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renatasnacks
This was so much fun to listen to! Great magical creature voices. The story was so, so weird and fun, too. I love a good middle-grade sendup of the Freemasons. Who doesn't?
SO much wordplay and reference and whatnot. It was a delight. A good readalike for kids (and adults) who like Lemony Snicket. Some of the weird references might go over kids' heads, but I think it's the kind of thing where at some point when they're older, they'll look back and have a brief flashback to Cold Cereal and be like, wow, what a weirdly clever book I read when I was a kid.
SO much wordplay and reference and whatnot. It was a delight. A good readalike for kids (and adults) who like Lemony Snicket. Some of the weird references might go over kids' heads, but I think it's the kind of thing where at some point when they're older, they'll look back and have a brief flashback to Cold Cereal and be like, wow, what a weirdly clever book I read when I was a kid.
Wow, this was really intense. I've been staring at a blank review box for a few minutes. IDK what else to say. On one hand, the ~twist~ was broadcast pretty heavily, but then it wasn't really about that?
It's definitely a page-turner and should appeal to teens who like dark thriller-type books.
It's definitely a page-turner and should appeal to teens who like dark thriller-type books.
I.... don't know??? I maybe didn't totally get it? I read [b:Dangerous Angels|14565|Dangerous Angels (Weetzie Bat, #1-5)|Francesca Lia Block|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166639454s/14565.jpg|990480] a few years ago and I liked it. I think what's weird to me about this is it's partly magical realism, where there are just magical butterflies and visions and whatever, just because, but then it's partly dystopian sci-fi where she's tried to explain it with science and cloning and genetic modifications??? But then if you're explaining some stuff that way, then what's the science for the magic butterflies??? They're just magical magic or??? Versus in the Weetzie Bat books it's just all kind of vaguely magical with no ~science.~ IDK, this might not bother another reader but for me I just kept getting pretty hung up on that.
Also: in college I had a history professor who told me not to use so many block quotes, because everyone just skims past those. And she was right. I feel the same way about blocks of text in italics. Like, a third of this book is in italics and my instinct was always just to skim past it. Couldn't they have come up with some other way to set that apart? Maybe just chapter titles? Or a non-italic, different font?? That's a petty quarrel, but still: irritating.
Uhh but that said, FLB's a beautiful writer, and her characters' fluid sexuality and gender is still great, and I think this book will be beloved by a lot of artsy teenagers.
Also: in college I had a history professor who told me not to use so many block quotes, because everyone just skims past those. And she was right. I feel the same way about blocks of text in italics. Like, a third of this book is in italics and my instinct was always just to skim past it. Couldn't they have come up with some other way to set that apart? Maybe just chapter titles? Or a non-italic, different font?? That's a petty quarrel, but still: irritating.
Uhh but that said, FLB's a beautiful writer, and her characters' fluid sexuality and gender is still great, and I think this book will be beloved by a lot of artsy teenagers.
This is the kind of book where I LOVED it but I can also accept that all the things I loved most about it are things that would irritate some other readers.
I read this so fast and deeply resented anything that drew me away from it. I adored the "behind the scenes" look at publishing and the meta about trends in YA literature and cultural appropriation.
Also, the basic conceit is that it's alternating chapters between Darcy, a teen girl whose paranormal romance novel is getting published, and her actual novel, and you can see how her life has affected the novel. And it's so clever and great! Also I wasn't expecting to be equally engaged in both halves of the book, but I totally was. Like, even though Darcy's novel was less "real" than Darcy's story, I cared equally about both plots. That is some crazy witchcraft right there.
Oh plus the main character is a queer woman of color, so that's cool!
Gosh I think this might be my favorite Scott Westerfeld book, and I've loved all his stuff. GOSH
I read this so fast and deeply resented anything that drew me away from it. I adored the "behind the scenes" look at publishing and the meta about trends in YA literature and cultural appropriation.
Also, the basic conceit is that it's alternating chapters between Darcy, a teen girl whose paranormal romance novel is getting published, and her actual novel, and you can see how her life has affected the novel. And it's so clever and great! Also I wasn't expecting to be equally engaged in both halves of the book, but I totally was. Like, even though Darcy's novel was less "real" than Darcy's story, I cared equally about both plots. That is some crazy witchcraft right there.
Oh plus the main character is a queer woman of color, so that's cool!
Gosh I think this might be my favorite Scott Westerfeld book, and I've loved all his stuff. GOSH
I think this is a book a lot of MG and YA readers will enjoy. There's a lot that I appreciated about it--it's diverse, it's smart--and I think if this were a movie I would love it. I love heist movies. I guess maybe I'd never read a heist book before, and it turns out that for me, it's kind of boring to read a bunch of pages about lock picking? I'd rather watch that kind of thing happen?
Still, I'm sure a lot of readers will be way into it.
Still, I'm sure a lot of readers will be way into it.
Okay. I love Dave Eggers. I can't help it. [b:A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius|4953|A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius|Dave Eggers|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327714834s/4953.jpg|42857] is probably still my all-time favorite book, and I love [b:What is the What|4952|What is the What|Dave Eggers|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328837457s/4952.jpg|3271214] and [b:Zeitoun|6512154|Zeitoun|Dave Eggers|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1296580156s/6512154.jpg|6703901], and I love the work he does with McSweeney's and 826 and Voices of Witness. Love it.
