Kalliope

DNF'd at 56%. This book isn't long but I simply couldn't take it anymore. This was a miserable sit. There is no joy or hope or spirit in this book. I think it wanted to be sort of like the film “It's a Wonderful Life,” centering on one community and its varied interesting characters. Imagine “It's a Wonderful Life” if every character was either Potter (mean and cruel) or Uncle Billy (miserable and pathetic). Story after story about miserable adults cheating on their miserable spouses, miserable adults who die from eating disorders, miserable adults miserable adults coping with the health decline of their miserable spouses, miserable pointless story after miserable pointless story. Olive herself being the most miserable of them all. Somebody really needed to smack the shit out of her. Am I supposed to feel bad for her, when she overhears her daughter-in-law saying how much she doesn't like Olive? And am I supposed to have a “you go, girl!” moment when Olive rifles through this woman's closet and vandalizes her things? I can't tell how the author wants me to feel about her, or any of them. Everything that each of them say and do leads me to scratching my head or outright hating them. I'm also scratching my head at the constant and distracting use of adjectives to describe how fat people are. I hated this book. I'm baffled that this won any award, let alone the Pulitzer. Do not recommend.

This was fun! I love the idea of devotionals, but had never found one that suited my taste. The authors divide up the week by subject: Monday is history, Tuesday is literature, Wednesday is visual arts, and so on. The book also shows you what week of the year you are on, which is great to help you track your progress. I enjoyed certain subjects (history, philosophy, and religion) more than others (visual arts), but that is to be expected. I love learning, and this little book filled that sweet spot for me. Would definitely recommend!

This was great! I read Eleanor and Park a few years ago, and I liked it quite a bit as well. Fangirl is very much in the same vein: the writing is quirky, emotional, and fun, and so are the characters. I loved the modernized yet classic coming-of-age elements in this story. Fanfiction is uncharted territory in literature, yet it's such a thriving commodity online for young people and adults. As someone who has read and written fanfiction, it was great to see the concept handled so well here. The romance was so sweet. Levi is one of the best male love interests in my recent memory. Burgeoning sexuality in the main character, Cather, is handled excellently. Though infuriatingly self-sabotaging and pessimistic at times, Cather is a great character to follow around in her world. She has a good heart, she is inquisitive and interested in things outside herself, and there. Is. No. Insta-love. THANK YOU!
I didn't give this one a 5-star rating mostly because 1) I didn't feel like the mom plot was wrapped up sufficiently. She wasn't there, then she was, then she wasn't again. I'd have loved to see more of this plot in the story since it was such a problem area for Cather. 2) The Simon Snow bits in between the chapters didn't always make sense in relation to the story itself. I think it would have been more cohesive if it had been strictly Cather's fanfic instead of random portions of her fanfic and the Simon Snow books. These are really small faults I found in the book, but they don't make it unreadable in the slightest. I really enjoyed Fangirl and would recommend it to anyone who loves YA.

(Reread, obviously)
This was always my least favorite of the series, not to say it is a bad book by ANY means. It's just the one that gets forgotten about. As a child, if I was going to rank the book series in terms of favorites, this one would have been at the bottom. Now, as an adult revisiting it for the first time in years, I was loving it. There is so much richness of character and story here. My favorite scenes include, of course, the flying car, every scene with Lockhart bungling his way through teaching, and the exchange between Tom Riddle and Harry. I was laughing hysterically during the Valentine's Day scene. This book gets forgotten a lot, but it is absolutely the funniest in the series and rightfully earns its place among the other installments.

Yes. This is great writing. This is how I want to write. I related very much to Ifemelu, since we are both writers and we are sometimes insecure about writing and what others will think of it. I could not point to enough passages in this that resonated with me and feelings/thoughts I've had, but here's an example of one:

...a part of her always stiffened with apprenhension, expecting the person on the other end to realize that she was play-acting this professional, this negotiator of terms, to see that she was, in fact, an unemployed person who wore a rumpled nightshirt all day, to call her “Fraud!” and hang up.

I admit I did not read the book in its entirety, but I read enough to form an opinion. Honestly, the story dragged, big time. Learning about Karen's personalities was interesting, but it seems to me that the lengthy conversations Dr. Baer had with each of them slowed the plot down a great deal. Also, I felt that the magnitude of Karen's trauma was so great that it felt unbelievable. In a bad way. I found myself shaking my head as each piece of her past was revealed, not in sadness but in skepticism. That's not to say the things that happened to Karen couldn't happen in real life. I simply mean that the author seemed to be needlessly piling bad things onto a character, and it didn't help me connect with her at all. If anything, it distanced me from her. The book is very graphic in nature, which I didn't really mind. However, I couldn't finish it due to its slow plot and questionable characterization. Perhaps I wasn't aware of what exactly I was getting into when I started this book, but I am not at all interested in picking it up again.

