it doesn't get any more no plot just vibes than a bedridden woman with memoriesit doesn't get any more no plot just vibes than a bedridden woman with memories...more
honestly, reading this book prompted a lot of shouldn't haves.
cursed bunny is strange and fascinating and unpredia utopia? for me? you shouldn't have.
honestly, reading this book prompted a lot of shouldn't haves.
cursed bunny is strange and fascinating and unpredictable. this, by the same author, led me to expect a bizarre good time, but all of these stories — while striving for weird on the surface — were one-note and easy to anticipate.
some of them were in space, some were in the future, some were...well actually most of them were in one or the other, but all of them were about technology and society, and they had simple things to say.
after two story collections from chung, i'd be interested in a novel.
to me, there is nothing that symbolizes the lack of romance in modern life quite like tpretty great title if you ask me.
so at least i liked one thing.
to me, there is nothing that symbolizes the lack of romance in modern life quite like the qr code. the fact that this book is full of them is the least of its worries.
among the biggest of my worries, you're surely wondering? thank you for asking. that's simple:
WHY DO MEN NEED TO WRITE SO MUCH ABOUT PENISES. i'm no prude but at a certain point spending this much time on phalluses takes up what we should've allotted to regularly scheduled programming, like character development, or themes. you know. the little things. (buh dum ch.)
in fact, an inexcusable section of page count is spent on shock value, masturbation, gross-out descriptions, pop-culture references, and brand names. what we're left with couldn't amount to much even in the best case scenario.
i enjoy an unlikable character more than a likable most of the time, because i am annoying and my brain is a cesspool, but i can't bear an unsympathetic one. we spend 300 pages in the mind of glue, and what is intended to be an exploration of the millennial experience left me unmoved and unrepresented. and in spite of the synopsis' claim that this book centers around hong kong's protests and "demise," that felt like an afterthought at best.
i liked the author's first book, but this reads a lot like the sophomore novel of someone whose debut was praised for its originality and literary quality when its most interesting portions were its observations of other art.
which is, you know. what happened.
bottom line: it's never a good sign when you're writing a rant on netgalley.com.
toni morrison books are like cookies (i tried and failed to have just one).
this is the second book in the beloved trilogy, and therefore i had to readtoni morrison books are like cookies (i tried and failed to have just one).
this is the second book in the beloved trilogy, and therefore i had to read it after beloved, or at least theoretically did the Right Thing in doing so, but i wish i was weird and random and quirky and read them out of order.
like beloved, this explores the aftermath of a striking act of violence among loved ones, with unique perspective and writing you have to work to earn the reward of understanding. but unlike beloved, its inspiration (the titular jazz) and its characters aren't for me, and i loved its predecessor so much that this was always going to be a tough sell.
i will read any book about women with a pretty cover. that's all it takesi will read any book about women with a pretty cover. that's all it takes...more
this is in many ways the ideal book: perfect title, feminist, slightly creepy, slighow did my journal get published?
get it? because i'm a void?
anyway.
this is in many ways the ideal book: perfect title, feminist, slightly creepy, slightly funny.
it proves its point — that women are seen as worthless unless they're bringing life into the world, and that they're treated in society accordingly — in the most effective and entertaining way possible.
i love ghosts and i love short books and i love literary fiction and i love family dramas and i love this book.
this is endlessly interesting (in its di love ghosts and i love short books and i love literary fiction and i love family dramas and i love this book.
this is endlessly interesting (in its depiction of mourning, of medicine, of food, of family). it's endlessly emotional (i had a lump in my throat for more than half of this book). it's original (that structure!) and readable (that writing!) and i knew i was going to love it and i did.
it's funny to use the word unforgettable moments after finishing something, but i had a feeling.
a month later and i'm still feeling it!
bottom line: picking up random books at the library is the world's greatest hobby.
paul beatty you're too clever. your books hit too hard. your worldview is too fascinatingpaul beatty you're too clever. your books hit too hard. your worldview is too fascinating...more
"a twenty-first century Catcher in the Rye that brilliantly explores toxic fandom"...none of these words are in the bible"a twenty-first century Catcher in the Rye that brilliantly explores toxic fandom"...none of these words are in the bible...more
i'll never be able to see the words milk and honey without thinking of instagram poetry. thanks rupi kaur.
but i liked this about the same as i would ii'll never be able to see the words milk and honey without thinking of instagram poetry. thanks rupi kaur.
but i liked this about the same as i would if it were in that genre, so. fair enough.
this is just not my type of book (no more pandemicish dystopian, please, i'm too fragile) nor of writing style.
more frankly, this is overwritten, with words used for how they sound rather than what they mean. "hulkings," as a synonym for hills. "humping" instead of rising. "eloquent" for an image of a graffitied d*ck. i didn't like it when cormac mccarthy did it, and he did it a lot better.
beyond that, between piles of adjectives, this landed heavily on cliches: "it wasn't until i hung up that i realized he'd never asked my name." no way! really?
add to these its gimmicks: "my employer" unwieldily used as many as four times a paragraph, as what was a fun style choice in early pages loses its sheen by the halfway point. if only there were a short, one or two syllable thing that we could call a specific person in order to reference them.
there are haystacks of em dashes every time another language is used, in an italy surrounded by expats as our monolingual protagonist.
there's italicized dialogue instead of the proletariat quotation mark.
in other words...a lot of unearned style here.
and ultimately my interest in the idea of an illicit, hyper-gifted chef cooking in secret in a dystopian world without food died when met with an untalented line cook. that, and a nonsense plot hinging on the justification-less idea that she'd be portraying a woman of another nationality at least decades her senior.
