This is my new favorite book. it delivered on every possible level. I adored the characters and the worldbuilding and the writing style. I will come back and write a longer review when I can express my love for this book more coherently, but wow.

Probably my favorite volume so far. I like how complicated the social dynamics have gotten. I like Kim. I'm starting to get invested. But Scott is really reminding me of my worst ex. Loser man who dates cooler, usually younger women? Yup.

This is a cute lesbian coming-of-age novel that is absolutely the blueprint for so many of the queer high school books that have come after. The Henna Wars especially is a recent sapphic book that has a very similar plot. And it's a super effective formula! 

This book is really historically significant, and I appreciate it so much for being one of the first YA books to portray queer characters, especially lesbians, in a positive light and with a happy ending. 

The story didn't make a particular impact on me, but the historical context did. I would definitely recommend it.

What a fun silly book. I loved the characters. Just a couple of thicc sexy sweet bisexuals having SO MUCH sex. This is right up there with most sex I’ve read in a traditional romance novel. And it was varied and fun! Would absolutely recommend. My only critiques are 1) how easy everything was despite the seemingly high stakes for Mason’s family stuff 2) they had maybe three actual conversations? I was definitely rooting for them but I think the book could have been a tiny bit longer to add a bit more dialogue in between some of the sex scenes 3) it was kinda soulmatey, which isn’t my jam but was still cute because I really enjoyed the couple.

I made the mistake of pausing the audiobook in the middle of the pegging scene, and it took a few weeks to find a good moment to just straight into that, but once I did I finished the rest of the book very quickly.

Palestine is an incredibly effective piece of graphic journalism. It paints a vivid, dark portrait of the state of things in occupied Palestine when Joe Sacco was there in the 90s. Sacco uses a variety of anecdotes, conversations, violent scenes, and quotes from other sources to create a compelling and overall sympathetic portrait of Palestine and Palestinians. He uses a dramatized portrayal of himself to show his own journey of understanding the occupation.

Unfortunately, I did not personally enjoy Sacco's art style or method of storytelling very much, despite how effective I found it. I struggled with the dramatized version of the author. I struggled with the general bigotry and the misogyny. I think some of that is just the 90s. Most of it is the author's desire to give the book a narrative arc.

Overall, I think that this particular book was not for me, but I would highly recommend it to anyone at the beginning of their journey with understanding the history of Palestine as it gives a solid grounding if you don't know where to start and takes the reader on a journey from distaste to understanding and empathy. 

I loved this book. It says so much about language and imperialism and memory, and it does all of that amidst fabulous worldbuilding and compelling characters. I loved Mahit and Three Seagrass and I had so many feelings and thoughts about everyone and everything else. I wanted a bit more from some of the political aspects, but that may well come in the sequel.

This book is really good so far but I just can't handle contemporary YA right now. I thought I could do it but I can't. Maybe another time.

Rereading this book for the first time since middle school and it sure isn’t very good, huh? 

I definitely couldn’t have written a better book as a teen, to be clear, and I still find this story very entertaining and fun and generally engaging. Saphira is one of my favorite dragon characters ever. Murtagh is wonderfully compelling. Christopher Paolini’s descriptions are very lush (sometimes overly so). And if I continue rereading more of the series I know I’ll enjoy Nasuada and Roran’s sections.

The gender of it all is just as messy and sloppy as I remembered, and the handling of disability is definitely abysmal and I don’t recall it getting better.

The worldbuilding and plot are generally unoriginal, but I really don’t care because 1) I enjoy it and 2) again, the author was SO YOUNG when he wrote it. There are some very silly aspects of the worldbuilding, though. I definitely assumed that the Ancient Language was much more of a conlang as a kid than it actually is. So much of it is just kinda sloppy Latin with some Japanese thrown in I feel like? Goofy.

Anyway I think that we need more overly long silly fun dragon books. 

I’m so excited to run this in the sci-fi setting my players and I created.

Largely reading these as background for the new show, but I’m mostly having fun. Justice for Knives Chau.