alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

This is such a sweet story about a girl who runs away from home and joins the hobo community during the Great Depression. Her mentor, Ramshackle, teaches her how to see the world, and others, with new eyes.

I would eat 99% of the meals in this book. Awesome for meal planning. I need to buy this asap.

I finally read this book and I loved it so much. The book alternates between three seemingly separate stories: a middle school boy born to Chinese immigrant parents, a sitcom that shows a white high school boy who is embarrassed by his stereotypical (in a super racist way) Chinese relative, and a retelling of the traditional Chinese tale Journey to the West that features a monkey king. The stories wrap up in a genius, heart-warming way.

I am glad I finally read this famous collection of essays and articles. Some of them are now quite dated, but others are still fiercely relevant. Funny to see how much the world has changed and how much it hasn’t.

My favorites:
- Words and Changes
- Pornography vs Erotica
- Linda Lovelace
- If Men Could Menstruate

Paraphrasing the end quote: Am I passing the torch? No, I’ll keep mine, thank you. But that way of thinking is part of the problem. We all need our own torches.

Before reading this I had only seen the blue-mustard-brown version of this cover and based my ideas about the story on that. I was imagining indy-bookish Bridgette Jones. The matchstick house cover is a much better representation of the type of story this is, but maybe like a guache painting version of that which somehow combines the two covers would be the absolute best.

Anyways.

I liked this book quite a lot but it was very different than what I expected. Btw, if you like the IT Crowd like I do, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that Roy plays a significan role ;)

I love slice-of-life graphic novels. Will read any. Send titles.

This one about a pre-teen girl observing the mysterious sexual world around her, on the cusp of becoming part of it herself, is just so real and good.

This book is pretty lame even by kid standards. Maybe it is meant to entice kids to read alone. But even the illustrations are weak.

I understood these feelngs so well. Beautiful art and storytelling.

I liked this book but it should be called Casual Dinner, not Modern Lunch. These recipes are simple, but do require time. So unless you cook for an hour for lunch and another hour for dinner, what you will probably want to do is make an extra large dinner and keep the leftovers for next day's lunch. Hence, this is actually a weeknight dinner cookbook.

So glad I gave this author another chance. Although the first book I tried to read by her, [b:Delirium|11614718|Delirium (Delirium, #1)|Lauren Oliver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327890411i/11614718._SX50_.jpg|10342808], made me so crazy with how nonsensical the foundations of the plot were, Broken Things really shows off her maturity as an author.

Broken Things has everything I like: a two-sided dead girl, creepy wandering in the woods, coming of age love lessons, family mental health issues. It's a classic whodunnit, which I'm not a huge fan of, and the motive of who did it is the book's weakest point (so, see comment above about Delirium I guess? old habits die hard).

The plot is very similar to another book I recently read: [b:A Good Idea|29960804|A Good Idea|Cristina Moracho|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1466778834i/29960804._SX50_.jpg|50354391]... a troubled girl goes back to her small hometown on the East Coast to find out who really killed her manic-pixie dreamgirl best friend from middle school and finds out that her friend was a bit more complicated than she remembered. And then she wraps up the loose ends of her past and starts afresh at college in NYC. VERRYY SIMILAR.