pineconek's Reviews (816)

No plot just vibes sad girl vampire who watches Buffy, has a difficult relationship with her aging mother, and just graduated art school. Featuring a really weird relationship with food that'll resonate with anyone who considered but did not succeed in drastically altering their diet. 

That's all folks. That's the book. And I loved it. 

Recommended if you're into aching passages about food and food craving, traumatic mother-daughter bonds challenged by distance and dementia, and lots of pining. Kept me up until 3am so I could finish it and I underlined several passages, so it's earned full marks. 5 stars. 

And I will reiterate: Sad girl vampire!!

Trope-y, familiar, and incredibly satisfying Nordic thriller. 

Every now and again, I crave a good serial killer story. I've watched over a dozen seasons of Criminal Minds twice, but I don't really watch tv anymore. I know good thrillers exist, especially when it comes to translated literature, and I'd heard great things about Nesbo. 

Consider me a convert. This book filled the hole in my heart left by the Chestnut Man and the Millenium trilogy. There's a sophisticated and weird serial killer, an emotionally stunted detective with a complicated relationship with his ex and her child, a plucky sidekick, suspicious professionals, husbands who know that the husband is the lead suspect, irrelevant sideplots focusing on old grievances, and twists and turns aplenty. 

Recommended if you're a fan of the good seasons of Criminal Minds, think that murder and snow pair well, and need another alcoholic disheveled brilliant detective in your life. 4 shiny stars.

I, too, just want to plant potatoes and dream. 

This volume is crazy. It's divided into four stories, and each of these follows absurd plots. There's robbers, a lavish hotel, love triangles, get rich quick schemes, annoying relatives, all packaged in charming naivety and wit. This wholesome absurdity serves as a well needed palette cleanser between more "serious" reads. 

Highly recommended but especially if you've never encountered moomins before and want an introduction to an aloof family of, parson my 21st century anachronism, of walking memes. Charming, delightful, and oh so fun. 4.5 stars on SG rounded up to 5 on GR. 

A big thanks to my library for carrying the old and large vintage bound volumes. Onto volume 2!!

This book was far out of my comfort zone. Finances/business largely disinterest me, and I doubted I'd sit through a book focused on rich people's experiences of the financial crash of 1929. 

This book is structured to tell the story 4 times, through 4 difference lenses and with 4 different sets of motivations. I won't spoil the experience beyond that, because finding out the details of who is narrating the story and why is half the fun. I did however take a long break when reading this book, pausing after the first section and not reading the other three until a month later. This unintended pause (caused by my mismanagement of library loans) accentuated the experience, and I would highly recommend taking breaks between sections to let them percolate. 

Trust touches on some great themes that kept me engaged: family secrecy, hidden talent, ambition, mental illness, loss, anticipatory grief, betrayal (in family and in love), a belief in one's own righteousness, and a fight for controlling the narrative. 

Recommended if you're interested in a slow paced story exploring the above and are willing to emotionally invest in a book that ultimately leaves things somewhat ambiguous. The audiobook cast did a wonderful job bringing this story to life. 3.75 stars on SG rounded up to 4 on GR.

You know that feeling when you know you're being irrational but you keep doing the thing that's proving your irrationality while simultaneously watching yourself be irrational?

That's the feeling explored in this book. Cognitive biases galore. The author walks us through how recency bias, the sunk cost fallacy, and other basic psych phenomena appear and exert control over her life. The book is deeply personal and toes the line between sociological exploration and memoir, which is likely disappointing if you were hoping for more of the earlier. The book is very "New York millenial" in its target audience, in the same way that Didion's book of a similar title is very "New York Elite". 

Recommended if you're in need of commiserating in some millenial ennui or want to better understand why your well educated friends put stock in their horoscopes and stay in bad relationships. 3.5 stars on SG rounded down to 3 on GR.

Agatha Christie was the first "grown up" author that preteen-me read. Twenty years later, I'm enjoying revisiting the cozy mystery setting. Nothing in particular drew me towards this one, other than it being readily available to me. 

But I'm glad I read it. It starts off very fun - a newspaper ad let's us know that a murder will take place at a designated time and location. All out key players want to rubber-neck and gather for the murder and, at the appointed time, lights go out and a gun goes off. 

I typically dont try to solve thrillers as I read them, but did successfully solve this one. That said, I couldn't be certain until the reveal. The twists! The turns! The red herrings and family secrets!

One thing that's awesome about reading these as an adult: the dialogue, which previously had gone above my head, is extremely funny and passive aggressive. I kept smirking. 

