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kyatic's Reviews (974)
This book is absolutely hilarious, although the scene in which the author promos one of his other books should probably have been left in the first draft, or indeed consigned to the recycling bin. Apart from that, it's a very funny book with some one liners that had me doing the proverbial (and often literal) lol, and although I do think it could probably have stood to be a good 50 pages shorter, I was enjoying the ride so much that I didn't really mind. I'm not the audience for this book - it's a YA novel, and I'm sadly much more aligned with the A than the Y these days - but it's very readable and I wish more books like this - unapologetically queer, hilarious - had existed when I was Y.
Uncorrected proof received via Netgalley - bear that in mind!
A small bugbear, first of all; this book would really be better called 'Queer Icons and Cats', because only about half of the cats in here actually belong to (or perhaps own, depending on your view of feline/human relationships) the aforementioned queer icons. That's not a criticism, just an observation!
This book is an interesting volume, with a photo of a famous queer person and a cat on one page and a brief description of the person (and sometimes the cat) on the other. It's really at its best when it's delving into the personalities of the cats involved; it's a sad fact that cats outshine humans in terms of beauty, interest, personality and talent in absolutely all cases, and although I'm a big fan of many of the people included in this book, the cats were definitely the best bit. Special mention to the trash-eating cat of a Michelin-starred chef. The audacity of that kitty is truly inspiring. All jokes aside, I genuinely enjoyed learning about the nuances of these people's personalities as conveyed through the lens of their interaction with our feline overlords; I think a lot can be said about a person by how they treat cats.
I also really appreciated the broad spectrum of people included here, from James Baldwin to Rachel Carson, Elton John to Bobbi Salvor Menuez - it was a great representation of how variegated the term 'queer icon' really is and should be. I think we often limit our perception of queer icons to people like Lady Gaga, Madonna and David Bowie, and don't really include the often doubly marginalised activists who actually do the work for queer liberation. This book did, and I think that's really to its credit.
The one thing that irked me somewhat was how so many of the bios in this book read a bit like resumés or advertisements. The biographies of historical figures, particularly James Baldwin, were nuanced, insightful and informative; I felt like they gave the reader both an overview of the individuals' contributions to queer culture and their personality in general. However, many of the bios of current queer people, particularly that of Frenchie Davis, were more like press releases than anything else, The writing in these ones came across like marketing copy, and it chafed a little; I don't need to be advertised to when I'm reading a book purportedly for edification or entertainment.
That said, it was an enjoyable little read, and I can absolutely see why they picked that photo of Jujubee for the cover. I kind of want it as a poster to decorate all my good rooms (the rooms my cat favours.)
A small bugbear, first of all; this book would really be better called 'Queer Icons and Cats', because only about half of the cats in here actually belong to (or perhaps own, depending on your view of feline/human relationships) the aforementioned queer icons. That's not a criticism, just an observation!
This book is an interesting volume, with a photo of a famous queer person and a cat on one page and a brief description of the person (and sometimes the cat) on the other. It's really at its best when it's delving into the personalities of the cats involved; it's a sad fact that cats outshine humans in terms of beauty, interest, personality and talent in absolutely all cases, and although I'm a big fan of many of the people included in this book, the cats were definitely the best bit. Special mention to the trash-eating cat of a Michelin-starred chef. The audacity of that kitty is truly inspiring. All jokes aside, I genuinely enjoyed learning about the nuances of these people's personalities as conveyed through the lens of their interaction with our feline overlords; I think a lot can be said about a person by how they treat cats.
I also really appreciated the broad spectrum of people included here, from James Baldwin to Rachel Carson, Elton John to Bobbi Salvor Menuez - it was a great representation of how variegated the term 'queer icon' really is and should be. I think we often limit our perception of queer icons to people like Lady Gaga, Madonna and David Bowie, and don't really include the often doubly marginalised activists who actually do the work for queer liberation. This book did, and I think that's really to its credit.
The one thing that irked me somewhat was how so many of the bios in this book read a bit like resumés or advertisements. The biographies of historical figures, particularly James Baldwin, were nuanced, insightful and informative; I felt like they gave the reader both an overview of the individuals' contributions to queer culture and their personality in general. However, many of the bios of current queer people, particularly that of Frenchie Davis, were more like press releases than anything else, The writing in these ones came across like marketing copy, and it chafed a little; I don't need to be advertised to when I'm reading a book purportedly for edification or entertainment.
