This was an interesting start to the series. A friend of mine is a big fan, so I wanted to give it a try. I enjoyed the story for the most part, though it was slow in some parts.

I am super uncomfortable with Apollo's actions and Persephone's desire to hide the fact he raped her. His pushiness after he apologized earlier on in the book for his attitude makes his whole character feel disingenuous. Artemis is going to be heartbroken that her brother could do something like that, but it could make a good foil for Hades when it comes out. He's misjudged pretty terribly. Apollo is supposed to be one of the good guys. I'm so angry about it, it almost makes me need to read the second volume.

Not the best graphic novel I've ever read, but very much not the worst.

I stopped reading this book for a while before I finished it. Sandy and Dennis were my least favorite of the Murray children when I started the book. In A Wrinkle in Time the two perceive themselves to be the men of the house and their father's absence and admonish Meg for fighting because they believe it's something boys should do. Aside from that, their gardening, and their close bond, they didn't have much character development. They are characterized as the skeptics of the family, not at all open to creative thinking. As the novel progresses, we get to see that change and we get to see Sandy and Dennis characterized as individuals instead of halves of a unit, and I've come to really like their characters. They're kind to the mammoths, and the way the mammoths are characterized to be almost dog-like makes me love them. Overall, this was a fantastic look at the least talked about Murray children and an exploration of their characters when put into wild situations.

Mooncakes is a beautifully written and adorably illustrated fantasy graphic novel that has fantastic disability representation, LGBTQ+ representation, and diverse religious coexistence. It centers on Tam, Nova, Nova's grandmothers, and Nova + Tam's childhood friend Tat. I really enjoy Tat's characterization as a sceptic who is more than willing to learn about magic, in the hopes of making it make sense through her scientific studies in the future. The author and illustrator do a fantastic job fully fleshing out supporting characters like Tat, Nova's grandmothers, and the main antagonist to the point that the exceed their archetypes and become fully fleshed out characters. The world building is immaculate, and I adore the beauty and effort put into the backgrounds and the animals that are featured in the book. This overall has incredibly cozy vibes, I'm in it was an enjoyable read. I think the characters are a bit younger than I expected them to be when I started reading. The language used is simple and easy to consume.

The Metamorphosis is an interesting look at a young man who has become the breadwinner for his family, who is suddenly transformed into a giant insect. He first tries to stay in bed and recover, equating the feeling of being an insect to bone deep exhaustion from his taxing job as a traveling salesman. As the time passes past his intended wake up alarm, and then past the time he's supposed to board his train to work, Gregor pushes himself to get up and go to work, telling himself he will make the next train. When the manager from his job comes to check in on him under the assumption that he is lazy and all workers willing to miss a day must be lazy and not ill, Gregor pushes himself to the point of injury to open the door and try to explain his tardiness. He longs to return to work, or more likely dreads the possibility of losing his work and thus his family's livelihood. It's sometimes interpreted that The Metamorphosis  is a metaphor for how capitalism crushes the spirit, which I do see in Gregor's distress at the idea of missing work and his overbearing bosses, but I find that view of the intended message in conflict with its conclusion. When the parents see how industrious the sister has become in the time spent working and caring for Gregor, and how she's grown and aged, she's seen as more valuable. At the beginning of the novel, they are reliant on Gregor. Though they're still flawed; the father's stubbornness, the mother's delicacy, and the sister's short fuse, the characters are stronger, healthier, and more ready for what the world can throw at them because they've joined the work force. It's an interesting exploration of loneliness and isolation. Applying a contemporary lens, I initially interpreted it as a discussion on depression and/or disability and the weight of caring for a loved one who is unable to care for themself. The way they view Gregor as unreachable and a burden, unable to understand them because they can't understand his attempts at communication is heartbreaking and familiar in how non-speaking disabled people are often viewed and treated currently and in the past. The Metamorphosis was written at an interesting time, as WWI had begun just over a year before. The novel was published as shell shocked and newly disabled veterans were beginning to be sent back home from the front lines. While Kafka didn't serve during WWI, Gregor's isolation and loneliness may have been a comfort for the newly returned soldiers.

I wasn't initially drawn in when I tried reading The Metamorphosis, but I really enjoyed the libriVox audiobook I listened to. To hear it read aloud, makes Gregor's desperation for connection all the more tangible. 

