I wish I could say I enjoyed this more than I actually did. And it's not that I didn't enjoy it, either, but it just felt like it was missing something. What that something is, I also don't quite know. Maybe that's my main qualm with this book overall---it just feels like it has the potential to be something really epic and emotionally sweeping, but falls just a bit short. Maybe it's the character development, which felt to me like it had great momentum at the beginning and then fell a little flat. Or the fact that the voice actors for the audiobook I listened to were just kind of really bad (sorry, but I really need to hear more than one type of voice inflection to believe that you've ever read anything out loud before). It may also be the inevitable game of comparison I played concerning similarities to Throne of Glass. Thanks to the influence of TikTok and the ferocity with which I devoured Maas' series two years ago, a story about a main female character desiring freedom from her oppressive master, discovering she can control a strange, powerful kind of magic, and eventually becoming an assassin of sorts for a slightly corrupt order of magical warriors is going to make me think of Celaena and the literary world in which she exists. I thought there were some great unique side characters, and a lot of promise for the book's world to be expanded in the rest of the series I'm not planning on reading. I also thought Max's backstory and the incorporation of a weapon of mass destruction in the form of a parasite were fascinating parts of this story that set it apart from Throne of Glass. But I still felt like the little momentum going at the beginning dropped off and got convoluted with overlapping political subplots, the introduction of this parasitic monster, and the slow burn romance I wished was just a little less and slow and a little more burn. I may be the slow burn's biggest fan, too, so this is saying something. As I've already decided to not continue with this series, I'll end this review here, quite eager to move on to something that hopefully has the spark I'm looking for in a fantasy series with such an intriguing concept as this one.



Some of my favorite quotes from Daughter of No Worlds:

"Men want power because it makes them feel good. Women want power because it lets us do things."

​"I had spent the night cutting myself up into little pieces for consumption, forcing people to acknowledge me, thrusting my pain into their faces."

"We had carved out these small, intimate spaces for each other in our lives, and by some miracle of human denial, neither of us had thought about what that would inevitably mean. Now, for the first time, I realized the breadth of the gaping absence we would leave in each other."

Oooooohhhh, where to even begin with this long-awaited read. I read it slowly and steadily like I do with most books, though I'm thinking of potentially carving out a day to just sit and reread this in one sitting for a rollercoaster of an experience (if I can find the time and have the emotional bandwidth). I had to stay up pretty late to finish this one; putting it down just wasn't an option. But trying to wrap my head around the terrible series of events that make up the last 50 to 100 pages or so was even more gnarly to have to do in the wee hours of the morning. I truly don't know where to start in commending Suzanne Collins for the work she's done within the department of dystopian fiction and writing as a craft, but maybe I'll start with how well she consistently creates and portrays characters. This narrator at the story's beginning---this unsuspecting boy with a simple life and young love he never wishes to be parted from---is not the Haymitch Abernathy fans have only been able to know him to be in the original series. The beginning narrator is not the end narrator, because too much has been changed and lost in the middle, and I think that's masterful character development as well as authorial understanding of how to get from Point A to Point B in a logical fashion that's also entertaining to read. I really latched onto the concept of Haymitch playing the role of a rascal, of stepping into the skin of a character type he ends up playing too well. It starts with the need for an image that might win him sponsors and distract from foul play, and ends with substance abuse as a result of deep grief. I also latched onto the strange alliance Plutarch Heavensbee and Haymitch create, and loved seeing how this book sows the seeds that blossom into full blown rebellion during Katniss Everdeen's era. All of the subtle but important connections back to President Snow and Lucy Gray consistently blew my mind, too. There's so much more I could say about the uniqueness of the Games' arena itself, but I don't want to tiptoe into spoiler territory and also feel like I wouldn't really describe all my individual thoughts about the psychological aspects of the arena well enough. I need to do some more thinking on the significance of this book during our current apocalyptic-adjacent time. This is also a book I think deserves close reading and careful attention considering the width and depth of this series' fanbase and purpose in the literary canon. At the risk of sounding rather dramatic: How different would so many of our opinions on justice, sacrifice, and human capacity for love and hate be today if we didn't have The Hunger Games on our shelves? On a less dramatic note: I just really want to give Haymitch (among many other characters in this book) a big hug.



