Elissa

Butts: A Backstory is an engaging, thoughtful microhistory of the phenomenon that is the human butt, placing society's current focus on bringing the rear to the fore in a larger societal context and interrogating its relationship to issues of gender, race (particularly Blackness), and cultural appropriation.

I've seen this book described as “funny”, and I'm not sure I agree; although Radke peppers wit throughout, unless you feel that seeing the phrase “human butt” in print is the height of comedy (I agree, but that's on me, not the author), you should prepare not for a cavalcade of laughs but for a journey to answer sometimes uncomfortable questions with a dose of good humor and a body-positive message.

Thanks to Radke's perspective, I'm glad to have begun 2023 not with another vow to transform myself, but with a healthy dose of self-love and an inquisitive, critical look at the societal pressures that shape the way we view our shapes.

This short story was well written and served as an entertaining enough diversion (I enjoyed it enough to finish it, after all), but lacked sympathetic characters, was ultimately inconclusive, and felt about as substantial as the home and garden shows it satirizes—which is to say I'd spend another 30 minutes reading a story like this if it were available in a dentist's lobby or the waiting area at a car dealership, but wouldn't seek anything similar out independently. More ardent fans of HGTV and its hosts' interpersonal drama may find their mileage varies.

Having eagerly devoured Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity, I had to pick up Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?. I did not expect it to be catered more toward the middle-grade reader than Doughty's previous work (although the illustrations were wonderfully evocative without being overly frightening, they comprised about half of the book), but perhaps that failing falls more on my side than the book's. I did enjoy the short ride—it was entertaining to see the unhinged questions kids have come up with and to learn a few things along the way, and a pleasure to see Doughty respond with her trademark enthusiasm and wit without any hint of talking down to her ostensibly young reader. I'm glad this book exists to help kids sate their curiosity about death, and to continue to break down the taboos associated therewith.

Gory Details is an excellent collection of bite-size trivia occupying the Venn diagram of taboo, macabre, and disgusting. I am looking forward to wowing anyone who will listen with the profusion of anecdotes and factoids about death and poop I've absorbed from this book (I've already deployed the fascinating/gag-inducing truth of just how blowflies have been known to interfere with crime scenes to one unfortunate soul, who may or may not have been eating at the time). Engelhaupt writes on a multitude of gruesome subjects with candor, good humor, and contagious fascination.

In this singular novel based on personal experience, Lockwood expertly weaves together disparate elements to create a uniquely twenty-first-century tragicomic tapestry. This book is about an event that brings a terminally online public figure back to the joy and despair of reality; it is difficult to describe in any further detail. Presented in short, digestible bursts spoofing social media posts, it is the memetic made literary. It is hilarious, ironic, depressing, inspiring, poignant, affecting. Above all, No One Is Talking About This encourages the reader to see from a new perspective and to think deeply about what truly connects us.

On the one hand, The Midnight Library has the rare distinction of being a quick, compelling read that stirred me to serious introspection; I have always identified with Plath's fig-tree metaphor in The Bell Jar, and Haig's alternate take on the choices that make up our lives is an existentialist rebuke that resonated strongly for me personally. This is a page-turner: the chapters are short, with many bordering on abrupt (a stylistic choice that works well for the subject matter), and the prose is straightforward but contains more than a few pithy jewels. I loved the concept of a library wherein a visitor could flip through alternate lives as easily as through pages

On the other, I found this book to be predictable, heavy-handed, and overly didactic. (The further the protagonist, Nora, progressed toward self-actualization, the more The Midnight Library read to me like a self-help book, especially insofar as I felt free to assimilate what I wanted and scratch the rest.) With as much telling as the book does, it seems to show something different with surprising frequency; for instance, the book spends a couple of pages explaining in no uncertain terms that Nora should prioritize her own wishes rather than those of others, but, from start to finish, illustrates that her happiness hinges on her impact on others' lives. I also think it's dangerous and offensive to imply (as this book does) that depression is, or is the result of, a choice; so too is Nora's unnecessarily stigmatizing aversion to any of the many lives in which she discovers she is on antidepressants, as though this were a personal failing.

Ultimately, I found this novel a largely enjoyable and thought-provoking use of an evening, but it's no surprise that it's polarizing despite its acclaim and continued popularity.

Although I often felt so adrift in imagery and metaphor while reading this epistolary novella that I had a hard time grasping the ancillary plot elements, this inventive work left a smile on my face. The prose poetry of This Is How You Lose the Time War, if at times abstruse, gleams even when describing the horrific, and especially when describing the beautiful.

