Mostafa Chizari
Contains spoilers
I did not care for this book, unfortunately.
The whole plot can be summarised into:
- Neurodivergent woman works in a shop
- She forms an alliance with a widely despised incel to conform to societal values
- She slowly realises she is losing herself in the process, and decides to go back to working in a shop
The premise has potential, but I found the execution bland, dry, and flat throughout. The main issue is that the side characters (the incel, their families, the coworkers) were completely devoid of any substance. I enjoyed the philosophies of the village and our innate value as humans within an economic network, but these were only ever superficially discussed. It’s a shame, because it could have been dark and rich material, but it settles for a very simplistic tone instead.
It was easy to read though, so I guess it had that going for it...
I have to start by saying the audiobook is wonderful - I still can’t get the words "little Liesel Meminger" in Rosa's voice out of my head.
Moving on. This is fundamentally a young adult book, so I’m clearly not the target audience. It understandably shies away from being too graphic or overly complex, though the hints of deeper themes are there if you want to dive into analysis and inference. It is well-written, and using Death as a narrator is a refreshing choice, but there is a lot of literary prose for not much gain throughout most of the book (the man waffles about the weather an awful lot).
The middle definitely stretches out, but once again, the audiobook performance saves it and makes the journey worth it, even for an adult reader.
This book tried to do too much and ended up skimming the surface of it's genres. It’s a time-travel tale where the reality-shattering shock of teleportation is glossed over way too quickly, but also a historical look at the brutality of slavery that it mostly just jumps through. It flirts with some fascinating, messy controversies like whether the oppressors deserve a shred of sympathy, but the overall execution feels a bit wishy-washy.
Butler drew heavily from actual slave narratives but watered down the grim reality to cater to a 1970s mass market. Personally? She diluted it too much. The profound moments are there, but they arrive in frustratingly short bursts, and I wish she’d committed to broader, sharper takes. The silver lining to all this dilution is that it makes for a fairly easy read. While it’s definitely not a breathless page-turner, it’s a smooth enough ride with just enough solid moments to keep you moving forward.
This is one hell of a book - and one I never thought I would enjoy. Having read Human Acts, I knew Kang was garish and bold, but I had no idea she could weave a storyline into such a profound, edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster. While she remains brash and direct, the chronology and seamless transitions between chapters mould this into an exquisite narrative, with plenty of subtleties to digest along the way.
It’s a book that made me wholly uncomfortable, in the exact way a great book should. As a man reading into the horrible acts men can do, I followed along with disgust, disdain and trembling fear. Towards the end, I felt a deep urge to reflect on philosophies of life I previously thought were set in stone. That doesn't happen by luck; it’s a testament to the sheer skill and talent Kang clearly possesses.
I finished this book in a single day, and I haven't stopped thinking about it for a month. It has genuinely altered my worldview, and I can ask nothing more of a piece of literature. A true modern classic.
Ishiguro is a master of saying so much in so few words, but here, he’s almost undone by the other side of that coin: saying so little in so much text.
This book is expertly crafted to find the eerie within the mundane, and he plays that tension perfectly right to the very end. The problem is that it remains relentlessly mundane all the way until chapter 20(!) out of 23. It’s a slow burn that occasionally feels like it’s forgotten to light the fuse :(
I know many people who DNF’ed this, and honestly, I can see why. It’s a crying shame because the potential is massive and the ending is thoroughly satisfying (even with a lingering trail of unanswered questions). Ishiguro is clearly a masterful writer, and I’m keen to read more of his work, but there’s no denying that this one is a slog. I don't regret finishing it, but I’m well aware that "pushing through" isn't everyone’s cup of tea.
A haunting, clinical look at humanity that sadly takes a bit too long to find its pulse.
Intoxicating, lyrical, and unashamedly poetic. This book is a high-stakes literary flex: two authors at the top of their game showing off in the best possible way.
The background of how this was written - letters sent back and forth between the two authors, then topped off with collaboratively written narrative scaffolding in between - adds a layer of mystique that makes the final product even more impressive. You can feel the competitive creativity in the prose. It’s dense, rich, and frankly, exquisite.
The plot is basically just wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, but to be perfectly honest this is all a distraction from the incredible literary art held within the writing style. The plot doesn’t need to do the heavy lifting when the prose is this evocative.
A short, sharp read, and an immaculate sensory experience.
To read this book and not walk away angry, you have to accept that this is a critique, not a representation. Through the lens of a white woman (and all the biases that carries), you follow a middle-class family caught between modernity and tradition. Seierstad clearly has a disdain for the latter, framing it almost entirely as a "backwards mindset." The joys and beauty of Afghan culture are reduced to superficial, fleeting moments, while the tragedy of repression is given the entire spotlight. This isn’t to say her observations aren’t true, but they certainly aren't the full picture.
