lot of women's history that I didn't know. I really enjoyed this book.

What a weird combination of horror, sci-fi and medieval history. I enjoyed parts of it, and other parts were a little too out-there for me; I couldn't decide between two stars and four, so it gets three.

I literally had trouble putting this book down. I loved, loved, loved reading it, and everyone should go read it right now. In “Sleep,” Christine wakes up every morning not knowing who she is or where she is, thanks to a head trauma more than 20 years earlier. The man sleeping next to her tells her he is her husband, and helps her to re-create her life every day. Then one morning, she is contacted by a doctor, who says he's been working with her for weeks and that she has been keeping a journal that records the things that are happening in her life so she can try to remember. Every morning, Christine reads her version of her history and tries to add more so she can know who she is and where she comes from, but the more she writes, the more she discovers she cannot trust her husband to tell her the truth.

Read Harder Task #8: Read a travel memoir

I wanted to read this because I went to Japan for work last year, but I only got to spend a few hours in Tokyo and I wished I'd gotten to see more. The cover describes this as a “graphic memoir” - the author/artist is a French dude whose significant other had an internship in Japan for six months, so he spent his time drawing the different neighborhoods and people he saw. So I guess it counts as both a travel book and a memoir, and I'm going to count it. The artwork is lovely and very informative, and really captures the feel I got from my short stay (and my slightly-longer visits in Osaka and Kyoto).

I think the reason I don't want to give it more stars is because I was kind of expecting a memoir to be more narrative. There are occasional comments about his day-to-day, but as far as I can tell they're not in date order (the book is arranged by neighborhood), and much more of the book is devoted to drawing things he saw: houses, skylines, people, maps of the various neighborhoods, advertisements, and kobans (police stations, which designated the start of each new neighborhood included). I think I wish it had been more linear, and included more of his life, and not just that of everyone around him.

Giving this one a VERY generous rating of two stars.

There were parts of this book that I genuinely liked: the idea of love conquering all, staying in love your whole life, and looking at life and marriage in an — overall — realistic way. I liked the characters of Fermina Daza and Dr. Juvenal Urbino, for the most part.

However, I'm fairly convinced that the author just needed an outlet for his disturbing sexual fantasies. And thus, the parade of Florentino's conquests, in so much detail that I wanted to throw down the book and yell WE GET IT ALREADY, HE LIKED WOMEN AND DIDN'T MIND USING AND ABUSING THEM. Marquez played WAY too fast and loose with the words “love,” “making love,” etc. He never admits that there are several instances of flat-out rape in this book; he ties it all up into a pretty little package of women forever looking for the men who raped them because they were so in love with their attackers.

Bullshit. This book was so full of bullshit.

But I'm the sucker that kept reading, waiting for the ultimate conclusion that we're concerned with from page 1: does Florentino finally get to be with the “one that got away”? (Hint: I stopped caring after he tells the OUTRAGEOUS lie that he's still a virgin at age 76, after the back of the book says that he partook in SIX HUNDRED TWENTY TWO AFFAIRS.)

But the real reason this book doesn't deserve any of the stars that I've given it is because, almost 300 pages in, when you're already invested enough to just want to finish the damn thing, this was when Marquez wrote that Florentino was regularly seducing a thirteen-year-old, a girl whom he, BY THE WAY, had been entrusted to be her legal guardian.

By the end I was convinced that it wasn't so much a good love story as a creepy story of a stalker who just COULDN'T. LET. GO.

There was just so much wrong with this book that even the parts I liked couldn't make up for it.

I love Smith's velvety voice when she reads poetry, which I knew from her podcast where she reads other people's poems. I liked that her own work was so accessible, that I could understand what she was trying to say and the beautiful turns of phrase. Unfortunately, since I listened to the audio (mostly while I was driving), I couldn't pause to linger over the lines I loved, and so they slipped away even though I was listening at normal speed. I'm going to want to revisit this in print, because even though I enjoyed hearing how she intended these poems to be read, I don't feel like I got as much out of this as I wanted to. This was a short listen - less than an hour and a half - but when I finished I felt like I needed to listen to it a second time to really get it, so I'm not going to give it a rating this time around.

Listened to the audiobook on a long road trip. It was entertaining, despite being a fairly terrible book. We liked the dual authors' notes to each other between chapters. Their hostility toward each other was hilarious.