As a tween, I was fascinated by problem novels--books about teen girls dealing with issues like drug addiction, mental illness, abuse, unwanted pregnancy--and I think that Jodi Picoult novels fill the same vesitigial niche in my adult brain. Luckily, she generally has much better politics and sounder research backing her up than those books I read way back when. But like those books, I know that when I need a compelling read that will get me out of a slump, Jodi Picoult will do the trick.

There's a lot I could say about this book, but mostly what I'm left thinking about after finishing is how tragic it is that, published in 2018, this book is already outdated, and that since Roe v. Wade was overturned it is even harder for pregnant people to obtain safe and legal abortions, when it was already such an intentionally arduous process in many places.

Okay, but how am I supposed to live with that ending until Volume 2 is released?

A harrowing and beautiful book that stuns me with its ambition and its ability to live up to it.

Edit 06.03.2024: Honestly very emotional that I get to say that I just reread this in preparation to pick up a library copy of Volume 2! Today! It's real!

I was so excited to read this book, but sadly, it’s a great concept executed poorly. It suffers a lot from the author’s lack of research, lack of journalistic ability, and insistence on being thoroughly up her own ass for the entire book. She misses opportunity after opportunity to learn anything more than an “everyone is welcome” sound bite from bar owners and patrons alike, and she offers no substantive analysis about lesbian spaces, but she does include countless anecdotes about her general incompetence at everything from riding a scooter to buying weed gummies without telling the dispensary clerk that she’s planning to transport them over state lines. God, I wish that someone else had written this.

Edit: After my roommate shouted at me, I have amended my rating to a meaner but more accurate 1 star.

I really enjoyed The Maid when I read it a couple of years ago and was excited when I heard that it was getting a sequel, but I was sadly disappointed by The Mystery Guest. There's a juvenile quality to it, like it's an adult novel written on a middle grade reading level, which I don't remember being the case with The Maid and which I think reads strangely. The characters feel flat, despite the fact that half of the book is dedicated to backstory that fleshes out the protagonist and the murder victim. And I find the "cops are just like maids if you think about it" foreshadowing(?) deeply off-putting. Overall not great.

Filterworld for me feels like a presentation of thoughts similar to ones I've already had, with the benefit of gathering them all together and providing anecdotes and data I didn't have. Sometimes distillation is as valuable as revelation, and I feel that this is a valuable read. It helped me make a small jump from thinking about how shallow and fragmented culture feels to reflecting on the passivity with which I consume that fragmented culture and what options there are for breaking free. (Mostly by being intentional about what we consume and how and by leaning into human curation.)

After reading Stolen Focus last year, I felt some doomerism about social media. That doomerism isn't entirely gone, but Filterworld made me feel like perhaps I can at least take some control of how I interact with it. It's making me want to take a 3-month algorithm detox and see what happens.

I love this book. I love Harrow. I love how Tamsyn Muir trusts the reader to be smart enough to put things together when dropped into new situations with unreliable narration, alternate versions of past events, and timeline fuckery. I love the memes (and how their appearance supports my theories about the TLT universe that are currently being proven correct by Nona the Ninth, which I'm reading now). I love the chapter with a wry nod to coffee shop AU fanfic that at least one review I read seems to have profoundly misunderstood the purpose of, revealing a not-very-astute reading and perhaps a sense of humor deficiency.

I don't know what to say. This series has immediately become one of my favorites I've ever read, and I know that I'm going to be devoting a lot of mental space to this universe for a long time. I only read the first book a handful of weeks ago, and already the characters are indelibly etched on my heart. Even the bitchy ones. (Especially the bitchy ones.) I know that this isn't for everyone, and I can point out the reasons why it's not for everyone--problematic queers, big words, the necessity for patience and tolerance for ambiguity, etc etc etc--but this is my review, and thus all you're going to get here is the assertion that this book is a fucking masterpiece.

Edit 02/28/2023: Just finished listening to the audio and must say, this book absolutely is better on a reread. Which is saying something, because I loved it the first time I read it, too. Kind of fitting that a book series all about looking back at a 10,000-year-old tragedy almost seems to be meant to be regarded in retrospect.

