books_ergo_sum's Reviews (933)

There is nothing more satisfying to me than reading a philosophy book that this accurately explains the messy thoughts I’m trying to grapple with.

And this one was all about explaining: what exactly is happening when something violent happens and my heart screams that it’s wrong but others disagree.

And idk. Butler’s book just blew my mind. Because their argument wasn’t that some people are pacifists and some people are basically Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic…

The starting premise was that pretty much everyone agrees—violence is wrong. ✨Except in self-defense✨ And it’s this teeny tiny exception that legitimizes all violence. Because of who gets included in that self and what counts as defense.

And the arguments in here were just excellent. So clear, so pointed, so philosophical. We had:
▪️ god-tier critiques of liberal individualism and the “self” we’ve inherited from different European Enlightenment philosophers (I could listen to arguments that the liberal subject is gendered male all day long)
▪️ Freud and Lacan on the death drive and unconscious judgments that we don’t even realize we’re making about self-defense 
▪️ Foucault and Fanon on the structures of power that permanently Other certain groups and exclude them from the in-group being defended

And the book had an actual solution! (you know how rare that is in philosophy? 😆) And it was linked to some of my favourite Butler-ideas: their stuff on grievability and equality.

Fake dating + secret pining? Always slaps.

There were some things about the book that were god-tier:
❤️ I love how intimately and emotionally this author writes MM relationships
❤️ The dialogue in here was genuinely funny
❤️ This audiobook was everything. It was a whole one-man show. I kept looking up if this narrator moonlights as a Peppa Pig voice actor because that Welsh coworker voice? Mr. Rabbit. And that pirate joke voice? Tell me that wasn’t Danny Dog’s absentee father, Captain Dog 😆

It was fade to black, which I personally don’t mind. And it was single POV, which can go either way for me.

But it ended up being the single POV that knocked it down to a four. It was going along fine until, kinda abruptly, the non-POV MC had a bunch of character arc things going on at the end? And I just felt disconnected from it in a way that made the ending drag.

Welcome to my TED talk: Minor Detail is an existential philosophy masterpiece. 

This dual timeline book set in occupied Palestine gave me ANXIETY, in the existential sense. I swear this was a The Stranger by Camus retelling—but better. For the following reasons:

First, because the two timelines perfectly described what existential angst is, and what it isn’t. It’s not fear of your own death (a common misconception), existential angst is fear of your own freedom in a world that is Absurd (existentially). And the MC of one timeline had one, the MC of the other timeline had the other.

With this added bit of mind F-ery: the MC who feared their own death but didn’t have existential angst GAVE THE READER EXISTENTIAL ANGST—the world was so Absurd and their choices/freedom so anxiety-inducing that that section read like horror.

Second, the absurdity of the world leapt off the page in a way that existential texts typically struggle with. Existentialism is a child of the way WWI shattered our faith in the Enlightenment project. But despite this foundation, existential novels aren’t typically set in wars or occupations, to their detriment. Not so with this book—the absurdity of its occupied Palestine setting (in 1949 and present day) was perfectly portrayed.

And third, my favourite part, existentialism has an Achilles heel. Or, I should say “had”—because if you’d have asked me before, I would’ve said existentialism is so rooted in Enlightenment philosophy (even though it reacts against it) that it never escapes liberal individualism. Yet now, I think Minor Detail does escape liberal individualism—maybe it was never rooted there in the first place. Because, while a philosopher/writer like Camus’s characters are so individualistic they feel like they have personality disorders, Shibli’s characters feel so human that she must be tapping into a richer ontology of humanity.

The book was excellent, completely recommend. The symbolism alone was so powerful I’ll never smell gasoline or hear thunder the same way again.

A 544 page Risdaverse book? Idk guys.

It was originally written as a serial and… I felt that.

The premise started out so fun. Our human lady wanted a cat, but she got an exiled cat-alien royal instead. Our cat-alien wanted to hide out at a resort with a bevy of servants, but he woke up on Risda and our heroine was definitely not interested in doing what he said. It was all really funny.

