coolfoolmoon's Reviews (357)

Stone Butch Blues

Leslie Feinberg

3.25

challenging reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

"Deep down, my insides seethed. I knew I was stone, too. It was a home alarm system that didn't seem to have an on-off switch. Once installed, the sirens went off and the gates shut, even if the intruder was loving." FUCK!!!

The book reads like it was a second draft that got published without any further editing. If there even was an editor at all. My edition had many typos and punctuation errors. Minor, but I still noticed them.

One strength the book has though is, in Jess' earlier years there's so much happening, so much to remember and to say, but then as Jess gets older life literally passes by. There's one sentence in the in between of being in her/his late 20s and approaching early/mid 30s that only says something like "years passed". Now I'm not old enough to know if that's how life feels as you age, but from what I know going from childhood to teen years to now young adulthood, I think that's an amazing detail, even if it wasn't intentional.

Content Warnings

So Far So Good

Ursula K. Le Guin

4.25

mysterious reflective relaxing fast-paced

Are all these poems hits? No. Do they specifically appeal to me? My writing style? What I love to see? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. I use the track progress feature on here to note which poems I like best, and I ended up just marking page after page after page. Even though this was her last published work, it makes me very curious to read the rest of her novels and poetry; to see how her style developed and grew over the years, then revisit this collection.

Content Warnings

A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter

Nikki Giovanni

3.5

emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

I didn't expect to see Jay Z referenced in here at all. Lovely. The poems, I mean.

Content Warnings

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros

4.25

emotional inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

In the introduction she mentions how she wanted to be experimental, wanted to write beyond the defining restrictions of one specific set genre, and she did it. I read it first thinking it was an autobiography, then a poetry collection, then an anthology, the simple coming of age story of a girl observing her neighborhood. But it was all of the above. Sandra. Miss Cisneros. You struck gold.

Content Warnings

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie

3.25

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I started and finished this book in 6 hours. Now why did it take us like 2 weeks to read it in high school? That's how you know high school is an evil place! Insufferable institution!

Great book, though. I'm glad I reread it.

But I had to take away points for use of the n word. Like damn even if it's not from our main character, it's very disappointing the author wrote that in.

Content Warnings

Queer Magic: LGBT+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World

Tomás Prower

3.0

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

I picked the book up because I saw queer and magic on the title, I didn't know it was actually gonna talk about magic. I thought it was just gonna be myths and legends and some history. Pretty cool.

Content Warnings

She Just Wants to Forget

r.h. Sin

1.0

lighthearted fast-paced

I don't even wanna review this. I didn't even wanna read it. This was kinda more of a hate read.

For context, I looked up the author because I noticed this was part of a series (I wanted to make sure it could be read out of order) and I read a New Yorker article where he basically admits he's a clout chaser. He wants attention and fame and he'll do what he can to get it. That's exactly what this "poetry" collection feels like. Something the hoteps would gobble up. Something very shallow, very this is why we make fun of Instagram poets. The whole book is generic, vague, and lacks any real substance. (Which is ironic, because in the article he mentions how people don't discuss anything of substance anymore. He was talking about social media's affect on people but. Sir. You're an Instagram poet. On purpose. You chose this life. The call is coming from inside the house.) I think reading that article may have tainted my opinion beforehand, but I already knew as soon as I left the library and saw that this collection for Black women was written by a Black man that I'd be in for some bullshit.

(Actually, it's not even specifically for Black women. There isn't anything in here that is, there's no better way to say it, racially specific. Again, very generic.)

There's a lot of bad poetry out there for sure, but the thing that makes that poetry good regardless is that it someone gave an earnest effort to express their thoughts or feelings. This collection honestly lacks heart that's just naturally in poetry.

It reads like a self help book that doesn't really give advice? But also, it seems like it's supposed to be a book for women who've been hurt by men, but then it turns into advice to men about how to treat their woman so they don't lose them? Pick one.

I did give it an extra .25 for the thought that even just one Black girl out there would read this and feel comforted or motivated but. Yeah. That's it.

It's also written in a way that's probably supposed to be read one story/poem at a time, but if you're reading it the way I did you notice how much he repeats things. Not just concepts, sometimes even whole sentences. Maybe it was made to be read one page per night but even then I can imagine any other reader also noticing how repetitive it can be.

Content Warnings

Native Son

Richard Wright

1.75

challenging dark informative tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Dear StoryGraph, I implore you, please add a trigger tag specifically for misogynoir, because it's disgusting how much of it is in this book.

The choice to open the book with Bigger killing a rat, then terrorizing his sister to the point where she faints and he laughs about it is mild foreshadowing of what's to come. Also, unrelated to the opening scene, there's something poetic about everything black men fear about being caught doing with a white woman, they do to Black women. Justice4Bessie!

If you're planning on reading this, brace yourself. In my edition, there was an excerpt where Wright tells the readers of a book club that the first draft of this book was 576 pages. Which actually makes me like this book less, because it could've easily been 200 pages shorter and been a tighter, sharper, better story. It was a drag to get through reading. In the third section of the book alone, one character monologues for 23 pages with no breaks. After a certain point you simply have to start skimming. But, I promise, you're not missing much.

I gave this rating an extra .25 for Jan and Max. It sucks that the characters I like most were the not-like-the-others whites!

Content Warnings

Best American Poetry 2018

David Lehman, Dana Gioia

3.25

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

Very hard to rate a poetry collection. But I got what I was looking for: in that, I hadn't read poetry outside of school when I was a kid and I wanted to read some. And I loved most of the poems and their explanations in the back of the book. I marked 30 of them to revisit. Very lovely. Will read more.

Content Warnings

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison

3.5

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

At first, I didn't get it. Then, I was starting to get it. Then, by the end, I thought I didn't get it. But apparently I got it the whole time, it's just that the time this book was written for is very different from the time of today. Things have changed a lot, but in many ways after reading this they haven't changed at all. I don't think I liked this book very much, but in some ways I did. I like Morrison's writing style and use of language. Something about it felt very familiar, very eerie, which made it unknown and familiar again. The things she wanted to say, to me, with the hindsight of 52 years in my 22 year old life, have been said again and again and I found myself asking "What was the point?" Which is never a good thing to have to ask. Not every book needs a lesson or a moral or a point. I know what the point was, I've seen it since I was as young as 3 years old, when my parents taught me black was beautiful and thus I never wished to be white, and I understood what race was, meant, and symbolized before I could write my own name down with a steady hand. I realize that the point was made 52 years ago when it was published, or 42 years ago, having been seen with the fresh eyes of a new decade, or even 32 years ago with the fresh eyes of a new generation. By the time I was born the book was probably just a memory of the shadow of an era. So now, personally, I don't like this book, but I do. I respect it. I'm sure had I been 22 when it was published in 1970 I would've loved this book. But again, things have changed and also things haven't. I see that it was important for the time, and it still kind of is, but now reading it I felt the sour feeling in my stomach I do reading and watching media from the decades that have come between then and now: it just felt like black trauma. Too much of it. I'm just tired. Been tired of it since before I was a teenager. Good book. Don't know if I would recommend it, but I certainly will reread.

Content Warnings

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