The reason why I'm reviewing this is not because I finished the book. The reason is, I accidentally misplaced my copy somewhere (trust me, I've looked for it), and none of the libraries around me carry it. I got sick of seeing this book on my Goodreads homepage and not being able to finish it, so I'm rating it based on my impression of the book so far. I'll probably find my copy right after I write this, because that's how the world works.
I picked this up because I really love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a book I have read many, many times since first reading it in high school. I'm pleased to say that the two are similar, but I feel that Joy in the Morning is not nearly as charming nor environmentally encompassing. It relies quite a bit on dialogue, which I'm normally fine with, but I think in this case it's to the detriment of the story because so much of the setting is lost to the reader through dialogue. The characters are enjoyable, but I didn't grow to love them the way I did with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. However, that's probably due to the fact that I lost my book before finishing it.
It's worth checking out for the writing style, but it isn't Betty Smith's best work by any means. I initially picked it up from a used bookstore so I could have something to read on a car trip, and I think that's a great setting for a book like this.

Did you know Julie Powell has had sex? She has!Have you ever heard of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Julie Powell has!

This book has been on my TBR for five years, and a weeklong vacation was its ticket onto my currently-reading pile. I've seen the movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams multiple times and love it–easily in my top list of movies which could be considered “chick flicks.” After considering it, I think there are two reasons it worked so well for me. The first is that the scenes of Julie Powell are paired with equal-length scenes of Julia Child, so it's both their stories and not just Julie's (in the book, 90% of the book is of course about Julie, with vignettes of Julia plopped down before each chapter). The second is that Julie Powell is played by charismatic Amy Adams.

The real Julie Powell isn't charismatic. She is whiny and pessimistic and self-righteous and turned up to eleven. She looks at adultery like she'd look at chronic nail-biting: a bad habit that adds character. I don't care about how much she curses like many others do.

I didn't hate Julie, though; far from it. In parts, her writing was charming and irreverent. I could honestly see myself reading her blog back when. But it was because of the food, the Project. She was writing about something. But quite a lot of the book wasn't about that. Julie seems to think her life is more interesting (and of course, more haaaaaaaaard) than it actually is. I didn't find myself caring much about all her long anecdotes about her “horrible” job and all the Republicans there (she mentions them ALL THE TIME). Even when they were interesting, sure enough she'd go right back to the whining, the insinuations that no one is really good enough for her (including her husband), and sexsexsexsex. You'd think she was the first to discover it. Perhaps a foretaste to her next book, Cleaving, in which she describes her affair in detail for all the world to see?

4.5 stars.

I had SUCH a fun time with this! This book's biggest strength is its action/pacing. This series has done an excellent job of ratcheting up the action book by book. This one is quite action-packed compared to Cinder, which I got bored with in a few places. I loved how much we got to see the rest of the setting; to bring up Cinder again, I felt that the setting of New Beijing was basically wasted, and I feel that that was kind of fixed in Scarlet. I was happy to see that fixed with Cress. We got to see so many places and get a real sense of life in this world, as well as on Luna!

I also really, really liked Cress as a main character. Her voice and personality are so unique amidst the others in the group (Scarlet, Wolf, Cinder, Thorne, Iko), and it was refreshing to have someone in the mix who isn't sarcastic, snarky, or cynical. Cress adds a necessary dimension to the character spread, and it's fun to see the different characters interact with her and react to how different she is. I also love Jason Clay!

The Cress/Thorne romance was just...okay. Can I just say it? I don't like Thorne that much. I loved him interacting with Cress in the desert (that was easily the best part of their romance), but after that, it went downhill. I like a character who breaks the tension with humor, but a lot of times it's like he's unaware there is any tension at all. The one exception I can remember is the exchange between him and Jason Clay (“Where's my gun?” “I've got it.” “Can I have it back?” “Nope.”). That shit cracked me up.

Anyway, the Cress/Thorne romance needs some serious development/maturity. Throughout, Cress is a perfectly devoted little angel, and he's...well, he's Thorne. I'd love to see Cress mature out of the fangirl love for him, and I'd love to see Thorne develop some sensitivity and self-awareness. UGH I WAS WAITING FOR HIM TO TELL HER HE ISN'T REALLY A CAPTAIN, BUT HE DIDN'T! In a good romance, both people need to grow as a result of being with each other. Cress has definitely evolved the most of the two. He allows her to put him on a pedestal, but when is he going to do the same for her? Yeah, he said she has a beautiful singing voice, but what else? I'm not really convinced he likes her all that much, if I'm being honest. It seems more of a convenience thing, not a conscious choice. It's certainly not the worst romance in a book. More often than not, it's very sweet and squishy and all that. I just don't love it the way other people seem to. Thorne is easily my least favorite character. There's time for more development, though! I'd love to be in the camp of Thorne fans, but as of now, I'm not there yet.

