Georgette
It's Sarah's Scribbles! And there's no way this won't be somehow hysterically #relateable. While I've always enjoyed whatever scribble that pops up on my Facebook newsfeed, I've never gone looking for the motherload. This compilation is a nice place to start and damnit, I missed #1.
With thanks to Netgalley for this opportunity to give an easy 5-star.
This was an utterly delightful and very fun romp of a book. A lady with a crumbling estate, a film star with a mysterious past, ulterior motives and entertaining sidekicks. In a way it's almost two romance novel subgenres in one - the outwardly-restrained historical romance and the sweep-me-off-my-feet “Hollywood”. It sounds bad when I put it like that, but this book was a nice break from my usual genres.
I never thought that I'd be into a lesbian porno graphic novel but Small Favors is terribly charming and sex positive that you can't help falling in love. There are several stories, some just a couple of pages long, but it always ends up with everybody having sex. There's not much in terms of plot and the one main arc is that Nibbil is Annie's conscience in humanoid form, supposedly to keep Annie from masturbating all the damn time but she turned out to be a companion and enabler. This was unexpected!
I wanted to like this book because the premise sounds interesting and I'm a thriller/horror fan. But the dialogue was cheesy, the POV jumped from one character to the next like an airborne virus, the characters all seemed like dramatic caricatures who can only end sentences in exclamation marks, and the demon would have made a lot more kills if he stopped talking so much. I think I kept on reading to see if it was consistently bad throughout the book. This should have just stayed in the era it was originally published.
This was an ARC from NetGalley.
Bree is a chemist who comes back from a company trip to find her boss dead from poison and herself as the main suspect. It's always made sense that a character would have a stake in solving the mystery quickly if they are a suspect, so this is the most obvious setup (plot-wise) ever.
It's interesting to have a protagonist who is a scientist (yay for women in STEM!) and perfectly capable of solving chemistry problems as long as it's not the romantic type. Nothing actually happened except maybe setting the path for a future love triangle.
However, it will have to proceed without me since this book didn't really do anything for me. It was nice to read but not in a “cancel all my appointments and sleep” way. The recipes at the end were a nice touch.
Ebook courtesy of NetGalley.
After reading so much garbage poetry books that seem to be the one making all the money, Melizarani is refreshing to the fellow spoken poet's soul. This book peels back the layers around the world of a Malaysian Indian woman with both keen word-fu and an unapologetic candidness. Her pieces about issues faced by the country and our people strike a chord.
And yes, it really did take me this long to finish this book. I started and stopped because I was in one of my reading ruts. Things only started taking off a week ago when I realised that I've been holding on to my friend's copy for a ridiculously long time and should really see about returning it. I gave it another shot.
Right away ‘blank' struck a chord. A commentary on the Allah controversy, Melizarani talks about having to substitute the A-word with a blank. Being from Sarawak, I am fortunate to live some place where everybody agreed how ridiculousness of this controversy is, even if they don't personally believe in either deities popularly associated with that name. Or even if, like me, their Blank really is blank.
‘my country is a man' puts a whole different, sexy spin on how to talk about Malaysia; while ‘to the macha who got away' made me put the book down halfway through the piece because one stanza made me laugh so hard I was unable to immediately continue. ‘hero' was a beautiful use of Superman as a metaphor; I wish I wrote that.
There were little pieces in between the longer ones that will make connoisseurs of instapoetry happy, but I barely remember any of them. I look at them again when I get my own copy.
Adorable! I love young monsters and this issue is well drawn and colourful despite the gloomy atmosphere at Assumption Cemetery. I felt that it did a good job introducing all the players and made me look forward to future issues.
ARC via NetGalley.
Ah, this brought back a lot of memories of both AoD and Xena. I've not read comics on either before so I enjoyed getting reacquainted with both. I enjoyed the artwork by Elliot Fernandez and Diego Galindo as well.