Recommended if you're into mysteries that involve family secrets and inheritance or in the mood for a light cozy mystery featuring the brilliant Miss Marple. 3.5 stars on SG rounded down to 3 on GR.

I don't think that I've ever read such a blatant male power fantasy in my life. 

Spoilers ahead because I just don't care: so the guy is trapped in a "private prison" aka a locked apartment for ten years with nothing but Chinese takeout and a tv. He gets incredibly jacked and doesn't lose his mind, obviously. And then, the moment he's released, he first finds a virgin who begs him to sleep with her and then focuses on getting revenge on his mysterious captors. But not before having this woman be 100% obsessed with him for next to no reason. Did I mention he got incredibly jacked while eating only takeout for ten years????

The movie was recommended to me by the guitar teacher I had when I was 14. He was 22 and, after he stopped teaching me, messaged me late at night on Facebook for emotional support around a breakup. Old boy was his favorite movie and like... Yeah I'm glad that I stopped taking classes with him lol. 

(He gave me other pretty good recommendations though like Requiem for a Dream and Six Feet Under but also things like Martyrs so 🤷. Anyway, wherever you are John, I hope you've stopped being weird towards teenage girls). 

This is a very unserious review of an unserious manga. I was actually looking forward to reading it and may still pick up the movie, but I was largely underwhelmed and annoyed with the manga. 0.75 stars on SG that I've rounded up to a 1 on GR. My life is better without old boy, the manga, in it.

(Lu en francais mais la revue est ecrite en anglais) 

I knew I'd love this, and I did indeed love this. 

The book is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who lives in a large cage with 39 other women. The cage is surrounded by halls patrolled by guards who do not interact with the women other than providing them with food or threatening them with whips. Our narrator is the only child in this setting, and does not remember a time before the cage. The women around her do, but don't see the point of telling her about it. 

Until one day, of course, they all leave the cage. 

What follows is a bleak story of survival and existential angst. Human life is stripped down to the barest of bones, and an already shaky will to live is put further to the test. Our narrator doesn't have explanations for why her world is the way that it is - and neither do we. We witness all the events of the book through this frustrating, lonely, and claustrophobic perspective. 

I don't really know what else to tell you about this book. The word "cyclical" is coming up for me, along with "interrupted cycles". The sense of cycles emerges from mentions of gardening, repeated settings, and our narrators life (in and outside of the cage), but the cycle of humanity, human civilization, human legacy... is starkly interrupted. I think I'm still figuring this book out, but it's one that will stay with me for a long time. 

Recommended if you're interested in bleak existential stories, are ok with the mechanics of the world remaining largely unexplained, and want a book that will leave you staring off into space for a long time thinking "what the actual f-". 5 stars, obviously.

I love how eclectic of an author Ishiguro is. I find some of his works brilliant, and others painfully boring. This one ended up in the latter bin. 

The beginning was stellar: we follow an elderly couple who live in a village where an omnipresent mist dulls their memories of specific past events. Through this haze, they remember that they have a son who left them (under possibly mysterious circumstances) and decide to set out for his village and visit them. 

A point of annoyance quickly arises: the man calls the woman "princess" in every other sentence he utters. This never got less grating. 

We follow them on their quest where they meet an Arthurian knight, a mysterious boatman, and hear tales of a she-dragon. This got quite repetitive and stretched out through the bulk of the book. 

And then, the last few pages contain a reveal that I won't spoil for you. While the reveal is heartbreaking, the journey ultimately didn't feel like it was worth the destination. 

Recommended if you're a fan of Ishiguro's work where most things are unsaid (I'm looking at you, Remains of the Day), enjoy an Arthurian middle England setting, and are in need of a sad fairytale for grown-ups. 2.75 stars on SG rounded up to 3 on GR.

This is basically "dang, I discovered emotional vulnerability and it's kind of neat" as a book. 

I picked this up because I'm in a stage of my life where I'm actively trying to be less dismissive of people who don't share my world view. I find this really hard in the current social climate, where one (1) Bad Opinion can be used to dismiss someone as not worth listening to. I appreciated the ways in which this book cautioned against using these mental shortcuts. 

As a side note: the author presents these ideas from the perspective of a hardened middle aged man, and I think other hardened middle aged men would benefit from reading this. 

That said, a stronger book on the topic that I recommend to a more general audience is You're Not Listening, which gets quoted in this one. I think that "how to know a person" can be useful for people new to the idea of emotional vulnerability. A soft 2.5 stars on SG rounded down to 2 on GR.