Devin

Hilarious, ridiculous, thoughtful, rambling, poignant, and just plain fun. It's a collection of thoughts on the world dressed up as the review of an exasperated editor trying to understand the scrambled notes of an eccentric philosopher who has been working on a “Philosophy of Clothes.” It has some genuinely insightful and beautiful things to say about the world, but it is never afraid to indulge in its own absurd mythos to keep things interesting. I'm so excited that I get to read this one again, and understand it better.

deliriously beautiful. cortázar speaks with a voice like the wind, and the way he flows from poetry to prose is like water flowing over stones in a river. it's beautiful, dizzying, so full of heart and joyous and lovely. read it all, and then again. good night.

it feels almost wrong to rate this book on such an arbitrary scale, especially after reading the poem “Why I Write.” i tried to stick with my usual scale. if a book is okay, i give three stars. if it's something good, four stars, and if it changed my life and i know i'll read it again and again, five.
anyway, being critical, which i try to do with these, Kindra Reiter is a good writer. Definitely look her up on instagram.

i can't. i cannot just be critical. “Island Life” was the first poem in this book to ring a bell in my heart that kept tolling. it hit something that made me cry and my eyes are still red as i write this. there are some poems in this book that are take-or-leave (oddly like Bukowski, only much less rough and gross; keeping in mind i like Bukowski, but i get people who don't), but the poems that hit, hit hard. they strike you through with sincerity and a mind like a wave that crashes and smoothes out and then crashes again. this is what poetry is meant to be, no matter the form it takes. i will always appreciate writing that is elegant, or new, or just weird, but i will remember writing that breaks my heart and puts it back together.

Ginsberg describes it best in the intro. the last poem is about Cambridge, and it is sad and lonely and tired, and closes the door on all the fire that this book is filled with. Not perfect, nothing is, but still good. still made me light, and happy. laughing gas poetry with tears included. Corso saw something. I don't know what it was, but it was something.

i'll read it again in ten years and will likely understand it better.

Keeping Up With The Karcrashians


I want to love this book a great deal more than I do. It's concept is something that arrests me completely; a look into the personal hell that a dysfunctional community of people can cause for one another. The writing is elegant and what one could expect from the time period and a skilled writer.
Yet, there is something in the execution that did not hold me. I don't know exactly what it is, but it after about sixty pages it became less of a joy and more of a routine to read. I still read it to the end because it is a good book, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Jane Austen but was perhaps putting this one off. The relatively low rating really only reflects the fact that I will not feel a desire to read it again for a long time, if ever. I'm glad I did read it though. It's beautiful and diabolical and intense.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, whoever the author is, they are both a conservative and a Republican. They make it clear by their opinions and eventually by their own declaration.
Keeping in mind, I tend to be more liberal, and though I try to avoid partisanship in general, my grandfather was a Democrat, so if I'm going to swing one way, that's usually it.
Despite that, it gave me high hopes to see which way the author of this book went, because if the criticism is coming from the President's own party, then that gives it more credibility, in my opinion anyway.
By the time I got to the final page, however, I couldn't help but feel as though I'd slogged through what was essentially an evening-long, one-sided discussion with an ex-MAGA politician who had nothing new to tell me. Our only shared qualities seemed to be the desire for the welfare of the United States, an affinity for our nation's history, and the conviction that Donald Trump ought to be fired.
Whenever the political events of the 20th century were brought up, there was so much praise of conservative figures and an enormous lack of writing regarding their failures, such as all the people who died in the AIDS epidemic because the Reagan administration would not acknowledge or help, or the torture carried out by the Bush administration.
The final disagreement that made me realize just how disappointed I was in the final product, was the argument that Trump ought to be fired by the American people in the 2020 election, and not via impeachment.
Two months ago, I agreed with this statement. Since then, it has been made abundantly clear that Trump doesn't give a damn about the integrity of the election, and will happily cheat, likely with Russia's help, if given the chance.
Because of that, I believe that he has forfeited his right to an election. Because of that, I realize that this book has taught me nothing, aside from deepening my understanding of just how ridiculous this Presidency has been.
If you're a Republican, I do recommend it to you. It's well-written, unabashed, and the author is someone I imagine you'll relate to a great deal more than I did. For me, though, I just feel tired.