(ARC courtesy of NetGalley)
If you're aware of Pearls Before Swine, it's hard to go wrong with a collection. I don't really follow the dailies, so this is a great way of catching up with what Stephan Pastis is up to lately (I feel like I can say that since he is one of the characters in the strips). There were many that made me grin or groan, and a few that made me laugh out loud. Also pleased to see the crocs and their long-suffering zeeba neighba make several appearances!
(ARC courtesy of NetGalley)
It's always fun to read Miao comics online and now in its book forms with additional content that may not necessarily fit the standalone-ish nature of web comics. Much like the first book, Miao aka Jian Goh uses a few pages to allude to some personal stories about growing up that is both a little uncomfortable yet relateable.
But most of the book involve the types of hijinks that cats, eeer, kids get into when they are growing up. While this might be the recollection of Miao and his group of friends, but it's a also childhood shared by many kids growing up in Kuching.
Random trivia: Miao is a cat but reflection on mirrors is a human.
With a cast of characters aka friends all of us hopefully had growing up, part of the fun is the colloquial Kuching lingo. Ling Ling screaming “MAIKU!” at Star Cineplex is one of my favourite scenes in the book. Any time Ling Ling is freaking out at the boys is my favourite scene actually.
PS - Still curious about Weefu's invisible friend.
I gave up.
I tried to read it but about 3 pages in, I realised that I didn't understand any of it. Thinking that maybe I wasn't really focusing, I tried again from the beginning. Still nothing. I'm not a fan of overly flowery metaphor or abstract concepts, so this sits on the other spectrum of nope from the likes of Lang Leav. I've read some of the other reviews and can conclude that I'm just too “dumb” for this kind of poetry. I didn't finish it, mostly because I was putting it off until I feel a little smarter but the copy expired. :P
(ARC courtesy of NetGalley)
I did not know what to expect, having not read a long-form poetry narrative before. But from the start, I was caught in the downward spiral and dragged along for the ride.
Some other reviewers said that Lily Myers captured the mentality of those who develop eating disorders. I don't have personal experience to compare it to, but it seems very realistic - the chain-of-events that led to a need to control one little part of your life is a familiar one.
As a novel told in poetry, there are some beautiful lines in there, some that made me have to stop because the sadness was a little much. At the same time, I also felt that it was simplistic. If this was novel told in prose, there could be more opportunities for character development across the board. However, for a quick read, this works too. Sometimes poetry is a what happens when you distill many words into a few that works just as well.
(ARC courtesy of NetGalley)
Surprising. A range of voices from women who refused the tudung, embraced it, fought for the right to refuse or embrace it, and a couple of third parties looking in from the side. Like most anthologies, there are hits and misses. As a non-Muslim, the views from both sides were enlightening. A few pretty interesting fictional takes as well!
I recovered this book under a pile of junk on my desk and made a push to finish the last two essays. Like most multi-author compilations, there are stories I can relate to and others that I don???t get at all. The last one struck me the most in this post-BN administration. Marvin Wong???s Occupying Spaces is a snapshot of an era we hope to see the last of.
To be honest, I've read local poetry anthologies that are so bad, I don't even want to log it on GR.
While ‘Poetrygami' is not terrific, it's not all that terrible either. It's a brief, fluffy, one-sitting read with styles that are popular with insta-poetry fans. There's a few poems that I really liked, and a whole lot more that would have been better if the author had an English language editor go in there and tidy up some of the grammar and typos. Not even an English poetry editor, mind you, just someone with a better grasp of English. There's some potential here to be better, and I'm low-key mad that this looks like a bunch of drafts.
I took a quick look at Nick Adly's blog and his Malay poetry is decent (based on my limited exposure to modern Malay poetry). I suspect Poetrygami might have also suffered from a ‘think in one language, translate to another' issue, where nuances got lost in transit. It's worth a “try again”.
Penumbra is a nice introduction to the upcoming Darkling Mage series, the troubled Dustin Graves, and the characters who are likely to feature in his new life as a magic-type person.