Edit 06/14/2024: I don’t know how it’s possible, but for parts of my third read I swear I felt like I understood less than I did on my first, and then I felt like I was understanding more than I ever have. What a wondrous and insane thing HtN is. Will stan and evangelize forever.

Honestly, this book feels like one big “fuck you” to everyone who’s like, “I hate Paul Tremblay books, they’re so pretentious and masturbatory and never have real endings, why yes I do read everything that he publishes for some reason,” and I support that.

This is fine, I guess? I like the concept, but overall everything feels a bit undercooked. The book itself is cute, though!

Despite the fact that I read constantly, I often feel insecure about not having read a lot of big-name popular authors that I see all the time. So I made a list of new-to-me authors to read before the end of the year, and I decided to give Alex Michaelides a try.

And I thought that The Silent Patient was resoundingly not bad! Pretty fun! Just the right blend of trashy and smart! I can join people back in 2019 in saying that I enjoyed it!

The audio edition I listened to included an author interview in which he talks about his influences being more Golden Age mysteries than contemporary thrillers, and I think that shows. This isn’t high-octane writing, but I relished the smoldering suspense and the reveal that’s like knocking the top layer of ash off a dying fire to reveal the blazing embers underneath.

Read this if you want to gasp as you voyeuristically peep in on the problems of people more glamorous and fucked up than you, but feel good about it because you’re also thinking about Greek tragedies the whole time.

PS I did not guess the twist correctly.

I read The Deep for two reasons.

First, the ocean is terrifying, and I'm open to pretty much any book that explores just how terrifying it is.

Second, the kinda smug recommendations. They're exemplified by a conversation I had IRL with a man--I'm sorry, but it's always men recommending Nick Cutter--I had just met who asked me what kinds of books I like to read. I said horror, and he wanted to know which authors I enjoy. When I got to Paul Tremblay, he made a face and said, "Ugh, his books are so boring, have you read Nick Cutter?"

I had not, but I enjoy both being informed and reading fucked-up books, so eventually (now) I got around to reading some Nick Cutter, the anti-Paul Tremblay, I guess.

And guys, I'm sorry, but this just doesn't do much for me. I don't like the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach to horror. I find it tedious and unscary. It's profoundly gross, sure, but gross-outs aren't really why I read horror. Not to be all "I read Playboy for the articles" about it, but I read horror for the ideas, and I usually need the gore to serve the ideas rather than the other way round. If I want to just be grossed out and sad, I'll browse r/noahgettheboat or something.

There are parts of this book that work for me, but they all worked better elsewhere first: The Thing, Event Horizon, IT (and honestly, Stephen King in general), The Cipher. I've watched or read all of those, so I don't feel like I got anything very unique from reading The Deep (except that they were under the sea this time).

And there's just this mean-spirited immaturity to the writing that annoys me. This is on display most vividly in the unrelentingly fatphobic descriptions of the protagonist's mother, in which her size is obviously being used as visual shorthand for her moral turpitude, an extra push to make sure the reader hates her and thinks she's gross when I don't know, the fact that she's a sadistic pedophile makes her pretty damn hateful and gross?

There are some other things I could get myself worked into a good rant about, but I won't. I will pause to acknowledge that I see why a certain kind of reader who is not me likes this. And I will acknowledge that I truly was taken by the concept, and that I wish there were a whole other book about the 'Gets, because hoo boy was that concept wasted here.

While The Deep was my first book by Nick Cutter, it wasn't my first time reading this author: I had already read The Saturday Night Ghost Club, which he published as Craig Davidson, and I really enjoyed that book. So I know that he has good writing in him, and I suspect that the Nick Cutter pseudonym is a bit of a shtick, an outlet for pulpy horror that I imagine makes way more money than that introspective, boring nonsense.

I might read The Troop at some point, because I can already feel someone gearing up to say, "Well, The Deep isn't that great, but have you read The Troop? You gotta read The Troop! It's so fucked up! The tapeworms! The turtle!!" And I'll heave a weary sigh and read about the tapeworms and the turtle. But not today, friends. Not today.