OK so I know Daniel Handler can be a #problematic fave but I have really loved a lot of his books and I think he is a great writer who overall has good intentions but just like.....makes some big missteps sometimes...

So I picked this up even though I was a little wary of the premise. And now I have some questions...

like

who is this FOR though?

it's written from the POV of a v horny teenage boy and the whole story is set in high school, which basically seems YA, but it's marketed/shelved as an adult book, but then it's like...uncomfortable as an adult lady to be reading really explicitly about a teen boy's masturbatory and sex habits.

there's kind of a twist....or something...where the narrator ~gets comeuppance~ when
a) he abandons his "not gay but we jerk each other off" best friend for a horny new girl
b) the new girl uses him and moves on
c) the "not gay" friend gets a boyfriend (props to the book for actually having that character come out as bi while the narrator refuses to)

like...I get that we're not supposed to find the narrator's actions to be good, and I can totally be on board with exploring the world through the eyes of a narrator who's kind of a shitty person (and I think Daniel Handler has done this so well with like The Basic Eight for example), but with this the whole time I was just like... why

it reminded me more of Diary of an Oxygen Thief than I'm comfortable with :(

I still think he's a great writer and on the sentence level there were still some beautiful sentences in here but on the whole.....

why

who is this for

is it for horny teenage boys who seek it out of the adult fiction section?? I guess??

This isn't the kind of thing I would normally pick up (too spoopy) but it had been highly recommended by a few people whose opinion I respect (and also I was looking for a short-ish audiobook) soo I checked it out. I loved the voice (literally, since I listened to this on audio) and the strong historical/cultural grounding.

A great, not-too-scary story, that's also a great historical fiction story about life in the Jim Crow South.

I definitely read this last year or earlier but apparently didn't put it on GoodReads! It was great though!

This was a great read and I thought Patty's voice and her personal struggles came through so clearly. I found myself thinking that the stakes didn't seem quite as high as they did for Ghost, but also I guess that's a commentary on how gender roles/expectations shape kids--Ghost, when faced with a lot of problems at home, acts out, while Patty tries to fix everyone's problems and feels responsible when she can't. It's very believable.

umm first of all I remember this when it was called Tales from Jabba's Palace??

This was a fun collection; like with any anthology (especially of this size), I enjoyed some more than others. Some of them made me weirdly emotional about background characters, it's fine.

Overall if this sounds like the kind of thing you would like, you would probably like this thing. If this sounds boring to you, that will probably be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My faves were probablyyyy Mallory Ortberg (Admiral Motti), Glen Weldon (the mouse droid), Charles Soule (Lando), Rae Carson (R5-D4), and Claudia Gray (Qui-Gonn)'s.

It's hard to know what to say about Frankenstein...like I'm glad it launched science fiction as a genre and Frankenberry as a cereal. I applaud the innovation but didn't love the experience of reading it in 2017 (tho I loved the spirited book club discussion it prompted).

as we summarized at book club...Frankenstein, OR, The Modern Prometheus, OR, TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH VICTOR.

This book is pretty cute and funny; it's got a ton of fun pop culture references and also a ton of adorable cats (Lord Cute-ington, Duke of Kittenshire), and the art is adorbs. There's not a ton of overarching plot--which is fine, I get that that's kind of how Archie comics are supposed to be--but there is a sort of back-and-forth character arc where Josie is trying to learn how to not be so bossy? I kind of appreciate that they're trying to show a difference between ambition and bitchiness, but the episodic nature makes it hard to have an ongoing arc and it basically makes it hard to root for Josie??

Melody and Val rule tho

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-85-alex-eliza/

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This book is so strange because it's essentially being marketed as, and based on the author's note, seems to have been written as, fanfiction of Hamilton the musical. But it doesn't really capture what people like about Hamilton? Like the character dynamics all seem very different. Which is fine theoretically--they're historical figures being recreated based on letters and books, and obviously there are going to be different takes on that...but I wasn't especially interested in these versions of the characters. There's a definite odd interplay of putting ~modern values~ onto the characters but without quite fully contextualizing some of their actions? (Which is something I think Hamilton the musical does well.)

And then the plot was....well, like, there's a scene where Eliza gives Alex a smallpox inoculation, and it's like, kind of erotically charged? And there's like...so much smallpox in this book. Why. Why is it. And like...they famously wrote each other all these letters? Why is there no letter writing in this book??

I read this all in one day. Mimi's voice (in verse) is SO compelling. This book is great at showing Mimi's hurt and rage at being othered (as a half-Japanese, half-black girl in 1969 Vermont) without being didactic. It's a great realistic school story that I'd especially recommend to fans of novels in verse and kids who are interested in the space program (as Mimi is).

listen: on an sentence level, Maggie Stiefvater is an undeniably gorgeous writer (although in this case some of her deployment of Spanglish felt clunky).

On a book level, uhh IDK this was like magical realism meets Delilah (the radio show). It does have a sweet message (like Delilah!)

In terms of Latinx representation--IDK, obviously I'm white too, but to me overall her portrayal of the Soria family didn't seem especially cliche or offensive (as I had feared from some pre-publication tweets), and she did thank sensitivity readers and Francisco Stork? IDK you can definitely tell it's not an #OwnVoices book but it seemed...fine to me on that front.

anyway--the writing's beautiful and some of the characters are compelling but it's overall not my fave. I think the messages (revolving around self-acceptance and asking for/giving help), if a bit heavy-handed, is something that a lot of teens (and beyond) will appreciate.