Ghost

I need to stop reading this author over my lunch, his stuff is not particularly graphic or gross (compared to other stuff I read at least) and yet the moment I sit down with food, I'll read something foul.

I really enjoyed The Vegetarians (that progression, that ending, chef's kiss) and Physical Media (horror comedy about a smart TV). The imagery was generally pretty solid. The first 5 stories in the collection were all really strong and would recommend this collection even if it was just for these.

There's also a couple of stories I didn't particularly like such as the one where the child main character read more like a teenager than like the 6 year old he was supposed to be (which was too bad because the idea behind the story was really cool) and the 2 stories that were more on the bizzarro side (though for these 2 I think it was more because I wasn't in the right headspace to enjoy them).

While this book was intended for people who are new to being activists or looking to move from mere activism to organizing I think it's a must read for people who joined movements at times of high intensity who feel kind of lost about the where to next when the protests die down or who have felt burnt out by social movements. Its bracing and cleareyed approach is also useful in embracing the space you want/can occupy as an activist/organizer.

What if a job in sales entailed selling yourself short, literally? That's the question Keisling invites you to contemplate here.

The world building was pretty frigging fantastic and I'm an absolute sucker for stories featuring the whole supernatural underworld somehow connected to our own where a character is somehow granted access to more or less against their own will. Don was a generally pretty likeable character so it was easy to stay invested in what happened to him and to feel for him.

That being said, I wasn't really impressed with what made people “saturated with mediocrity” though, but I'm the type to think that finding comfort and joy in the mundane is great so maybe I felt just a smidge called out. Also, what happened to Mr. Precious Paws? Unforgivable!

Well, I shouldn't have finished reading this while eating lunch, it very damn near ruined my appetite. I'm not sure if that constitutes a 1 star or a 5 star endorsement of this story given the genre? Seriously though, it's not just a gross out fest, there's only one super gross scene.
I liked the main character and his discomfort with being perceived, that was very relatable to me personally.

I initially picked this one up because I read a lot about the American justice and carceral systems but not so much about the Canadian ones, I'm a Canadian living in Canada, I'm sure you can see the problem too, and this book came up when I searched for “books about the Canadian prison system” and it was available at my library.

I got about 25% through and there were quite a few parts that sounded like they were in really bad faith and laced with uncalled for cruelty, even when I did agree with at least part of the author's takeaway (basically that justices need to be held accountable more) so I went looking into what that author was all about and I realized that bad faith arguments and hate fueled rhetoric were really her thing. I'm not in the mood to hate read something so I'm yeeting this one into the nope pile and calling it a day.

No rating.

That was something else. Goodreads has La Liste under Theatre/Plays (it is a monologue), and Poetry but I suspect it would be rather at home under psychological/quiet horror too. The style is very effective at dragging you in the character's state of mind, into her exhaustion and distraction and into the guilt that laces everything she has to say.

The Québécois film culture has something of a unique tendency towards the documentary tone (perhaps less in the last decade or so) which gives it a unique hyperrealist feel, this play has that same vibe going which I found most delightful.

That was a fun and quick read. It's told in transcript of a podcast/YouTube show format which was an interesting choice, but I thought it was done quite well.

This particular author seems to reinvent his writing style for every book and that's one of the biggest draw of his work, I never know what I'm going to get but I know it will not be lazily or poorly done.

Ben oui, je suis encore dans mon kick de lire en français et en voilà un autre qui ne semble pas être dispo en anglais (Well, I'm still on my reading in French kick and here's another one that doesn't seem to be available in English).

It was a quick little collection of essays that were previously published in magazines in which the author talks about various feminist topics such the importance of taking it personal and of fully embracing it, malaise as an appropriate reaction to the current state of things, the notion of exceptional but not revolutionary, and even cyclo-feminism. It covers a lot of ground in not very many pages and in a way that's mostly pretty accessible (at least if you're fluent in French).

In the intro to the book the author talked about how having deadlines forced her to deal with sharing ideas that were not final and about which she was still actively thinking and that was a little too relatable for my liking.

I think I'm about to just read everything this author has ever written it was my second time reading her work (in less than a week) and once again I was very impressed by just how bleak and tense she managed to make this story while also including an overwhelming amount of repulsive stuff.

The characters were great (although the main cop one was as cliche as it gets). I was particularly fond of Luc a very fat man recently abandoned by a girlfriend he's not sure he ever truly loved and afflicted with a questionable will to live but also somehow a quite decent guy which made him super easy to root for.

I'm almost sad that there isn't an English version of this book because there's quite a few people I would recommend it to if there was one.

I read the author's first collection shortly after it came out and I've been a fan ever since, even though he is objectively the WORST, I keep coming back because his stories are just so good (since this is Goodreads I have to disclose that saying that Rob is the worst is a JOKE between me and the author not me posting a review “primarily about the author's behavior”). Long story short I've never been disappointed by any of this guy's stories and this little mix media/found footage horror story/cautionary tale was no exception, I loved it. It was short but effective and tremendously enjoyable to read.

I don't remember who told me that I wasn't going to like this book but I started it with low expectations on account of it and ended up really liking it, found it quite delightful actually.