You don't need to listen to the podcast to understand this book, but if you listen to the podcast you should read this book. The length to which the narrator's life is systematically and fundamentally destroyed explains her idiosyncratic behaviors on the podcast in a way that makes them make sense in the context of Night Vale's weirdness. The writing is incredibly well done and immersive, and the narrator slow descent into the violent and creepy old woman from the sweet and curious young girl were first introduced to is fully believable in the narrative.

the lengths to which Edmond worked to completely destroy not only the narrator's father's legacy, but the narrator herself are impressive and obsessive in equal measure. The effort he put in, in making sure she would never have joy, have a future, or know her family is astounding, and the revelation about lady Nora is so heartbreaking. The authors did an incredible job making the reader love the narrator even as we watched her become what she becomes. She genuinely loves Edmund's heirs right up until the moment they have a son of their own. Her sense of reality is so twisted and her need for revenge so entrenched that the cyclical nature of her revenge is both astounding and understandable. I really enjoyed that we got to see little Josefina and her angels make the faceless old woman feel welcome for the first time in a long time. After everything, Night Vale is the only place where she could belong.

I didn't want to put the book down. The storyline and characters are so real and interesting, and the storytelling is so well done that it feels like the reader is there alongside the characters.

when Lydia about how David lost some of his fingers in a garbage disposal during his college years, right after discussing how the hammerman shoved his hammer into the garbage disposal, I thought it was going to be revealed that he was the hammer man, and it killed and his teenage years. I really enjoyed that the story was revealed slowly for the characters to process as adults, after it was so fantastical to them in a childhoods. The mystery villain who scarred her for life being someone she and her father trusted and the whole situation happening because of an infidelity pushes the whole axe murderer trope into something far more mundane.

This book has killed my desire to know more about cults. It was an upsetting read, but I think I'm glad to have read it. I almost put this book down and completely stopped reading it in the first quarter. When describing her early life, Dianne describes her early childhood sexual assault with a positive spin that was viscerally upsetting to read. As I got further into the book, I realized that description fits the severity of the incident when compared to Dianne's experiences in her teens. The writing feels a bit academic in the beginning, but once I got into the book, I found that the narration described Manson and the family's descent into extremist madness that was thorough, yet easily consumable. Manson's carefully created magnetism and Dianne's curious, rose-colored memories of the events of her early time with the Manson family explain just how impressionable young people were twisted so deeply.

Bluets is a collection of 240 essays, ponderings, notes, and reflections on Maggie Nelson's relationship to the color blue and the emotions and history to which she relates the color. Some are connected, others are disjointed and read like a list of fun facts. I won't say this was terrible, but I also won't say that I got much out of reading it. There was much more description of the act of "fucking", and use of that word as a noun to describe the actions of sexuality intercourse than I expected when I started reading. It jarred whatever tenuous grip the essays had on me because in our current vernacular in the are I grew up, "fucking" is more often used as a modifier than a noun in it's own right. Near the middle of the book, sections Nelson wrote about her paralyzed friend were uncomfortable to read. She fetishizes and excoticises the blue hue her friend's limbs have taken on due to their disuse. She acknowledges that her obsession with her friend's paralyzed body is weird, but continues documenting her fascination. Close after that section, Nelson uses the R-slur in reference to Andy Warhol's opinions on sex.
I feel like I read through someone else's diary with the hope of getting to know them better, but I really just feel is a little icky.
I think I just don't really like essays this short. 240 essays in 100 pages doesn't give each essay enough space.
Nelson's writing style is academic, but conversational enough to be easily consumable.

The Whispering Skull is a solid continuation of the Lockwood & Co. stories. I love the development of Lucy and George's friendship. They're far more prone to banter than to genuine argument like they had been in the first half of the first book. I guessed a few of the twists before they happened, but a few surprised me. I especially enjoyed the bit with George's glasses.

I was really excited to start reading this book, but it took me a long time to get through. In random parts, I would find myself getting overwhelmed, but not in a bad way. Just in a way that I needed to put the book down for a little bit and think. Overall, I really enjoyed Rhea Ewing's approach to curating these interviews into a narrative that could be used to discuss the wider cultural impacts gender has. I sometimes had trouble tracking who was speaking. Each individual has a well illustrated face and each section is denoted with their name, but because the interviews were interspersed between one another and I took my time reading the book, some of the connections between sections of one interview or multiple interviews with one person weren't easy for me to see. I was often pulled into the stories they were telling and forgot to check the name in the upper left of the boxes.
I think this is a really valuable resource, but I don't think it's formatted in a way that is best for me as an individual to absorb and digest information.