Everything that I love about modern poetry, done with an elegant and mad skillfulness. Honestly, I have a hard time describing poetry I like. Usually just end up saying “go read it.”

go read it.

sweet, gentle, meaningful.

I will always owe a huge debt of gratitude to Stephen King. He is one of the main reasons I chose to become a writer, and he filled my teenage years with nightmares and wonderful, horrifying stories.
This story is an excellent one. It's creative and terrifying and you feel so deeply for the heroine as she overcomes both her physical and mental obstacles in her fight to survive. It's a heartfelt and fearless look into the how traumatic events can damage us.
The only thing keeping me from rating it higher is the same thing that keeps me from enjoying all of Stephen King's books. The older I get, the more I dislike his writing style. I used to love it, then I didn't care that much, and now it's feeling more and more like a chore to get through it. The stories are the only reason I still read him, because they are so damn good, and I insist you give this book a try, especially if you're not so persnickety about writing style as I am. It is well worth your while.

This is a painful, awful, brilliant examination of cruelty and evil. It is based on the real case of sixteen-year old Sylvia Likens, a girl who was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski. Gertrude not only abused her, but manipulated her own children and other children in the neighborhood to join in with her. This is a book that could so easily have been trashy exploitation of a terrible crime committed against a little girl. Yet, for reasons that I have trouble putting into words, it never feels that way. Reading this felt like when I read “Night” or “This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.” It becomes so awful that it must be hyperbolic, but the truth is that it is not. Unlike those two stories, this does not tout itself as non-fiction. Names are changed, as are certain events (in a sickening twist, this book actually tones down some of the things that happened in the real case), in order to provide distance and leave room for Ketchum to write without trampling all over the memory of Likens.

This is a hard book to read, and it is absolutely one that you could go the rest of your life without having to experience. However, if anything that I have just written intrigues you, it is worth your time.

God this book is fascinating and beautiful, and there is more than one scene that turned my stomach or put my jaw on the floor. It has its own atmosphere and ambience that is so unique to just this book, that I can't think of anything to which I can compare it. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to. If it helps any, the first time I heard of this book was when I went to google and searched for “books that feel like the Silent Hill series.”

Mary Oliver is one of those writers who has felt like an old friend to me from the moment I first opened one of her books. This collection of poems feels like a box of angels. It is rainwater seeping out from your cabinets, jungle trees growing out of abandoned skyscrapers. It's just so good. Please read.

Terrifying, disgusting, pure awful wrought with such skill. It hit me all the harder because I was working as an electrician when I first read it, and actually heard some of my coworkers discussing a real life case where a woman had been arrested because of a situation exactly like this novel. My coworkers thoughts? That the boy was lucky and they wished they'd had a teacher like that when they were kids. It goes beyond being simply a painful work of art, and becomes a painful, necessary work of art.

It is tempting to look at evil people in the world and label them as monsters. From Adolf Hitler to Ted Bundy, we give them names and adjectives (inhuman, animal, insane) to distance them from ourselves. But they were all human, and the capacity for evil like theirs exists in all of us. All it requires is that we give into our selfishness, and refuse to take responsibility for our actions. This book is a horrifying reminder of that, and it forces us to take the point of view of a truly repulsive human to teach us this lesson.

P.S. I despise every cover to this book I have ever seen. It always makes it look like an erotic novel, and this book is the farthest thing from erotic.

I still return to this one again and again. It is poetry that conveys beauty and simplicity. It instills the same feelings in me as the song “Simple and Clean” by Utada Hikaru. It is lovely and deeply human.