Some of my favorite quotes from Sunrise on the Reaping:

​"As much pain as my loved ones feel now, how long will it be until I am just a memory?"

"And while Lenore Dove will forever be my true love, Louella is my one and only sweetheart."

"In the same way you instinctively know the waxed pears on the table lack juice, this girl lacks Louella's essence."

"Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn't have to be so terrifying. That's on people, not the world."

"But you can't keep Effie down."

"We hold each other so tight it's like we're one person."

I'm so glad I decided to listen to this as an audiobook because the fabulous Kelly Bishop herself narrates it in her unmistakable, iconic tone and flair! I absolutely adored getting to hear the life story of a woman who I can claim to "know" through her role as Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls. But the amount of life Kelly lived before and after this seven season stint really astounded me and made me think about how, regardless of her fabulous representation of a lovingly complex matriarchal character, Kelly is her own separate person with such an intriguing story to tell. And what a story it was! I had no idea she started her professional career on the stage, and still seems to consider her time dancing and acting in live performances peak parts of her career and fond memories. What do you mean the A Chorus Line song "At the Ballet" is about her and her life?? That's so insanely cool. I also appreciated how she decided to take us through her life story, which is no small feat. Beginning with the onset of her career really taking off with A Chorus Line and then working backwards to explain her passion for dancing, her relationship with her mother and father, and how she came to move to New York and have a few romantic flings, functioned as a storyline that I thought worked really well to eventually bring us up to speed with "the present" and the rest of her major life events, including Gilmore Girls, eventual marriages, and various health issues. I also appreciated how Kelly wrapped up the memoir with an attitude I aspire to wear as comfortably as she does if I'm blessed with as many years. It's an attitude that all but screams "this is the end of this book, but certainly not the end of my story." 

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Some of my favorite quotes from The Third Gilmore Girl:

"Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place."

"If it’s meant to work out, it will. If it isn’t, it will just make me available for what I’m supposed to be doing instead.” (Sometimes it was reassuring; sometimes it wasn’t.)"

"What on earth would we all do without one another?"

I have much more George Saunders reading to catch up on, but I'm not sure any of it will hold a candle to my opinion of Tenth of December. With that being said, Pastoralia was a weird time, but maybe not as weird as it could've been giving my expectations of what Saunders is capable of and leans into. His absurdism and ability to make even the most unlikeable of characters a little less pathetic and a little more human really impresses me. Every single one of this collection's stories felt like a penned fever dream. Each of them has a strange uniqueness, from the completely one-of-a-kind, often pathetic characters, to the landscapes I can only describe as liminally familiar (for "Pastorialia") or suburban wasteland chic (for the rest of them). "Sea Oak" has really stuck with me. I think it's my favorite of the collection, perhaps because it mixes grief with sexual exploitation, a surreal zombie aunt, the sour taste of regret, and the reality of being unable to escape financial struggles. Saunders' writing is just so poignant in an often uncomfortable way; I don't think anyone would describe his tales as cozy or feel good. I really have nothing good to say about "The Barber's Unhappiness" and stand by the fact that strongly disliking a narrator who's pretty terrible doesn't mean we have to find a way to redeem them. Anyways. Saunders is good at what he does, and for what these stories are within the genre of weird fiction, they're pretty great.

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My favorite quote from Pastoralia ("Sea Oak"):

"Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over..."

