alexture's reviews
935 reviews

The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization by Eviane Leidig
Did not finish book. Stopped at 4%.

I feel like I've exhausted my patience for alt-right related stuff 

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Big Swiss is the unlikeable story of an unlikeable woman who commits identity fraud to sleep with another unlikeable woman, and then other bad things happen.

It's good, but in a repulsive way. I found myself muttering "urgh" to myself every few pages, and yet going to the next page to know what was going on.

Disgusting and fascinating, this book had the effect of a zit popping video.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

4.75

I could not put this book down. If you asked me what made it so great, the only answer I could give you would be a confused shrug - I have no idea.

Choral cast novels have always been a soft spot of mine, so maybe it's that. Maybe it's how incredibly well-defined each of the four points of view is, with extremely different writing styles (Imelda's section is 100 pages without punctuation, which is about as enjoyable as talking with her must be). Maybe it's how everything converges and how you want to mutter "oh no please don't do that" every three pages for six hundred pages.

Maybe it's the Big Gay, maybe it's the Irish village, maybe it's the broken college student or the child who thinks he'll get sent to boarding school if he tries to get his needs met.

Maybe it's the ending.

Maybe it's all of this and more, mixed into one big block of "oh no god no".

 

Bellies by Nicola Dinan

sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This novel is told in two points of views, Tom and Ming's. The narrator isn't always clearly identified from the start, so it sometimes took me a paragraph or two to realize that a new person was talking.

I liked the way that the same thing was shown from two very, very different points of view. And I can relate with both characters: Ming, terrified that she's giving up on being lovable and desirable by transitioning, Tom, a gay man who loves his girlfriend but just cannot love women.

It's a very slow trainwreck, with some hope still, in some ways. It's horrible and painful, and really good (and realistic).

Special shoutouts to Cass who deserved better than whatever all this was.

If Found, Return to Hell by Em X. Liu
Did not finish book.

Read a couple of pages and there was just too much cursing, which took me out of the novel. Unfortunate because everything else was enticing.

The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
Did not finish book. Stopped at 8%.

did not vibe with the writing style or the fact that dialogue isn't marked (I really hate that!!!)

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

2.5

La maison hantée by Shirley Jackson

2.75

All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky

3.5

Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn

3.75

I find too many dystopias boring because of their focus on very normal people.

This one doesn't really fit the general model, if only because everyone's extremely queer. Even though the premise is extremely basic, and the plot twists are overdone, there are a couple of very interesting characters who breathe just enough life into this novel to make it worth reading, in my opinion.

What I liked:

• Unlikeable characters, but also, I wouldn't do any better than them.
• The setting: as I said, it's basic, but there's a reason why it's been done so much. It just works.
• Lesbians.

What I liked less:

• Sometimes the novel felt like a pamphlet when it came to the not all men are bad, not all women can have babies, trans women are women, etc. I think the story was enough on its own for all these themes and it didn't need the monologues to drive the point home.
• It was a smooth read but also maybe a bit too smooth - what happened?
• Uninteresting characters, and yet I wanted to know what would happen to them.

It's hard to know if it was a good book. I'm going to say it was nice to have something so conventional and yet so queer, because that's still rare, but that's about it.