I’ve already read seven books, and although I don’t anticipate I’ll read
seven more I thought I’d do a halfway rewind. Just to make sure there isn’t one
massive never-ending post at the end of August.
I started this in July and finished it in August. It was given to me for
free by a young lady I went to high school with. Her boyfriend wrote it and
published it himself. And she asked if I would read and review it. And I got a
free book in the bargain, so I said yes. I’m very easy. I really liked it. It’s
sort of a detective story set in a fantasy/sci-fi world. The alchemists helped
build the city, which has now stretched outside its limits and there are three
levels. The alchemists are hated now, but they have one champion; Ian Allant.
He’s a political activist and has fought for them. Then he’s murdered. I really
liked the book. It’s well written, and well developed. The characters and the
world are good and well developed. I also really liked how the mystery was
resolved. I don’t think I mentioned that in my review. Yeah, it was good.
I read this because of Conrad from Just a Dust Jacket. It’s not really
got a plot. It’s just a woman, named Elizabeth, looking back on her life and
the nights she lived and the things she did. It was really beautiful and I
really loved it. It goes from event to event and it is seamless and beautiful.
It’s lyrical and it’s this weird combination of fact and fiction. It features
references to pop culture and people sort of belonging to the places Hardwick
describes. I can’t really pin down exactly what it is that made me love it so
much, it’s so… strange. It helps that I really like books where nothing
happens. That’s not accurate. I like books where there isn’t really any plot. I
like this episodic story of this woman going through things that happened in
her life. It was amazing.
I read this in a day, because it’s a really fast read. It was absolutely
beautiful. Brown Girl Dreaming is a memoir about Woodson’s childhood. She grew
up in the sixties and early seventies, in both New York and South Carolina. Her
mother lives in New York and her grandparents live in South Carolina, and Woodson
spends a lot of her summers there. She is African American and obviously grows
up around the time of Jim Crow and the end of segregation. It was interesting
how the end of segregation was different in the North and South. It was
fascinating and an interesting look at a woman raising her kids alone in the sixties.
It’s also written in verse, and it was beautiful. It didn’t get in the way of
the story, which is good. It’s important that style doesn’t get in the way of
the story, so I loved that. It was so gorgeous. So, review.
This I listened to on audiobook, and it was read by Kate Bolick, very
well I thought. It is her look on gender roles, and how we see women who don’t
conform to the idea that women are born, grow up, get married, have babies,
die. It’s also a sort of study in women who wouldn’t conform. It’s a historical
look at singledom and what it means to be single, and what kind of expectations
you sort of break when you don’t get married and you don’t get kids, and when
you don’t want to do that. It was really fascinating, and I loved reading about
all these badass ladies who Kate Bolick used as her sort of guides in life. I
really want to buy the book in paper and read it again and so I can read the
index, this is the kind of person I am. I really liked it.
Urban fantasy, sassy, snarky mechanic, sexy werewolves and creepy
fairies, what else do you need? It’s so good. It’s the third book in the Mercy
Thompson series about Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson, a shapeshifting mechanic. She
lives next to the local werewolf pack and she took over the garage of her boss
Zee, a part of the fae. Zee is accused of murder and Mercy, ignoring all advice
and sense, tries to figure out who killed the victim, and set up Zee. It’s fun,
and spunky, and Mercy is cool, and very true to herself, and Patricia Briggs is
good. She’s very comfortable in her world, she knows her characters, she knows
her world, and she is good at this. Also review.
This is my first Virginia Woolf, and I definitely want to read more of
hers. Like with Sleepless Nights this doesn’t really have a plot. It’s just
about a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway who is throwing a party. It’s a
sort of stream of consciousness thing. It goes from the mind of Mrs. Dalloway
and then jumps into the thoughts of just this random person she walks past, and
then from that person to someone else. And I thought that was interesting,
suddenly you’re in someone else’s head. Clarissa fell in love with a young
woman, when she was like 18, and she thinks about this a lot, because obviously
they couldn’t act on this in the 20s, and the woman is going to be at the
party. And there’s this side story of a young soldier who has shell shock and
is struggling with readjusting. And it was really interesting. I really liked
it. It was fascinating to see how the different people see each other, and how
they think about each other.
