readingpicnic's reviews
475 reviews

I liked this a lot more than the movie honestly. Lots of gore and violence! I like that this doesn't shy away from getting super dark. Love the art style too.

I'm glad I got to hear about GamerGate from their point of view instead of only hearing about them as a victim of the movement. It was also nice that they actually provided advice on how to deal with and combat online hate, advocated for helping victims of abuse even if they were once abusers, and spoke to how getting off the internet is not a good solution for people for whom the internet is the only place they can find community and be open about their identities. It feels like other books about online hate don't offer real solutions and ways to navigate it, so it was refreshing to be more educated on what people can actually do. I didn't know anything about their victim advocacy group Crash Override, so I am glad I now know about it now.

The author's anxieties were wayyy too similar to my own for comfort. I liked the pages of reflection in between the transcripts between her and her psychiatrist, but I wasn't a big fan of the pages of reflection at the end of the book. I think they made sense in between a different format of writing, so it was a bit disorienting for these pages of her own writing to be back-to-back in the end. I've definitely never read anything quite like this book style-wise, and it was validating to see someone so honest about their mental illnesses and anxieties that people don't really talk about.

Interesting to see an unreliable narrator being held accountable for lying or misremembering the story. This was a very sad story filled with guilt and grief over the accidental death of a child when the two girls were four years old, which she never forgave herself for, so it was a little difficult to get through. The writing was very good though: "After they climbed out, clean again, her mother sprinkled talcum powder on the girl's body with such rich abundance that she felt like a special dessert." 
It was sad how doomed all the sapphic longings felt in this book, especially between Florence and Ruby, who were especially devastating in their inability to put a concrete name to their queer longing. The imagery of Florence unfolding and refolding her letter from Ruby for years made me physically ill. The story was a little disorienting at times when I would learn that a whole passage I had read never actually happened and was just imagined by Margaret. I would say that this book could fit into the weird girlhood genre.

I appreciate the mission and execution of this piece, and I wish I could have seen it performed. I liked that he included pictures of the play in the back so I could get a sense of it though. I can tell a lot of research and passion went into this piece, and he didn't do it in a cruel or undeserving way, but he tore Lin-Manuel Miranda apart! Absolutely to shreds (which was very entertaining honestly)! Showing his ignorance every step of the way, whether intentional or not, of creating the Hamilton musical, as well as its lasting consequences, such as impressionable people and schoolchildren possibly only seeing this version of history that romanticizes slave-owners...Ishmael not only educated Lin-Manuel Miranda (at least in the play) about the mistakes he made, but he also posited real reparations that could be made with the excessive profits from Hamilton. 
Also, love that Toni Morrison funded this play. 

I love Tillie Walden’s art style and storytelling ability so much. Very sorrowful queer girlhood story that made me cry a bit at times. I feel like I learned a lot about figure skating too, which is cool. 

I was so intrigued by this, but unfortunately I did not like it as much as Heaven. I think the pacing threw me off and it went back and forth in time in jarring ways. I wasn’t sure what the direction of the story was most of the time and it kind of felt like it ended before it should have. I did still love the author’s word choice and writing itself, and I found myself writing down lots of quotes.

Such a unique and fun take on a memoir. The writing was so addicting and unique that I finished this in a day. I loved the author's mission to tell a trans memoir that wasn't just about transition or victimhood, to instead complicate these common narratives this with their trans community's dynamic personalities, showing the beauty and fun and drama of the transfem community, as well as mixing in magical realism elements and mystical creatures. I don't really know what's actually based in memoir with this book, but I'm okay with that because it was so exciting to read and I love creative nonfiction.

Wow, this book is incredible! I haven’t been so caught up in a fiction book in so long. I loved how complicated all the characters were, how distinct their voices were, the little powers they had, everything! The alpha vagina power? Incredible. I love the humor in this book so much. The food descriptions were excellent as always, as Elizabeth Acevedo clearly writes with so much passion and love for food and how it's made and enjoyed as a community. All of the different generations of women with points of view in this story did such a good job showing generational trauma within this family and cycles of abuse, as well as just how complicated familial relationships are in general. I love everything Elizabeth Acevedo has written, but this is a new favorite.

This book is quite dense, but I’m glad that I read it and learned more about the history of the occupation of Palestine by Israel. I was not educated on Palestine for most of my life until recently, and I’m committed to changing that this year. I will say, I did not like the audiobook narrator, so that did affect my reading experience a little bit. 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🍉🍉🍉