UHHH sorry GRRM I just do not give enough of a fuck about any of these characters to continue with this series. Hope everything works out OK in Thronesville or whatever.

(I know everyone else on the planet loves this series but it is not for meeee.)

Uhhh it was fine? The style felt weirdly derivative of Scott Pilgrim somehow, even though Scott Pilgrim's whole deal is paying homage to comics/video games? But the style of the text boxes reminded me of that. The whole plot of this was whatever. I was mostly in it for Laura Kinney and she's barely in it. Also why is Kurt suddenly like... drunk or mentally incapacitated?? What?

I blogged about this here but basically let me say that it was fun and clever and excellent world-building and I don't even really like vampires but I really liked this book. (But also I think someone who would like vampires would like it.)

I really liked this! A good history of the media imbued with both a healthy skepticism and hope.

It was on YALSA's best graphic novel collection & at first I wondered what teens would read this. But teenage Michael Moore-obsessed Renata probably would have dug it.

This ended with the entire school dancing to Katy Perry. What more do I want from my superhero comics? NOT A THING.

Super fun! Love me some angsty baby superheroes obviously.

Two stars seems harsh, but the Goodreads definition of 2 stars is "It was OK," which is exactly how I would describe this book. I wanted to like it. Lauren Myracle seems very nice and she's very passionate about this book. It deals with important topics like hate crimes and sexual assault and meth. I don't like hate crimes or sexual assault or meth either, Lauren!! But this just seemed clunky to me, I suppose. The characters seemed like... elaborately cookie cutter'd? Like she knew she shouldn't have 2-dimensional characters so she deliberately gave each character a secret and/or flaw? And for me, none of it flowed together very well. But clearly a lot of teens are connecting with this book and I think where Shine succeeds the most is in capturing small town Southern life, which isn't where a ton of YA books are set these days.

OK. I picked this up because I really wanted to read "Notes on 'Camp.'" Because I love camp. Duh. And I loved "Notes on 'Camp'" and I loved a few other essays, the ones I understood. A lot of these essays are reviews and/or critiques of French films and philosophical treatises that I had not even heard of, let alone read. Sontag is brilliant obviously and I'm sure all the essays were good--they were readable and I felt like I got something out of them, even if I literally didn't know what she was talking about. But unless you, like me, feel extreme reluctance at book abandoning, you could probably just read "Notes on 'Camp'" online somewhere and not read reviews of a bunch of foreign films from the '60s. Unless you like foreign films from the '60s, in which case, pick this up immediately.

This was a really great blend of personal exploration & actual information about Israel; I'm woefully undereducated on Israeli history and this did seem like a good start to understanding Israel. Of course, I'm woefully undereducated on Israeli history, so I'm not sure what slant this has or what may be omitted. But whatever, I liked it.

Oh I don't know. First of all, I guess the concept of this book (this person A wakes up in a different person's body each day, forever) doesn't really make any sense? Can we talk about that? I mean what? I mean sure let's examine what the core of a person's being is like, I guess, but... well, whatever. Also I guess my heart is hard and old but I never really like "love at first sight" narratives. Also, as many reviews have pointed out, the chapter where he wakes up as a fat boy is really messed up. On the other hand he makes a definite point of being LGBTQ-friendly (as David Levithan does so well). There were passages that were beautifully written, keenly observed microcosms of high school. But overall I guess it just was not my cup of tea.

PS the ending is just like, not how things work?? Also it spent a lot of time building to some kind of climax that I never really bought into.