alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

Not as interesting as the first novel, mostly because this story was more disjointed and multifaceted. I would have preferred if it followed a single character instead of taking a bird's eye view approach.

It’s cool that Ryo is trans and Jin is such a good ally. Overall a very cool concept for the story, where the high school protags develop a street fashion brand to express themselves and combat prejudice.

Given my irrational fear of aliens, reading this at midnight last night was a greeaaat idea.

I liked the more narrative poems, like Tamar and Amnon. I bet these would sound a lot better in Spanish tho.

Highsmith at the top of her game.

Slow, melancholy. Simenon's one-sided conversation with his dying mother reveals a portrait of a layered and complicated personality.

A pretty forgetable story with bland characters.

If I rewrote this, Mimi would be the only POV, I would take advantage of all the missed potential slapstick comedy moments, and it would have been like a cute funny Frenchified version of You.

I have never read any of Jack Kerouac's work before, and other Beatnik writings have given me cold feet to try it. I was surprised that I liked these essays! The sentences are long winded but poetically so, and his unique descriptions piqued my imagination into the freedom of roaming around as a white dude with zero commitments in midcentury America.

This could have been written yesterday. I liked the other two essays about sports and antisemitism, more than the titular one. But all of them were good and highly relevant.

I liked all the tea on GK Chesterton, ngl

DNF @ 35%

I was in a reading slump the entire month of May and this is not a good book to read when I'm just coming out of it. The writing and story concept are good, actually, it is just so dang slow. Let's say the pan is not warm enough to make the butter sizzle ha.