Regarding the other romances, I'm thrilled with the development of Cinder and Kai. Prior to Cress It felt a bit too much like “she's-Cinderella-and-he's-the-prince-so-it-kinda-has-to-go-this-way.” However, I LOVED their scene at the end! It felt totally earned, and so sweet! And of course, I really enjoy Scarlet and Wolf together. I liked his characterization in reaction to Scarlet's absence.

DR. ERLAND AND CRESS. THAT WHOLE SCENE. YOU KNOW THE ONE. DAMN.

ANYWAY, I'm very excited for Winter! A lot of other YA books tend to sag toward the middle of their series, but with The Lunar Chronicles, it's been the opposite! I can't wait to see where it goes from here!

Checked this out in a effort to further my knowledge of the birth chart and its elements. I was slightly confused/disappointed when I first started reading this. My North Node is in the sign Scorpio. I read what Spiller had to say about tendencies of Scorpio North Node people and found them less than resonant. However, a quick check of my chart showed me that my North Node is also in the 4th house (which is associated with the sign Cancer–unrelated in this instance). I found this section of the book much more representative of my tendencies. I think that this is a compassionately written book, always reminding the reader that the North Node is not indicative of your set-in-stone destiny. It is indicative of things you probably struggle with right now, and can hinder your growth. I think anyone interested in astrology should check this out.

“I know who he is.”

I didn't know this book existed until recently (although I have only just recently watched the first two seasons of the show, plus the movie Fire Walk with Me) but I think it is absolutely essential reading for those who are into Twin Peaks. It was very difficult to tear myself away from this book. It adds so much vividness and emotion to the character Laura Palmer, who viewers of the show/movie know, all told, very little about. I loved this so much; it was lucid and wild and mysterious and so, so sad.

I'm pretty shocked at how much this book bothered me, considering how much I was entertained by the first one. Obviously I have to pull out a Hunger Games comparison. The second volume in that series is by far the best: incredibly action-packed from page one. Insurgent was action-packed in only a couple places, and then it completely plateaued again. Most of the book, in fact, was at a plateau. While Divergent was go-go-go all the time, Insurgent was pretty much dead on arrival. It relied a lot on dialogue and it also (misguidedly) trusted that the reader would recall countless four-letter-name characters from the first book, who pop in and out of the story randomly and add largely nothing. More than once I had to look up who characters were, because in the first book they honestly weren't interesting or important enough to bring back.
There were some fun scenes, but it seemed they were over immediately and suddenly the reader is back with the group of people we don't really know and pages of boring dialogue. Tris didn't grow any more interesting this time around, and while there was opportunity for Tobias' character to develop, it often took a backseat to Tris' mostly illogical inner diatribes. For someone who is part Erudite, she's a bit of a dunderhead. She really is Divergent in that she is erratic and violent one minute, and contemplative and mouse-like the next. Tobias was the same way. It was hard for me to follow these characters because it was like a switch was flipped in between the first and second book. Tris' switch had the label “BE TOTALLY USELESS AND CLUELESS” and Tobias' was “BE VIOLENT AND SHOUTY FOR NO REASON.”

Probably won't pick up Allegiant.

This is my second Stephen King since The Shining in high school. Of the two I think I prefer this one; it is just as horrifying but has the advantage of being closer to home (possibly making it more horrifying?). Good horror, in my opinion, always has a sliver of sorrow included in it, and Carrie definitely has that. The thing that sometimes took me out of the story, though, was the interspersed in-universe pieces of writing (e.g. news articles, book excerpts, etc.). I much prefer to just read a straight narrative of events, rather than “accounts” of events, but that's just me. Happy Halloween!

This is a pretty solid introduction to the world of Tarot. After reading this, I know enough to do a reading for myself. There was information included in the book that didn't really relate to Tarot, but was interesting to read. I liked reading about the connections between Tarot and numerology/I Ching/astrology. The only complaint I have is the author wrote that drawing certain cards means specific events will–not might–happen to you (e.g. new baby, new job, etc). She used very certain language, and I think that can be misleading.

A student I tutor introduced me to this story and we read it together. I found it reminiscent of West Side Story. It has a surprising amount of suspense and tension, considering how ridiculously short it is. Seriously, I finished this in less than ten minutes. It is very much dialogue-driven, leaving much of the backdrop of the story to the reader's imagination.