Read this for book club. It was not for me. There is a real possibility that I would have enjoyed it more if I weren't coming to the series for the first time so late. While there is enough information to get by without reading previous books, the impact of everything that happens would have been greater if I had any emotional connection whatsoever to the characters, and I didn't get that here. However, there is a strong current of "all cops are heroes and they'd be able to do their job better without those pesky mandates" (body cams? vaccines?) that runs counter to basically everything I believe in, so... maybe not.

I read this for my 2024 project to read at least 12 banned/challenged books, focusing on the most recent ALA top 10.

Is this a very good book? For my money, no. I'm joining an apparently very small number of people in saying that it's in need of perspective and polish. A lot of other 1- and 2-star reviews go into more detail about this than I care to do, so I encourage you to sort by rating and seek those out if you're curious.

But should this book be banned? Of course not.

(Are a lot of the glowing reviews responding more in opposition to the bans than in repsonse to the actual quality of the book? Perhaps.)

Surely there are more incisive and thoughtful (and less self-serving) resources for teens to learn about queerness, racism, and consent.

A bit loose in terms of plot, but impeccable vibes in the way of David Lynch meets Dazed and Confused. Glad that I finally read this after seeing it floating around for years.

DNFing for now because I haven’t touched it in months, and seeing it on my very single self’s bedside table every night isn’t doing my mental health any big favors.

I want to be Mary Oliver when I grow up.

(Sincere thanks to my local public library for their indulgent renewal policies.)

Spoiler

House of Leaves on easy mode.

If I have a complaint, it’s that it feels a little too cinematic for my tastes at times, like it was written to be a movie (and I mean, from what I’ve heard about the Netflix optioning before the book contract, I’m sure a lot of it WAS written to be a movie). But it’s fun and spooky, and sometimes that’s all I want!

This is such a difficult book to rate, largely because I feel a bit guilty for not loving it. The prose and dialogue are excellent, the setting is interesting and immersive, and a couple of the characters (Chona and Dodo) won my heart. There’s also a central “everything is connected to everything else” motif that’s quite impressive; I imagine the outline for this book was just one of those conspiracy theory/criminal profiling boards with pins and bits of string going everywhere. But I spent a lot of time wishing that we could get to the point of a chapter already so I could learn the little twist of how so-and-so knows what’s-his-name and get back to the plot threads and characters I cared about. By the end, there were so many moving pieces working toward a very tidy ending that I felt like I was reading a Rube Goldberg machine instead of a novel. There were also a couple of literary pet peeves of mine in play that knocked a star off. But I know this book is beloved to many, so ymmv.

This is an interesting look back at the 2000s, but I feel like Ditum at times engages in the same tabloid tone that she is criticizing, especially with Amy Winehouse and Chyna, which left a bad taste in my mouth.

Edit 07/25/24: Oh, and apparently she's a TERF, so yeah, don't read this book.

This book did not work for me. As another reviewer noted, it reads like self-insert fanfiction about the AIDS crisis. (Sorry to all of the well-written fanfic I’ve read. I don’t mean you!)

The narrator manages to meet every famous gay person in New York, stumbling into prominence as an activist in the process and succeeding at everything because he’s so “naturally likable” and because everyone wants to sleep with him.

There are copious footnotes that at first I thought were going to be relevant to the plot. The book is written as a fictional memoir, after all; maybe there would be an interesting framing device? Maybe some tension between the narrator and the character editing his manuscript? But no. The footnotes mostly seem to serve the purpose of preventing the reader from having to Google anything, and they come across as achingly pedantic.

And I disliked the writing. The prose is flat, plot points frequently wrap up too quickly or just go nowhere, and the ending doesn’t wrap up anything at all. It felt like a disservice to what little characterization is present and to the readers investing 200+ pages of time into reading the book.

I can understand the urge to write about this period of history and to educate people about it through fiction, but this just isn’t it. Disappointing.

*”Kiss the Go-Goat” plays softly in the background*

I took ages to finish this book because the prose is a bit wooden and the pacing is weird. However, despite this, and despite it being unfortunately of its time in some ways, it’s also unintentionally hilarious, and I can’t say I disliked it. Came for the tawdry Satanism plot, stayed for the queer-coding and the quest to find an ancient penis. Charming trash.