Considering this is my first foray into the surreal genre-bending stuff Murakami's been up to for a while, I had a better time than I expected to. Considering I also don't read a lot of absurdist, speculative short fiction like all of the stories in this collection, I tried to keep an open mind and think I'm doing a better job of embracing this genre and style of writing for what it is. It's definitely not my genre of choice, but also not at the bottom of my list either. All of that to say, a few stories really stood out to me as either especially weird and hard to grasp, or especially weird but, strangely, easier to grasp as a result. I was particularly drawn to the stories that had supernatural elements or unexplainable, slightly unsettling and creepy goings ons. For example, "The Mirror," which had a classic scary story setting, informative narrator, and nearly Edgar Allan Poe-esque kind of vibe. Or "Hanalei Bay," with a mother's terrible tragedy affecting her son and a ghost potentially haunting her that we don't find out about until the very end. Stories like "Dabchick" and "A Shinagawa Monkey" also worked for me in their really high level absurdism. "Dabchick" just made me laugh, because what are the odds there'd really be a dabchick chilling on the other side of the door at this guy's weird job thinking about death? And the way "A Shinagawa Monkey" starts with what seems like a clear theme about loss of identity ends with a literal talking monkey who steals peoples' names. I think what also really ended up working for me was viewing these stories through the lens of a writer as well as a reader; in other words, I admire how precise writing absurdist and surrealist stuff must be, because too much ridiculousness simply loses readers, while carefully curated randomness makes analyzing the steps the writer took (or may have tried to take) a true form of craft. In addition, keeping in mind that all of these stories were originally written in Japanese helped me understand that certain parts of the original plot may pack a bigger punch in their original language. While I don't assume this is the case for every time I came across something I couldn't understand in part of the stories, I don't discount it as a completely unviable possibility. Overall, I don't think too much was lost in translation (though I'll argue that Murakami's portrayals of realistic women could use some work). I enjoyed this collection more than I expected to. 

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Some of my favorite quotes from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman:

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."

"What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last."

"Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing."

Jesmyn Ward is coming to my university this month (eek, I love my school!) and I have absolutely no idea where to start with my questions for her related to her craft and ability to jampack so much symbolism into so many different image systems in a seemingly effortless way. I think the way Ward's able to juggle these image systems and remind readers of them at every turn (and I quite literally mean at the line level in almost every sentence) is one of the most impressive things about her writing to me. I haven't engaged with any of her other work, but feel inspired to now. One of this novel's image systems surrounds the Greek myth of Medea. So, c'mon, I was bound to like this book at least a little. I didn't realize just how much of the story's general plot as well as characters and their development circulates Medea's myth. Ward writes in such a way that readers can think they have who's supposed to mirror Medea and Jason on one page and then question if other characters are actually functioning as the original myth's characters. There's ample room for careful analyzation that my class and I spent nearly three hours dissecting. I know we could've gone for at least another hour, too. Some of my peers felt their reading experience was bogged down by all of the similes and metaphors Ward doesn't hold back from using. I honestly felt like all this image-evoking language was used in such a fresh and new way that it only helped me enter into the story and its setting more fully. I won't insert any spoilers into this review, but the themes of motherhood, humans as animals (and vice versa), sex and love as violence, and recurring motifs like eggs, the colors black, red, and white, and death/decay make this book as visually haunting as it is heavy with symbolism and rawness. I really loved the narrator, Esch, whose eyes we look out of and, as a result, understand Skeetah, Randall, Junior, Manny, Daddy, Big Henry, and several other male characters that accentuate Esch's womanhood. I loved how she described the things around her in terms she saw and understood in her corner of the world---Bois Sauvage. I also loved how she related key parts of her life and emotions to Medea's story, notably how the anti-hero might've felt and reacted to certain parts of her story that Esch seems to relate to on a level she's not quite able to admit to herself. The similarities and comparisons between China, Skeetah's beloved fighting pitbull, and Esch astounded me, too. There was so much there from the very first to the very last page. Truly, I feel like my admiration for what this book does on so many planes is its biggest asset, and I can't wait to meet Ward and (hopefully) discuss her writing process and personal inspirations for this amazing book.



Some of my favorite quotes from Salvage the Bones:

"It is the way that all girls who only know one boy move. Centered as if the love that boy feels for them anchors them deep as a tree's roots, holds them still as the oaks, which don't uproot in hurricane wind. Love as certainty."