But the problem is I think over the last few years (as he enters middle-aged white dude status) Dave Eggers has been on some kind of quest to see if he can make the struggles of middle-class white dudes as interesting as like, refugees and tragic young orphans. Spoiler alert: HE CANNOT
He's still a good writer on like, a line by line basis. But overall this whole novel is just like ughhhh we get it we have all been let down by American society we get ittttt
Like just please write a book about somebody with ~real problems~ Dave you're so good at that
But the problem is I think over the last few years (as he enters middle-aged white dude status) Dave Eggers has been on some kind of quest to see if he can make the struggles of middle-class white dudes as interesting as like, refugees and tragic young orphans. Spoiler alert: HE CANNOT
He's still a good writer on like, a line by line basis. But overall this whole novel is just like ughhhh we get it we have all been let down by American society we get ittttt
Like just please write a book about somebody with ~real problems~ Dave you're so good at that
I think this is both a very important book and also one I enjoyed reading. Janet Mock tells her life story with powerful honesty and compassion for her family members (who failed her in important ways, but also supported her in others), for the trans girls she grew up with, and for herself. I think this book would be a great resource for trans teens, as a kind of "it gets better" story but also a guidemap to one way of transitioning (which is obviously a very personal process that varies for everyone). I think this is also a good read for cis teens and adults as an intro to terms like "cis" and "trans" and just ways to be more aware and sensitive to trans individuals.
But it also reads as just a compelling story of a girl coming of age and breaking the cycle of poverty against pretty bad odds.
But it also reads as just a compelling story of a girl coming of age and breaking the cycle of poverty against pretty bad odds.
I kind of wanted to hate this book tbh. Like going into it, I was like, "Oh sure, Sheryl Sandberg has tooons of great advice for the average woman, toootallly." But after I read it, I was like, "Oh sure, Sheryl Sandberg has tons of great advice for the average woman!" NON-SARCASTICALLY.
I also saw this getting slammed for her being out of touch with non-CEO women/minorities/etc, and I was expecting to roll my eyes a ton at this for that reason alone, but I was actually very impressed with how often she did point out that obviously women with less privilege are going to have a lot more obstacles against leaning in, and it should fall to men to "lean back" and to other women with more privilege to help pull up women. (Obviously there's more to say about those issues, and it's definitely not Sandberg's main point, but she's not as clueless as a lot of what I'd read about this wanted to make her seem.)
And I think a lot of what she has to say about gender roles in the workplace were just very refreshing to read, written out so clearly. Like, even though I am pretty well-educated and read feminist blogs and whatnot, I still had about 100 lightbulb moments reading this. It's very TED talk-y (I mean that in a good way). Her points really resonated with me, even though I'm obviously not a CEO of anything, nor do I ever want to be.
ALSO I think it's shitty that people are so dismissive of this like it's some inconsequential thing that there are so few women CEOs and we should be focusing on REAL issues like girls being kidnapped in Nigeria, for example. Like, yes, of course, there are other important issues in the world. But nobody's saying shit like that about like, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or whatever. Until we overthrow capitalism, I think big companies like Google and Facebook are probably going to stick around for awhile, and it certainly does matter how many women work there and how comfortable they feel in their chosen industry.
I honestly really recommend this to both men and women, no matter what kind of job you have or want.
I also saw this getting slammed for her being out of touch with non-CEO women/minorities/etc, and I was expecting to roll my eyes a ton at this for that reason alone, but I was actually very impressed with how often she did point out that obviously women with less privilege are going to have a lot more obstacles against leaning in, and it should fall to men to "lean back" and to other women with more privilege to help pull up women. (Obviously there's more to say about those issues, and it's definitely not Sandberg's main point, but she's not as clueless as a lot of what I'd read about this wanted to make her seem.)
And I think a lot of what she has to say about gender roles in the workplace were just very refreshing to read, written out so clearly. Like, even though I am pretty well-educated and read feminist blogs and whatnot, I still had about 100 lightbulb moments reading this. It's very TED talk-y (I mean that in a good way). Her points really resonated with me, even though I'm obviously not a CEO of anything, nor do I ever want to be.
ALSO I think it's shitty that people are so dismissive of this like it's some inconsequential thing that there are so few women CEOs and we should be focusing on REAL issues like girls being kidnapped in Nigeria, for example. Like, yes, of course, there are other important issues in the world. But nobody's saying shit like that about like, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or whatever. Until we overthrow capitalism, I think big companies like Google and Facebook are probably going to stick around for awhile, and it certainly does matter how many women work there and how comfortable they feel in their chosen industry.
I honestly really recommend this to both men and women, no matter what kind of job you have or want.
Oh boy. Like, this was the first Alice Munro book I've ever read (listened to), and I get it--Alice Munro can write a short story. I don't think audiobook is the right medium for this though, or at least not with these 2 readers? It took me forever to get through this because I had it in the car but they made me sleepy. So boring. Still, obviously, I can admire the quality of her prose.
Aw jeeze. I really liked the first third of this book, where it was about space camp and kids getting cool mysterious powers from space. And I really liked that it has a disabled Latina girl as the heroine!! And a Captain Planet-diverse team of friends. How could this go wrong?
I didn't like how the last 2/3 were realll boring and slow. I don't understand. It's about kids with SPACE POWERS why was it so BORING. I think there was maybe excessive detail given to the mechanics of the space powers...? And like... too much dumb love triangle (GAH)?
I think it's tween friendly--the most intense the love triangle gets is kissing. Some characters do die, but the violence isn't gratuitous.
I didn't like how the last 2/3 were realll boring and slow. I don't understand. It's about kids with SPACE POWERS why was it so BORING. I think there was maybe excessive detail given to the mechanics of the space powers...? And like... too much dumb love triangle (GAH)?
I think it's tween friendly--the most intense the love triangle gets is kissing. Some characters do die, but the violence isn't gratuitous.