DNF at 6%.

I tried, but I can't even get past the opening pages. Excessive adjectives and adverbs litter awkward descriptions that are more "telling" than "showing," and I am utterly uninvested in the fate of "the magnet for all the bad, terrible, and so-so luck that existed in the world."

I've only seen Felicia Day in a handful of Supernatural episodes (to be fair, I haven't actually seen that much of that show), so I'm not quite sure why this was on my TBR but I'm glad it was. Honestly, it only took forever to get through because I'm still trying to figure out how best to fit audiobooks into my life - I prefer print books, whether paper or digital, although the latter is admittedly so much more convenient; however, for some books I want to read, my library only has it as an audiobook - but I enjoyed it from start to finish. With the exception of a handful of ableist comments, the jokes were pretty funny (mostly self-deprecation related to geekiness and/or anxiety and/or previously-perceived precociousness, which aligns well with my own brand of humor) and Felicia Day is a terrific storyteller.

3.5 stars.

Maybe it’s growing up in the Silicon Valley, maybe it’s all the Jobs biographies I’ve already read, but I feel like I’m missing what all the hype over this one is about. It almost seems to focus more on his legacy and his products/career trajectory than who he was — yes, I know that his work/life balance was heavily skewed and the two are inextricably intertwined — and while educational (for example, I hadn’t realized the extent of his role in Pixar or of his celebrity connections), it’s not really what I personally look for in a biography. (The ending is more like it: the parts about his battle with cancer, his family, even the epilogue were really good.)

So I can see why this book appeals to the masses; it’s thoroughly researched, full of colorful anecdotes and interesting dialogue, and generally pretty brutally honest. But it’s certainly not the best of its kind.

(I received a free eARC from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.)

Not quite sure how I feel about this one. It’s aesthetically — cinematically, at least in my mind’s theater — striking, but at times almost self-indulgent (Olli ogling every woman close to him, for example, and particularly his dreams and the secret passageway scenes). The main plot didn’t really come in until halfway through, and the idyllic summer scenes didn’t seem relevant to the plot until then.

Spoiler

I’m not really educated on the issues that intersex individuals face, so I’ll be the first to say I’m not in a position to comment on whether this novel is more helpful or harmful in terms of representation. My inclination, though, is to at least give credit for incorporating a real but frequently overlooked situation that people face.

(Also there are some formatting errors, though of course that’s not as important as the story itself.)

This is a fun, whimsical tale, though the inconsistent pacing threw me for a loop. It’s certainly quite different from the usual children’s books with simple dialogue and emphasis on plot/characters rather than setting and themes, in a good way I think.

I was really enjoying it up until the last chapter, with Toad’s escapade and subsequent bragging and swaggering about, but then again my annoyance is a pretty good indicator of how vividly those scenes came across.

This book is very clever, in some ways perhaps a bit too much so. It's also very meta, a tribute to the mystery genre as a whole and certain writers, such as Agatha Christie, specifically, which I'll admit straight up that I definitely don't have the background to appreciate in full. Personally I found the real-world/publisher storyline more interesting - though to be fair I've never been much of a whodunnit fan; if I'm being completely honest I might even appreciate Sherlock Holmes primarily for being the source material of beloved modern adaptations rather than on its own merits - but I felt a little distanced from that one as well, possibly residual from trying to reconcile it with the Atticus Pund plot, with the end result being that I never really felt connected to either storyline. Kudos for casual LGBT rep, though in this day and age it's becoming more of an expectation than a significant bonus.

So taken as a whole, the duality works on paper - and again, is very clever and meta and all that - but makes me as a reader feel a little distanced from the story. I like being able to feel immersed in characters and plot and setting without worrying about minutiae, but mysteries like this one seem to be more about the construction as a whole with the devil in the details, with my personal favorite elements being just tools to demonstrate the author's/detective's storytelling ability.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I read Shakespeare on my own — let alone in the original printing, necessitating letter replacements and sounding out words phonetically to translate into modern English. It’s not on the level of Caesar or Hamlet, though I do remember an interesting class discussion on whether Hamlet and Othello would have fared better were their narratives swapped.