"In every one of the Greeks' mythology tales, there is this: a man chasing a woman, or a woman chasing a man. There is never a meeting in the middle."

"I can see her, chin to chest, straining to push Junior out, and Junior snagging on her insides, grabbing hold of what he caught on to try to stay inside her, but instead he pulled it out with him when he was born."

"This baby got plenty of daddies." 

*SPOILERS AHEAD*
Wow wow wow, I've put off writing this because I sincerely didn't know where to start in covering all the amazing things happening and working in this book. I think it's amazing for its portrayal of women during a time when they weren't taken seriously in professional workplaces, discouraged to report sexual assault and rape, and generally had to prove themselves competent at every turn. I also think it's amazing for its melding of different topics I didn't think could all be fit together the way they are here: rowing, chemistry, parenting, romance, religion, etc. But what I think is most amazing is its ability to be Elizabeth's story while also putting emphasis on Calvin. I think I'd have been disappointed if it felt like it was primarily a romance, that Elizabeth's story was one of self-discovery and advocacy because of love, and not merely because she had respect for herself. Thankfully, that's not the case, because Elizabeth and Calvin's relationship is described to be based on chemistry and, therefore, the kind of bond that acts as a catalyst for Elizabeth to keep living and doing her best to create a life for herself and her daughter even after the father is gone. But wow, was I really really sad when he died. I think the way it happened was not only heartbreaking for its unexpectedly accidental nature, but because what ifs and a sense of guilt keep reappearing in the narrative at the most opportune times. This book made me outright angry a few times, too, like "I want to punch that character in the face" angry, but I view that as a good thing.
I simply must mention Six-Thirty the dog, the best character in the book, with possibly the most complex interior life and character development. I loved how he had a role to play in the story, that he wasn't just the dog off to the side, nonverbal and unimportant. He's Mad's friend and protector of sorts, and Elizabeth's reminder to keep trying and learning and moving forward with life. And he's so smart! I also love Harriet as a side character, as a woman in need of her own companionship and escape who sees someone else in need of her parenting skills and, as a happy result, becomes part of a new family, per se. Reverend Wakely and Mad's friendship as a result of "research" on her father felt like a fun puzzle to put together, too. I like how they learn from each other in equal parts. I think this book introduces and develops chraracters incredibly well---my opinion or expectation of each and every one of them was subverted by the time I reached the end, either in a good way or a bad way. This especially applies to Walter, the not-so-great TV studio professional, who I expected to be a womanizer unable to separate Elizabeth's beauty from the rest of her. The way he also enters into Elizabeth's sense of found family, built on the foundations of who Calvin was to her, was very sweet. My favorite part (besides Six-Thirty and Elizabeth meeting Calvin's biological mother and getting her job and research back in the same day) is that Calvin wasn't particularly exceptional in the street smarts department despite his intellectual prowess. All that to say, I like how Elizabeth loved him to her very core, but was able to see in hindsight that she never completely lost herself when she lost him, that she's still her own autonomous and capable person who, against all odds, must go on and raise her daughter, try to inspire and teach the masses her expertise, and find a way to be taken seriously in a world where it seems like everyone would rather overlook her brilliance. 



Some of my favorite quotes from Lessons in Chemistry:

"Sometimes I think," she said slowly, "that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn't make it past noon."

"Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do."

"Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counsellors would go out of business. Do you see my point?"

"Humans need reassurance, they need to know others survived in hard times. And unlike other species which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice."