However, once you stop looking for a balanced portrait and start reading it as a pointed critique, you can appreciate the writing, and my, is it beautiful. The characters are almost all jaded, arrogant, or depressing, but they have genuine substance. While I disagree with how they are represented, the author still manages to bring a specific, dark side of this world to life.
She is clearly a talented journalist. It takes a certain brazen bravery to offer such an honest, unfiltered viewpoint of the "dark side" of a civilisation. I might disagree with her framing, but I can still give her props for the skill and grit it took to write it.
A masterclass in storytelling! Michael Lewis takes what should be a dry subject and turns it into something sharp, funny, and genuinely absorbing. He weaves the financial crisis into a much broader (and sometimes blunt) take on human nature, arguing that these collapses aren’t failures of maths or regulation, but of character.
His cultural observations can be pretty reductive, but they’re delivered with enough wit and pace to feel balanced. The core idea - that people everywhere behave the same way when handed ‘free’ money - is both uncomfortable and hard to ignore. It’s crude at times, sure, but given the scale of the damage caused, that feels almost necessary.
Honestly, I’d recommend this book even if you have zero interest in economics; it’s worth it just to experience how effortlessly the story pulls you in.
Simple, cosy, and surprisingly comforting. It’s not the most intricate or deeply reflective book out there, but it’s an easy one to recommend.
Nora spends a lot of the story draining the life out of every situation and her journey out of that pit leans into simple self-help territory. But the end of the day, this isn’t really trying to be a philosophy text: it’s a story, and a very digestible one at that. It’s easy to read, easy to empathise with, and easy to move on from once you’re done. For a book that touches on heavy themes, it stays refreshingly light and was a great reset before diving back into more intense reads.
Important ideas buried under a lot of waffle. This felt like a never-ending sprinkling of doom and gloom, and more like falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole than reading a properly shaped book. The subject really matters, but the prose made it a slog to get through; if this were a university lecture, I’d forgive it, but as a book it seriously tested my patience. There is a glimmer of something genuinely compelling in the chapter on materialism and mental health, where some of the connections are sharp and genuinely thought-provoking, but unfortunately that clarity doesn’t last.
Most of the rest feels like information overload without enough philosophical depth or narrative drive to hold it together. Davies keeps hammering home how broken everything is - psychiatry, Big Pharma, the state - but offers very few meaningful solutions beyond “here’s why your life (and society) is bad”. Stripped back, he really only needs a few core points:
- The chemical imbalance theory flattens deeply human suffering into a clinical label
- Profit-driven pharmaceutical systems encourage over-prescribing
- Medicalising mental health keeps it safely apolitical, encouraging you to endure poor conditions rather than fight to change them. It treats the symptoms of a broken system so that the system itself never has to change.
All worthwhile arguments - just not ones that needed this many pages to make.
A beautifully written but difficult read that never fully clicked for me. The opening chapters are incredibly strong — the language is powerful, and I felt completely pulled into the chaos after the uprising, especially the emotional weight shared between the characters early on. That connection dropped off for me in the middle sections, where the relentless brutality and graphic detail made it hard to stay emotionally engaged rather than overwhelmed. The final chapter, though, brought things back around and reintroduced the human core I’d been missing.
I can absolutely see why people love Human Acts, and there’s no denying how skilfully it’s written. Unfortunately, I found it tough to get through and difficult to truly connect with for long stretches. It made me think, but more out of confusion than curiosity — I felt like I needed outside context for parts of it to really make sense, which hurt it as a standalone read for me. A harrowing look at humanity’s fight for justice, but one that felt like too much gore and intensity without enough grounding to hold it all together.
Alternative title: The Life and Struggles of a Rich Person Who Is Super Hot and Everyone Knows It
I wondering whether I'm just simply not the target audience, or if I'm simply too anti-capitalist to enjoy a bootstraps fantasy about fame and exceptionalism. It starts off fairly engaging and is clearly competently written, but the entire thing collapses under how painfully shallow it is. Evelyn is the only character with any real attention paid to her, and even she feels two-dimensional. The book constantly gestures at Big Topics™ like race, sexuality, grief, and ambition, but almost always uses them as shortcuts to cheap emotional beats that never land.
“Movie stars are movie stars are movie stars...
we are the chosen ones because we are extraordinary”
A quiet but deeply affecting read.
It's a beautiful glimpse into the heart of a simple man, moving gently through his comforts and routines while slowly exposing the anxieties and insecurities beneath them. The real tension comes from watching him wrestle with doing the right thing when the passive ease of everyday life keeps nudging him toward compliance instead.