That said, it was an enjoyable little read, and I can absolutely see why they picked that photo of Jujubee for the cover. I kind of want it as a poster to decorate all my good rooms (the rooms my cat favours.)
Perhaps this book needs to be read on paper or on a Kindle with the appropriate font. I read a pdf version, and the formatting was borderline unreadable; there were several pages on the pdf version that I unfortunately had to skip because the font was so tall and narrow and oddly spaced that my poor eyeballs couldn't parse the letters on the screen. Because of the number of pages I had to skip, I'm not including this in my 2020 reading challenge.
This writer has talent, and is certainly very confident in that, going by the book's description on here; that's not by any means a criticism. It's admirable that this author is so bold in their work and doesn't feel restricted by convention or genre expectation. Few books of poetry in 2020 are genuinely subversive, but this book breaks more rules than it follows, and that's no bad thing. The rules are clearly broken here with an actual understanding of what that breaking means, which speaks to the author's dedication to their art and making something completely different.
However, I do think this book is so very personal and so specifically written as catharsis that it loses a lot of readability. It's so abstract - really, 119 pages of loosely connected ideas, diaphanous images and incredibly opaque metaphor - that it's very, very hard to get a grip on it. I love poetry. I love abstraction. But here, there were whole pages at a time where I felt completely adrift, and unable to connect to the work at all. Abstract ideas work if they're rooted in something just tangible enough for the abstraction to hold meaning, and these poems didn't do that for me. The author also desperately needs to stop relying on a thesaurus; for example, 'I will not stop / for bouts of amour / as I have in the / lucifugous past / the waiting hours penumbral', or 'my auroral blue pools / scintillating / with rain'. I know what all of those words mean in and of themselves, but that, as an image, is so difficult to access that it fails to be evocative. I will say that the later poems don't suffer so much from this, but the first half of the book is heavy with it, and it becomes a real chore.
The poems that work best are, in my very subjective opinion, the simpler ones, where Sidirov relies less on showing off his vocabulary. Azu's Wedding was probably my favourite; I enjoyed the closeness it invoked, the intimacy, the shifting nature of their relationship. I also liked the surreal absurdity of a lot of the imagery; There Are No Monkeys Here was quite delightfully weird, and one of the poems I'd quite happily sit and analyse. 'I don't know love but I do know loving' - that's just great, really. There were lots of lines in here that, by themselves, are excellent.
Sidirov's decision not to use page numbers and to instead label each page with a word / phrase which makes up a poem is brilliant, and, perhaps a little ironically, the poem that these page 'numbers' made was by far my favourite in the whole book, and one which will linger.
I think this author has talent, and could do a lot with it; I just feel like perhaps this book was written more for them than for us, and that's fine, but it certainly makes reviewing (and indeed reading) it a little tricky. I'd happily read their other work, but perhaps with the benefit of an editor who shares their overall vision.
This writer has talent, and is certainly very confident in that, going by the book's description on here; that's not by any means a criticism. It's admirable that this author is so bold in their work and doesn't feel restricted by convention or genre expectation. Few books of poetry in 2020 are genuinely subversive, but this book breaks more rules than it follows, and that's no bad thing. The rules are clearly broken here with an actual understanding of what that breaking means, which speaks to the author's dedication to their art and making something completely different.
However, I do think this book is so very personal and so specifically written as catharsis that it loses a lot of readability. It's so abstract - really, 119 pages of loosely connected ideas, diaphanous images and incredibly opaque metaphor - that it's very, very hard to get a grip on it. I love poetry. I love abstraction. But here, there were whole pages at a time where I felt completely adrift, and unable to connect to the work at all. Abstract ideas work if they're rooted in something just tangible enough for the abstraction to hold meaning, and these poems didn't do that for me. The author also desperately needs to stop relying on a thesaurus; for example, 'I will not stop / for bouts of amour / as I have in the / lucifugous past / the waiting hours penumbral', or 'my auroral blue pools / scintillating / with rain'. I know what all of those words mean in and of themselves, but that, as an image, is so difficult to access that it fails to be evocative. I will say that the later poems don't suffer so much from this, but the first half of the book is heavy with it, and it becomes a real chore.
The poems that work best are, in my very subjective opinion, the simpler ones, where Sidirov relies less on showing off his vocabulary. Azu's Wedding was probably my favourite; I enjoyed the closeness it invoked, the intimacy, the shifting nature of their relationship. I also liked the surreal absurdity of a lot of the imagery; There Are No Monkeys Here was quite delightfully weird, and one of the poems I'd quite happily sit and analyse. 'I don't know love but I do know loving' - that's just great, really. There were lots of lines in here that, by themselves, are excellent.