But then…
▪️ our hero’s personality wasn’t the most consistent;
▪️ our heroine had no character arc in sight (though her manipulative + chatty personality was fun);
▪️ the romance plot was more ‘we’re married and hot, might as well bang’ than on-page falling in love-y; and
▪️ Risda III is boring. It’s what makes all the novellas in this series comfy as heck, but it made this book feel loonnng.

Ruby Dixon writes campy alien romances like no other. The chapters, taken individually, were so fun. But the overall story is where I struggled. Maybe I should have read this as a serial as the chapters were being released last year.

This little novella was fiiine.

It had good bones. Fated mates with an underwater alien guy; some kind of freaky, primal ‘hunting her’ in a labyrinth ceremonial mating thing; and a much-braver-than-me heroine.

It was just too short to really hook me in (62 pages) and what I really want is a full length version of this story… One of the other human ladies who was hunted in the labyrinth, in the next book perhaps?

These books are so fun. The clueless virgin in this one was of the 'sexy Daddy who wanted to be topped by his dominant lady boss' variety--loved it. The only thing that kept this from being a five star read was that a dangerous mission placed the MCs in two different locations for a bit—which, as much as that makes sense (the non-warrior human lady doesn’t need to be on the mission, let’s be real), tends to pause the romance plot in a way that feels putdownable.

Clueless virgin alien with sexy Dr. Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds vibes. So smart, but so dumb. This book was very entertaining. The only thing that kept it from being a five star read was that the bad guy was a bit too real—I was too worried at times to relax into the silly.

The last book in the series and now I’m all caught up 🥲 (I’m also caught up on the spin-off, which I chaotically read first because the spin-off covers are literally the prettiest alien romance covers I’ve ever seen).

This book just nailed it—
✨ the meet-disaster was meet-disaster-ing
✨ our human heroine had a great backstory and her character arc was everything
✨ our starchy diplomat alien hero was the sweetest clueless virgin yet
✨ so much horny pining
✨ the overarching plot of the series had a satisfying conclusion

This was just lovely and I highly recommend the series!

Am I a bad person if I say that one of my favourite alien romance tropes is when the bad guys imprison the alien hero and then kidnap a bunch of human ladies because they want to find his fated mate for nefarious reasons?

Nothing says romance like meeting under duress 😅 Especially when there’s a huge amount of language barrier and escape-adventure-danger, my favourite.

You could argue that, even though this is book 5 of 6 in the main series, you could start with this one (if you like being a series chaos queen). This story was an important node in the overarching series, as well as its connection to the spin-off. It had a lot of plot stuff to pull off, and I was pretty impressed!

It was just shy of a perfect read because the heroine did something dumb at one point, and not in a fun way. But overall, I really enjoyed it 💙

This wasn’t a “oh, good book” four stars—it was more like a “through what sorcery is this book getting four stars from me??” four stars.

Because it had some potent (but probably idiosyncratic) pet peeves of mine. It had:
✨ low stakes “enemies” between feuding families
✨ some ‘I love them too much to be with them’ non-drama, and
✨ that couple that is always my least favourite in the series, the antagonistic ‘Anthony Bridgerton and Kate’ couple. Just on a personal level, you couldn’t pay me to go on a double date with a couple this emotionally unintelligent—borderline belligerent—so like… why am I reading their book, you know? 😂

So where’s my one/two star rant review? Even one of these pet peeves would be a DNFable offense.

One part of it is just this author and how much on-page falling in love she writes into her books. The sheer number of scenes where these two interact was almost gratuitous. Flirty-flirty heart eyes, hand touches, and conversations galore. It’s like drugs to me.

And the other part of it was how the story took all my pet peeves and… dealt with them? problematized them?

Lame-o “enemies” because your families are feuding is dumb—and that was the point. “I love you too much to be with you” is such a cop-out—again, the point. And grumpy grump couples need their hearts to grow a few sizes before they can really be together—thank you, lovely character arcs in here.

So yeah, somehow I ended up really enjoying this?