It has a touch of the weird, a touch of the dark (if you enjoyed the blend of weird and dark in the Never Whistle at Night collection you will probably like this one) and it centers women characters, if you're familiar with my reviews you probably know that I'm absolutely here for the weird, unhinged and/or angry girlies. Also, there's an Elvis impersonator infestation in one of the stories so you know, that kind of weird that's not afraid to be a tad ridiculous or over the top.

The imagery was great and the stories were smart without pretention and nothing came across as trying too hard.

4.5 rounded up.

I enjoyed this book well enough until the reveal the 9 years old child with ADHD and impulse control problems was also somehow a psychopathic mastermind with incredible acting skills and she acted in concert with an evil nurse desperate for her dad's attention, I find that kind of trope super tedious and I would have probably liked it better if more of it had been left implied rather than outright told.

I really enjoyed Lily and Nick's POVs but Mei's was a little harder to follow for me. On the one hand I wasn't a fan of Mei's parts but on the other hand it also went to show that Khong can give different characters their unique voices and flairs which is always impressive.

Sprawling family sagas aren't my thing but it was done exceptionally well here and with such a reasonable number of pages I'm really impressed with how organic and unrushed the storytelling came across as. Seriously, with the topics this book approaches I expected it to be on the ponderous and slightly pretentious side but it was neither, I found it almost charming (oddly enough) and entirely unpretentious. On a technical aspect I would absolutely give this one a 5/5.

It was my first time reading this author and it will certainly not be the last.

About half of the collection was pretty good, the other half just didn't really come across as memorable or impactful to me, that being said I'm not in the age range to be the target audience for this collection.

My favorite stories were:
Welcome back to the cosmos – Space horror will always hold a special place in my heart.
The brides of devils bayou – The one with the strongest characterization in my opinion.
TMI – The most interesting/unusual premise.
Black pride – Charming but I would have liked more horror.
Queeniums for Greenium – Fat girl resisting a “wellness” cult, you know I was going to be down with that one!
The skittering thing – Interesting imagery, would have liked a little more character building.

3.5 rounded up.

I've been sitting with this book for a couple of days now because quite frankly I'm not sure I get it. I liked the main character well enough and her general sense of unease as well as the way Levy captured the Covid/”post-Covid” weirdness so but I can't help but feel like I missed something.

The writing style was pleasant and there's probably a lot about the imagery that I could sit with and pick apart so points for that (in other words, if you were the kid who enjoyed thinking about why the curtains were blue, you'll like this one).

On the whole I did enjoy this book, it was engaging and heartbreakingly beautiful at times but there seemed to be a lot of plot holes and strange leaps in logic. I think the plot holes and leaps were an intentional aspect of the narrator, to establish the blend of naivety and arrogance that make up her character, but it sometimes clashed with the general tone of the book (which might have been a translation issue, I assume).

This one was both charming and melancholy. The style is really agreeable and if you're the kind of person who enjoys thinking about small things and points of detail you might just fall in love with it.

There's part of the book where the author talks about her final walk with her dog, Charlotte (why is Charlie the perfect name for a good boy or girl?), and at the time of my reading the book (mid-June 2024) my cat, Ali, is home on palliative care and I know that soon I will have to schedule that final appointment with the vet, reading that part of the book made me feel seen and it was oddly comforting so I suspect that this book will hold a special place in my heart on account of it.

After talking about the book with a couple of people I concluded that it is just enough about the author's thinking to not be quite a memoir and that therefore it is okay for me to rate it.

I wanted to love this one but really it was too long and one note for me.

It was very long, and the situation was pretty much the same for like 75% of the book and the character alternated between the same 3 states of mind over and over and over again. Now, I can imagine there are people for whom that kind of horror is particularly effective, but I am not one of them so for me it was just progressively getting more and more tedious. It didn't particularly help that I never really grew particularly invested in Gyre since she never felt like a fully formed character to me.

Neutral 2.5 rounded up.

Review in English because that's the language most of my Goodreads friends speak but I read the French edition, if a translated edition exists, I cannot speak of its quality.

In my early 20s I really loved that author's stuff, Aliss and Oniria being some of my favorite reads at the time so when I felt in the mood to read in French one of his titles seemed like the safest bet.

The main POV character, Michaël aka Mike is a semi-decent dude slowly digging his way to utter mediocrity, his only redeeming quality seems to be his love for his son but even in that he isn't that great (that relationship isn't really built on in the book and all of Mike's relationships come across as kind of shallow).

The secondary POV is Wanda, a serial killer whose crimes Mike used in his most successful book (insert “f*cking MIKE” sound here for my fellow brain rot speakers). Wanda's dialogues were so stilted and unnatural that I almost wonder if the intent was for it to be unsettling or something. A lot of her POV is told in the form of journal entries and while they did a great job of showing the character's immaturity, they also made her sound quite insignificant which in turn made her control of the situation seem quite farfetched.

The premise that particularly visceral kill scenes would make or break a polar/noir book came across as kind of flimsy to me but then again, I read a fair amount of murdery stuff and I know that visceral kill scenes sell but not necessarily to a mainstream audience otherwise extreme horror would be having a field day.

Ultimately, I found this book to be rather weak, interesting enough to finish but nothing too memorable.