This is YouTube’s Mamrie Hart’s memoir. Basically what it says on the
tin. It’s her childhood, college years and making it as a YouTuber. She moved
from college to New York to sort of make it as an actress, and eventually got
into UCB and then she made YDAD. It’s funny, and I feel like Mamrie’s humor
works on both YouTube and in a book, which is really good. I liked her stories
and hearing more about her life, and she seems like she’d be an amazing person
to hang out with. It was fine. It was fun, and fine. I enjoyed it.
This was all over booktube, and it sounded really interesting, and it
was cheap, so I thought, hey, why not. It’s a dystopian novel where women are
no longer born, but made in like… pods, I guess. The girls are then raised in a
school where they focus mainly on how to look the absolute best, be the ideal
weight, the ideal person to attract a husband. Men are born, and raised, and
every year ten men who are I guess 17-18, come to the school and pick a mate,
or companion, and those girls get to be these boys’ wives. The other 20 girls
are either concubines (whores) or chastities (practically nuns), who raise the
next batches of girls. The main characters is freida. She used to be best
friends with isabel, who was the highest ranked girl in school. Now isabel has
done the unthinkable, she’s getting fat. I thought it was interesting, and
good. There were parts that dragged a bit for me, the life at school is very
limited, they have very little to do, so that got a bit repetitive at times. I
liked that the main romantic interest, Darwin, while being sort of kind and
sweet, is still a product of the world he’s grown up in, and he still thinks of
women in the terms everyone else does. It would have been easy to make him this
kind hero, but he is still a complete piece of shit, even though he’d probably
be a kinder husband than many of the other boys. I really liked it, and while I
thought I’d decided my rating the end was so emotional I bumped it up a star.
So that’s what I’ve read so far in August. Onto the last half. Also, just noticed. I've so far read mostly women. So that's... something. It's kind of cool.
In the Seraphim City by Eirik Moe Dahll-Larssøn
I read this because of Conrad from Just a Dust Jacket. It’s not really
got a plot. It’s just a woman, named Elizabeth, looking back on her life and
the nights she lived and the things she did. It was really beautiful and I
really loved it. It goes from event to event and it is seamless and beautiful.
It’s lyrical and it’s this weird combination of fact and fiction. It features
references to pop culture and people sort of belonging to the places Hardwick
describes. I can’t really pin down exactly what it is that made me love it so
much, it’s so… strange. It helps that I really like books where nothing
happens. That’s not accurate. I like books where there isn’t really any plot. I
like this episodic story of this woman going through things that happened in
her life. It was amazing.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
This I listened to on audiobook, and it was read by Kate Bolick, very
well I thought. It is her look on gender roles, and how we see women who don’t
conform to the idea that women are born, grow up, get married, have babies,
die. It’s also a sort of study in women who wouldn’t conform. It’s a historical
look at singledom and what it means to be single, and what kind of expectations
you sort of break when you don’t get married and you don’t get kids, and when
you don’t want to do that. It was really fascinating, and I loved reading about
all these badass ladies who Kate Bolick used as her sort of guides in life. I
really want to buy the book in paper and read it again and so I can read the
index, this is the kind of person I am. I really liked it.
Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
This was all over booktube, and it sounded really interesting, and it
was cheap, so I thought, hey, why not. It’s a dystopian novel where women are
no longer born, but made in like… pods, I guess. The girls are then raised in a
school where they focus mainly on how to look the absolute best, be the ideal
weight, the ideal person to attract a husband. Men are born, and raised, and
every year ten men who are I guess 17-18, come to the school and pick a mate,
or companion, and those girls get to be these boys’ wives. The other 20 girls
are either concubines (whores) or chastities (practically nuns), who raise the
next batches of girls. The main characters is freida. She used to be best
friends with isabel, who was the highest ranked girl in school. Now isabel has
done the unthinkable, she’s getting fat. I thought it was interesting, and
good. There were parts that dragged a bit for me, the life at school is very
limited, they have very little to do, so that got a bit repetitive at times. I
liked that the main romantic interest, Darwin, while being sort of kind and
sweet, is still a product of the world he’s grown up in, and he still thinks of
women in the terms everyone else does. It would have been easy to make him this
kind hero, but he is still a complete piece of shit, even though he’d probably
be a kinder husband than many of the other boys. I really liked it, and while I
thought I’d decided my rating the end was so emotional I bumped it up a star. 