pineconek's Reviews (816)

I wanted to like this book very much, and liked certain parts of it. I can see why it resonates with some people but it really wasn't for me.

The good: I enjoyed the writing style and, in particular, the descriptive scene setting. This is a book without much plot but the beautiful writing meant that I wasn't bored.

The bad: I was perpetually annoyed with most of the main characters for several reasons. I found myself checking how many pages I had left every 10 pages or so, constantly considering dnf-ing this. I wasn't bored - but I was irritated by both Elena and Lila, their respective parents, and most of the male characters that hung around them. I frankly can't think of a single character I feel fondly towards. This was frustrating because it felt like I was supposed to like some of these characters (within their complexities) and things just didn't click for me.

This book exceeded my expectations and then some. Wow. What a compassionate, insightful, well balanced discussion of difficult human emotions and the circumstances that lead us there.

I'm surprised by the low reviews on goodreads - I loved this book, and loved the way it was read on the audible edition. Then again, I'm a sucker for explorations of religion-induced guilt and shame, familial responsibility, and trauma. I loved the TV show and read the book after. There were enough differences to make reading the book worthwhile and I think I marginally prefer it to the TV adaptation.

"when it started, I believe I was special. It was a terrible thing to discover that I was common, that everything that happened to me - a crystalline, devastating landscape I navigated in my care feet - was detailed in books and reports, in statistics."

The above is one of many great lines about domestic violence in this book. The exploration of how widespread, minimized, and strangely banal abuse can be was masterful.

I got the same feelings from this as I get from my favourite Jeanette Wintersons, so that's saying a lot. This memoir was extremely readable - an excellent page turner full of good information and frighteningly familiar experiences. I love candid discussions of relationship violence and the aftermath, and this delivered.

What I didn't like as much/why it's not a 5 star read for me: small stylistic things pulled me out of this. I dislike citations in my narration and some of the reflections felt out of place. I engaged with small details more than with the big picture because I kept getting "pulled out it". That said, I liked the micro style of writing (voice and sentences a lot), and am grateful that a book on this topic is making waves.

I didn't think I'd like Alice Munro as much as I do but this is the second book of hers I've read and I think I'm very into it.
Wow. This was a pleasant, curious, melancholic, nostalgic, and profoundly sad read. Strange elements came up in banal ways - a few cults, some ESP, lots of alcoholism and domestic violence, and recurring coincidences reeking of "what ifs", mistaken identities, and goat thrown in for good measure. I really enjoyed the musings on the theme of runaway (noun? Verb? Person? Opportunity?) along with beautiful portraits of people making difficult choices or being stuck in impossible situations. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys short stories that loosely connect and character driven fiction.

This was a really beautiful portrayal of a slice of history (Uganda in the late 70s to early 80s) and the lives women led during those times. The heroine is remarkably relatable and the bulk of the book is spent exploring her relationships with her family and community. There's no plot per se - I would describe the book as a coming of age novel centering womanhood.

This was a slow and dense read for me. The prose is excellent, slow paced, and filled with critical details. Ultimately, this was beautiful and satisfying.

I've been searching for this book for ages and it was well worth the wait. Excellent classic sci fi that blows saramagos "blindness" (which I also love) out of the water as an exploration of what happens when most humans can no longer see. Delightfully creepy and short, and retaining much the same stylistic elements that made the only other book of his, the Chrysalids, so memorable. What a great read.

Meh.

Let me begin with the title story: if it bleeds has a decent premise but it took everything that was frustrating with the outsider and amplified it. The story could have used some serious editing and been half the length. I found myself checking how much I still had left and groaning that it went on for another chapter, and another, and another... Holly us a fun character but the outsider-like creature in this story is a boring villain (sorry).

The other three stories were fine but nothing overly memorable. I think I expected a lot more out of this. I would really only recommend it to people already familiar with king's work and curious about what he's up to lately. I don't think a new reader would understand the hype behind the master of horror upon reading this collection.

I can't in good conscience recommend this book to anyone and I'm not really sure how to rate it. The book accomplished what it set out to achieve. It's debatable whether what it set out to achieve was a good thing.

I nearly set this book down ten pages in. There are no paragraphs in the entire book and some of the sentences run on for several pages. The writing is stream of consciousness messy vulgarity. The content is violent, vulgar, and horrifying to most sensibilities. The effect is that we get a chaotic picture of the (frankly horrible) lives these characters are stuck in. Trigger warning for basically anything and everything but especially things related to reproductive trauma (including but not limited to miscarriage), sexaul violence, severe and persistent drug use, and abuse of animals and minors (plural). As I said in the begging: I can't recommend it in good conscience. I would only read this if you have a strong stomach and want to meet tragic characters infecting horrific immesurable trauma on each other.

I wasn't really sure what to expect of this book and made some jokes along the way. At one point, it was "oh this is just Frodo and Sam on skis". I don't read high fantasy or sci fi with a lot of world building much and, as such, the first third of the book or so wasn't really for me. That said, I'm glad I stuck with it because there were so many subtle explorations of interesting ideas as well as clear foundations for future scifi. This was a slow burn joy that I'd recommend to anyone interested in classic SciFi (and, obviously, gender & sex issues but you can read other comments about that elsewhere).