This book, for one thing, is a really quick read, and for another thing, really made me think about how some parts of childhood and being a kid are universal---despite where your house was located, what culture you grew up in, or what struggles you or your family experienced. As I was reading, I thought about how I view my own childhood as something to be taken out in bits and pieces, like scattered episodes of a TV show that, when put together, give a vague impression of the overall plot. I think a lot of collective memory, especially in relation to childhood, is like that. The introduction of this book very helpfully shed light on Cisneros as an author and her lived experiences that directly contributed to her writing style and inspiration for this book. I'm excited for the opportunity to meet Cisneros later this year when she visits my university for our annual Writer's Symposium spring events, and especially look forward to hearing her speak more on her craft. The craft in question (at least in this book) reads to me like the choice to connect a series of flash pieces that follow the life of our narrator in a certain socioeconomic landscape and community on Mango Street. Each story features authentic characters, emotions, and images that you can hear and taste and smell all in one. It gets back at that idea (for me) of being able to find some of the more universal parts of childhood in between the folds of every page: playing jump rope with the girls who live nearby, being wary of new neighbors, wondering what makes certain adults act the way they do, feeling the weight of going from a girl to a woman... the list goes on and on. Being able to read about a community of children that, among the similarities, also hosts a variety of differences was a privilege. To tap into another's lived experience through fiction and wonderful prose is exactly why I read and continue to read. This was a lovely book in every way, especially in its ability to make me ache to taste nostalgia and wonder if things would actually be better if I could return to days of innocence.


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One of my favorite quotes from The House on Mango Street:

"We are tired of being beautiful."

I've had this book for at least three years now and finally read it! And boy was I missing out on such a wonderful collection of short stories, and retellings of classic fairy tales no less! I think some of the current literary market is getting bogged down with fairy tale and myth retellings if I'm being completely honest, even as I continue to work on a current project that's a loose retelling of part of The Odyssey. But where I think this collection goes in a fresh direction is its dependence on readers having prior knowledge of the way these fairy tales are "supposed" to go. When Chainani executes the twists and turns to be found in each of these retellings, they work for their cleverness as well as their refreshing take on the parts of fairy tales that have become archaic when it comes to gender roles, societal expectations of what love looks like, and some of the more ridiculous parts of these bedtime stories most of us have come to accept as part of the unique genre. The first story starts with a bang: "Red Riding Hood" in an interesting world of sacrifice---one woman determined to be the anomaly, and ravenous wolves portrayed as young men with just as dangerous appetites. I thought great attention to detail was given in the placement of each story (especially with the transition from "Sleeping Beauty" to "Rapunzel"). Some of the stories fell a little flat for me or seemed to border on cliche in their attempts to portray girl boss characters and the like. But to like every piece in any collection of stories is rare, and so many of the worlds of these fairy tales are imagined in various cultures in creative ways (in other words, not everyone's white or living in a English/French/German-inspired kingdom). The illustrations scattered throughout are so lovely, too, and represent an art style that reminds me of Chainani's School for Good and Evil world I love oh so dearly. I think Chainani has clearly established himself as a fantasy author well-practiced and talented at subverting expectations at the base story-telling level, creating unforgettable and likeable (as well as hateable) characters along the way. I can't end this review without raving about the final story, "Peter Pan," which was so well-placed as the ultimate tale and possibly one of the best short stories/pieces/retellings I've ever read. There's already so much to choose and play off of in the realm of Peter Pan and his fantastical Neverland, but the direction this story goes with Wendy as its narrator took twists and turns I never could have expected and loved. There's a great and subtle balance of multiple themes, from trying to hold on to childhood, to pleasing selfish people, to falling in love with someone who sees and wants all of you, to acting in true love by setting it free. Ugh, it just struck me as a heartbreakingly beautiful and stunning piece of creative work. Finishing it while at the beach and staring at the ocean in front of me while processing it made for an even more dramatic time experiencing this piece.

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Some of my favorite quotes from Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales

"She's lucky to be alive, they tell her in their grunts and growls. Lucky her beauty isn't worthy of beasts" ("Red Riding Hood").

"But sometimes, there are bigger things in life than what's right" ("Jack and the Beanstalk").

"Or maybe I saw love where I wished it would be, says the witch. Projecting onto a man what I wished I could give to myself. Making him the answer to everything. Now that is real evil" ("The Little Mermaid").

"Who made you, he breathed. Who made someone so wondrous and pure?" ("Peter Pan").