natashak1's Reviews (265)

If you go into this without any preconceptions about what it is you will undoubtedly enjoy it much, much more because it does about fifty different things at various points, and most of them are written fantastically. That said, the people who say this is a love story before anything else are probably right, too.
Long, but in the satisfying, padded out, almost cozy way that Stephen king is best at. 

Honestly it's a tragedy that most people just know the title of this as a transphobic joke because it's a truly brilliant piece of writing that uses sci-fi as a vehicle to discuss gender with such elegance.

I can't even describe what I loved about this, but it is so clearly a book written with incredible care and curiosity for the subject matter. And although the central thesis is more or less hand delivered to you on a plate by the last short story, it also feels like the author is very much offering you a menu of ideas to pick through and take from as you please. 

Genius pacing and spread of information through the four "books" within this. Only complaint is that I did find the voices of the first two books a little dry but I can also appreciate that that's exactly the point. The final book is a completely perfect end.

I found the style of Murakami much easier to get into in a shorter novel, and it felt like the smaller stakes (on a individual rather than societal level) in the plot was much more suited to his writing. 
I also love books that have really complicated or dislikeable characters, and Murakami wrote them brilliantly.

Honestly I did not believe there could be another Han Kang book I found more impactful than Human Acts, but here we are. Indescribable and completely wonderful.

It's a classic, I've had these for years and every now and again come back to them because they're just so well done (and manage to do gore without being silly shock value). Incredible.m character design too, no other book could make me so obsessed with a hand puppet.

Mixed bag in here and I mostly wanted to give this a go because of the use of regional dialect which I usually find works well. That said I didn't find myself preferring the standard English poems or the dialect ones, there just seemed to be a handful that clicked with me and a bunch that didn't.
Will probably revisit to spend a bit more time digging into specifics because it is definitely a collection with a lot of worth, just not necessarily something that personally resonates too much.

Each story has its own strengths and weaknesses, but altogether they do work well and have a fairly coherent thesis going on.
Not sure I'll come back for any more serre but it was definitely worth a try.

Insomnia reading - nostalgic but not much more to say really.