Sidirov's decision not to use page numbers and to instead label each page with a word / phrase which makes up a poem is brilliant, and, perhaps a little ironically, the poem that these page 'numbers' made was by far my favourite in the whole book, and one which will linger.
I think this author has talent, and could do a lot with it; I just feel like perhaps this book was written more for them than for us, and that's fine, but it certainly makes reviewing (and indeed reading) it a little tricky. I'd happily read their other work, but perhaps with the benefit of an editor who shares their overall vision.
ARC received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Minor quibble out of the way, first of all - this is not a rom-com. It's definitely a com, and a laugh-out-loud funny one at that, but rom it is not. Sure, there's some rom in it, but if you're expecting a narrative arc rooted in rom as well as com, then I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I was expecting that, so I was a little disappointed on that front, but the rest of it more than made up for that.
Still, this book warmed the cockles of my November-shrivelled heart in ways I didn't expect. On the surface, it's the story of Ally, dumped by her long-term girlfriend and forced to move back in with her dad, her whole life exploded into irredeemable shrapnel from the force of her girlfriend's tragic betrayal, and her attempts to both better herself and prove to her ex that she's doing so. At its heart, though, it's the story of Ally learning who she is outside of her relationship, and rebuilding herself as a whole entire person without leaning on someone else.
One of the strongest things in this book, in my very subjective opinion, was how flawed everyone is. Every character feels real in a way that made me want to instantly befriend them all (and also shake some sense into most of them, except for Sophie and Charlie, who are perfect and I would die for them.) Ally makes some abysmal decisions, and, as the book goes on, it becomes clear that her ex is not, in fact, an evil tyrant who dumped Ally for no reason. We learn this along with Ally, and it felt very authentic to see the truth of the situation come into view at the same time she does. I'm always a fan of books where the protagonist is allowed to be messy and to make mistakes, and to do deeply questionable things; I don't believe a character should be forced to be likeable at all times. Real people aren't. Ally was still a deeply sympathetic character, even when she was being a real idiot, and that's the mark of great writing; I never stopped rooting for her.
It also just so happens to be absolutely hilarious. Some of the one-liners, particularly Jeremy's, made me snort in a deeply unattractive way. Malcolm is perhaps the greatest cat in literature of all time, and I don't say that lightly, as someone who has read an actually quite embarrassing amount of books just because they mention a cat in the blurb. You can tell this book was written by a cat owner, and I mean that as a the highest compliment. This book has been marketed as something of an adult version of the Georgia Nicholson series by the late and great Louise Rennison, and although I don't think it has quite the same feral, manic energy as that series does, it does share the tendency to make you laugh like a lunatic, and also a fantastic cat.
Really, although it's not an established genre, this is a queer friendship comedy and a bit of a love letter to the communities formed by queer people everywhere, to the chosen families we create for ourselves. A hom-com? I've got nothing.
Minor quibble out of the way, first of all - this is not a rom-com. It's definitely a com, and a laugh-out-loud funny one at that, but rom it is not. Sure, there's some rom in it, but if you're expecting a narrative arc rooted in rom as well as com, then I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I was expecting that, so I was a little disappointed on that front, but the rest of it more than made up for that.
Still, this book warmed the cockles of my November-shrivelled heart in ways I didn't expect. On the surface, it's the story of Ally, dumped by her long-term girlfriend and forced to move back in with her dad, her whole life exploded into irredeemable shrapnel from the force of her girlfriend's tragic betrayal, and her attempts to both better herself and prove to her ex that she's doing so. At its heart, though, it's the story of Ally learning who she is outside of her relationship, and rebuilding herself as a whole entire person without leaning on someone else.
One of the strongest things in this book, in my very subjective opinion, was how flawed everyone is. Every character feels real in a way that made me want to instantly befriend them all (and also shake some sense into most of them, except for Sophie and Charlie, who are perfect and I would die for them.) Ally makes some abysmal decisions, and, as the book goes on, it becomes clear that her ex is not, in fact, an evil tyrant who dumped Ally for no reason. We learn this along with Ally, and it felt very authentic to see the truth of the situation come into view at the same time she does. I'm always a fan of books where the protagonist is allowed to be messy and to make mistakes, and to do deeply questionable things; I don't believe a character should be forced to be likeable at all times. Real people aren't. Ally was still a deeply sympathetic character, even when she was being a real idiot, and that's the mark of great writing; I never stopped rooting for her.