Dust is a jack-of-all-trades who can't just stick to one thing, so after his murder and “resurrection”, he finds himself shoved into a world that existed alongside the one he was existing in, with powers and a possibility of making something of himself for once in his life. But first, he has to figure his new powers out and learn to work together with some other magic users from a hidden organisation.
This is a one-sitting read that will give you a feel for the writing and story, and also leaves you wondering about -enough- things that we will probably learn more about in upcoming books.
Disclaimer: I am friends with the author and he didn't bribe or threaten me to write this.
DNF. Library book and someone else has it on hold. However, being fairly well-versed on the subject of introversion, I???m not learning anything new here. I???ve dealt with most of my introvert problems before I even put a name to it. So while most of what I read reinforced my worldview, I???m letting this go to someone who needs it more.
I'm low-key mad at this book.
On the one hand, what a great premise! Iskandar Al-Bakri had an interesting take on the Puteri Gunung Ledang legend, and married it to historical figures known in the era and another well known mythology that you won't even associate with old Malaya. I'm so onboard for stuff like this, especially with it's local.
On the other hand, it reads like a simplified history textbook... or as another reviewer mentioned, an info dump. I wasn't sure if I was reading a novel or a fancily-dramatized secondary school history lesson. The so-called main characters didn't even engage until nearly the end of the book. There was far too much “Character used fancy silat move which is called [this] because of [reasons].” Educational, but lost the momentum there.
I think this novel would have benefited from a sharp editor with an ear for historical fantasy. Having said that, I don't hate the book. It's a good example of how you can take something well known and run off in another direction with it.
I wanted to say I found this hard to follow, but that's not necessarily true since I did finish the book. I've not read much fiction or even non-fiction out of this region, so the Inuit names and culture were unusual and eye-opening to me.
I don't know if it's the translation or the style or just the general layout of the ebook, but it feels like reading a half-worked manuscript. This won't be the first time I read a translation of a novel that was wildly popular in its original language, but didn't come off half as well in English.
The story itself was probably what kept me going, but it could have been executed better.
The value of this book to a Malaysian or Asian writer is that Gina Yap Lai Yoong isn't some white author in a faraway white land doing this glamorous writing thing that seems abstract and unrelateable to us.
Gina loves writing, and despite being introverted and having to work harder at public appearances, she is also very determined and resourceful about both getting words down and getting them published.
Fortunately for you and me, she is generous with her knowledge and has put together this book to talk about practical things that you probably haven't thought about (ie your autograph signature should not be the same one you use in your official documents), and some very obvious things that serves as a kick in the pants (ie this book isn't gonna write itself).
A Writer's Journey is an easy-to-read and friendly little tome that will sit in the same category on my shelf as Stephen King's On Writing, because we all love a peek into the writing process and personal life of more accomplished authors.
Disclaimer: Gina is a friend, but she neither asked nor bribed me to write this review.
Beauty and the Beast is one of my all-time favourite fairy tales. All the nods to familiar names and characters is cute, and the artwork is lush ... but ultimately, I'm not warming up to this retelling.
Um, no.
Great cover, but the art inside isn't the same. I don't like this particular style of artwork and I won't have requested it if I knew. The dragons seem more European but the setting is Asian. The story had potential but I'm somewhat confused by the lengthy story of what turned out to be a secondary character, or at least, the main character of this first issue. The dialogue and writing needed more work. Not sure if this is a translation issue.
This ARC is courtesy of NetGalley.
Aldo is a 200 year old immortal who has done absolutely nothing with his life, and found the need to attempt a confession to a psychiatrist. As the story languidly unfurls, Aldo spots a man on TV that he knew from the 18th Century and sets off to find him.
This is a case of a graphic novel setting out to be different, and succeeds. The writing was wonderful. The artwork is a huge part of the storytelling and the story came with a twist in the last pages. I'm shook, y'all. This is the best thing I've read this week.
ARC courtesy of NetGalley.