Books I started and didn't finish for various reasons
The Bone People by Keri Hulme: Unlike the other books in this section, I did not give up on this book because it was bad. This book was good and I really enjoyed it, but it is very very dense. It is written in a unique style, the most extreme "stream of consciousness" style I've read, and also includes Maori words on every page without translation. I was just slogging through it - I would like to come back after I get my reading skill up a bit more.
Sedating Elaine by Dawn Winter: I really liked this concept. Basically its about a new lesbian relationship where one needs to leech off the other for money for a bit to pay off owed money to a drug dealer. The rich girl (Elaine) is pretty annoying, so to deal with her while waiting for her money, the main character Frances.. Sedates Elaine. However the execution is Horrible. These characters have no depth to them whatsover. Elaine is a stupid obvlious sex-crazed girl and Frances is a selfish addict. It almost feels like it was trying to be satire bc of how over the top the characters were, but it SUCKED. It was not a thoughtful or interesting take on how money or sex can ruin a relationship, or how someone can be oblivious to their partners true thoughts, it just sucked. The writing was bland and had the quality of a highschooler's. I held out for 100 pages but ultimately decided it sucked too bad to continue. Id like to see a more skilled author try a concept like this.
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca: GOD THIS BOOK WAS ASS! This is about another lesbian couple who meet online and its toxic blah blah blah. The progression of events are not at all how people interact with each other, no one speaks like a HUMAN here. Ive been in weird toxic relationships online as a teenager and this was NOT at all how they went down. Too far-fetched, it was repetitive, and I hated it. Stopped after 30 pages.
Read: August 10-12th
I truthfully did not know how I really felt about this book. I usually don't, which is why I write descriptive reviews for books instead of attempting a rating system, but this one was Extra muddled.. The best part of this book is the absurdism of each scenario presented, not how well it was written, or what the absurd scenario was a metaphor for. I was feeling a bit bored in the middle, which was then promptly thrown out about page 150 when the insane series of events leading to the ending occurs. I did not enjoy the twist ending, it felt cheap and stupid. Tyler Durden is so much more interesting of a character when hes Not just a fragment of the narrator. Its so much more interesting how Tyler is willing to abuse & push the narrator to the limits if he was a real seperate person. I also don't know how I feel about the social commentary aspect. Like yeah, I see it, I know what is trying to be said, but something about its execution is lame to me. I think maybe because I'm not really the target audience of this type of masculinity. The support group method of coping was so much weirder, and sttranger, than the very straight-forward beating up another guy to get my feelings out method. This writing seems pretty negative, but this book did keep me engaged & I really loved all the characters. It was an enjoyable read but nowhere near as deep or well-written as other people act like it is.
Read: April 29th - May 5th
I have teared up and full on cried so much during this already. Its a very accurate in every way portrayal of transness, of being an artist and wanting to make art about your life, and of mourning. It follows a trans woman writing about a friend of her's who died. Just a couple pages in I started crying as one of the side character's had the name of a dead trans woman friend I lost 2 years ago. Some of the things written have the exact vibe of relaying a story about a dear friend, maybe it wasn't actually as funny or witty as you remembered it, but you still gladly share the memory. The format is so unique as well, I wonder what planning it was like. It goes very in depth into the (fictional) show the dead character loved, and also of the personal moments between the author & many other people. Worldbuilding such a personal world with so many realistic memories seems like a unique challenge.
Thoughts after finishing
This did make me cry even more... It just felt so realistic. It felt like a really good representation of how Big life is. The character it centers, Vivian, has a bunch of endeavors (and also a bunch of things she had no interest in), and she felt so real. There was also more than a few lines that made me like, cringe, a bit but its stuff i Know.. like I know this is really how queer people talk to eachother, I've had those types of conversations, it just feels less pleasant reading it on paper LOL. This book also references a lot of real (and fake) media, like songs and stuff, and I find it was done in a good way. Usually mentioning songs in a book is a death sentence to me lol. This was also extremely readable - the sections are so short that you just move onto the next one and have new thoughts, and if you're a bit bored of one part, theres the next.
Read: March 24th - March 27th
Well this is the fastest I've read anything in a while! I had some criticisms initially, but when I thought about them more, they seemed more purposeful for the story. Like, the core of the story is contrasting wealth & poverty, but it felt like the poverty part was portrated very positively. But this whole book is very idealist due to that being the nature of wealth, and so maybe that's on purpose. Secondly I thought the books pacing was interesting.. There's a whole 100 pages of backstory before we even touch the main conflict. I enjoyed this leisurely style for like 70 pages, but by 100, I was Itching for something to actually happen. This felt necessary for the parts of the book I loved, though.
Spoilers in this parapgraph
There was a lot I loved about this book. The many different perspectives lets you explore the relationships between all these characters very thoroughly. As a result, even in the ending when Izzy framed her whole family as horrible and living lives she could never agree with, I still sympathized with all her siblings. I also love seeing this dynamic of a rich and a poor household being explored.. A lot of this was very relatable as a poor person when I started dating & befriending much wealthier people than me. All of the commentary about motherhood made me cry as well.. Whenever it was relevant. The pain of characters like Mrs. McCullough and Bebe Chow is so real, and I've seen it in women in my life (altho I would've given the baby back to Ms. Chow. Any day). The miscommunication between the families was realistic and had me on the edge of my seat going, oh my god I hope someone realizes theres more to this story!!!
Read: February 13th - March 20th
I've been interested in East Africa because I'm travelling to Tanzania later this year. While having fun doing research online, I also ended up invested in Namibia, Angola and Uganda, so I seeked out a book. This is a very general book, but a good starting off point if you want to start learning about Africa. And whew this is a hefty book! I had to read it in one chapter increments because the writing was so dense it was hard for me to process multiple chapters in a row. There's a lot of really good information in this, but the author writes things in a very biased way sometimes which offput me at times. There are a lot of sources referenced, I've been reading some of 'em to learn more. I wish my library had a better selection of Africa books that were more specific..
Read: February 13th - March 3rd
I recently had a trip through Native land in Nevada and so when I saw this book at the library I instantly wanted to read it. The first interview had me reading through tears the entire time. I cried a lot throughout the whole thing. The amount of pain detailed in all of these interviews, even the less extreme ones, hurts me so much. The harm of colonialism and the US's & Canada's governments is not talked about nearly enough. There is also a lot of joy in these statements. Reading about the connection to their communities & the earth that is felt during rituals, events, and spiritual practices was really compelling to me. I'm white and I've always felt very disconnected from even my extended family, and to know that there are people who have become so connected to the area around them makes me hopeful. There is a very wide amount of accounts in here - people on reservations, with no connection to their culture, who grew up on the land, who switched between these places, - and it was interesting to the see the similar threads throughout all these locations. Lots of homelessness, sexual abuse, and alcoholism no matter where you look.
Read: January 2nd-12th
One of my highschool teachers gave me this as a graduation gift. It contains several surreal stories that are told as if its completely normal. I really enjoyed these stories, except for one in the middle (Light And The Sufferer) that I found way too long and disrupted my interest in these short stories.. I enjoyed the more surreal and hard to understand stories a lot more than the ones written in clear, matter of fact fashions.
My favourite story was the very first story, Al by Carol Emshwiller. I enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness writing style and the weird facts of the world they live in. They talk about enjoying music & art as if its a feature only of their particular culture (they live in an isolated town) and I liked that a lot for some reason. The narrator also yearns a lot, and plans/thinks about her life with the mysterious Al figure, which reminded me of myself a lot. I like to plan my life with any stranger I think looks interesting LOL.