not to mention that goofy ending.
anyway. this book doesn't know what it wants: for us to condemn its cast of wealthy, even as they do more than the politicians it can't bring itself to frame as the good guys; to extol the virtues of our protagonist, deliberately ignorant to the selfishness and ego and greed that rival anyone's; to approve of fine cuisine or skewer it, same with capitalism and global travel and age- and power-gap relationships and money and philanthropy and and and.
it's mealy mouthed in every way you can imagine, and it leaves a sour taste.
i would follow the lines of a family for 300, 400, 500 pages. i've followed them for 800+! 240 pagei love family dramas.
this one just felt too short.
i would follow the lines of a family for 300, 400, 500 pages. i've followed them for 800+! 240 pages doesn't feel like enough to see the full dimensions of their dynamics, the traces of family they carry, to develop full characters i'll remember forever.
while there are moments of this that struck me, in truth there just weren't enough moments for this to stick with me.
this book is truly nothing more than its title: extremely simple, almost annoying and cloying writing about very preschool-level topics, like imaginarthis book is truly nothing more than its title: extremely simple, almost annoying and cloying writing about very preschool-level topics, like imaginary friends and hitting and stuffed animals.
i read this book because of its title, and its title is the explanation for everything i hated about it.
life is so cruel in its ironies.
bottom line: i can't believe i'm giving this one star, and i can't think of any reason to give it more than that....more
a lolita retelling about a white man who only dates asian women...genius.
i badly wanted to like this book, because that's brilliant and because i bouga lolita retelling about a white man who only dates asian women...genius.
i badly wanted to like this book, because that's brilliant and because i bought it in the world's most beautiful bookstore and because it's a posthumous release edited by the author's daughter, but it fell flat for me.
it starts off kinetically, with three perspectives and a kidnapping and a secret, but this book was unfinished, mid-revision when the author abandoned it, and you can tell. it follows daniel, a violinist and asian fetishist; kyoko, the daughter of the woman he spurned; and alma, the love of his life. its first pages see two characters contemplating suicide and the third taking up a murder plot.
alma and kyoko are at first outrageously interesting, both as characters and for what they represent, but kyoko falls out of the narrative and alma's ending is so unsatisfying. (i'd be remiss not to mention that the way kyoko's boyfriend, kornell, a black man, speaks and is characterized did not sit right with me.)
this has SO MUCH to say about asian fetishization, which as a white woman marrying an asian man i consider often from a different perspective, but it doesn't want to stick to its guns. it lets daniel weasel his way out of any broader understanding of the phenomenon, and redeem himself in a way that feels icky.
i'll definitely be looking into this author's other work, because my real complaint about this book is that it didn't feel cohesive or complete. and it wasn't!
bottom line: this had so much going for it, but not enough....more
i expected to like a book with a 2.88 average rating because i think i'm special.
we can all see how that went.
this is a surreal book that is also poori expected to like a book with a 2.88 average rating because i think i'm special.
we can all see how that went.
this is a surreal book that is also poorly written, which means, in other words, that it was for the most part total nonsense.
someday i hope i love anything as much as this author loves adjectives. we should all hope for a muse that leads us to use over 100 adverbs in less than 35 pages.
oh well.
bottom line: turns out i am like other girls....more
the only thing better than the biography of an eccentric groundbreaking woman artist is one that's made up.
unfortunately that's not what this was abouthe only thing better than the biography of an eccentric groundbreaking woman artist is one that's made up.
unfortunately that's not what this was about.
i love lucy dacus and i hate to disagree with her, especially since we read this book at the same time which is thrilling, but we couldn't have had more disparate experiences.
this book was strange. it had a lot of interesting things to say, and a lot of interesting ways of saying things, but these two didn't always match up. some of its most compelling points are made in throwaway lines connecting middling paragraphs, and some of its strongest structural choices are wasted on the alternative history subplot it insists on destroying itself within.
in other words, this is likely good, but it's far from uniform.
the most bizarre moments of this book are twofold: its attribution of boring faux-biography to some of the 20th century's coolest nonfictional minds (oh hi, renata adler and chris kraus! you again, kurt cobain and david bowie!) and the fact that this is not so much biography of an artist and ex wife as it is relation of a history in which the southern united states seceded from the north in 1945 for the reason of "religion."
never mind that surely we would not be treated to this history if this were actually a biography of a woman. never mind that this makes no sense. never mind that world war ii still happened in this universe and we would thereby have to ignore the sense of american unity and patriotism that pervaded following this victory. never mind that also in the 1940s, the north was so progressive as to approve of socialism and of same-sex marriage and of a variety of other liberal causes, even though it elected a neofascist shortly after (who ran against ronald reagan, the green party candidate?).
i could never lose myself in these characters or in this story, because my suspension of disbelief was constantly being f*cked with by an alternate history so silly it resurrected my fading memories of apush syllabi.
i don't know. this book is so weird.
i badly wanted it to be my problem rather than the book's, but then there's the writing. i can deal with overwrought language if it’s precise. sentences that contain bits like “she glimpsed in my direction” and “dark black” are just too much for me to look past.
bottom line: the definition of an unpleasant surprise....more
at a time when palestinians are being dehumanized by so many, i am grateful for the release of this book, which beautifully shows the opposite to be tat a time when palestinians are being dehumanized by so many, i am grateful for the release of this book, which beautifully shows the opposite to be true.
this is a book about complicated people, neither good nor evil, those who are doing their best and those are not and those who may be beginning to try to. it would be apt at any time, but it is especially timely today.
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