Note: unless I missed more here than I thought, it is never once explained how the protagonists travel in time. Some other key details I'd have liked to see elaborated include the inner workings of the protagonists' unconventional letter-writing and, indeed, the reason for the time war itself; these were either implied, glossed over, or outright ignored, which rankled me. If you must be told the “why” and “how” to enjoy a time-travel story, this book is probably not for you.

This book's saving grace is that it is not actually about the titular time war. At its core, This Is How You Lose the Time War is a romance, one that the travel back and forth in time and space ultimately serves to facilitate. In this respect, it tells a brilliantly original story of the triumph of love in the face of the horrors of war. I can't say I enjoyed this book until I really got into the rhythm of El-Mohtar's and Gladstone's worldbuilding-by-implication, but when I did get into it, oh, boy, did I.

First of all, I mean no disrespect to the sisters who endured the horrors detailed within the pages of If You Tell. I spent most of this book viscerally disgusted by the fact that a human being could do any of this to other human beings, let alone her own daughters. I feel for them; the trauma they suffered should not be minimized, and their stories should be told, so long as they wish it.

I will give credit to Olsen where credit is due: this is an incredibly compelling story. However, the same cannot necessarily be said about the storytelling. The structure of the book puzzled me: it seemed linear, except when it wasn't. Too many of the approximately ninety chapters (no joke) largely seemed to restate facts that had already been covered, making the book a slog despite relatively easy reading. Olsen's frequent employment of line breaks for emphasis quickly became a pet peeve, as did his use of “at once” to juxtapose two essential synonyms (i.e.—and I'm paraphrasing, because I've already returned the book—”It was at once repulsive and disgusting”).

I only saw If You Tell through to the end because I had to know what happened next. Some people surely will—and do—love this book; ultimately, I was not one of them.

Reading this short-and-sweet essay was like having a relatable conversation with a particularly witty friend. It didn't change my life or anything (and, considering the subject matter, maybe that's the point), but it has definitely inspired me to check out Irby's other work.

A touching, wistful novella about the impact of a man's life within his family. Even as it impressionistically and heart-wrenchingly depicted the tragedy of mental decline, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer evoked the wonder of magical realism. I cried bittersweet tears at the end. Definitely spurred me to read more Backman.

Quick read. I thought it was funny, but expected it to be more of a collection of rants about certain types of people, rather than personal essays about the trials and tribulations of being a suburban mother of young children in very specific circumstances. Entertaining reading material while waiting/on the train, but didn't go much deeper than that for me.

I found The Magician's Land not just a satisfying end to the Magicians trilogy, but the best book in the series: this final puzzle piece made sense of the story Grossman was telling all along. Those who can get past jaded protagonist Quentin's growing pains in the first two novels deserve this book as a reward. Ousted from the lush fantasy land of Fillory, Quentin begins to strive toward a new and singularly fantastic purpose, actualizing more than himself in the process; in the meantime, the Fillorian royalty struggle to save their land from a looming apocalypse. Grossman's worldbuilding in this series was both comforting in its evocation of Harry Potter and Narnia nostalgia and innovative enough that it deserves to be celebrated. He has built his own magician's land.

A Man Called Ove certainly deserves a content warning for attempted suicide, but its insight about the pain of grief, the unexpected delight of cross-generational connection, and the meaning of community tugs at the heartstrings. Here Backman, with the simultaneous pathos and comforting warmth that are his custom, provides a window into the life of a crotchety old man certain he has exhausted all joy life could ever have to offer him—until new neighbors arrive to seriously disrupt his routine. Despite his bleak outlook, Ove is one of the funniest characters I have encountered in fiction; his shameless frankness is endearing and laugh-out-loud hilarious, and I found myself rooting for him despite every effort he made to convince his neighbors, and the reader, to the contrary. Taking inspiration from Ove, I will bluntly say that this is the most uplifting story about an old guy constantly trying and failing to kill himself I have ever read.

This is a hard one to review, because although I liked the experience of reading this book, I'm no longer sure that I liked the book itself: Codex hooked me from the beginning, then ultimately threw me back in the water regretting having been hooked at all.

Throughout, the tension set my expectations high, and I found the book's dual focus on medieval literature and video games intriguing (although neither seems to be the author's particular wheelhouse). I was looking forward to seeing these pieces converge in a satisfying way, which didn't happen. I kept thinking there might be some supernatural element, and there wasn't. I wasn't sure why I was meant to care about the characters, let alone the drama between the distant Duke and Duchess, which made the ending all the more unsatisfying ... and that's saying something; this book has the biggest nothing of an ending since “It was all a dream!”

If the mark of a good book were its ability to make one think “Oh, that's clever” to oneself every now and then, this book would be very good indeed. It's a shame its cleverness does nothing of substance.