It also just so happens to be absolutely hilarious. Some of the one-liners, particularly Jeremy's, made me snort in a deeply unattractive way. Malcolm is perhaps the greatest cat in literature of all time, and I don't say that lightly, as someone who has read an actually quite embarrassing amount of books just because they mention a cat in the blurb. You can tell this book was written by a cat owner, and I mean that as a the highest compliment. This book has been marketed as something of an adult version of the Georgia Nicholson series by the late and great Louise Rennison, and although I don't think it has quite the same feral, manic energy as that series does, it does share the tendency to make you laugh like a lunatic, and also a fantastic cat.
Really, although it's not an established genre, this is a queer friendship comedy and a bit of a love letter to the communities formed by queer people everywhere, to the chosen families we create for ourselves. A hom-com? I've got nothing.
ARC received via Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I really enjoyed this one! I absolutely love queer historical romances; it's my favourite comfort genre by a country mile, and this was a good one.
I'm cis, so I can't comment too much on the trans rep in this one, but I did like how the author handled other people's perceptions of Alvy. Laura has no problem at all changing the framework by which she views her friend, once she's made aware that he isn't who she's always believed him to be. I liked their dynamic and the easy way they joked with one another, and how their familiarity and respect for one another was evident right from the off. Alvy in particular is a very enjoyable character, being very eccentric and also very tall, which is not, I recognise, a character trait, but is quite endearing. The actual romance was well-paced, given the length of the book, and felt believable.
It wasn't perfect; it definitely could have stood to be about twice the length, for a start. I would have loved to have read more about the printing press and the periodical they published. We only really got to see a couple of scenes of them messing around with the letters, and I think there was a real wasted chance for a meaty subplot and some historical detail there. I like novellas a lot, but I think this should have been a novel. That said, the author does an excellent job of establishing the principal characters, their personalities and their relationships within the small space of this book, and that's no mean feat.
The author also has a very strange habit of never using dialogue tags. I did a search for the word 'said' after I finished the book, and the word only actually crops up 7 times, and every single time it's in direct speech (i.e. "Do you remember that you said this?") and never as an active verb. This means that it's often very difficult to tell who's speaking, because we have whole swathes of back-and-forth dialogue without any of it attributed to one character. You can eschew dialogue tags in conversation with two characters, but only once you've already established the order of who's speaking; without initially making it clear who says the first sentence, the reader becomes lost. This was my only real gripe with the book, and reading the preview for the next book at the end of this one, it looks like that one suffers from the same problem, and I do hope that this is remedied before that one's published, because I'd like to read it!
All in all, this was a good little read, and I'll very happily look out for the author's next works.
I really enjoyed this one! I absolutely love queer historical romances; it's my favourite comfort genre by a country mile, and this was a good one.
I'm cis, so I can't comment too much on the trans rep in this one, but I did like how the author handled other people's perceptions of Alvy. Laura has no problem at all changing the framework by which she views her friend, once she's made aware that he isn't who she's always believed him to be. I liked their dynamic and the easy way they joked with one another, and how their familiarity and respect for one another was evident right from the off. Alvy in particular is a very enjoyable character, being very eccentric and also very tall, which is not, I recognise, a character trait, but is quite endearing. The actual romance was well-paced, given the length of the book, and felt believable.
It wasn't perfect; it definitely could have stood to be about twice the length, for a start. I would have loved to have read more about the printing press and the periodical they published. We only really got to see a couple of scenes of them messing around with the letters, and I think there was a real wasted chance for a meaty subplot and some historical detail there. I like novellas a lot, but I think this should have been a novel. That said, the author does an excellent job of establishing the principal characters, their personalities and their relationships within the small space of this book, and that's no mean feat.
The author also has a very strange habit of never using dialogue tags. I did a search for the word 'said' after I finished the book, and the word only actually crops up 7 times, and every single time it's in direct speech (i.e. "Do you remember that you said this?") and never as an active verb. This means that it's often very difficult to tell who's speaking, because we have whole swathes of back-and-forth dialogue without any of it attributed to one character. You can eschew dialogue tags in conversation with two characters, but only once you've already established the order of who's speaking; without initially making it clear who says the first sentence, the reader becomes lost. This was my only real gripe with the book, and reading the preview for the next book at the end of this one, it looks like that one suffers from the same problem, and I do hope that this is remedied before that one's published, because I'd like to read it!
