Reviews
Browse all reviews by date posted or filter by rating, year read, or tag on the right to find something specific like a juicy memoir or a particularly unhinged review.
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- ATLA 6
All About Love: New Visions
I found the earlier chapters clearly defining love as “the will to nurture our own and others’ spiritual growth” really brilliant and challenging in a good way. Unfortunately I found the majority of the rest of the book incredibly repetitive and near nonsensical.
Mexican Gothic
★★★☆☆ A well-worn Gothic premise in the novel setting of 1950s Mexican countryside. This book hits all the best Gothic cliches, i.e. a young woman is sent to a creepy remote mansion with prickly secretive inhabitants and uncovers a terrible mystery…
The Anthropocene Reviewed
★★★☆☆ This is an incredibly John Green book. The John Greeniest. The most John. The very Green. This book went down like chicken soup and I’m really not mad about it.
Imbalance (Avatar: The Last Airbender Comics #6)
★★★☆☆ Not as good as the previous ALTA graphic novels by Gene Luen Yang but still contains the signature political and moral themes.
I’m Glad My Mom Died
★★★☆☆ This was good but not as good as everyone says it is? Well-written insofar as it’s a riveting tale, but can’t compare to the memoirs I’ve read by more seasoned writers.
The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family
★★★☆☆ Unpleasant to read. Wong’s paints her recollections in lurid, sensational, and vindictive grotesqueness.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
★★★☆☆ DARK COTTAGECORE FEATURING CURMUDGEONLY ASTROLOGY-WITCH IN THE REMOTE FRIGID POLISH COUNTRYSIDE AND STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR AND TOWN DEATHS. Ok but seriously though this was wicked good. Beautifully written. A dark feminist, animal rights, anti-ageism manifesto.
Eagle Strike (Alex Rider #4)
★★☆☆☆ Not as good as the others - villain and action set pieces not as compelling or believable. The new hyper-advanced video game console at the centre of the story is VERY dated, and more obviously so than the super computers in Stormbreaker, surprisingly.
A Room with a View
★★★☆☆ Very enjoyable and funny read. Solid character development for ditzy protagonist Lucy and great cast of characters. Gets a little rape-culture-y with the nonconsensual kissing and girl falling in love with boy anyway. Contextual character stuff holds up though and makes the romance decently believable.
Orpheus Girl
★★★☆☆ Dreamy sad teen lesbian romance, very very very loosely based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in the American south in the early 2000s.
Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1)
★★★☆☆ Swashbuckling noir heist fantasy with an ensemble cast of broken tragic ne’er do wells who, between the lot of them, cover basically every type of damage. This book is...a lot.
Home (Binti #2)
★★★☆☆ It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she abandoned her family in the dawn of a new day.
Binti (Binti #1)
★★★☆☆ Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
★★★☆☆ What it says on the can - a very short, high school level (I assume) science book on astrophysics. I expected some more self-inserts from Tyson but he doesn’t even mention his own contributions to the demotion of Pluto as a planet.
Strange Weather in Tokyo
★★★☆☆ I excepted something a little more atmospheric. As it turns out, this is just a quaint slice-of-life sort of thing where things just sort of quietly happen and there’s not a ton of plot or tension or set-up or pay-off.
The Flatshare
★★★☆☆ A pretty silly, totally not to be taken seriously, quirky caricature characters, very golden age Drew Barrymore/Julia Roberts romcom-esque story about two young attractive slightly ditzy people who arrange a flatshare sleeping in 1 bed at different hours so they never meet (until it’s time to bang, obviously).