aaronj21's Reviews (912)

This book did manage to effectively portray the flavor of the 60's, but that's about all I can say in its favor.

I found the writing style repetitive and dull. The author would often express the same concept or use the exact same phrases in back to back sentences, making for uninspiring prose. Once the protagonist travels to Morocco she ceases to be a character and becomes more of a mirror for the rockstars and celebrities around her. Everyone around her instantly adores her for no easily discernable reason and finds her fascinating even though all she does is go along with the group (mostly) and speak in brief, bland spurts. This washing out of her already threadbare personality may have been a deliberate artistic choice, but it makes the middle and end portions of the novel exceedingly dull since the narrator is our only point of view.

The shout out from, and the comparisons to, Taylor Jenkins Reid's work do this book absolutely no favors as Reid soars marvelously in the same niche where this novel stumblingly plods. The comparison can only serve to highlight this book's deficiencies against a much better alternative.

A clever, thoughtful reimagining that goes so far beyond simply making Romeo and Juliet gay (as laudable a project as that is). This book sparkles with wit and verve, the characters feel real, both familiar and developed, and the dialogue flows beautifully. Romeo and Valentine’s love story is utterly compelling while also feeling grounded in its historical and literary setting. The true themes of the original play, the vicious cycle of violence, the dire effects of parental neglect, and the senselessness of avoidable loss, all shine through here. Juliet and her unwanted marriage to count Paris don’t get overshadowed even though the main story is about two boys falling in love; indeed, the Juliet of this adaptation is lively, resourceful, and as cunning as any Shakespearean character ever was. It was a pleasure to read from start to finish and I also appreciated the impressive number of Shakespeare references the author was able to work in (“claim his pound of flesh”, “ghost at the banquet” etc.). This is book is a great example of the wonderful, high quality, gay fiction I wish had been more prevalent when I was a teenager.

This book was a terrifying, thought provoking, beautifully written nightmare from beginning to end. I lost track of the number of times I audibly gasped or shook my head “no!”. I could not turn the pages fast enough and I was both eager and afraid to learn what would happen next right up until the very last sentence. While in my personal opinion Stephen King may be overstating things by calling this book Tremblay’s best (that honor goes to Head Full of Ghosts in my book) he’s not far off the mark, this was a truly remarkable, unsettling, and upsetting read on many, many levels. I only hope the new film adaptation can manage to capture a sliver of the dread and suspense that oozes from this novel.

Another lovely ancient Greek historical fiction from Mary Renault. This retelling of the childhood and youth of Theseus, king of Athens and slayer of the Minotaur is an excellent example of how authors can convincingly retell mythological stories through the lens of historical fiction without losing any of the drama and pathos of the original legend.

This collection of poetry was uniquely beautiful, full of remarkable lines that make you pause and think and then wish had thought of yourself. I found something to like or appreciate in every poem and several of them were extremely incisive and relatable. I found that I liked the poems earlier in the book better than those towards the end, but I think that’s just a matter of preference. In particular, “To the Popular Kids Who Called Me Gay”, “The Plea”, and “The Stoner Safari”, were utterly heartbreaking and completely compelling. I would be very interested to read anything else this author creates.

This book was informative, written with a pleasantly broad scope and illustrated with gorgeous high resolution photographs.

A bit more dry and rambling than I was expecting, at times this book struck me more as a catalog of relevant archeological digs rather than the sweeping historical narrative I was looking for.

Occasionally dry and lacking in context about ancient Egyptian life, this was nevertheless a through overview of the office of Pharaoh throughout the centuries.

Clever plotting and a few neat twists ultimately don’t save this thriller from its chronic lack of detail and utterly lifeless writing style.

What should have been a gripping, twisted mystery falls somewhat flat due to extremely generic writing and a cast of one note characters. Although this novel did pick up around the halfway mark, it wasn’t a satisfying read for me. The writing was its weakest point, the author described things very generally and matter-of-factly in a way that could have been an asset to a mystery like this but came off as boring, each character spoke and thought just like everyone else, and this book frequently told, not showed, what was going on. All that coupled with characters I couldn’t even begin to find a reason to care about and a complete lack of clues for the reader to pick up on throughout the book (it was one of those mysteries where you could never have pieced it together with the information the provided, you had to wait until the author revealed something new) made for a rather uninteresting read.

Always a pleasure to reread this lyrical and competent translation.