Keegan's writing is astonishingly economical - the backdrop is painted with so few words, yet feels completely vivid. The way she shifts between warmth and an underlying sense of menace, often personifying events themselves, is handled with incredible control. Absolutely loved and would absolutely recommend as a powerful quick read!
My father died many years ago now - of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.
And so it goes...
This book is exquisitely chaotic and canonically deranged. Its fractured looping structure and deadpan takes are a perfect mirror for the sheer absurdity of war, and I loved how little interest Vonnegut has in making things neat or comforting. It's honest, strange, deeply human, and quickly becoming my favourite flavour of fiction.
As an audiobook, though, the constant jumps in chronology left me even more baffled than expected. Still brilliant, but I'd probably recommend reading over listening.
Also I lovedThe Gospel from Outer Space by Kilgore Trout, and I wish I could give it it's own review (which would definitely get 5 stars!)
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly extremely poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor.
The American poor are footless, mindless, and disinherited. They find each other hideous, and they have been brought up to believe that a man who is poor has only himself to blame.
They are afraid of each other's contempt, for they have no respect for themselves
A powerful and unsettling memoir, right from the isolated, survivalist upbringing to the impostor syndrome of formal education. The tension between loyalty to family and the slow awakening of selfhood is where the book really shines, and some moments are genuinely hard to read (meant in the best way).
It reminded me a lot - both in plot and tone - of Jennette McCurdy's memoir, with both books creating a beautiful rendition of the trauma surrounding a push toward independence.
Held up almost entirely by the audiobook performance. The voice acting was genuinely great and did a lot of heavy lifting, so this juuuuust scraped 2 stars for me.
The story itself felt badly paced, with thin character work and big themes that get name-checked but never really explored. I get that it's a short novella, but it still felt bloated - like a 10 page idea stretched out with filler that doesn't add much. The superficial and simplistic tone also made it that much harder to fully engage with what could have been dark and rich material.
Disappointing read, especially given the hype...
‘Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.'
A genuinely lovely listen — almost like getting quiet life advice from a thoughtful Japanese uncle. Murakami threads his memories and routines through running so naturally that the whole thing feels both personal and meditative. A simple but beautifully resonant memoir that holds together surprisingly well through that single repeating variable.
A good book with a lot to say. It hits some genuinely important themes around identity and vulnerability but the writing style was just far too over the top for me - every feeling wrapped in layers of metaphor, to the point where I kept missing the heart of what the story was trying to do. For such a short novel, it somehow felt much longer, and not always in a good way. I appreciated the intent and the emotion, but the drama of the prose often drowned out the clarity I was waiting for.
A brutal, brilliant read that hit all my cynical nerves in the best way. I'll admit the first few chapters were tough to push through with so many characters thrown in and not much depth, but once the whole Ralph-Piggy-Jack triangle kicked in, it turned into an instant page-turner. A beautiful rendition of the thin layer of civility, and the island's slide into chaos felt uncomfortably close to how real society unravels. Ralph's desperate grip on rules and morality reads as dull heroism to the kids, but to me it felt like the exhausting grind of trying to stay decent when the system pushes you the other way. Dark, sharp, and honest in a way that sticks.
Honestly, this one just didn't do much for me. I listened to it as an audiobook, which might've played a part, but the writing felt so simple and the story never really surprised me. I already had a rough idea of the plot going in, and the book didn't give me much beyond that - no extra depth or layers to make it hit harder. It's a quick read, sure, but also a pretty underwhelming one.
An easy read with a bunch of funny, interesting characters. While I enjoyed the nuance of MT and the hilarious antics of the boys in the (cafe)bar, I felt the story lacked in building up Joseph's story well. While I assume the gaps were purposefully designed, they left me feeling the story was only half told, with the blank spaces feeling more frustrating than exciting. A very well written novel that I would recommend but unfortunately not one I would rave about.
Very well written with tons of beautiful moments, but ultimately very let down by the ending. If it had ended about two chapters earlier, would have been beautiful.
While the writing style is great and the plot is interesting, the characters are all too ~quirky~ to relate to.
N.B. Bilodo also added onto the list of characters creepier than Dracula.
What a masterpiece. A tale of friendship, hope, true sadness, and the power to prevail at every step when everything seems lost.
Such easily accessible sci-fi as well. It all boils down to just two bros, bro-ing it out in space - what more could you ask for? Actually reduced me to tears.
Would 110% recommend the audiobook; incredibly well paced, brilliantly acted and each character is very distinct and recognisable!
“You no can die. I no let you die.”
