jessicaxmaria's Reviews (1.04k)

I continue to enjoy POWERS, but this one fell a bit flat for me. Only in comparison to the rest -- it's still one of my favorite graphic novel series I've read so far...

Really enjoyed this one, but the lettering and typos sometimes took me out of the story. Really liked the Queen Noir stuff and getting to the bottom of the mystery.

I'll start with the good news first: it's a solid premise with some VERY interesting details. This story about an adopted man finding his birth-mother, and then trying to piece together his father's life is highly intriguing. Not just because he comes to the conclusion that his father very well could be the Zodiac serial killer, but the story in his hands is great - a proven predator, a kidnapping, under-age marriage, a baby left in an apartment building, various arrests, the escalating mood of fear of San Francisco in the late '60s -- this guy's got STORY! And the evidence towards proving his dad was a serial killer is interesting and solid though it is all circumstantial, so he has a case but it's not definitive.

The bad news? With this GREAT story premise and these interesting details, the book really falters because it's written as though it's a novel. As someone who went to school for journalism, reading this became a cringe-ing experience when he would, for example, write dialogue of a conversation that happened in the early '60s (before he was born) between his dead father he never knew and someone else he's never met. When he writes Zodiac murders as though his dad was there though there's no record proving so. He could have been there; why not just say that? But writing sentences about how his dad, named Van, saw a girl enter a library and then killed her after she left is so annoying and only used for added melodrama. The facts are chilling in and of themselves, no need to embellish. Quite disappointing and distracting as it became painful to finish.

Hoping, though, that the DNA test can come through at some point - I do hope Stewart's theory is proven correct. What a news story that would be.

I bought Cutting Teeth because I went to a book reading and the author read a passage that made the whole room laugh out loud. I'd never heard of Julia Fierro before that night, but now I know I'll be buying every future novel she publishes.

A novel about several Brooklyn-living parents who head to a beach house in Long Island with their young children for a long weekend. The story revolves around the dynamics between the playgroup friends and those between parents and their children. I do not have children, but I'm glad the writing isn't flowery and cheesy regarding them. I imagine parenthood to be difficult, and I liked getting into the heads of these characters. They're not likable; but maybe I wouldn't be likable either if you could all read my thoughts. Especially if I had to devote part of my life to raising children! These characters in their chapters feel stripped and naked to the reader, but most of them understand that their thoughts are for themselves and they posture to the others as best they can. That's a real person's brain, right?

And they weren't all unlikable. Fierro builds these characters with good back stories and though we're only with them for a weekend, I came to know them and their motivations. I was happy and laughed, and I was sad and cried a bit. Perhaps no more than in Leigh's and Tenzin's observations of Chase. I could go on about each character and how I understood their plight - maybe not by relating but by empathy - but that would take too much time. I especially liked the ending which had my mind racing at a mile a minute, and made me want to re-read the book to build on certain theories I believed in. I finished this book last night, but I'm still wondering where those characters are now.

Highly recommend. Great beach reading for those looking for summer books!

More interesting than the previous two, and funny, but such shallow renditions of shallow people save Patrick I suppose.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of writers' experiences living, loving, and leaving New York. Most relatable for the likes of me in terms of living here now (going on eight years), and because they are all essays in tribute to one of my favorite essays of all time, Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That." All of these writers have lived different lives and at different times -- there's a range of ages, a range of 'New Yorks,' but every New York is the same. Perhaps I wasn't buying heroin or waving goodbye to New York as I flew to New Zealand, but there are similar threads through each essay, and it mainly has to do with that character of this city; that emotional relationship you've found yourself in with a location that lives and breathes just like that lover that loved you and dumped you and reclaimed you and sometimes you just left without looking back. Or you embraced it all the more. Almost how similar points of view can produce such different reactions.

In the past few years I've noticed a bit of a trend with authors who set their novels in a time period where cell phones, computers, the internet, and most especially social media does not exist. I understand that perhaps it's difficult to write in a certain serious way when these technologies may seem shallow - or, maybe, difficult to be dramatic (miscommunication, a missed message, etc.). But there's still drama in this technology-laden world we live in, and I'm glad Emily Gould wrote a novel that reads like today. Like it happened to three women I could know and live in the same world that I do in 2014. And for how well I know this world and with the feel I have for these characters, I still didn't know what would happen next and what decisions they would make. The book really is about characters making decisions, and as an incredibly indecisive person who freaks out about money, I turned each page with a little bit of anxiety on what Bev, Amy, and Sally would do next. This was a good thing, and I liked the book a great deal.

I'm not sure why I got all misty-eyed at the end, but maybe it's because I remember intense fights with friends. There are those ones that can be overcome, and it's one of the best feelings to feel reunited. And it's the worst when you can't. I've cried far more tears for a break of friendship than a romantic relationship; I think Bev and Amy are similar.

Definitely not a novel for everyone; it's not even a very enjoyable novel. There's no joy, but what a voice. In the first pages the seething and angry attitude of Nora made me smile in its vicious rendering. The story of a woman who considers herself wholly unconsidered by most people, the titular woman upstairs who lives life on the blurry edges of everyone else's, she who is single, nearing middle age (though she considers 37 to be middle age which is weird?) and lives alone as an elementary teacher. People ascribe to her boring sentiments like being kind and always doing the right thing and never going against the grain. But her inner self is all, but I'm an artist!

When she meets the mother of one of her young students, a working artist named Sirena, she begins to live a different life, at least inwardly. Still playing up her woman upstairs facade, and the journey is interesting even if you don't like Nora. She's not likable, but I felt for her at times.

It's also a novel in which not that much actually happens despite all the allusions that things will throughout - when we get to those mentioned events they are rather small. And perhaps that's the point: to Nora, these are the most intense moments of her life, and to us, well, we always want bigger, more dramatic events in our fiction. I did enjoy that bit of realistic injection into the fiction; but I don't think many people will like the novel. I did, and I'm still thinking of that creepy Nora voice every now and again in my own head weeks after finishing...

Reading about Cheryl Strayed's tumultuous journey on the Pacific Crest Trail was also a journey for me as a reader. Wild made me laugh out loud (when she first tries to hoist her backpack on), cry (several times, usually regarding her reflections on her mother), look away in horror (the horse), and squeam in anguish and anxiety (so many parts). Strayed's a wonderful writer, I often read passages out loud to my husband if we were in the same room. She's great at setting a scene; though sometimes the depressing moments weigh heavily (as they should, I think). I enjoyed her tales of camraderie on the trail and understood all too well her fears, especially as a woman (and there's a scene that made my hair stand on end, I was so nervous). She's insightful and self-reflective in a way that I liked a lot, it's realistic and humble and exposed--it's not always pretty, but she makes no apologies. Loved the ending, too. I would recommend this book to everyone.