justinlife's Reviews (916)

I might go back and change this rating. This will be one that I'm sure I'll oscillate on. did I find it just ok or did I like it? I don't know. It's somewhere in the middle.

I did learn after reading this that personal essays without a common thread aren't for me. I've tried with David Sedaris and now Samantha Irby and I don't think I like the genre.

Samantha Irby's voice is fun and the reader can tell that blogging is her primary mode of writing. I'm not always convinced that it translates well into the written book. It felt like reading an intimate blog of a friend who shares way too much. Being this is my first exposure with Ms. Irby, I feel like maybe this wasn't the best start. I felt like there pieces to her story that were already told that I wanted to know about, such as how she ended up in Michigan and married. She brushes over it, which leads me to believe that she's written about it before. I did find her relatable, if hyperbolic, which can be fun.

There are moments in this collection that are laugh out loud funny. There are moments that I read aloud to my partner and he laughed as well. I appreciated that she's my age and the references were familiar. Her prose is conversational, like a friend who's on the phone and you're having a conversation. I enjoyed how she told her stories. The relationship advice one and the one on publishing were the highlights to me.

This is a decent "city people finding love in a week in a small town" romance novel. It's fine. I enjoyed the overall feel of it and the authors do capture the hell that is TN in August, which kudos. The characters fall head over heels in a week and that's a choice. Both characters are fun and the authors have a lot fun with the dumb names.

This is the best book I’ve read on the Tarot. I love the decks and have a few but there’s always a part of them that felt unsolvable and unreachable. Cynova’s approach is straightforward as she dissects each card and gets you to hear her stories about the cards. These descriptions and the way the book is organized helped me place cards and come to an understanding. 

If you get this book, get a deck too if you don’t have one already. The Tarot can be a useful tool and this book shows ways to tell the story of the reading but also how to be a professional and how to manage your career as a reader. I haven’t read anything like it. 

I highly recommend this one.

This is a hard book to describe but let’s go! 

Paul is a twenty something shapeshifter who changes gender when he feels like it. As one would expect from someone at that age, he hooks up a lot. Not love making. Sex. Filthy, raunchy sex. With gay men. With lesbians. With people. Sometimes there’s sex with partners too. The book isn’t all sex, but when it’s written, it feels dangerous, maybe even primal, but not really arousing. 

The story follows Paul as he glides through life in Iowa, Michigan, Provincetown, and San Francisco. He’s everything someone in their early 20s is- full of ego, self doubt, hormones, and living recklessly. What I found interesting is what Paul experiences as a man and as a woman and what he allows himself to experience in both genders. 

At times it’s hard to read b/c the choices he makes. I mean, he is in his early 20s so we know they aren’t all great choices. Overall though, this novel is a lot of fun. It’s great to see gender and sexuality played with so effectively. If you’re a fan of queer theory, literature, and music references, there’s a feast to be had.

This book meets at the intersection of memoir and history. It’s one person taking a dive in the familiar waters of the places he’s known but also adding context by exploring the history of the places as well. We see gay history through bar history. We see history take shape and form an environment- a place we can visualize. As gay and queer culture become mainstream, Lin reminds us of what we’ve lost in doing so. 

This was a fun read about a part of gay culture that gets mythologized. Lin explores that mythology, their past importance, and his current relationship with gay bars. They are both dangerous and welcoming, filthy and communal, home and a vacation. 

By the end of the book we are left with a lot to think about. What is the queer community? What has gay capitalism done to it? In striving for acceptance, what happens for those of us don’t want acceptance? What does it mean to be a community? None of these have easy answers, if there are answers at all. 

It could also just be a book by an aging queer reminiscing about time gone by. What I appreciated about this book is that when history gets told, the context around it gets forgotten and stale. Lin brings the context, the smells, and the atmosphere. It’s harder to remember that and I’m glad that it’s recorded. 

This one is hard to rate. There’s so much to it that I liked and so much skill in crafting this, but I really, really didn’t like the narrator.

The book has everything- unreliable narrator, magical realism, fourth wall breaking, culture commentary and much more. We follow the author of a book Hell of a Book on a book tour around the country while every other chapter we get a story of a young Black kid. The author deals with his own trauma while constantly being seen as a voice to his people’s collective and constant trauma. 

There’s a lot to chew on here. Is he disconnecting to process trauma? Is the child him/the character of his book/something else? What’s real and what’s not? All can be fun to play with and Mott is successful in his delivery. 

My issue was by the end of the book, the person I was rooting for just… sigh… never got where I wanted him to go. It’s intentional I’m sure, but having an unreliable and somewhat mean person to follow throughout the book got irritating. That probably says more about me though.

This book was a lot of fun. Slow to start, but all spy adventures start with a stakeout right? 

Vera Kelly is a CIA operative working in Buenos Aires searching for KGB connections while the country experiences a coup. She uses her intelligence, wit, and sexuality to survive.

This was a refreshing addition to the spy genre. I love seeing LGBTQ representation where it’s just a part of Theo they are. Overall, one of my favorites this year. 

This was a nice read. Nothing really stressful or tense, but just a fun trip to the aquarium. The author observes the octopuses in captivity at the Boston Aquarium and other aquariums as well as going to the open sea . She learns to scuba and creates bonds with the people she meets along the way.

It’s somewhat relaxing and calming. Her journey in animal science is a fun one and it felt quiet. I learned more about the octopus species than I did before and it opened my eyes to how much we don’t know about the ocean and her creatures. If one reads this, I recommend doing a chapter at a time and treating it as a podcast. It felt like one.

The book is 100x better than My Octopus Teacher. While the documentary is stunning in the videography, the audience doesn’t learn as much about the world as we would in this book.

If you’ve been reading a lot of serious reads or a lot of tense books, this would be a nice palate cleanser. 

What an interesting, short read. This book packs a punch while adding to the catalogue of "old man thinking about his past" genre. At times, it reminded me of Memories of my Melancholy Whores in that we have an older first person narrator reliving parts of his past. The narrator, Tony, remembers things a way and an event happens that challenges those views of who he was, how he was, and what he did.

I did not see the ending coming and it left my mouth agape. It made me rethink about the characters we were introduced in a new light. When new information arises, how we see the past and the people change.

It was overall an easy read but the narrator does wax philosophic on living, life, and memory and that leads the reader into a false sense of "oh this is a nice read." And then he catches you. Well done, sir

The final chapter of the Xenogenesis series does not disappoint. Butler ends the series with the reader wanting more. She effortlessly combines alien invasion and post apocalyptic genres in a way that’s smooth as silk. At the end of the series a full century has gone by and we want more. I’m more curious about her world and I want more stories in it. 

This book is a departure from the other two as it’s told in first person narration by an ooloi construct- the ooloi are considered a third gender and critical to the mating process. It isn’t male nor female but an other. It goes by it as the pronoun. The narrator is the first hybrid ooloi and we the reader get to spend quality time as with it as finds mates, discovers it’s abilities and uses them to survive a world that doesn’t want it. 

There’s lots to digest in the series as a whole and while this book is amazing, it’s the weaker of the three. It ends abruptly and toward the end of the book, it felt like the plot was moving way faster than the story. Particularly with Its Sibling, Aor.

I want to know more about the Mars colony. How are the humans doing w/their second chance. I want stories of the hybrid species centuries from now once humanity has been fully immersed. I want more!