I am only just barely beginning to gauge how I feel about this as a piece of writing at 25%. The subject matter is so dark and so heavy that it's been hard to concentrate on anything else.
I would say that I think both the writing and the narration are a little clunky, but it carries you along and doesn't give you that dry history book feeling.
pickKind of between a pick and a so-so. I'm not gonna lie, the writing was clunky and the purple similes came at a mile a minute, and when each description is structured exactly the same...it grates.
But somehow I enjoyed it anyway. Camille was likeable, flawed, irritating, sweet...she felt very well rounded.
The book had a lot to say about beauty, gender, society, objectification, etc, and managed to say it without being didactic.
Bree is a sweet baby angel. This book has technically returned to the library, but my tablet hasn't refreshed yet so I'm being sneaky.
I don't love how heavily a caricature of a person with bipolar and/or borderline Sophia seems to be. Can we not have someone be nasty and cruel and unfit for rule without also making them ~crazy~?
Camille narrates like a five year old with a florid sense of metaphor and I can't tell if it's intentional to show her immaturity or if the author is just kind of...not great...at this.
Edelweiss is so punk rock, I'm love her
using the word "blimp" instead of "airship" feels like a true power move
pickThis was solid, with a few weaknesses: it was a little preachy, and the underlying plot was a little simplistic. Some of the threads that came together at the end didn't feel meaningful or significant.
The end almost really pissed me off but came back around to solid. Moore left a couple small gems unexplained for the reader to pick up, without holding their hand and explaining it (something I've noticed lately--trust the reader!!)
What, no acknowledgment for his obviously close relationship with his partner Jenner?? Also boy is this shedding subtlety fast. Bit preachy there, Jon.
It's true that society is sick and consumerism is a blight on humanity but this book also brings a bit of that Old Man Yells At Cloud "smartphones will bring the apocalypse" hysteria that I don't love.
This one finally came back in! I'm determined to finish. I really like the prose, it manages to clearly evoke the hard-boiled style without reading like a one-to-one pastiche of Hammett or Chandler.
bailedThe plot got very meandering, and I found myself struggling to follow and maintain interest. I bailed when I realized I was actively avoiding reading it.
First impressions: reading about an autistic person going through anxiety and feeling it in very similar ways to how I feel anxiety is...refreshing, but also stressful.
The writing is giving me a bit of an ESL vibe, and given it's set in the Netherlands, that may be the case.
This is an #ownvoices teen sci-fi with an autistic protagonist.
pickThis was intense! Pretty bleak. An exercise in making you empathize with horrible people.
I loved Melanie, even as she was making her final, terrifying decision. I found Parks really compelling--he never apologized for all the child abuse, and I couldn't forgive him for it, but he achieved maybe a scrap of redemption.
I tried to check out the Boy on the Bridge immediately, which should tell you how I liked this one.
I would give anything to be a horror author in a time before everyone in the whole world knew about cordyceps fungus
UUUGHHH Unbury Carol is written by the same author as Bird Box. Gag! 🤢
I poked around--by which I mean went to the author's Twitter--and discovered that Three Dead Astronauts is still being written and as such isn't even out in arc form, hence the lack of reviews. The notif I got was an error.
Amazon has scrambled the Three Dead Astronauts reviews with the Three Body Problem reviews so all it talks about is whether or not it's a good translation from Chinese. Please, I need to know things!!
Hi Littens! I moved, so I haven't had the mental bandwidth for reading in several weeks--please forgive me! I'm going to try to be active again.
when u forget to take care of your libby app and instead of tamagotchi poop it leaves book obligations on your loan shelf
Littens, is there any way to upload your own stickers? I suspect not, so instead--what apps do you use to make your pics fun and interesting? I kinda feel like I use the same 5 stickers again and again...
Almost 75% done with this one--maybe I'll make it through before my loan expires!
A giveaway I can enter! Thank you @cobwebmoth !
I would choose the gift card--bc I want books but I am exclusively a digital reader!
WHAT'S UP
pickA lovely, heart-wrenching book with a couple of bumpy spots. Repetition was clearly intentional but not always fun to read. Creeping pace. Her father's grudge against her art felt like a manufactured conflict, especially when he became completely supportive with no explanation by the end.
Loved how much of the story was shaped by Chinese beliefs and traditions around death, and how they run up against the modern world while still being very real.
I don't think the Paul Holes Twitter is real. THERE I SAID IT.
Starting this one with a little anxiety--it seems like it's going to be a pretty heavy read, which in combo with I'll Be Gone in the Dark and the Astonishing Color of After is...well, let's say I haven't set myself up for success, emotionally.
The pacing is really slow but I never find it unpleasant to read. Somehow I'm still only at like 60%.
This is just steadily plunking along. A little bit slow, a little bit repetitive, but the writing is fluid enough to carry me with it.
Here's something colorful I saw today.
It really is tough to stop reading at bedtime, isn't it?
(This book is much better than the other)
I did not know that people from Sacramento were called Sacramentans.
--Weldon Kees, "Crime Club"
These 2 lines really struck me
While I'm being inspired by people, I quite like @Purrsistently 's habit of lettering/handwriting quotes!
pickInspired by a post I saw earlier -- if you find yourself reading books about autistic people from allistic (non-autistic) authors, let me recommend this beautiful little book of poetry and essays written in our own voices.
You'll be surprised by how different the inside perspective is, and in a culture hugely dominated by misinformation and stigma, that is more valuable than I can begin to say.
Park day! I made a really terrible error about how much walking I had in me and now I am completely dead and can't do housework BUT it was a nice day and I got to read outside in the breeze.
So far, the color thing feels kind of...gimmicky more than profound.
pickTightly and exactingly plotted, dark and tense. Subtle slow-burn building of dread and the ultimate unreliable narrator--who manages somehow to be likeable even as you're realizing how terrifying she really is.
I think because it's first-person from a character voice, the use of language itself didn't grip me like it did in Hill House.
I feel like this book was too smart for me. I left it feeling like there was something I didn't "get." Thoughts?
The wildfire angle was played up to such an extent and then ended up being so minor that it wasn't Chekov's Gun so much as it was Chekov's Water Pistol.
so-soCall #1 was a red herring (although I did guess it long before it was set up as such). Call #2 at 63% was correct.
Readable. Had its moments of scorching prose, but not enough of them. The resolution of the past mystery was tied up as a dangling afterthought to the present one.
I like a bit of environmental storytelling, but a tale can't live on variations of "it was hot" alone.
This tasty little nugget didn't appear until 5% AFTER my usual bail point. You got lucky this time, boyo!