All in all, this was a good little read, and I'll very happily look out for the author's next works.
ARC received via the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
First and foremost, Kasbeer is an excellent writer and I appreciate her candour and honesty in these essays. It's no easy thing to write about your life in such a raw and open way. The essays in this collection which stood out are, not coincidentally, the ones in which Kasbeer writes about the parts of her life that have wounded her most grievously. 'Lovers' in particular was a really excellent essay about recovering from trauma, and I also really enjoyed 'On the Edge of Seventeen'. 'One Man's Trash' was great, too; I loved seeing behind the glamorous veil of the world of the fashion magazines, a la Ugly Betty. Those were the standouts, in my opinion, and not just because they're topics that I have the most interest in. I also really enjoyed Kasbeer's turn of phrase in general, and found myself highlighting several lines in each essay because I loved her use of language. I haven't read her work before, but this book has definitely convinced me that I ought to.
I did feel like a lot of the essays sort of just fizzled out; they seemed to be building up to a point, and then just stopped. There also didn't seem to be an overarching theme, with some essays delving into the nuance of trauma and recovery, and others just meandering around Kasbeer's life. I wonder if this is because they were edited from their original publication, or because they're not designed to work together cohesively as a collection.
I read an ARC so I don't know if this was corrected in later editions, but Kasbeer also has a tendency to use classical allusions but get them a bit wrong - she references the myth of Apollo and Daphne as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses and claims that Eros is the Roman version of Cupid at one point (it's actually the other way round, sort of, insofar as Roman gods aren't really 'versions' of the Greek gods at all, but Eros is very much Greek.) She also makes reference to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium in a way that doesn't really engage with the actual meaning and mode of the text, and also confuses the roles of eros and philia. I do happen to be a classicist so I have a bit of a sore spot for people misusing classical allusions; it tends to be done in an attempt to look very clever and to add weight to a text, but it comes across as clunky when it's not done with a real understanding of the allusions themselves. Still, I recognise that this is a bit of a personal gripe, although I do think it should probably have been fact-checked.
I would really have liked this to have been longer, because Kasbeer has such an engaging voice and way of writing. I'll very happily pick up anything else she writes, and I'm really gunning for a full length, 300+ pages book of essays, or a really meaty memoir about her days as a PA, because I think that would be great.
First and foremost, Kasbeer is an excellent writer and I appreciate her candour and honesty in these essays. It's no easy thing to write about your life in such a raw and open way. The essays in this collection which stood out are, not coincidentally, the ones in which Kasbeer writes about the parts of her life that have wounded her most grievously. 'Lovers' in particular was a really excellent essay about recovering from trauma, and I also really enjoyed 'On the Edge of Seventeen'. 'One Man's Trash' was great, too; I loved seeing behind the glamorous veil of the world of the fashion magazines, a la Ugly Betty. Those were the standouts, in my opinion, and not just because they're topics that I have the most interest in. I also really enjoyed Kasbeer's turn of phrase in general, and found myself highlighting several lines in each essay because I loved her use of language. I haven't read her work before, but this book has definitely convinced me that I ought to.
I did feel like a lot of the essays sort of just fizzled out; they seemed to be building up to a point, and then just stopped. There also didn't seem to be an overarching theme, with some essays delving into the nuance of trauma and recovery, and others just meandering around Kasbeer's life. I wonder if this is because they were edited from their original publication, or because they're not designed to work together cohesively as a collection.
I read an ARC so I don't know if this was corrected in later editions, but Kasbeer also has a tendency to use classical allusions but get them a bit wrong - she references the myth of Apollo and Daphne as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses and claims that Eros is the Roman version of Cupid at one point (it's actually the other way round, sort of, insofar as Roman gods aren't really 'versions' of the Greek gods at all, but Eros is very much Greek.) She also makes reference to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium in a way that doesn't really engage with the actual meaning and mode of the text, and also confuses the roles of eros and philia. I do happen to be a classicist so I have a bit of a sore spot for people misusing classical allusions; it tends to be done in an attempt to look very clever and to add weight to a text, but it comes across as clunky when it's not done with a real understanding of the allusions themselves. Still, I recognise that this is a bit of a personal gripe, although I do think it should probably have been fact-checked.
I would really have liked this to have been longer, because Kasbeer has such an engaging voice and way of writing. I'll very happily pick up anything else she writes, and I'm really gunning for a full length, 300+ pages book of essays, or a really meaty memoir about her days as a PA, because I think that would be great.
